Zero is the only number that cannot be represented by Roman numerals. Which in a roundabout way implies that empires give no regard to what’s underneath their pageantry. And to that end, this year now behind us was born from a complete and total lack of accountability by all participants, for what lies beneath their own pageantry.
The DailyMail has published an article of grotesque declarations, citing a study likely funded in part by a grant from whichever pharmaceutical company. In direct contrast to the experiences of all those who actually meditate with any regularity, the article asserts how meditation is nonetheless irrevocably linked to narcissism, and boosts feelings of superiority. As opposed to egocentric attributes actually stemming from the stupefying plethora of self-entitlements for half-assed shortcuts in life generally accepted as status quo by these funny societies abounding. I oppose taking credit for matters I had nothing to do with and I oppose taking blame for matters I had nothing to do with, whereas seemingly all others cannot function for a moment without that duplicitous framework. The ability to exist without others doing the thinking or feeling on our behalf does not proffer any feeling of superiority, but instead warrants the endless responsibilities to come of genuine independence, while the demands whether as individuals or as a group for others to inform our thinking and feeling is categorically what any and every superiority complex is all about. A disavowed codependency means only that standards of conformity be damned. My being able to clean up after myself does not mean that I am superior to those requiring others to clean and organize, as by the standards of proper society the act never seems apt for garnering bragging rights. It only means that in such situations I am quite simply not the person requiring something of others. When independence is fundamentally self-validation, that article both jealously and erroneously invokes independent thinking as a measurement of superiority, when all claims of a superiority by default necessitate false equivalencies to justify itself. Likewise, is restitution ethically in the wrong, for example.
The USA being the lone democracy in world history to have hypocritically codified slavery into its constitution obviously means that fascism is normalized, and that racism is absolutely as systemic as is sexism. However the core components to the machinery of this government exist to use and abuse all those unwilling or unable to themselves become users or abusers on behalf of ego, whether for their own benefit in accordance with the basic tenets of capitalism or that of greater egos among the bully pulpits of national discourse. A solution not focused on all aspects of a problem leaves much to be desired for the mass of the population and for future generations, as actions have consequences regardless of justification, regardless of desperation. Living a life free of consequence is disastrously foolhardy enough, but to exert unwarranted consequence only makes those matters worse. If a restaurant continues to fuck up your order upon every service, then continued patronage does not oblige them to change how they go about their business. Forgiveness is definitive enabling no matter the circumstances, but punishing persons who have never benefited from the grievances of others is every bit as nonproductive as is rewarding persons who themselves lost nothing to the grievance of others. Neither pathway undoes said grievances, while either pathway only alters the identities of abusers and abused, rather than prohibiting the poisonous relationship from prolonging. Such restitution would never come from the modern slave-masters themselves, but the lower classes covering all taxation on their behalf, and thus enabling the means for accumulating such hoarded resource to continue unobstructed. So adherents are thoughtlessly less concerned with societal well-being than they are in a private payday, at a cost to others, ideologically no different from the assholes who created the problems in the first place.
Abolition means abolishing the whips with the chains, and the political party bearing that name was expectantly short-lived in a culture where self-serving acts are celebrated as heroism, and where heroic self-sacrifices get ridiculed and scorned. Even were you or your kindred spirits to finally grasp the whip, those most deserving of its effect are far removed from your reach by design in the very system you wish to gain profit from. No matter how measurably nefarious the evils of the world, if any sampling of it must still be used or abused then it is not a moral high-ground being sought but a competing brand being marketed. I am not advocating for any societal thing to stay the same, I am advocating for problems to be resolved rather than juggled out of sight, out of mind. Thinking reliant on terms of dependency is mere perpetuation of all struggles to be overcome, struggles much deeper than anybody looking good or feeling good.
If I am upright, I can keep my jaw set. But it means a constant ache, as I am stretching tendons and tensing muscles to compensate for the lacking cartilage of my jawbone. When I am reclined however, and especially while unconscious, I cannot keep my jaw set in its place. I have always moved around an inordinate amount in my sleep, as much as possible short of actual sleepwalking, and too often I abruptly awaken myself as though I have been kicked in the mouth, bone grinding bone underneath my face. Sometimes my jawbone collapses in my sleep to such degrees as to weigh against my throat, pressing to cut off the air.
