The younger generation wants to change the present because they will have to live in the future. The older generation can be apathetic about the present since they will never see the future. So why do we let the older generation make all the rules?
"But experience and wisdom!!"
Yeah that wisdom brought us global warming, environmental destruction, several unwinnable wars, the most devastating economic catastrophe since the great depression, the destruction of the last semblance of democracy, social inequality on an unprecedented scale, etc. etc. etc.
Maybe that wisdom ain't all it's cracked up to be.
Tuesday, March 17, 2015
Monday, November 3, 2014
Another Lost Generation
I wake up and cause a climate catastrophe. I do it again while taking a shower, at the same time I’m dumping chemicals into our water system. The clothes I’m putting on were likely made in a sweatshop, or were otherwise produced by someone underpaid and overworked. The milk in my cereal was made by a cow who has been forcibly impregnated (raped) continuously over several years. Even though I don’t eat meat, that cow will be ground up into a paste as soon as she can no longer produce milk. As I check my email and scan my news feed, I’m using a device made of strip-mined toxic materials and of components manufactured by a corporation that installed nets around its factories to discourage workers from jumping.
I am complicit in environmental devastation that will cause millions to starve and in the poisoning of a dwindling water supply. I personally reap the benefits of slave labor, animal abuse, human exploitation, and torture.
It’s only 9 in the morning.
As I ride the bus to campus I see an entire family begging for change in front of a supermarket overflowing with food, but there’s too much on my mind already. My tuition is filling the pockets of administrators who are slashing salaries of overworked professors and my textbooks perpetuate a racket which exploits the hopes and dreams of my peers. I’m surrounded by nervous and naive teenagers who are already thousands of dollars in debt and who probably have no idea that payments on that debt can be pulled directly from their bank accounts with no warning at all. Some of my required classes explain to me how capitalism is making my life better, while others narrate the tragic disappearance of the American Indians without using the word genocide.
There are people across the world who feed their whole family for less than a dollar a day, I’m living in a world where a dollar is little more than a mouthful. If I took the time to grow my own food then I’d have no time for class, but it’s not as if I have access to enough land for that anyway. So I’m stuck buying plastic wrapped organic produce, which was grown naturally on a corporate farm by illegal immigrants who work 70 hours a week just so they don’t get sent back to a country being eaten alive by drug cartels armed with assault rifles generously donated by the ATF. It’s impossible to escape the exploitation, cruelty, and violence that underlies every facet of American society.
It’s noon, lunch time, that means more money for Monsanto and more animals screaming in their cages. Usually I pack a lunch so I don’t have to buy as much food loaded with high fructose corn syrup or coated in pesticides. Still, the crunch of organic carrots doesn’t quite drown my thoughts about the students and felons being paid barely above minimum wage to run the dining facilities, many of which have been contracted out to multinational corporations in light of dwindling funding for higher education. The student workers are trying desperately to keep up with the 10% tuition hike every year while the felons are trapped working for the same government which stole their future over a trumped up drug charge. Did I mention that my school is legally required to buy all of its furniture from Colorado Correctional Industries? The amendment that made slavery illegal has a glaring exception for those convicted of a crime.
Maybe I’m too cynical, I think I’m just seeing through to the truth of things. I’ve spent a lot of time reading about the history we ignore and I’ve learned many of the disturbing stories behind the polished products which fill our lives. A friend of mine wrote his thesis on labor history in Colorado, at one point he asked his professor why everything they were learning was so depressing. “If you want something uplifting then go study theology, this is history.”
I slink off to the edge of campus for a cigarette. Smoking outside recently became illegal on campus and, even though I’m white, I don’t want to run into any of those peace officers who have a nasty habit of getting away with beating innocent people. I know smoking is bad for me, but I’m already inhaling the fossil fuel fumes that fill the air and at least the smoke from my hand rolled cigarette is carbon neutral.
As the day goes on I’m churned through an educational assembly line, walking beneath inspirational quotes about the “timeless human spirit” which have been carved in stone just above a glass ceiling. I have to be here; even though it’s a corrupt and exploitative institution, college is my best chance of keeping factory work in my past where it belongs. So I fill my blood with caffeine, nicotine, and amphetamines as I get back to work.
I stop at the supermarket on my way home, thankfully there’s no one panhandling this time. I’m not here for much; a block of cheese, a couple bell peppers, and a bottle of ibuprofen. Looking in my basket I can see cows being stuffed with GMO corn and cocktails of antibiotics as machines literally suck life out of them. I see the inspector who was bribed into granting organic certification, but she’s not getting paid much either and has a family to feed. The plastic packaging will probably end up in the ocean somewhere. Then there’s the pharmaceutical industry, I don’t want to even start on that one.
At every step along the way, at every moment in my day, I am complicit in or benefiting from some horrible crime or injustice. But what choice do I have? I have to survive, there are certain items I need to keep going and my budget places very real limits on what I can buy. So I’m trapped supporting a system which perpetuates human exploitation on an unimaginable scale.
My last stop on the way home is the liquor store. I head to the back and snag a local brew from an employee owned company which uses 100% recyclable materials. Beer is one of very few products that I can buy guilt free, which should tell you a lot about my drinking habits. Soma has never tasted so good.
I know it seems like I’m overly pessimistic, seeing what’s wrong with everything around me, but this isn’t a piece about what’s good in the world. There are plenty of people who write and sing about the beauty and wonder of life, I’m not blind to that either. I’ve loved and danced, laughed and played, climbed mountains and swam in the oceans, and it was all wonderful. All things considered I have a great life, but most of that was pure luck. I am a straight white cisgender male, who is also tall, conventionally attractive, and was born into an upper middle class family with intelligent and well educated parents. The world was handed to me on a silver platter, but this isn’t about me. The coziness of my own little corner of the world does not mean that things are ok. This global perspective is characteristic of my generation, the information age has given us a window to the wider world and what we see could mildly be called depressing as fuck.
We know our oceans are being poisoned and global temperatures are rising, we know our government is owned by the rich and fucks the rest of us on a daily basis, we know de facto slave labor produces most what we buy, we know that the few good jobs left are paying less and less, and we know that neither our social nor political institutions provide any avenues for affecting real change. Hell, many of us cast our first votes for hope and change six years ago and we’re seeing all too clearly how well that’s turned out.
So some of us tune out, reveling in petty distractions or drowning this knowledge with some obsession or addiction because the thought of it all is unbearable. Others collapse into despair or develop some debilitating mental illness because we cannot bring ourselves to look away. Either way, we’re working so goddamn hard nowadays (or not working at all no matter how hard we try) that all thoughts of making the world a better place fade in the face of making it through one more week.
We are a lost generation. Raised on fading hopes and broken dreams, we came of age and naively stepped forward to claim the promised rewards of our struggles, only to find them snatched away every time we try to take hold. Stumbling forward we look around asking ourselves “What the fuck is going on here?” failing to find any satisfying answers. Scarcity in an age of abundance, plutocracy in the paragon of democracy, slavery in the land of the free; contradictions, myths, and lies everywhere we turn. We’re lost because the world doesn’t make any goddamn sense.
I find myself writing this instead of rolling my boulder of homework a little higher up the hill. A small but growing stack of bowls and plates sits on my desk in front of a hookah held together with duct tape. Although I’ve ensured that it’ll be another late night, the cynical satisfaction I’ve found in composing my thoughts will probably preserve my sanity for at least one more day.
After reaching the point of exhaustion I scan my news feed one more time. A sardonic smile crosses my face as I find another video of police beating people at a protest against police brutality. I probably shouldn’t have watched it, it’s nothing I haven’t seen before and I attend those kinds of protests too so it’s only a matter of time till my face is smashed into the pavement.
