so ever since like a few weeks after i enlisted
i’ve been keeping track of my life, which i never bothered doing properly before
and it’s been awesome, everything’s been getting a lot better
i’ve managed to find creative solutions to most of my recurring problems and stuff like that, generally everything is improving in every imaginable way
i no longer feel like existentialist melancholy or other evil-painful things
“keeping track” is so vague
every little detail you can imagine
i keep careful control, but it implodes once in aw hile
i don’t keep CONTROL
i just keep track
the control happens almost naturally, subconsciously
what gets measured gets managed
“keeping track” of every little detail… that’s not living is it
live and let live
it doesn’t take much effort!
like 5-10 minutes a day
still too much effort
and it adds a lot of value to my life because I no longer have extended periods of emptiness where i don’t know hat happened
I do have some periods of emptiness but they’re nice/pleasant/meaningful
i have my writing to gain insight
i write too! I write even more, now
big picture, everything connected etc
instead of small details
the small details start to fade away in the long term trends
i’ve managed to break away from narrative fallacies that I used to use to explain everything
it was the hardest thing to start doing, i’m naturally an improvisational don’t give a fuck type guy
my main motivation was NOT to feel like my 2 years in NS is/was a waste of my time
what do you do when you have absolute freedom?
whatever i feel like
like what
we DO have absolute freedom, we just don’t realize it often enough
yes precisely
I mean you could look at it from many ways and describe it in many ways but essentially we have far more control and choice than we realise
i know
a painful realisation for me was to acknowledge that for all my loathing of routines and structure
I actually was keeping to a very rigid one in absence of conscious ones
my subconscious led me into making the same decisions over and over again,into the same situations, same old same old
he who cannot obey himself will be commanded
by forces beyond his control, be it from within or without
so I wasn’t cool with that, once i came aware of it (by keeping track)
anyway
long story short I’ve pretty much become a far more awesome person than I was a year ago, and I can see how I’m going to become far more awesome in the future (awesome being a summarization of a whole bunch of skills and ideas and perceptions and blah blah good stuff)
but
as a result of all this I’ve found myself a bit less tolerant of some of my friends, a bit more anxious, eager, impatient
i don’t know how to describe it because while I say anxious, I’m more at peace now than I ever was
at the same time I guess I have an increasingly acute sense of awareness when something is a waste of time
superiority complex perhaps?
and I am the sort to never think of anything as a waste of time
there’s always something you can learn, always something you can experience, figure out, see in a new way
no leh in fact I feel far less superior now than I used to
I increasingly feel like that there’s no such thing as natural talent, or that I’m in any way better than anyone else
I used to think I was some big fuck seriously omg
I got it; what I feel above all else is out-of-context
I need a frame of reference
the past
02:11
I mean I am more than what I was, at least I think I am, though I have my doubts of course
Godels theorem!
i cannot prove myself within the context of myself
there are errors inherent in self-referencing
I cannot know if I am making up stuff to make myself feel good or bad
I cannot be aware of my own subconscious deception, intense scrutiny nothwithstanding
an easier way would be to find someone else who’s been through something similar
(i’m sorry I’m making you listen to all this and pretend that you care)
i dont have much response to external things, especially now since my internal workings have ceased to be of any good to myself
ouch
how did that happen
i dont know
jialat.
it’s good actually. i breeze through a days being indifferent
maybe it’s the weather. cold as ice.
I enjoy moments like that sometimes
the other day I was staying in camp alone
so peaceful
not a soul around
vast empty space and intense solitude
yeah it’s like it here most of the time
especially when i’m alone at home
i like the two extremes. very silent or very chaotic when we have parties
I also like kopi
I’m a very kopi person
about 4-6 people, less than 4 needs solid conversationalists, not easy to find
i often wonder if partying has a dehumanizing effect
life has a dehumanizing effect
hahaha
most of the time
not intrinsically though
what does it even mean to be “human” anyway
we’re all basically aninams
animals
okay I can expand this
I would choose to include monkeys and dolphins and it’ll stil be valid
a sense of individual worth and relevance in context to the larger social unit
so when I say dehumanizing i mean like, de-facing
i dont have much individual worth
I’m very torn on the subject
i can argue for a lot of different positions and i’m not fully convinced by many
what is the self, what is consciousness? difficult questions that both seem to be leading towards non-entities- which make sense but seem contrary to intuition and experience
so I suppose in the CONTEXT of intuition and experience, the self can exist, and matter, even if it doesn’t in reality, because as long as we are creatures of intuition and experience then the concept is still relevant (at least within that context)
kinda like how we’re typing on interfaces that are actually comprised of bits and ones and zeroes
so do we have value as individual? we can choose to if we want to in the context of our experience
I’m pushed towards thinking that if it has to get so complicated, there must be a flaw in the question/premises
and that I think drawing lines between individuals is the first mistake we make
I am me and you are you, physically, yes, sure, it’s obvious
but almost all of us are more than ourselves in one way or another, in many ways, really, and we are the sum of many things, and ultimately there’s no such thing as an individual to begin with
so again, can we have individual worth
i would not make sense outside of the context of the whole, the way a wave does not make sense outside of the context of the ocean
so what is the worth of a wave? its contribution to the ocean, in a sense
and perhaps similarly the value of a human being is his or her contribution to humanity- and by that I don’t mean like inventing something or writing a book or being a politician or whatever
but living, speaking, thinking, processing, acting, being, becoming
ah well.
