I got to thinking today about how very different my life is from others. We all have individual lives of course. One life compared to another is so vastly different as to be difficult to categorize, though we all eat, and sleep, and die. The substance of my thinking is more to do with my growing sense of alienation from what I percieve to be the values of others.
When I say something like,.. 'Isolation' I mean a very distinct sensation. That sensation is gone from most modern culture. Jammed so tightly together in hive clusters, its impossible to go without seeing other people in their workplace, in their tenement building, on the roads, and the ever present commercial shrine of consumer outlets. The 'Isolation' I experience is a totally alien concept.
While that is a good example of my meaning,.. it is but one word,.. and its hard to cram the life meaning it is meant to convey into a single word. There are so many words in my vocabulary that just paint expressions of confusion, hostility, and estrangement in varying degrees in the expression of those that encounter it.
After a time, I learned just not to say those kind of things in order to be accepted by degree. It doesn't really matter that if anyone else knows or not,.. how could it? Trying to express it does not win me any popularity contests,.. and even if it did,.. what would be the point?
Someone out of the blue told me that they thought I was not achieving my potential,.. that somehow,.. who I am and what I am doing with myself is beneath what they thought my capability could achieve. That they had prospered in their life and felt sad that I had not. It was a shock to me. I did not know the person felt that way. Its what got me to thinking. I do not think they intended it to be insulting,.. it sure did feel like an insult though.
'Sacrifice' is another of those self identifying words. I can give myself over to the loss of things I hold dear, and have done so, in order to pursue what I value in my life. I did it when I left Tennessee for the army, when I turned my back in disgust of my religion, when I walked out of people's lives for good and sealed off the possibility of their return to my life again.
I live in a hole in the ground. I do not have running water. Emergency services are utterly unavailable out here in the nothing. I rarely have money. I have no kin anymore. All electricity is produced on site so I must be somewhat frugal with my power expenditure.
The reason I was willing to sacrifice those things is to achieve (by degree) my dreams. I have seen such beautiful things, loved with the utmost intensity and passion, known what it is to be a hero to someone. I can say that I know what bliss is and utterly know the truth of my statement.
I found the little patch of nothing I want my bones to eventual be left behind in (after a full life or unavoidable accident) that I am not lying. The sacrifices required in order to experience these things are the path of least resistance on the path I feel drawn to walking my little life down.
Somehow,.. this person looked upon the few details of what constitutes my reality they knew and feel as though I was wasting my life.
And then,.. my epiphany.
What I get out of life is simply invisible to on lookers. The values I hold, relationships, aesthetic, my perspective,... all the things that add up essentially to /me/. That's how I at times find myself amidst confusion, how I give offense, and am hurt. I cannot expect others to accept what they cannot understand about me any more than I can force myself to be something I am not.
This is what it is to be me and that is not going to change.
If I am unwilling to change for others in order to live my life, unable to be understood, and if who I am hurts/is hurt by those around me how can I be anything but distant? The forgone conclusion of the situation fills me with an acceptance of it. While I might prefer other out comes, I find consequences of seeking what I think of as my own potential and life are fitting.
Introspection is a bitch. You can be walking along one day,.. and get onto a line of thinking,.. and just follow it right off a cliff. Or at least,.. I seem to have that metaphorical ability. For all of my thinking I don't really seem to get that far. At least I don't have to be a contestant on holly wood squares or listen to the most up to date subway commercials between chunks of entertainment, or pretend to like the taste of miller genuine draft.
Its a small consolation.
I am a clinical and antisocial bastard. The 'total' bastard if you will. I say swear words, I have a twitchy eye injury, I laugh about as loud and generally unpleasantly as my dogs make barking noises, I don't believe in the easter bunny, and its funny when the fat yuppie lady with larval clutches attendant falls down on ice in the parking lot when yelling at which ever one it was that needed yelling at. (that shit is funny to me, I cant help it) Its in every culture code to identify and expel bastards on general terms with righteous indignation and furious anger!
I go beyond 'total' bastard though.
