(no subject)
Some of this (up to potentially all of this) may be a post-facto pack of lies. It feels true, though, so I'm going to speak it while I still remember it.
Most people who know me nowadays know me as someone who casually strides over boundaries with a lot of things. I know how to push buttons, I know how to make people uncomfortable, I know how to stride over and straddle and spank delineating borders. It renders me inexplicable to a certain degree that is reinforced by the curious spinning and twining of my mental processes. I see and am blind to things others don't and aren't. One of those things has always been Purpose.
In the first many years of my conscious life, I was certain that Purpose existed in the world. God's Plan was a thing that existed. The events of a person's life were predictable and scripted out by a benevolent übermind capable of grasping everything in the universe at once; all one had to do in order to reap those positive benefits was find out what you were supposed to do and do it. If you meet someone you were good for and who was good for you, you married and probably have kids. Get a job in a field that interests and suits you and you will do well in it. There are Signs and Portents, visible and obvious to anyone who wanted to be part of this plan, and in following the Purpose set out for you, your life's happiness was maximized (minus necessary suffering that comes from being human in a fallen world). If you didn't want to fulfill your Purpose, turning away from your place in God's Plan, then you might be able to enjoy yourself but it would be a twisted, stunted sort of pleasure that was as much self-mutilation as enjoying yourself.
Because I wanted maximum happiness, in harmony with the will of a benevolent Creator, I was as good a child (and teenager) as I could make myself be. I kept my eyes open for the Signs and Portents that would direct me, and I waited patiently for some idea of what should be important to me. Sometimes, when I despaired of not seeing Signs, I wondered: if the greatest thing in life was God, why bother with life and living in a corrupted world when you could kill yourself and be by His side in eternity? (Serious ramifications for a teenager, that. Never did follow the train of logic to its conclusion, though.)
And because I was waiting and watching, paying half a mind to that at all times (because God's will can make itself known at any time-- you just have to be listening then!), I did not pay half a mind to other things. School always suffered. People who were impressed with my intelligence were astounded-- those as smart as I happened to be were supposed to do better in school. Looking back, that's all I remember getting as far as feedback on my performance: "We know you can do better than this. You could do better if you worked harder. Why don't you work harder?"
I didn't have an answer for them back then. Now, for my younger self, I might answer: "What makes work hard? HOW does one do hard work? What does it entail? AND WHY DOES ANY OF THIS MATTER WHEN I CANNOT SEE WHAT I AM MEANT TO DO?"
For a long time, I relied on faith that I would eventually see those signs. Faith only goes so far, though, particularly when the people you are told to look to for exemplars tell you that the Will of God is obvious to anyone who asks. I saw nothing of these signs, I heard nothing of these signs... was the system wrong? Of course not. If the system didn't work, then why were there so many testimonies that it did?
The fault, then, rested with me. -I- was the insufficiently faithful one. I was the bad seed. I was the incompetent one (a notion reinforced enthusiastically by people wondering why I wasn't doing things as per specifications of some nebulous concept of 'my potential'). The faith remained, though-- if there was a way out of my situation, it would be obvious, and I could take it, and it would save me.
I existed like this for a long time. Protected-- people who saw what was interesting and/or worth preserving in me when I couldn't, or decided to do so for reasons of their own. Safe. There was a rope thrown to me by the Roommate many years ago, who made it plain to me that these people weren't just throwing me charity bones. I believed him, but I didn't know what that could mean to me-- the problem, ultimately, lay in the fact that he knew where I merely hoped, and unless I believed in him as I believed in Him, there was only so much he could do for me.
And as I lost faith, I also stopped trying to do anything else but see that Sign. I glided effortlessly out of college twice, fell from job to lesser job-- perhaps what I needed was dedication! Perhaps something what I needed was something that I couldn't possibly fail at! Then I could use that time to find the intended Purpose.
Then came the janitor job I got fired from.
There are a dozen reasons I could cite for why this energized me the way it did. For now, we will look at the one relevant to this idea: I finally realized that I could not depend on the system. For all its promises and lures, the system had failed me. It had been failing me since the beginning, perhaps, and it couldn't do otherwise. People I could depend upon, sure-- but people are finite resources. It might be that I would never see the Signs and Portents that would direct me to His will.
Or, more plausibly, it might be that there ARE no signs or portents. If they were wrong about the system, perhaps they were wrong about a great many more things. Enter a new flow of Nietzsche (sound out the old idols-- and sound them with a great swing of your hammer!), and suddenly, all of the evidence my senses had been providing me thus far fell into place.
I'm still tinkering with my own idols-- but these ones are mine, made from the things that haunted me in times past and recast in a form more fitting my intuitions. It will be a process I finish when I die, and not before.
