Archive for March, 2006

I believe I will be continuing with my current theme of addiction in this post and perhaps in more to come. I think I will be a little more serious with it than when I first ventured the subject in Addiction and the AAA . I was fooling around with a flirtatious meandering and perhaps ridicule of what could be a serious condition, Internet Addiction. However this blogologue will be truer to the subject at hand…Addiction in it’s traditional form, that is, addiction to drugs and or alcohol, having said that, it also could pertain to any other addiction, whether it be gambling, sex, food, internet etc. etc. More specifically I will examine exile as it relates to addiction. In truth I am interested in addiction as a stand alone topic but tonight I have been inspired to explore exile in juxtaposition to addiction. I started reading Albert Camus’s, Exile and the Kingdom and it has inspired me to elaborate something which is close to me.

Exile is the existential state which the addict is more or less placed, whether one believes this is self imposed or if it is a consequence beyond the control of the person in addiction, is essentially irrelevant. It is my feeling that the state of exile is a pre existing condition and that it is further compounded by the addiction and by the addict feeling marginalised and stigmatised by a society, which perhaps views addiction as a moral failing. Perhaps there is some justification in this stance. When one tries to impose one’s own experience into something that is foreign, it is difficult to view a differing angle, after all, no one forced these people to consume the substance in the first instance. It is easy to believe that one has control over one’s choices and who can argue with such simplicity. Perhaps one could also imagine feeling isolated where there seems to be no avenue or discourse to relate. It is easy to assume that everyone has equal opportunity and the necessary skills to effectively communicate and thus have some connection to a whole, yet what if an individual felt dis-empowered in some way and felt unable to communicate. Perhaps this individual was abused in some way or that he or she felt in a profound way disconnected and didn’t belong. An outsider perhaps or a loner or just different. Exiled?

I am not advocating an excuse for addiction in any shape or form. Addiction is embedded into our society and I am interested in how the addictive process comes into being. I believe the scenario of exile can offer an explanation of how addiction can develop. Some consider addiction a disease and perhaps there is some merit in this argument. I am not convinced that such a disease exists, however I am not aiming to persuade anyone otherwise if they do accept the disease theory. I am concerned with the concept of exile and if this in some way contributes to a person choosing to become enslaved by addiction. I mentioned earlier that perhaps a general consensus in societal terms suggests a moral failing on part of the addict, which in turn assumes a choice. So I am running with such thinking, although I have a problem with morality in the sense that to assume morality one must think in terms of right and wrong. I want to lay aside right and wrong as these are subjective. If I can define “moral failing” as merely choice then I need not extrapolate needless interpretation of good versus bad, or right and wrong, neither of which are necessary when one is given choice.

A choice of enslavement perhaps sounds irrational. How can one choose enslavement when all of our democratic values are based on freedom? Perhaps this seems absurd and perhaps you are now vexed at having been deceived in some way because at the outset I stated that I was going to be a “liitle more serious”. It does appear that the argument is beginning to take the AAA (Absolute Apathetic Absurdism) stance. Let me assure you that is not. I will not say that a level of absurdism isn’t about to unfold, however I will say it is not of an apathetic view point.

It is late now and I will continue this saga at a later juncture.

Goodnight!

Is it at all possible to have a level of positivism whilst maintaining a level of creativity? For me the creative daemon seems to dwell in a miserable place. Perhaps the very idea of creativity is in essence the positive drive, which stems from the chaotic whirl wind of a troubled, brooding mind. Perhaps creativity is being in touch with a spiritual centre and by allowing oneself to express the creative daemon in whatever form, it frees the negativity, which can overwhelm and in it’s worst capacity, destroy. For me the outlet for eradicating the free radicals of negativity is the writing process. I have moved from writing in a private journal into this open ended medium for a little change in atmosphere. I really haven’t considered who my audience is, I am writing for myself in essence so it probably matters not who is reading this apart from me. It allows me to focus on an internal struggle and then combine the conflict and perhaps resolution into words, freeing me from the wallowing feeling.