This can’t go on and we all know it. Even if we weren’t losing our hopes and losing our minds, no society built around the use of a finite resource can survive for long. Ideally a revolution occurs before it is the only option, needless suffering can be avoided and the absence of desperation allows for clearer heads to prevail. Yet at the same time as more and more of us are realizing how little we have left to lose, defenders of the status quo are resorting to more and more desperate measures. I guess they’re just in denial, but they’ll learn the hard way that those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable.
The largest class war between the haves and the have nots will be fought in our lifetime and we will be on the front lines. Previous generations failed to wrest power out of the hands of the psychopaths who run our government and the corporations which own it, so now it’s our turn to try. It’s our turn to fight for a better world but now the stakes have changed. Global climate change and resource depletion threaten our entire species, if we fail then the next generations may not have enough clean air to breathe. The water is rising, we fight or we die.
Right now though, I’m exhausted. A long and grueling day of attentive listening and hunched scribbling has left me drained in both body and mind. The most I can muster is to share a few links on facebook expounding and detailing various specifics of our increasingly desperate situation. I woke up ready to start fucking shit up but I looked around me and saw that there aren’t enough of us ready yet. Many still have hope that things will work out, that life will make an exception for them and they’ll have their little fairy tale. Someday that illusion will break and that naive denial will fail in the face of cold hard reality. We’ll stop lying down and start looking up, start fighting to make the world a better place. A mass of angry young people who feel they have nothing left to lose can turn the whole world upside down. Once we realize how powerful we are there will be no stopping us. It could happen any day and at any time, there’s no way to know what will trigger this pent up desperation and rage. I don’t know when it will happen, but I do know that the longer we sleep the worse the nightmare will become.
Today wasn’t a good day. Sometimes I can forget what’s going on around me and find a little peace of mind in the daily grind, but not today. Instead today was just another straw on the camel’s back. There’s only so much more I can take before I snap, but I know that when I snap I won’t snap alone.
I am complicit in environmental devastation that will cause millions to starve and in the poisoning of a dwindling water supply. I personally reap the benefits of slave labor, animal abuse, human exploitation, and torture.
It’s only 9 in the morning.
As I ride the bus to campus I see an entire family begging for change in front of a supermarket overflowing with food, but there’s too much on my mind already. My tuition is filling the pockets of administrators who are slashing salaries of overworked professors and my textbooks perpetuate a racket which exploits the hopes and dreams of my peers. I’m surrounded by nervous and naive teenagers who are already thousands of dollars in debt and who probably have no idea that payments on that debt can be pulled directly from their bank accounts with no warning at all. Some of my required classes explain to me how capitalism is making my life better, while others narrate the tragic disappearance of the American Indians without using the word genocide.
There are people across the world who feed their whole family for less than a dollar a day, I’m living in a world where a dollar is little more than a mouthful. If I took the time to grow my own food then I’d have no time for class, but it’s not as if I have access to enough land for that anyway. So I’m stuck buying plastic wrapped organic produce, which was grown naturally on a corporate farm by illegal immigrants who work 70 hours a week just so they don’t get sent back to a country being eaten alive by drug cartels armed with assault rifles generously donated by the ATF. It’s impossible to escape the exploitation, cruelty, and violence that underlies every facet of American society.
It’s noon, lunch time, that means more money for Monsanto and more animals screaming in their cages. Usually I pack a lunch so I don’t have to buy as much food loaded with high fructose corn syrup or coated in pesticides. Still, the crunch of organic carrots doesn’t quite drown my thoughts about the students and felons being paid barely above minimum wage to run the dining facilities, many of which have been contracted out to multinational corporations in light of dwindling funding for higher education. The student workers are trying desperately to keep up with the 10% tuition hike every year while the felons are trapped working for the same government which stole their future over a trumped up drug charge. Did I mention that my school is legally required to buy all of its furniture from Colorado Correctional Industries? The amendment that made slavery illegal has a glaring exception for those convicted of a crime.
Maybe I’m too cynical, I think I’m just seeing through to the truth of things. I’ve spent a lot of time reading about the history we ignore and I’ve learned many of the disturbing stories behind the polished products which fill our lives. A friend of mine wrote his thesis on labor history in Colorado, at one point he asked his professor why everything they were learning was so depressing. “If you want something uplifting then go study theology, this is history.”
I slink off to the edge of campus for a cigarette. Smoking outside recently became illegal on campus and, even though I’m white, I don’t want to run into any of those peace officers who have a nasty habit of getting away with beating innocent people. I know smoking is bad for me, but I’m already inhaling the fossil fuel fumes that fill the air and at least the smoke from my hand rolled cigarette is carbon neutral.
As the day goes on I’m churned through an educational assembly line, walking beneath inspirational quotes about the “timeless human spirit” which have been carved in stone just above a glass ceiling. I have to be here; even though it’s a corrupt and exploitative institution, college is my best chance of keeping factory work in my past where it belongs. So I fill my blood with caffeine, nicotine, and amphetamines as I get back to work.
I stop at the supermarket on my way home, thankfully there’s no one panhandling this time. I’m not here for much; a block of cheese, a couple bell peppers, and a bottle of ibuprofen. Looking in my basket I can see cows being stuffed with GMO corn and cocktails of antibiotics as machines literally suck life out of them. I see the inspector who was bribed into granting organic certification, but she’s not getting paid much either and has a family to feed. The plastic packaging will probably end up in the ocean somewhere. Then there’s the pharmaceutical industry, I don’t want to even start on that one.
At every step along the way, at every moment in my day, I am complicit in or benefiting from some horrible crime or injustice. But what choice do I have? I have to survive, there are certain items I need to keep going and my budget places very real limits on what I can buy. So I’m trapped supporting a system which perpetuates human exploitation on an unimaginable scale.
My last stop on the way home is the liquor store. I head to the back and snag a local brew from an employee owned company which uses 100% recyclable materials. Beer is one of very few products that I can buy guilt free, which should tell you a lot about my drinking habits. Soma has never tasted so good.
I know it seems like I’m overly pessimistic, seeing what’s wrong with everything around me, but this isn’t a piece about what’s good in the world. There are plenty of people who write and sing about the beauty and wonder of life, I’m not blind to that either. I’ve loved and danced, laughed and played, climbed mountains and swam in the oceans, and it was all wonderful. All things considered I have a great life, but most of that was pure luck. I am a straight white cisgender male, who is also tall, conventionally attractive, and was born into an upper middle class family with intelligent and well educated parents. The world was handed to me on a silver platter, but this isn’t about me. The coziness of my own little corner of the world does not mean that things are ok. This global perspective is characteristic of my generation, the information age has given us a window to the wider world and what we see could mildly be called depressing as fuck.
We know our oceans are being poisoned and global temperatures are rising, we know our government is owned by the rich and fucks the rest of us on a daily basis, we know de facto slave labor produces most what we buy, we know that the few good jobs left are paying less and less, and we know that neither our social nor political institutions provide any avenues for affecting real change. Hell, many of us cast our first votes for hope and change six years ago and we’re seeing all too clearly how well that’s turned out.
So some of us tune out, reveling in petty distractions or drowning this knowledge with some obsession or addiction because the thought of it all is unbearable. Others collapse into despair or develop some debilitating mental illness because we cannot bring ourselves to look away. Either way, we’re working so goddamn hard nowadays (or not working at all no matter how hard we try) that all thoughts of making the world a better place fade in the face of making it through one more week.
