don’t be a rebel, don’t be a dick. get on board, get on deck.
they say.

you’ll be fried trying to be freed. stay where you are.
they say.

you want to get fitter? oh, we’ll stop you – we have fetters.
they say.

stop trying to pick a better future for yourself. stop trying to pick a better future for yourself.
they peck.

that writing you do with your quill pen, quell it. now. or else.
they say.

those words you write, they’re six six six. those words you write, they’re sex sex sex.
we are religious. you are blasphemous.
they say.

stop writing your tails, you’re barely making taels. stop your foolishness.
they say.

your wrists, just try to wrest them from our grasp. just try!
they finally say.

…e before i, except after c.
they say.

You Will Always Be Wrong

Seriously, think about it,

You will always be wrong.

Not just sometimes, not just most of the time, every single time. Every. Single. Time. No exceptions. (Kinda makes you questions everything you do doesn’t it?)

I’m not particularly affected about my being wrong to myself (hell, I revel in it), but when you realize that thousands of people listen to and heed your words, and combine this with always being wrong, you definitely question whether you’re doing more harm than good. (The rule of thumb is that you’re most likely contributing to the death of the known world than not, good job you.)

If you can’t speak the truth and nothing but the truth, why speak at all right?

This is one of the reasons I stopped writing here a while back. But I came back. Why?

Because I realized that, despite always being wrong, we all have a reason to keep doing this fantastically horrible thing we call art/work/stuff.

Why To Keep Going Anyways

Don’t keep going and move forward in your work as a means of proving yourself more right than the world. Don’t move forward with the intention of showing people just how wrong they are, and how your answers are so much, much, much, (did I say much) better than theirs. Move forward with the intention of putting forth your ideas and thoughts into the collective mix, called ‘society’, for feedback. Move forward with the intention of telling a story (people listen to stories). Move forward with the intention of conveying your emotions (no matter how many times people tell you that it’s ‘gay’ to do anything ‘with feeling’). Move forward with the intention of touching someone’s heart and mind long enough to make a connection, and maybe a goshdarn difference.

Work and move forward knowing you’ll be wrong, but choose the path you deem the least wrong while doing so. And move forward with the intent to show others what that path looks likes (and let them judge for themselves whether it’s as good as you yourself think it is). Maybe the path you chose is wrong, maybe it’s not (remember, we talked about this, it is), but someone will definitely improve upon it both ways, and that’s the only reason you need. But people can’t improve on your work and ideas unless you create and put them out there.

Take Henry Ford for example. He was right, but mostly wrong. But in pursuing the path that he deemed most right Henry Ford lead way for others to better upon his answer to the question on everyone’s mind (the question being, “How does one get from point A to point B better.”). The market easily showed us, with cold-hard cocaine traced cash, that Ford’s Model T was the best answer they had at the time. And thus came the large array of successor cars we have today. [Yes, I know, Ford didn't invent the car (Karl Benz did), but he invented the process that got the solution of "how to get from point A to point B better" into everyone's hands better.]

For example’s sake, let’s talk about electric cars. Electric cars are more right than the Model T cars of the old. And electric cars aren’t in themselves entirely right (this is why you don’t see them scattered around everywhere, they have cons that most people deem greater than their pros). Electric cars are just a more right answer to the same question (that hopefully leads to an even more right answer down the road). (This of course takes into account that there’ll still be roads in the future, and not some apocalyptic post-nuclear world war wasteland sort of world. Which is a horrible possibility, and just what we deserve.) But do you think we’d have this wonderful car that mocks the Model T, if at first the Model T was not there to be mocked? If at first the Model T was not there to be improved upon? If at first the Model T was not built for fear of being wrong sometime in the future? No. That future’s here, the Model T is wrong now, yes, but only because it set the path for it’s own mockery.

But, if this isn’t enough to convince you, here’s another plus of realizing you’ll always be wrong – you stop forcing your ideas upon people, and thus people like you more.

No one likes a forcer. Remember – no means no. Don’t rape minds – enter them slowly, with permission, and maybe a condom.

I don’t know about you but I’ve never been one to listen to the person who speaks with a belief that they are 100% undoubtedly right. I lean more towards the type that tells me, “I’ve researched this, I’ve looked at the positives and the negatives to the best of my abilities, and this is what I think the right answer is (and pretty please, don’t kill me if I’m wrong please).” The former has an air of being closed off and unchanging, conveys the notion that they’re not open to new ideas, and I don’t know about you but I have a really hard time calling someone who’s not open to new ideas a thinker. The latter though is a completely different breed of human-meat. They seems more.. human, more real. The latter grabs my interest because they’re admitting that what they give me (information, products, illegal drugs) is not the best muthafucking perfect 100% uncontested answer to my question and problem, but that it’s the best one they’ve found so far. They admit that they as humans are not without imperfection, and so too will their answers not be.