If I were to intellectualise this process in a semi scientific/spiritual sense, I am using two hemispheres of the brain. The left and right sides are in a duality of sorts and what comes from this crossing is the words which appear in front of you. While I search for answers in my meditative state I am consulting the inner world of emotion to perhaps reach some understanding of the ebb and flow that thoughts and feelings create. At the same time I am detached from the intensity of feeling, perhaps because one hemisphere is dominant, I believe for me it is the left side, hence my pseudo intellectualisms and rationalisations. I added the /spiritual because it is the way I relate spiritualism, in a scientific imagining and reductionism.

If spirituality can be defined as uplifting then writing allows me a sense of the spiritual. Prior to me beginning this blogologue I was feeling somewhat down and bluesy…I am not feeling so much of it now, now that I have been focussed on the higher consciousness that is required to write. That is how I view this process…it is a creative process, even if the subject matter isn’t embedded as a creative story as such. I do hope that I will continue this hobby into that part of writing though. I have a few ideas and have even started, yet for some reason I haven’t continued with it for a long time.

A recurring thought is that if I wrote but one page every day it would amount to 365 in a year, enough for a novel. It is one thing to hope, and another thing for a reality to eventuate, wishful thinking isn’t going to make anything happen though.

Could it be that my latest addiction is an obsession with being online. I must confess, a day doesn’t pass by, where I am not online. I find something vaguely comforting in the act of searching for information, posting self obsessed rambles on online forums and generally living in a an artificial world where connectivity is but a mere click away. I will also confess that I have no social life. Alas it is my tale of woe…it is also my tale of finding solace in the emptiness of the universe. At least in this semi reality I can have some hope of reaching somebody, where as, out in the “real” world I am a nameless face in a heavily populated forest of faceless names. I pretend I don’t exist when I walk amongst the mire of people that are so eager to get to some destination or another. Sydney is a fast city I believe….no one has time to greet anyone on the street….we have to be somewhere and with the queer look of, I’m running late to perhaps facilitate some sense of worth or greater importance. It can be a lonely city. I lie when I say I have no social life…I do…but it is not the type of social setting which most people experience….suffice to say, I have a place to go when I am feeling lonely.

Having somewhere to go is a blessing when I really ponder the idea…So many people in this world feel and are isolated. When I used to catch the train to work, I would walk past the homeless. The down trodden and less fortunate. I too ignore these people and am no saint when it comes to helping my brothers and sisters. I am far too self absorbed in my desire not to exist to really be absorbed in the helplessness of those very people in the street. Henry Lawson wrote a great poem called Faces in The Street, it really sings a wailing, sordid sadness, when I read it, as it did the first time I read it. It brings forth those very faces I used to walk by, desperate and yearning. I think it is why so many of us just walk by, fuelled by ego and self delusion, thinking our life is so important. Whilst in our peripheral vision we a get a glimpse…a reflection, a mirror staring at us, the “faces in the street” peering at us, pleading and at the same time demanding that we acknowledge their existence. It is the same desperate yearning we all have if we look deep within….we all want to belong…we become frightened by the fragility of this yearning and desire to belong. In some profound sense, we begin to understand how easy it is for any one of us to lose our sense of belonging when we look at those “faces in the street”.

It is easy for me to apostatise ego and drive when sitting here behind this faceless machine, theorising and moralising, yet a couple of lines from Henry Lawson’s piece can hammer home my own shortcomings.

I wonder would the apathy of wealthy men endure
Were all their windows level with the faces of the Poor?

I am sitting here, behind apathy, pondering my own fallibility. I am probably worse than those wealthy men…I have a moral conscience but do nothing with it. That is absurd. Absolute Apathetic Absurdism (AAA).

Perhaps I ought to get back to my addiction….it seems less absurd.

Do you know what makes you tick? I often look to other people and get the sense that they have a handle on something I don’t. They appear to be so self assured, confident and have a grasp of reality which eludes me for the most part. I wonder if these people suffer from insecurities like the rest of us mere mortals. I think that I quite possibly judge my insides by other peoples outsides too often. It could be one of my biggest flaws. I am always performing some comparative analysis on a conscious and sub conscious level. What is a shy, introverted, sensitive guy to do? How do these people get to be so confident and self assured? Do they ignore that voice, which seems to deride. Do they even have such a voice? I’m thinking out loud. Perhaps my thoughts are too loud and that is perhaps why I am not one of those “together” people. I sometimes cover my insecurities with a level of arrogance but I can never seem to pull off what I want to achieve with this arrogance. It merely hinders me in some way.

