A Preference for Insects (Waking Up Changed)

I don’t care what Kafka says.  It’s one thing to wake up in the morning as a bug, but quite another to wake up as a nihilist.  Offered only the two, I’d opt for insecthood any day.  At least I’d have a tangible shell to protect me instead of a melting, plastic shield of dying beliefs.

The Razor's Edge (Psychedelics and Morality)

To say that a particular idea is “right” or “wrong” to “some particular degree” is the same as to say the social acceptance aggregate, as determined by my interests, is either strong or weak.  Which is to say, the idea is more or less useful around certain kinds of people (the ones I need to stay linked to). 

 Moral claims both spoken (“this should be done”) and unspoken (“I am doing this, which is my bid for its needing to be done”), are offers for an exchange of social capital.  They are economic transactions. 

 Everything is mathematical, a play of numbers, an algorithm at the razor’s edge between “nothing” and “something.”

 Psychedelics, properly used, provide an experience of this edge.

Suicide and Inertia

"I" continue to exist to the extent that my behaviors are meaningful to others.  This is because socially determined meanings are necessary for movements to be actions, and actions are further subsumed as meaningful with reference to "me" as the person acting. 

In other words, "I" am a product of the attitudes held by others about the meanings of my behaviors.  

But this implies a kind of enslavement, since my self is constructed from outside of me and apart from my own choices.  When I recognize this slavery, I may feel threatened and become disillusioned with my world.  This results in my innate desire for freedom, a desire to be self-determining in the construction of my identity and my choices for acting.  

But I can only attain this freedom if I refuse to behave in ways that will be meaningful to others.  Self-determined "actions" lose the meaningfulness that makes them "actions," so that they become mere events.  As a result, my desire to escape from enslavement is also an embrace of inaction.  

Freedom, then, is only achievable through inertia.

Inertia and suicide are two ways of describing the same experience.  The desire for suicide is the desire to abstain from meaningful movement (action) and suicide is the successful attainment of such abstinence.  It seems, however, that that such a mission cannot be entirely authentic since it sets up inertia (escape, suicide, etc.) as an objective.  By replacing old objectives with a new one, I have simply assumed another socially construct that underwrites the meaninfulness of my behaviors (making them actions).  

This suggests that, to really commit suicide, I cannot not use a gun or a knife (which would involve meaningful behaviors and objectives, ie., actions).  The authentic suicide requires a resting in inertia, voilitional stillness.  This is death through inaction, outside of choice (illustrated by the passive starvation of the protagonist in Knut Hamsun's Hunger).

On this account, suicide is the cessation of action, sustained non-movement without deliberation, complete inertia.  I have described this elsewhere as "trading places with the vagrant," by which I relinquish all possessions and commitments that provide me with identity.  This is "death" in a very profound sense, is it not?  

So, in the end, freedom can only occur in the process of pure suicide.  If tomorrow I will not exist, I am free to do anything today.

Writing on Napkins (An Unsober Reflection on Freedom)

(transcribed from notes on my bar napkins)

Availability as potential absence = alcoholism.

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When, finally, I can see objects as objects, I will be free.

And in any event, there are two ways to be free:  To be (1) attuned to the social structures, and (2) to be entirely naïve with respect to them.  The dances between the former and the latter are the reason I’m an alcoholic.

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The fragility of a social structure is determined by the degree to which you recognize it as a social structure.  The neurotic (psychotic?) tend to shatter everything because, in the light of their gazes, everything becomes fragile and a path can be laid in any direction.

Falling Asleep

When you’re at the edge of sleep, the little nervous geists in the back of your head begin to emerge, and your fears flash before your eyes.  The events and things and people that you do not want to look at, they are always there, waiting to look at you.