I can deny myself these things. For the ease of movement in society when I am on the square's turf I don't draw attention to myself. I can say my pleases and my thank yous and my Sirrs and my ma'ams. (being from Tennessee it was required by law for a baptist to beat the proper pronunciation in me don't you know.) I can do these things,.. but I detest them as hollow contrivance.
Really,.. the bastard is strong with this one.
I don't really care what the person in front of me in a line translates last night's 8 o clock news to mean, I don't really believe in the smile a customer service representative gives me, I don't ever know what color of tie best brings out the color of the assistant manager's eyes. All that shit,.. doesn't really effect me as an individual and I know I sure as hell do not effect these things in a lasting or meaningful way.
In other words. Fuck 'em.
I'll smile. I will keep from stepping on any toes if I can manage it,.. but I will not invest a quantum of myself in thinking that other people are any different. I refuse to do the little dance. I should add that my sense of common politeness also includes things like,.. stopping to see if the guy that just slid off the ice road in front of me needs a cell phone and has a plan of what to do next. We are all animals made of meat sacks of mostly water. Not everyone realizes this, so being in a position to do a trivial courtesy that might be the difference between Darwin or the tow truck is part of the unwritten survival pact I think social animals should possess bare minimum.
Fuck 'em,.. but don't leave them to be eaten by moose, it's too horrible even for yuppies.
So while I feel I don't go out of my way to be a /dick/ (a whole other subspecies of social reprobate) It does set the context of what I like to think of as the rarefied 'true' bastard. If I value absolute truth with myself on how I see things I neither expect or give an ounce of care to anyone outside my range of interests all day long and then I sleep well at night. (I sleep well in a semi underground lair amid a pile of carnivores, any place else is sort of iffy) Even the things I think of as perhaps altruistic on the surface, is ultimately something I can identify as self serving. (when I feed my dogs cooked meals their enjoyment of it makes me feel good,.. without that reward of feeling good I don't think I would be driven to do it)
If you have to stop and think for more than five minutes to answer “Am I true bastard?” the answer is either yess,.. or 'see Sociopath the 'evil' bastards for more details'
Even the draw to self identify as a 'true' bastard itself is something that rewards me. When I look at myself in the mirror I do not see a hypocrite, the type of person I have a low and utter kind of contempt for. By accepting the substance of how I actually see things I feel I can make some progress at discovering who I really am more than who I would like to think of myself as (the process never being complete of course). It also makes me feel like I can be a /better/ person than I typically expect other people to be by that simple act of doing the bare minimum. Every time I stop to ask if everything is okay I always get this sort of look of surprise. Its always a kind of canned line but I like to leave off encounters where I did help by saying “We are all in this together."
The 'true' bastard always contemplates the second helping on theoretical grounds.
Always
If I had a 'true' bastard motto it would be that,.. “We are all in this together” Its one of those statements that is not inherently good or bad,.. its what you make o fit,.. and usually in a reflexive manner without thinking about it. Taken at the end of push starting a car its interpretable one way,.. looked at from the eye of a 'true' bastard it always has the subtext 'and you jackasses are broke down in troll country wtf is the matter with people! Get the hell off my lawn!'
(waves politely from the dog filled car and waves)
(teehee) yuppies
Whenever I am broke down I don't expect any one to stop and the only ones that ever would are the pilot cars for the arctic trucking crews. Don't get me wrong,.. I respect those guys. But I respect them only marginally more than the guy that pays them to do it or the weasel bastard that signed off on it /having/ to be their responsibility for legal CYA reasons. I know they are probably giggly at me later down at the hill top truck stop,.. but that's okay,.. If they have to stop on my account,.. I was probably doing something stupid and a chuckle doesn't have any of the tooth of frostbite.
The 'True' bastard cuts in both directions.
