vs. Civilization

I guess if it were possible to hit the do-over button on Chris McCandless’ life, maybe I would’ve pictured him back at Slab city. Maybe he would be in a remote cabin near a National Forest (Montana maybe?) , but with his car, or an emergency phone that he could’ve used. Or back at the farm where he was running the combine. Maybe he would be part of Tom Brown’s community, and nobody would’ve impugned his integrity in the slightest. I am not sure what would make you want to be in a situation where there was nobody for miles, accidents do happen even in the middle of civilization. I think it is deeply rooted in human nature to put our heads together, to build community. Back in the very primitive past, I think if you had one family of four, they were at much more risk from the environment, from accidents, wild animals, disease, etc. If you jump to a situation where maybe you have 2 extended families living near each other and in communication, now you have the beginning of a community. Then there is a much higher degree of safety, far less risk, yet still a minimum of anything that Chris would’ve objected to. With another handful of families, a church, a post office, a marketplace, some medical care and a jail, now you have a village or small town. I can’t imagine what would be wrong with living on the outskirts of a small town, one of those places with about 8 stoplights and a gas station in the middle of lots of desert, mountains or prairie. How much hypocrisy or conflict could there be in a population of say 800 or so, maybe 2 cops who you would know by first name? Maybe that was an unacceptable level of compromise, but if the man had had a phone and a friend nearby, or had kept the car, he would be still alive. Still hunting, fishing, hiking the AT trail, writing his book, etc. It’s almost frustrating to think about too much, and I can relate to him to a very strong degree. My wife was watching the movie with me and she was like “Don’t you get any ideas!” Even at this moment on the Northern tip of Manhattan, I cannot hear or see any of my neighbors now. For the past several minutes it has been unusually quiet. No car horns, no music, no voices, no TV. I love this neighborhood. Yet, I know my neighbors are there, this suspended moment where I hear only birds and the hum of the fridge is only temporary at best. Yet, even when there are people around, it’s still normal levels of people noise, nobody in the building is really obnoxious to the point where there would be serious conflict that is legitimate. I guess we all have our level of people presence that we can handle and we choose our place to live accordingly.

Into the Wild

This is one of the most beautiful movies I have seen in a long time. It is deep and provides quite a bit of food for thought. To look at it from back to front, I am really sorry for Chris’ (Alex’s) death. It seemed like a shocking, unnecessary waste. I cannot really help but think that he could’ve accomplished what he wanted and needed to know without going to such an extreme. There are many places, many communities for people who think this way, who feel this way and want to be close to nature and not beholden so much to civilization. I think that to a certain extent, we are not as aware of our blockages, our problems, the things that hold us back until we can handle looking at them. When we are angry, upset, confused by the same things that keep coming up, that is where we need to take a deep breath, not react, but really hold (our/my) ground mentally and dig in. Why is situation X confusing to me? Why is situation Y making me angry? What needs to be solved here? There are so many lessons to be learned from this film. It is keeper. More on pros and cons of civilization to follow.

Buckling down

I guess in some ways I am thankful about my financial struggles. I really feel that my wake-up call has come in time for me to do something about it. I have reached a point of absolute frustration, disappointment, anger about the money that nearly all other matters and concerns have been wiped from my plate. I have gotten extremely focused on this problem and I am determined to solve it no matter what it takes. I have pulled the trigger on a second job, which I expect will reach 32 hours on the clock and I am looking at putting in some 60-70 hour weeks total. I don’t think I’ll have to do it for long before I am out of debt, fully caught up and I begin to put together some reserves. Once that happens, then I will be far less dependent on either position than I am now. Then I can start to look at scheduling some coursework and that clearly outlines a point in time of returning to (finally!) one decent paying paying professional job. I am glad I had, for one reason or another, maximum time to explore, take shots at singing and really get it together before reaching this point of having to put the pedal to the metal. It seems like such a cliche, but it is a cliche because it has the truth within it and its a pretty damn good, concise description: nose to the grindstone, etc.. For the 6 months to a year or so that I expect it to take, if I take care of myself physically and really stay focused, I can get it done, I just have to be smarter about it than my previous attempt at this (different second job, MUCH more money). Once I have the reserves then I can get the passive income streams going, and then I will also have some leverage vs. the new job if any problems arise, which I don’t expect. I may even keep the second one for a little while just to make sure of a smooth transition. As an added bonus, I think I found a way to pull off the ‘professional student’ gig that results in potentially having the entire week off Monday thru Friday. Of course this is an option for those who are childless and out of debt. With debt and children, the pro student thing will be much more difficult. The dream at last is within reach.  

