(no subject)
He sat in his sweat. It poured out of every pore on his face and streamed down his large frame to eventually settle in only God knows where. His fortune told him to not let anyone get him down for what he does, but he realizes that the guilt will inevitably set in. His armpits smelt like a working man‘s, and he kept sniffing them involuntarily. He wondered what it would be like to be completely amoral. He wondered if there really was any right or wrong. He wondered about the Chinese.
The Chinese have a lot of people, kind of like the old Soviet Union used to have. What’s the difference? China has insinuated itself into the mainline of American Capitalism, and found ways to deal with the ideological hypocrisy by saying that it’s what’s best for the state. That’s how they rationalize things: that’s what’s best for the state.
He wonders briefly what it would mean to live in China, with no freedom of speech, no drugs, only what you do day to day: praying that maybe you could mean more to your country. How can I make myself useful to the state? How do I get my cut? Or maybe you just farm and farm and farm until there needs to be a dam built and you get relocated and your house gets destroyed and you never complain because those who protest get run over by tanks.
That guy that stood down the tank in Tiananmen Square is totally dead right now. When he stood up to a world power, Ice Cube was thinking about leaving NWA.
He wonders about where his moral code went. Did it all disappear when he stopped believing in organized religion? He was taught, and he understood the morals taught to him. He questioned each belief logically when he had certain givens: 1. There is a God (because there has to be a prime mover whether or not that thing is a benevolent being or not); 2. “… God, like a human architect, approached the founding of the world according to order and rule and measure everything in such a manner.” (Johannes Kepler); 3. “God would not have made the universe as it is unless He intended us to understand it.” (Robert Boyle). So it seemed that all moral codes must follow from these givens. Do not kill stems from: there is a God -> God made everything -> Everything God makes follows order and rule and serves a purpose -> everyone in the world was made by God and thus follows His order and rule of the universe and thus serves a purpose -> Why would you destroy something that was not slated by God to be used to be killed? Or maybe people are meant to be killed.
Maybe it’s not God though, or at least He’s not directly involved in what we consider morals. Maybe what we call laws is just the progression of us as a race moving beyond our animal instincts. Much further than a bird sacrificing herself for her young. We’ve moved to the point of abstract concepts. We can’t build giant bridges without the square root of negative one. Things that only exist on paper help us to make things that exist in our world. The concept of love is just an extension of survival of the fittest. But what if we took it in the wrong direction? The one’s who should propagate are the ones that look out for themselves and their mates? What about our culture? Is marrying a white collar criminal who grifts millions of dollars a year continue survival of the fittest? It would appear not, because our culture condemns those who take unfairly from others.
What about the intense struggle for survival, a component of natural selection? If someone doesn’t push and fight and steal from those above them, how are they to survive? You have to prove you can last and spread your way of thinking.
Your way of thinking… The middle class way of thinking. The get a nine to five job work for forty years and retire off of the company that you wasted your life on. Maybe at the beginning of our species there was only three tribes with three different leaders: one gathered people around them and thought to themselves, “With enough people I can take from those who have much.” Another said to themselves, “I know it will take a long time, but if I tend to my farm and care for my livestock, I will someday have made enough to sustain my and my family’s life indefinitely.” But it was the third who said to their compatriots, “We will be the ones who will play the other two tribes against each other, and gain through knowledge and tact and espionage, so that they will give us their spoils of conquest and the toils of their labor in exchange for a semblance of order that they can believe in.” Maybe this is where we found our moral code: Do not steal from others -> a false rule imposed to make the ones who work their entire lives believe that those who steal from them will be punished. But it this this very law, made by those who could gain from both the other tribes, that creates the divide between the two under-tribes. The stealers will always steal, and the honest farmers will always farm, making a rule about it inspires false hope in one, and fear in the other. This is the basis for the conflict between the lower and the middle class that pools all the power in the upper/controlling class.
He notices that it’s raining outside. Another shot, another line. Water for your crops and all that. If you know you’ve been doing what you were taught was wrong, how do you reconcile yourself to your past? There has been no precedent in your life like this before and it weighs you down. You think to yourself, “I know and understand what is supposed to be right and wrong, and yet I break so many of these laws I have become numb to violating them. Should I follow any of these dictates? What is it that I believe?” You know logically that just because you don’t believe in one law doesn’t mean that you should throw them all out the window, but then you start thinking about China again.
China believes differently from you. China has similar laws, but operates differently from us here. There are no unions in China, and thus no real work condition laws. Everyone is serving the state. Everyone is a part of the bigger picture, or at least is supposed to be. Everything you do is to better the whole, and that thought will be enforced by any means necessary. We take everything we have for granted, the fact that we can question right and wrong without being killed is a gift given to us by our ancestors starting at the Magna Charta. We have been given all this freedom, and like the humans that we are (trying to become the fittest), we abuse and twist our freedoms to our own benefit (usually at the expense of others).
