a deficit of passion
i have noted the problem of my title, for some years but it seems more pronounced than ever at present.
I used to think that the problem was too many choices or things to do, and I didnt know which one I wanted. Now having given it a very minimal amount of thought, it is clear that the problem is in fact, finding one place of not many but several good ones to be, probably a particular swath of south america (mercosur region, pending spending time there and finding out for sure) or a particular swath of southeast asia (japan, china, indonesia, smaller countries in the region, maybe india or nepal or bangladesh).
what applies with location also does with say. entertainment. I was reading Kenzaburo Oe the other day about how he has figured out in middle age that there are certain authors he will concern himself with reading and rereading indefinitely. i thought, why do so? there are so many authors to choose from! but there are so few good ones, I remember as I frustratedly read brave new world. huxley has some interesting ideas i suppose, more so for their impact on our society than abstractly, but he writes so badly it is painful. i know, then- some cinema, some literature, certain musics, reading certain magazines. this will be my life for 60 more years. maybe sometimes I will have lovers, I hope to even marry somebody though I dont have any idea of who yet. Which is of course fine. I would have to do a lot of mental spadework before I could marry someone though. Especially about whether I would want children or not.
the same is true with employment. There are so few things I would want to do. it seems inevitable almost, that I will try to get work with the US state department (or the EU but I bet they dont hire noneuropeans) in southeast asia or in southern latin america doing stuff. i can really not think of anything else i want to do, and given how much i deplore bad writing and music, it would be truly irresponsible for me to make bad writing or bad music myself. i know i could never write anything great. at best if i worked hard i could be like, a christopher isherwood. i have done the emotional work of working through my problems and in so doing have untied the knots, that are the subject of great novels. now my central problem is that of the void. 60 years is a long time, especially when one is aware of how little one, or even all, human life means. These days when i read and conversate and do little else, drive home that point. SO when i am planning my future life i am doing it so much less out of considerations like truth and beauty i used to care for, than out of considerations like how cold it is in wintertime, how hard the language is, how tasty the food is.
i am not saying btw that i do not have almost infinitely more music, more literature, friends, etc to discover (though particularly in the first two cases I suspect that it is far from infinite, due to my voracious consumption to this date).I am just saying that at a point, after enough phases, one can identify: this is not important, this will pass. All will pass. That makes the frustrating things easier but living in general so much harder. one considers the taoist story of the gentle butcher: li zhao wore out his new butchery knifes once evry year, and it was getting expensive, so he went to see q#ing zhang, the famous butcher who had had the same knife for twenty years. qing zhang said, essentially, that one had to adapt oneself to the cow, and understand it, so that when one cut it, one did not cut through tendons or muslce, but found the perfect spot. in this way the cow was carved up without even feeling it; in fact, the cow often fell asleep as qing sliced it into cutlets, because he avoided nerve endings. therefore qings knife was after 20 years good as new. obviously this story is fantastic but it is instructive. i have learned where to cut, so that i can get good grades at a difficult uni without really trying, so that i can make friends and have conversation without really trying, hold a job without really trying. i woke myself up by coming here, and started wanting to try. but what to try at? there is nothing that does not seem somewhat ludicrous, excepting attempts to alleviate human poverty, pollution, and violence. so that is what i will do. but there is really now ay i can do any of those things now. also, it is clear to me in most cases that pursuing of things with girls would be unwise, i hold a place for some theoretical romance in my heart but simply am not attracted to many girls. so truly, i am superior, standing above the fray of hearts that get broken of their own volition, of pointless activity. but riding the subway reading books all day, drinking too much and talking about sex, literature, language, these things are also wastes of time, there is nothing that really is a good enough use of time to justify my consumption of resources. i am entirely too smart for my own good and that has been sharpened as i have discarded passionate irrationalitys more and more (mostly by trying them out and learning from mistakes, i am not trying to suggest i am somehow super wise, just that after 10 strangers in bed one doesnt need any new ones, and so on with other things also; i just compressed so many terrible choices into a small period of time that here i catch my breath at the lack of fruitful new bad choices i could make to learn from).
