2003-10-30 - 1:09 p.m.

Of Divers Stimuli & Mendicant Souls

The everpresent "Things" are as simultaneously interesting and straightforwardly simple as ever. I imagine that for other people the question would present itself in the form of moments of indecision, depression -- a sense of a lack of direction, perhaps. It's different for me, though I can't really say whether it's easier or more difficult.

I already know the solution to hard times. Simply put: get through them.

The relationship is not working out as we had originally hoped, though there is still much to be said for it. The communication of the last week or so, however, confirms -- at least in my mind -- that there will be a strong friendship rising out of this present turmoil. I just wish that somehow didn't mean she had to leave.

Which she does, and I understand that too well to ever disagree.

Sure, we can always bash and batter our way through life -- some of us seem made to do very little else. But, like poorly made console RPGs, there is quite often absolutely nothing at the end of a long struggle to mark it as having been a progression toward or away from anything whatsoever.

We condemn aimless, gainless, difficult -- milestone-less? -- struggle in games, but accept it without question in life. We being myself, naturally, since that's what I've got to work with, but I'm extrapolating without regard for accuracy in hopes of figuring something out. Bear with me.

I started playing a game once called SaGa Frontier -- possibly by SquareSoft, since that sounds about right. You were presented with a number of options for characters that could be played through to the end, each with their separate story. This was a concept I rather liked, up to that point. I chose Blue, a mysterious loner of some kind or another. The details of games I disliked fade with time.

You fight your way through a game of significant length, solving puzzles, leveling, getting better gear -- the usual fare for an RPG. Then, wham, final boss fight! MEGA MAGIC! SWORD SLASH! BOO-YAH! The boss finally dies .. and the words "YOU WIN" appear on the screen ..

and that is the end. The screen goes black and it cycles back to the opening screen. SaGa Frontier. Press Start to Begin.

Why would you?

Why do I?

Someone once defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Sounds good and it rolls off the tongue readily enough, after all -- it's got that slight bite of paradox that makes for good, solidly repeatable truisms. The fact is, though, that you have to consider and accurately evaluate whether the significant characteristics of the situation are truly identical -- it's not just saying "there was a rock in each situation, therefore the situations were identical".

There's a difference between picking up a shiny piece of quartz to carry home in your pocket and picking up some nice pretty pitchblende. It's the significant characteristics that make a situation what it is -- but how are we to know what those characteristics are?

It's readily apparent enough in a purely materialistic situation like the one presented before (hereafter referred to as a ge-rock-en experiment purely for my own amusement) the points from which the damage can result. Uranium is not a healthy substance, and it is pretty widely understood that you should not touch it -- thanks, Hollywood, for spreading this vital day-to-day information.

What if you don't know what uranium is, though? Rads aren't a concept that leaps readily to mind, and pitchblende looks friendly enough until you notice that it glows in the dark and causes odd lumps on your body after prolonged exposure.

How is a would-be Curie to find the significance in Things-unknown?

I don't really know where I'm going with this other than sort of reassuring myself that it's not a safe assumption that relationships are a bad idea that will universally end in pain. I know that this is not the truth. Good things have come of my past relationships, and good things have come of this one and will continue to come from it.

Something in me would really like to quit pressing Start and just go play another game; leave this one, the one where I walk around from day to day and do things and meet people and have my regular ups and downs and stand in the rain waiting for doors to open and read excellent books and think full-immersion thoughts and often have hope for the future. Leave it, and find .. I don't know.

I'm not much of an atheist, since I've no certainty whatsoever on matters of metaphysics. I know that if there is a Father God of the Christians that I feel entitled to punch Him in His Nose a few times for making some really stupid concepts and turning them loose like crack in a middle school.

Worse, actually, because crack is a physical substance that you can be locked away from. If there is crack in a plastic baggy in front of you, you can be reasonably certain at a glance that it is crack. You can be locked away from it. Protected from it, if you like, assuming that your viewpoint includes the perspective that people should be protected from drugs and that merely keeping them away from particular addictive substances will somehow cause them to be better people.

I'm a fire guy myself. Walk through it, and you get burned. Keep walking through it and you're gonna keep getting fucking burned, but maybe you learn how to do it a bit quicker and with a bit less damage than those that've never gone outside their sixty-seven degree climate controlled habitats. This doesn't mean I'm going out and hunting down a crackmonkey so I can beat them up and take their stash to prove how strong I am. It does mean that I'm not going to panic when I see drug use take place -- because, fuck, how is someone else doing what they feel like doing going to threaten my well-being?

Anyhow, back to what I was saying two paragraphs back before I got on the crack sidetrip. Crack is a substance, and like most non-gaseous substances, you can be kept away from it in large part or entirely through choices of location, lifestyle, and even a bare minimum of awareness of your surroundings. That and the choice not to spend money on crack or use it -- pretty simple.

But how do you prevent yourself from falling prey to the persistant dualism that pervades our language? How do you avoid believing that self-sacrifice is inherently heroic, regardless of whether it actually helps anyone or anything worthwhile? How do you avoid believing that suffering makes you somehow better, when the alpha male of modern religions, modern Christianity, is screaming in your face to hurry up and turn the other goddamn cheek so you can inherit the earth?

