I used to post on some popular blogs.
I've learned something.
I really don't exist, none of us do really.
Open your mouth and speak your mind, and you will be told by other people who are also speaking their mind that you should have stayed quiet. They don't seem to see the irony in that.
Who wins these arguments is largely a function of the personality of the speaker, not the merits of the argument, some people simply won't back down and declare themselves winner by raising their own glove in their hand and just insist that it's so far above everyone else that no one can touch it. Then they make it a personal character attack which takes on a very interesting dynamic:
Person A can say to person B that they are "lower than whale shit" "the worst person I've ever known" or you can add to this list because you know where it comes from. Fair enough, it's an opinion.
But if person B actually takes it to heart - meaning they take it personally and become emotional or angry over the matter - then suddeenly person A walks their argument backward and claims that it wasn't supposed to be taken so seriously.
Well, hey, if it wasn't meant to be taken so seriously, why did person A go to such lengths to grab person B by the ears and make goddamn sure that they FUCKING HEARD WHAT THEY WANTED TO SAY. AND THEY'RE RIGHT, SO WHY HAVENT YOU, PERSON B, STUFU AND GONE HOME YET, YOU MISERABLE PIECE OF SHIT, then it seems rather odd that they were expecting person B to not really take it seriously.
Its a common moment in the life of a parent to remind their progeny that "with freedom comes responsibility". That speech used to be given upon big moments like the aquisition of the young person's driver's license. (of course given the circumstances of our age, that speech obviously doesn't get delivered the way it used to)
But free speech - well, that just has no strings at all.
You can say things that will wind someone up like a childs toy, and when the listener is so apoplectic and unhinged they're even threatening to kill themselves - well, hey - now it's time to put the responsibility not on the one hurling insults, but on the listener to react properly.
That's right, always put the weight on the receiver to give you the reaction you wanted.
So in this analogy, freedom always belongs to the speaker. Responsibility always belongs to the listener, in this case to give the speaker the reaction they were expecting, or at the least, no reaction at all,.
And so I watch the news of the shootings, and for those who have the stomach for it who dig through our news and point out how many tragedies we've had in recent years, it's sad that we as a country have bastardized freedom beyond it's original meaning; it now comes with no responsibility.
You can yell "Fire" in a crowded theater, and now it doesn't have to be a clarion call of something burning - fuck, no - now you can use it as a signal to discharge weapons and still disavow any responsibility for where the bullets land.
And suicides, well, we've absolved everyone from any part in the 30,000 of those every year. Like the people who believe in "evil" as an abstract force in the universe and not a function of people who make choices to commit acts of evil, we have declared mental illness to be some kind of communicative virus that somehow is spread through the aether. (look it up, it's worth the google).
If people who committed suicide had spend their entire life in seclusion, seperate and isolated from humans and the society that humans create, then there is some ground to claim that it's in the water or some mysterious mental wave of dark energy that just grabs some people but not others. Blame it on the chemistry in their brains.
But the people who are labelled "sick" or "ill" or crazy were not raised in seclusion on the moon, they were interacting with people for their entire existence; gathering experiences, lessons, pain, joy, sorrow, elation. Our lives are a dynamic screenplay in progress that is shaped and formed by our social relationships and interactions.
But in 2011, people want to believe that there are just "sick" people out there - the religious chalk it up to Satan and "evil" as an abstract force in the universe. Surely it wasn't a result of any interaction they had, no, not that.
Kurt Vonnegut to lace his writing with the phrase "and so it goes".
It seems the greatest tragedy in the story of the human spirit is that while we have claimed dominion over all the universe and act as if we can solve any problem of nature, we shamelessly surrender that the acts of other humans are the one thing mankind will never have control of.
After all, humans just do whatever they want, and nothing can stop them.
I've had my fill of people who will argue with me for 59 rounds, then claim that I alone have gone too far by taking it to round 60; and then who waste their precious time in round 61 by coming back to tell me that the whole thing was a waste of their precious time.
Priceless.
Pointless, too, but only if you have the objectivity to be that honest. Most get through life by the noble technique of just declaring the other person "wrong", "sick", "sad" or "pathetic" - "lower than whale shit" and then insisting that a smart person would end the argument; they end the argument and claim in the falacy of affirming the antecedent, declare themselves the smarter one.