So,.. back to my initial point about introspection. I think a lot. It does not take me far in life in the way conventional success is often determined But it takes me weird places. Its not a source of as much pleasure as it is being realistic in the application of my limited time here on planet dirt. I don't really have any uplifting message or some throw back wisdom to share with you rare and few seekers or dreamers, I just don't want to have to keep up pretenses and have a handy public service announcement to point at as an explanation for the bizarre anti social behavior that people unexpectedly find themselves stumbling through from time to time in the loose vicinity of knowing me as a person.
I think everyone that has gotten to know me the least bit knows this.
I used to look forward to posting here. I would get the seed of inspiration in me from an event,.. or a particular thought,.. and let it fester. I would compose a rough draft in my mind of how to best posture the things I wanted to say. Even if the substance of what I was wanting to put text to was unpleasant, the process of arranging it in my head gave me a way to begin to try and make sense of my feelings.
I wrote for myself first and foremost. The record I left gave me something to look back on and consider. It was also nice to feel like I had a small audience of friends with whom to share the little nuance of detail in my life. I do not feel as though what I wrote was of particular significance to anyone other than myself in any meaningful way, it was just kind of ,.. nice,.. to have a medium in which to tuck away little slivers of myself.
Over the years, the pleasant dynamic waned and then collapsed under the burden of personal interaction gone wrong. One by one people left my life, became bitter enemies, or proved to be threats to my sense of well being (and in a notable incident a direct threat to my life and that of my dogs). The journal became a conduit for something other than the pleasant experience I had come to enjoy.
Looking back over the events I chose to remember through this record,.. I saw all these beautiful things I once had in the few people I cared for and now have no longer. The many ghosts reached over the intervening distance to remind me why I prefer to live life alone and in relative silence, twisting old forgotten blades still lodged in my back.
I recently posted a music list I had made for someone and got to thinking about the past. I agonized over which specific tracks to use, the imagery used within them, and the ordering of it. The ritual of that sort of musical alchemy was done in the manner I learned from the girl that used to be my sister.
She is not anything to me anymore, dead and buried beneath the too many lies she had me believing. I am still haunted by how intimately I knew her,.. and then how utterly she abandoned me without saying farewell.
After posting it,.. I spent some time listening to the music anew and reading over old posts and the commentary. Here and there I chuckled a bit at my naivety,.. but mostly it just made me feel old and withdrawn. I do not think I am much of an extrovert, though compared to the way I am now those days gone by made me feel downright sociable.
How did that happen?
I accept I am a kind of coward when it comes to others. I cannot help it. It doesn't seem to matter how much I care about a person, how much I trust them, or what favorable regard I appear to be held in. Not knowing how to read others or to see a threat as it is developing has led me to reflexively remove myself from situations in which I might get mistakenly let the wrong people inside of my defenses.
In the wake of all that has happened it is the defining honestly of how I view getting close to anyone anymore.
I rarely leave my precious treeline anymore. In comparison to the people I grew attached to, I find the silence of the trees soooooooooo much more sincere. Days turn into months without ever seeming to enter the weekly denomination that rules so much of the purpose of others in the daily monotony of their modern comfort living. Through it all I just kind of drift through unseen.
Dogs, to me, are better than humans in the embrasure of their own perspective. Given the opportunity for something like equal regard within a pack they live whole heartedly as themselves and do not feel shame or equivocate about what they want (be it getting into the garbage, drinking out of the toilet bowl, or stealing food from your plate) It makes dogs easier to accept at face value than the human convention of deceit, manipulation, and abuse.
I read a post concerning the death of a dog I once knew. His owner sprung a surprise stand off in which true deadly fangs were bared. It reminded me of the time I pulled that very same dog out of a burning building. At the time I was filled with a berserk desperation to protect that which I thought of as my pack, the most intimate social bond I have ever been able to feel with others. The dog was unconscious and not breathing. It's owner thought it was dead and that it was his fault at the time.
Now though,.. all I can think about that person involve the numerous betrayals that they became a vector for. I think about that moment in which I saw the horror expression on my close friend's face before I dove back into the inferno he had caused. I can imagine that same look on his face even now, picking up the corpse of his dog who had died alone and in agony away from his master's side. It's shitty that dog died that way,.. though the utter contempt and ill will I hold for his owner leads me to think of it as a fitting end.
