Ernest Hemingway allegedly said that writing is like taking water from a well.
You may take a bucket or two at a time and come back shortly after to find the well as full as it was before; however, if you take many buckets at once, it will take a while before that well is full again.
I do not write a lot and have decided only to write when I feel it to be necessary. It is necessary for my brain health. I don’t go to therapy, perhaps I should, but I can only go to so many sessions before I have to pay out of my own pocket. I am covered by the insurance policy with the university I go to. They cover about 50% of dental work and 500$ worth of therapy. I have already used about 300$ this year, and haven’t found it to be a long-term solution considering my limited funds. Yes, I’m sure if I continued regular therapy that I would see improvements, but it’s simply not in the cards at the moment.
So I decided in class one day to turn to writing. It must have been a boring class because I thought about a lot of things. For one, this is necessary for my health. Two, I want to be able to have something vulnerable that can teach me about myself so that I may feel better in my life. Three, I want to continue this long enough as a sort of story to tell about my life that I might pass on to my children or theirs far down the line. Maybe even create it as a sort of website where others can do the same.
I don’t like social media. I do use Twitter, however, but only as a source of news for less than 10 minutes a day. I have an Instagram account that I never go on, but have kept for the sake of friends that I do not talk to. Besides those 10 minutes a day, and the data that Facebook inevitably harvests from my inactive Instagram account, I avoid social media altogether. Social media, I think, includes Reddit. Because people on Reddit like to attempt to make strange distinctions between their drug of choice and other social media outlets, I feel it important to note that it is the same.
I used to use Reddit a lot when I was younger. Mentally, I regard this the same of how I used to drink excessively when I was the same age. Both behaviors serve as little more than a distraction from your daily life, and they necessarily drain your time that you could be using for other more worthwhile activities. Yes, social media can help to keep you informed of current events, in the way that I use it today, but I still don’t think that’s a good excuse. I mean that I am not using my time wisely when I go on Twitter. Why should I care that Joe Biden gave the state of the union address the other day? Why do I care that the premiere of my province is giving a tax exemption to breweries?
On the other hand, I learned from Twitter on Saturday that the next day would be daylight-savings time. That saved me a morning hassle as I worked at 7:00AM the next day. But still, I wonder if there was a way to keep up to date on all of these things happening in the world without using social media.
“But what about friends?” And this is where I might differ from most other people. Because I think a lot of people recognize that social media is a force for evil, but they don’t care that much. They might justify it in this way, that they are keeping up to date with their friends. But that is hardly the majority of the time that people use these things for. It’s a false justification. It is the same as if an alcoholic said “But what about social lubricant?”
I think you should try to meet your friends face to face. That belief might leave me more isolated than most, but it is so difficult and trivial to text each other as a main form of communication.
A friend of mine recently gave me a call. I knew him since I was eleven years old and just starting real, non-homeschooled, school. It was truly good to hear from him, to talk to him, and to realize that people that I used to be friends with can still be friends.
But I don’t think social media works that way. Not for the most part, anyways: that’s the function of calling or texting.
Something that I have come to realize is that social media companies are politically biased. Everyone is, but those in charge of social media companies have a lot of power over what people see. Even search engines, such as Google, have manipulated search results in favour of political biases. This, in combination with the algorithms that dictate what users see (in order to keep them engaged for longer) means that avid social media users often become political radicalists. And “avid social media users” encompasses a large percentage of the population. Which is why I am weary of what the present has brought, and what the future will bring.
The terminology has seeped into the vocabulary of people. People talk about “content” with regards to time-wasting online videos and other forms of media. They talk about their “feed” or “for you page”. And I think about the algorithms that control that and the impact that it might have on people.
I have seen a poster on the university campus that said something along the lines of “you should follow queer creators [on social media]” and I thought “why?” Look, I think that it is clear by my writing that I am not prejudiced towards the sexual proclivities that different people have. As far as I am aware, they don’t have a choice in those matters, and that is of no concern to me. And it shouldn’t be. When it comes to sexual things the only thing that matters is that the two people involved consent and find enjoyment. And that’s a tricky matter as people can often persuade themselves into believing that they consent, but that’s irrelevant to what I’m talking about. The point is, why should I follow ANYONE on social media? Why is anyone moralizing about these things? The correct answer, I think, is that you really shouldn’t spend time on social media. That might make you more isolated, but does that really matter? Is connecting online at all comparable to connecting in person?
