Yesterday I posted about Max Headroom and New Coke. Unbeknownst to me at the time, Coca-Cola was making news that very day. The New York Times has the story.
Coca-Cola is dropping “Classic.” These cans await soda at the Swire Coca-Cola bottling plant in West Valley City, Utah. The Coca-Cola Company is dropping the “Classic” from its red labels in some Southeast regions, and the word will be gone from all of its packaging by the summer, the company said Friday. The story was first reported by the trade publication Beverage Digest.
The “Classic” designation — which appears under the “Coca-Cola” script on labels — was added to the packaging in 1985, to distinguish the original formula from a sweeter, wildly unpopular new version of Coke.
It has been a curiosity of mine for a long time how I am able to talk about coming trends, changes, and make predictions so easily. Why 24 years after New Coke comes and goes would I write a post about it on the same day that news comes out related to the last remnant of that fiasco fading away?
It reminds me of a concept explored in several of William Gibson's books. In Idoru and All Tomorrow's Parties of the Bridge Trilogy, a prominent character dives into the net and is able to gain information by looking at nodes. While not necessarily even looking at specific information that appears relevant to the questions he is trying to answer, somehow the pieces come together for him and he can make sudden intuitive connections. I think that this sort of nodal thinking is becoming more and more possible as our world of information is consolidating more and more into places were it can almost all be located simultaneously.
I have a love/hate relationship with this trend. I love it because being connected to information makes me feel as part of the system. It is very important to me to be able to understand the context and the narrative arcs of the world I live in. I can paint you an amazing picture of the past 200 years that will put this whole world in context for you, and every foreign policy decision or domestic policy decision will make perfect sense within that context (regardless as to whether it is a poor decision or not). The more than I know - the more nodes floating in my consciousness - the more sudden, intuitive connections form for me at seemingly random times.
Why now would Max Headroom and New Coke be on my mind? I will create a list to bring you into my psyche:
1) I've been thinking heavily about the ideas of simulation and simulacra of Baudrillard, and possible PhD theses I could come up with relevant to those ideas. 2) I've noticed recently the deluge of animated films and television shows that have been better than ever at creating realistic looking three-dimensional models. The graphics have looked so smooth, in fact, that this has struck me at times as being extra-real. 3) With the election of Barack Obama, there has been a new media blitz by many corporations riding on Obama's coattails - stealing his themes for their commercials. The top culprit in this blitz, Coca-Cola's largest competitor: Pepsi
These thematic ideas carried forth of course would also lead me backwards in time toward pivotal moments (nodes). You can see how I got there, and it is no wonder than Coca-Cola would use this opportunity for another self-remaking. It is, no doubt, ironic following this that Pepsi and Coca-Cola are using this year's Super Bowl in a new push against each other of epic proportions.
Rival cola makers PepsiCo and Coca-Cola Co. have together purchased nearly 10 minutes of ad time during Sunday's game, and both plan to use the widely watched spectacle to launch new branding and marketing initiatives.
So, the obvious question will be what is this new initiative be, and will it also follow in Obama's lead? Well, yes it will (from the first article) -
With the introduction of a new global advertising campaign, called “Open Happiness,” Coca-Cola decided it was time to make its American product match what it was called elsewhere.
This campaign will connect with Obama's new openness toward the world and willingness to cooperate and collectively problem solve with Coke's desperate need to be viewed as a positive influence in the world considering its numerous abuses abroad. Coke is branded as an American company, and a beneficent one. "Open Happiness" will be as much a PR campaign as it is a campaign to get us to collectively put our money in to buy their products in this rapidly decreasing market.
Why should we care about any of this? Coca-Cola is as much as anything else a symbol of American colonialism (they have appropriated much of the water in many countries around the world, despite local protest), American idealism, American culture in general (think Norman Rockwell), among other things. Coca-Cola is a powerful American symbol - how the meaning of Coca-Cola changes will also reflect how the meaning of America changes. Do not underestimate the power that corporations have in generating meaning, and the immense stress they are under to manage trends to remain relevant and profitable.
