onegoodreason
"She went down swinging" Tom Petty
- Dec 28, 2018
- 115
ctrl_alt_delete
r e p l i c a n t
- Nov 14, 2018
- 222
(three)
"His vision, from the constantly passing bars,
has grown so weary that it cannot hold
anything else. It seems to him there are
a thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world.
As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,
the movement of his powerful soft strides
is like a ritual dance around a center
in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.
Only at times, the curtain of the pupils
lifts, quietly--. An image enters in,
rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles,
plunges into the heart and is gone."
~ Rainer Maria Rilke, The Panther
"They tell us that suicide is the greatest piece of cowardice; that only a madman could be guilty of it; and other insipidities of the same kind; or else they make the nonsensical remark that suicide is wrong; when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in the world to which every [person] has a more unassailable title than to his own life and person."
~ Arthur Schopenhauer - Studies in Pessimism: On Suicide
The essential, or rather existential question is this: to whom does my life, my very own life, belong? Is it to 'God', or 'the State', to a partner, pet, companion or friend(s), or does it not rather belong to me? And, if that is taken as a given (prove me wrong), then is it not both entirely logical, rational and ethical to accept personal responsibility for the whole of that life including the time and reasoning of the disposal of what is, after all, mine own property?
I used to be libertarian, but that political position has been subsumed to the cause of social conservatism, liberal economics and socialist ethics; i.e. destroyed utterly by semantics and the rhetoric of hate and fear. These days I consider myself an Ethical Nihilist, with Green Oak-leaves.
Ethically-speaking we humans have absolutely fucked this place, are close to bringing about the extermination of a third of all currently existent species, as well as our own long-suffering drawn-out extermination, for the sake of affordable new shoes and I hold the ethical position that I want nothing at all to do with all of this stupid stupid horror so fuck you all, bye and so, am really rather glad to go. Of course, I am rational enough to never mention this to anyone who could have the power and cultural insanity to presume that they can assume responsibility for my life "for my own sake".
To be well-adjusted to an insane species is to be insane.
"His vision, from the constantly passing bars,
has grown so weary that it cannot hold
anything else. It seems to him there are
a thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world.
As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,
the movement of his powerful soft strides
is like a ritual dance around a center
in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.
Only at times, the curtain of the pupils
lifts, quietly--. An image enters in,
rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles,
plunges into the heart and is gone."
~ Rainer Maria Rilke, The Panther
"They tell us that suicide is the greatest piece of cowardice; that only a madman could be guilty of it; and other insipidities of the same kind; or else they make the nonsensical remark that suicide is wrong; when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in the world to which every [person] has a more unassailable title than to his own life and person."
~ Arthur Schopenhauer - Studies in Pessimism: On Suicide
* * *
I used to be libertarian, but that political position has been subsumed to the cause of social conservatism, liberal economics and socialist ethics; i.e. destroyed utterly by semantics and the rhetoric of hate and fear. These days I consider myself an Ethical Nihilist, with Green Oak-leaves.
Ethically-speaking we humans have absolutely fucked this place, are close to bringing about the extermination of a third of all currently existent species, as well as our own long-suffering drawn-out extermination, for the sake of affordable new shoes and I hold the ethical position that I want nothing at all to do with all of this stupid stupid horror so fuck you all, bye and so, am really rather glad to go. Of course, I am rational enough to never mention this to anyone who could have the power and cultural insanity to presume that they can assume responsibility for my life "for my own sake".
To be well-adjusted to an insane species is to be insane.
Last edited:
ctrl_alt_delete
r e p l i c a n t
- Nov 14, 2018
- 222
(four)
"Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that's the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply. Let him not laugh too gladly when the water runs through his fingers, nor stand too silent when the setting sun makes red the veld with fire. Let him not be too moved when the birds of his land are singing. Nor give too much of his heart to a mountain or a valley. For fear will rob him of all if he gives too much."
~ Alan Paton, Cry, the Beloved Country
"I have of late — but wherefore I know not — lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises, and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air — look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire — why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors. What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world. The paragon of animals. And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me. No, nor woman neither..."
~ William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
* * *
* * *
* * *
"Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that's the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply. Let him not laugh too gladly when the water runs through his fingers, nor stand too silent when the setting sun makes red the veld with fire. Let him not be too moved when the birds of his land are singing. Nor give too much of his heart to a mountain or a valley. For fear will rob him of all if he gives too much."
~ Alan Paton, Cry, the Beloved Country
* * *
"I have of late — but wherefore I know not — lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises, and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air — look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire — why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors. What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world. The paragon of animals. And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me. No, nor woman neither..."
