The Faith of a Heretic

I am re-reading Meditations, but this time I am going to read it from front to back cover instead of skipping from aphorism to aphorism. I made a trip to the tiolet yesterday and found myself absorbed in the reassuring wisdom of Marcus after that long winded and misanthorpic rant. What turned into momentary reading material transformed into an hour bathroom session. It is amazing the sheer breadth of topics covered and how so effectively every topic is addressed with the grace of a sage. This is for the besieged.

Much credit must be given to Gregory Hays who managed to produce the most approachable translation I have yet to encounter, breathing life into a text which is often translated in a formal, Shakespearean tone. Gregory understood that Marcus was writing to himself in a personal journal and would have never used such an academic tone.

In my opinion Marcus would have never used such an elitist tone, it is simply not characteristic of his generous and kind spirit. Hays translation reads warmly as if Marcus is speaking directly to the reader with his hand on your shoulder in a fatherly, wimsical and very intimate manner.

Translating Greek (and Latin) is not a clearcut deal (since the languages don’t make any sense if directly translated word for word) and the translator makes all the difference in the end. It lies on the translator’s shoulders to transmute ancient words into something a english speaker could understand and do so in a stylistic fashion which does not betray the spirit of the original text. So again I would like to thank Gregory Hays for his most skillful, insightful and powerful translation of the journals of Marcus Aurelius.

I yearn for other philosophical meditations penned in the fashion of a therapeutic journal (and hopefully translated by Hays too). The reading experience is much more intimate than that of treatise or discourse. I would die to get my hands on a Socrates meditation but we all know that will never happen. Socrates never wrote anything down, just as Epictetus, Socrates remixed, never did. A man can dream. I feel so close to the wisdom and insights of the Socratic line of philosophers and recall fondly the many teachers that trained me in the Socratic lifestyle before I had even discovered the ramblings of Plato. Truly it is the righteous life.

I return to school tommorow into what will probably wind up being the worst semester yet. Sumerian agathodaimon be gone.

“He only earns his freedom and his life who takes them everyday by storm”

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Although I usually try my best to keep my posts here fairly impersonal and philosophical, if I don’t get out this list of disdain i’m going to implode. Again, sorry for the Devin Townsend style rant.

I’m sick of being lied to by everyone, being mislead by people who supposedly love me, of gasping for air in this suffocating facade of normalcy.

I’m sick of living in a world where everyone has vile secrets, double lives and throwaway declarations.

I’m sick of that look the paper gangsters shoot me as they pass me on the road, going 90 miles per hour in a 20 miles per hour zone; that false gesture of constant threat and murder eyes backed by nothing but mass produced drum synth and predictable shouts about getting bitches into your car.

I’m sick of the emotionless music cranked out at the lowest common denominator like every thing else in this decaying culture, the music engineered to get girls (like every thing else in this decaying culure), the pointless, memetic, hollow phrases sung so trite on top of two chords. I’m sick of never being able to discuss what I listen to or becoming a straw man when I do. The fashionable devotion to new ways of life and new ways of thinking to completely replace previous ways. The fashionable adoption of any mundane creed flashed so seductively on MTV; the idiocy and gullibility of people. I’m sick of the close mindedness and ignorance, the steadfast devotion to corporate arbitration, the way buying shit that you don’t need gives you purpose. I’m sick of the dishonesty in music, how the frontman of Creed can have drunken groupsex with Fred Durst and some groupies and still talk about christian values as if they were anything more than a vessel to sell more records and stuff his pockets so fiercely with green paper that will be scattered at the time of his hopefully sooner than later death. How ‘hardcore’ rappers can brag about selling records to 13 year old suburban pampered cunts.

I’m sick of giving her my everything, my heart, my life and being stabbed in the face in return. I am sick of being unable to feel love anymore, of only being sure my heart beats when I reflect on past times, the gaping void in my stomach that wells with disgust and pain every single moment i’m awake, the heart palpatations I feel when I realize this isn’t a dream. I am destroyed by the memories of hopes and dreams, of plans and promises smashed to dust. I would have died for this. I am sick of constantly being dissapointed because NO ONE CAN KEEP THE SIMPLEST OF CONVICTIONS. I am sick of the notion that integrity is for nerds and christian prudes.

I am sick of all the supposed philosophers who so easily get into girls pants with irrelevant speak of meaningless metaphysical nonsense or speak of change in the world, only to get drunk on the weekends instead; the way their seductively talk about their fantasy world when it doesn’t matter but won’t even bring dissenting opinion when pressed during a debate out of fear of someone dismantling their bullshit theories. It seems that if you speak of chaos magic, spirit healing, chakras, shadow bodies or thelema backed with some flowery words its easy to woo the idiotic masses. I am sick of the prentention of these people who all support the gratuitous branding of anarchy symbols, any offensive or radically left wing philosophy without knowing what their talking about. Ask Pol Pot’s children just how fucking great communism is. Ask Thich Quang Duc if immolating himself in a town square was just David Copperfield Vietnamese edition.

