Reoccuring Themes

The service industry is like highschool. Most readers of DW have either worked service industry, or at the very least you can relate some employment you've had to the highschool, gossip-based mentality. And within Ruby Tuesday's, I hear a lot. Maybe it's because of my position to the management, maybe because I'm a neutral entity there, not belonging to any clique or group, but whatever the reason, people tend to gossip a lot in my presence. So I hear all the dirt, all the running jokes; essentially, all the things said behind people's backs.

Except mine. But everytime I hear someone's rant about some other person, I can't help but wonder whether this is evident to that person. Do they know the type of things people say about them? Are they aware that they're known as the heroin addict, the slut, the inept manager, the hard body with nothing going on upstairs? I mean, that would transcend any accomplishments of self-awareness, reaching an other's-awareness, right? And so, in the back of my mind, everytime I listen to someone's loose tongue, I can't help but wonder what this same person (and others, too) say about me behind my back. What am I unaware of being known as? And, keeping with the highschool mentality theme, what would my superlatives be?

I know it's a cheezy activity, but chances are you've also been in some employment or group where everyone made up superlatives for everyone else. Given that I worked for Housing for four years, I got my fair share of such activities. I bring this up, mainly, because the ones made up about me always had a reoccuring theme; one that was brought to my attention again tonight. I was hanging out with a couple friends from philosophy, and we were going to head to the bar. In the course of the conversation en route, it came up that I used to play darts and, though not great, can hold my own. One of the guys turns to the other and says, "this just confirmes my hypothesis from earlier." Though I don't know I ever understood the connection he made, the previous hypothesis was that I lead a double-life. By day, a mild-mannered philosophy student, by night a secret opperative for some indecipherably abbreviated governmental institution. They even asked if I ever moonlighted as an assassin. I think this probably developed from an earlier conversation about M:I:III (which, for what it was, was a decent action flick). Anyways, this was very similar to several superlatives that have been given for me; something to the effect of "Most Likely to be a deep cover operative for the CIA."

Ok, so given, that's kind of cool. And I wouldn't mind if that's the only thing being said about me behind my back (albeit I live an increadibly boring life, but, as pointed out earlier, that's just what a deep cover agent would say). The point, though, is that I think I have a fairly stable personality. And, as we human animals have the habit of catagorizing everything in our lives, I sometimes wonder, especially when hearing the catagorizations other people make, what catagories I tend to fall into with people who know me. And yes, the good and the bad. So feel free to share with me, as I think I'd be fairly objective about the whole thing. Afterall, I've already mentioned my acceptence of the arrogant (mis)label, and after reading The Fountainhead (finished tonight), I could accept myself to be an egotist (in Rand's usage, though again, mistakenly deluted to the common notion of the term). But, yeah, it must makes me wonder what I'd know if I was other-aware.

The End is Nigh

I'm nearing the end of The Fountainhead. It's been an amazing ride. I came across a quote a long while back, saying something to the effect that, a young man who wishes to remain an atheist cannot be too careful in what books he reads. In fact, that's very close to the original quote. Maybe by C. S. Lewis. Anyways, many acquaintances over the years have never understood why I read the books I do. True, the majority of these books are classics, which have stood the test of time, though fairly rarely in circles of wide popularity. I go for more of the undercurrent type of books; the Russians, the Beats, the antagonists fighting against something through their work. But I find that quote very applicable. It's not that I'm an atheist, nor that this thought need be religious at all; but that every book I've ever read was read (or, I should say finished, as I've begun many books deemed not worth completion) to influence me in a certain way. Call it self-molding. Take the most innocent prescription of assignments in any classroom at any level of education: it's political, hypnoidal, producing subservience and a dilution of the self. So why not fight that with my own programming? I can think of two anecdotes to demonstrate this;

In highschool, I was reading Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams. On really any account, an interesting book, regardless of it's accuracy or import. In my Latin course, we were doing translations and, after finishing mine, and having no other obligations, I took out this book to pass the time. The teacher, calling the attention of everyone in an otherwise quiet classroom, chastised me for reading something so "perverted."

In a course, "Political and Social Ethics," I answered a question to my own understanding; something to the effect that, sure, we should attempt to give everyone equal footing, but there comes a definite point where success and obligations should be the sole product of the individual's abilities and talents. The professor, again with the attention of the class, as a whole, says, "What are you? Some kind of fucking socialist?!?" (as a side note, I'm not entirely convinced that my opinions there were socialistic, but that's not really the point).

The point is that, through the last few weeks of the worst semester of my 18 years of academic experience, The Fountainhead played a large part in keeping me sane. A friend of mine asked me last week what I planned on reading this summer. When I said Rand, and how much this book, in particular, had helped me to cope with the last few weeks, he responded that, If it came to reading Rand as a way to cope with things, perhaps what I needed most was a hug. Fair. And this affinity isn't, as this same friend later said, due to a sense of individualistic, egotism, conquering the world as one man, and island unto himself capable of incredible suffering only to emerge victorious. No, instead, it's a more subtle understanding of the egoism philosophy present in Rand's work (as a disclaimer, I am not stating I agree with the Rand philosophy, nor even that I understand that philosophy to agree or disagree with);