does that make sense?
i guess
kinda like
bees, or ants, but far more complex times many many
I was reading this beautiful description by a biologist of language as a living organism
and how people build it and put it together, fervently, with abandon, subconsciously, unintentionally
some people jump at this and go “omg we’re a hive mind working towards a singularity”
but I think it’s a bit more rich and complex and beautiful than that and I get a lot of pleasure out of contemplating it, it’s almost spiritual
this idea of a kind of almost divine order and complexity that begins to arise out of simple patterns and deviations and sheer randomness
i struggle to express/convey that, though. I’d love to, if I could, and I ought to. That would be something.
02:39
write it down
copy and paste
Visa,
this might sound out of the blue. Your blog has become much, much better than the one in the past. It’s rather stimulating and somewhat coincidental(?) that I find myself moving towards the same conclusions as you, albeit probably via a different route of ideas.
The things you’ve mentioned in passing about the value of University, for instance, and the corresponding degrees that we so desperately scrabble after.
Consciousness Singularity (actually, I see it as primordial consciousness – which is about the same thing, I suppose), and our role in it.
Perhaps alot of the parallels that I’m imagining I’m seeing are the result of me filling in the blanks, as it were, with my own thoughts and musings. I wonder how similar we might be in our direction, and where we might actually differ in the way we choose to evolve.
It has become extremely disconcerting (actually it gives me a heady feeling at times just thinking about it) how many of my beliefs have gone unchallenged, untested, unverified. I’ve been through many a mindfuck, as I’m sure you have, in the time since JC, and I too, feel that I am less shit (or on a positive note, more awesome) than the person I used to be. Not that such a statement really mean anything, since the self doesn’t exist (but you already knew that).
Could you tell me where you’re intending to take your potential? Maybe we could bounce ideas off each other, and actually have meaningful dialogue instead of me projecting my own bullshit on you.
Have a good night.
ONE MORE YEAR TO ORD
…also, you should keep writing. You probably have the strength for it, unlike me. I find that all too often I degenerate into self-indulgence instead of producing anything honest and worthwhile.
I really can’t wait to ORD (this thought recurs). There are so many things I want to throw myself into, and every day spent in this mandatory term of service just seems to me like a bow string being draw tauter and tauter for the day I finally get my pink IC. I’m sure you feel the same way.
By the way, have you decided which University you want to go to? And which course?
At any rate, I can totally relate to what you mean by feeling simultaneously impatient/restless, while being more at peace. That really struck home for me. I feel *exactly* the same way.
As if I have a seed within me. What do the Greeks call it, a Daimon? Whatever it is, I often feel as if I have a task, a responsibility to carry out, and that the path will be full of headfucks and fear and also giddy triumps but generally would be me trudging through valleys full of shit – much of it my own. My fears, my limitations – that whole shebang. All of it to uncover the reality behind the layers of bullshit I’ve lived with. I can’t wait.
I know what I want, in the sense that I know what I have to do next. Ever since I’ve been liberated from the lie of self (haha), I’ve lost the capacity to be depressed in any meaningful way. Angst is simply alien to me now. I can readily disengage from any labels I can give myself, or others, though I still do so out of habit, not compulsion.
Things are just so clear to me now. I cannot see all the way to the finish line, but the path is lit for me constantly by at least a few steps ahead. Meanwhile, I am painfully conscious of the forces of laziness, self-destructive cynicism, cowardice, and dishonesty that can slow me down and stagnate me (although they cannot consume me – once again because I am an enlightened buddha). I do not fear it, however. It just is. Old remnants and more entropic patterns of consciousness.
This is a lull period, make no mistake. I’m sure you, too, feel the same way. When the chains are off, we’ll be up and running. Haters will hate, wankers will wank. Irrelevant. IRRELEVANT.
I realize fully how cheesy all this sounds, but – fuck it. You know. Fuck it.
My conviction is that life is just consciousness evolution, and we’re the ultimate mind’s fragments for the purpose of self-experience. I am willing to explore alternate realities, I believe in God, but in the end I believe all these words are bullshit unless they’re grounded in direct personal experience.
It’s probably scary to just abandon belief and be willing to confront reality on its own terms, but it’s necessary because fuck fear, that’s why.
Now. Good night.
Thanks! I’ll respond to everything in time, perhaps here, perhaps over the next few entries, most of it which i was already intending/planning to do before you even said anything (as you would have expected)
which is, I think, even more reasonable evidence of the same sublime forces that are at play here that builds beehives and language (your singularity, if you will- a description that I feel kinda trivializes the actual beauty and complexity of the process, yet perhaps it is a process that has to necessarily be trivialized in the interpretation, the way a map or a painting or a photograph necessarily simplifies its subject matter so that it may be interpreted and understood)
a lot, man, a lot. thanks for sticking around. and keep fighting the good fight. i am certain that there are more of us.
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