I know they’ll be imperfections, there always are. But the person who says that truthfully straight to my face deserves a lot less all-consuming eye-bulging hatred than the man who shouts to the rooftops about how perfect, and wonderful, and simply magical, his solutions are. As long as they tried their best to clean it up (to get rid of as many wrongs from their solution as possible), I can’t be mad at them. (The paradox of all this being that in admitting that they’ll always be wrong, they’re actually the most right people in the room.)

Myself, I aim to be this type of person. A person who admits that he has flaws, and that most likely down the line he’ll be catastrophically wrong, yet still persists towards the ultimate ‘right’, knowing that it’s unattainable.

And so I write this, not to deem myself right in who’s better as a person, but to convey to you that I deem the sincere person who admits they’re wrong more right, and dare I say more important, that the preacher who shouts of their “righteousness”. And I write in general in order to let you see my thoughts, and maybe, just maybe, something I write will be give someone just the right shove to go out and improve upon an idea of mine.

In fact, that’s what I hope for. That you go out there and prove me indisputably wrong, in the best way possible.

We will always be wrong in the end because the world is finding a more right answer every day (this is a good thing, it means the world is improving), but the speed at which the world changes and becomes more right is up to us. I write now and not later so that not only can someone prove me wrong while laughing uncontrollably and mockingly pointing at my dejected face, but so that someone proves me wrong while laughing uncontrollably and mockingly pointing at my dejected face soon. (The sooner, the better, the faster we can move on to even more right answers.)

Seriously, I won’t be mad at them for proving me wrong, quiet the opposite, I’ll give them the best embrace I can possibly give (while trying to hold the broken pieces of me intact of course). For in proving me wrong, and giving the world a more right answer, they’re contributing to the betterment of this tiny thing we live on called Earth. And I couldn’t ask for more.

Anyways…

Here’s to the pursuit of the right path. And here’s to our footsteps, for though erroneously they do so, they walk that path.

photo credit: Johnny Jet

First off, start bright. Enjoy nature, enjoy art, enjoy science. Enjoy life.

Then get brighter and brighter. Continue to enjoy all these things while others have forgot how (while others never learnt how). Continue while others have found work. Continue while others say that you have to work to fit in, to labour to live (they say ‘to labour’, they mean ‘to suffer’).

Everyone saw so much potential in you, why don’t you just use it? But why must you use it you ask? Because, they answer… These are not real answers. But how is to suffer to live you ask? Because, they answer… But why must I fit in you ask? Because, they answer… Are you happy you ask? These are not real questions they say after a brief pause.

Continue being an artist, a wanderer, an innocent. Then your stomach churns and the bills arrive; you need money, food, and shelter; and the barterers smile and say, “We’ll give you money, we’ll give you food, we’ll give you shelter; hell, have it all – first, give us your innocence. It’s too bright. We need to dim it down a bit. Just a bit. Yeah… just a bit.” (They smile.) The choice is simple, exist or live – you can’t have both they say.

Exist or live… you can’t have both they say.

But why can’t I have both you ask? These are not real questions they say, after a brief pause.

photo credit: Kyle May

We’re not happy people.

Just look at the stats. People are grumpier, sadder, tireder, and meaner than they used to be (no this is not Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs).

And why are we unhappy? Is it because the world is a harsher place to live, because we have less than we used to? No, in fact stats prove that the world has been continuously getting better over time. So what’s our problem? Maybe it’s because of where we live, America.

We live in a culture that praises material wealth and external richness over internal. We live in a culture in which we are judged by what we have, not by who we are. We live in a culture overrun with ads and commercials that constantly tell us what we are missing, what we don’t have, and what others have over us. This leads to higher crime rates because the poor, finding no other way to acquire these possessions that have been ingrained in their heads as must-haves rob. And on the other side of the coin, people work 12 to 15 hour days just to afford these possessions that are, again, deemed as must-haves. We live in a market driven economy, even if we don’t think so.

I used to think this was the best route, just let the people choose and they’ll always choose what’s good for them. Wrong. A dictatorship under the right person would do so much better. (Even if that sounds wrong and evil, it’s true.) If we continue to operate in a market driven culture we’ll just continue to be slaves to companies that know how to apply psychological tactics against us. (And most of us are unaware of these tactics.) But put in place a person or organization that is as aware of these tactics (or more) as the companies, and let them act as the counter-weight and the scales balance a little bit.

