Messages

Hey thanks for answering. I don't know you much, but I think I may have some idea of your hurting. I lost two close friends to cancer this year, and yes, that fucking disease is one top notch argument against the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, all powerful thing. More like omnivorous. Needs to fuck right off.

I am saddened and aggrieved.

But I am sure that the torch of a man of his stature is now carried by his grateful spiritual heirs, may his wisdom grace the world in aeternis.

Them tamarinds can be a pain.

Why is your husband dying?

No. 8, and so much.

If you were to launch some kind of an international single-issue movement with the hashtag #heyzuckyouassholegiveusourrawfeeds, how would you go about it? What I want from Facebook is all the posts of all my friends, time-stamped. Some tools to do my own filtering would be nice, but I think that stuff would grow out of the ground if it were planted with raw feed.

Been thinking hard about that one. I guess it's mostly Roger. But my overall memory of my interactions is also that I messed it up a lot, got defensive, arrogant and also several times plain stupid. I'm not completely sure how to fix that, but I do want to. I am very much open to suggestions.

Hey, hello, I'd like to give getting along with some of the people here another go, because (how boring) once again I done been changed.
I realize that none of you may be interested in that, but just in case.

Ask me anything. Or tell me anything.

So what would you call a benevolent Buddhist theocracy running a chill subsistence economy with no private property beyond personal effects? I guess you could call that all three.

Staying tuned.

RD Laing's The Facts of Life is a pretty good demonstration of how far this kind of thinking is willing to go.

Meme Magic, you say?

Actively looking for and engaging with accomplished and versatile people with radically different ideas on important things seems to be an activity that boosts immunity.

It seems to me catchy one-liners (or even few-liners, we can include iconic songs and conspiracy-theories, too) are primarily in-group markers to aid identification (a bit like uniforms or dress-codes), but as most of us are now swimming in a sea of ideological mess and get exposed to most everyone's brain-dirt, their role is shifting: in the before-time, by and large you found yourself in a group and then studied and learned the visual, linguistic and other behavioural badges that went with being a member: in this after-time, children who are not forced into a specific group by their caretakers actually build identities out of various badges originating from various groups and matrices. These cobbled identities sometimes have a weird tragi-comic feel, like cargo-cults.

Teaching critical thinking to kids (largely by demonstration) is vitally important. If that parental duty is not neglected, there is a hope that the identities they build for themselves will be somewhat organic and adaptive, leading to autonomy and a level of immunity against the catchy bullshit that now appears to be our common substrate. No guarantees, for sure, but by and large it seems to work better than not doing it at all.

[But what, then, is mania?]

– Merry Christmas, and make sure you get some rest, will you!

– We'll be resting all right, for a bit, maybe, but life is calling!

– Well, if life is calling, you must go. And then there are those times when it doesn't call. It's the worst thing in the world perhaps.

– Yes. I think that is depression, when life is not calling. But I trust that I have gone beyond that now, that I will not be in that predicament again.

– There is that level. You learn to notice when life isn't calling you, and you get a move on yourself. You learn that when you find yourself in a place where life is not calling you, it's high time to move along. Don't stay therem not even a minute, get marching right away.

– I guess you're right.

*

Of course later on, professional that I am, I polished it up a little more. Aiming for exactitude, I would say that depression is when one does not hear the call of life (it has become my conviction somehow that life is always calling), and despairs. And getting over depression is when one learns that, instead of despairing, it is better to clean the ears, move the head about, and to move away from that place with poor acoustics.

*

But what, then, is mania?

In the human individual, when it is created, the instinct to engage with the world is overwhelmingly strong. The call of life rings out in the voice of angelic trumpets and there is no question about it, I am already following the call.

Often it happens that at that precise point,
I get punched in the nose.
Stabbed in the stomach.
Abandoned.
Betrayed.
Hurt.
Tortured.
Tormented.
Considered less than nothing.
Ridiculed.
Misunderstood.
Subjected to indignation,
decried a sinner,
placed in a salt well,
killed,
shoved bit by bit
in the direction of death.

If that becomes chronic, and there isn't anybody there who understands what is happening, if there is nobody available to show this, to plead for and receive solace from, the ability to answer the call of life is compromised. Eventually, the call itself grows quiet, recedes to the depths, becomes unnoticed, as if it weren't there at all (of course it is there until the very moment of death, although it may wither away to a tiny, thin, fragile little red thread).

But then on the other hand...

life is the strongest thing there is.

And when that baneful, curled up, inward-turning, self-reproaching, cold and necrotic and silent and constricted way of being finally brings me to the very edge of what I can take, the call of life breaks through the long-built prison walls, and I respond with extasy and exhilaration, vibrating with joy as I notice that I can still hear that horn, that I am still able to cry out my answer and to follow.

That's the beginning of mania.

Only turning away from life for an extended period weakens and sickens the musculature of life.

Joy slowly turns into compulsion,
a drivenness,
and the wounds from whose pain
I turned away in the first place
begin to hurt,
with all the pain
I had chosen
not to feel
before.

This is like twisting a knife
that a wound has healed around,
twisting it hard,
maybe many years later.

The personality creaks and buckles under the stress,
and the human begins to want to fall apart.