i feel meaningless but in fact my mental belief that i am meaningless because evry human life is meaningless, far outstrips that. i mean i dont feel depressed about it, and i even vainly believe my life is probably more meaningful than that of the average american. but i still am convinced that my life is meaningless much more mentally than emotionally. this is furthered as i distance myself mentally from useless group identity, such as whiteness, maleness, americanness, hipsterness (the last two especially). as i become more and more talented at adapting, and let go of destructive beliefs, i find that there is little residue, aside from a highly built up apparatus for processing information. my mind is like a city after a plague; no beliefs or hopes or faith to scurry around the streets, just an impressive set of buildings, one labelled music, one labelled body, one labelled philosophy, one labelled politics, one labelled language, and so on. its just there are very few beliefs i can hold without seeing both sides of the story. for instance i object to anti semitism, but i dont feel that i can judge anti semitic palestianians, or even people who object to the zionist state in general. and even totally unjustified anti semitism, is not sufficient for me to reject a person. for instance, i was having a conversation with E. the other day, when he came out with it 'you know, the majority of corporations and banks are controlled by Jews.' ridiculous, E., and you should be ashamed. but what should I do? squawk, say 'I Never,' and walk off in a huff? how ridiculous. instead I kind of laughed, said I disagreed and got onto my train. even that response i later judged to have been too harsh. it is the same elsewhere; if somebody impugns Nietzsche or dostoevski, or lenin, or danton, if someone supports george bush, if someone says they dont like rap music, or house music, or any of my other core beliefs are violated- i mean, what am i going to do? say, 'no, professor, you are an asshole, lenin was a great man?' 'no dad, you are an asshole, rap music has some merit?' 'no (almost any american), house music is amazing'. I generally tend to dislike bush supporters. but thats more for other reasons than their politics, more their aesthetics and the lack of physical attractiveness (the girls always wear too much makeup for my taste).
I have no belief stronger than, thou shalt not reject others, thou shalt consider further and never assume you know the answers. and that pretty much precludes all other firm beliefs. at best i have theories couched in careful terms, such as 'i like much (perhaps 35%) of house music, particularly unconventional or experimental house music,' or 'i like much of lenin's philosophy concerning imperialism and the cultural vanguard,' or so on.
i have civilized myself out of the point of humanity. i am overqualified for content life as a human being.
my key hope lies with, particular people and how they exemplify a particular trend. that trend being, that sometimes people I know have very thought provoking things to say. possibly, if i have excellent luck, i will meet someone of this description who wants to have sex with me, and who i get along with reasonably well, and who i can convince to move to beijing or wherever with me. barring that, every time i edit my myspace i will be tempted to write under itnerests : everything and nothing
PS good band name: against representation
PS good concept: iconoclasm as a response to consumerism
I used to think that the problem was too many choices or things to do, and I didnt know which one I wanted. Now having given it a very minimal amount of thought, it is clear that the problem is in fact, finding one place of not many but several good ones to be, probably a particular swath of south america (mercosur region, pending spending time there and finding out for sure) or a particular swath of southeast asia (japan, china, indonesia, smaller countries in the region, maybe india or nepal or bangladesh).
what applies with location also does with say. entertainment. I was reading Kenzaburo Oe the other day about how he has figured out in middle age that there are certain authors he will concern himself with reading and rereading indefinitely. i thought, why do so? there are so many authors to choose from! but there are so few good ones, I remember as I frustratedly read brave new world. huxley has some interesting ideas i suppose, more so for their impact on our society than abstractly, but he writes so badly it is painful. i know, then- some cinema, some literature, certain musics, reading certain magazines. this will be my life for 60 more years. maybe sometimes I will have lovers, I hope to even marry somebody though I dont have any idea of who yet. Which is of course fine. I would have to do a lot of mental spadework before I could marry someone though. Especially about whether I would want children or not.
the same is true with employment. There are so few things I would want to do. it seems inevitable almost, that I will try to get work with the US state department (or the EU but I bet they dont hire noneuropeans) in southeast asia or in southern latin america doing stuff. i can really not think of anything else i want to do, and given how much i deplore bad writing and music, it would be truly irresponsible for me to make bad writing or bad music myself. i know i could never write anything great. at best if i worked hard i could be like, a christopher isherwood. i have done the emotional work of working through my problems and in so doing have untied the knots, that are the subject of great novels. now my central problem is that of the void. 60 years is a long time, especially when one is aware of how little one, or even all, human life means. These days when i read and conversate and do little else, drive home that point. SO when i am planning my future life i am doing it so much less out of considerations like truth and beauty i used to care for, than out of considerations like how cold it is in wintertime, how hard the language is, how tasty the food is.
