something that just came out.

Written 12^th June 2011.

The urge to scribble is being suppressed by the knowledge and belief that it is important for me to write something down. It is something that is so far unknown, that has not taken its final form. It is frustrating and stopping me from doing what I want to do.

For the first time in a long time last night I spoke about things that were important to me to people that I know and don’t know very well. The ideas did not always come out properly but they came out. I do not think they were always heard or understood but I was able to vocalise them and not worry if they were being listened to. This is important I think. I was told that I needed to share more of myself with the world.

Growing up I never felt that my father and I had much in common personality wise. I think now this is because I did not know him as a person but instead as a figure, an actor who played a role and did a job. Now he is a person and I can see that he does have a personality not dissimilar to mine. A personality that he has either passed on to me or I have inherited from him. It appears that we both struggle with the idea of casual friendships. Those people that occupy the space between acquaintance and good friend. The people whose company I enjoy but inertia keeps me from seeing more of. When they are not around my desire to see them can be subdued by television or a book or a trip to the supermarket. Of course thinking about it that also describes the situation I find myself in when it comes to good friends as well.

This inertia is something I need to overcome.

I thought last night that my concept of fear may be different to other people’s. That what I see as fear they see as unpleasant.

I often wonder when I see a fat bearded man get on the bus and walk down the aisle if that is how I look. I do not think of them as people. This is unkind and unfair and something I need to work on overcoming.

I feel resentment towards people who gush over their animals. People who have decided that their dog or cat or fish is a demigod that must be worshipped, that it is a supreme being incapable of mundane actions. That the animal is in possession of a genius level of intelligence and instinctual behaviours are transformed into cleverly thought out schemes of Machiavellian cunning. My resentment towards them is two parted 1.) I am expected to listen to their stories and agree with them and by doing so tacitly recognise that there is no other animal as smart, adorable or wonderful as theirs (this is clearly wrong as they have never met MY cat or dog), an animal that I have no relationship or connection with and 2.) the way they that they have subjugated themselves to the animal. It is the second part that I find most offensive. The first part can be excused and overlooked, we are proud of the beings that we love and cannot conceive of anything more wonderful than they are, but the handing over of control to an illegitimate authority I cannot. I wish I knew why this bothered me so much.

There is no need for me to be concerned over the actions and thoughts of others that do not impact on me or others, yet I am.

I am not sure if that was what I needed to get out but I have no desire to write any more tonight.

what do you want to be?

Being asked to write down goals would cause me to sit and stare blankly at the paper in front of me until it was time to wait to be called upon to share them.

It was in Year 10 that I first learnt I was no good at goal setting. Since the next two years of High School would be dedicated to achieving the marks required to get into University and our chosen course, the School thought it would be a good idea for those students going to University to write down their top three choices for their future occupation. Then once this list was completed there would be a meeting with the Deputy Principal and parents where everybody would discuss the list and how these choices would be achieved. Not knowing what I wanted to do I wrote down what was expected of me, gave the required answers and promptly forgot everything that was discussed.

Through out University I studied a number of units – all taught by the same lecturer – that at some point towards the end of the semester would require us to make a list of the short, medium and long term goals we had for our lives. This was more challenging to bluff my way through.

There are countless other examples that could be provided but honestly are they required? All that needs to be said is I have no real goals. Well, no goals that are easy to write down and articulate. Even that doesn’t feel like an accurate representation of things.

Perhaps with more thought and application the goals I have could be turned into a list? It is not something that I have ever attempted.

It is only one goal really: to be a good person. This is a rather broad and overarching goal that accommodates so many things, so many sub-goals. It is also an intimidating goal and it is perhaps its intimidating nature that has meant it is has not been written down and shared. It is intimidating not because of its size but because of its requirements, because it is requires me to be something I feel I am incapable of being.

For to be good, to be what I see as good, I would be required to be compassionate, selfless and patient, to be tolerant and accepting and to do these things with no thought. But not only to behave in this way but to think this way as well. And it is this mental component that is so difficult, where I feel and believe I will fail. Because my thoughts and actions are not always synchronised, that I while I may give my time I am not happy about it and begrudge whoever has taken it. That while I am listening to somebody tell me their story I am wishing for them to shut up and to cease their inane prattling.

I have no idea how to fix this. I have no idea how to get rid of this contempt for others (not everyone) that I have. Because it is contempt that I believe is behind it . Contempt that is unjustified and the source of my own failures. But perhaps placing the blame completely at the feet of my contempt is over simplifying things? There is also a lack of empathy and compassion. An inability to see people as containers like I am. Containers that are filled with hopes, dreams, curiosity and beliefs. That what I consider is stupid and boring is actually interesting and meaningful to them. That all they need and want is to be recognised as having value. And it is this value I can not see.

