Nightmare / Diamond Heart
I was in the middle of reading this brilliant piece by Dale Beran when the image of a fully-formed web app and corresponding set of social behaviors floated up into my mind-eye.
I imagined a world where everyone had a calendar but no one discussed anything around scheduling. To get time with someone you had to place a request on their calendar which they could either agree to or ignore. But this applied to everything – sex, shopping, whatever. If you wanted to have a date with Suzy you didn’t ask her out – instead you put a request on her calendar for Wednesday night. To ask someone out in person or to suggest a “play date” for your children using email would constitute a massive transgression against social order and might be illegal.
The imagined manifestations of this abstract principle took the form of nightmare creatures: Men and women who are always silently rejected but cannot complain about their plight – driven to suicide from touch deprivation – putting “hugs” on their calendars – being denied – slowly sinking into drug abuse and esoteric/extreme masturbatory acts. Or the inverse – a supplicating and sexy creature of pure hedonism who is constantly bombarded by requests for touch and sex and, being nymphomaniacally or chemically or altruistically driven to the extreme of accepting all external desires, exhausts whatever finite supply of sexual tension we innately have as humans, becoming a limp and over-pleasured doll.
I suppose another element of this nightmare is that it’s something that I desire (it seems intuitively true that nightmares must be desired) – in fact, it was borne out of a desire that I had for more efficient/less awkward communication of scheduling. I find it tremendously difficult and awkward to arrange time to see people/hang out/whatever. Partly this is because I undervalue myself and view every such request as a form of submission. Partly this derives from fear of rejection. Partly, it’s just a pain in the ass to try to find a time that works for everyone.
But, I think the real heart of this terror may beat out the belief that no one really wants anything – that the entire fabric of reality is built up like one giant, horrible lie. That therefore it can be executed by rote application of a simple system.
But, this is probably just projection of the belief that my own heart yearns for nothing – that I am always a breath away from death and to conceive of life in any other way is dishonest and insipid. That I cannot want, but this means that I cannot be, in society. That I am not driven by extreme lust, so I cannot participate in dating and sex. That I am not driven by extreme desires for material and physical satisfaction, so I cannot participate in capitalism consumerism. That my lack of participation in consumerist means that my “career” and skills are incoherent. My lack of want means that I do not fit.
My lack of want may mean that my heart is already dead / that it has turned into a diamond / that whatever spirit animates this body is temporary / that I am schizophrenic and manifesting different spirits constantly / that this body is haunted by ghosts / that I am nothing but a whirl of ghosts / that these ghosts will evaporate and my body will slide into the abyss / that the universe is cold and hard and rock.
(did you know that hollywood films and porn and all that are really just to create these extreme wants in you – that without them you become like me – hollow and clean – it is sad but it is happy – but it is tired and it is clean)
Desire Desire
Oh, lonely healer – with no one to heal –
You are inclined to manifest illness to consume your power.
—–
I was walking home from the BART station after dropping Emma off and I passed by a bar. I was drawn to the bar. Here is a place where people will talk to you, if you want to talk to them – where you can share compassion – where you can lend an ear.
My being drawn to the bar was a strange feeling, because I have a great number of memories of times spent in and around bars whose associated emotions were strongly divergent from this. I remember being repelled or scared by bars. I remember spending time in bars thinking “why does anyone go to a bar?” I did not, for a very long time, understand why bars existed. I thought they were dirty and loud and boring. I wondered why unattractive people would spend time together. I didn’t get it. [1]
Now I was drawn in and actually had to fight this pull. I was not entirely in control. One interesting fact is that I could fight the pull. [2]
Anyway, I’m too tired to finish this post, but I wanted to outline the basic point, here; which is that people in our society generally connect over their shared desires. Which is weird because we are also in control of our desires to some extent. E.g. if I allow myself to become hungry then this is power I can use to, for instance, visit communal eating places or cook with people. If we foment our passions we are able to then direct them towards the development of connections with other humans. You help me, I help you sorta thing. The weirdness stems from the self-consciousness with which these desires can be interacted with. Do you see it? Do you feel it? This weirdness?
Without desire aren’t we weak to connect? If we are taken care of – then what? How do we touch other people? Why would we want to?
I mean, it’s not like connection is the end-all be-all. It just feels like part of the Thing.
—–
[1] Actually, this feeling goes all the way back to 7th grade or so. My first “school dance” was a horrible combination of scary, boring, and sad. I didn’t “get” why kids would willingly spend time at one of these things, and I felt like a total reject weirdo for not wanting to participate. Wasn’t this what “normal” kids wanted?
[2] My willpower seems to be increasingly, strangely.
You can always …
You can always cut your hair,
You can always tear your muscles,
You can always burn your face,
Burden being strength.
THEN WHAT!?! (paranoia/self-destruction)
The words “I am not fun” can be fun.
—–
You can struggle back to your childhood. You can stare your death in the face and say “no.”
—–
They told you “don’t fear rejection,”
but you had never even thought of any sort of idea like “rejection” to fear.
Now you wondered “what is rejection?” and you formed hypotheses and built it up to be capital-R Rejection and now
Now
Now it had you. Now their omen had taken root in your psyche,
“What if I get Rejected?”
What if no one no one ever again ever again loves you as your mother loved you? What if you never find that solace again? What if, when you die, it is howling chaos, horror transcendent, fantastic void, formless, alone, vast, alone, vast, alone, vast, alone?
—–
Your childhood held the answers. Answers to questions such as:
What is the nature of abstraction?
Why is there anything rather than nothing at all?