I read somewhere that self esteem is merely a rating system founded on irrational logic (my interpretation). I can say I have low self esteem but what good does such a rating do? What good does a high self esteem rating do? This same piece of literature suggested self acceptance to be the key to some kind of happiness rather than self esteem/rating. Other literature based on spiritual concepts also suggest self acceptance as a goal to aspire to. This is something which I need to work on…self acceptance rather than self deprecation. Derision is the path of least resistance in my psyche…it is time I took the path of greatest resistance so that I am able to accept who I am based not on what my perceived achievements are, or by some sociability index (that in essence I am not in the best position to judge), but by the values I hold and the person I am, based on these values.

Food for thought…albeit weary thoughts.

Often this little phrase enters my head…I just don’t feel like it…right now I don’t feel like writing but I know that sometimes it is the only thing in my life that can fill the void…this great big fucking hole that opens up and wants to swallow me…I want to fall into it…to be lost within the dark mass and not ever venture out from it’s comforting chill. I have been teetering around the edges of this swarming mass and if I move just that much closer to it’s edge, to peer down, I know I will slip or the edge will crumble and I will be lunged into the crawling mire of filth and decay. A part of me wants to fall…to give into the temptation…to be cradled in the arms of narcissistic black. Where I can admire the filth of self obsession and not be concerned with outside trivialities. I want to be lost in Self, indeed that is where I am most of the time. Except I am expected to participate in the outside world, to be accountable to something other than myself.

Right now I want to hide from everyone and everything so I can just breathe and not feel any pressure, to perhaps just rest and be with me. Is that selfish?

A friend of mine often used to joke around when we’d sit in a cafe in cosmopolitan Newtown, by performing a caricature of a scene in some movie (I think it was a movie) where the character would be talking into a microphone giving himself narratives or audio notes with a line “there is nothing to fear except fear itself”. I don’t know if it actually comes from a movie or if this friend was pulling my leg but the words seem to resonate a long, drawn out chord within….fear is actually the only thing that I ought fear, although it defies logic, the quasi aphorism does have a nonsensical ring of truth to it…I have nothing to fear, however the feeling of fear is never completely absent from my being. I am probably giving too much of myself away, by letting you in, on this little secret but it is true.

I am seemingly, in constant battle with some unknown fear. It begins to nag at the insides of my stomach..churning…swirling…spiralling in the pit of my soul, where it remains, feeding like a parasite. Fermenting a little. It never reaches a panic state but the anxiety seems to stew when I am facing an unknown. I am infatuated with the absolute, perhaps this infatuation is the root cause of my fears. Reality gently nudges, suggesting with it’s eyes, a truth, that nothing in life is absolute, there is no black and white, so I am drawn into a state of anxiety because my desired or perceived state of absolutism can never be achieved. It is totally irrational and in some ways I am aware of this, however my intellectual instinct allows me nothing when I am at the mercy of emotional despotism.

Once again I am floundering away from what really is nagging at me. Although I have been experiencing discomfort due to fear…the cause of this fear is the idea of facing interviews and possibly shifting my comfort zone. I don’t really have to look any deeper than at the mere, superficial events that are happening in my life. A recruiter has sent my resume off to a prospective employer and I feel fear over it. Thus the inspiration for this blogologue. I am prone to use colourful language to avoid confronting the issue, which in this case is fear. Pure and simple…FEAR! A couple of acronyms for FEAR are:

False Evidence Appearing Real or
Future Events Appearing Real

I can apply both scenarios to my obsessive thinking patterns, however neither are really worth the effort. That is the short answer and the rational antidote to my FEAR!