I let that person get close to me and as a result I have to bear the consequence of having once deeply loved what I thought that person was. It is a burden that serves as a solemn reminder to me about /why/ I do not let others that close anymore.
I am not sure if this is my last post here or not. Writing it all down doesn't really give me the sense that I have accomplished anything or that I am unburdened by the composition of it.
I am a strange animal. I have thoughts in my head. Some things seem funny to me, I like the way an orgasm feels, and when prodded by hunger I drool and try to devour things. I think humanity is so taken with it's own romanticized notion of what constitutes 'being human' that it doesn't typically percolate to mass consciousness just what,... strange,.. creatures humans are.
When someone points accusingly and squeals in a desperate tone. “It isn't human!” everyone around them gasps and draws back a pace. If there is a surly demagogue within ear shot then the pitchforks and torches get pulled out. (trust me on this one its an ugly sight) You can see this at work in propaganda when Washington wants Americans to murder one group of foreign nationals or another.
At the other end of the spectrum there is this cherished concept of 'Humanity' as a virtue all its own. Its spoken in that same tone of angels floating around on cloud serenely. Crimes against humanity are a class of social behavior deemed so in violation of the basic tenants of thinking mortal creatures to be abhorrent in a manner that requires show trial executions and media coverage for the whole planet to see. (well,.. not the execution itself,.. just the fanfare at the gates and anyone who happens to sneak a cell phone in) Those bastards should have known better just by possessing a human perspective themselves to not have used mass starvation / chemical / biological / radiation / robotics to decimate civilian populations. And thus they must be made to pay!
But what even defines humanity? Looking at history through the ages it doesn't seem to be quite the same thing popularly held to be pseudo sacred by modern conventions. Our ancestors were bloody handed bastards who left a wake of atrocity behind the progress of their culture. You can paint pretty pictures over the function of a sword,.. but its primary purpose is that when called upon to do so its a device that renders people into flinchy gobbets of steaming unhappiness.
That makes sense to me. I could see how one group of people with swords could convince another group without swords to follow the same invisible man in the sky, great rulers back home, or to hand over the valuables. I don't really want to die a painful death,.. and thus tend to have that factor into my decision making. I think anyone who has ever gotten a decent taste of agony knows at a bone deep level to avoid it.
It's a truth that amid all the psychological acrobatics common sense seems to involve, stands out as distinctly genuine. In my own personal answer to the question of what constitutes humanity,.. that would factor into it considerably. Agony is a pretty good teacher,.. and if we claim any kind of intelligence,.. applied thought process to strategically avoid injury is a pretty useful survival trait.
The other side of Agony is bliss though and here in I think my own perspective begins to substantially divulge from the herd. I think bliss is not the same thing as pleasure,.. though pleasure can certainly bring about a bliss state. I think the opposite of pain is comfort,.. feeling in the moment with no pressure to react to changes or be concerned with anything. I think meditation is also a form of bliss (this is speculation however,.. still unsure what exactly other people do in their heads when they are 'meditating')
So,.. my whole wide meandering point was to share my basic views of what I think motivates the strange creatures we are. If I look at humans as a set of trained behaviors and instinctual programming then I can see myself as having been crafted much more by Agony than bliss. Whether emotional or physical when I experience it I pay close attention to my thoughts and surroundings, my thinking kicks in, and I learn about who I am.
The single instance of greatest Agony that comes to mind was being BETRAYED by a friend I named Melek. No other event in my life changed how I interacted with other people both known to me and strangers. It hurt worse than kidney stones,.. it hurt worse than having my eye lid torn in half, it hurt worse than landing on a bicycle seat wrong, it hurt more than my step dad trying to rape my sister, it hurt more than Sheeeba dying,.. it hurt worse than killing Harrrly, It hurt worse than being someones abandoned dog. It hurt so much that an echo of it is always in my thoughts.