And the manic person needs
input,
input,
input:

experiences,
information,
objects,
whatever,
more
and more
and more.

Because after a period of disengagement,
if I wish to re-engage with the world,
I need to orient myself:

I need to know
what the world
is like.

People get a little reckless in this vortex.

With the exception of very rare lucky instances, this is the time of sedation. Of narcosis, of forgetting, of the drop of saliva stretching from the edge of the lower lip, the repetitive movement, the soft, sickly warmth of the asylum. Faintly, it smells of urine.

Like it happened to my dad, many times over. He'll be 80 in April, and he has given up entirely, long ago. There isn't much I wouldn't give to see him shine just once more, no matter how crazy, how sickly his light would be, but there is very little chance of that.



That's not something he has done to himself.



Others did this to him. The mania is his, but the sedation is ours.



To be honest, I would not protest if we were to do this somehow differently from now on.

*

An old man fond of tall tales once related that in India there is a social class, a part of the middle class, who can presently avail themselves of the services of the both old-style witch-doctors and modern medicine, as they see fit. If, in one of those families, a young person in their early twenties goes mental, not sleeping, talking strange all the time, throwing out truly bizarre ideas to improve the world, a great deal depends on where the family seek help.

If they turn to the village witchdoctor, this is the advice they get:

Call the entire family, all the relatives, all the friends, and hold a week-long festival in honour of this young person.

Celebrate them:
there should always be someone to listen to them with rapt attention,
praise them,
bask in their beauty,
feast,
drink,
be merry.

Within 3 or 4 days, the patient will calm down, have a good, long, healthy sleep, and return to their normal life. Although it is quite possible that they will make some major adjustments to it, the excessive spinning will abate, and it will not return. If it should, after a number of years, the treatment is to be repeated. There's never need for a third occasion.



And then that happens.



But if they go see a psychiatrist, they will receive this advice: sadly, the child suffers from bipolar disorder.

We will now sedate him,
put him to sleep for a few days,
and that will relax him.

Sadly, it is an incurable disease,
but,
luckily,
its symptoms can be kept in check.

They will have to take medication for the rest of their lives,
and they should be kept under vigilant observation,
because, unfortunately, it may often happen that
they will forget that they are ill,
stop taking the medicine
and become
dangerous to self
and society
again.

And then that happens.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRnNDkHb0MU

"Between P-Funk and Hirley0"

That's like the rock and the hard place, right?

Hi, Kevin,

"I'm new here and thanks for having me here."
I am not having you here. you came of your own accord.

"Demographic: 36 and United States, New York
Professional Info: well marketing for gaming website, https://www.gametop.com. Visit if you love some online free games. I love playing games for entertainment and i'm sure most do"
What's "well marketing"? Did you come here to advertise? I hope for your sake that you didn't. I don't like free online games, I don't like entertainment and I don't like you much.

"What you like to do in your free time: games, games, and more games."
No, actually not me. I play 3D tetris about 5 times a year, board games with my kids 'cause they deserve it, and I play music. The stuff you are referring to is offensive bollocks, in my considered opinion.

"Sometimes just chill and have a a beer."
That's good to know. Try sticking a couplefew tabs of acid in it.

"What kind of topics / projects are you interested in?"
How is that any of your business, exactly?

"Anything that is creative, interesting and refreshing...Cheers"
Well, if your intention was to provide a conclusive demonstration to the effect that you are a vacuous moron, hats off to you, Sir!

"How did you find Eris and what did you to her once you found her?"
I found her by living a full and risky life, something you may also have heard about in movies. Once I found her, I offered my respects and tried to be on my best behaviour. So far, she's been easy on me.

Best of luck, even though I think the deck is stacked against you on this one.

I have no doubts that we will adhere to our glorious tradition of all failed revolutions, wars of liberty and bids for independence. In the meantime, we have fun. This is what we did outside parliament last night. https://www.facebook.com/bruno.fuchs.92/posts/1196122187229770
It was cold, but some people danced.

We seem to be having a bit of a revolution over here. Spirits are high, people are cavorting in the streets, policemen are having shit thrown at them, politicians are being told in no uncertain terms where they can stick it. The final straw was the "slave law", which allows employers to force workers to do overtime while also allowing them to pay for that overtime up to three years after it is actually worked. But the bastards also plan to pass another law on Wednesday which will kinda put an end to Hungary having anything remotely like an independent judiciary. The dance continues.

The other day I was in conversation with some fellow dissenters and I said:

There's this guy in America, he used to hate my guts, I think now he just thinks I'm an assburgered silly cunt, in fact, there's an entire bunch of people over there who think I'm an annoying, narcissistic, attention-whoring simpleton, but I've learnt a great deal from them. His most important teaching, and I'm afraid I may not be quoting verbatim, was something like "if we agree on 30 percent of important things, we may not be able to work together. If we agree on 60-70 percent of important things, we're made for each other, let's stand up to power together. If you think we agree on 100% of important things, go see a psychiatrist!".

So there goes (and I think it's quite funny): I am grateful to you, guys, and I am particularly and personally grateful to you, Roger. And there's very little you can do about it!

Thank you.