Deterioration of Spirit

"The human race, the deterioration of the spirit of man. Man undermining himself, causing a self-willed, self-imposed, self-evident self-destruction."
-From The Prisoner Of Second Avenue

Emotional Inspiration Part 1 - What are you listening to lately?

Without meaning to spam slipknot stuff they are a band that’s been in the front of my consciousness lately for one reason. They’re what I’ve been listening to lately.

This kind of infatuation that is developed is something of a key to understanding the state of your condition.

The song that you listen to today is the song that’s stuck in your head tomorrow. Sometimes there are events that remind you of a song and it gets in your head again. Other times, and this is the interesting part, sometimes when you listen to a song it jogs associated emotional patterns and memories.

But this is the really cool thing. It’s not sometimes. It’s all the time. Your emotions are affected more by your sensory input than your thoughts about the sensory input. Its why people are more prone to act on their emotions than their rationale.

Granted some people are more into different kinds of sensory input. Smell is famous for being an extremely effective emotional memory catalyst. But just about any sensory stimulation will invoke an associated emotion if that thing, or something similar, has been experienced before.

The Number 42

What is the meaning of it all? It’s a common question and at a glance sounds like the whine of an angst ridden teenager. But I mean, isn’t that a question that should be asked? And in fact there's a very simple answer.

There isn’t any.

I mean it comes down to that.

There isn’t any inherent characteristic in anything that would be called “meaning”. The only meaning that exists is imagined. But that’s how it always is. Every single thing you ever thought had meaning only had it because of the meaning you imposed upon it as a part of the assessment of your own subjective experience.

Now…  What’s wrong with that? I mean why is the meaninglessness of it all looked at like it’s a bad thing? I mean that is, in itself, adding a meaning to it. Why do that?

Well there are a number of evolutionary psychological reasons but suffice it to say. To a human, what is meaningless is discarded. It’s what made us efficient as a species.

So when one is to say that life is meaningless it jerks the reaction of “Then why not throw it away?”. And simply my response to that is, “Why would you?” there is no reason to.

It’s startlingly simple really. And that’s just it. There is that kind of simplicity to the world and it’s so outside of what is commonly held up as a wonderful, magical, really really good thing that it’s difficult to come to terms with all of the implications of the sheer meaninglessness of it all.

But don’t get me wrong. The subjective value and worth of something isn’t useless. In fact it’s entirely useful indeed. 

I mean look at something like chemo therapy.

To anyone healthy it’s simply poison and is of nothing but negative value. But to a cancer patient it’s ridiculously useful. But will the cancer patient think to themselves in quiet contemplation how ironic it is that they violently require chemo while sick but someone healthy violently would not want chemo at all?

No. they couldn’t give a fuck. They’re too busy dealing with the notion of their own potential death. It’s an odd sort of thing really. Recognition of the meaninglessness of it all just subtracts the artificial imposed and for the most part destructive meanings we apply and instead leave us free to experience reality as it really is and basically add and discard meaning to and from meaningless things at a whim.

In short. The number 42? Its as good an answer as any.

Wait and Bleed

What a way to start a new dystopian style blog about enlightenment than with a song that i feel sets the tone of this new venture. This isn't going to be about feeling good. Its not going to be a blog about being nice. Its going to be a blog about harsh honesty in the form of supreme self destruction.



Destruction of the fundamental mental construct ruling and ruining your life. Seeing its not a real thing is great. After that is the destruction of all that remains. All your happy and nice feelings about the world and everything in it are as equally false and damaging as the things that you loathe and fear.

Everything you love and all things you revere only hold that significance because its what you imbue it with in your head. I have no interest in niceties. My only interest is the utter destruction of all you hold dear and your motivations for holding it in such high regard.

This is the ultimate self destruction. The end of holding up pretty words like they are made of purest gold and taking them to pieces to see what their actual significance is.