~ William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
* * *
~ Robbie Basho, Death Song
* * *
Last edited:
onegoodreason
"She went down swinging" Tom Petty
- Dec 28, 2018
- 115
First, I am in total agreement with you in everything you say here. Our lives are our own. If we choose to live, that's good and fine. If we choose to die, that's good and fine, too. It is our right to choose how we are, what we want to do, who we want to be. No one has the authority to tell us we must be a certain way, live a certain way, look a certain way or we will be unlovable, unaccepted, cast out on empty waters to sink or swim alone. We choose with our Divinely given free will what we will do and all the rest, etc., and it is no one's business but our own.
What is happening in this world right now is horrific. We are killing the planet, so much of the life on it, including ourselves (generally speaking, that is), for as you say, Dearheart, "affordable new shoes"!? Geez, why can't we wake up and stop this madness before it's too late? I think it's already too late. So much damage has been done there will be no recovery unless Mother Earth decides she's has had enough of us and wipes us from her face, and I wouldn't blame Her one little bit! Man's arrogance has molested our world, taken it for granted and taken advantage of every resource until it's run dry. Then what? Space, the final frontier. And we'll wreck that, too. Some say the aliens avoid this place, we're too dangerous, too immature and stupid. I'd agree with that assessment. (Personally, though, I think the aliens are here and have been all along, but that's another story.)
The Panther in the picture - my God/dess, what a magnificent being - living in a frelling cage?!??!!?!? To say that is just so NOT right is a frelling understatement. AAAARRRRRGGHGHGHGGHGH, that makes me sooooo frelling mad!! No wild being should ever be in a cage, or in a tank, or bred in captivity, and served up for trophy hunters to kill just for fun and bragging rights?!?!?! There's a frecking woman out there somewhere who kills for trophies. I want to kill her with my bare hands, or at least beat the crap out of her till she swears she'll stop?!!?!?!? All zoos should be shut down, all animals in circuses or are forced to perform for entertainment or work hard every day (Asian elephants) must be banned forever, no more aerial round-ups of the wild horses and burros, no more poaching elephants, hippos, or rhinos for their tusks and horns. No more mass slaughter of prairie dogs by filling their dens with poison gas to make way for the next housing development. grrrrrrrrrrrrr, I agree, Sweet Panther, growl your displeasure and frustration. I'm with you wholeheartedly.
You did nothing to deserve the life we forced you into. Sorry, Dearheart, didn't mean to hijack your thread here, but I think y'all can tell this is a sore spot for me, and another reason to get the frell out of here. The pain of these precious beings breaks my heart to pieces and makes me ashamed to be a human. Insane? Holy shit, yeah, and I'm one for getting the frell out of the funny farm here if caging our wild beings is part of the deal. If I could protect them all somehow, I would. Now that would be a life purpose. Too bad I'm in no position to do anything about it. (sigh)
Goodnight, all. Peace.
color_me_gone
Sun is rising
- Dec 27, 2018
- 970
Phyllis, your rant is SO me too!
ctrl_alt_delete
r e p l i c a n t
- Nov 14, 2018
- 222
[223]
This is my note.
I am sorry for, and accept full responsibility for, any and all upset people feel as a result of what I will have done. I've done the best I can since the 4th attempt to push everyone away from me. So that people would mind less, be less upset. I'm sorry to those who still feel a positive emotional link to me. I'm sorry about that. I hope I fade from your emotional memory quickly. I hope you decline to look upon what I have done sympathetically, but instead view it as a selfish and cowardly act, unworthy of any admiration and impossible to excuse. This will help both of us.
It's not your 'fault', or indeed, anybody's 'fault'. I've been working towards this since I was seven, and my first attempt was at the age of 12. My second at 23, third at 34, fourth at 45, then fifth and sixth at 46, and now finally, I hope, my seventh, aged 48. It was pretty much bound to happen eventually. And I always knew this.
I never wanted to grow to become my parents, in love with power, excusing their behaviour with any foolish notion that came to hand to support their firmly held views regarding who should wield power and who should have it wielded upon them. It has been very depressing to discover that this appalling perspective towards one another and towards life in general is not confined to my parents alone but is rather a deep flowing current through our entire species, a current of gullibility and bigotry, of lust for power, and a disregard for the consequences that always, again and again and again, arise and swallow us whole.
We either pretend there are no consequences of our foolishness, or, if we are a little bit more wise, that if there are any consequences that we will, at some ill-defined possible point in the future, take full responsibility for them. We won't, because we don't, and because I am a strict determinist, and propose that we probably can't help how we are since this has proven to be such a successful survival strategy for our species so far, probably never will.
