Always and Never

Women never shut up.

Men never listen.

Blacks can never be trusted.

Jews are always stingy.

Asians are always frail.

Whites are always boring.

Republicans never care about the poor.

Democrats never care about America.

It suddenly strikes me that the words "always" and "never" might be great indicators of the lizard brain at work. The lizard brain works at the instinctual level responding to fears and drives. It can only act on impulse. People are not lizard brains. They have lizard brains. It is simply a question of whether they serve their impulses or their impulses serve them. I'll go into that another time and if anyone knows any more about it, I'd love to learn.

But at any rate, why am I thinking about this? Facebook. Youtube. If I wanted to argue for the destruction of all our technology and a return to the age of naked savages with clubs and torches, I would use the internet as my strongest argument. In graduate school, one of my classmates was fascinated with technology and the concept of the singularity -- particularly the eventual union of all humanity into a single consciousness. Having seen Facebook threads, having seen Youtube comments, I can only shudder at the thought. Discussions on the internet have this unnerving tendency to degenerate into what amounts to be geysers of sewage spraying in every direction.

The words "always" and "never" have the ability to comfort a person in ways that empiricism simply cannot. Absolutes order the world, give it structure, tell you what your place is in it, require you only to nod your head and go along.

Arabs are always terrorists.

Americans always fight for freedom.

Arabs are always oppressed by the Zionists.

Americans are always after oil.

Atheists are always scientific.

Christians never think.

Atheists are always arrogant douchebags.

Christians are always persecuted for their faith.

Everything fits into categories. Nothing is left unaccounted for. The things that are left unaccounted for need no explanation. They only need to be explained away. That black swan isn't a swan at all because all swans are white! Logic now moves in reverse, a retrograde rationality.

If you wish to live life, the lizard brain must be subdued and made your servant. The impulses must be mastered. The fear must be mastered. Embrace uncertainty, venture forth into the darkness of not-knowing, of possibly-never-knowing, and set up your tents there. When you hear the questions howl in the night, don't run back to the warm, moist confines of mother's womb -- once you've left it, you can never go back -- instead go forward, always forward, and seek out the unknown.

Approach each moment, each instance, each atom with the knowledge that its distinct from every other. Your sample size is always one. Don't approach everything the same way. There may in fact be two of the same thing. I may be wrong. You won't know until you get there. I'll be working from the premise that if I want to get there, I'll have to get moving. If it makes sense to you, then get off your ass and go. If it doesn't make sense to you, if sitting still and waiting for the answer seems more reasonable, then sit and wait. But you must think. You must overcome the mind that knows only fear, thinks of only survival, can not give you anything more than survival. Is survival all you're after?


Pretty girls are always bitches. Or have boyfriends.

Good guys are always taken. Or gay.

Frat boys are always homophobic jerks.

Sorority girls are always sluts.

Premise #1: Life is infinitely rich and diverse. 
Premise #2: Homogeneity is wearisome. 
Conclusion: The diversity of experiences and facts in life is a gift from God.

"A ship is safe in the harbor -- but that is not what ships are built for."

-- John A. Shedd 

To enjoy this gift, we have to leave the harbor. A willingness to throw away what we know in order to gain what we don't yet know -- isn't this a premise to all learning? I believe it's a fair one. The classical physics that govern airplanes and billiards required minds to throw away the Greek theory of the elements. Quantum physics, Schrodinger's cat, requires us to discard the airplanes and eight-balls. What new mysteries yet unknown will require us to throw away quantum physics anew? Are you scared or excited? Do you want to shrink back or push forward?

"... don't be mad because it's all about progression/ loiterers should be arrested"

-- Jay-Z, On To The Next One

For me, I learned this experience when I took a gender politics course in grad school. Up until this point, I only received an unilateral education in gender politics -- conservative and Christian. I'm still not exactly sure what my motives were for taking the class. Was it because feminist criticism was the only major school of theory that I had no training in? I think I said that to some people. Was it because other people believed that those people, those gays, those lesbians, those people who love gays and lesbians, were so far away from God that they could never be brought back and consequently needed an intrepid adventurer like myself to go and win them for Jesus? Yes, I believe I thought that to myself a number of times too. Or maybe because it's the only class that could fit my schedule that semester. I don't remember.