The Buddhists say that all transient things know suffering, but I'm told by reliable sources that lobsters have no pain receptors -- their nervous system simply isn't advanced enough to accomodate the concept or the bulk of extra tissue it would take to maintain and interpret essentially extraneous information-gather-er-er-ers.

I'm not much of an atheist, but I'm even less a theist. I'm not one to take things on faith, or even on intellectual credit -- not when it would have to involve a conscious choice to believe something irrational in the "pointless" sense of irrationality.

Not that the world is exactly trooping to this little page to read the mindful ramblings I periodically pour out, but still, there's the thought of a collective gasp at the idea of God being "pointless".

Really, though, what would the existence of Deity change in my life?

We find the gods that pronounce our preexisting beliefs correct -- perhaps this is merely an American truth, but it's one I've seen everywhere -- and we then pronounce them, in turn, correct.

Assume I discover, somehow, a door somewhere that leads directly to Deity of one sort or another, who is able to communicate with me and make it's desires -- if we assume for the moment that this newly discovered .. thing .. is temporal, locational, active, conscious, willful, social, intelligent, curious, responsible, and demanding all at once -- known to me.

For some, the nature of Deity is such in their minds that the demands or even whims -- if we accept, once again for the moment, that such a Being might indeed have such transcient quirks as .. whims -- are ineffably correct regardless of context. For these, Deity is the ultimate source of Authority, their preexisting and final God. Deity's demands flow through the existing channels of obedience; they obey those that they see as being properly set above them by existing rules. Those rules being followed, the commands of Authority are not to be disobeyed because they are declared -- by those same rules! -- to be unavoidably correct.

Indeed, to define *right*.

"How could executing the command of Deity -- or Authority -- be any less than truly noble," asks the saboteur as he slits another throat, asks the hashisheen as he sets down his pipe and takes up his blade to drink another life in pursuit of Heaven, asks the politician who agitates for war in the interests of the Fatherland, asks the soldier, asks the missionary, asks the policeman, the conservative talk-show host, the insane webmaster of godhatesfags.com, and the Just Doing His Job nine-to-fiver who walks past the crippled and helpless every day in pursuit of a better tomorrow.

There are, no doubt, greater crimes than possession of an unquestioning trust in authority. I do not believe, however, that there is any greater offense that one can commit against one's own faculties.

This Deity, somewhere, in a hidden room far from our reality who wishes us to act in a certain way .. he can fuck off for all I care. I will continue to act in accordance with my beliefs, regardless of His or Her or It's or Their or Our or Whatever's opinion of my actions. If this being has control of some manner of afterlife -- of what value is obedience motivated by fear, I ask? Of what value is a life lived slavishly?

If this same being has control of an afterlife, and dictatorial powers regarding our destination in that theoretical timeframe -- there will not be even a moment in which I do not feel that my presence in whatever delusionary hell may have been concocted by the sick bastard that people generally seem to picture as being God was entirely ..

I don't know the word. Unjustified brings right and wrong into it, which simply aren't parts of my most fundamental worldviews.

It will not be something I see as punishment, or discipline, or a necessary consequence, or anything of that nature. If God has ultimate power as the Christians claim, then God has ultimate choice and responsibility to those of lesser capacity. Belief to the contrary is what leads us to condemn those around us when they make what are genuinely mistakes of ignorance.

We move toward what we believe to be God, and I hold the image that people have of God to be responsible for a great many wrongs done humans by other humans throughout history. The motion toward the God we have all heard about is a reflection of His imputed character -- utterly impersonal, whatever His apologists may claim, and utterly without regard for anything but .. obedience. The disobedient, the values that crawl into your skull begin to whisper, deserve to be punished as soon as you are in a position to have the power to do so.

I do not believe in punishment. The only discipline in which I believe is self-inflicted by necessity -- it can only be our choice to become truly better as individuals. How can someone else impose quality on us? Is true human quality something so cheap as to be mass-produced or .. enforced?

I do not believe in punishment. I do not believe in the Christian God or any other of which I have heard. I do not hold with metaphysics that ignore human choice. I do not hold with metaphysics that deify humans or human choice. I do not talk to trees and I do not dance with fauns or satyrs in the moonlight. I have never seen an elf or a fairy, and I've yet to so much as sense the presence of an angel -- or a devil or a demon or a dragon or a spirit or a ghost or so much as an enchanted Frog Prince.

My hope, such as I have, is in continued contact with other people. The hope that they have more variety than seems immediately apparent, and that the variety I find there will lead me to new ideas and new thoughts -- perhaps someday, some thoughts and ideas of genuine value to others. Specifically, the same others that allowed me to think of those thoughts.

She's leaving, and the hopes for the relationship -- a mystical, incredibly unlikely defiance of the odds, union of kindred souls and minds -- are dashed and I am beyond words where this is concerned.

Yes, beyond words, this is why I am filling page after page with mental flotsam. Brilliant, I am so goddamn brilliant.

The hopes for the relationship, however, are not the sum of my hope, either for life or for her. We will remain good friends because we both wish it to be so -- and if the desire to be friends is genuine, if spending time together and learning from each others' perspectives is really what we want, how could it go otherwise? Time and distance can definitely complicate things, but .. fundamentally, we do what we want to do, and in this case, we want to remain in contact and continue our friendship and growth.

I still have hope. I just wish sometimes that I did not because I feel so very tired at times like these.

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