Inspiration

There are times when you simply lack motivation or ideas and you just cannot bring yourself to write, right now is one of those times. So, in an effort for inspiration I sometimes use a dictionary to find a random word, which then gives me an opportunity to write on a topic.

My word is "MODERNISM"; really. I cannot believe I got modernism. I have to write an essay on fundamentalism as a reaction to modernism and I am also reading a few books on the idea of modernism, so I guess this blog will have to serve as a precursor to work I should be investing in.

Descartes is often described as the father of modern philosophy (and modern mathematics) and in terms of epistemology (the science of knowledge, how we know things) he proposed an absolutism that typically characterises modernism. He set out to find 'first principles' that is, indisputable knowledge on which we can build Truth (yes, capital T) consequently in this search for Truth he was led to the famous maxim: "I think, therefore I am". Today, at least in the last six or seven decades this absolutism has been eroded, at least at a scholarly level. A new epistemological understanding is taking shape, one largely proposed by those crafty, crafty French.

I cannot believe modernism was the word I got, it makes for a horribly boring blog. I am going to change the word then, to "MODEM", I didn't pull it from a dictionary, instead there is one right in front of me.

Modem o, modem, that is all I have got. Nighty night.

It came full circle, ugliness

We are all hopeless, it cannot be escaped. My heart is still beating but I feel as though my soul has stopped beating with it a long time ago. My soul is not a living thing but in a state of dying, like it has achieved its peak and is gradually fading away into a death, into a severance of body and soul, where my being will be split asunder (I have always loved that word, it speaks of lighting bolts and incomprehensible power; anything that is beyond human comprehension is worth recognition). What has propelled me toward such a bleak and unsatisfying end? I do not know.

I do know that my friendships are strictly business: "what is that you do?", "what is that you can do?", "what is it that you can do for me?". There is a strange space that exists between a connection and the hope of a future connection. You meet someone new, someone different perhaps, or beautiful, or admirable, talented, intriguing or just someone like yourself. In this meeting the opposite person is thinking that you possess some of the previous qualities and so some form of connection is established and you both leave your first meeting in the hope of another. You are too shy, too afraid of rejection or too convinced of your worthlessness to think that they would be also thinking the same thing. And so you see your hope around, here and there but never to approach just in case you spoil the sacred moment of your first meeting. Every exchange of words from then is weak and makes you feel short of breath, you squirm and glance away, looking for a way out or an easy way in, forget about it, you cannot walk upright through a crack in the brickwork.

Then, of course, there is that rare and decisive moment of hope in which a step of uncertainty is made and a connection is remade, in that oxygen instance you have floods of ideas and unity, passion and an unstable desire to conquer the world. Or you could just kick them in the face and spit on them running away quickly so that as they see your back a voice whispers in their head that eventually spews out of every orifice cursing and remembering what you did in between shaking their head and shaking the heads of everybody they know. You know better than them.

You always did.

Welcome ignorance!

Why do we all wish that we were more idotic? I feel as though our generation, more than any other, are content to while away the time in recreation and abasement. It is because we can, right? We have no pressing danger or immediate urgency and so we are allowed to waste our lives in a material squalor. Sing, Sing the message of our generation to the older, the younger, the poorer and there are no richer.

"You need more stuff"

Echoes the chorus while the verses rattle off the ills of society worth fleeing from:

"learning, critical thinking, books, questions; these are the dangers we face"

We are the idiot nation, welcome ignorance!

Committing, quitting

I work at Word Bookstore, Word is a Christian bookstore chain who take advantage of the Christian consumer market and while purporting to sell 'resources' usually only advertise what sells rather than what is actually good. What does it mean to commit to your ethics? I believe that Word exploit the weaknesses within the church in order to make money. I vehemently disagree with this but should I quit on the basis of such a belief?

I had a conversation once with a friend who said that I was thinking too small if I didn't take a job based on ethical values. He said that it can be our duty to enter a workplace and reform it; to change it from the inside out. I would have preferred to extricate myself from the world and create my own bubble of community that lacks the reality of tragedy.

This begs the question, what is fundamentally wrong with Word? It surely is not the people I work with who are some of the most creative, loving and passionate people who I know. The conclusion I have rested with is the capitalist framework in which Word operates. The enemy of capitalism has always seemed to be communism, or some form of socialism. At the core of socialism is the other, whilst the core of capitalism is the self. Saying that, the answer is not workplace socialism; that is equally as wrong and would place a business outside the field of real competitiveness. The answer is dedication to the other, as opposed to the self.

Capitalism crumbles at humility and servanthood as it is built on a foundation of competition and comparison. The furthest we can move toward humility is embodied in the greatest victims of our western salvation, the homeless. If, as a functioning business, we were to support the most poor and destitute of our society how would that change a business? Obviously I am in no position to make executive decisions about who we support corporately; but I am endeavouring to influence a quiet revolution. In my few encounters with manifest brokenness (the homeless) I have come to terms with the lack of character inside myself. I believe Jesus called us unto people like this for our benefit and not theirs; I realise this now because I have nothing, beyond dollars (which are hollow to starving people), to give.

