Society in which you step over homeless folks on your way to pointlessly click and type on the computer all day, is deeply fucked up. And you have to be veeery brainwashed to not realize that.

Society where everyone’s main activity is to do a “job” that serves no purpose but to make some people richer.

Where we commute to that “job” by cars while the planet is dying.

Where we are only allowed to do this “job” in an “office”, although it was clearly proven that they are just as capable of doing it at home.

Where there are still people are sleeping on the streets, people who can be sheltered in the “offices”, but instead we are supposed to just run over those people our way to work and not care.

And we are supposed to pretend all of this is OK, lest we are fired from this system and have to lie down next to those people.

Well, it’s not worth it.

There is an ability I call unity of thought, for a lack of a better word, which is essential for acquiring intelligence/wisdom. It is the ability to connect each new idea/view that you have, with all the other ideas/views in your mind, to make it compatible with those. And to drop the ideas and views that aren’t compatible.

(it is called holding a view for a reason — it takes effort and you cannot do it with too many of those.)

Unifying your thoughts sets your mind free, but it requires commitment.

It requires that you remain consistent in your thoughts and view, even in contexts where this is not beneficial to you.

It requires you to reject the ideas that your brain wants you to reject.

No compromise.

Trying to balance a different set of views and ideas, depending on the situation, will make you dumb and will mess up your mental health…

Today’s topic of discussion is addiction. Why do we get addicted?

The simple answer is that addictive stuff is pleasurable and we just like to do stuff that is pleasurable, but that’s not complete, e.g. nobody goes to rehab for patting kittens.

The reason for the problem of addiction — feelings of guilt and shame result in self hatred and desire for self-destruction that is channeled by a given substance or behavior. This is confirmed by the success of the 12 step programs — remove the guilt and shame and the addiction takes care of itself.

It’s like your problem is that you think you have a problem, and also that society thinks you do. Your problem is other people.

What is conformism. Dictionary defines it as “willingness to conform”, but I think a better definition of conformism would be the want, desire to conform (as everyone are willing to conform when given the right motivation). This is not a complete definition either, because in order to have conformism you have to have something to confront to i.e. an established way of doing things which in turns entails that there must be an an establishment i.e. a group of people who determine what’s right and wrong.

The two things are very interrelated - you cannot have conformists without having establishment and you cannot have establishment without having conformists.

I think that it is unquestionable that the dream of every aspiring conformist would be for the, to become the establishment, to be the person who sets the agenda. Only then would a conformist be who they want to be i.e. conformists are people are ready to change the whole world, just so they can be who they want to be while remaining conformists.

No need for that. Just don’t be conformists. Conformity is not the way.

Battling my ego.

The stage is set.

I turn to it and say “It’s gonna hurt ME a lot more than it hurts YOU”.

If you’re not a socialist before you’re twenty-five, you have no heart; if you are a socialist after twenty-five, you have no head. – anonymous

I am young enough that there are still people telling me that they too were anarchists/artists/communists/optimists when they were my age, but then they “matured”. And when they do that, I always think about what does the word “maturity” mean. Traditionally, it obviously means responsibility, taking care for yourself and other people. But, apparently, in today’s society it also means conformism. The logic goes like this, I think: in order to take care of your family you need money and in order to obtain money you have to quit “fooling around”, a viewpoint that is captured well in the quote I began the text with. But implicit in this quote is that thoughts that differ from the status quo aren’t “serious”, that they are just “dreams”. What the quote actually says is something like: “since birth, you have a natural capacity to dream, and you need to learn how to suppress that capacity i.e. you need to lose faith” (that’s exactly what being a conservative means, if you think about it, it means, stop believing a better future is possible and instead focus on changing as little as possible).

So, this is how the concept of maturity is used a tool for political/societal control:

1. The meaning of “mature” is shifted. It no longer means “being responsible”. Instead it means “being faithless”, for example, people who exhibit any quality that signifies they have any faith left, such as a sense of humor, practicing arts, sports, having rich social life, or even disinterested in material wealth, are perceived as “immature”, regardless of how good they are taking care of their responsibilities.

2. At the same time, we have a cult of this so called maturity. Immaturity is no longer seen as a normal stage of life that everyone goes through, each at their own pace. Instead, the word “immature” is routinely used as an insult, even towards children, who are also constantly told to “Grow up!”, (the disappearance of childhood being a natural response to this). It’s like a best thing that a person can do is mature as much and as fast as possible (and that it’s better for a person to be bad, mean, stupid etc. than “immature”).

A couple of points on this:

• People who use that quote that if you aren’t into communism as a youth you have no heart, but if you don’t later drop it when you get older you have no brain, seem like they are so desperate over the fact that they have lost their hearts that they made up the second part to soothe themselves.

• I find all this ridiculous, and I don’t even know how those “mature” people even find the will to live such a life.

• Obviously a better world is possible, it’s always possible to be better. And nobody has any grounds to say anything else.

• Even if a better world wasn’t possible, I would continue living my life as if it’s possible, simply because there is no point in living any other way, there is no point in living as a pet and there is no point in raising children to live the same way

When I am done with art anarchism and optimism I won’t be old, I’d be dead, at least mentally.

Anxiety and writer’s block come when you attach so much significance to your work that you start to feel that you just wouldn’t do it justice if you work on it while not in your prime. This is a stupid idea - nobody will do your work, but you. Just do your best, you will delete it if it isn’t good.

If you do something and delete it, that is not the same as not doing anything, even if you don’t ever rewrite or publish i.

And more importantly, if you don’t want to work, then don’t: take a hour off, leave your work in front of you and start start reading some random book, or doing something else entirely, untill something in what you are reading/doing reminds you of your work.

One of the best pieces of advice that I got:

“Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly”

And conversely, everything that is not worth doing poorly is not worth doing at all.

My focus for the next year or so is to stop being so self-critical. No reason whatsoever to beat yourself for stupid shit, and it destroys your self-esteem, allowing you to be exploited by people who don’t even know what self-criticism means.

Seeking instant gratification is not “living for the moment”, it’s a manifestation of our your fear of death (so kinda the opposite thing)