(oct2022 thread) a thing I haven’t quite been able to connect the dots on properly, but have an increasing felt sense of: there is a way in which people get mad at the world to the degree to which they’ve abdicated themselves

trying to explain this with words is tedious and tricky business. I can think of other people who’ve said similar things but I’d prefer not to bring them up because of the associations, connotations, implications that I’d rather not get tangled with

I’m not saying that the world *isn’t* a maddening place. There’s all manner of cruelty and injustice, there’s many lifetimes worth of horrors to be mad about being enacted every day

nevertheless we live our lives in the world that Is. everybody’s gotta eat, everybody’s gotta sleep, unrelenting rage can only keep you going maybe a week, a month, a year. at some point you might wanna start strategizing and ask yourself how you wanna live in the madworld

I’m also not saying “therefore retreat into yourself, look out for only yourself, imprison yourself in a fortress of solitude, numb yourself to all emotion, accumulate power and use it to seek more power” – that’s a miserable way to live. As a dramatic teen I said I’d rather die

[this whole thread so far feels like I’m next door to the room in which the actual thread I want to be writing is. like I’m in the restroom while the band is playing outside]

I think the thing is that love and fear is at the heart of everything, and talking openly about this is complicated because people aren’t necessarily ready to hear it, and so as a result a tremendous amount of our communications is either hedging or unproductive yelling

hmmmm that’s still not… I guess I wonder if people are always already focusing their time and energy on what they want to see more of. I think there’s some truth to that. It’s complicated by the fact that people are multi-faceted, and might be in a disequilibrium type of state… (end)

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(og thread, mar2022) there is a very radical, powerful state of mind, state of being, that people throughout history have recurringly tried to talk about, but it’s v hard to get the point across because people who don’t want to hear about it will look for problems with the imperfect utterance

its the feeling of being the author of your own fate/destiny, of being in charge, being truly self-sovereign, earning your own respect and admiration, feeling your own body and mind standing by to assist you, the captain of your soul

we can talk shit about this all day, argue about the details, blah blah, the comments section appended to this is tens of thousands of pages long full of procrastinators & avoiders looking for fine print technicalities &excuses to support their argument that they’re not in charge

n ya kno what, if you argue against it, you’re right. you’re not ready. it’s wise of your fear to protect you from the absolutely searing light of self-responsibility. it’s like a weight on your shoulders that will break your back if you don’t have the right form. u have to train

this quote is in the right spirit of it there is no test to pass but your own you have to seize it for yourself there are a bunch of movies that have scenes that try to capture the emotional reality of this, I remember Into The Spider-Verse has it

Moana has it (the call isn’t out there at all, it’s inside me),
Frozen has it (you are the one you’ve been waiting for all of your life)
it’s you
you are already the monarch of your life but you have to see it and accept it

i don’t think I could have shipped Introspect without listening to frozen, moana, spiderverse, superman, avatar, etc soundtracks etc over and over again lol

it’s not an intellectual thing, you need the emotional reckoning, it comes from the gut and heart