Originally written Aug 14, 2007; published on this site Nov 30, 2007
Hey! I’m here and I’m important
I’m alone and lonely and don’t want to be
And I’m weak and pathetic
I want you to tell me over and over
that I’m here and I’m important and I matter and I’m loved
because if you don’t
then the loneliness and fear I already have
from being just this one person
in this vast universe
that my mind is aware of
that is SO completely different
from what my body knows
will take over and petrify me.
Shit. You’re not gonna do it.
It’s up to me, then.
Hey! I’m here and I’m important!
YOU’RE NOT LISTENING.
I’M HERE AND I’M IMPORTANT, GOD DAMMIT!
Why isn’t anyone listening?
I’m so lonely.
And no one will give me a ride to the Grateful Dead concert. (Zappa)
Zappa notwithstanding…
So, what’s the reaction of someone who doesn’t care because they feel the same way?
Ummm, wow, dude – kinda needy, dontcha think?
Yeah, well, don’t mean it ain’t true, and don’t mean that there might be an efficiency achieved in saying it and just getting it out of the way. I’m tired of going through the mental calisthenics of spinning it, ok? Try and keep up…
Maslow 1: The Body. Eat, Rest, Fuck, Protect
Survival. You fear your imminent death in the next moment.
Maslow 2: Brain. Safety. Security. Stability. Consistency. Certainty.
Survival (based off “Rest”). You fear your imminent death in the next day.
Maslow 3: Ego A – Belonging
You fear a meaningless life.
You wanna be more than a beaver or a tree or an ant.
You no longer fear death. You’ve embraced your life.
You egotistical fuck – you’re got AWARENESS, don’t you? You think you’re something, so now you’ve got fear that all your something is, in fact, nothing. Yuk.
That “awareness” deal is the price you pay as you become aware of the aesthetic – the random, indifferent beauty of everything that has been, is, and will be. You find out that you’re just a tiny piece, and that defies everything you thought you knew before.
Before you were aware of yourself your world was you-centric already (Maslow 1 and 2 fit across the board), but you had no awareness of yourself, and an incomplete awareness of the aesthetic, and thus made no assertion of definition. You left the aesthetic as it is, with your natural, survivalist methods, and made no assault to demand your importance – the point was moot. (Still is.)
But NOOOOOO! You had to THINK your way through your survival, didn’t you? You had to reason, to discern, to improve, create, and innovate…
…you just HAD to go and harness fire that night while you were tripping on mushrooms, by grabbing that stick with your hand (which you can do because you’ve got a thumb and you’re walking on two feet – innovations of Thinking Man), DIDN’T YOU???
“Dig this, Glog – I’ve got fire in my hand!”
Oh, ain’t you something.
Cut to “America’s Got Talent”
So anyway, it’s still kind of tough to maintain the “I’m something” deal so early, so the first thing you do is be WITH something that says, “You’re something”
Trees aren’t very good at trying to live with us – we pretty much have to constantly shepherd them around ‘cause if we don’t they’re gonna do what they want and fuck up our plans along the way. So instead, we chose to try and be with other people – they’re better at affirming our existence. (If a cockroach walks on my desk, lifts a front leg and makes a noise then goes on his way, we’re in DEEEP trouble)
The want to belong is EVERYWHERE.
[I’ve been including an additional component as I’ve had chance to discuss this stuff with one or two people. Capitalism is the absolute worst socio-economic system for minimizing the ego. The arbitrary benevolence of a free market economy. (heavy sarcasm). It needs to be said here and now for its relevance…]
because the folks that know how to manipulate
(a greedy extension of empathy, another extension of awareness)
will give you ALL SORTS of groups you can latch onto
– and YOU make their job very easy because you desperately need to be a part of a group
Um, wait…let’s rephrase that: you want to find a smaller group (Why?) The group you’re in now – everything and everyone – is way to big for you to feel an integral part. You can be forgotten, missed, overlooked. Hell, more than CAN be…you already ARE.
You can thank all the minds that came before you for giving you that fear
for giving you that sense of a vastness that your body will never experience
that makes you feel so small, so insignificant that you yearn to find some group that is smaller that will acknowledge your existence and tag your “being” as vital in this moment of your existence.