Is there more to say on this? Probably. But right now, I could stand some tacos.
Most people who know me nowadays know me as someone who casually strides over boundaries with a lot of things. I know how to push buttons, I know how to make people uncomfortable, I know how to stride over and straddle and spank delineating borders. It renders me inexplicable to a certain degree that is reinforced by the curious spinning and twining of my mental processes. I see and am blind to things others don't and aren't. One of those things has always been Purpose.
In the first many years of my conscious life, I was certain that Purpose existed in the world. God's Plan was a thing that existed. The events of a person's life were predictable and scripted out by a benevolent übermind capable of grasping everything in the universe at once; all one had to do in order to reap those positive benefits was find out what you were supposed to do and do it. If you meet someone you were good for and who was good for you, you married and probably have kids. Get a job in a field that interests and suits you and you will do well in it. There are Signs and Portents, visible and obvious to anyone who wanted to be part of this plan, and in following the Purpose set out for you, your life's happiness was maximized (minus necessary suffering that comes from being human in a fallen world). If you didn't want to fulfill your Purpose, turning away from your place in God's Plan, then you might be able to enjoy yourself but it would be a twisted, stunted sort of pleasure that was as much self-mutilation as enjoying yourself.
Because I wanted maximum happiness, in harmony with the will of a benevolent Creator, I was as good a child (and teenager) as I could make myself be. I kept my eyes open for the Signs and Portents that would direct me, and I waited patiently for some idea of what should be important to me. Sometimes, when I despaired of not seeing Signs, I wondered: if the greatest thing in life was God, why bother with life and living in a corrupted world when you could kill yourself and be by His side in eternity? (Serious ramifications for a teenager, that. Never did follow the train of logic to its conclusion, though.)
And because I was waiting and watching, paying half a mind to that at all times (because God's will can make itself known at any time-- you just have to be listening then!), I did not pay half a mind to other things. School always suffered. People who were impressed with my intelligence were astounded-- those as smart as I happened to be were supposed to do better in school. Looking back, that's all I remember getting as far as feedback on my performance: "We know you can do better than this. You could do better if you worked harder. Why don't you work harder?"
I didn't have an answer for them back then. Now, for my younger self, I might answer: "What makes work hard? HOW does one do hard work? What does it entail? AND WHY DOES ANY OF THIS MATTER WHEN I CANNOT SEE WHAT I AM MEANT TO DO?"
For a long time, I relied on faith that I would eventually see those signs. Faith only goes so far, though, particularly when the people you are told to look to for exemplars tell you that the Will of God is obvious to anyone who asks. I saw nothing of these signs, I heard nothing of these signs... was the system wrong? Of course not. If the system didn't work, then why were there so many testimonies that it did?
The fault, then, rested with me. -I- was the insufficiently faithful one. I was the bad seed. I was the incompetent one (a notion reinforced enthusiastically by people wondering why I wasn't doing things as per specifications of some nebulous concept of 'my potential'). The faith remained, though-- if there was a way out of my situation, it would be obvious, and I could take it, and it would save me.
I existed like this for a long time. Protected-- people who saw what was interesting and/or worth preserving in me when I couldn't, or decided to do so for reasons of their own. Safe. There was a rope thrown to me by the Roommate many years ago, who made it plain to me that these people weren't just throwing me charity bones. I believed him, but I didn't know what that could mean to me-- the problem, ultimately, lay in the fact that he knew where I merely hoped, and unless I believed in him as I believed in Him, there was only so much he could do for me.
And as I lost faith, I also stopped trying to do anything else but see that Sign. I glided effortlessly out of college twice, fell from job to lesser job-- perhaps what I needed was dedication! Perhaps something what I needed was something that I couldn't possibly fail at! Then I could use that time to find the intended Purpose.
Then came the janitor job I got fired from.
There are a dozen reasons I could cite for why this energized me the way it did. For now, we will look at the one relevant to this idea: I finally realized that I could not depend on the system. For all its promises and lures, the system had failed me. It had been failing me since the beginning, perhaps, and it couldn't do otherwise. People I could depend upon, sure-- but people are finite resources. It might be that I would never see the Signs and Portents that would direct me to His will.
Or, more plausibly, it might be that there ARE no signs or portents. If they were wrong about the system, perhaps they were wrong about a great many more things. Enter a new flow of Nietzsche (sound out the old idols-- and sound them with a great swing of your hammer!), and suddenly, all of the evidence my senses had been providing me thus far fell into place.
I'm still tinkering with my own idols-- but these ones are mine, made from the things that haunted me in times past and recast in a form more fitting my intuitions. It will be a process I finish when I die, and not before.
Is there more to say on this? Probably. But right now, I could stand some tacos.