Less ads would be a great first step. Announcing what psychological factors within you are being pressed by certain ads like how digestible products must legally list ingredients is another great step. But these steps I fear shall never be implemented. Because it’s the people’s vote – and that’s the biggest deception of all. The mass-hypnotized people choose what is wrong for them because it looks more appealing and because they lack knowledge of the full harm it causes to them. And usually the right answer requires that the people suffer now to prosper later, and the people never ever want to suffer now. So the people choose what is wrong for them, over and over and over again.

And there’s no one to blame, because these companies aren’t bad people – Illuminati, as we’ve all come to believe. No these people are hypnotized too. They grew up in the culture so they were infected as well – so in their eyes they are producing good for humanity… when they aren’t.

What we need is someone with power who can give the people what they need rather than what they want. We need a parental figure who’ll feed us veggies when all we want, all we make, and all we consume is candy – which will eventually kill us. We need people like Tom Ford and Steve Jobs to look at our legal affairs. In their unique niches they listened to us and heard what we truly wanted (a faster mode of transportation and a phone that could do everything), they didn’t give us what we wanted (faster horses, and more complex phones), but instead gave us what we needed (cars, and phones so complicatedly simple that we had no choice but to shut up and stare at them in awe everytime we used them).

We’re just kids in adult bodies at this stage of life – we need true adults, and parents at that. True parents that care for us and not for their own wealth or standing in culture. True parents that want to see us grow. True parents that derive their happiness from our happiness – inner happiness, true happiness.

We need someone who shuns our culture, to lead our culture.

But the problem is that a truly happy culture will have little room for improvement. Like the Native American cultures of the old who were happy living off the land with what they had.

The unhappy shall always conquer the happy, because the happy – being happy will never develop as much technology seeking happiness externally. They would have already attained happiness inwardly.

If we were truly happy with faster horses, we wouldn’t have cars. If we were truly happy with postal mail, we wouldn’t have email, and if we were truly happy with ourselves we wouldn’t need items that scream “Hey, look how happy I am!”

So we live in a culture of fast improvements, because we are unhappy. Yet to be happy is to give up these improvements, these upgrades. And maybe genetically that’s why we are unhappy, because genetically we are bred for survival and improvement. And if evolutionary improvement is only found through unhappiness, guess what our body is going to choose every time?

Genetic layout causes males to be unhappier with one woman faster, so that men can go around spreading their ‘seeds’. Genetic layout cause females to be unhappy with the kind man faster in order for them to go out and seek the strong and brash even if they make them unhappier than the kind male. In the end, this is all about survival.

But as good marriages prove to us, we can fight with our genetic make-up and win… if we try. (But the question arises again in this matter, will we truly be happier doing so?)

So how do we create a culture that’s truly happy, yet at the same time improving at a pace so in line with our genetic layout that it actually changes (fools?) our genetic layout to seek happiness rather than unhappiness?

I don’t know.

Maybe we’re meant to live a long and unhappy, but prosperous, life. Maybe we’re meant to find true happiness and once we’ve done so die (no matter what age it’s attained at). Or maybe both routes are wrong. As I said, I don’t know.

What I do know is that continuing to live like we are is unhealthy and it needs to change, fast.

But I fear happiness and progress cannot be uttered kindly in the same sentence.

photo credit: raneko

Are you Dog?

Listening obediently to some tall figure that feeds you? Trusting? For the tall figure knows all. Unquestioning of the words it speaks? For it’s always right, never wrong. Loyal? Coming to it’s side the moment it calls, sitting when it tells you to sit, and occasionally receiving the one or two orgasmic belly rubs? Are you happily satisfied with what you have? Is your future taken care of? For you handed it to the tall figure, knowing that you’d never experience hardship ever again as long as you didn’t disobey it. Are you man’s best friend? Forever walking the path he walks alongside him, never straying?

Or…

Are you Cat?

Curious about everything; Content with nothing? Distrusting of what is said, always. Asking odd questions. Saying odd things. Forever wanting more – to see more, to know more, to feel more, to be more – when most think that what you have at hand is enough. Do you love too much? Marry too often? Speak without being spoken to? Fall countless times? Contradict yourself over and over and over… and over? Curious enough to leap? (Death or life, who knows what’s at the other end of that leap, but it’ll be fun right?) Curious enough to change? And prepared to pay the price – death (of the old self)? Over and over again? Each time with no less pain.

