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What this is about
My girlfriend just started writing a blog about her struggles with fitness and I realized that I have some things to say also.
Physically, I've had few problems in my life. I'm a natural athlete with a high metabolism. Emotionally, I'm solid... I rarely lose my head or feel out of control. Mentally, however, I find it so hard to be satisfied.
What limits me? Feelings of smallness and inability to affect large problems in the state, country, and the world. Feelings that corporations and the wealthy class are able to do whatever they want without consequenecs. Feelings that no matter what I do with my life that I'll be on edge and continue to struggle with alienation.
Decadence is the appropriate label for the world we live in now. There is a sort of decay in meaning that is eroding everything. The source of this decay is abstraction. The fundamental ties that once ground us into our lives are falling away. For instance, we used to have a strong connection with our labor. We would spend our time making things and we'd know how those things worked, what they were made out of, and we'd have personal connections with those objects. Now, everything is mass produced, and we have absolutely no connection with the objects in our lives... However, these objects now represent us more than objects ever had previously.
What is the primary measurement of a man? I wish it was his character, his creativity, and contributions to society and his family. Unfortunately, instead we are seeing increasing compartmentalizations of people, reducing them to an image... an externality so potent, that even within the individual the primary core of where self is created is external. The reliance on externalities makes us all, by definition, lost.
Alienation is the hallmark of our decadence and it makes it hard to care about ourselves or others. We can easily fall into the spectacular images of the media and drown in drug use. Drown in food. Drown on the couch in the loving arms of Oprah and Pat Robertson.
We need to feel power, but there is little to authentially feel power from. We are forced to create to overcome this system, and most of us don't have the tools to do this. I'd like to think that I have the tools to do this, but in the last 2-3 years I've felt as though I'm losing my edge. I've lost the focus I once had.
I've begun to get it back. I've returned to the desert and I've again started treating my body as it deserves to be treated. The better the body is treated, the better our mental and emotional health can be. My focus on eating better and exercising has put me into a place where I feel that I am in better health now than I ever have been.
But this is the beginning. I have been avoiding the contradictions of existence and the absurdities of modern life that once inspired me to write. This journal will be there for me to put my thoughts out about how to get this place again, about how to have a healthy existence in a world not built for health, about what those challenges are, and general observations.
Physically, I've had few problems in my life. I'm a natural athlete with a high metabolism. Emotionally, I'm solid... I rarely lose my head or feel out of control. Mentally, however, I find it so hard to be satisfied.
What limits me? Feelings of smallness and inability to affect large problems in the state, country, and the world. Feelings that corporations and the wealthy class are able to do whatever they want without consequenecs. Feelings that no matter what I do with my life that I'll be on edge and continue to struggle with alienation.
Decadence is the appropriate label for the world we live in now. There is a sort of decay in meaning that is eroding everything. The source of this decay is abstraction. The fundamental ties that once ground us into our lives are falling away. For instance, we used to have a strong connection with our labor. We would spend our time making things and we'd know how those things worked, what they were made out of, and we'd have personal connections with those objects. Now, everything is mass produced, and we have absolutely no connection with the objects in our lives... However, these objects now represent us more than objects ever had previously.
What is the primary measurement of a man? I wish it was his character, his creativity, and contributions to society and his family. Unfortunately, instead we are seeing increasing compartmentalizations of people, reducing them to an image... an externality so potent, that even within the individual the primary core of where self is created is external. The reliance on externalities makes us all, by definition, lost.
Alienation is the hallmark of our decadence and it makes it hard to care about ourselves or others. We can easily fall into the spectacular images of the media and drown in drug use. Drown in food. Drown on the couch in the loving arms of Oprah and Pat Robertson.
We need to feel power, but there is little to authentially feel power from. We are forced to create to overcome this system, and most of us don't have the tools to do this. I'd like to think that I have the tools to do this, but in the last 2-3 years I've felt as though I'm losing my edge. I've lost the focus I once had.
I've begun to get it back. I've returned to the desert and I've again started treating my body as it deserves to be treated. The better the body is treated, the better our mental and emotional health can be. My focus on eating better and exercising has put me into a place where I feel that I am in better health now than I ever have been.
But this is the beginning. I have been avoiding the contradictions of existence and the absurdities of modern life that once inspired me to write. This journal will be there for me to put my thoughts out about how to get this place again, about how to have a healthy existence in a world not built for health, about what those challenges are, and general observations.
posted by Will at 10:39 PM
1 Comments:
I have lots to say, Will. Your last paragraph sums up some of my own struggles--and something I was trying to capture to describe the 'about me' or about this journal in my own profile.
I hope that I can inspire you to get back into writing about the absurdities of modernity here. In a more basic level, that is what I hope to accomplish with my blog. I can see how this all relates to your blog premises..
A hope this can be a good beginning for both of us.
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