Silicone is more of a fall color. You see, it is winter now, so you might try red.
There's a fine line to navigate between adjusting to the weather and adorning yourself in camoflage.
It always astounds me how you can look in the mirror through other people's eyes
for them.
II.
Lately, I have noticed the aching sighs of the earth under the crushing weight of the cresent moon orbiting quietly across the sky toward cloud-covered horizons.
But I am often in my car and instead am forced to look down at the yellow and white lines engaging the grooved asphault between isolated city alcoves on country roads lined with snow.
The playland of the mind while the sinking night swallows me whole.
Dear God, please help me stay awake until I get home tonight.
III.
I am no more a threat than you are to yourself.
IV.
People often over-simplify what is meant by the word
choice.
Fate and Destiny happen to be twins that had their eyes ripped out by Oedipus and Electra's brother (before anything went wrong).
Whether those twins watch over us or indulge themselves in their remaining senses matters not at all.
Choice has little to do with outcomes, but a surprising amount to do with the water tumbling down the side of your glass placed in front of you by a perky, yet apathetic waitress.
In the increasing loss of meaning, and the ever-changing dynamics of meaning in society, a problem with the meaning of "friend" is emerging. The primary problem here, is that "friend" is taking on different meaning in difficult circumstances that are no interchangeable.
[The] policy that Burger King ran afoul of this month with its “Whopper Sacrifice” campaign, which offered a free hamburger to anyone who severed the sacred bonds with 10 of the friends they had accumulated on Facebook. Facebook suspended the program because Burger King was sending notifications to the castoffs letting them know they’d been dropped for a sandwich (or, more accurately, a tenth of a sandwich).
The campaign, which boasted of ending 234,000 friendships, is history now — Burger King chose to end it rather than tweak it to fit Facebook’s policy — but the same can hardly be said of the emerging anxiety it tapped. As social networking becomes ubiquitous, people with an otherwise steady grip on social etiquette find themselves flummoxed by questions about “unfriending” people: how to do it, when to do it and how to get away with it quietly.
That is correct, even the concept of friend has been fully commodified.
[...]Burger King decided that it would do the talking for this article rather than its agency and delegated the task to Brian Gies, a vice president of marketing who said he was not a member of Facebook and therefore had not participated in the “Whopper Sacrifice.”
Mr. Gies explained the marketing team’s thinking about Facebook. “It seemed to us that it quickly evolved from quality of friends to quantity,” he said, “which was interesting to us because it felt like the virtual definition of a friend became something different than the friends that you’d want to hang out with.”
From there, Mr. Gies said, the team started wondering: “Do you really want to have all these people knowing what you’re up to and what you’re interested in? We wanted to be part of that conversation and part of that solution, and ‘Whopper Sacrifice’ was born.”
There is a sort of cultural capital here. It seems clear to me that this is only possible in a post-industrial society to even occur to have concerns such as this.
Facebook, which now has more than 150 million members, has clearly been built on the back of the culture of oversharing. Many members broadcast the mundane details of their lives through a “status update” feature, which lets people — nay, encourages them — to describe the contents of their lunch or the virulence of their bronchitis.
There is something compulsive about the desire to share everything about ourselves. As though that in itself will lead toward self-discoveries or closer connections with other people. However, in a deluge of too much information, the valuation of all information decreases. We are not as easily moved by the gentle subtleties of our lives. And the context of our lives becomes this massive web, the meaning generated from all of its points sparkling against each other. And somehow, left wondering if anyone is at the helm.
Even in this environment, however, deleting friends does not generate a notification of any sort, leaving members to discover they’ve been unfriended only when they find they no longer have access to someone’s profile. It can be a jarring experience, especially considering that the person who dumped you at some point either requested you as a friend or accepted your request (on Facebook, that is how friends are made). But members understand that such selective discretion is critical to the social-networking ecosystem.
The system is self-regulating. No-one, but everyone. The thick morass we are slogging through. There are plenty of ways to navigate through the system, but regardless of those choices - the system remains intact.
