another lens

Humans are just animals. When they murder each other, it's the same as when a cat kills a bird. When their governments destroy each other, it's just one anthill invading another. This is life. Bubbles of peculiar energy that form and then pop, form and then pop, with much colliding into one another along the way. Often beautiful, often horrifically brutal and unjust, always a matter of perspective and illusion. As it will always be. Long after we're gone, long after our entire species is gone. I'm not taking sides anymore. 

That is my intention, in any case. Intention is an important concept, as I wrote about years ago, as I began school and everything. Not to cast any doubt on the free will issue, intentions have their causes like anything else. They also have their effects. A change in perspective may not be an act of free will, strictly speaking, but intention is about focusing on who we want to be, rather than who we are. 

Not to slip into nihilism, this can be about living in accordance with our values. We cannot change the world, for samsaric conditions never really change, but we can we always strive to live as a more benevolent element within it. This, regardless of how much we stumble and fall short, for where we end up will only be as meaningless as any notion of where we are. We do not exist as a fixed point in a given moment, but as an array of vectors, causes and conditions, momentarily manifesting as we form and then pop.

I've thought a lot about what my intentions should be over the last few decades, or however long it's been since this pandemic started. My intentions put on hold indefinitely, I had no idea what I should be doing and aimlessly waiting comes so naturally. I had no direction. The whole framework had collapsed, that I'd depended on so heavily for some much needed reinforcement of my mental health. 

I find myself thinking in past tense, although most of this is still true. Case numbers are coming down though, with little reason I can think of for them to ever go up again. Maybe a minor wave next fall, but for the most part, numbers should only come down from here on out, and this is the first time I can say that. Maybe this is putting me in more optimistic spirits. 

Or maybe the 36 hour depression fast I did a few days ago has helped with the neurochemistry. Maybe resolving to move on from politics has been a weight from my shoulders. Or maybe it's just that I've stopped using social media.

Whatever it is, I'm sure I'll be miserable again soon enough😀

happy?

Buddhism focuses a lot on the connection between suffering and desire. Even if you break your leg, they say the suffering really comes from wanting your leg not to be broken, more than the physiological pain of it. The idea being that pain itself isn't suffering, until you want the pain to go away. The broken leg takes this to a more difficult conclusion, but it's easier to think about in terms of wanting our lives to be better.

Yesterday, I was initially set off by Facebook showing me a memory from a year ago, when my life was going quite differently. It feels like a lifetime ago, when I had hope and optimism, and what really hurts is the contrast. I got to feel alive for a brief moment, only to have it taken away. The feeling of loss, of wanting that back is what's really painful. Craving. Attachment.

I sometimes think about how open I am about my pain, and how others perceive that. There's a related dynamic at work, where someone who cheerfully has nothing will seem like a much better person than someone who's miserable about never having enough. The more we have and crave, the weaker we look. A person with no arms or legs who can be happy about it can seem far stronger than the able bodied complainer.

I could certainly try to post that way instead, but it's critical that this is genuine. So often we leap to this idea that we can simply will this contentment into existence if we set our minds to it. This encourages us to be happy with whatever we have, to appear to be strong and healthy minded, such that people fake it to varying degrees. Appearing to be happy is the appearance of success, whatever else we actually do have, but if it's not real, it's not healthy at all. 

How happy is everyone else, really? I often wish others would be as open about it as I am, but I have no idea. I know that for me, it's not so simple, and I have doubts that the underlying mechanics of it ever are. If we're miserable because we're starved for human contact, this may be part craving, but it is also the physiological effects of human contact being absent. 

When our basic needs aren't being met, it's naive to think peace of mind can be found by a radical acceptance of the situation, as resulting deficiencies erode brain function directly. If a person is starving, suffering doesn't only come from the craving for food, but the deterioration of the mind starvation itself causes. Suffering is also a mechanism that's evolved to help us find food. The idea that we can transcend the basic physiology of it is naive, but the less we understand that physiology, the more we can pretend our minds are unaffected by such things. This pretense only gets us so far.

do not read me

 Sorry, just testing something. 

https://intorpor.blogspot.com/2022/01/read-me.html

vectors

I don't like that I'm so negative, but this judgment of myself is an odd one, as I clearly gravitate towards angry negative social media personalities and public figures, lately. I hate when others are optimistic about the way things are going. Why the hell would I want to be that way too? 

I find it deeply disturbing how oblivious everyone is. The effectiveness of partisan propaganda and sensationalist bullshit is the number one reason I have no hope. This country has been completely overtaken by actual rightwing psychopaths who thwarted elections, yelling "but Trump," and everyone falls for it. I hate Democrats, I hate politics, I hate everything. Instead of the kind gentle soul I'd hoped I'd be, it turns out that I'm bitter, angry, and hateful.

Humans are stupid. They always have been and always will be. Turns out, nothing is ever going to get better, and in fact, is rapidly getting worse. If I ever meet someone who can face that reality while remaining positive, they will have my deep admiration, but that's not the same as optimism. To be optimistic in light of human history and current events is just grotesque.

So, I've been pretty depressed about all that. The world has grown very dark, very fast. That's not even getting into the pandemic ripping us apart amidst it all. That it destroyed my life and coping mechanisms hasn't helped. That it fucked up my father's treatment and made it impossible for me to visit him while he battled cancer did not help, either.

It seems there is no getting over that. I have to learn to not think about him. Every time I do, it's as traumatic as ever. That seems to be the way people generally get over things. They stop thinking, they let themselves forget. Focus on the present, don't dwell in the past, don't think about it, don't learn from it, just stay positive no matter how fucked up everything is.

far from equilibrium

My father had major depression my whole life. I never had much sense of what would make him proud or anything like that. He just accepted me. He never seemed to want anything in particular for me, other than for me to be happy. So, I've spent my life trying to figure out how to do that. To be happy, in spite of major depression. I felt like I was getting pretty close for a while, but the formula still needed work. I couldn't tell my father that he'd need to take up kickboxing.

Now it feels like it doesn't matter anymore. The world felt like it was ending and it did, in a sense. Thinking back on my time in Hawaii, it's like remembering a bad dream, or a month long acid trip. One from which I'd violently shaken myself awake. I went home, back to my own world, where we still have some time left.

Life is not in our constituent parts, but the biochemical system which holds it all together. Death is that moment the system ceases to do so, and something magical is suddenly just gone.