I actually choke in my sleep several times per year, although my dilapidated jaw is only one of the causes. My throat will simply clamp shut at times, always while I am unconscious, with me jumping fastly awake and completely unable to breathe, hopping around my surroundings trying madly to get air into or out of my lungs. It eases slowly back, a spoonful after a couple of impossibly frantic minutes, and gradually more until 20 or 30 minutes later I am finally breathing with relative normalcy. But the tension of those early minutes, the considerable pain of the experience has me convinced that eventually I will be unsuccessful, falling to a heart-attack or an aneurysm or just choking the rest of the way into death. Tears of blood looks so ridiculously fake in cinema, but in the mirror it looks demonic, and it has been known to strike eyewitnesses in such a way as to never again share my bed. Sometimes I wonder if another cause for the nocturnal choking may be a phobia developed after my older sister was strangled to death by her final boyfriend, in her own bed. I’ve survived over twenty years of this now, sleeping less than anybody you will ever know.
Doctors do not exactly wire jaws shut anymore, at some point in recent decades switching over to a form of metallic mesh to be implanted under the flesh, reconnecting jawbone to skull. But considering American healthcare, the prospects of a permanently misaligned jaw is unnerving, and almost as terrifying as was the medical necessity of dislocating my jaw almost 3 years ago so that an oral surgeon could then dig out the hooked root of a shattered wisdom tooth. Explaining my x-rays days before the surgery, he told me how shocked he was, showing that cartilage on the left side of my jaw had eroded down to about 50% of what should be there, with the cartilage on the right side down to a mere 20% of what should be there. He said I had the most severe form of arthritis of the jaw he had ever encountered in the decades of his vocation. I had known of the impending procedure a full month in advance, and some of the worst nightmares of my life happened then, dreading the chances of something, anything going wrong. Botched surgery or not, there is no money or insurance or trust for me to ever pursue the mesh procedure. Just days and nights of incomprehensibly growing hell. So detractors, take note: I’ve a glass jaw if ever there was one.
But this pain without end is not anyone’s fault. It comes partially from genetics, and it comes partially from enduring a culture possessing no reliable healthcare, but it largely comes from advanced deterioration inescapable from the regular obligations to a shared world. When the only job I could find was a 2 or 3 hour walk even to get there, then of course the natural arthritis of my ankles would be prompted into acceleration, cartilage gradually ground to dust, so that by walking dramatically more than most people do across decades my only footwear has been tactical boots with extra support for the overcompensation of my Achilles’ heels. Because when I suggest I am an environmentalist, it’s not just a fucking hashtag for the likes. I have walked from cities to cities, from states to states, with the wear and tear resulting from long years of that not exactly leaving me feeling superior. By no coincidence such a lifestyle does not have me feeling remotely codependent either. I won’t ever buy influence over myself or others, and I won’t ever sell influence over myself or others, and if I never were to wish for anything else in this salted wound of a life, I would wish I was not so evidently alone in this. Superiority requires points of reference, universally through outrageous leaps of logic, where I need find no use for any of you in my life.
Living to the death, as well do I write to my death, and every movement is incomprehensible physical pain for me throughout my body, the cartilage which should be attached to my middle-aged bones virtually nonexistent. But instead of looking to sue whomever in order to render me an easier life, the pain lionizes me into making my time worthwhile. I proactively look to the concerns of those around me, because if my own modest needs go unmet then it would be abject self-centeredness to presume the more troubling needs of others face better results. I do not actively contribute to what causes their problems, up to and encompassing decidedly not contributing by any means necessary to a culture holding no place for me beyond cleaning up its ongoing messes and fallacies. When I see others regard inconveniences as threats to their health and safety, impairments to their liberties and pursuits of happiness, it makes me all too aware of the millions of years it took for humans to develop written communication, or what passes for civilization.