But I do remember carrying a combative attitude to class every week in the early part of the semester. I can only express relief that I did most of the readings and as is my usual habit, waited around to get a sense of things before I spoke. Something changed in me. I began to see where they were coming from and the legitimacy of their arguments. These were serious thoughts and issues that needed to be considered. I burned with shame and anger that I laughed at Voddie's jokes. No, lesbians are not lesbians because they "can't get some." No gays are not failed attempts at "being men." I've seen too much to make that repulsive a joke. I have had a lot of great things happen to me in life, all of which I feel a deep indebtedness to God for, and right near the top is whatever work of the Holy Spirit caused me to walk a mile in feminist and LGBT shoes. I don't agree with them, particularly on political issues -- I remain adamant against abortion although not opposed to gay marriage (which isn't the same as supporting it), but I understand the issues far more fully now. And more importantly, I respect the origin of those issues. And I sneer at the ostriches in the pulpit, the ones who have never sailed real-life experience's stormy seas, the ones who say that we're the ones being persecuted when we comprise 90% of the population.

I wonder what kind of world we would have if we could all subdue our lizard brains and venture into the unknown. Last year I had an argument with someone over religion. I don't do much of this sparring anymore but he had been so aggressively douchey about it that I felt compelled to stand up. He eventually made this assertion that I could believe whatever I wanted because it gave me comfort.

Comfort.

Motherf*cking comfort. My religion, my belief in God has been the source of nearly all my greatest anxieties and angers in life. Love God? Sometimes I hate him. I love the Courage Wolf quote "Climb the highest mountain. Punch the face of God." because that's exactly what I want to do sometimes. Even the pains I experienced in relationships are attributable to my theological leanings. I certainly did not choose Christianity for Goddamned comfort.

But this assertion flew. As if he knew me! As if he understood me! As if he knew about my mental breakdown where I ran off into the stormy New England night, sprinting into the howling wind and pouring rain, lost in a park, with my cell phone battery dying, screaming obscenities into the sky until my throat was hoarse and punching boulders until my knuckles bled. Comfort. God damned, motherf*cking comfort.

But can I blame him? Christians, in debates, often assert that people don't want to be Christian because they want to continue to live in immorality. Hell, I made that argument many times in my early years. I made that argument to people I didn't know, barely knew and knew all my life. I followed a script. The whole world followed a script. But that was then. Here we are now. I grew. I moved forward. And now that I know, I'm resolved only to ever move forward.

Would you join me in this journey?

A Rocking Horse Life

"Life's too short to phone it in."

LINK

Idee fixee. This can be nothing else. Obsession? No. There's a manic tint to that word I don't like. Achieving life is my idee fixee. Specifically, it's in the physical activity that I find myself inspired to write about achieving life. Stillness is not laziness, finding your edge, leaning beyond your edge, these are just three of the lessons that I learned from yoga. Determination, purposefulness, integrity another three from triathlon training. But where is it that I find joy? It's in the learning, growing, leaving that I find joy.

There's a reason that "On To The Next One" is my latest most loved song by Jay-Z. "And niggas don't be mad because it's all about progression/ loiterers should be arrested" And to use a jarringly different source of inspiration, one of my favorite verses in the Bible speaks of moving from glory to glory. Two more disparate muses I could not find, but despite their opposition to one another there's agreement: life can't stay still. Life must move inexorably onward. A person must have goals and must march bravely forward in their achievement. As Ayn Rand said, a circle is the shape most proper for nature. It is not proper for humanity. Humans must live like rays of light, starting at one point and firing off into the distance, focused, directed... directioned.

What I've been writing against is the kind of life that does not move forward. It moves, but the motion is that of a rocking horse. Plenty of action without direction, this is what saddens and angers me. This is what I left behind. I don't hate popular culture, television or things that people do for pleasure. My ire burns towards the use of those things as a distraction from the fact of life, against aimless and mindless consumption, against a life not lived, or a life lived by instinct and impulse.

Call it immaturity, my Christian predilection for crusades, a Messiah complex or a neo-liberal affinity for values imperialism, but I can't stand by and watch others phone it in. I remember living a phoned in life. "It's too hard. I don't want to." It sickens me to consider how often these words left my mouth or festered in my mind. It brings me to my knees to think how very often I'd pine helplessly to watch lives being lived while I wondered at my daily torment. Reader, do you know what I'm talking about?

Are you phoning in your life, not pursuing worthwhile pursuits, out of lack of confidence and courage? Are you going through the motions in your life? Certainly there's movement. You wake up, you go to work, check e-mail, check facebook, wait for someone to talk to you on G-chat, come home, watch T.V., or sometimes you go out, go to sleep, wake up tomorrow ready for another empty day. That's 24 hours of movement. Where is the progress? You might relocate from one neighborhood to a nicer one or from a lower paygrade to a higher one. Is that progress? Is that all you have in your life? Is your heart alive?