I can't help but think that the ramifications of the time spent managing friendships online has significant real world implications with how we interact with each other on a day-to-day basis.
1) A human hampster wheel 2) A walker for giants 3) A snowmobile engine 4) A cheese grater 5) A sub-atomic nuclear generator 6) A submarine training facility 7) A secret compartment for hiding jewelry
Max Headroom debuted in 1985. The television show was canceled in 1987. The premise of the show is that a news anchor was hurt badly, so to preserve his identity they uploaded his mind into a computer. A three-dimensional simulation is created of this person who then goes on to have his own show where he talks about things of his choosing and interviews people, similar to Oprah.
Max Headroom, of course, was merely an actor who's image was computerized into a simulation of that actor.
Despite the early fascination with the show and the idea of Max, the phenomenon died out quickly. This was due to many factors, including - media oversaturation, the use of Max in some of the largest advertising campaigns ever (for a product that people didn't like), and a general disdain for the character's quirks and the "creepiness" of the show.
In a strange way, Max Headroom illuminated something very real about our society in a dystopian lens: the simulation of Max, and the simulacra of ideas used to make him highlighted very clearly how unreal our society had become. Is there anything so meaningless and disconnected from reality than a computer-generated image of someone speaking out of a strangely generated neon box world? The disembodied image of Max, himself oversaturated with his nearly omnipresent awareness of culture, forces us (at minimum) on a subconscious level to question the virtuality of our existence.
It is no wonder, then, that Max became an advertising phenomenon. Allying himself with New Coke, ironically, could not have been a more perfect union of death. At the time, Max was everywhere in the media. He was at the height of his popularity, and his put this personality capital on the line for New Coke in an advertisement campaign.
New Coke was doomed before it was ever released. The cultural significance of the original Coca-Cola formula was beyond what anyone could have imagined. When it was announced that Coke was changing its recipe, Coca-Cola Co. received over 400,000 angry calls and letters. Many of these people felt betrayed and a psychologist hired by Coke to talk to angry callers said that it sounded as though they were talking about a "dead family member."
A product, mass-produced for drinking, so important to people's lives that they would feel this loss on the same level of losing a family member? Indeed, Coke had tapped into one of the fundamental problems of the media culture we live in - value and meaning have been co-opted by brands that feed us what they want us to have. The backlash against Coke stemmed from people feeling the loss of value in the symbol of their product. This is backed up by the statistics which show that most people didn't care too much about the difference in taste between Coca-Cola Classic and New Coke. People were upset because the meaning of the product was lost, not because of any tangible differences the utility and pleasure of the product itself.
Max Headroom and New Coke are relics of the past now, which at the time were meant to project us into a new and exciting future. A virtual human? A scientifically improved Coke flavor? Strangely, this futuristic reach has now left these two cultural products in the dust.
Both Max and New Coke demonstrate currently relevant ideas about simulation and simulacra --
1) The more transparent the generation of meaning is with the intent to manipulate people, the more likely they are to resist.
2) Despite the willingness to resist manipulation, advertising has become one of the most successful technologies ever created to accompany the inventions of television and the internet. The reason for this is that there is a void of meaning in our world, and advertising helps to fill that void by pointing us toward products filled with cultural meaning. This is important because the meaning of the product and the product's usefulness need have absolutely no correlation for this to be true.
3) The discomfort of Max's virtuality lead to his death, because people could never quite take him seriously due to his strange hiccups in speech and plastic facial features. The current trend toward using computerization to create a "real" that is more real than real emerges from an understanding that subtle manipulation is much easier than drawing on a conscious suspension of disbelief, rather than the subconscious alteration of pre-existing schema. Humans, at this period of time, are quite ready and willing to be manipulated for the sake of meaning construction, even if the meanings are based on simulacra - a sort of house of cards with no foundation in reality or anything other than a fabricated meaning that came before.