The wiser among us try to warn us of impending catastrophe, of our own species suicide, our own extermination. And we certainly seem to me to be determined upon that path. And that's well, just how things are, for quite a lot of sentient species. There's probably a really good, and quite obvious reason why the universe isn't overrrun with galactic civilisations, and my money's on this: the drives that make a terrestrial species overwhelmingly successful at dominating life on their planet are not always the best to safeguard the other forms of life on that planet, or, indeed, to get off that planet when things turn really sour.
And I'm sort of okay with that now. Species come, species go; we came close but didn't make the final cut, too bad, let's see what cats can do instead. Or maybe life could have another go at dinosaurs - they were a pretty stable lifeform and such interesting shapes too!
What isn't okay, is complicity. What isn't okay is knowing of the horror that we will inflict upon all the other species we share this planet with. What isn't okay is the species exterminations that are a direct result of our unfortunately too successful survival strategies. What isn't okay is knowing that we are, quite literally, the worst thing that has happened to this planet in 66 million years.
As I have grown, I have learnt that my parents twisted values are 'our' global values, and that no amount of frank discussion, based on evidence-based research and backed up by peer-review and even mass popular support and peaceful protest , is going to change that. There's a fuck tonne of oil under the Arctic seabed, and minerals galore under the Antarctic ice sheets. There's a serious amount of money to be made, and if it literally costs the earth, well, that's a price some future generations as yet unborn will have to pay. Surely, these global values of ours say, surely it was worth it for all the cheap sunshine holiday breaks and affordable new shoes? Not to mention the sex and the drugs and the non-stop fucking entertainment.
The distractions with which I have, in my weakness and inability to stand up to this in any meaningful way, oh-so-successfully distracted myself, don't work any longer. For some years the only way to stop feeling like I was going to scream with rage and cry until I had no more tears left was to drown myself in the temporary oblivion of alcohol. And other things, of course. You can never have too many distractions says the society of the spectacle. Beards stock has been doing very well in recent years, but it looks like ethno-facism has re-entered the Blue Chip portfolio, once again. And it's even not like everyone is dead yet from the last time that horrible little distraction with the funny haircut was around.
So you see, from where I'm standing, it seems like the humans just don't have the Big Match temperament. It looks to me like you aren't going to pull a hat-trick out of some previously unseen magic bag and fucking sort it out. And I don't want to distract myself from this. And I don't want to be part of this. In fact, I refuse to go along with this anymore because the sense of complicity is more than I can bear. And I'm too lazy, cowardly, timid and squeamish to try and stop this by none-peaceful means. I'm just done with it. I'm leaving. The real reason I have managed to stay sober this past 17 months, is because I have cast aside my addictions to temporary oblivion, in favour of a permanent and satisfactory permanent oblivion. It's why I've been so happy, so cheerful.
I don't believe in an after-life, either of the old theological type or the new technological one. It's the same emperor in a fabulous new outfit. The question of complicity in atrocity can be placed at either God or Simulation. Did you know that in 2017 at least two babies were actually raped to death (one in Saudi Arabia, one in the U.S.A.)? That's just two atrocities of the millions, the billions, that have taken place in our short history. If there is some sort of Hidden Guiding Hand, it would seem to me to be a very foolish idea to place any trust-value in it's compassion, in it's basic ethical premises... Epicurius' logical challenge to theological claims of simultaneous omnipotence, omniscience and omnibenevolence remains as valid now as when first proposed. It's not in the least bit surprising that so few of his works survive...
Anyway, that's me, my tuppence of pointless verbiage. "For what it's worth I dress my tears in costumes" as Rozz Williams said. I hope I'm wrong. I really do. I hope you pull your collective fingers out of your collective sphincters and prove me wrong. That really would be the very best way you could remember me, because I would really like that. And since I have been so very wrong about so very many things in my life, plausibly achievable. So chin up eh, back straight, ignore the distractions and deal with the actual facts. You can do it. You've got this.
In the name and presence of my three favourite anthropmorphic personifications, Artemis, Athena and Aphrodite-Uranos, a.k.a. Integrity, Wisdom and Loving-Kindness, (because sometimes even an ardent nihilist and atheist like me needs a made-up trio of goddesses when the going gets tough and my rational mind is awash in dopamine and cortisol) I offer you my love, such as it is, and the benefits of this poem, which I found very useful, especially in my latter years.
And there's this, too...