I was going to begin this paragraph with, “Can you imagine what war is like?”. But I think I will avoid that topic. FUCK IT. I’M GONNA DO MORE COKE!
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My question into morals is rather easily defined: I enjoy doing what is termed to be wrong, so should I ignore social mores and follow my folly or conform to the way civilization has run for the past couple thousand years or so. I suppose that in the end, it won’t really affect anyone other than myself (since I only play a small part in the drug trade and have an even less part in the happenings of the world). One has to wonder about those people who actually try and change the world themselves, without any power other than their determination to make this world a better place. People will spend money to fly to Africa and build a school for neglected orphans, then return to the United States and buy McDonalds’ food. How does that affect the world? Who do these people actually save? I find myself thinking more and more of our species as numbers: there are X amount of people here doing this, there is Y amount of people over here doing this other thing. Ideology is a tricky subject.
Belief is a troublesome topic as well. What exactly does anyone believe in? What does a belief in something stand for? All of my generation seem to ‘believe’ that anyone who totally and fully believes in something other than that which is physical (i.e. religion, love, fate, destiny) are complete idiots and should not be listened to. My generation believes in what is real. Love fades; you are not a unique snowflake; God doesn’t exist; live a pleasant life, because it’s all you have. This leads eventually to Epicureanism, the philosophy to avoid all that is unpleasant. Taking the easier route, one never has to deal with the moral questions of, “Is it wrong to steal from someone?”. Rather it is, “How much trouble will I get into if I get caught stealing?” Is this a progression of us as a species, or is it my American, capitalistic culture that numbs me to the pains of others?
What is the goal of life? Anthropology tells us it’s to propagate our genes. Sociology tells us it’s to better and hold firm our beliefs. But what about the goals of the individual? I’m not talking about getting the right job and making X amount of money; rather, how does the individual (who inevitably wastes away and dies) change the world around them to their betterment? How do we become the fittest?
Why do I enjoy acting like trash? What is it about the forbidden that flips my switch? It’s not rebellion, it’s not apathy, it’s not contrariness. There is something inside of me that seeks destruction. I know that sounds exactly like a goddamn teenager, but damn it: I honestly lust to be a ‘perfectly terrible bastard’. Why is it then, that I find myself hesitating? Why do I play the game of civilization? I guess I have to in order to survive, but I play honestly enough. I have come to realize not to cross the social mores that could end with me locked in a cage for the rest of my life… but the ‘truths’ of these mores escape me. The world becomes a smaller and smaller place with every second of my life. Different people become mere copies of archetypes, each following the dictates of their genre of life. It seems that the majority of people are just following what is said to be their stereotype. These are the people who have given themselves over to the letter of the law, and neglect the thought and insight that precipitated the dictum. They are the worker bees that keep the clog work working, the oil in the gears. But I want to be something more: I want to be one of the few behind the wheel of this over-greased old machine known as civilization. There are human beings out there today who are planning our moral code ten years from now. Should we follow their plan, or make this world into something that we can call our own?
Abortion. I cannot stand it. Why would any being want to destroy the most ultimate thing they can create? There’s a lot of bullshit surrounding the act of abortion: saying that a fetus isn’t human, saying that the world is better off without another crack/rape baby, etc. Let’s just take the basic fact that when you abort a fetus, you prevent it from becoming a living, breathing, member of the human race. That’s just a truth. It doesn’t matter whether or not it is technically ‘human’, you prevent it from life. So how do you reconcile yourself to its destruction? You say to yourself, “ I cannot afford to raise a child in a proper environment”. “The hardships that this child would have to endure would be cruel to inflict upon it.” “I never wanted this child, and I can terminate it at my choice.” There has never been, and I suspect never will be, a person that has not taught me something. Be that as it may, I have learned how to smoke crack and I have learned how to correctly name the stars in the sky. I once said that the most interesting people in this world are the meth addicts, and I suppose all addicts. This is because these are people who have rejected (not usually though choice) the opinions and rules that the everyday Joe follows. You meet someone who can beat anyone at chess beg you to lend them five dollars so they can smoke a little meth with you. It’s embarrassing, intriguing, and disturbing all at the same time. They have found what they want in life and went after it full steam.
Goddamn I’m fucked up now. I don’t want to stop. I feel like if I stop I give up on all that remains of that part of me that I hold secretly and silently. The part that got me arrested, and the part that I use to rationalize saying, “FUCK YOU ALL!” Maybe I’m just a little too high. Need to calm down. Cold water helps. :)
I'm going to go buy some fish. :)