We are a lost generation. Raised on fading hopes and broken dreams, we came of age and naively stepped forward to claim the promised rewards of our struggles, only to find them snatched away every time we try to take hold. Stumbling forward we look around asking ourselves “What the fuck is going on here?” failing to find any satisfying answers. Scarcity in an age of abundance, plutocracy in the paragon of democracy, slavery in the land of the free; contradictions, myths, and lies everywhere we turn. We’re lost because the world doesn’t make any goddamn sense.
I find myself writing this instead of rolling my boulder of homework a little higher up the hill. A small but growing stack of bowls and plates sits on my desk in front of a hookah held together with duct tape. Although I’ve ensured that it’ll be another late night, the cynical satisfaction I’ve found in composing my thoughts will probably preserve my sanity for at least one more day.
After reaching the point of exhaustion I scan my news feed one more time. A sardonic smile crosses my face as I find another video of police beating people at a protest against police brutality. I probably shouldn’t have watched it, it’s nothing I haven’t seen before and I attend those kinds of protests too so it’s only a matter of time till my face is smashed into the pavement.
This can’t go on and we all know it. Even if we weren’t losing our hopes and losing our minds, no society built around the use of a finite resource can survive for long. Ideally a revolution occurs before it is the only option, needless suffering can be avoided and the absence of desperation allows for clearer heads to prevail. Yet at the same time as more and more of us are realizing how little we have left to lose, defenders of the status quo are resorting to more and more desperate measures. I guess they’re just in denial, but they’ll learn the hard way that those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable.
The largest class war between the haves and the have nots will be fought in our lifetime and we will be on the front lines. Previous generations failed to wrest power out of the hands of the psychopaths who run our government and the corporations which own it, so now it’s our turn to try. It’s our turn to fight for a better world but now the stakes have changed. Global climate change and resource depletion threaten our entire species, if we fail then the next generations may not have enough clean air to breathe. The water is rising, we fight or we die.
Right now though, I’m exhausted. A long and grueling day of attentive listening and hunched scribbling has left me drained in both body and mind. The most I can muster is to share a few links on facebook expounding and detailing various specifics of our increasingly desperate situation. I woke up ready to start fucking shit up but I looked around me and saw that there aren’t enough of us ready yet. Many still have hope that things will work out, that life will make an exception for them and they’ll have their little fairy tale. Someday that illusion will break and that naive denial will fail in the face of cold hard reality. We’ll stop lying down and start looking up, start fighting to make the world a better place. A mass of angry young people who feel they have nothing left to lose can turn the whole world upside down. Once we realize how powerful we are there will be no stopping us. It could happen any day and at any time, there’s no way to know what will trigger this pent up desperation and rage. I don’t know when it will happen, but I do know that the longer we sleep the worse the nightmare will become.
Today wasn’t a good day. Sometimes I can forget what’s going on around me and find a little peace of mind in the daily grind, but not today. Instead today was just another straw on the camel’s back. There’s only so much more I can take before I snap, but I know that when I snap I won’t snap alone.
Wednesday, February 12, 2014
Breaking news: Congress to vote on the DoublePlusGood Act
A bipartisan group of legislators recently sponsored a piece of legislation with ambiguous and confusing language. The DoublePlusGood Act may or may not be used to deny legal rights to the bad people, and might-possibly-but-no-one-can-really-tell give major corporations more money and power.
Speaking under condition of anonymity, a senior senator stated "I really have no fucking idea what this bill is about but it's clear that The DoublePlusGood Act will be a good thing for this country, possibly even plusgood." When asked for clarification over what the fuck this act is about, one of the cosponsers provided key insight and understanding. "The Doubleplus Good Act will do one or more of several things; it will create jobs, ensure national security, protect our freedoms, and/or make America more American." This may sound like more trite political bullshit but Senator Rich Whitey offered a heartfelt a pinkie promise that The DPGA will be doubleplusgood for America.
When asked why they chose the name DoublePlusGood Act, Sen. Whitey stated that "The Patriot Act, The Freedom Act, and the America Act were already taken and we were running low on thinly veiled propaganda. We figured fuck it, the American people are docile enough to accept a stronger plutocracy. Anyway I've got to go, my wife wants me to fire our servants and hire new ones who will work for less." Sen. Whitey then noticed the interviewer's watch and realized his own watch was more expensive. He ended the interview saying "Fuck off, pleb".
Speaking under condition of anonymity, a senior senator stated "I really have no fucking idea what this bill is about but it's clear that The DoublePlusGood Act will be a good thing for this country, possibly even plusgood." When asked for clarification over what the fuck this act is about, one of the cosponsers provided key insight and understanding. "The Doubleplus Good Act will do one or more of several things; it will create jobs, ensure national security, protect our freedoms, and/or make America more American." This may sound like more trite political bullshit but Senator Rich Whitey offered a heartfelt a pinkie promise that The DPGA will be doubleplusgood for America.
When asked why they chose the name DoublePlusGood Act, Sen. Whitey stated that "The Patriot Act, The Freedom Act, and the America Act were already taken and we were running low on thinly veiled propaganda. We figured fuck it, the American people are docile enough to accept a stronger plutocracy. Anyway I've got to go, my wife wants me to fire our servants and hire new ones who will work for less." Sen. Whitey then noticed the interviewer's watch and realized his own watch was more expensive. He ended the interview saying "Fuck off, pleb".
Wednesday, February 5, 2014
Our Brave New 1984
Note: This is a slightly modified version of an essay I submitted for a class assignment. I am working on expanding the ideas within but this may take some time seeing as the material could easily fill an entire book.
Few dystopian novels have a greater hold on our collective conscious than Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” or George Orwell’s “1984.” These two are almost polar opposites, Huxley’s world is controlled by pleasure while Orwell’s is controlled by pain, yet the basic goals of either ruling class are the same: maintaining their own power. By comparing and contrasting different forms of control from these two dystopias, I hope to shed some light on how they converge in our world today.
I will analyze three broad categories; forceful control, resource control, and information control. Forceful control refers to the use of brute force; police, prisons, military, etc. Resource control refers to the availability of basic necessities and commercial goods. Information control refers to propaganda, access to information, and surveillance systems. The power systems in both dystopias and our world today can be thought of in these terms.
Information control
Arguably information control is the first line of defense of any power structure. If propaganda is universally believed, if people are unaware of the functioning of their society, or if they lack the information or language to understand or describe the nature of their oppression, then they are unable or entirely unwilling to organize effectively. In Orwell’s 1984, three major themes of information control are relentless propaganda, revisionist history, and surveillance. The telescreens of 1984 are present in every Party member’s home and constantly broadcasting propaganda. There is no subtlety here; every message is about the Party’s accomplishments, the enemy’s ever present evil, and how much better off everyone is thanks to the government. Generally the US government does not engage in such blatant propaganda but government institutions certainly reinforce various useful illusions, such as The American Dream. Certain historical facts are simply omitted from the history taught in schools and thus are largely unknown. These support the illusion of a just yet imperfect government.
A very strong parallel to 1984 revolves around surveillance. In this dystopia, all Party members are being watched at all times and anyone who shows any sign of heretical thought is arrested by the Thought Police. In our world, the United States government has created surveillance programs that attempt, and largely succeed, to capture and record every single piece of electronic communication in the world. There are far more terrifying programs that have come to light but hedonistic apathy and simple ignorance limit the scope of awareness. We have yet to see what the US government will do with such terrifying power.
The most pervasive propaganda campaigns in our world are run by big business. In Brave New World, humans are conditioned from birth to hold certain values and have a specific set of desires. Selfish hedonistic consumerism is imprinted on children via behavioral conditioning and hypnotic suggestion, crafting a population that loves mindless entertainment and always desires the newest gadgets. The overabundance of material goods means there is always a hot new thing to satisfy animalistic desires, so there is never a lull in the entertainment paradigm wherein people might question the status quo or engage in self reflection. This selfish hedonistic consumerism is markedly similar to the United States culture of today.