'Yes! And isn't that the root of every despicable action? Not selfishness, but precisely the absence of a self. Look at them. The man who cheats and lies, but preserves a respectable front. He knows himself to be dishonest, but others think he's honest and he derives his self-respect from that, second-hand. The man who takes credit for an achievement which is not his own. He knows himself to be mediocre, but he's great in the eyes of others. The frustrated wretch who professes love for the inferior and clings to those less endowed, in order to establish his own superiority by comparison. The man who's sole aim is to make money. Now I don't see anything evil in a desire to make money. But money is only a means to some end. If a man wants it for a personal purpose -- to invest in his industry, to create, to study, to travel, to enjoy luxury -- he is completely moral. But the men who place money first go much beyond that. Personal luxury is a limited endeavor. What they want is ostentation: to show, to stun, to entertain, to impress others. They're second-handers. Look at our so-called cultural endeavors. A lecturer who spouts some borrowed rehash of nothing at all that means nothing at all to him -- and the people who listen and don't give a damn, but sit there in order to tell their friends that they have attended a lecture by a famous name. All second-handers.'

'If I were Ellsworth Toohey, I'd say: aren't you making out a case against selfishness? Aren't they all acting on a selfish motive -- to be noticed, liked, admired?'

'--by others. At the price of their own self-respect...A truly selfish man cannot be affected by the approval of others. He doesn't need it." (p. 605-6)

An Athiest's Point of View

Three passions have governed my life:
The longings for love, the search for knowledge,
And unbearable pity for the suffering of [humankind].

Love brings ecstasy and relieves loneliness.
In the union of love I have seen
In a mystic miniature the prefiguring vision
Of the heavens that saints and poets have imagined.

With equal passion I have sought knowledge.
I have wished to understand the hearts of [people].
I have wished to know why the stars shine.

Love and knowledge led upwards to the heavens,
But always pity brought me back to earth;
Cries of pain reverberated in my heart
Of children in famine, of victims tortured
And of old people left helpless.
I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot,
And I too suffer.

This has been my life; I found it worth living.

--Bertrand Russell

Silent Suicides

Do not pass by my epitaph, traveler.
But having stopped, listen and learn, then go your way.
There is no boat in Hades, no ferryman Charon,
No caretaker Aiakos, no dog Cerberus.
All we who are dead below
Have become bones and ashes, but nothing else.
I have spoken to you honestly, go on, traveler,
Lest even while dead I seem loquacious to you.

Frickin' Demons!

Well, I got an A. Where does she get the nerve?!?

Fight to the Pain

Meditation is running into reality. It does not insulate you from the pain of life. It allows you to delve so deeply into life and all its aspects that you pierce the pain barrier and go beyond suffering.

-Bhante Henepola Gunaratana, "Mindfulness in Plain English"

So I've been absent for awhile. I'd like to say it was in the pursuit of killing demons, but unfortunately not all my demons may be taken down through reason. In fact, one in particular seems immune to it. The thing is, every time I loaded up my edit page to write some thought about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, all I could think about was the barrier of pain I've been smashing my head against these past few weeks.

I won't go in too much graphic detail, as the scars are still healing. But suffice it to say that I cannot stand being in a position of a non-equal power-base. And yes, this applies to those situations where I am the "top dog," too. But in the case in question, the control was not only not in my hands, but in inept hands, at that. The reason I have such frustration [bleeding eye frustration, no joke] with non-equal bases of power is that one of the guiding factors I hold necessary for the existence of integrity is undeniable fact that one should be rated solely on their abilities: solely; nothing else; just the stripped naked soul of the individual regardless of whether it's man v. Nature, man v. man, or man v. himself.

I've attempted a third paragraph four times now. But every time I start writing, I trail off in a stream of unfiltered anger. Because yes, I'm pissed. The scary kind of pissed. I just have such frustration with those individuals who are insecure, yet entirely too proud at the same time; that oximoronic, Ellsworth-mediocrity, disdain for the 12 great minds who've shaped our society because they will never be the thirteenth-type, capable of doublethink yet blind to the subconscious betrayal of their real self through these inconsistencies. Ok, third paragraph is now finished. And I end with a quote:

"Or you can accept this fight is for your life, and make the past your killing field. You shouldn't have any problem spotting me when you go out there. I'll be the guy with the machete. "
-- From the disreputable website, CJ

Co-Exist

The title is linked to a pretty cool blog citing a pretty funny article by the Onion.

The Other Side

"Men go abroad to admire the heights of mountains, the mighty billows of the sea, the broad tides of rivers, the compass of the ocean, and the circuits of the stars, and pass themselves by."

"Hear the other side."

--St. Augustine

To annoy DJL, I'll go ahead and say it; Sorry I haven't written in so long. But, seriously, it's been a busy time as of late. In addition to training for the quasi-manager role I'm taking on at work, it's also end of the semester. Which, of course, means 50 pages or so of writing and various other sundries. But I have had a couple revelations in the works. One on puzzles, cause I do love puzzles. But the more interest topic I'll be putting up here is an explanation for the title of this blog, "Divergent World," and its corollary to what I mean when I say "the other side of things." Anyways, probably in a week or so I'll be back to posting. And, contrary to the cliche' apology above, I really don't expect you to be anxiously awaiting...but at least it'll be an indication that I'm sane again.