While I am averse to Agony,.. pain I actually kind of like. I live a rough and tumble life. I get nicked, bruised, cut, clawed, banged, bitten, bonked, and burned on a semi regular basis. It just happens in the normal course of doing stuff and having rowdy dogs. I think in part what a person is able to tolerate and why, and what utterly and totally a person cannot abide. So while I dread you friend Agony,.. I do recognize your influence in how I see the world,.. and who I am to people.
My heart hangs heavy as I write this. It's been that way for over a moth now. Sometimes that is the way things are with me.
Coming upon the choices in my life I often feel like I am made to weigh a possible course of action between a selection of consequences that offer little happiness for me. The only thing worse I think is not choosing,.. allowing the things that happen to me to take place without me having invested myself into them.
I wrote a letter to an old friend the other day. Well,.. not that he is much of a friend to me anymore. The substance of it valued the memory of who he was to me, lamenting us not being that thing anymore, and thinking it best to keep myself removed from the situation. It hurt to write that handful of text. Not knowing how else to deal with his approach it was the most truthful response I could come up with.
I feel like a ghost in that regard, the remnants of a life that has grown still and far away.
Very far away.
We used to be very close,.. even so far as having defined who we were in the context of completing one another. Thinking of that makes me feel like I know something about dying. It was not as though we were perfect, the both of us hurt one another deeply even then. At one point he tried to commit suicide,.. at another point I just up and left for good (accomplishing much the same thing I think).
I am just like that I suppose. When I am hurt(which seems to be more and more) I just accept the hurt and then find a way to remove myself from the pain. I don't like hurting people who mean something to me and my own pain by comparison doesn't carry the same weight with me. Being alone with myself is an easier thing to bear than to become the inflicted discomfort on those that have mattered to me.
I think I have mentioned it before, but there is a pause I have before leaving out from the Trollhaim as the car is idling. I wonder if I will be coming back to the property,.. if lurking out there in the day is my end. I do not invite it, per se, I just feel the possibility of it lurking up the path a ways out there in the gloom of uncertainty. It's comforting in its own way to think one day I will end and have to no longer fret about how I am seen by others or to have to endure any more betrayals. It makes surviving the day and returning to my den to share the spoils of the day with my pack that much sweeter.
Not sure if I really have a point amid all this wallowing in introspection. I feel like recently a lot of things have gone wrong in how I deal with people and I am uncertain how to move through it to get back to the thinks I desire to accomplish. I don't want to hurt in the same emotional space that I have given over to my creative outlet. I am not sure how to push through to it though, or even in so doing how long it might last.
My greatest sense of accomplishment lately has come from absorbing knowledge, being useful to my pack, and spending time idle playing cards. It's simple stuff really, but it does keep that ghost feeling lingering at a distance for the duration. It could certainly be a lot worse. Maybe one day when all this is over I can sit down and compare notes with the older ghosts of the sabertooth and the mammoth and see who had the more fulfilling journey. I think they might understand me better than my contemporaries.
I have written many times about my own damaged associations with interpersonal relationships and society as a whole on other occasions in my journal. If there would be a central theme to my journal, that would probably be the one right there. Despite the repetition of the subject matter I have yet to satisfactorily captured the meaning of it I think. I mention that here at the beginning of my most recent post to give an opportunity to any erstwhile reader as a courtesy. Drama and stessiness to follow,.. please help yourself to some complimentary nachos on your way out one of the conveniently located exits if thats not really your thing.
Chipper I am not.
So then,.. for the brave, curious, or morbidly fixated,.. on to the substance of my personal journal.
I think there must be something within my psychology that enjoys being a victim. It's been there for a long long time. I remember one time when I was about sixteen and in the company of a tight knit group of friends. I forget why ,.. but at the time everyone was angry about something and as is often the case with juvenile males experiencing so many strange hormonal changes the prospect of violence hung in the air.
My reaction to the situation came as a sudden impulse which I reflexively followed. I laid down at the feet of my close friend, who I was nominally the leader of. I calmly folded my arms behind myself, keeping mostly on my back. I just did it. The shock of the unexpected reaction evaporated the impending fist fight in the space of the single moment.