You ought to seek real human connection. Social media is a substitute for that in the same way that drugs are a substitute for achievement (and human connection as well). You ought to seek human connection because it will help you to learn about yourself and where you fit in the world. It will teach you what your values are and it will keep you from becoming insane. Social media does not keep you from going insane and, I think, it rewards insanity.
The point of what I’m talking about, and I will talk more about it in the future, is that I think it would be beneficial to a lot of people to sit down and write. And a funny idea I had was that this website I’m using to write for my Self could be a database for others to do the same. They would be able to connect with their ideas, values, emotions, and perhaps realize things within themselves that they didn’t know; they would be able to have something to pass on to future generations for the future to say “This is who he was”; they could have novels of their ideas and their beliefs written down in the same way that we have the great classics in literature passed down through generations.
Of course, this would be separated from social media. It would be anonymous and only something people could read if they happened upon it or you deliberately shown it to them. Essentially a personal blog without the algorithms that addict people and the likes and reactions that keep them engaged. Like a way to easily write journals that you could keep and pass down and use to your advantage, as opposed to the advantage of some shady corporation in China.
This is not fleshed out, but it is perhaps worth consideration in the distant future, I think. The thing is that it would not make a lot of money and it would only engage those who see the benefit. Many people have no inclination towards writing, and plenty of people prefer the short term benefit of mindless social media use.
I like to think of my Self as having strong principles. Generally, strong principles go against practical common knowledge. I may be wrong in some of my principles, but I am human and I will do all that I can to change to become my ideal Self. That is, funnily enough, one of my principles.
You ought not to rely on God, at least not in the traditional sense. Rationality is Man’s means of survival. I’ve said it before. Man does not have sharp claws nor fangs, but he has a mind that he relies on for his survival. I love to use bears as an example. Bears are huge. They have large muscle mass, sharp claws, and wicked canines. They do not need to rely on their mind for survival, so you will never see a bear build a civilization with other fellow bears: they have no need. Man, on the other hand, has some size, some teeth, and some muscles, but is comparatively futile in combat with other predators. But Man has a powerful mind that he uses to his advantage.
What advantage? Survival. That is the highest value and one which is shared with all other forms of life. When you look out onto the world, you regard everything in terms of value or utility. A piece of dog shit on the sidewalk has potentially negative utility to you, so you are disgusted. A crisp hundred dollar bill, however, provides you a great deal of utility, so you pick it up. Every value you have can be distilled into your survival, and this is true no matter what species you belong to. Man wants to survive, and so he uses His mind. There are plenty of degrees of complexity to this, but it holds no matter what.
Why get married? So that you can become a better version of your Self. After all, two heads are better than one. Why become a better version of your Self? You are more resilient, more knowledgable, and better equipped to deal with the difficulties that the world has to offer. And why do you want that for your Self? Well, it’s so that you can survive. You can conquer all that which the world has to throw at you and you aren’t so dissatisfied or lost in life that you succumb to your own depression, which I think has become a motivator in life.
I believe that it used to be the case that Man did not often have to deal with suicide. His priorities involved not starving and not being eaten by a bear. But those threats have been diminishing since at least the Industrial Revolution. So what does he do with his time? The biological drive is still there. He still has a deep desire to be more resilient and capable of feeding himself and avoiding bears, but he also has a deep desire to feel pleasure and avoid pain. So he is at a cross-roads. Some choose to optimize their being for pleasure or happiness. That can involve addiction, social avoidance, isolation, short-term momentary happiness and, ultimately, their demise. But that is all in accordance with their biological drive to eat and not be eaten. Alternatively, they can choose to dedicate themself to be the best possible them that they could feasibly be because, of course, they wish to eat and not to be eaten. Most people are a mix of the two. But a greater threat these days than days before is dissatisfaction and it’s consequences, namely, suicide.
So we can distill marriage into the desire, the instinct, to survive. And I think this is the case for every goal or ambition that people have.
The reason that I do not think people ought to dedicate themselves to God, in the traditional sense, is that God takes the responsibility away from them for their own survival, among other things. As I’ve said, Man uses his mind to survive. He is responsible for doing so and he dictates what is good and what is evil. He should not rely on others, generally, to tell him which is which. That is an insult to his intelligence and therefore an insult to his ability to survive.