The extreme behavioral conditioning of Brave New World is largely absent in our society but we are regularly subjected to subliminal messages which warp our values and desires. The science of marketing is aimed at making people desire certain things and the marketing sectors of separate industries have a shared interest in reinforcing consumerism. Television ads target children, the most impressionable demographic, and brand mascots become idols. At such a young age, this sort of conditioning is very effective and carries over into our adult lives, even for those of us who are aware of it. These imposed superficial values and desires serve to counteract the effects of the greatest information revolution in all of human history: the internet.
The wealth of knowledge available at our fingertips, indeed in our pockets, has the potential to tear down all ideological barriers. The powers that be are right to see it as a threat, this is why there are so many attempts to censor the web. However, in Huxley’s dystopia censorship is simply not needed because people have no desire to learn beyond the needs of their hedonistic desires. We are undoubtedly seeing that trend today, enormous breaches of the social contract by major corporations and government institutions are largely ignored by the general public. Thus there will be no revolution while the circus continues.
Resource control
Despite being the second line of defense, resource control can mitigate the shortcomings of information control schemas. This can take the form of abundance or scarcity, in our world we see both acting at once on different social classes. In 1984, everyone except Inner Party members are poor and even they have minimalistic lives by our standards. Scarcity for the proles and Outer Party keeps them physically drained and struggling, both of which limit capacity for critical thought and sap energy that could otherwise go towards higher pursuits. However, if resources are too scarce then there will be ‘bread riots’ as the prevailing social order is incapable of meeting basic human needs. The ideal balance between these two is maintaining resource availability barely above subsistence levels, which is exactly what the Party has achieved in 1984.
We see this at play for the lower classes of US society. Those who live near the poverty level work long hours and earn only enough to keep a semblance of a home and provide for their most basic needs. With no time or energy to learn or examine the nature of their oppression, and lacking resources above a subsistence level, they are generally unable to organize to demand better treatment. We do see protests demanding higher wages when living conditions fall below a certain level, but the concessions made by the ruling classes are almost always the bare minimum necessary to pacify the public.
The opposite resource control schema is necessary to pacify a middle class. With a higher quality of education and far more free time, they are more prone to demand political or social change. However, since they have the time, energy, and resources, they can be distracted. This is where we see the material abundance scheme from Brave New World; the middle classes of our society can easily spend time and money on the newest gadgets, games, and TV shows. However there must always be novelty or else they will become bored. This demands consumerism perpetuated through behavioral conditioning. In Brave New World there are slogans such as “more stitches; fewer riches” while in our world we have business models based on planned obsolescence. A distracted and thoroughly entertained middle class is far less likely to agitate for change.
Forceful control
The last resort of oppressors, when information and resource control are not enough to maintain the status quo we see tear gas and batons. In our world we see different applications of violence to various social classes while the worlds of 1984 and Brave New World have opposing methods of state violence. In 1984, violence is planned as soon as any individual breaks from the Party line. The only reason they are not imprisoned immediately is to allow for more monitoring of the individual to determine psychological weaknesses. The threat is absolute, anyone who shows any hint of dissent will be disappeared and likely never seen again. Large scale crowd control is not needed as the Thought Police are always looking for political dissidents and neutralize them as soon as possible. The opposite is true in Brave New World, individuals are not monitored because they can be trusted to mindlessly pursue hedonism, while the few that do dissent are simply ignored by the rest of the population. As of now, our society does not appear to emulate either of these models.
Despite strong correlations with race and poverty, state violence directed against civilians is largely arbitrary in the US, with one major exception. We thankfully lack a government agency akin to the Thought Police so political organizations are relatively free to form. Without that safeguard, it is necessary for the power elite to violently resist any protest or movement which threatens the status quo; this usually takes the form of pseudo-soldiers posing as peace officers. We rarely hear about protests that are violently suppressed and they are relatively rare, due in large part to the brutality of the state’s response. This works to serve information control as it restricts knowledge that a counter-movement exists in the first place.
Within these three spheres of control, our world is like a hybrid of the information and resource control schemas of 1984 and Brave New World. Forceful control most certainly exists as well but it does not have the extreme attributes of either of these dystopias. If we are looking to these novels as warnings against the evils of totalitarian society, we ought to focus primarily on the information control systems from each. Some aspects of our society, particularly between hedonistic apathy and universal surveillance, are eerily close to the worlds of 1984 and Brave New World. Many of these dystopian aspects seem to be growing at a terrifying rate while others are being increasingly undermined, primarily due to the developing information age and industrial automation. We should remain vigilant against increasing similarities between our world and these dystopias lest they become predictions of our future.
Sunday, September 22, 2013
As close to nirvana as I can imagine being
I was feeling pretty lonely and despondent for a while. A bad breakup from a long time ago was still on my mind, the everyday stresses of life were building, and my awareness of social issues was becoming too painful. I wasn't at a low point per se, I was just feeling down for a while. This last time I ate mushrooms with the intent of having a deep introspective journey, and I certainly succeeded, though not at all in the way I expected. They were way stronger than I thought but it was still a rewarding experience. Now I'm much more satisfied with my life as is, nothing has changed except my attitude but I'm much more at ease on my own and the other things that were bothering me aren't as mentally oppressive as they used to be.
It's not really possible to describe in words what the experience was like but I'll give it a shot. I hope someone finds it interesting and if not writing this will help me sort out what happened.
My plan was to go on a hike, it was the first warm day after a recent snowfall and I wanted to see the wilderness with snow on the ground. I made myself a peanut butter and mushroom sandwich, ate it at the trail head, and started hiking. After an hour or so I started noticing the first effects, lights and colors were brighter and my depth perception felt more real. The landscape stood out way more than it usually did, kind of like the difference between a 2D picture and then seeing the real thing, except I started out with the real thing which then just got better.
Then things started to get bad. I started to think this was a terrible decision because I'm still in school and don't want to fuck up. I'd already dropped out once and psychedelics could really mess me up for a while. I was tearing into myself, loathing every recent decision I'd made and shouldering the blame for every single one of my troubles. I was angry, sad, frustrated, every possible negative emotion at once, and to top it off the hike wasn't as nice as I was expecting. The snow was still thick and I only had hiking shoes so I was slipping and my feet were soaked. As the visual distortion started to kick in I realized I was lost, I had completely lost track of the trail I was supposed to be taking. I was still on a trail, so I wasn't dangerously lost, but I occasionally passed other people and I was clearly in distress. I could barely read my handwriting on my directions and couldn't think clearly about where I was. This was in an area I'd hiked before but I began to panic. I'd planned ahead though and my friends knew what I was doing and where I was, so I called them to get help. They gave me directions and picked me up on a nearby road. It turned out I'd hiked uphill about 8 miles in 3 hours and came out about a 30 minute drive from where I'd planned to.
While hiking I'd been hating myself more than I ever thought possible. It wasn't depression, I cared too damn much about it to be ambivalent. My hatred came from acute awareness of all of my weaknesses. Every decision I'd ever made when I should have known better, every moment of cruelty or lack of compassion, every inadequacy stood out in my mind like brain freeze that refuses to go away. I flogged myself for everything I was ashamed of, bleeding on the inside and nearly weeping on the outside, it was the worst kind of misery. A jail cell in hell where I'd installed the bars myself.