Prejudice and Loss

This was a comment I posted on another blog in response to a racially tinged comment:

The problem and intrinsic evil with prejudice is that the bigoted person never realizes what they miss. It is just basic common sense to make decisions about people ONE AT A TIME. I admit to being prejudiced too- against ignorant, bigoted white trash of any income. Yet, these people never waste much of my time because they quickly reveal who they are. They are not smart enough to hide it for long, and they seek others of the same polluted, faulty, indefensible mindset. Then I can excuse myself from their life immediately & permanently. There are better ways to spend time: I could call my mentor for advice on investing: he is Latino. Or I can email my ex-girlfriend: she’s Jewish. Or I can go have a drink with my wife’s friend from work: she’s  African American. I am deeply thankful for my friends and colleagues of ALL ethnicities who have enriched my life immeasurably.  I hope I do the same for them.  I also hope all bigots eventually wake up, and realize they were taught to feel this way and it costs them a lot. But I don’t expect it to happen, they will probably just continue to lose.

 

Mental Constructs

So, I have been thinking a lot about Burian’s mental construct theory again and this is likely because I have not adequately resolved the questions it raises. To recap briefly, Burian states that we as human beings rely heavily on mental constructs to provide a sense of meaning in our lives, and that we risk insanity without these structures to rely on. Also, in fact that the realization that all subjective meaning is constructed is risky to stable mental health. My current line of thought about this is that the need for the constructs is a construct itself. I suspect that a higher level of evolutionary awareness can be achieved by discarding the constructs completely, developing an expanded, unburdened, purer level of consciousness through becoming more immediate to direct experience. The leap that must be made is one that is already taken by most people without necessarily being aware of it on a verbal level: that their subjective daily experience itself has intrinsic value and meaning by the mere fact of its existence as sequential sensory events. So, the starting point as given for all philosophy is that awareness itself is intrinsically meaningful. This line of thought taken further could lead to the conclusion that all experience is also intrinsically meaningful regardless of its nature, even that of suffering. Once I accept this, I find that any subsequent construct is at a more specific level, in terms of organizing ideas philosophically, it nests under the main principle as being more micro to its macro level of data. So now, I seem to have a guiding first principle, that if (used) as true, forms a sort of existential safety net. By its essence, it seems to cut right to the meat of any philosophical idea: subjective awareness is meaningful in an (a priori) way, or else what? If you are alive, your awareness exists as a material objective fact, so whether or not you ascribe meaning to it is not necessarily relevant. Awareness just is if you are alive. As humans, we are able to be aware of this and perhaps, to perceive a need to attribute meaning to it is also a construct that could be questionable in and of itself. Even if you (playing with fire here?) dare to say: “My awareness itself has no meaning”, that statement does not have to have anything following it.  If one were to feel that awareness without meaning creates a suicide imperative, that is also a construct. Whether it has meaning or not, a being’s subjective awareness still exists, and its existence can be terminated by a choice.  I find subjective meaning in the fact that this choice is available in a strange way, and also take an odd comfort in the fact that this awareness will end (or at least be fundamentally altered) by itself in physical death. That fact, to me renders the possibility of a meaningless awareness moot in the event that meaninglessness merits annihilation. Taking that as a given starting point now returns the focus of my inquiry back to the original first principle: Subjective awareness and experience have intrinsic meaning by the mere objective fact of their existence. Any other construct created for subjective meaning is more specific detail to this first principle. It seems like just a t-shirt philosophy but yields surprising depth when explored in context of the body of historical philosophy to date, at least what of it that I am aware of. My hope is that discarding all constructs beyond the first principle yields a mindset that is clear, uncluttered, immediate to sense experience and pristine. It has the potential to yield I believe, if not enlightenment, a level of awareness much closer to it than I have yet experienced, a sort of mu-shien  martial artist kind of state of being. If the first principle here expressed is internalized as instinct, a fundamental body-knowledge and form of self-acceptance, then all else just becomes focus on the here and now as flow. This mindset then seems to me to create an infinitude of possible choices and thoughts in any given moment or situation. It seems as a theory to be a little obvious, but to me the daily practice of it is not.