The Tempest

I’ll forever remember this song as the one that accompanied me through the worst and most debilitating period of depression that I’ve ever experienced.

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Old post lifted from wherever

So…I was going through my old MSN Space (now Windows Live Space, but whatever) and I found a post I must have made while on crack. But I love it! It’s got Life Lessons and Uplifting bits and blah, if you ignore the crackiness. Here it is:

grammar/punctuation are for the WEAK

Some people might wonder….’hey, your life isn’t really that perfect, how do ya handle things?’ (shut up, someone totally might wonder that, okay?) for those who are even semi-interested or just bored (plz don’t expect entertainment here, you should know me by now) READ BELOW for further detailsMy methods are:

STEP 1. LAUGHING
yes ppl, joke off everything and i guarantee you your life will be 100% happy, fun-filled and joyous….frolicking in fields of daisies and that sort of thing. ya rly. ppl might hate on you but hey they wouldn’t know their asses from gaping holes in the ground…which coincidentally reminds me of an interesting story which i shall not be relating here.

STEP 2. IGNORING
oh noes, you’re joking, i can’t do that WRONG yes you can. it’s easy. step 1…ignore whatever it is. see! sooo easy. i should be charging you for this but hey i know better than to try in jamaica, blasted set of freeloaders and pirates blah blah anywayyyyyyyyy yes you can ignore people/things/whatever and miraculously…..they won’t go away but hey you’ll be so busy trying not to notice them that you won’t have time to notice them and eventually you end up at

STEP 3. DENIAL
whatever you may have heard (LIES) it’s actually much more than a river in egypt. it’s a whole way of life. rather popular too, currently in vogue with politicians such as bush and condoleeza (however she spells it…my gosh it’s as bad as shaquanda or something) and i know those arent very encouraging examples but whatever. that’s beside the point anyway. back to DENIAL. i do it all the time! and it totally works!!!11 all you need to do is ignore something so much you enter the beautiful negative world of rejecting the idea completely and thinking anyone who sees/accepts it is freakin insane. which they probably are anyway. but who cares? not meeee

in any case, i would put more stuff there but quite frankly i can’t bother what with formatting and grammar and spelling and all which i also cant rly bother with but w/e

also i cant think of anything more right now

So…so…true T_T (NB. must remember to stay off crack)

On selfishness and humanity

Despite the fact that I’m required to study literature to complete my major (Spanish, btw), I tend not to analyse books, movies, anything. I’m not really concerned with why anything happens, or if the text is a reflection of whichever sociopolitical scene, or whatever. I don’t try to find meanings in things, or to identify with fictional characters. I read to enjoy the content, not to examine it.

So it’s really surprising that I find myself consciously comparing myself and Sam Vimes. He’s a character in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series, a policeman. In one of the books (Thud! 2005) he’s the target of an ancient evil force, the Summoning Dark…it tries to possess him, but keeps getting repelled by something already living inside him. At the end of the book, it’s revealed that (yes, spoiler, lol) what’s inside him is the Guarding Dark…it watches him, never letting anything else interfere with what’s innately him. On another occasion, in another book (don’t remember which one), the Patrician of the city asks him “qui custodiet ipsos custodes?” ie, ‘who guards the guards?’…basically asking, if the police are responsible for the fates of those they watch over, who keeps them in line? Vimes’ answer is simple. “I do.”

I’ve always been fascinated by the concept of watching life as an outsider. Possibly because it’s true for me, and I think it’s true for everyone else, whether they realise it or not. I don’t actually FEEL anything, except when it concerns me and/or the few people I truly, honestly care about. People are suffering, dying everywhere, and honestly, I don’t give a shit. I really only care because if it’s allowed to continue, it’ll eventually infiltrate and mess up my pretty little sphere of existence. Which I would find highly irritating. So I force myself to act.

This is the essence of a society. People aren’t instinctively pack animals. People are instinctively selfish, and want to feel safe, and warm, and happy. Being part of a group that accepts you is what leads to these feelings, unless you can manage to induce them on your own, which rarely happens. So we have our Peace Corps, we have the great USA…the World Police (lol), we have our little cliques and societies…all selfish, all designed (subconsciously of course) to force people to act towards the goal of maximum personal benefit. This also is why socialism and communism are declining…they’re a marked improvement on the feudal system in terms of selfishness potential, but you can’t beat capitalism for potential for personal gain. Someone said once (don’t remember where, sorry) that we COULD actually have an equal society, if we did away with the super-rich and super-poor. But even the super-poor don’t want to do away with the super-rich, and create an equal society…sure, the people themselves might be hated, but not-so-very deep down…the masses will never rise up in a super-Marxist revolution, because they don’t want to do away with the establishment. They want to BE the establishment. They want the jaguars and diamonds and hilltop mansions and skinny blondes. So for this, they eat shit, kiss ass, grovel, live their lives in squalor and sometimes come to work and shoot everyone then themselves.

All of this could be not fixed but maybe eased a bit, if people realised they really, truly were alone…if all of this subconscious could transcend its own nature and become conscious. How many people really, REALLY know they’re alone? And can understand the depth of their solitude? Can people in general stand aside and watch their actions and interactions clinically, impartially, and KNOW that no-one else can affect them without their permission? Dr. Karl Menninger teaches us in Man Against Himself (1938) that depression, despair, suicide, and general unhappiness is caused by a lack of self-awareness. What’s called for is self-control. Not self-control as you’d normally think of it, but self control so complete that you can control your own mind, and your reactions to events. Then, and only then, will you have peace and happiness.

On the other end of the spectrum, you could possibly exist as a creature of pure emotion, accepting everything the world throws at you and FEELING it completely. I think that way, your happiness caused by external forces will be brighter, and your unhappiness from externals might be shorter-lived as well….but I’m not sure. It’s never struck me as being a particularly secure way to live, and security is a priority for me. I’m a very selfish person.

I’m human, after all.