I’m sick of having to force a smile when I should be screaming. I am sick of being expected to ingest all the deceptions and still be ‘friends.’ I am sick of this world that produced her, when I know we could love eachother in another place, another time. Some other world where father figures don’t rape their children and its not OK to guilt trip a misguided and battered girl into spreading her legs. I am sick of married men exploiting high school girls who lack the self-respect to say no. I am sick of seeing so many girls be battered only to turn that venom into words that cripple like a gun. I am sick of not being able to bring justice to these social parasites, of not being able to prune the wilting plant. I die when she is hurt. I’m sick of braking my back for everyone, being the rock that people cling to, and then being second guessed and doubted when lesser men spread fabrications; the imprudence of those who would so easily buy into slander and heresay. I’m sick of being the one down in the fens when liars and manipulators win over with lies what I so honestly loved without misleadings.
I’m sick of my supposed friends who could care less about fellowship. Ruthless careerists stepping on my face to reach the top of the pyramid. I am sick of being used by these so-called friends and being selfless, being unselfish at every turn, only to be spat upon in passing. I am sick of hearing the firebrand rants on sobriety only to have those words mean nothing when you return from college a alcholic. I am sick of when you sit around and talk shit about everything that you once based your whole life on and i’m supposed to smile and nod. I am sick of being unable to have honest discourse, of always being distracted by something technological when we rarely meet, of the secret plots and the selfishness. There is something supressing honesty in meeting, something illusory which hovers in air. I am sick of being able to remember simpler times when all we needed was a porch and a couple blocks for manhunt. I am sick of being ignored and forgotten when new vaginas come around, from spending all my time with someone to spending none. I am sick of the way my supposed friends constantly complain about their girlfriends but never openly communicate to them, the way they endure the greatest annoyances for nothing, the way they sell themselves to the idea of work to the bone and nothing to live for outside a 9-5 work shift.

I am sick of there being no refuge, no one to stem the constant loneliness, no righteous government to serve, no school of philosophy that isn’t teeming with esoteric nonsense or overly critical cycles of analysis. I am sick of being forced to look over my shoulder and being on guard when speaking to new people.

I am sick of all this filth, the stench of liquor, vommit and semen on 12 year olds, invitations for dark alley hand jobs, listenting to her stories of secret whoredom and depravity. I am so tired of being alone in my honesty, of never finding a single human being that doesn’t lie directly to my face. I am sick of the search, of aspiring to search, of living at all. This place is an allegory of everything unnatural, neurotic and unsound, it is the antithesis of reason, of love and of compassion. I am sick of being sober, of thinking clearly, of being alone at all times.

I am sick of listenting to inspirational speeches by politicians, the deceptive rhetoric and sensationalism of network news, the constant fear brigade that seeks to drive everyone into the arms of hate, mistrust and selfishness. I am sick of the mandatory corruption at every strata of executive power.

I am sick of enduring this dying cell.

I am sick of walking home in the dark by myself.

Reassurance: Nothing will last and this is just noise. Time destroys everything. This pain won’t last because I won’t. Every order, empire, paradigm will be smashed into dust, every atom recycled eternally through the duty of oblivion. Your fleshy bits will be eaten by worms, which will in turn be eaten by beings far greater than themselves. Your bones will one day burn as fossil fuel. Those of the future will burn their ancestors just as we burn ours. That is our fate: a toxic vapor of burnt excess. This moment is nothing considering the gaping void of time before and after, the irrelevancy of individual lives. This will mean nothing. This is just noise.

Remember:

Matter. How tiny your share of it.

Time. How brief and fleeting your allotment of it.

Fate. How small a role you play in it.

Through one choice made all choice is gone
And I see them throught ice glazed eyes
I envisioned their will to never crack
Now these hands are ties behind a broken back
Whatever I once knew fell apart in my hands
Breaking, falling to the floor like sand
Through these fingers of panic this decent I see
I look down, all I see is what used to be

I mourn for all the loss
I have nowhere to place the blame
There is no more time for deciding
Father, I know what their hiding

Time has come for the truth to be known
Shed the falsehood for your own good
There’s nothing wrong in taking another step
There is no crime in saving what’s left

Cast iron convictions catalyst to my reactive hate
I see the times to come. I cannot wait

A kinship lay in shambles
Shadows of promises once made
Indifference, emptiness
To those who have been betrayed

So I cover it with pride
And this torture I keep on the inside
These years of decay
Are chipping me away

Vengeance will serve as attrition to their sin
This is my jurisdiction again
A line is crossed as I have been
Punishment, bloodlust revenge

It’s hard to look back on what it could have been because I remember what you said but still don’t know what you meant. If I only knew then what I know right now it just could have been so different. Those dreams, your dreams, were fueled by the promises you made to me but you never meant to keep. Lessons were learned the hard way. I try to focus on the future but couldn’t get past your mistakes. What do you have to say? I won’t look back but will you ever change? Those dreams, your dreams, were fueled by the promises you made to me but you never meant to keep. I won’t look back. Lessons were learned the hard way. I try to focus on the future but you will never change.