I can’t tell you which to be. The dog will experience aspects of life the cat will never do, and vice versa. But I will persuade you to be the cat. For only the cats have tales worth telling. A cat minority of one is all that can be counted on to tell the truth. The real truth; one unobstructed by someone else’s views. Dogs will never die as many times as cats do. Some see this as a good thing, some don’t. I’m one of those who doesn’t. For cats realize that dying is what the living do, that dying is what the loving do, and that dogs are those who do not know that dying is what, to live, each has to do.

I am cat. I’ll forever be unsatisfied, I’ll forever be searching for… something. Forever uneasy, forever uncomfortable, and forever unstable. That’s the hell (and heaven), I’ve chosen to live.

What are you? Dog? Or Cat?

photo credit: peretzp

Love is stupid.

It leaves you breathless for no reason. It buckles your knees and at the worst times. It gives you heart-complications, literally. It makes you care none whatsoever about you’re own survival in this affair. It leaves you sleepless, and mindless at times.

… And that’s the point.

photo credit: notsogoodphotography

Have you ever looked at a paradoxical sentence? Have you ever really stared at it? Consumed it with your entire being and let it hang within your soul, stirring around, making all this ruckus within you that makes you shift unevenly in your seat from time to time without knowing why?

Being abnormal is normal. Being normal is abnormal.

Truths are found in paradoxes. That’s what I believe. Not truth as in knowledge, but as in the truth that’s rarely acquired; wisdom.

If I told a computer program that it had to hold the notion “You are unique like no one else,” and the notion “You are the same, like everyone else,” as both being right and equal it’d exploded faster than you could say discombobulated. But if I told you that, and you actually thought about it for a second or two, you’d realize “Hey, maybe Arsene’s on to something!” And yes, there are many types of paradoxes, but for brevity’s sake I’m only talking about philosophical paradoxes (the one’s that relate to living a better life).

But this news isn’t new, philosophers far grandeur than me have brooded on such topics long before I came along. I’m just here to raise my hand in collective agreement with these amazing ponderers of life.

Wisdom is found in the paradox:

1. Less is more. More is less.
2. Impossible is usually possible.
3. Passion destroys passion.
4. The job of fiction is to tell the truth.
5. Obtaining everything means having nothing.
6. When you accept yourself as you are, then you can change.
7. Pain is pleasure. Pleasure is pain.
8. The more you know, the more you know the less you know.
9. You must be willing to die in order to live.
10. You have no choice in making a choice. You are doomed to make choices. You cannot not make a choice.
11. You say more when you say less.
12. Work is more fun than fun.
13. The only constant is change.
14. Everything changes, yet everything stays the same.
15. The best way to be comfortable is to be uncomfortable. The best way to be uncomfortable is to comfortable.
16. Sometimes the smartest thing to do in a situation is to be stupid. Sometimes the stupidest thing is to be smart.

Even the grasping of a truth is in itself a paradox. The truth looks foolish to the fools, and wise to the wise. The truth is simple, but it’s also so complicated that you should be laughing at my measly attempt to capture it in less than 1,000 words. (But that just leads us to another paradox, “The longer a piece of writing is the less it’s read.”)

Truths are conflicting at their base. They’re not black or white, or good or bad; They’re transcendent of these labels. For good and bad, black and white are labels we created (and asinine one’s at that). Which is why paradoxes are usually considered grey in color. They are complicated, reflecting life in their own existence. Life isn’t simple, there’s no one certain answer for all situations, and good does not necessarily always mean good. (One man’s good can be another’s bad.)

Saying that a truth is simple is being oxymoronic (emphasis on the moronic). Saying that a truth is paradoxical (complicated) is being redundant… So I’m being redundant (but to prove a point).

Maybe this is why every single human is a hypocrite. We don’t ever aim to be hypocrites, but it always happens at one point or another, and just when you think you won’t be one, you are. For me, this is our subconscious at work. The subconscious isn’t as picky about the truth as our conscious minds are. Our conscious minds see truth, but shun it when it doesn’t agree with our currently held beliefs (“Everything must be either black or white!,” we tell ourselves.). But our subconscious always acts on truth, or at least always tries to (some of us have the uncanny ability of fighting with and winning over our subconscious).

F. Scott Fitzgerald said it best, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”

In order for us to grow, we’re going to have to stop screaming for everything to be black or white; for everything to be simple. We’re going to have to get it through our thick skulls that truths are grey, complicated, and messy – and rarely do they get along with each other.

