Don’t take this the wrong way but fuck everything you believe in.
Heart and soul are only words for entirely too many people, when words have meanings and actions have leanings and words and actions both bring consequence. As with the given precepts of truth and justice, betrayed where convenient over nobody wanting to fess how those taken as evil deserve no more and no less than those mistaken for good. When Oscar Wilde wrote of saints and sinners he meant that people change. Not that they could change or that they should change, but that change is inevitable regardless of ratings. Which suggests both love and ego are uselessly unstable, from one to the other and back. But it is notably curious how “evil” is empowered by love and by ego, when “good” can exist in their absence.
Opposition to Trump should be regarded not as an issue of partisanship but as an issue of morality. The one divide in DC is that of competing financial interests. Were they to exist at all, true leftists would be in the streets, compensating failures of governance by doing the work themselves. You wouldn’t hear about them because there’s no money in it. Far more vocal are the prosperity-indoctrinated evangelicals, pursuing a night of long knives when the tenets of their faith prompts a dark night of the soul. I think salvation without sacrifice is death without living. Spirituality or not all of this before us is foreplay, and not the climax. When craigslist personals was still a thing, I had a lucrative side-gig ghost-writing term papers for college students round the country, for several years. But their diplomas are supposed to be mere symbols, for what they were meant to have learned in order to achieve them. The most memorable and endearing part to any relationship is always the courting, not the prenups enacted, as gratification is the least eternal thing in all of creation. Freud would’ve had a field day by our collectively obsessing over entertaining fake worlds whose inhabitants do not obsess over entertaining fake worlds. As in, where are the TVs inside of sitcoms? In another life I wrote thousands of review articles of comics, books, films and albums and conducted several hundred interviews of creatives, and while I strictly avoided big publishers and studios, at day’s end the point disavowed by all concerned how oxymoronic creative industry compels audiences to live vicariously. I feel our opinions matter only in terms of self-determination, but we cannot mold them without experience and favoring opinions to experience is wanting salvation without sacrifice, which I believe are synonymous. Uncomfortably so but necessary.
Like how pagan is anything not Christian, terror is any ideology alternative to whichever ruling party’s favor. History could maybe stop with the reruns if the gods hired writers from outside fan-fic forums. Contributors to society habitually give free reign to the wrong lot for the filling of voids. As though were it by design.
I’ve lived both sides of this, being the guy who’s been sexually harassed at work. Older, married women grabbing my ass at the store thinking I’m the cowboy to give them one last adventure. Girls thinking my vocabulary is an exit to freedom, legit angry I don’t take their number. When I still had a cell, more common than robo-callers were nudes from exes. I never mean to give a wrong impression, but my not having a bank account or credit cards or the like, none of that is a temporary setback. I actively choose a life uncomfortable for most. I sincerely believe it is impossible enough finding an honest connection offline. Online is comedy and tragedy all rolled into one, because none of this is real. And it sucks. My cool avatar/proxy doesn’t show half my teeth gone from years clocked in fighting off bad neighborhoods. The taxes Jeff Bezos all by himself legally avoids could single-handedly fund the national food stamp program, but that tech-guru prick still sent off dick pix and destroyed his own marriage. We all have glasses in need of filling but we are all drinking different mixes. I mean, comic books are produced by infantile minds for juvenile minds, yet how many thousands of those derivative tales end with self-perceived heroes uniting against a greater, common threat? From the mouths of babes even, might petty differences carry all the weight of passing wind. Under every conceivable circumstance do tactics of divide and conquer service egos, not the whole. All in resistance to tasting the authentic thought, the authentic experience, the authentic feeling for the sake of either copy-editing the reality of others or falling victim to the editing of others.
Failure to be the saint or sinner envisioned by others is silly enough, but I’d suspect someone not being pure enough to praise your saint or to condemn your sinner was what Alan Watts warned about in his contrast of faith and belief, observing how too many are too overeager to suckle a finger pointing the way as opposed to looking to where it directs. The messenger is not for shooting *or* for frigging.
We toss about terms like equality, solidarity and unity, but that means having those unflattering to what we value reading from the same page as us, and for that page to not be decided on by the whole, by both us and them, is subservience, rather than equality, solidarity or unity. At the extreme, outright killing of a foe doesn’t end his argument, but rather only prevents both sides of the divide from evolving to a point of understanding. Allowing an enemy to learn from his mistakes enables him to contribute to the whole, thereby strengthening the whole. So anybody taking issue with someone lending support, ideologically does not seek unity, but a perpetuation of non-inclusive personality cults. In this way are matters of partisanship or religious zealotry or brand loyalty advancing divisiveness and superiority and not integration. It’s not difficult to find reasons to look down on divisive concepts like nationalism, but oh so many fail to see how they themselves enact the same logic in their own personal, day to day living. Damn the wealthy for giving the same percent of their holdings to charity as do you yourself. Maybe the point of us all being on this orb together isn’t to win everyone over to your dark side, but to find something everyone can believe in, which benefits them every bit as much.
Such as a nice fuck.
This may sound cruel, but I would imagine that happiness is a subjective, backseat luxury to biological necessity for much of the natural order. We can ascribe feelings to individual blades of grass but they grow where they are able regardless. I’m sure there’s degrees to this but we measure by our own standards. I’m convinced all animals are far more aware than many give them credit for, but that awareness not encompassing the intricacies of art appreciation for example is a guideline with no bearing on their survival. And I think it’s a long-running debate over just how many of our own personal issues arise from wanting more than the basic mandates for survival, as though a fulfilling existence must require more than a roof over our heads, food in our bellies and somebody to love.
Equality, solidarity and unity mean your brand is not superior, your faith is not superior and your party is not superior, as it insists all others are inferior to your preferences, when the universe is not now nor has it ever been defined by your preferences. For a system to not be self-serving, it absolutely must take into account the thoughts, feelings and experiences of total strangers as well as those persons we despise most. If not, then there’s no claims to equality, solidarity or unity. Everyone sets the standard or nobody does. No personality cult is the way of the world but an example for susceptibility to marketing, which is shameful. The self-determination of others matters more than a flattered ego. We are not numbers, we are not commodities, we are not non-player-characters in the game of life. Unless she’s wearing yoga pants in which case all bets are off.
But seriously, equal rights means that you are not special. Who you’d like to be, befriend or to fuck is not special. To say otherwise is to confess that you don’t truly want or value equal rights, instead giving emphasis to personal preference, same as with the Trumps throughout history. For a Democracy to function there can be no stars of the show, and I believe adamantly that the USA is no Democracy and never shall it be a working Democracy as by all appearances most of its citizenry won’t know where to begin existing without idolatry of some fashion or other. The likelihood of utopia, much less a sustainable society whose inhabitants have universally unimpeded guarantees to life, liberty and a pursuit of happiness, ever coming to pass is as likely as the majority of humankind experiencing an ideological awakening. Nothing short has yet to suffice. The ongoing existence of DC and Wall Street, Hollywood and the Vatican rule that out entirely. Escapism as avoidance, wishing and gambling for dreams to come true as opposed to working it out for ourselves.
Like my snake oil on facebook and make me breakfast come the morning. See where that gets you.