When I got home I took my 'abort pill,' some medicine that would end the trip pretty quickly. Just as I began to lie down in my room though, everything started to change. The visuals were coming on strong, every decoration in my room started to come alive. The painting of a tree started to grow, I could see the leaves waving in the wind and the bark pulsing with flowing sap. My hands were glowing, twinkling in the faint light, and I was totally at peace. In my room I was in a safe place so I could enjoy the rest of the experience. It became the exact opposite of what I'd been feeling hours earlier.
Everything in my room took on a powerful meaning; my books, my guitars, my lava lamp, everything was exactly were it ought to be and it occurred to me that everything I needed for a happy life was right there with me. I closed my eyes and could see brilliantly colored fractal patterns, flowing in and out of each other, and started to connect them to what I was thinking.
I became one with the universe, totally and completely. We have always been one with the universe but we can hardly ever feel it. I felt it so deep in my being that I wept with the realization that I wasn't alone because it was impossible to be alone. I was part of everything around me, part of my friends, my house, my family, everyone and everything was me just as much as I was them. It was total bliss, as close to nirvana as I can imagine being.
Then time began to unfold. I had the feeling that this moment was going to last forever, because it was forever. Past and future no longer existed, each was a foggy memory or a foggy prediction of what happened and what might happen. The unity of the universe's various opposites became a chain of pairs, formed into a circle, where it is only possible for us to experience a finite few at any given time. Nothingness and existence, life and death, love and loss, separation and oneness; as I felt each I was only able to feel those directly connected to the present sensation. I started laughing and I couldn't stop, everything made so much sense. All the confusion and lack of understanding was simply a function of some other understanding. Just like the uncertainty principle, we can only know a few things at a time, and all my fears about the unknown just floated away. Time didn't exist anymore, I was going to be in this state of flowing understanding forever. Imagine the crest of a single wave, flowing through the ocean. My understanding, my experiences, my existence, was the crest of that wave. In everyday life that's all we know, and that's all I could know at the time, but I felt the existence of everything else. Even if I couldn't experience it then, it was there and I was inseparable from it. I fell in love with everything, it was such a powerful feeling that I was laughing and crying with more emotion than I'd ever felt before.
Then my perspective started to focus in on myself. As I saw all of my troubles and worries in the context of infinite love, beauty, and existence, I started laughing again. None of them mattered, they weren't real and they wouldn't last. My life, my actions, and my subjective existence were all totally insignificant and it was the most empowering realization I've ever had. All the pressure to succeed, all the fear of failure, all the demands placed on me became so trivial they might as well have never existed. I was free, to do, think, and love however I wanted. If my life was nothing and everything at the same time, then every desire and every dream of mine was something inherent and inseparable from the universe. Every wrong, every evil, every cruel or spiteful action or thought I'd ever had or committed was against myself. And every love, every caring or compassionate act, was me loving and caring for myself. Then I realized that most of the people around me had never felt this way, and their judgement, dislike, or jealousy were just a part of me, so I had no reason to care what they thought. All the fucks I once gave flew out the window, and I started to sing.
"I don't give a fuck, I don't give a fuck, I don't give a fuck fuck fuck fuck, FUCK!"
It was the best song ever.
After singing for what felt like hours but was only a minute, I started to calm down. I was rolling around in my bed, which felt more comfortable than a womb could ever be, and started to go into denial about shrinking down into my body. I was one with the universe, my consciousness had transcended all of time and space to contain the entirety of existence, but now it was time to be human again. I was a little sad about it but knew it was inevitable, and knew that all the things I'd learned and realized were still true. So I took a shower and went to play some video games.
I didn't reflect on it too much for the rest of that day, it was too fresh and too raw. The next few days though I was able to feel the residuals of all the peace and love I'd been a part of. I didn't realize it at first but I was utterly content with the same life that was just not enough before my trip. After writing this out, I understand why a little bit more.
This trip was waaaayyyy more intense than I had expected or wanted, the 'abort pill' I took certainly cut it short but that's not saying much. All the fear and self hatred from the first half made me want to die, I wanted to die more than I'd ever wanted anything. Then I had exactly the opposite experience, I loved everything and didn't care whether I was alive or not because that love transcends everything. Life is an adventure, an 80 year vacation from my normal state of being, and I'm going to explore it to the fullest.
Mushrooms are a powerful drug that should not be toyed with. They can be incredibly rewarding and unbelievably painful. You may come face to face with all of your inner demons and may not be able to escape their fury. You may feel an omnipresent love, a compassionate force so overwhelming that all human evils appear to be nothing more than little annoyances. You may walk through hell, float through heaven, and then come back to earth knowing the difference between the two. After a journey like that, it's impossible to keep the same perspective on life.
It's not really possible to describe in words what the experience was like but I'll give it a shot. I hope someone finds it interesting and if not writing this will help me sort out what happened.
My plan was to go on a hike, it was the first warm day after a recent snowfall and I wanted to see the wilderness with snow on the ground. I made myself a peanut butter and mushroom sandwich, ate it at the trail head, and started hiking. After an hour or so I started noticing the first effects, lights and colors were brighter and my depth perception felt more real. The landscape stood out way more than it usually did, kind of like the difference between a 2D picture and then seeing the real thing, except I started out with the real thing which then just got better.
Then things started to get bad. I started to think this was a terrible decision because I'm still in school and don't want to fuck up. I'd already dropped out once and psychedelics could really mess me up for a while. I was tearing into myself, loathing every recent decision I'd made and shouldering the blame for every single one of my troubles. I was angry, sad, frustrated, every possible negative emotion at once, and to top it off the hike wasn't as nice as I was expecting. The snow was still thick and I only had hiking shoes so I was slipping and my feet were soaked. As the visual distortion started to kick in I realized I was lost, I had completely lost track of the trail I was supposed to be taking. I was still on a trail, so I wasn't dangerously lost, but I occasionally passed other people and I was clearly in distress. I could barely read my handwriting on my directions and couldn't think clearly about where I was. This was in an area I'd hiked before but I began to panic. I'd planned ahead though and my friends knew what I was doing and where I was, so I called them to get help. They gave me directions and picked me up on a nearby road. It turned out I'd hiked uphill about 8 miles in 3 hours and came out about a 30 minute drive from where I'd planned to.
While hiking I'd been hating myself more than I ever thought possible. It wasn't depression, I cared too damn much about it to be ambivalent. My hatred came from acute awareness of all of my weaknesses. Every decision I'd ever made when I should have known better, every moment of cruelty or lack of compassion, every inadequacy stood out in my mind like brain freeze that refuses to go away. I flogged myself for everything I was ashamed of, bleeding on the inside and nearly weeping on the outside, it was the worst kind of misery. A jail cell in hell where I'd installed the bars myself.
When I got home I took my 'abort pill,' some medicine that would end the trip pretty quickly. Just as I began to lie down in my room though, everything started to change. The visuals were coming on strong, every decoration in my room started to come alive. The painting of a tree started to grow, I could see the leaves waving in the wind and the bark pulsing with flowing sap. My hands were glowing, twinkling in the faint light, and I was totally at peace. In my room I was in a safe place so I could enjoy the rest of the experience. It became the exact opposite of what I'd been feeling hours earlier.
Everything in my room took on a powerful meaning; my books, my guitars, my lava lamp, everything was exactly were it ought to be and it occurred to me that everything I needed for a happy life was right there with me. I closed my eyes and could see brilliantly colored fractal patterns, flowing in and out of each other, and started to connect them to what I was thinking.
I became one with the universe, totally and completely. We have always been one with the universe but we can hardly ever feel it. I felt it so deep in my being that I wept with the realization that I wasn't alone because it was impossible to be alone. I was part of everything around me, part of my friends, my house, my family, everyone and everything was me just as much as I was them. It was total bliss, as close to nirvana as I can imagine being.