...the person who was somehow still so smart only moments before while mired in it, but now has been somehow awarded by whatever council in their mind that decides these things to have the higher ground.
There will be more shootings, more suicides, because people just love the freedom to push as hard as they want and then blame everything that falls over and crashes for being weak or unstable.
In a perverted irony, people who write their thoughts out will be arrested and detained because their thoughts sound dangerous.
Of course, the people who aren't speaking their mind are dangerous too, but they're smart enough (or deliberate enough) to keep their mouth shut. People like me speak so that a discussion can be had, while all manner of people who have no fucking clue what they are thinking make pronouncements about how and why and who put the thoughts in someone else's head; while never actually listening to them.
The society of people who surrounded a person for their entire life who put those thoughts in their head will disavow all of it; leaving all the culpability for their words upon the people who's throats they crammed their words down sideways because they had the "right" to speak.
Watch.
People who are honest about how they feel are held against their will because their thoughts sound dangerous.
the ones who are dangerous aren't held, because - well, this is easy - if their thoughts are never spoken, they don't make any sounds at all.
They're smart enough that they know it's stupid to tell anyone what you're going to do if you want to actually do it, they just do it.
So every so often a Jared Loughtner makes himself famous, and the offices of shrinks and cops all over the country are suddenly busy, beause now everyone has to take every angry word as a threat that someone will kill in an at of senseless psychotic violence.
Meanwhile, the senseless psychotic violence continues anyway, because the problem is not who's speaking and who's not, but people care nothing about anyone but themselves. Society has become a zero-sum proposition where person A's freedom must come at the expense of person B; and thus the meaning of the word has been bastardized beyond redemption.
Freedom cannot belong only to some people or it has ceased to be freedom. That' the lesson that America is not learning at this time; society has forgot that even if we dont' agree with each other we are nonetheless symbiotic.
Lewis Thomas wrote "The Medusa and the Snail", within he tells the story of a parasite, the medusa (wasp) whose eggs are laid within the flesh of the snail. The wasp larvae eats the snail with deliberation to gain energy to grow - it saves the snails vital organs for last until the rest has been devoured - and thus gets the most out of the snail. Good for the wasp.
The snail sees it otherwise.
This is an example of a parasitic relationship; where one party gains at the expense of the other.
This country was supposed to be a symbiotic relationship. A place where all parties gain together; their interactions are mutually sustaining, one gives to another, and it is returned in some form to maintain the equilibrium. Otherwise, if one party gains always at the expense of the other, well, we're going to run out of "other" eventually.
So I'll be the guy who lays bare his soul in the blind and foolish hope that somehow humans might realize they are their own worst enemy; we create and perpetuate this misery we think we're so upset by, but we never take responsiblity for it.
In America today, the bastardized concept of freedom is the uninhibited opportunity to shout at whoever you want about whatever you want.
Responsibility for what happens from the echo? Well, that's for everyone else.
And so it goes.
Although maybe not forever.
There have been many great societies throughout history.
Where are they now?
Why do we have the hubris to think we'll be different?
It's our hubris that blinds us to our own faults and failures that will consume us from within.
Wecome back my friends to the show that never ends,
well, sometimes it ends.
You see as an atheist, I believe in the end of the world, only my version has nothing to do with a prophecy or the book of Revelation; there will be no rapture, no place of salvation where some can escape and endure while others suffer and perish.
We all go together, and it seems the reason this is guaranteed to be our fate is because whenever someone has the temerity to suggest something is wrong and needs genuine attention - well, in the "Greatest Country In the World, (TM) 'tis treason to say any such thing. We wouldn't be the Greatest Nation On Earth if such a thing were possible, now would it?
Carry on. This is one man's rambling that we attack each other from within, claim it is precisely what our founders and "G"od himself want (after all, everything is) - and that means if we all die catastrophe or by our own hand, think of how many people will close their eyes and seek comfort in the idea because they're just sure that everything that happens is the will of someone or something we can never understand.
This is why religion scares me - why I see society consuming itself - people see something wrong, they're comfortable with it being wrong...just as long as it's not their fault. They solve this by never accepting anything as their fault.
and so it goes.
Maybe not forever, though.