I am hard on religion, but as I’ve said before, I don’t think that the atheist necessarily has a leg up on the devotedly religious. The atheist rejects God, correctly so, but is often still prone to falling for a similar trap. I am speaking mostly about that which is worse even worse than subjecting your Self to God, which is losing your Self in hedonism or nihilism.
Both have a insidiously evil nature to them. The hedonist believes that pleasure is all that matters; the nihilist believes that nothing matters. The consequences of these beliefs are not something I will talk too much about as I feel they speak for themselves.
Just as social media provides an alternative to social connection; religion provides an alternative to meaning. If one were to stop using social media, he would need to find a way to connect with others. Similarily, if one were to lose their faith in God, he would need to find meaning. Many atheists have not found meaning and so they fall for the aforementioned traps. But just as man is capable of ascribing values to the world in which he lives, so too is he able to ascribe meaning. Before meaning can be reached, however, he must come to terms with his values, his principles.
To take a shortcut from this journey of self-discovery, I believe anyone who searches for this meaning honestly will come to the same conclusion.
He wishes for life after death.
For most, this involves bearing and raising moderately successful children. And that is a real ambition, a real goal, and it has real meaning that I am ill-equipped to even describe. For others, this involves some sort of creative ambition of creating something that can outlast you. Again, most people are a mix of both, and they should be a mix of both. Regardless, Man wishes to leave his mark on the world in which he lives. Like a dog pissing on a fire hydrant, but Man hopes to subsist through the water and cleaning chemicals used on the fire hydrant. He wishes for his children to have children, for his artistic merit to continue to be realized hundreds of years after his death. This seems to me to follow directly from man’s will to survive. If he wishes to live, then he wishes to live even after his death, and so he finds ways of doing that even if he doesn’t realize it.
There are plenty of traps along the way, however.
Back to what I consider my strong principles. I might tell this story and let that be the end of today. I moved to this city two hours south of my home town. I have been here for nearly three years which is by far the longest I’ve ever lived in a place besides my parents house. Previous to moving here, I was a rather serious alcoholic. And the consequence of that involved a relationship that I did not care for. Of course, as an alcoholic, I yearned for connection for connection’s sake. So I was in a relationship with someone I did not love for over three years.
We moved here together to go to school. I might talk more in depth about this in the future as it might be worth organizing in my head, but ultimately, it doesn’t bother me, so it’s not a priority. Still, it would probably be worth writing some things down for my sake of understanding my Self.
Anyways, We lived here where I live now. We used to be on the other side of the city where the homeless crack addicts would break into our apartment complex and pass out in the hallway. We lived there for about eight months before moving here for six months. At the end of that six months of daily drinking I decided it was the end of the relationship. I acted a little bit wrong about it too. I was sitting and fiddling on the piano as I told her probably without looking at her too much, but it had been a long time coming of that. Perhaps she didn’t realize it until she called me about a week later about how it was for the best (though not necessarily in those words). She said I was cold about it and that it hurt. I probably was. Anyways, that day that I ended it, I had to go to work from five to close. She called her mom who helped her move out during that time. She left almost nothing in the apartment but her piano, (what used to be) our cat, another cat we were temporarily caring for, and our photo album.
Months went by and I was alone. Just weeks after she left, I stopped drinking. I don’t know how that worked. I was focusing on school and writing music and doing lonesome things that are good to do alone. She eventually texted my parents asking them to bring her piano back. I did not like that. Had she came down and gotten her piano, I would’ve been happy to move it into her car; had she sent her parents down and gotten her piano, I would’ve been happy to move it into theirs. But she wanted me and my parents to do the work for her. I did not like the idea. So, when my mother came down to take me out to lunch I told her that I would not move the piano on account of her (having disrespected me multiple times) asking me to do her a favour. It went against my principles. My mother hated that decision of mine. I stand by it today but somewhat unsure. The piano belonged to her, but she abandoned it and asked a favour from me. I did not want to do her a favour as I do not want to do favours for people I do not respect or do not respect me. I do not believe I am obligated either. But my mother tried to make me feel bad about it. I felt bad that she did that. My mother has these outbursts which affect me and which are delicately crafted to affect me, I think. The piano is still here.
My principles could be wrong. But I can admit that. If I reason that my principles are wrong, then I think that I would change them accordingly. Sometimes, principles go against practicality. I think a lot of people sacrifice that. It’s easy to do. But I think that it is wrong to do so. That’s it for today.
MyShelf 