Hey, man, has it ever occurred to you that love is a is not the opposite of hate? You can't enjoy the other emotions properly without it. Bitterness, vengeance, hate...these are all offshoots of love. No, indifference is the opposite of love AND hate.
I was born in America, but I grew up in Canada. I moved here just at the right time, when the school was covering the US constitution. Once I got down into it, I fell in love with this country and the ideals upon which it was founded. The ideals speak for themselves, and the historical progression of America - though it had its dips - was a steady increase in the standard of living and liberties for more and more of its population. Hell, I loved this country so much, I spent 10 years in its service.
And that's about the time things started to go bad, Jim. I was sent to two "conflicts" that turned out to be nothing more than trade shows...nothing new there, just another dip in the road, right?
But then I've watched since, as we picked up two MORE trade shows, and as we've tossed away more and more of our principles along the way. Torture is acceptable now, and 50% of America believes that there never was a right to privacy. Religious whackjobs (see: The Family) control what parts of our government aren't run by huge corporations, and freedom has been reduced to Freedom™.
So what happens when you suffer constant disappointment with something you love? When the bastards chip away at everything that made this country great, and the general population couldn't give a damn, or even cheers it on?
Yeah, you get hate. So if you've ever wondered why I hate America™, now you know.
Or Kill me.
:mittens:
I get told I should be Patriotic, Roger.
I get told it in person now and then, and passively by a whole slew of sentiment and expectation. I also want every countrified jack - bastard who expects me to pay more for a t-shirt "made in America", to suck a tailpipe. They all fall apart jsut as fast, and I'd rather buy products I'm proud to own up to being made here.
What has America done for me?
America taxes every purchase I make, any luxury they can pin down, and the very money I earn at my job.
I live frugal, I don't overuse heat, water, or electricity, I keep focused and spartan to do things I like, only to watch assistance and favor go to people I hate and programs I'll never see benefit from.
America educated me in a brick bomb shelter surrounded by hoods and assholes, letting cynical second rate teaching, glory hole administration, and students who didn't want to be there drag down the whole insitution.
America rattles the dying suspension out of my car and drops chunks of interstate highway on it's roof because road repair didn't quite make the budget.
America treats it's thugs with an impotent convoluted court system, and spits them out of it's "houses of correction" as soon as they get too crowded. They enver get any of the GOOD criminals either.
America elects whackos, and even if an infintessimal vote is the only tool they have against them, they can't be bothered to use it against said whackos.
America is also where my cohorts, most of my friends and family are. However badly it fucks up, or however poorly it's run, I'm still a piece of it, not at the end of the day, but every minute and day.
It isn't the paragon of reason, education, and civility I'd like it to be. I'd cry until I BLEED if people could react to the good of a country as a whole, instead of their hard wired tribal instinct, but it's not the kind of thing they'll do naturally. It's not a thing you can tell them either, they have to figure it out themselves, and I don't trust the fuckheads to go that far yet.
I want to scalp every "businessman" who treats dollar bills like pokemon too, for starters. They are the new lawyers.
So I'm exclusive about my America. It's only the people I like; who even if you're wrong color, wrong side, wrong birthplace, can still act civil, and respect that you're in the same shit they are. The folks settign up shops or industries I want to see get good business, who's primary inspiration is doing their work, not shitting in the well just for the sake of making a few of their own filthier rich. I'd like to have an America that's worth having. If this one goes down before that can happen, I'll dance and scream and fan the flames. Seeing this palce square it's shit away would be a rare thing, but a worthwhile one, It'll happen here a lot quicker and easier than the rest of the world.
Humanity i love you by ee cummings
Humanity i love you
because you would rather black the boots of
success than inquire whose soul dangles from his
watch-chain which would be embarrassing for both
parties and because you
unflinchingly applaud all
songs containing the words country home and
mother when sung at the old howard
Humanity i love you because
when you're hard up you pawn your
intelligence to buy a drink and when
you're flush pride keeps
you from the pawn shops and
because you are continually committing
nuisances but more
especially in your own house
Humanity i love you because you
are perpetually putting the secret of
life in your pants and forgetting
it's there and sitting down
on it
and because you are
forever making poems in the lap
of death Humanity
i hate you
Shit yeah.
:mittens: Fucking awesome!
