serenity is a choice

Category: Blog (Page 1 of 2)

The Problem with “I”

“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”

Newsweek: “A Cult of Ignorance” by Isaac Asimov, January 21, 1980, p. 19.

Rich I am not, nor famous…

A friend of mine once asked me, why I am not rich. I am charming, good looking, intelligent and talented I know to express myself (and humility is one of my most prominent qualities). So why on earth am I not rich? Told that to another friend and she explained to me I had one profound problem concerning getting rich and famous: I neither need nor crave recognition for any achievement.

She is right. I know the value (or lack thereof) of anything I do myself, the applause of others might be nice, but is nothing I need. I want to be seen as a person, perceived in what I am. To see somebody smile, just because this human being enjoys the fact I exist, that is enough.

All that really doesn’t help in getting rich.I hate promoting myself, I even always hated writing a diary. My way of experiencing and understanding the world is in Cassirer’s sense the dialectic that results from the dialog with others. Ubuntu — humans become humans through humans.

Though I use Debian.

And then, the world…

“Magical theater, entry fee is your mind.” — Herman Hesse, Steppenwolf

That said we can dispense with any further literary pleasantries. We’ll come back to those later, for now let me put in plain words what’s ailing me for quite some time:

This world has lost its mind.

By world I don’t mean trees, spiders, solar protuberances on the moonlight shining on the 12 pins in Connemara seen across the sea (actually something I had the pleasure to experience, back in 1988 on a trip to Ireland — one of those moments where you ask yourself, utterly influenced by Walt Disney movies, if nature can be tacky by itself. Well, it can’t, no matter how much blue and white animators use to really get to the bottom of the idea of “kitschy”). Some little aspect of the word world: usually it means “our world”, the world we perceive as the ocean of concepts in which we dwell. Reality is just one of those concepts and it’s quite difficult to say what this world means.

I won’t go into philosophical detail, because I’m sick with a slight fever and a very shallow essay is about all I can deliver right now. Just one observation about being “woke”.
To try to better the world is a noble concept, just like freedom and caring for others. But what about the permanent judgment of others or situations, ideas. Do you really become a better person by miming the moral blockwart of the universe? That is not to say that there is a crazy amount of things one can feel judgmental about. Former presidents, companies that sucked the blood of their employees, people who shit on the environment and above all racists, sexist, fascists. But you don’t succeed in changing anything on a basal level in the mind of people, when you put yourself above them, morally or concerning what your level of personal development might seem to you.

I think there’s the problem: you fixate on the problems around you to run away from emptiness, loneliness and a general lack of serenity. To put it that way: you don’t know nothing about yourself, but everything (and I mean EVERYTHING!) about everything else. Even when you have spent perhaps a decade or two max in this world which is quite a bit less than the 15 odd billion years the universe exists (in this case it’s universe, because it’s quite debatable if the word world in the sense I defined it earlier can be used for a universe devoid of minds to perceive it – and it’s not the time nor the place nor the physical state I’m in two get into a philosophical discourse about that).

In this is where the observation that the world has lost its mind comes in. Too many people talk about freedom and have no idea what that is (the freedom to do whatever you want is just the freedom of being dependent off to her whims and desires, so none at all), about being woke, while being just arrogant, about being creative, meaning using Instagram filters, or about a better world which to them is just a world that makes it so easy to live in without any effort of taking care of the world, others, or just trying not to be in asshole.

There are many people who are not like that, but you rarely find them on Instagram or Facebook, because it just do the right thing and don’t talk about. The world is not an easy place to live and there’s no reason why it should be. It’s the place where we are invited to stay for a while and then in the end find that in a way we mattered. And while on the bus tour called life don’t scream at the bus driver for not being exactly what you expected her to be while spilling your ice cream on the seats.

“Per aspera ad astra!”

random?!!–//rant: __ Internet__

<rant mode>The Internet is broken since it got usurped by greedy peddlers of the sub-mediocre that somehow managed to dumb so far down expectations that people actually think this shit is gold. Oh, and let’s not forget the deteriorating influence of those nice little devices to whose screen format everything gets adapted. Stephen “Apple is a mobile company” egomaniac Jobs and Marc “the unsocial network” Zuckerberg delivered means, methods and mentality for a devolution of human interaction. Communicating and finding your tribes in the Inet is a fantastic thing, but assholes like those made it into a slimy, money-grabbing bog. The next revolution needs to be on the Net. Have to figure out how. </rant mode>

short

…//.. ?.. — ??…!?… .

it is getting old to even think about the pandemic

“To be is to do”—Socrates.
“To do is to be”—Jean-Paul Sartre.
“Do be do be do”—Frank Sinatra.

Kurt Vonnegut, Deadeye Dick, 1982

there is neither do nor be now, only keeping on
but maybe literature will help

Mistah Kurtz-he dead
            A penny for the Old Guy

after all, books are worlds (within worlds, just you read 1001 nights)

I want the men around me to be fat, healthy-looking men who sleep at night.

Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

.. but there are never enough fat men around when you need them

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars/ But in ourselves.”

ibd.

not helpful either — the blame can be dispersed like water from a hose
or not spread at all
btw. do you wear masks?

So, Kurtz is dead, Caesar is dead and still the world goes on spinning

… … !!! .

carry on.

ooo—…|~/// – 0001

fine she said!!!”” this I am — this you are…
apologize, if you M U S T
ard bast king in yhore s//pleen//d’or

??? (her lack of understanding —//

you'll be

forgiven

loook, look, lookedy look look — BUT !!!SEE***.//

P E R C E I V E

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