Then time began to unfold. I had the feeling that this moment was going to last forever, because it was forever. Past and future no longer existed, each was a foggy memory or a foggy prediction of what happened and what might happen. The unity of the universe's various opposites became a chain of pairs, formed into a circle, where it is only possible for us to experience a finite few at any given time. Nothingness and existence, life and death, love and loss, separation and oneness; as I felt each I was only able to feel those directly connected to the present sensation. I started laughing and I couldn't stop, everything made so much sense. All the confusion and lack of understanding was simply a function of some other understanding. Just like the uncertainty principle, we can only know a few things at a time, and all my fears about the unknown just floated away. Time didn't exist anymore, I was going to be in this state of flowing understanding forever. Imagine the crest of a single wave, flowing through the ocean. My understanding, my experiences, my existence, was the crest of that wave. In everyday life that's all we know, and that's all I could know at the time, but I felt the existence of everything else. Even if I couldn't experience it then, it was there and I was inseparable from it. I fell in love with everything, it was such a powerful feeling that I was laughing and crying with more emotion than I'd ever felt before.
Then my perspective started to focus in on myself. As I saw all of my troubles and worries in the context of infinite love, beauty, and existence, I started laughing again. None of them mattered, they weren't real and they wouldn't last. My life, my actions, and my subjective existence were all totally insignificant and it was the most empowering realization I've ever had. All the pressure to succeed, all the fear of failure, all the demands placed on me became so trivial they might as well have never existed. I was free, to do, think, and love however I wanted. If my life was nothing and everything at the same time, then every desire and every dream of mine was something inherent and inseparable from the universe. Every wrong, every evil, every cruel or spiteful action or thought I'd ever had or committed was against myself. And every love, every caring or compassionate act, was me loving and caring for myself. Then I realized that most of the people around me had never felt this way, and their judgement, dislike, or jealousy were just a part of me, so I had no reason to care what they thought. All the fucks I once gave flew out the window, and I started to sing.
"I don't give a fuck, I don't give a fuck, I don't give a fuck fuck fuck fuck, FUCK!"
It was the best song ever.
After singing for what felt like hours but was only a minute, I started to calm down. I was rolling around in my bed, which felt more comfortable than a womb could ever be, and started to go into denial about shrinking down into my body. I was one with the universe, my consciousness had transcended all of time and space to contain the entirety of existence, but now it was time to be human again. I was a little sad about it but knew it was inevitable, and knew that all the things I'd learned and realized were still true. So I took a shower and went to play some video games.
I didn't reflect on it too much for the rest of that day, it was too fresh and too raw. The next few days though I was able to feel the residuals of all the peace and love I'd been a part of. I didn't realize it at first but I was utterly content with the same life that was just not enough before my trip. After writing this out, I understand why a little bit more.
This trip was waaaayyyy more intense than I had expected or wanted, the 'abort pill' I took certainly cut it short but that's not saying much. All the fear and self hatred from the first half made me want to die, I wanted to die more than I'd ever wanted anything. Then I had exactly the opposite experience, I loved everything and didn't care whether I was alive or not because that love transcends everything. Life is an adventure, an 80 year vacation from my normal state of being, and I'm going to explore it to the fullest.
Mushrooms are a powerful drug that should not be toyed with. They can be incredibly rewarding and unbelievably painful. You may come face to face with all of your inner demons and may not be able to escape their fury. You may feel an omnipresent love, a compassionate force so overwhelming that all human evils appear to be nothing more than little annoyances. You may walk through hell, float through heaven, and then come back to earth knowing the difference between the two. After a journey like that, it's impossible to keep the same perspective on life.
Sunday, September 8, 2013
A brief analysis of Occupy Wall St
The Occupy Wall St
movement is almost universally misunderstood, even amongst those who
would consider themselves occupiers. I cannot truthfully say that I
know 'the truth' about the movement though I consistently see the
same misunderstandings. Occupy Wall St was an expression of popular
anger at the gross injustices of our social, political, and economic
systems. There were no official goals, no explicit demands, and no
consensus on which specific issues should be the focus. However, if
a single message can be gleaned from the entire movement it is this:
there is a class war going on and we are losing.
This class war is
being waged on a variety of fronts, many of which initially appear
completely unrelated. The wars on drugs, terror, and crime share a
common enemy: the poor and disenfranchised of the world. Corporate
personhood, corruption in government, and the two party system are
only some of the ways that democracy is quashed. The consolidation
of media outlets, propaganda relabelled as public relations, and
internet censorship schemes all seek to throttle the development and
exchange of ideas. Concentration of wealth, a currency controlled by
a self interested elite, and a predatory economy all prevent people
from having the time or resources to effectively enforce their basic
human rights. It all comes down to control, control of the masses to
solidify the power of a neo-aristocratic class.
The ultra-wealthy
elites looked at Occupy Wall St and saw a true threat to their power.
People across the country, indeed across the world, coming together
to show just how mad they are. We were talking, sharing our
struggles, realizing that our personal and financial problems are
shared by millions. To borrow from the feminist movement, we began
to realize that the personal is truly political. Yet this in itself
is not threatening, instead it was our show of strength. We saw how
many of us there are, how many of us are mad as hell and don't want
to take it anymore, and we started to realize that we are strong.
The proletariat were starting to see their true power and the ruling
class was terrified.
In response, there
was a massive, coordinated campaign to silence and destroy the
movement. Occupiers were mocked and vilified in the media, we were
supposedly just angry kids who had no cohesive message and offered no
solutions. These claims were false or patently absurd, you do not
need a solution to identify a problem and the message was simple:
there is a class war going on and we are losing. We were
relentlessly hounded by police and federal agents, in Denver the
peaceful encampment was stormed by pseudo-soldiers with tear gas and
paintball guns full of pepper spray. In Boulder we were lucky, the
police resorted to sleep deprivation via hourly visits and the city
council issued edicts that would criminalize standing still in a
public park at night. Yet elsewhere elderly women were being pepper
sprayed and a veteran was almost killed by a tear gas canister to the
head. The FBI and Department of Homeland Security worked in
cooperation with major financial institutions to coordinate a
Nationwide crackdown on Occupy communities everywhere. The full and
terrifying power of the ruling elite was exposed; the greatest
propaganda machine the world has ever known, a surveillance system
that only the Stasi could envy, and a domestic police force
systematically desensitized to brutalizing the same people it is
supposed to protect. Driven home at the barrel of a gun, the message
was clear: Do not challenge the status quo.
It would be a
mistake to say that the system is broken, it is performing the
function for which it was designed. The sad truth is that we cannot use the
ballot box to resolve our social, political, economic, or
environmental problems. The game is rigged, so the winning move
is not to play. I believe that we
are speeding towards an abyss, a humanitarian catastrophe where
billions will suffer and millions will die. Yet all experience hath
shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which
they are accustomed. I fear that we will only awake from this
artificially induced dream when we are faced with a devastating
social crisis. At this point it may be too late, the powers that be
might capitalize on this to cement their control or we might enter a
new dark age while simultaneously facing environmental catastrophes.
No matter the outcome, the longer that we sleep the worse the
nightmare will become.
Still, the greatest
legacy of Occupy Wall St has yet to make itself known. We stirred
the pot, scum may still float at the top but now we are more aware of
them. Information has started to spread, ideas flow more vigorously
than ever, and a new international network of activists has formed.
We know that the system is failing, we know that it must fall, and we
are awaiting the next opportunity to bring it down. Now with more
experience, more allies, and greater resolve, whenever the next
political movement appears, we will be ready.