I especially liked this bit.
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on December 21, 2009, 05:15:04 PM
...love is not the opposite of hate. You can't enjoy the other emotions properly without it. Bitterness, vengeance, hate...these are all offshoots of love. No, indifference is the opposite of love AND hate...
So many times I'm called a miserable asshole, and my friends wonder why I "hate everything" so much. So... Yeah... Diggin' it.
Quote from: dimo on December 21, 2009, 07:49:28 PM
:mittens: Fucking awesome!
I especially liked this bit.
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on December 21, 2009, 05:15:04 PM
...love is not the opposite of hate. You can't enjoy the other emotions properly without it. Bitterness, vengeance, hate...these are all offshoots of love. No, indifference is the opposite of love AND hate...
So many times I'm called a miserable asshole, and my friends wonder why I "hate everything" so much. So... Yeah... Diggin' it.
It also explains why you can love something and hate it at the same time.
The distance between love and hate isn't as great as the distance between either and indifference. All Jedi on this bitch: Love can lead to Fear and Jealousy which can lead to Hate. Of course, a pithy way to put it and not incredibly illuminating.
The real difference between the Passions and Apathy seems to be effort. Indifference is often typified by "I cannot be bothered" laziness, and with a large number (ever increasing) of people who cannot be bothered, there is now a market for manufactured, plastic, 'Passiontm'. The distance between Passion and 'Passiontm' is designed to appear very small, but is actually even larger than that between Passion and apathy.
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, and 'Passiontm' is the very incorrect first step. Real Love or Hate requires getting to the end of those thousand miles, each and every step.
There's also a difference between passion and completely losing your shit over something trite and inconsequential. Cf: People on "Reality TV", Twilight fans, etc.
Quote from: LMNO on December 21, 2009, 08:52:25 PM
There's also a difference between passion and completely losing your shit over something trite and inconsequential. Cf: People on "Reality TV", Twilight fans, etc.
what's the line, then?
it has to be something 'worthwhile'?
it has to be longstanding?
I have no idea where the line is.
But I find it very hard to call the screaming madness of MTV's The Shore anything closely resembling "passion".
The feeling is the same, the biological urge sated - that's the scary part. These mass produced phantasmagoria milk the passion from our masses like sucking the venom from a diamondback. Viper may as well be toothless by the time the "vote now" message has been transmitted.
wasn't there also some thing about how crying and laughing are really similar on some biological level or something?
That's how we arrived at horrormirth if I'm not mistaken
Quote from: LMNO on December 21, 2009, 08:57:23 PM
I have no idea where the line is.
But I find it very hard to call the screaming madness of MTV's The Shore anything closely resembling "passion".
I don't know how to accurately define it, but I see it as:
infatuation vs. passion
Not to say that I really have a grasp enough on reality to stand in judgment as to what is "real" and what is just an infatuation, but... That's the best I've come up with so far.
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on December 21, 2009, 08:58:47 PM
The feeling is the same, the biological urge sated - that's the scary part. These mass produced phantasmagoria milk the passion from our masses like sucking the venom from a diamondback. Viper may as well be toothless by the time the "vote now" message has been transmitted.
Right...
what was it in Brave New World?
Passion Surrogate treatments. they used these because people's bodies require the physiological effects of passion to function properly, but for obvious reasons, we can't have
real passion gumming up the cogs of progress....
Real passion is unpredictable and not generally conducive to status quo
(http://www.bjornagain.com/images/status-quo-photo-status-quo-6234458.jpg)
The way I see it something like this zero "energy" is total apathy, as you increase the "energy" you approach more passion, if you over load the "energy" or are fundamentally incapable of handling passion then you end up with what LMNO described, a kind of mental saturation (like turning the volume up too high on shitty speakers).
To be most effective, I guess you have to maintain just enough passion to still be able to think well enough to put it to good use. (Loud enough to rawk with your cawk out, but still hear the kick ass solo clearly)
If you've got yourself a batch of 'PassionTM', you're never going to be able to put it to good use. It's flawed from the beginning. (You accidentally bought a Jimmy Shand CD)
"Love under will"
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on December 21, 2009, 09:10:51 PM
Real passion is unpredictable and not generally conducive to status quo
If that's the only difference, then there's not really any advantage in that vs. the Passion™ of pop culture foci, outside of the minority groups of Discordians and their ilk.
further, i don't see why those of us that seek spontaneity and status-quo busting couldn't be channeled and corralled with a modicum of clever engineering.
