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æquanimity

Monthly visit from the most beautiful woman I have ever seen in all my travels. She always prompts several days of quiet decompression, very much like coming down from an acid trip, followed by humbling, and lionization. I do not believe in love, but I do believe that any of us might provoke great truths from one another, intentionally or not. The most meaningful encounters in life give perspective in discerning between what we could be to the world, and what we should be to the world. And the world is so much bigger than what we may think we want or deserve, what we long for or lust after. It is a choice to complicate the lives of others, just as it is a choice to piecemeal from the thinnest of airs excuses for the ramifications of our actions or inaction no matter how great or small. But good lord that ass.

That is an example of Martin Heidegger’s concept of Gelassenheit, explained as “the spirit of disponibilité [availability] before What-Is which permits us simply to let things be in whatever may be their uncertainty and their mystery.” Which I expounded upon with great chagrin to my philosophy professor uncle in my last essay. It is not the responsibility of truth to flatter anybody. And I find it manifests endless friction when you are unwilling to settle for the same stories accepted by others, that political partisanship and corporate branding and religious zealotry are somehow different matters. It’s automatic stigmatization to not side with a team spirit.

Why do schoolchildren of the USA under-perform academically? Because they have been led to believe that they can become celebrities, CEOs and even Presidents, without any sort of education. And because academia has become a place where egos are nurtured rather than challenged, a place where they are programmed to take up the mantle of a nation of codependents. The most self-sufficient persons are readily cast as the weirdo outsiders. Neither fetish or covet roles of personality cult centerpieces and there must be something wrong with you. Stop clapping and your Tinkerbell may die and you’ll be all alone! And then you’ll have to actually do things for yourself. Alone with your thoughts long enough, and you may find that everything else was just a distraction. The Trumps of the world are shining examples for how money cannot even remotely fill the void of genius. This article from João Medeiros is contemptible trash, for promotion of what’s contrary to all of reality.

That is an example of Martin Heidegger’s concept of Geworfenheit, or thrownness, where the angst brought about by the individual’s seeming lack of control over their own origins and their referential dependence upon other beings, taken together, compels the individual to mischaracterize all forms of unity as self-service. By their cowardly, childlike inability to confront their own powerlessness in life, do they instill their perspective with supreme authority in direct contradiction. I see it as the reflexive insistence of opposites, of things being other than what they are. In the same way that when Uncle Sam assures us he’s a peace-keeper what he really means is god-king, identity politics and self-identification are actually rightwing, ego-driven constructs from start to finish. For all its gravitas, the most consistent thing about the bible has always been that readers proactively pick and choose which bits have meaning and which bits are filler. Every Christian rewrites it liberally. But then, morality predates Christianity. Our cultures are desperate to escape the reality they cannot redefine, prompted by Heidegger’s coined thrownness. If the masses were vaguely capable of adapting to reality, then the personality cult centerpieces would be other faces in the crowd and nothing more.

As though homeless were maliciously so, the forced, endless migration of homeless says quite a lot about how those unwilling or unable to make money for the upper class get treated, demonized by their elected officials and ostracized by the general public. It’s not just that slavery is extant, but that the majority are in favor of it without any consideration. Rationalizing boardrooms getting more than all their workers combined. And along with raising minimum wage, UBI would be made meaningless just by raising the cost of living to insure corporate profit. If reform isn’t talking explicitly about capping maximum wages and blocking all efforts to price-gouge and over-charge, it’s run of the mill ignorance. Deny support for exploitative industry, such as mindfully avoiding the cinemas or refusing to upgrade your smartphone, and you’re cast as the weirdo malcontent, the lesser-than. Fuck, I haven’t had a phone, TV or bank account in years. Never in my life had a credit card. I get by fine, but nobody wants to play without their compulsory distractions. I’d rather follow my imagination than marketing but real freedom holds no value in a society lacking values. When this empire inevitably crumbles, while everyone else is emptying their medicine cabinets, it’ll be just another day for the potluck regulars.

Companies were doing this sort of thing before Trump was even born. Servicing monopoly is what this government exists for, which is why we do not need a new spokes-model but a new government altogether, from the ground up. Cable news producers can openly acknowledge how their entire field is simply about making money and that content is based entirely on lucrative profitability for advertisers, investors and shareholders. Because paid journalism means paid to sell something, no exceptions, yet the masses can read this news and continue believing their personal favorite icons are somehow made of sturdier stuff. Law enforcement in this country was begat in the north to collect taxes for property-owners and in the south to reprimand slaves. Unelected industrialists wrote the Fed into legal existence decades ago. None of this is even vaguely new and ping-pong is mere perpetuation. That’s free market Capitalism to blame. The billionaires in Russia push their private fetishes at the expense of their national politics no differently than do those in the USA, selling out their countries and endangering their kinfolk for a buck. There is no unselfish way to accumulate wealth, or power. What pundits hate about foreign governments, what frightens elected officials, is the financial competition, and every form of government Democratic or not devours itself once its leaders turn Capitalist, putting their whims before their people. Nationalists confess how little they care for nationalism when they use nationality as an automatic scapegoat for greed. All nations under god or not are screwed by their wealthy in the same ways as we the people over here. Not by their governance but by the folks purchasing the many politicians overeager to sell.

Why in the fuck would I poison myself with coke or pepsi either one, when I could make my own pinot noir? It does take two to tango, and the USA is positively not a royal mess from the efforts of any one party. Rather, it’s the dehumanizing greed long-afflicting both sides of the coinage, competing for dominance while the cool kids know that actual leftists are too busy helping others to raise the millions to campaign for any office.

Actual leftists are not real, but they could be and they should be, and they would be were the masses not so preoccupied with the wish-fulfillment of claiming authorship of reality, demanding that all it contains conform to their private wills so burdened by intangible crowns of thorns. It’s not that I skirt topics, but that it is the very same foundational flaw to be found conflicting with all established ideologies held with pristine sanctity in our modern age, political, industrial and spiritual. The imaginary power to rewrite anything unbecoming.

What is a cult, but adherents to the belief that whichever thing should be held beyond any and all reproach? The infallible leader is what defines a cult, whether it’s a personality thing or the blood sacrifice variety. Too much coddling leads to spinelessness. The mirror itself is the reflective abyss gazing back, but it only holds your gaze until you turn away.