Well now, that's not something I can answer for you is it? At any rate, go and watch Lost. It should be coming on right now.

By What Measure A Slave?

Seek freedom in indulgence and be a captive to your desires.

Seek discipline and find your freedom.

I have no clue who first said this but I got most of it from one of my hiking brothers on facebook.

I feel a certain level of unease in writing this post.

It's because I'm going to use the word "slave" and I don't want to belittle the fact that there are slaves who are raped 10 to 15 times a night for profits that they will never see because they believe that if they do not cooperate, harm will come to their family and loved ones or themselves. There are slaves who grow and cook the food that we eat, build the structures we find shelter under and clean the rooms we stay in. Close to 30 million of them exist today and the black market moving them has usurped illicit arms trading as the 2nd most profitable illegal enterprise. I don't want to make light of that fact.

But at the same time, I want to make clear that I was once enslaved and that we too are all enslaved. But when I speak in this manner, I speak in degrees. To what extent am I a slave? To what degree are you a slave? How slavish is your manner of living?

The Jack Lalanne video above hits as close to my heart as any video I have ever seen. We can be, most of us are, slaves to our body. It tells us when to lie down, get out of bed, eat, have sex (or watch porn) and check e-mail. It tells us when to start running, stop running, panic, and cower. For most people, the rational function of the mind should be looked at as a vestigial organ. We call these your average everyday ordinary human beings who can only do more because of a few exceptional human beings who invented the means to harness the power of fire, the strength of animals, the waters, the winds, the earth and the stars. A few people did those things. A disgusting mass of human-shaped parasites tagged along.

I am, to a degree, one of them. I was, in the past, much more of a parasite. Like I said, I speak in degrees and not absolutes.

I have several phrases that I like to repeat when others ask me what I really want in life.
"I want to see the uppermost limit of human potential. And I want to see it in myself."
"I want to live a life that's worthy of 10,000 lifetimes."
"I want to transform myself."
"I want to find my freedom."

All of them, particularly the last one, grows out of one kernel: the captivity of man to himself. I have been incredibly blessed to read Seth Grodin's blog since last night and this morning I read these words. Lightning stroke thoughts and thunderclap words stormed in my heart. This, I needed to read this. As I began to digest those words I knew that these words were a map to what I wanted to say.

I. Want. To. Rule. My. Life.

Not to merely have drives, but to be driven. What's the difference? There's a sex drive, a hunger drive, an Oedipal drive, a checking-your-email-unnecessarily drive and a why-the-hell-am-I-still-on-Facebook drive. Those are drives. I want to drive my life. Not my impulses but myself. How does a typical person operate? They live as if life was a game of whack-a-mole. Each impulse gets a wack. Each desire is a prompt for action. There's no purpose beyond the whacks in that game. Compare now, if you will, an advanced roleplaying game. Let me use Baldur's Gate 2 because it's one of my favorite games of all time. There's a story. You are given a character who has goals. Why are you doing any particular thing? Not because it's there but because you are working towards a greater goal. Consider the animals and all of nature who only have drives. Ravens, monkeys, dolphins, elephants all of these have displayed startling amounts of intelligence from building simple tools like ravens and monkeys, to the sophisticated language and emotiveness of the monkeys and dolphins to the burial practices of elephants. Each one of them is in no uncertain terms, remarkable. None of them display drive. All of them live circular lives, but the life of a human being should not be a circle.

It should be a line, a ray shooting inexorably forward into the inky ignorance of the world, plumbing the mysteries of the universe, cultivating the universe. Man should be venturing forth in confidence, integrity and intelligence seizing life with both hands. Should the highlight of his week be playing Settlers of f'in Catan? Should it be the oblivion of alcohol, the indolence of television, the cacophony of inane chatter about celebrity gossip, of finding trendy restaurants to say you've eaten at, to lusting over cars, phones, iPods, iPads, and all other nonsense? And when all is said and done, sink back into the ooze as a fatty meal for worms. Is this not an insult to the creator who fashioned Man inside His Mind?

More than asking "What are you doing?" I am asking "Where are you going?" and all too often the sad answer is nowhere. Where else is there to go? This is all life has to offer.

