I post things like this on my blog when I need to scream into the void, and because actually getting published is too hard. I could try compiling my rants into a book one day, perhaps. Probably a free ebook or something.
Shopenhauer said that most people use their minds like maps. They have a destination in mind, and for them thoughts are merely roads to get to that destination. Any thought that challenges their preconceived notions, that makes them rethink their positions and causes them to end up somewhere outside their expected destination, are avoided. Thus, cognitive dissonance reigns supreme. Most people don’t know how to think. They merely repeat a script handed to them by the great thought architects that run this society. A script which does not threaten the herd, the hivemind. Actual intelligence that questions the heirarchy, is frowned upon. And this happens no matter what team a group says they’re on. Left, right, or indeed, monotheists, polytheists and atheists, they all think the same way. It becomes tribalism. I don’t mean to sound egotistical, not too long ago even I was trying to fit in with this herd, following the mental roadmaps handed to me in school. Maps that ended up leading me over a cliff and into the sea. I used to think the average person was much more complex than they really are. Even within science, new ideas are scoffed at by the majority before they can’t be denied anymore. Take for instance the story of Alfred Wegener, who first posited the theory of continental drift. He was laughed at and ostracized by the scientific community, became a pariah, until proven correct, after his death. If someone says something profound at a dinner table, the conversation pauses uncomfortably, until someone can make a joke and pretend that challenging thought was never spoken. And the thought dies, and the thinker learns to stay silent. The real thinkers are few and far between.
My father tried and failed to live up to the standards society placed on him. His siblings were all successful business owners, big houses, two of them are millionaires. There were times when my immediate family had some money, but he mostly only ever barely scraped by. I’ve always been poor, but I’ve learned to be content with what I have. We lived in apartments for the majority of my childhood, and we moved after being evicted over missed rent several times. He was a house painter, a laborer basically, and a seasonal one at that. He worked harder than my aunts and uncles but earned less. He injured his hand, his injury made worse at the Veteran’s hospital (a veteran of the botched Iran offensive by Jimmy Carter in the early 1980s in fact; how little things change). He now lives off a settlement over his botched operation, in a rented room, while two of his siblings live in mansions. I started to understand the rigid class structure in this society at a very early age, by just examining my extended family.
I however, have transcended his fate. Because I have no desire to live for the validation of others. I tried that for a long time, and it got me nowhere. Seeking the approval of others is like an endless treadmill. It’s always about what you’ve accomplished lately. It’s never enough. Having sacrificed my reputation with my extended family and others who would judge me and think of me as a loser or a failure, I have become more free than my father before me, more free than any of my aunts, uncles or cousins. Some of them I doubt have had an existential thought once in their lives. They’re content in the chains society has placed on them, for even the rich live in mental chains. There are ways I wish I could be freer, but as it stands, I don’t obey a boss, I don’t care about trying to be another cog in the system. I have broken those chains. I have exited Plato’s cave. I am no longer a participant in society, but an observer. People resent observers a lot of the time, but they should really hate the game instead of the player. They misdirect their rage towards people like me, who have found some way to free their minds, if not their entirety, from under the oppressive boot of this civilization. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still going to be in the back seat when the runaway car with no brakes that this country has become goes careening over a cliff, but until that inevitably happens, I have time. I have freedom to persue my passions, and hopefully, claw my way to some kind of personal victory. Just getting into a postion to do this was a struggle. It required me to be broken and rebuilt more than once. My ego had to die. But I am at a point where the work toward victory can begin.
Life has no inherent value, meaning or purpose beyond what you yourself give it. But it is all you have. Accept this truth and move forward.
May Set rise and Aπpπeπpπ fall. πΌπ’ππͺ
πΉ֍֎πΉ
~ Siamanto the Foreigner
π·π πππ―ππππΊπππ ππ
ΥΥ«Υ‘Υ΄Υ‘ΥΆΥ©Φ ΥΥΏΥ‘ΦΥ¨