How do we attain language?
How does a small clump of genetic material grow into a fully-formed and functional human being capable of
manipulating symbolic representations of high-level abstract concepts,
manipulating physical objects whereby the ambient air is filled with vibrations whose combinations of frequencies cause psycho-chemical reactions and resultant macroscopic phenomena in other cell-clumps,
transcending singular spirit and reconnecting temporarily with the all, the everything, the one?
—–
And you’re worried about Rejection? You’re worried about some other strange little clump of cells not desiring participation in a social form which neither of you decided upon, which neither of you want, which neither of you even need? A form which will give you nothing lasting, which is symbolic, which is empty of all essence?
—–
When I take my body and rub it slowly against your body all of my cells speak with all of your cells and they say
Hello
Hello
Hello
And the collective cell-structure which I am here referring to as “I” am calmed by the presence of your cells. I am calmed by a reminder that other cells with other origins exist, but that there is an commonality to us. I can feel this. In that moment I am drowned in ancestral knowledge of peace and harmony on the plains.
—–
Return, return, return –
Where would there even be to go, but back? What are we reaching out for?
Even the universe was once a tiny speck and all our collective before-stuff would fit inside my nostril.
— So let’s say we do build a rocketship and do transcend space and distance to arrive at another planet and find our long-lost cosmic brothers. Then what.
It’s like a clock ticking inside me:
Then what!? Then what!? Then what!? Then what!?
You do well at your job and make some money THEN WHAT
You fuck someone you find physically attractive THEN WHAT
You write something that someone likes THEN WHAT
You smoke some weed and attain a new epiphany THEN WHAT
Then what? Huh? Anybody out there?
THEN WHAT!?!
—–
I don’t have answers. I use various substances and social forms to hush the question, momentarily, but it always rebounds, often with greater force than when it left.
Then what?
Where did this question originate? Is it a self-reflecting demon of some kind, existing only in its own consideration, coming from nowhere, breeding destruction and grief?
How does there exist a question without an answer? This feels like a question – I can ask it honestly. Why do I do anything? Any reason I give requires a new justification. This questioning operates on all levels – emotional – spiritual – intellectual. I achieve some sort of spiritual success or connection – then what? I feel good for a while – then what?
It boggles my mind that society is not entirely paralyzed by this question. What the hell are we doing? Sometimes I’ll ask someone “why are you doing what you’re doing? why are you married to that woman?” and they’ll become uncomfortable and quiet, and then they stop being my friend, or get distant. As I get older, fewer people want to engage with it. They’re just “doing what they’re doing,” and that’s that. I tell myself that they’re afraid of death, that they can’t think about it because it’s too uncomfortable. But I don’t even understand these dynamics. It’s as if the discomfort of asking the question is somehow itself an impetus to act.
This is much like the concept of Freud’s “Death Drive,” which is that lack of attachment itself, intrinsically drives us towards attachment. That there is some sort of anti-gravity in the ether which pushes us towards matter. Perhaps space pushes rather than objects pulling.
But even if this is true, it’s only classification. It’s only saying “the ‘Then What?’ phenomenon is somewhat more general than you’d thought.” It’s only connecting it up to Buddhism & Physics & whatnot. It does not answer the question “Then What?”
—–
Probably there isn’t an answer. Well, provably there isn’t an answer, since any answer merely begets another question. But so this undoes the entire concept of justification. But so this undoes the entire concept of conceptual thought at all.
But, so, now this gets really mucky. Because certain professions which are key to the continued existence of the human organism – for instance computer programming – require a linear and structured thought process whose entire basis is justification. You can’t write a program that doesn’t do anything – a program has to do a thing. Similarly, each part of the program must do a thing such that the harmonization of the actions of these parts corresponds to the overarching function of the program. And so on…
But we could imagine these professions existing even without an overall justification. We can imagine functions or actions existing as sub-objects in the big object called society so that we have, in some sense, “local justifications.” The concept of “consumable” is in some sense equivalent to this. E.g. a toothbrush has a justification locally (tooth health for a human, for a while) even if it does not contribute to some overall justification.
—–
So, there is provably no answer to the question “then what?” There are no justifications. So what happened? Why are there local justifications?
Trying to answer this question inspires extreme paranoia. Either we begin to perceive that our projected self-justifications:
“I’m going to be a good man and a good father!”
“I’m going to provide for my community!”
“I’m going to make art which inspires other people!”
are themselves simply commoditization routines which turn us into objects useful in some greater scheme.
Or we realize that the human organism has merely grown, seamlessly, since before we were speaking complex languages, and that our roles and are simply distortions of ancestral responsibilities which have become perverse and meaningless.
Neither option is fulfilling – it doesn’t feel nice if someone is in control – it doesn’t feel nice if no one is in control.
So what would feel nice? What explanation would even begin to satisfy? Is the type of introspective cognition I’m involved in at the moment itself fundamentally unsatisfying? Perhaps I am merely caught by my own “satisfaction” bug which tells me that if I continue down this road long enough eventually I’ll reach an answer; while I know definitively that this is not the case.
Perhaps this is the culmination of this analysis – perhaps I should simply, once and for all, come to the conclusion that it is not useful – that I should simply stop.
Metaphor = Pataphor + Meditation
We can use images to interact with our waking lives more effectively (metaphor), but we can also live in the realm of images and dreams (pataphor), or we can live in the realm for which our waking lives are dreams (meditation).
These three tools allow us to modulate the “levels” on which we exist, conceptually.
Bigsley the Oaf 
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