I move onward, the only direction

can't be scared to fail, in search of perfection

--Jay-Z "On To The Next One"

Get a degree. Get a job. Get a wife, a house, a pair of kids, a car, another car, another house. This is your life. This is your life and it's being lived for you by an automatic program.

Why are you so scared? Is it because you see Prometheus' liver being eaten before you?

You know what it demands. Your time, let's start there. The more time that you spend free, the less time you spend on the things that enslaved you. You're not going to spend time eating food you're not hungry for, with the people who don't want to see you rise above them because it reminds them just how inhuman a circular life is. It terrifies them with the question "Could I do that? Just maybe? If I worked a little harder? If I was a little more brave? Trusted in myself a little bit more?" But then the fear of these answers is far too much for them to handle and they tear you down anew. You know who hindered me the most when I was trying to transform myself? It was the people closest to me. How did they do it?

"Stanley, you look so good already, why not hang out with us?"

"Stanley, you're making an idol of these races. It's sinful."

"If you were godly, you wouldn't think about looks. You should exercise after you get married."

"Just be careful. We don't want you to hurt yourself."

"Ugh, I want to die hearing the things you do."

"Oh, triathlons? Yeah, they're no big deal."

Parents. Lovers. Friends. Fellowships. Lay persons. Clergy. Bosses. Students. Teachers. They tore my liver and tomorrow they will do it again. Because I'm too soft, because I truly do love them, I did not banish them. Others have. That was the assholery referenced in the Phoenix Effect series. But I was lucky. I did not need to go that far. I have triumphed over these nay-sayers in the past and will continue to conquer in the future. I do it because I want to live free, above my impulses. A unified man, a free man does not live as the servant of his desires, but his desires, as true, genuine and honest as they always are, serve him. That's what I want.

Achieving Life

"Isn't it interesting how when we say 'Hold on, hold on, I need a minute. Just let me think!', what we are really asking for isn't an oppportunity to think, but an opportunity to stop thinking. We just want to find calm amidst the chaos, to let the thought come to us instead of trying to drag it out of ourselves." -- Kendra Potter, my yoga teacher

So about half an hour after last night's post, I went to my yoga session with Kendra. When I woke up this morning, I went for a run and yes, the pain was delicious. I only lasted about 10 minutes but it  was a glorious 10 minutes of sprinting and all-out exertion. And is it any coincidence that the world feels so much brighter, vibrant and beautiful this morning? I didn't ride a train to work, but a cloud.

It annoys me that some will demean the effects of these activities as a mere endorphin rush. Consider the following NYTimes blog and Wall Street Journal article that cite this Circulation study on what exercise does at the cellular-molecular level. Exercise keeps you young, vibrant and happy at the molecular level.
Our physical programming system, our body-map, deoxyribonucleic acid or DNA, the molecules indicate that we are supposed to live. We are meant to live pursuing the achievement of life -- not the postponement of death. No matter how many times I write this, and God knows, I've spent many a blog entry on it, I cannot emphasize it enough. The sedentary life is no life at all. It is a slow, wasting disease.

Perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps I am trying to fit every life into the same shape as mine. But I cannot in my heart ever truly believe so. I cannot fathom the desire to live a quiet, trouble-free life. Why would, how could anyone live without goals, without passion and vitality? Knowing what it's like to fly screaming into the wind at Mach 50 on your bike, to run, to climb, to jump, swim, stretch, survive, to continually push the upper-most limit of your mind, your body, your heart, to see how deeply you can love, how loftily you can think, how wide your jaws can stretch in swallowing whole this life, having even tasted a tithe of this, can you really want to live a life of moldering in front of a T.V. or drowning in a bar?

Recall, if you will, a moment of achievement, any achievement. Was it your first kiss? There's no shame in choosing this event -- that someone chose you speaks to the values that they saw in you. Or perhaps it was making the math team in Junior High School, coming to the rescue of your co-workers at a presentation, ascending the summit of Mt. Everest and knowing that no one stands higher than you at this moment or perhaps weaving a spell over your audience as you perform your magnum opus at the pinnacle of your career. All I ask for is the memory of pride, glorious pride welling, no surging up in your chest, arms upraised exulting in the joy of the moment. Let me ask you, reader -- is this not what life is supposed to be? The application of your various powers to a task that is beyond your ability and rising above yourself? Or should life always be easy? Which would you rather have? The dull, damp mediocrity of ease and leisure or the heated intensity of pursuing a dream, a goal?