“I don't want to fight you.”
My memory of the event hangs more epic than how the event it self actually played out. That sort of warm fuzzy glow. Given an opportunity to fight I could find no inspiration within me to do so with my highly trusted pack mate and thankfully he could not carry the encounter into violence.
He wept.
This lead (I speculate) to seeing vulnerability as a means expressing my desire to not be any kind of a threat to those I am close to. Whether one of my few friends, a lover, or adopted family I make it a special point to make myself vulnerable with them. I get that urge with people I am close to and do not shrink from it.
However,... since I passed into adulthood proper that tendency has been a vector for all sorts of negative experiences., some of the worst experiences in my life in fact. (thanks hazmatt,..... that was sarcasm if you did not notice)
When a dog attacks me,.. its different,.. when I am around strangers,.. its different,... when its around those I feel have betrayed me,.. its different. There is no desire to be vulnerable,.. just a berserk desire to deal with the potential threat on terms that are as favorable to my interests as possible. When there is even a prospect of something wrong between me and someone I care about I feel almost helplessly drawn to making myself able to be hurt by that person,... even when I think I am the aggrieved party.
It hurts soooo much much when that vulnerability is exploited.
One time in the process of breaking up a dog fight one of my more psychotic dog rescues let go of the dog she was in the process of tearing up and then clamped on to my arm. It hurt -alot-. If you have never had a seventy pound dog lock onto your arm,.. well,.. suffice to say its not something I can really recommend to others. The important thing is is that this dog I had liberated from a very bad set of circumstances stopped attacking,.. very slowly let go of my arm,.. and then proceeded to hide in a corner. I did not react to the pain,.. I let her hold my arm like that,... blood beginning to dribble out of her muzzle. I used the space of her confused withdrawal to triage the injuries of the other dog. The pain was entirely insubstantial compared to what that physical pain allowed me to accomplish.
Emotional pain,.. that's another matter altogether, particularly the sort that comes from having consciously made myself defenseless toward it. I don't know what to do with all the hurt I carry around with me. I don't know how to let go of it, I don't know how to manage it,.. I don't know how to keep my confidence from drowning in the bitter ocean of it.
Why then do I feel unable to determine a probable approximation of emotional threat from those I associate with? Why does the pain I can't control not act as an incentive to keep myself out of those situations? Why can I not change my emotional behavior which keeps leading me to feel this way? Why do I reflexively suppress the clean glaring heat of wrath as a response to betrayal?
Most importantly, where is the next knife in my back coming from?
I have a messed up sense of humor. Its part of who I am, Like a foot or a brown hair color. While generally this runs the gamut of bizarre non sequitors (Fish Spectrum class wrestlers in corduroy face-masks ftw!) or the brutally sadistic (She fell funny) the subject of my story has to do with puppets.
Jeff Dunham is a funny man. He is talented with voices, singing, and displaying a sort of social irreverence that I find equally obnoxious as well as charming. The funny man makes me laugh. When a friend introduced me to his collection of DVDs of his performances I watched everything he had. It's rare that I can really get into comedy performances. Most of them revolve around things meant for a much wider audience and falls flat on my own aesthetic. As noted though,.. Jeff Dunham is a funny man.
In between the chuckles though,.. I noticed a couple of things that just got under my skin. It was not his reflexive closet racism that really bugged me so much. That's almost trendy on comedy central. What got me was a sort of underlying perspective that his conservative majority values were the same everyone in the audience had. This was displayed through his dead terrorist puppet, off handedly associating a lot of negativity with possibly being mistaken as a fag, and most importantly calling out special attention to serving armed forces past present and future with having the entire crowd cheer for them.