Chemical Nonsense
Some of the most profound and life changing experiences I’ve ever had happened on the couch in my living room. How do you word a feeling? One particularly memorable moment involved my guitar; I was sitting down stroking the body with tears streaming down my face muttering the same phrases over and over again. Can you describe a being? I had just finished tuning it but not in any way I’d ever done before; adjusting the peg one degree and listening intently, over and over again until it was just right. How can you describe a feeling? I noticed that sometimes the strings get a little stuck near the top of the neck, I tugged on each one individually, yanking it into place until the tone was just right. Can you word a being? Eventually, after what felt like an hour, I tried to play but couldn’t make a sound that summed up what I was feeling. Describe a being? Word a feeling? I gave up and just admired the wood, falling in love with every grain, every crack, every shade of color; the feeling was overpowering and I wept. I could get lost in it forever.
Everyone has defining experiences in their lives, some come from overcoming challenges while others from great sorrow. Why, wait, it doesn’t matter. This one changed me forever in ways I may never come to fully understand. Whatever, I’m happy. I remember walking in circles touching everything I passed and feeling equally touched by them. Ribbons flowing, people, ideas crossing in space and time. I would force illegible handwriting into a notebook believing I was approaching some profound truth. So close, so very close. At one point I felt capable of ending existence with a single committed thought. Self reference. To this day I don’t believe it is possible to describe in words the swirling thoughts and emotions of those hours. So this is what acid is like.
I have been very fortunate in my life, loving parents who have never struggled for money yet did their best to teach me its value. Trading places, paper for food. They raised me to question what I’m told and be open to new ideas. NO. My father’s job had us moving every few years, I’ve lived about a third of my life thus far in various underdeveloped and developing countries. False separation, boxes for boxes. This has given me a wider perspective than most people my age simply by having been immersed in various cultures. My sandbox is bigger than your sandbox. I do my best not to take it for granted but there are also many disadvantages to moving every few years. Humans, souls, where do they go, body and mind. For some time I struggled with why I should have all these things when so many die for want of water or food. Thus is life.
When I first moved away from home, beyond the sheltered trappings of dorm living and thousands of miles away from my family, I experienced the harsh realities of the world. Why why why why why why why why. I learned how many of the things I believed while growing up just weren’t true. Doublethinkers, newspeakers, soma addicts, pneumatic life; I am faulty machinery. Having your world view shatter is a terrifying and exhilarating experience yet unlearning what you know is the only way to replace a false belief. Memories, symbols for reality, metaphors upon metaphors. One of the most powerful lessons I learned were all the lies I had swallowed about drugs. I love everything.
In elementary school I had to go through the Drug Abuse Resistance Program. D.A.R.E. to believe what you’re told. Officer Friendly came to our classroom to talk about the dangers of drug use; we learned that drugs are addicting, they can hijack your life, and that you can be sent to jail for having them. My god, I’m criminally couch ridden. I’d never heard anything about drugs until that day but when I came home and asked if cocaine could kill a person who tried it once my mother became furious. Drugs are bad, mmkay. She told me that it was a gross exaggeration and that they left out one of the most important reasons people do drugs. They’re fun dammit. In school I was told what to believe but thankfully my parents wanted me to ask why. The good book says so.
Today I know much more; I know that alcohol is by far the most dangerous of all drugs yet also the most acceptable. Hypocrites everywhere, is that what it means to be human? For a year I smoked cannabis several times a day; it is almost harmless and now I appreciate art like never before yet it’s a schedule one substance. Breath smoke for fun, fucking brilliant. I danced like I’ve never danced before while on MDMA which has let me feel more comfortable moving to music. The rush, it’s coming!!! I’ve been engulfed in the emotions of others while on mushrooms and my empathy is stronger for it. The room has an energy, it flows through us all. Aside from the occasional drink the only drugs I use now are nicotine and caffeine yet I have no regrets whatsoever about the others. So where is my commercial?
Yet all of these drugs pale in comparison to the effects of LSD. Lets go on a journey, a trip, hahahaha. A person could read the bible a thousand times and come no closer to god, a few milligrams of this drug and suddenly they feel at one with creation. Oh, there you are. Most drugs have undeserved negative stigmas but acid definitely has the worst. Oh nothing, just popping bubbles. They say it drives people crazy or makes them jump off buildings, these stereotypes just aren’t true. If he thought he could fly why didn’t he start from the ground? It has helped me explore the deepest workings of my mind and know myself like never before. I feel, I know, I am.
One night I spoke to god. Yeah, that’s not really you. I was well aware that I was tripping, the visuals I had were about as powerful as what you see after glancing directly at the sun. The stars died so I could be here today. He took the form of George Carlin leaning over a wall smoking a cigarette. Well aren’t you just as cool as a cucumber. He never said anything, just gave me glances when I said something stupid or listened passively while I talked. You’ll never give us proof of your existence. I would speak and think out loud, trying to work out the tumultuous cascade of thoughts. Whatever man. It was powerful at the time, I look back on it now and it doesn’t mean much. You like burning ants. These experiences, while undoubtedly hallucinations, are still ripe with meaning. Metaphors, metaphors, metaphors.
The best way I can describe being on acid is a rather loose metaphor. Vessel of ideas, symbol manipulations. If your brain is a bucket and your thoughts are tetris blocks lying inside of it, LSD shakes the bucket. Listen and you might learn something. Thoughts bounce around and rearrange, some of the arrangements are completely insane but others make a scary amount of sense. There is nothing here. There is a danger though, if the bucket gets shaken too much things might fall out. Slowwwww downnnnnn. Not to say that you will go crazy but too much could take you places you don’t want to go, like a very unpleasant memory. I want to forget. There is immense value in looking at things from a new angle, that is the most fascinating effect of LSD. Wow.
I have also felt what it is like to be insane without actually crossing that line. Wait, no, hahaha. When thoughts rush at you without control and you have no way to block them out you are at the mercy of your subconscious. Wait, no, hahaha. After these experiences I found a new appreciation for my sober mind, the ability to direct my thoughts as I wish. Wait, no hahaha. Just like anything you might take for granted, you don’t realize its value until you know what life is like without it. Wait, no hahaha. Neitzsche said “When you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” Wait.
These experiences are far from clear cut; I have undoubtedly taken risks with such mind altering substances even without the potential legal consequences. Life without living is no life at all. Though it is hard to put my finger on exactly what I learned from trying out various drugs, there are a few definite things I can say. Nothing is certain. I am more comfortable in my own skin, I know that death is not something to be feared, and I know that the most powerful force in all of human existence is the bond between people. Vibrations in the mind of god, whose true name is love.
Back on the couch I found myself rooted to my seat and drifting away in a sea of thought. Symbols representing symbols. Some of the things I’d learned are floating in and out of my consciousness, others I could barely grasp for more than an instant. Imagination of myself. I knew that I wanted to write a song but I didn’t (and still don’t) know how, I’d never done it before and knew nothing about songwriting. So what? My guitar was lying across my lap, the taught strings on the neck and tantalizing curves of its body were taunting me with their simple beauty. (...) Suddenly a group of ideas appear in my mind; music is just emotion in vibration, an incomplete feeling expressed in words that are paired with a partial sound. Pretentious prick, what do you know of music?
After staring at the back of my guitar for long enough, I started to write in my notebook. Let if flow. The words poured onto paper; flowing strong in no particular direction and I felt better for it. Puddles of ink can move mountains. When I read them the next day some made sense and some didn’t but I vividly remember the emotion they were attached to. Vibrations of feeling. Eventually I rewrote those lyrics and rewrote the tune to them. It’s coming clear, slowly. Those first words were the earliest ones I’d been proud of, the first of any creative work which I felt had any merit. The sound of life. I’ve since written much more, some good and some bad but that’s how these things go. And that’s ok. I know for certain that those hours I spent mumbling to myself changed the direction of my life. It doesn’t matter. I write and play music when I have no other outlet, it clears my head and eases my worries in a way nothing else ever has. My peace and great reprieve. Without the confidence I found sifting through all that chemical nonsense, I would likely be living without the greatest comfort of my life. Oh wait, I forgot, I don’t exist.