Add: ... just noticed there is a pic in your post that nannywall blocked.
perhaps makes my response stupid.... posting anyways.
(http://images.mirror.co.uk/upl/m3/dec2007/0/1/AFFB4A07-C548-7195-93C65234794F9935.jpg)?
Quote from: Iptuous on December 21, 2009, 09:25:34 PM
If that's the only difference, then there's not really any advantage in that vs. the Passion™ of pop culture foci..
There isn't. Lot of angry people will have you believe otherwise but, ultimately, if existence is meaningless then a hollow sham of an existence is no more or less so.
Comes down to personal taste. Personally I think the mainstream swimmers smell like junk food but I don't pretend there's any higher judgment than my opinion.
Fuck looking for meaning or depth in Passion. You want to know what real Passion is? You want to know what makes it better? It's when it's the only thing that makes sense to you. It's when it's the thing that you enjoy the most. It's when you love and hate it at once and you don't even want to bother reconciling the two, because they go so fucking well together. I'm that way with punk rock. Hell, I'm that way with rock and roll in general. I've found that opposites like love and hate tend not to be separate things, but rather the same thing viewed from different perspectives. The trick is staying close to the edge and giving it all you have. Be loud and fast and out-of-control. I think that's what we all love here. Rebellion. Maybe that's the key. Maybe Rebellion is True Passion.
But you've got to be careful there, man. Rebellion is a tricky subject. After all, isn't it just another tool of The Machine™? Rebellion these days is carefully controlled and contained. I think Rebellion is a lot like Passion, in that regard. There's Passion, and then there's Passion™. Sure Rock at one point was Pure, Raw, Powerful, it was fucking beautiful. But all of that is being swept aside by the Radio, fucking MTV, here's what you should listen to. Here's what you should buy. Buy. Buy. Buy. Listen to this, wear this band's shit. Like every other tool of Rebellion, The Machine™ figures out how to turn it against us. Okay, okay, I know what you're thinking "Hey, Chief, what about X band's message or their Ideology. They're still rocking it!" And that may be true. But for every one of them, one of us that gets it? There's thousands--millions, who don't fucking get it. They bob their heads because they're programmed to. That's Rebellion™ for you.
That's what makes The Machine so fucking horrible. It can turn one free thinker's ideas and thoughts and scramble it over the airwaves to their drones. They can take something so beautiful, and market it, spin it, overplay it, until the message is lost among all the noise.
Quote from: Triple Zero on December 21, 2009, 09:05:27 PM
wasn't there also some thing about how crying and laughing are really similar on some biological level or something?
Crying and screaming in horror too. Mirth uses the same chemicals as stress reactions.
Quote from: Chief Uwachiquen on December 22, 2009, 07:48:44 AM
But you've got to be careful there, man. Rebellion is a tricky subject. After all, isn't it just another tool of The Machine™? Rebellion these days is carefully controlled and contained. I think Rebellion is a lot like Passion, in that regard. There's Passion, and then there's Passion™. Sure Rock at one point was Pure, Raw, Powerful, it was fucking beautiful. But all of that is being swept aside by the Radio, fucking MTV, here's what you should listen to. Here's what you should buy. Buy. Buy. Buy. Listen to this, wear this band's shit. Like every other tool of Rebellion, The Machine™ figures out how to turn it against us. Okay, okay, I know what you're thinking "Hey, Chief, what about X band's message or their Ideology. They're still rocking it!" And that may be true. But for every one of them, one of us that gets it? There's thousands--millions, who don't fucking get it. They bob their heads because they're programmed to. That's Rebellion™ for you.
That's what makes The Machine so fucking horrible. It can turn one free thinker's ideas and thoughts and scramble it over the airwaves to their drones. They can take something so beautiful, and market it, spin it, overplay it, until the message is lost among all the noise.