I just want to be good.

random thought

Processing books and thinking about the receptionist on Level 16 today I realised that nearly everyone who has a job, has their job because they saw it advertised, applied for it and somebody chose them over other applicants to do it. This realisation, and the idea that there are people right now looking for jobs and that many of them will be unsuccessful in their search was somewhat mind blowing.

the end of the world

A phrase that I think a lot is “one day the world will end”. What this means to me I am not exactly sure. Nor am I sure why I use it to fill silence inside of my head.

I have the idea that, while climate change is a real phenomenon, that a vocal minority in the climate change movement would not be out of place in movements that are welcoming of or actively trying to bring about the Biblical end times. That they belong to the group of people who almost have a need for the world to end.

I can not bring myself to believe that the world will end one day. It probably will when the sun explodes as all stars do, but I don’t think society is going to break down and I am going to have to murder people in order to stay alive or sleep in abandoned overgrown houses. I think there is a realistic chance that I will end up living in a fascist corporatocracy, but I can act normal enough and am good enough at keeping my opinions to myself that I shouldn’t have to worry about a show trial and execution or worse being sent to a concentration camp. For a long time being sent to a concentration camp was a fear that terrified me so much that I did not even dare verbalise it, in fear that by doing so I would bring about its actualisation.

I think the need that some people have for the world to end is their way of dealing with their own mortality and a refusal to accept fully that one day, they will die. This refusal whether built on fear or vanity has taken their death and turned it into something epic: the destruction of an entire planet.

The world ends for us all one day, just not with a bang but with a whimper.

 

complex thought

I stood at the sink last week and saw a cockroach run out from the wall. It scurried across the floor, pausing, waiting perhaps for me to make my move towards it, perhaps just for as long as its nerve could hold before starting off again. I looked at it and told it I that I would not kill it tonight. I told it that I had spared its life and I wondered if it had any understanding of benevolence. I knew it had not understood the words I said to it, but were my actions something that made sense to it?

I believe one day that scientists will tell us that all animals engage in complex thought. That they think like we do. I believe this because goldfish have memories. because cows have complex social hierarchies and because gorillas will take on pets.

The idea that humans are the only intelligent life on this planet is a myth told for our comfort and vanity. It is accepted because we are the animal that has done the most with its intelligence, that we (in the developed worlds at least) have used it to make our survival easier than we can possibly imagine. It has allowed us to do things that were unimaginable 200, 100 or even 20 years ago; things that no other animal has been capable of.

But this idea is based solely on one difference between humans and other animals: humans capacity for written language. The fact that we can write ideas down, create records of events, in short posses a common knowledge that can be expanded and extended is what has allowed us to separate ourselves from the other animals and given us our houses, cars and plasma televisions.

The lack of a written memory does not preclude complex thought from occurring, it just prevents it from progressing further than a single individual or their immediate group. Just because there is no understandable evidence of something doesn’t mean that it isn’t there.

But getting back to the cockroach. For my actions to have made sense to it, for it to understand the idea of benevolence it would not only have to be capable of complex thought but also to have a moral system that is similar to the one that (most) humans posses. And while I believe in the universality of complex thought I do not (yet) believe in universal morality.

 

something to think about.

Each year for the last three years I have read at least one book set in Auschwitz and its surrounding camps. It started with Primo Levi’s If This is Man and progressed to the book I just finished We Were in Auschwitz. Each of the books have been first person accounts of life in the lager, records of the pointless cruelty, daily struggle for survival, the hard brutal and for the most part pointless work, and the things that a human being is capable of doing, of being reduced to, just in order to stay alive.

I had always pictured the lager as a grey dark place. Devoid of sunlight and blue skies, a place with a physical appearance as ugly, brutal and depressing as the activities that went on within it. This picture was what I had created through reading Primo Levi’s If This is Man and The Drowned and the Saved, books that were concerned with human actions and motives and how these effected life. If the physical world was mentioned outside of a general description of the buildings and layout, it was to emphasise a point never simply to describe, to provide an unadulterated image of the physical world within lager. The physical world’s appearance relied on the suffering and brutality, the feelings and actions of its participants. It was reading This Way for the Gas Ladies and Gentlemen that forced a changed in the way that I pictured the world that these atrocities took place in. Gone was the grey bleak skies, the rain, mud and freezing cold and in it’s place were lush green fields, blue skies with fluffy clouds and bright sunshine. A world that was idyllic. That men and women were reduced to animals and worked to death in it changed nothing, it was still beautiful.

For somebody raised on television and movies this juxtaposing of evil and beauty was difficult to comprehend and reconcile. The horrors of Auschwitz are still going on today, they are not concentrated into one place but spread across countries and continents. They are going on in a world that behaves, feels and is as beautiful as ours. I find that amazing

breeding is important.