Everyone has defining experiences in their lives, some come from overcoming challenges while others from great sorrow. Why, wait, it doesn’t matter. This one changed me forever in ways I may never come to fully understand. Whatever, I’m happy. I remember walking in circles touching everything I passed and feeling equally touched by them. Ribbons flowing, people, ideas crossing in space and time. I would force illegible handwriting into a notebook believing I was approaching some profound truth. So close, so very close. At one point I felt capable of ending existence with a single committed thought. Self reference. To this day I don’t believe it is possible to describe in words the swirling thoughts and emotions of those hours. So this is what acid is like.
I have been very fortunate in my life, loving parents who have never struggled for money yet did their best to teach me its value. Trading places, paper for food. They raised me to question what I’m told and be open to new ideas. NO. My father’s job had us moving every few years, I’ve lived about a third of my life thus far in various underdeveloped and developing countries. False separation, boxes for boxes. This has given me a wider perspective than most people my age simply by having been immersed in various cultures. My sandbox is bigger than your sandbox. I do my best not to take it for granted but there are also many disadvantages to moving every few years. Humans, souls, where do they go, body and mind. For some time I struggled with why I should have all these things when so many die for want of water or food. Thus is life.
When I first moved away from home, beyond the sheltered trappings of dorm living and thousands of miles away from my family, I experienced the harsh realities of the world. Why why why why why why why why. I learned how many of the things I believed while growing up just weren’t true. Doublethinkers, newspeakers, soma addicts, pneumatic life; I am faulty machinery. Having your world view shatter is a terrifying and exhilarating experience yet unlearning what you know is the only way to replace a false belief. Memories, symbols for reality, metaphors upon metaphors. One of the most powerful lessons I learned were all the lies I had swallowed about drugs. I love everything.
In elementary school I had to go through the Drug Abuse Resistance Program. D.A.R.E. to believe what you’re told. Officer Friendly came to our classroom to talk about the dangers of drug use; we learned that drugs are addicting, they can hijack your life, and that you can be sent to jail for having them. My god, I’m criminally couch ridden. I’d never heard anything about drugs until that day but when I came home and asked if cocaine could kill a person who tried it once my mother became furious. Drugs are bad, mmkay. She told me that it was a gross exaggeration and that they left out one of the most important reasons people do drugs. They’re fun dammit. In school I was told what to believe but thankfully my parents wanted me to ask why. The good book says so.
Today I know much more; I know that alcohol is by far the most dangerous of all drugs yet also the most acceptable. Hypocrites everywhere, is that what it means to be human? For a year I smoked cannabis several times a day; it is almost harmless and now I appreciate art like never before yet it’s a schedule one substance. Breath smoke for fun, fucking brilliant. I danced like I’ve never danced before while on MDMA which has let me feel more comfortable moving to music. The rush, it’s coming!!! I’ve been engulfed in the emotions of others while on mushrooms and my empathy is stronger for it. The room has an energy, it flows through us all. Aside from the occasional drink the only drugs I use now are nicotine and caffeine yet I have no regrets whatsoever about the others. So where is my commercial?
Yet all of these drugs pale in comparison to the effects of LSD. Lets go on a journey, a trip, hahahaha. A person could read the bible a thousand times and come no closer to god, a few milligrams of this drug and suddenly they feel at one with creation. Oh, there you are. Most drugs have undeserved negative stigmas but acid definitely has the worst. Oh nothing, just popping bubbles. They say it drives people crazy or makes them jump off buildings, these stereotypes just aren’t true. If he thought he could fly why didn’t he start from the ground? It has helped me explore the deepest workings of my mind and know myself like never before. I feel, I know, I am.
One night I spoke to god. Yeah, that’s not really you. I was well aware that I was tripping, the visuals I had were about as powerful as what you see after glancing directly at the sun. The stars died so I could be here today. He took the form of George Carlin leaning over a wall smoking a cigarette. Well aren’t you just as cool as a cucumber. He never said anything, just gave me glances when I said something stupid or listened passively while I talked. You’ll never give us proof of your existence. I would speak and think out loud, trying to work out the tumultuous cascade of thoughts. Whatever man. It was powerful at the time, I look back on it now and it doesn’t mean much. You like burning ants. These experiences, while undoubtedly hallucinations, are still ripe with meaning. Metaphors, metaphors, metaphors.
The best way I can describe being on acid is a rather loose metaphor. Vessel of ideas, symbol manipulations. If your brain is a bucket and your thoughts are tetris blocks lying inside of it, LSD shakes the bucket. Listen and you might learn something. Thoughts bounce around and rearrange, some of the arrangements are completely insane but others make a scary amount of sense. There is nothing here. There is a danger though, if the bucket gets shaken too much things might fall out. Slowwwww downnnnnn. Not to say that you will go crazy but too much could take you places you don’t want to go, like a very unpleasant memory. I want to forget. There is immense value in looking at things from a new angle, that is the most fascinating effect of LSD. Wow.
I have also felt what it is like to be insane without actually crossing that line. Wait, no, hahaha. When thoughts rush at you without control and you have no way to block them out you are at the mercy of your subconscious. Wait, no, hahaha. After these experiences I found a new appreciation for my sober mind, the ability to direct my thoughts as I wish. Wait, no hahaha. Just like anything you might take for granted, you don’t realize its value until you know what life is like without it. Wait, no hahaha. Neitzsche said “When you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” Wait.
These experiences are far from clear cut; I have undoubtedly taken risks with such mind altering substances even without the potential legal consequences. Life without living is no life at all. Though it is hard to put my finger on exactly what I learned from trying out various drugs, there are a few definite things I can say. Nothing is certain. I am more comfortable in my own skin, I know that death is not something to be feared, and I know that the most powerful force in all of human existence is the bond between people. Vibrations in the mind of god, whose true name is love.
Back on the couch I found myself rooted to my seat and drifting away in a sea of thought. Symbols representing symbols. Some of the things I’d learned are floating in and out of my consciousness, others I could barely grasp for more than an instant. Imagination of myself. I knew that I wanted to write a song but I didn’t (and still don’t) know how, I’d never done it before and knew nothing about songwriting. So what? My guitar was lying across my lap, the taught strings on the neck and tantalizing curves of its body were taunting me with their simple beauty. (...) Suddenly a group of ideas appear in my mind; music is just emotion in vibration, an incomplete feeling expressed in words that are paired with a partial sound. Pretentious prick, what do you know of music?
After staring at the back of my guitar for long enough, I started to write in my notebook. Let if flow. The words poured onto paper; flowing strong in no particular direction and I felt better for it. Puddles of ink can move mountains. When I read them the next day some made sense and some didn’t but I vividly remember the emotion they were attached to. Vibrations of feeling. Eventually I rewrote those lyrics and rewrote the tune to them. It’s coming clear, slowly. Those first words were the earliest ones I’d been proud of, the first of any creative work which I felt had any merit. The sound of life. I’ve since written much more, some good and some bad but that’s how these things go. And that’s ok. I know for certain that those hours I spent mumbling to myself changed the direction of my life. It doesn’t matter. I write and play music when I have no other outlet, it clears my head and eases my worries in a way nothing else ever has. My peace and great reprieve. Without the confidence I found sifting through all that chemical nonsense, I would likely be living without the greatest comfort of my life. Oh wait, I forgot, I don’t exist.
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