Your physical characteristics might well have been “grouped” for you…says the Lefty.
The White Lefty
The White Male Lefty
The White Male Heterosexual Lefty
BOOM! I exist and can now automatically, without even trying, be a part of four groups.
Oh, and us WMHLs, you know how WE are…
And BOOM! I now have permission to act any way I want because I’m part of this group and shucks, we’re all the same and behave the same so sometimes I’ll align myself with this group so I can get what I want.
And that’s just physical characteristics.
Anyone out there a FAN of something?
Monty Pythoners?
NASCAR?
Wrestling
[hold on – I just mentioned professional wrestling – I think I have to kill a calf now or something]
And all THAT’S just happening with Maslow 3: Ego A – Belonging
Shall we move on? Yes, let’s! Isn’t this FUN to talk about!
Maslow 4: Ego B – Esteem
Ab-so-LUTEly the next step after YOU telling me I’m important is ME telling me I’m important. Now I’m recruited for groups because they want someone like ME to be a part. I know I have value and import now, I don’t need you to tell me.
I don’t think I’m important – I KNOW I’m important. I’m convinced I matter.
Thing is, this can be a good thing. Pity we’ve fucked it up so far, let’s hope we can turn things around.
Reaching “Esteem” these days far more often means that you’ve given yourself the right to do just about anything you want because you don’t NEED anyone telling you how much you matter.
Be careful with this one, though – if you keep TELLING me you matter and you’re important, then I’m pretty sure you don’t really feel that way.
There’s a lot of stuff regarding the Esteem component that I could bring up that’s egomaniacal, self-indulgent, self-absorbed, all those “inner” and “self” things that in THIS context have a negative connotation.
I’d like to focus on the good component about this, though.
Because if you’ve gotten here, then that also means you’re beginning to gain some perspective in yourself and your existence. You’re just still a little too caught up in it, but you’re well on your way to what can be a VERY good place…
Maslow 5: Loss of Ego
You find out the pointlessness of all that self-absorption.
Not a whole lot of people get here.
I don’t know if I am. I like to think I am, but I’m aware that since I’m human I might be just stroking my own ego in saying that.
HELL, I’ll go you one further………..
MAYBE some professional educated mind-type person could read the stuff I’ve been putting out since November last year – contained on this site on one page or another – and quickly get to the level of my suffering and the level of my victimization and the level of my need to be loved and cared for and tell me that Philip, you are in REALLY bad shape and you’ve got things so twisted up in your head that you aren’t even AWARE of how fucked up and insane you are.
I allow for that possibility.
I’m able to acknowledge over and over how much I don’t know.
How little meaning there is to everything
These points do not instill fear in me. They are merely facts – points of information – that are true in the aesthetic and NOT part of a perceived reality.
And MAYBE, if I know that there is a vastness to what I don’t know, and I know there is a vastness of meaningless, random arbitrary events, and I am not fearful of these points,
Then maybe I’m NOT insane. Seems reasonable, doesn’t it? Does to me….
But then, I don’t know. I could be insane.
(It goes back and forth like that. A lot.)
So here’s what happened.
Rational Man, Thinking Man
Homo sapien sapien
has been running scared for a very long time
His manner of survival has made him dominant
He thinks, he reasons, he questions
He solves problems and innovates
To the NEXT best answer for everything
And has used this dominance and manner of survival to feed the collective ego, to dampen the collective fear, to give rise to each individual voice to allow everyone to feel that sense of value. I have an obscure but relevant example:
Here’s an ethical question that arose just this afternoon:
You have spider mites on your tomatoes in Harrisburg.
(Bad luck, sorry. I’m happy you’re using the land near you to make your food, though.)
The Neem tree of New Zealand, it turns out, contains within its extract a scent that repels insects from plants without toxicity.
Do you, as a Harrisburgian (is that what we’re called? How about “Harrisburginites?”) have the aesthetic RIGHT to pursue whatever avenues are necessary for you to obtain, mass produce and distribute this insect repellant so everyone’s little farms can have this insect repellant?
Phrased to include “whatever avenues are necessary” the answer is no.