I won’t look back.

121: Marriage.

Love friends, think long term, avoid wasting energy on anyone who is not up to the task. Sex for its own sake is heroin addiction with a thicker needle. The honest man makes this pledge without the conjured threats of robed patriarchs, the approval of his community or the observance of some trite ritual. Marriage if anything should be a cosmetic venture overshadowed by a previous and unquestionable vow of truthfulness and integrity of character. When our virtues are cultivated in such a fashion there is no need for anything else. The mental oath of marriage should come long before the church entrance or otherwise you’re not fit for what the popular society would call ‘marriage.’ I don’t need the ritual of marriage to make myself devoted to someone; there is no other sober way to form a union. Trickery, deceit, cowardice and dishonesty are the greatest flaws of character. In fortifying the virtues of honesty, prudence, temperance, justice and moral courage the idea of an immediate transformation from ‘bachelor’ to ‘married man’ seems silly. Good character is not formed in a week or a month. It is created little by little, day by day. Protracted and patient effort is needed to develop good character. Marriage is nothing but a distraction that will not patch a rotting foundation.

Marriage as co-habitation, a business arrangment or ownership of sexual organs is a marriage of waste.

Toward the First Revolution in the Mind Sciences with B. Alan Wallace

Human Computation with Luis von Ahn

The Origin of the Human Mind: Insights from Brain Imaging and Evolution with Martin Sereno

Sweet dreams my dear little child
I burn for touching a bead of your own mass
You will be gone now forever
Try to sleep one more time

“Capital . . . in the political field is analogous to government . . . The economic idea of capitalism, the politics of government or of authority, and the theological idea of the Church are three identical ideas, linked in various ways. To attack one of them is equivalent to attacking all of them . . . What capital does to labour, and the State to liberty, the Church does to the spirit. This trinity of absolutism is as baneful in practice as it is in philosophy. The most effective means for oppressing the people would be simultaneously to enslave its body, its will and its reason.”

The following list is a collection of tools and disinformation primers that should be required study by every American citizen, they help us understand just how the wool has been pulled over our eyes by the 2 minutes hate anticulture of the post-Industrial Age.

Love and Nihilism: An Integralist Primer by S.R. Prozac

- Offers a intruiging alternative worldview where the individual is the least relevant and the overall harmony of the system is most worthy of personal sacrifice. Prozac presents a heroic portrayal of nihilistic ethics, metaphysics and civic duty while toasting to Vedic and Indo-European sensibilities washed away by thousands of years of Abraham’s neurosis. A must read!

“Baloney Detection Kit” by Carl Sagan

- For those who are just taking up the just duty of battling sophists at every step, Carl Sagan offers a plainly worded, easily memorable and effective toolset to engage the enemies of the republic.

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (If you have some money get the Gregory Hays translation)

- The personal memoirs of the finest example of manhood to ever live, Marcus Aurelius expands on the metaphysics of Heraclitus while offering a warm tutoring in the Stoic (Socratic) lifestyle. Marcus speaks directly to the reader with urgency, dry wit and with vivid realism while maintaining his charisma, cheer and incredible sense of duty and conviction. If you are to read one book in your entire life, read this.

The Discourses and Enchiridion (Handbook) of Epictetus

- A major influence behind the ethics and logic of Marcus – Epictetus was the bridge between old and radical Hellenic-era Stoicism and more tangible, pragmatic, dutiful Stoicism of the Roman era. Epictetus was himself (like all wise men) an admirer of Socrates. Having refused to write anything down (like Socrates) what we can read of his today was compiled by his students, notably the Stoic and Roman statesman Arrian who studied under him.

Who Wrote the Bible by Robert Beckford

- Is a crucial introduction to understanding the origins and foundations of abrahamic religion. Once you have watched this video its time to study the bible. Why? Abrahamic neurosis is the basis of all contemporary western thinking, political theory and social dysfunction. Understanding the bible’s finer points is neccesary to understand where modern norms, desires, lifestyle choices, materialism, superstitions, cruelties, prejudices, inclinations and hatreds derive from.

There is nothing to restore in this latter day republic gone away.

Patchogue as a hive for all peversions and dysfunctions; Mecca of the sick ones.

American Nightmare fills my ears at a volume that causes my ears to vommit blood:

A cold world is one where you think hope’s alive.
Where “friends” aren’t really “friends”, where love CAN’T survive.
A cold world is one where life takes your life, where day after day is a fight after fight.
This-World-Has-Made-Me-Cold, but I know, you’ve got to break your back to hold your ground,
and bones will heal, so I’m standing strong.
IT HURTS.
IT BREAKS.
IT KILLS.
IT TAKES.
WE’LL FIGHT.
WE’LL WIN.
WE WON’T GIVE IN.