Watching television -- reality shows, this season's new drama, can anyone, and I mean anyone, say that they feel a deep fulfillment and satisfaction in this "activity"? The moments we spend living are our lives. There are no, none, not a single throw away moment of life. Killing time is nothing other than suicide. How you spend your days is your life. When someone goes to a bar for some such occasion or another and gets shit-faced drunk, when this is what they spend 5 days of a 7 day week waiting for, is this their idea of humanity's zenith? They wait for this?

My theology is thus: Man joyous is God's crown. Sedentary living and alcoholism to me are just different manifestations of the same disorder -- escapism. Life will not come to those who flee from it. If you will not cry for it, you will never laugh from it. If you will not break yourself for it, it will never build you up. Life must be achieved -- by the power of your mind, the force of your will, your determination and the audacity of your imagination. Life must be seized, it must be worked for and it will require more than you can currently give.

And in running I find myself living. When I am sprinting at top speed and watching the world blur past -- this is my heaven, this is my joy. Everyone who marvels at my busy life usually sees my training as just another element in the rigamarole and rush of things. It couldn't be further from the truth. Running anchors me. Calm exists at 180 beats per second. Why is this? Because achieving life gives you the tools to achieve even more life. I was made to live this way. We were meant to work for life.

Below is a video that never ceases to inspire me.

The Phoenix Effect: The Aesthetics of Living

A few days ago I used this picture in a post. I don't have some magical formula to my pictures. I simply run an interesting phrase through google image search to see what comes up. The phrase that came to mind was "courageous vision" and it resulted in the above picture.

I think it's a beautiful image. The user's Flickr account, Ganga Sunshine, displayed a lot of similar work with explosions of colors and... and techniques and methods whose names are beyond me. But with the above picture, I felt that it fit my idea beautifully. A delirious, joyful, dance under an open sky, flight without wings, a sensate soaring through the azure -- that describes a beautiful life doesn't it?

Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Rand ... three of my favorite philosophers wrote on the aesthetics of living. Kierkegaard characterized it as a life devoted to sensate gratification -- an escape from boredom and responsibility. Progressing from the aesthetic, one moves to the ethical realm of social debt and then on to the final phase: the religious, wherein a person acquires faith, the highest form of human existence.

Nietzsche, from what I remember of my existentialism class (it has been quite some time since I last delved into his work) did work on understanding pain. The problem with pain, is not that it hurts, but that we misunderstand its significance. Upon encountering pain, the typical reaction is to try to ignore, suppress, minimize, avoid, forget. Rarely does anyone have the thought of mastering the pain.

And Rand, the philosopher with whom I have had the greatest struggle, it was she who taught me that the purpose of morality is not to teach us to obey and suffer but to enjoy ourselves and live. This is true morality.

And so when I consider my life I feel compelled to answer the question: is this life that you are living an aesthetic life, a beautiful life? Up until this point I had always thought that I was because I had ended what was an ugly life. A life of cowardice, craving security, comfort, terrified of risk, I lived this way and my hatred and loathing continues to run deep. But as Rand continues to remind me, avoiding death is not the same as achieving life. Not being that particular ugly did not mean I had then achieved beauty.

Is my anger beautiful? Or rather, the anger I seek to fill myself with -- is that beautiful? For a while now, I've been afraid to face the reality that it just might not be. The anger leaves me simple-minded, short-sighted and desperate. Anger, the mindless rage at my own inadequacy by its very description excludes the higher faculties which have been given to us as humans. No, the beautiful life that I keep coming back to in my mind is a sort of quiet confidence assured of its inevitable triumph. It moves unhurried, taking each step with foresight, intelligence in the way of a conquering king's procession.

Anger is inefficient, this kind of pride and confidence that I envision understands how to budget its strength and resources. But how is this life achieved? Anger came over me as if I was a Homeric hero, clay in the hands of the happy, idiot gods. When has it ever been that confidence and unshakable assurance came over mighty Diomedes or clever Odysseus? No, it would be fallacious to think of it in the same vein as emotions. What I'm searching for is not an affect of the spirit, what we would today call emotion, but it is alithea, the a-lethe, the un-forgotten truth of life, the eureka lightning bolt realization.

And how is that achieved? Alithea is never formulaic but it is always beautiful. When it seizes upon a person the world becomes suffused with a glowing sublimity. Alithea is always at first the world of walking trees but a while after the mud has been applied to the eyes, one sees but never the same. So long as one lives, one will find alithea. But that does not help me so much. I wish to uncover the truth of my own life-- how shall I live?