But do you have the right to obtain, mass produce, and distribute it? Absolutely.
Every step of the way must NOT be to be so efficient to reach as many people as possible with as cheap a product as possible. Every step of that obtaining, producing, and distributing must be done in a way that does NOT give prominence to MAN’S needs, but works within the aesthetic.
Careful where you get your energy, though.
Yeah, um, fossil fuels are done. We all know it.
WHY IN THE FUCK WOULD ANYONE buy a Hummer?
Oh, sorry – why in the fuck would anyone who doesn’t have an ego buy a Hummer?
Why would anyone without an ego DESIGN a Hummer?
Mass produce and distribute to your heart’s content with water, air, and sun. And feet.
No mechanized transportation. No mechanized production.
Just ‘cause you CAN doesn’t mean you SHOULD.
And the whole “motor” thing is driving us to our deaths. (Get it?)
I can appreciate the want to go there. I’m reminded of the book “Innerspace” – one of the first I read during “Human, Being” – and how it spoke of the trips the mind was making in advance of the trips the body could make:
Telegraph : Train
Telephone : Car
Television : Airplane
Computer : (Don’t tell me astronautics – been to the moon lately?)
Yeah, there’s the problem. Our mind is writing checks our body can’t keep.
(Someone else said that, I can’t recall who)
We have extended the MENTAL environment past the physical
It’s created a monster out of the ego.
Feed THAT ego into a capitalistic society, and…….well………holy shit
You see what’s happened.
So it better be now:
1. Get rid of motorized production and motorized transportation,
2. (Once you do that, you do what you must to equate the body to the mind)
Get rid of “transmitted” communication
3. Get rid of electronic logic – we’ll do our thinking for ourselves.
We cannot abide the tools created from greed (want, fear) and the unevolved notion “manifest destiny” (also fear: if you want to mean something, just convince yourself everything else exists BECAUSE of you and just for you. BOOM! Dontcha feel more relaxed now?)
4. “Can we cut down on our rutting JUST for a couple of seconds while we figure out this FOOD-AIR deal????” (Hicks)
Oh, this is a tricky one. Population control.
Um, not really. We could be less indulgent, certainly. And virginity until marriage is a wonderful offering to the aesthetic. We can return to the extended family in a much stronger way, more greatly reveal the wisdom of retaining the ancients (within reason) and, as the time draws near, accept their death WITH them, with less grief and more appreciation.
It doesn’t have to be crass or objectionable, or even require the creation of any “method” to achieve it. As we learn to live in the context of the aesthetic, we will make less effort to hold onto each strand of each moment of each person’s lives because we will know their context and their finiteness and their finality and the joy of their existence – and the aesthetic will react by working to achieve equilibrium, just like Nash said.
Must pause: Nash’s governing dynamics – see “A Beautiful Mind.” Ron Howard is a director who I’m sure would use pieces from his interviews with the man to sculpt the quiet, unforced dialogue in the screenplay (the truth to the character, a more realistic recreation). Thus, I hold it reasonable that, when Russell Crowe, as aged Nash, is muttering to some students in the library while his friend calls his wife in to see that he is interacting with people – the point of the scene – you only might pick up what he says. I’ve seen it a few times – he says that “mathematics is indeed an art form.”
Of course it is. ANY pursuit can be an art form.
Nash viewed his pursuit as artistic because he had an artistic sensibility, he had a similar sense of the aesthetic, of the grander pursuit of everything towards the next moment, stupid egotistical humans notwithstanding.
There’s artistic plumbing, artistic waste disposal, artistic dirty jobs of all manner and form – for anyone who pursues those efforts with a sense of the aesthetic attempts no assertion, minimizes the impact on the aesthetic, and grounds themselves in the understanding of their existence and their role in the aesthetic.
There can be art to being a lawyer. (Here’s an empathy test for you: Be a lawyer on the day you wake up and say in fear of what you’ve become: “Holy fuck – I’ve turned into a lawyer!”)
OK, so if we return to a life that works in the context of the aesthetic, population will achieve equilibrium and our viruslike behavior will naturally recede. (We were never viruses – we just played them on TV)
There’s more, always more…
Thanks for listening.
Philip
One Perspective 