And finally (gawd, will I ever finish...!) I believe this book to be the most powerful that I read in my entire life. It's very short, and based on the true story of St. Ferdaus. It might help you too.
l o v e : w i s d o m : i n t e g r i t y
This is my note.
I am sorry for, and accept full responsibility for, any and all upset people feel as a result of what I will have done. I've done the best I can since the 4th attempt to push everyone away from me. So that people would mind less, be less upset. I'm sorry to those who still feel a positive emotional link to me. I'm sorry about that. I hope I fade from your emotional memory quickly. I hope you decline to look upon what I have done sympathetically, but instead view it as a selfish and cowardly act, unworthy of any admiration and impossible to excuse. This will help both of us.
It's not your 'fault', or indeed, anybody's 'fault'. I've been working towards this since I was seven, and my first attempt was at the age of 12. My second at 23, third at 34, fourth at 45, then fifth and sixth at 46, and now finally, I hope, my seventh, aged 48. It was pretty much bound to happen eventually. And I always knew this.
I never wanted to grow to become my parents, in love with power, excusing their behaviour with any foolish notion that came to hand to support their firmly held views regarding who should wield power and who should have it wielded upon them. It has been very depressing to discover that this appalling perspective towards one another and towards life in general is not confined to my parents alone but is rather a deep flowing current through our entire species, a current of gullibility and bigotry, of lust for power, and a disregard for the consequences that always, again and again and again, arise and swallow us whole.
We either pretend there are no consequences of our foolishness, or, if we are a little bit more wise, that if there are any consequences that we will, at some ill-defined possible point in the future, take full responsibility for them. We won't, because we don't, and because I am a strict determinist, and propose that we probably can't help how we are since this has proven to be such a successful survival strategy for our species so far, probably never will.
The wiser among us try to warn us of impending catastrophe, of our own species suicide, our own extermination. And we certainly seem to me to be determined upon that path. And that's well, just how things are, for quite a lot of sentient species. There's probably a really good, and quite obvious reason why the universe isn't overrrun with galactic civilisations, and my money's on this: the drives that make a terrestrial species overwhelmingly successful at dominating life on their planet are not always the best to safeguard the other forms of life on that planet, or, indeed, to get off that planet when things turn really sour.
And I'm sort of okay with that now. Species come, species go; we came close but didn't make the final cut, too bad, let's see what cats can do instead. Or maybe life could have another go at dinosaurs - they were a pretty stable lifeform and such interesting shapes too!
What isn't okay, is complicity. What isn't okay is knowing of the horror that we will inflict upon all the other species we share this planet with. What isn't okay is the species exterminations that are a direct result of our unfortunately too successful survival strategies. What isn't okay is knowing that we are, quite literally, the worst thing that has happened to this planet in 66 million years.
As I have grown, I have learnt that my parents twisted values are 'our' global values, and that no amount of frank discussion, based on evidence-based research and backed up by peer-review and even mass popular support and peaceful protest , is going to change that. There's a fuck tonne of oil under the Arctic seabed, and minerals galore under the Antarctic ice sheets. There's a serious amount of money to be made, and if it literally costs the earth, well, that's a price some future generations as yet unborn will have to pay. Surely, these global values of ours say, surely it was worth it for all the cheap sunshine holiday breaks and affordable new shoes? Not to mention the sex and the drugs and the non-stop fucking entertainment.
The distractions with which I have, in my weakness and inability to stand up to this in any meaningful way, oh-so-successfully distracted myself, don't work any longer. For some years the only way to stop feeling like I was going to scream with rage and cry until I had no more tears left was to drown myself in the temporary oblivion of alcohol. And other things, of course. You can never have too many distractions says the society of the spectacle. Beards stock has been doing very well in recent years, but it looks like ethno-facism has re-entered the Blue Chip portfolio, once again. And it's even not like everyone is dead yet from the last time that horrible little distraction with the funny haircut was around.
So you see, from where I'm standing, it seems like the humans just don't have the Big Match temperament. It looks to me like you aren't going to pull a hat-trick out of some previously unseen magic bag and fucking sort it out. And I don't want to distract myself from this. And I don't want to be part of this. In fact, I refuse to go along with this anymore because the sense of complicity is more than I can bear. And I'm too lazy, cowardly, timid and squeamish to try and stop this by none-peaceful means. I'm just done with it. I'm leaving. The real reason I have managed to stay sober this past 17 months, is because I have cast aside my addictions to temporary oblivion, in favour of a permanent and satisfactory permanent oblivion. It's why I've been so happy, so cheerful.