i am not saying btw that i do not have almost infinitely more music, more literature, friends, etc to discover (though particularly in the first two cases I suspect that it is far from infinite, due to my voracious consumption to this date).I am just saying that at a point, after enough phases, one can identify: this is not important, this will pass. All will pass. That makes the frustrating things easier but living in general so much harder. one considers the taoist story of the gentle butcher: li zhao wore out his new butchery knifes once evry year, and it was getting expensive, so he went to see q#ing zhang, the famous butcher who had had the same knife for twenty years. qing zhang said, essentially, that one had to adapt oneself to the cow, and understand it, so that when one cut it, one did not cut through tendons or muslce, but found the perfect spot. in this way the cow was carved up without even feeling it; in fact, the cow often fell asleep as qing sliced it into cutlets, because he avoided nerve endings. therefore qings knife was after 20 years good as new. obviously this story is fantastic but it is instructive. i have learned where to cut, so that i can get good grades at a difficult uni without really trying, so that i can make friends and have conversation without really trying, hold a job without really trying. i woke myself up by coming here, and started wanting to try. but what to try at? there is nothing that does not seem somewhat ludicrous, excepting attempts to alleviate human poverty, pollution, and violence. so that is what i will do. but there is really now ay i can do any of those things now. also, it is clear to me in most cases that pursuing of things with girls would be unwise, i hold a place for some theoretical romance in my heart but simply am not attracted to many girls. so truly, i am superior, standing above the fray of hearts that get broken of their own volition, of pointless activity. but riding the subway reading books all day, drinking too much and talking about sex, literature, language, these things are also wastes of time, there is nothing that really is a good enough use of time to justify my consumption of resources. i am entirely too smart for my own good and that has been sharpened as i have discarded passionate irrationalitys more and more (mostly by trying them out and learning from mistakes, i am not trying to suggest i am somehow super wise, just that after 10 strangers in bed one doesnt need any new ones, and so on with other things also; i just compressed so many terrible choices into a small period of time that here i catch my breath at the lack of fruitful new bad choices i could make to learn from).
i feel meaningless but in fact my mental belief that i am meaningless because evry human life is meaningless, far outstrips that. i mean i dont feel depressed about it, and i even vainly believe my life is probably more meaningful than that of the average american. but i still am convinced that my life is meaningless much more mentally than emotionally. this is furthered as i distance myself mentally from useless group identity, such as whiteness, maleness, americanness, hipsterness (the last two especially). as i become more and more talented at adapting, and let go of destructive beliefs, i find that there is little residue, aside from a highly built up apparatus for processing information. my mind is like a city after a plague; no beliefs or hopes or faith to scurry around the streets, just an impressive set of buildings, one labelled music, one labelled body, one labelled philosophy, one labelled politics, one labelled language, and so on. its just there are very few beliefs i can hold without seeing both sides of the story. for instance i object to anti semitism, but i dont feel that i can judge anti semitic palestianians, or even people who object to the zionist state in general. and even totally unjustified anti semitism, is not sufficient for me to reject a person. for instance, i was having a conversation with E. the other day, when he came out with it 'you know, the majority of corporations and banks are controlled by Jews.' ridiculous, E., and you should be ashamed. but what should I do? squawk, say 'I Never,' and walk off in a huff? how ridiculous. instead I kind of laughed, said I disagreed and got onto my train. even that response i later judged to have been too harsh. it is the same elsewhere; if somebody impugns Nietzsche or dostoevski, or lenin, or danton, if someone supports george bush, if someone says they dont like rap music, or house music, or any of my other core beliefs are violated- i mean, what am i going to do? say, 'no, professor, you are an asshole, lenin was a great man?' 'no dad, you are an asshole, rap music has some merit?' 'no (almost any american), house music is amazing'. I generally tend to dislike bush supporters. but thats more for other reasons than their politics, more their aesthetics and the lack of physical attractiveness (the girls always wear too much makeup for my taste).
I have no belief stronger than, thou shalt not reject others, thou shalt consider further and never assume you know the answers. and that pretty much precludes all other firm beliefs. at best i have theories couched in careful terms, such as 'i like much (perhaps 35%) of house music, particularly unconventional or experimental house music,' or 'i like much of lenin's philosophy concerning imperialism and the cultural vanguard,' or so on.
i have civilized myself out of the point of humanity. i am overqualified for content life as a human being.
my key hope lies with, particular people and how they exemplify a particular trend. that trend being, that sometimes people I know have very thought provoking things to say. possibly, if i have excellent luck, i will meet someone of this description who wants to have sex with me, and who i get along with reasonably well, and who i can convince to move to beijing or wherever with me. barring that, every time i edit my myspace i will be tempted to write under itnerests : everything and nothing
PS good band name: against representation
PS good concept: iconoclasm as a response to consumerism