It is my goal to use the vehicle of industry and commerce as a ironic catalyst for social change; much in the vein of the Horse of Troy. Such a business I think would have to be retail in essential nature as this provides the greatest opportunity for human connection. If anyone reads this (which is unlikely) and feels gravitated toward something new and anti- anti then please either comment this or message me through myspace, the link is on your right.

My ideas are just ideas, but I hope to cultivate some commitment in myself.

Neglect

Plato talks about education being the answer to all wrongdoing. He says that we only do wrong things out of our ignorance and that if we really knew the effect of what we did we would not do it. I thought this was really good but after consistently desiring good and failing to achieve it I see that it is not through not knowing the good that I fail but an undisciplined and lacking life. The worst of me always comes out when I am complacent and neglect the responsibilities I committed myself to.

I am reading Silas Marner by George Eliot and have four pages left; four and yet I cannot bring myself to pick up the book and finish. Also on my reading list at the moment is Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury and The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera.

Textures

 

That ether sky

I often walk alone at night
my shoes nearly falling off and
my mouth bustling with words and phrases

The ground falls away and gives unto
the lonely sky that swallows up
in order to give wonder a new birth

I always preferred a country sky,
the stars cascade and bow in
cosmic decadence, the entire universe was for me

I often walk carefully at night
and you should take my busy hands and
brush them softly, whispering that

that I don't have to...anymore.

Control

This is such an ambiguous concept, but then I guess any abstract noun presents difficulties. I mean, I say something (like control) and who knows what it rattles in your brain; it moves through the conduit of your previous experience and forms a terminally subjective meaning that is far removed from what I am talking about. Hence, virtually all of post- modern philosophy ends up tearing up the classical philosophers because the words they used really have no meaning, words are dead. Can we connect? I do not really know.

Anyway! I am supposed to be writing on control.

The word would mean that we have some mastery of our environment, a feeling (real or imagined) of authority. The greatest degree of this control could lean toward power but the least degree of control would fall into the jaws of helplessness. We are told that control is a good thing, that control is directly linked with purpose, that if we purposefully strive ahead and control, take-a-hold-of our situations that will turn out the way we want them. For the most part, this is true and not a bad thing; illusion, however, is.

Control is necessary but even more important is looking like we are in control, because if we can't be in control then why not at least seem like it? Right? I realise that all these issues (that I blog about) stem from a core problem but I will not address this problem just yet. I grip the illusion of control like grim death, as if you imagining I had control would count to real control. The short story is my life has moved beyond my control and become a monster of it's own. I used to think that this was a fantastic thing but it has moved into areas to which I never wanted, let me illustrate.

A hydra is a mythical beast, when you cut off one of it's heads it simply grows two more to replace it, making it virtually unbeatable, Hercules did apparently but God only knows how. My life is much like a hydra, I had a single head or purpose; then it got cut off. To compensate I grew two heads, diversifying my purpose and not limiting my options, sounds like sensible business to me. By 21 I have had my head cut off so many times that I have about 57 heads and I do not even know which one I really am, this angry monster now just rampages following whichever head is out front. I have a complete lack of control despite every head being a part of my body that just feels the weight of the world crushing it.

I am the hydra, and you are next.

Night times

I was hoping to have my next blog entry broken up by photos and I have heaps of them ready but a friend has the cable and so I can't take them from my camera just yet. So, in a desperate attempt to not lose momentum this blog entry will be another all - text one.

People do not know what they want, I think maybe it could be that we are all afraid of what we want or that what we want is 'wrong' and so we don't stop wanting it but instead just deny that we want it. Which brings us to an interesting situation... when we pretend not to desire something we have to pretend to desire something else. This blurs the line between reality and fiction; and how do we know what we want if we really don't want it? I think we have to take our cues from somewhere or someone else.

For example, somebody seems to be doing really well wanting a full- time job that is not nessecarily fulfilling but it pays the bills as well as a weekend of excesses. He is able to work this job with minimal stress and has even been promoted. Now, you, on the other hand, don't want a full- time job. You think you want to do something creative and different to change people's minds and hearts while retaining your soul. You really want to be brilliant. Mr Jobs (as we will call him) seems to be achieving some form of brilliance, at least on the weekends, if nowhere else. He has enough money to treat his social inadequacy with drugs and alchohol and seems to be unaffected by it, I mean, his work is not a place that demands integrity. What is it that you want? Brilliance. Who says what brilliance is? The answer is simply other people, they weigh your worth. Mr Jobs is your new standard of brilliance and so you begin to take cues from him without actually realising that he does not share your desires to maintain the goodness of his heart and purity of character. You sold yourself short for a cheaper dream imagined in the mind of bang gangers and junkies.

I don't think I came to a point but I rarely do, writing can only reflect life and right now my life serves little purpose other than capitalist waste and consumption. With all our false wants and confused ideas we career through an oblivious existence to an obvious end.