I don't believe in an after-life, either of the old theological type or the new technological one. It's the same emperor in a fabulous new outfit. The question of complicity in atrocity can be placed at either God or Simulation. Did you know that in 2017 at least two babies were actually raped to death (one in Saudi Arabia, one in the U.S.A.)? That's just two atrocities of the millions, the billions, that have taken place in our short history. If there is some sort of Hidden Guiding Hand, it would seem to me to be a very foolish idea to place any trust-value in it's compassion, in it's basic ethical premises... Epicurius' logical challenge to theological claims of simultaneous omnipotence, omniscience and omnibenevolence remains as valid now as when first proposed. It's not in the least bit surprising that so few of his works survive...
Anyway, that's me, my tuppence of pointless verbiage. "For what it's worth I dress my tears in costumes" as Rozz Williams said. I hope I'm wrong. I really do. I hope you pull your collective fingers out of your collective sphincters and prove me wrong. That really would be the very best way you could remember me, because I would really like that. And since I have been so very wrong about so very many things in my life, plausibly achievable. So chin up eh, back straight, ignore the distractions and deal with the actual facts. You can do it. You've got this.
In the name and presence of my three favourite anthropmorphic personifications, Artemis, Athena and Aphrodite-Uranos, a.k.a. Integrity, Wisdom and Loving-Kindness, (because sometimes even an ardent nihilist and atheist like me needs a made-up trio of goddesses when the going gets tough and my rational mind is awash in dopamine and cortisol) I offer you my love, such as it is, and the benefits of this poem, which I found very useful, especially in my latter years.
And there's this, too...
And finally (gawd, will I ever finish...!) I believe this book to be the most powerful that I read in my entire life. It's very short, and based on the true story of St. Ferdaus. It might help you too.
l o v e : w i s d o m : i n t e g r i t y
DreamsofDeath
Fear of crashing and not coming back
- Oct 18, 2018
- 75
Beautifully articulated. Thank you for it, and the lovely poem(s).
color_me_gone
Sun is rising
- Dec 27, 2018
- 970
Wow. Just. Wow.
You have expressed my feeling of where we are, and what we could be, in such a deep way.
I am a man who understands technology, but not deeply intellectual. I do not have a way with words.
But I so get this.
I am going to memorize "SHe Who is".
I want to use that for meditation. It is perfect.
Thank you for all you have given us.
May you rest in peace, Dear One. Tear.
You have expressed my feeling of where we are, and what we could be, in such a deep way.
I am a man who understands technology, but not deeply intellectual. I do not have a way with words.
But I so get this.
I am going to memorize "SHe Who is".
I want to use that for meditation. It is perfect.
Thank you for all you have given us.
May you rest in peace, Dear One. Tear.
@ctrl_alt_delete
You won't fade from my emotional memory and you will take a piece of me with you when you go. We both know that irl we would have been close friends. I trust you to look after the piece of me I give you to take with you until we meet, waiting round the bend you will be my "huckleberry friend" Love you darling.
You won't fade from my emotional memory and you will take a piece of me with you when you go. We both know that irl we would have been close friends. I trust you to look after the piece of me I give you to take with you until we meet, waiting round the bend you will be my "huckleberry friend" Love you darling.
ctrl_alt_delete
r e p l i c a n t
- Nov 14, 2018
- 222
ctrl_alt_delete
r e p l i c a n t
- Nov 14, 2018
- 222
This was me.
Too much style. Not enough substance,
So it goes.
Still.
Love to you.
Also wisdom and integrity, if you want 'em.
No one does.
Anyway.
my love to you.
Too much style. Not enough substance,
So it goes.
Still.
Love to you.
Also wisdom and integrity, if you want 'em.
No one does.
Anyway.
my love to you.
color_me_gone
Sun is rising
- Dec 27, 2018
- 970
Rest in peace, Dearheart.
You were kind and gentle, with a powerful mind.
You will be missed.
I am so happy that you got the peace you so well deserved.
Jerry
You were kind and gentle, with a powerful mind.
You will be missed.
I am so happy that you got the peace you so well deserved.
Jerry
TheCrow
Invisible Spirit
- Sep 26, 2018
- 802
God, this makes me so fucking sad. {Tears}This was me.
View attachment 7332
View attachment 7333
View attachment 7334
Too much style. Not enough substance,
So it goes.
Still.
Love to you.
Also wisdom and integrity, if you want 'em.
No one does.
Anyway.
my love to you.
color_me_gone
Sun is rising
- Dec 27, 2018
- 970
Yes, she was a wonderful human being.