Of all the jobs that I do the pulling out and removal of weeds is my least favourite. It is not the physical discomfort of having to spend hours on my knees or the repetitive menial nature of the task that bothers me. No, it is the feeling of inadequacy, that depending on mood and mindset that I feel of varying intensity. With each weed that is pulled from the soil I am reminded that here is a living object that has succeeded at life, that is more successful than I could ever dream to be right now.

What constitutes success? What constitutes succeeding at life? All of this depends on what the purpose of life is exactly if in fact there is such a thing. That age old question. Because the idea that life is without meaning is something that most people can’t reconcile. The search for purpose, meaning and desire to understand is one of the things that makes us human. If there was no need for a purpose or meaning behind life there would be no need for the belief systems that so many of us build their lives around.

It is my definition of success that causes this feeling of inadequacy. Because in my mind the purpose of life, the reason for being is a simple one. We are alive for one reason and that reason is to ensure that our genes are replicated and passed down, so to speak. Everything else, the stuff that actually happens that is important and gives us enjoyment is unimportant, meaningless. It is nice but it is not what we are here for.

I should probably give up reading books on evolutionary biology.

work will set you free?

Tomorrow I will hopefully finish putting up a fence that I have been helping my father put up for one of his employers. Despite digging post holes, compacting the earth around the posts, helping to attach the picket rails and drilling and cutting the fence pickets there has been no feeling of accomplishment. That is not to say that there has been no enjoyment has been taken from the project. I have had fun and felt a feeling of satisfaction as the various problems that have popped up have been solved and overcome, of learning and discovering new ways to do things and to find that I had ability and skills that I didn’t know I had. The absence of a sense of accomplishment is a result of my role in the construction of the fence and the lack of a feeling of ownership. My roles has been passive, following instructions and working to a plan that has already been developed and worked out. It has required no thinking, creativity or imagination just the the ability to put the drill or saw blade in the right place. This requires more thought.

nothing particularly clever.

Last night I sat down to post two quotes from Camus’ The Plague. The quotes dealt with love and the feeling of loss and sadness brought about by the forced, indefinite separation from a loved one.

In my final year of high school for English I studied the play Cosi. It is one of only three plays that I have read in its entirety (Happy Birthday Wanda June by Kurt Vonnegut and The Government Inspector by Nikolai Gogol are the others) and my least favourite play. I say this despite having forgotten most if not all of it and perhaps were I to read it now my opinion and feelings about it would be changed. I do not remember much past the general story, a mention of a Velvet Underground song, and a monologue one of the character had about hate.

The character is of the opinion that hate is a far better (perhaps even nobler) emotion than love because man puts time and effort into choosing who to hate and devotes actual effort to maintain it. Love is just something you fall into with no thought or effort of your own or the one you love. This is what I remember, ten years on. I am unsure if this is a serious idea put fourth by the author (playwright really) or not. On one hand the idea comes from a patient of an asylum but on the other hand it is one of those pseudo-profound statements that people like to latch onto.

The statement sets up love and hate as diametric opposites which is untrue, for it is possible to hate and love something equally. But even if it were true and they were in fact on opposite sides, it would still make no sense. By choosing to hate you are choosing not to love. Hate like love is irrational. Finally you can choose who you love, why you love them. This could be explained better but I have no desire or ability right now to do so.

What could be said, and maybe was said later, is that hate is what love can become, that the intensity which you hate someone is the reflection of intensity with which you loved them, but this gets us into crazy stalker territory.

It is something to think about further and maybe when I have some answers I will elaborate further.

What a difference 24 hours can make.

timber

Standing holding the rope thinking about what it meant to be afraid. Watching the top of the tree, looking for a way to escape if things turned to shit, listening to the chainsaw cutting through the wood. Pulling the rope ever tighter until the inertia was overcome and the tree began to fall towards me, silent until it hit the bricks with a muffled loud thump.

Waiting for the tree to fall it became obvious to me that death still frightens me. The idea of being crushed under the weight of the trunk. The trunk crashing down onto my head, neck and shoulders, cracking ribs and bursting organs caused me to look around nervously for somewhere safer to stand, to work out where the trunk was was going to fall and convincing myself I was right.

As the tree fell I realised that dying this way wouldn’t be so bad. The dying process would be over fairly quickly, it wouldn’t that be that long or drawn out surely and for most of it I would be unconscious. What would be worse would be surviving. The readjustment to life that would be forced onto me through spinal injuries. The pain, rehabilitation and the financial cost both initial and ongoing…..then the tree fell where it was meant to and I stood there unharmed.

Maybe I would have felt differently if the tree had fallen on me.