:mittens:
Quote from: Chief Uwachiquen on December 22, 2009, 07:48:44 AM
But you've got to be careful there, man. Rebellion is a tricky subject. After all, isn't it just another tool of The Machine™? Rebellion these days is carefully controlled and contained. I think Rebellion is a lot like Passion, in that regard. There's Passion, and then there's Passion™. Sure Rock at one point was Pure, Raw, Powerful, it was fucking beautiful. But all of that is being swept aside by the Radio, fucking MTV, here's what you should listen to. Here's what you should buy. Buy. Buy. Buy. Listen to this, wear this band's shit. Like every other tool of Rebellion, The Machine™ figures out how to turn it against us. Okay, okay, I know what you're thinking "Hey, Chief, what about X band's message or their Ideology. They're still rocking it!" And that may be true. But for every one of them, one of us that gets it? There's thousands--millions, who don't fucking get it. They bob their heads because they're programmed to. That's Rebellion™ for you.
That's what makes The Machine so fucking horrible. It can turn one free thinker's ideas and thoughts and scramble it over the airwaves to their drones. They can take something so beautiful, and market it, spin it, overplay it, until the message is lost among all the noise.
Haha, that's not rebellion. Rebellion isn't what the machine gives you. Rebellion is something you have to look for, and if you don't find it you make it yourself.
Quote from: Chief Uwachiquen on December 22, 2009, 07:48:44 AM
But you've got to be careful there, man. Rebellion is a tricky subject. After all, isn't it just another tool of The Machine™? Rebellion these days is carefully controlled and contained. I think Rebellion is a lot like Passion, in that regard. There's Passion, and then there's Passion™. Sure Rock at one point was Pure, Raw, Powerful, it was fucking beautiful. But all of that is being swept aside by the Radio, fucking MTV, here's what you should listen to. Here's what you should buy. Buy. Buy. Buy. Listen to this, wear this band's shit. Like every other tool of Rebellion, The Machine™ figures out how to turn it against us. Okay, okay, I know what you're thinking "Hey, Chief, what about X band's message or their Ideology. They're still rocking it!" And that may be true. But for every one of them, one of us that gets it? There's thousands--millions, who don't fucking get it. They bob their heads because they're programmed to. That's Rebellion™ for you.
That's what makes The Machine so fucking horrible. It can turn one free thinker's ideas and thoughts and scramble it over the airwaves to their drones. They can take something so beautiful, and market it, spin it, overplay it, until the message is lost among all the noise.
This is the best thing written on PD this month.
I agree with that post. Rebellion is an essential part of The Machinetm and of the human experience. Real Rebellion. The packaged shit we've been fed for the last 20 years and more hearkens back to that "Doing everything different from the mainstream is exactly the same as doing everything exactly the same as the mainstream" bit. The problem is in identifying which is which, as ever.
I dunno, I have some ideas floating around I need to pull together for this.
Rebellion is like Freedom in this respect.
If you see either, printed on the front of an overpriced teeshirt, available in a range of rad, this-season colours - assume it's counterfeit.
protip: Real rebels don't think of themselves as rebelling - they're just exercising the freedom that everyone else thinks you have to ask for.
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on December 22, 2009, 06:12:41 PM
Rebellion is like Freedom in this respect.
If you see either, printed on the front of an overpriced teeshirt, available in a range of rad, this-season colours - assume it's counterfeit.
protip: Real rebels don't think of themselves as rebelling - they're just exercising the freedom that everyone else thinks you have to ask for.
THIS.
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on December 22, 2009, 06:12:41 PM
Rebellion is like Freedom in this respect.
If you see either, printed on the front of an overpriced teeshirt, available in a range of rad, this-season colours - assume it's counterfeit.
protip: Real rebels don't think of themselves as rebelling - they're just exercising the freedom that everyone else thinks you have to ask for.
Rebellion isn't free, you gotta toss in your buck o' five. Rebellion costs a buck o' five.
\
(http://www.bbspot.com/Images/News_Features/2004/10/team_america.jpg)
Dumbass references aside, well said. That example didn't even occur to me.
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on December 22, 2009, 06:12:41 PM
Rebellion is like Freedom in this respect.
If you see either, printed on the front of an overpriced teeshirt, available in a range of rad, this-season colours - assume it's counterfeit.
protip: Real rebels don't think of themselves as rebelling - they're just exercising the freedom that everyone else thinks you have to ask for.
Wisdom. Why didn't I think of that?