Now,.. I understand civic duty more than the next slob. What got me about the encounter was deep rooted and took me days to really grasp what upset me about it. I was raised in a military family in the regular presence of veterans. Vietnam Vets in particular with a circle of second world war legends filling out the peripheral grandparent's generation. These were my role models I had patterned myself after when making a conscious decision to be a willing sacrifice for the preservation of the country. That was the deciding factor of why I joined the army. Thinking in the terms of joining an organization staffed by volunteers with similar values and respect for national identity, it seemed like the right thing to do. Straight patriotism with no chaser.
I think the wave of applause that greeted the armed forces that stood up to get clapped at were applauding that same illusory view of what constitutes the military experience. A people see acts of altruism,.. and want to reward that. You can see the same concept at work in military ID discount if you live anywhere near a base (which is also a strategic move to increase sales and store traffic). It has been a long time since I was in the military though. So on the few occasions I see an opportunity to talk with military uniforms I take 'em. By displaying even a little knowledge and asking basic questions I overcome my social awkwardness and just tried get a feel in their own words about their feelings of military servitude.
Not a single time have I heard anything about a national identity, preservation of a way of life, or anything else altruistic. I never cease coming away from such encounters feeling profoundly,.. saddened,.. by unanticipated responses. Far and away the most frequent answer is for lack of other prospects, wages, and benefits. I don't think there is anything wrong with that. A professional soldier should be able to live comfortably within the arrangement of servitude. A little base by my own perspective,.. but an otherwise acceptable shade of moral gray. Some of the responses though,.. well,... Ill just paraphrase the more memorable ones.
I got my bitch pregnant. It's the only place that will pay me to carry a machine gun. It got me out of county lockup. My dad made me.
(My absolute favorite response which left me stunned for a few seconds) You know, because haji has to die.
Those reasons I don't think are particularly commendable. They are the ones that the current military people I have talked with have told me,.. being comfortable enough to say it to a stranger's face. The thing that I feel Jeff Dunham's crowd was applauding is better represented by those reasons than the incredibly naive and watered down concept of what I think most of society carries around in it's collective values.
Its not the image that they like to roll out in big swathes of red white and blue with gold trimming and shiny stars on the Murdoch prole feed. It's the bleeding meat of truth that lies beneath the more attractive lies of modern public relations campaigns.
In my own neck of the woods I was alarmed to discover that most weapons misconduct, including murder, is brought about by actively serving military personnel or their direct family living with them on base or in the subsidized cheap housing of Fairbanks. Two military goons killed Blondie (a famous hippie pawn store owner) for refusing to purchase their stolen body armor and threatening to turn them in. I found a business card of his in my home the other day,.. the last scarred bone from a long-since scattered pile. I watch Youtube videos of soldiers in places like Iraq and Afghanistan doing what it is heavily armed killers in lawless countries do.
I know they are not all like that. There are enough conscientious stories, suicides, and systemic drug use to tell me there is a very big problem with what our military service is doing to those that have volunteered for it. Those that excel in the environment are given a venue for their talent, those that do not find coping mechanisms, a certain portion of both come home missing parts of themselves and shunned by the broken VA system that has not functioned in years.
The support our troops need is to be brought back home,.. not fucking puppets applauding. I think the people that should be applauded are those which have enabled and continue to exacerbate the atrocity.
Do you believe there is other intelligent life in distant galaxies? If no, why not? If yes, do you believe this is something to be feared and avoided or actively sought out?
I think that mankind's ability to recognize intelligence is too in question to offer a definitive example. Any basis for comparison is based upon a human consciousness point of view. What even is -defined- as life is often quite interpretational let alone cognitive ability. I would surmise that both intelligence and life exist outside of our tiny dirt sphere and we are merely too backwards of an animal to recognize it moving through the subtleties of a physical universe we are incapable of ultimately knowing.
I am scars. My biggest sense of success comes from rescuing animals from the cruelties or irresponsibilities of others. Particularly beating cases. I can personally identify with that condition of existence, fearing a blow you cannot predict that sometimes doesn't come for days. I also need pain on a semi regular basis to remind me what it's like to have a body. I don't mean to say I lack an awareness of my body,.. but most of the time it feels like the volume is just really on low,.. and sometimes it's difficult to make it out distinctly. Having to struggle, to cope with physical pain, or going to exhaustion acts as a kind of physical reassurance where my limits are.