Other more sinister scenarios are lurking within the caverns of my mind, however, they are not meant for this blog. Yet I also believe they can, in some sense be defined by this blog. So I will speak in colourful language for a moment, so I have a reference, a mental note of sorts. I have been confronted with darker demons than those of fear. These other demons are lascivious in nature. They stir temptation and desire control. Control of feeling. They slither like a reptile and promise dominion in pleasure beyond earthly attainment. In a way they are pure as hatred…black….cold. They whisper sweetness and offer a world, which is utopian and free from pain. They are liars. In essence, they only seek destruction and when the morning breaks, whilst the morning light is awakening the rest of the world, the seduced are left lying in bed, shivering and empty, like abandoned shells washed on a vast shoreline, weeping in despair.

At this time year I can feel the season shifting into a sombre tone. Summer is swaying with the autumn breeze and likewise my mood is being drawn downwards by a faint whirlpool of suction. Shorter days and longer nights smear the world with a wash of grey that seems to waft through the air. I think I am experiencing the first course of what looks set to be a five course meal, tonight I am having an entrée of grey, tasteless and heavy.

Possibly tomorrow I will feel better about who I am…tonight I am not so sure if I’m ok…I am feeling a little less than adequate, it is one of those nights where I am better off being in bed early, so I don’t have to endure too much consciousness.

Goodnight!

I am essentially free writing in this blogosphere. I never really know what will eventuate in my ramble. It is pretty much a stream of consciousness, which seems to develop an existence of it’s own. Perhaps it is how the universe was formed. Out of nothing. A thought. An idea..but of whose creation….a creator? What if the creator is the nothingness behind each and every thought. Are thoughts driven by an external force? Do thoughts have any significance in the world outside that of the creator or artist? In fact what is thought?

Questions stream through my mind at increasing speed…it is only when I stop before a keyboard or a blank page with pen in hand do I ever hope to capture, any single one or collection of them. To perhaps keep it hostage for a moment before it disperses into the mindscape or in this case cyber space. At one stage I meditated on Descartes often thought of one liner….“I think therefore I am”…I lost my writing on the topic due to hard drive failure, the idea is still lurking within the nether regions of inner space…I didn’t have anything original to add, however I was a little surprised that the question I was pondering over had been thought of by others, without ever having come across it anywhere prior to the thought revealing itself.
I essentially wondered whether the meaning of “I think therefore I am” came down to thinking something and thus believing it to be true.

For example if one says “I can’t do that” does that thought then dictate the outcome? “I think therefore I am”…I haven’t read Descartes, so I haven’t the authority to lay claim to understanding what his intention was when postulating this little statement. I assumed it had an existential foundation…yet when one examines the sentence in isolation, away from any other context, it does appear to take form as a statement on belief systems.

Like I said at the start of this blogologue….writing seems to have a life of it’s own. Thinking has a life of it’s own…I am yet to come to a resolution though…I can de-construct this process a little….The first thing that I encountered when I peered into the whiteness of this page was the question of what do I write…then from nowhere a title loomed above in my peripheral vision…Existence….So I wrote that down…Then I began this blog…without any preconceived ideas or at least conscious ones that I had planned to write, the words come from nowhere is my best guess (during the process I do go back and edit what I have written). Having said all that I have in a way come full circle…What is thought? Where does it come from? Is existence defined by it, as one can easily interpret from Descartes. Or is there more to Descartes statement than can be construed from first glances?

I am a amateur thinker at best, so am possibly out of my depth. Perhaps the real question is…Can I believe what I think? And if not then what can I believe? It is a continuing pursuit..perpetual in essence…I am definitely pursuing something…searching for something….I think I have stumbled across it…A belief system that is true! Absolute! Perfect? I think it has become clear, what it is I am searching for….perfection. The only thing that is said to be perfect is God. It would appear that I am at a cross roads. I am searching for perfection yet I can not accept it exists. It is the paradox of perfection, I want something I can not have.

Enough thinking for one night me thinks.

I think it interesting that blogging seems to be such a fad at the moment. Everyone wants their fifteen minutes of fame (or is it “I” that wants just fifteen more minutes of time…your time)…or could it be that memes are the culprits aspiring to fame? Is it feasible to entertain the notion, that blogging evolved from memes taking flight in a fit of virulence…the internet incubating the seeds, so as to enable the flight of mind and global dominance of the virus that is the mind…the synaptic endings of IP addresses emerging as a womb to the expansion of consciousness. Mutational strains of virus endeavouring to hold on to an existence, which may or may not have a half life of seconds or millennia?