To see truth you’re going to have to work at it. It won’t be given to you on a silver-platter. It’ll be in the rumble, underneath propaganda, doctrines, age old practices, and stereotypes. You’re going to have to think, every single moment. You’re going to have to fully inspect all ideas that dare enter the territory that is your mind. Don’t take the easy route and go with the simple black or white answers. Train yourself as Fitzgerald said by holding two opposing thoughts in your head as both right (paradoxes). Train yourself every day until you look at all held ‘simple truths’ with scepticism in your eyes.

Truths speak in paradoxes. It’s a foreign language for many of us, but one that we can learn with practice.

photo credit: Brett Jordan

He was a born again, gone again man.
He was a scorned again, soar again man.

He said “I have things that haunt me so.”
Please just leave, I’d rather stay than just go,
I’d rather pray than just know.
… And can’t you see I’ve got my cross to tow?

He was a born again, gone again man.
He was a throne again, thorn again man.

Can’t you see he’s been saved?
Can’t you see he’s been raised?
He’s been shown the light,
And it’s awfully bright,
And it’s an awful sight, to be beside.

Oh, he’s a born again, gone again man.
He’s an atoned again, alone again man.

photo credit: petesimon

“We never really grow up. We just learn how to act in public.” ~ Bryan White

Maybe I was ignorant as a child (aren’t we all?), and maybe I was still ignorant as a teen (aren’t we all?), but it was only later in life that I learnt that most interactions in public are pure performance. And like most realistic realizations about the world – this saddened me. For consciously, and unconsciously, I now act in public; consciously controlling my facial expressions, my body movements, and my speech.

Constantly seeing how others see you isn’t a bad thing, but you end up controlling yourself from being completely honest; you remain quiet rather than saying you don’t understand, you lie in order to not hurt the other, all-in-all you’re phoney… you play a role at all times – the teammate, the friend, the co-worker, the polite chit-chatter, the neutral diplomat.

Why I’m saddened by this is because I find that the most authentic people are the people who are either unaware of the play that is called public life (the ignorant and dunce), or those who, being stronger than us all, have chosen to not take part in the play by doing the exact opposite of what’s expected. But the latter is still in a way being controlled; Acting counter to the play still means that the play controls their actions (their actions are all reactions, what happens when there’s no play to be counter too?)

But the people who I truly admire are those that, like the rebels and conformers, have noticed the play that is daily life, but are unaffected by it like the dunces of the world.

Those who see the rules society has built but still live by their own.

They don’t make their decisions based on the rules of society, or of going against society, they do it for personal reasons, whether their personal reasons align with society’s doesn’t affect that much. They don’t care less about society, but they have a personal understanding of themselves that’s so strong that all of society’s written and unwritten rules come second.

These are the types of people who would help out ‘the other side’ in a segregated community. These are the types of people who would never conform unless conforming in that moment aligned with their personal self. They’re not rebels, they’re not conformers – they’re… just. They don’t stand for or against to be seen in a certain light by others.

Jeff ‘The Dude’ Lebowski from The Big Lebowski movie is one of the best examples I can think of. He’s not rebelling against anything at all, but he’s also not conforming, he’s just… being. He looks like the most carefree person on the planet; he’s a big kid with no worries, and when most people watch the movie they wish their lives were as free as his.

In a way we all have a bit of Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski in us. We all have those moments in our lives where we’re truly ourselves – no acting, and these moments are usually found when we’re home, alone. We don’t wear clothes to show off when we’re at home alone, we don’t eat politely to be seen as polite, we don’t act like we’re beings who don’t fart or poop, and we definitely don’t wear makeup if we’re home alone with nowhere to go. We’re free at home. And the more freer you feel being home alone than you do in public life the more you’re acting in public life rather than just living.

So our goal should be to be as free in the world as we are when we’re home alone.

Why this is harder than it sounds is because unlike being home alone, you are not isolated in public – you’re in constant interaction with society and society’s rules. To be free in an isolated environment is easy. But to be free in a sociable and crowded environment filled with ever-changing people, ideas, written and unwritten rules, you’re going to have to constantly be aware of the rules around you, and constantly be in a fight against you’re own human desire to conform or rebel and figure out what you want to do for you (remember, this isn’t about “People will think this or that if I do this or that,” it’s about “What do I think of this or that?”).

This level of being can only be acquired through constant practice and observation. Like how becoming a good writer requires you to be constantly writing and reading. So to with becoming a ‘good person’, you must constantly practice living rather than acting in as many interactions as possible. Practice seeing the message you convey with everything you say and do, practice seeing how others correspond to the messages you’re conveying, but most importantly practice being brave enough to do your own thing in all situations.

The goal is to be the same in both private and public times.

For you’re not truly alive until you stop acting.

photo credit: Frenkieb