Injury is a different manner,.. at least on terms I don't understand or cannot influence. Primarily I think of myself as more emotionally than physically defensive,.. though I have a long muscle memory. I don't like being a victim. At least not to someone I would not trust to share a meal with. When a dog fight breaks out there are warning signs and conditions that precede it. A sort of ritual of violence. I don't agree with the 'logic' inherent with the dog's actions,.. but I recognize and understand what that ritual is and how to go about stopping it before it starts. When I get bit its when I have failed and the violence proper its to the point that the dogs just become these thrashing berserker trying to -hurt- the other dog with a high instance of flail. I fucked up by allowing the conditions and now I will damn sure remember what I did wrong because physical injury sucks and the emotional regret never heals.
I am scars. Physical pain you get used to. Emotional pain hurts because it never goes away. I am an exile from my family (saving my mother on a conditional basis). I have been banished from society. I find the comfort of dogs more fulfilling than that of casual friendships with my own species. Emotional pain strikes me in a way I have no defense against and as such I protect myself from regret,... in a instinctive flinching desperation kind of way. I am in that manner a coward and satisfied that I am.
And yet,.. these are my values. The hidden me that judges the experiences I go through weighed by those standards. Emotional pain hurts so avoid it. Physical pain is worth enduring for the sake of what I believe in. I like the mark of the scar that it leaves and find who I am reflected in it.
I think animals are often taken for granted because humans take for granted that they too are animals,.. not any more special than the dirt both tread upon in the cosmic scheme of things. I am a simple creature. I don't want to be hassled. I will bite if provoked. I will not betray those I consider of my own. Conditional respect based on reciprocation rather than social presentation. It just seems to be who I am at my laziest acceptance of reoccurring lessons in my life.
I would like to think that I am a creature of genetics as well as a creature of chosen associations. Social structures formed with this free association I call in my personal vocabulary a 'pack'. Ideally it should imply a bond stronger than blood relation in addition to allowing for that association within it's framework as well. It represents those you functionally trust your life with on a regular basis and points of priority of consideration in most (if not all) things. These packs only occur in situations where each member is dependent on the other members themselves rather than simply the social structure. The personalties and unique traits which strengthen the overall group.
I further conjecture that such groups only function in a small unit. My best experiences which led to thinking of my chosen manner of interpersonal reaction have only ever included 3-7 members arrayed over humans and canines living together in conditions if not strictly as equals, connected in such a way that each member is vastly more valued than those who are outside of the pack. It is not active dissociation from others as much a deep understanding of one another and sense of self that comes from deep familiarity.
The biggest drawback I have encountered with this line of thinking is that the desire to -trust- other invariably leads to being taken advantage of. People who are unable to form stable dependencies on others or never fully grasp the concept of truth use the frame work of my proposed pack model in order to provide the appearance of the group's requirements and as a method of access to a greater pool of personal resources. Sometimes it seems situational,.. other times times it has been a distinctly plotted thing,... more and more though I have to wonder if there is not also an opposite genetic and choice of associations at works. I have been betrayed so utterly now on so many occasions I have to wonder if the people themselves are even really conscious of what they are doing. I cant really -blame- them for who they are any more than I want to be -blamed- for being the way I am. But in order to assess potential threats as well as prospective new individuals,... how does one factor the possibility of undetectable intent the individual might not even be aware of.
Liars,.. particularly prolific ones,.. that I have known have seemed so rolled up in the garb of their untruths that they seem to genuinely believe that they are not lying, often requiring excessive amount of blatant evidence in order to redact a statement they had made previous shown to be not the case. It doesn't make sense as a gambit to lie so badly or blatantly that I really have to wonder how -intentional- it is on their own part. Maybe lying is so comforting and second nature that they are the most frequent victim of their own controlled image to others.
The thought creeps me out on so many different levels.