(reality check) For me the past time of blogging, seems a natural extension to the journaling I’ve been doing over the last three years, off-line…I think I questioned in one of my first posts whether I yearned for some sort of validation…for a sense of validation to my existence….I can’t recall if I actually wrote it or thought it….I’m lazy so couldn’t be bothered scouring through my previous posts to find out if I did indeed write it. What does it really matter anyway…I haven’t received any validation one way or another, I am content just to enjoy the process of writing, regardless of any fame it may or may not provide. I confess, the idea that perhaps someone else may be reading something I have to say is appealing to my starved sense of worth. My ego wants to be heard. Alas, I have to concede that there are no echoes in this blogosphere, only quiet musings of a lonely man.

That is perhaps a lie…I am not so lonely, however when the quiet of night is resounding my heart beat I often wonder whether I am lonely and if this blog thing is mere distraction from feeling. I have learnt to feel the things I need to feel…That I can no longer run from feeling, as I used to do in a previous incarnation. Yet I am confronted in this dead sea of night whether I have found a new way to avoid feeling. To be honest this reflection is saddening…perhaps I have hit a nerve in my weary central nervous system. I often ponder the question of how personal should I endeavour to go in this public domain of information and thought. I guess the answer is solely up to me…Do I necessarily want to redeem the whole of my soul to public scrutiny and possible ridicule. Perhaps it matters not…I haven’t a clue if anyone is even interested in the pseudo intellectualising of an ordinary man doing ever so ordinary things. Perhaps there lies something of interest…some honesty at my own shortcomings. I am not really divulging any secrets…I am merely reflecting on thought and not giving anything too emotionally revealing…in essence only intellectualising.

Besides I have other avenues where I can explore emotional tribulations, in a safer environment. Perhaps in time I may give more of myself but for now I will continue with diatribes of nothingness.

I have officially been placed into the job market! Dare I say that I am gonna go for gold. The interview I had with the recruitment leech this morning went remarkably well…at least I thought it went well. Whether I can maintain some form when the time comes is another story. I am finding it hard to really pin point what I am worth in today’s market. I am convinced that I am worth more than what my current employer is offering. I believe I’ve always sold myself short and I think it high time I change this humble approach…I am almost excited by the prospect of playing a game. My life is so boring that I need something to enhance my range of feeling. Why not see what I can achieve? Why shouldn’t I sell myself to the highest bidder? Am I obliged to forsake a perceived, better life style, to a vague sense of loyalty. Is loyalty even considered virtuous any more? Are we not programmed to upgrade and update…to discard the old for new…are we not set to believe that the new virtue for our time is obsolescence?

We live in an age of consumerism where the ultimate product is the buyer..the consumer…you and me!
William S Burroughs spoke of junk as being the;

…ultimate merchandise. The junk merchant does not sell his product to the consumer, he sells the consumer to the product. He does not improve and simplify his merchandise, he degrades and simplifies the client.

And so it is with the time we now occupy….the merchant is selling the consumer to the product where the merchant is the product and we are the consumer. In effect, we are not improving and simplifying merchandise, we are degrading and simplifying ourselves, with obsolescent thinking. Constantly being bamboozled with the perfect life…just around the corner….we can pick up a can of flowery spray and in an instant be transformed into Eros…a God of lust and irresistible charm.

The ABC’s Four Corners had a great special How The Kids Took Over the other night. I think it illustrated perfectly how we are fast becoming the product. Although the program depicted marketers as devising (perhaps devious) schemes on how to “imprint” consumers to a product or brand at a stage when they are yet to be considered consumer able…I see the Burroughs pyramid of junk being bought and sold as it were. As an extension of this theme I am postulating that we are the product and the merchant…one and the same. Perhaps when all is said and done….the end product is the end. We ultimately become the obsolescence.

I don’t think I’m really making much sense with my disjointed point of view…however I am compelled to believe that I must in some sense view myself as the junk and also of the merchant when it comes to pitching the product to a prospective employer. I need to create the scenario where I sell the consumer to the product. To somehow degrade and simplify the client into thinking the perfect life is just around the corner… with the next fix…or in this case, the next project.