I remember watching Max Headroom as a kid. My mom hated it, it made her uncomfortable. Looking back now, I realize that I liked Max because he challenged me to think about the world I was growing up in. The first time I began to question what being a human actually meant started from thinking about the simulated half-existence of Max.
This is a small example. Generally, by loss of history it is meant that with passing years the context of the more distant past is lost or distorted. Items such as this accelerate the process.
Plato's Cave, the Matrix... continuing thoughts from last post
The Matrix is an allegory for Plato's Cave (which is also an allegory). In Plato's allegory, the Cave is a place wherein prisoners live in ignorance and experience the world through the distortion of moving shadows that don't reveal their true forms. Once freed, the prisoner struggles to leave the cave and to move toward the light. After finally being able to use his eyes for the first time, he can see things as they are... but once then given an opportunity to re-enter the cave he cannot go back to live as he had before. It becomes not only an imperative to stay free, but to also free others from the cave - which is something they can only experience themselves.
The theme is intentially dublicated exactly within the Matrix. Throughout the movie, we question reality as Neo traverses back and forth between a simulated world and the "real world" which he has just discovered. His fight within the simulated world is to help save the "real world".
Herein lies the problem - in the postmodern world, there is no refuge in the "real world" as Reality is but a memory of a tattered map. Plato's Cave for us is not finding the Real - but finding the evidence which allows us to understand that we live in a society that has let the Real slowly fade to simulacra - I have stepped into this life mid-simulacra. The context is already placed firmly within the timeline of the many "copies without originals" that forms our collective understanding and memories. The beauty of the Matrix trilogy is that it ended in such a way that so many people were furious at the ending, which was almost comically too perfect. It had to be so to mirror back to us the conditions of our "reality".
Again, to consider what this protends for the future - there are revolutions waiting to happen, but none of them are poised to fix the actual problem we are facing. At some point though, perhaps not even in my lifetime, one of those revolutions is going to create a new crisis upon shattering the dimensions of the simulacra that give us what we understand as context. People already don't trust politicians, the news, and often even their own eyes and ears. What will happen when what little trust that is left is not only crushed, but completely confounded?
You could ask yourself what you would do... or what Neo would do... but the problem lies in the fact that there is no foundation for how to handle this sort of collapse. It cannot be answered by any of us unless we truly were in the position. Not a collapse of meaning (we're already suffering through that), but an awakening of the gravity of that collapse - certainly further progressed with time - which cannot be ignored.
My aim here is to connect philosophical threads toward a coming future to consider what our next philosophical crisis will be.
Inch by inch the world is getting filled to capacity. Borges, in his time, wrote a parable about the simulation of a map so large it covered the entirety of the empire at a one-to-one scale. This metaphor of the simulation was adequate to describe the crumbling facade of the decline of empires of the modern era. Then, Baudrillard adapted this metaphor to apply to the postmodern era - reality had become the map, and was fraying away leaving the simulation in its wake. With reality gone, the simulation descends into a confusing mess of simulacra. In our time, reality is now reproducible and indistinguishable from the original. We have no access to Reality, because each facade of the postmodern world hides even deeper levels of the facade. There is no baseline. In Borges's parable, only in the deserts did some of the map remain. For us, only in the deserts does some of Reality remain.
Now, the deserts are overflowing, and the ground itself is fraying. Breaking apart and pulling into a void beyond human understanding. Nature is less natural than the concrete monuments to it's past that commemorate the commemorations of the multiplicity of time. The future holds for us an inevitable fissure in the simulacra and simulations that we swim in, which eventually must collapse. What will emerge is not a world newly in touch with an invigorated sense of Reality. Instead, the nostalgia for what has been lost and the confusion and fear of the chaos of an ungilded world will send us spiraling into projects to recover the frayed simulacra. The New World, the post-postmodern world, ought to be termed the Refabrication.
In our postmodern world, we see the collapse of meaning. There are many kinds of movements aimed at recovering meaning, or creating oases of meaning. The inevitable collapse of the simulacra will lead to movements to recover what semblance of meaning the simulacra held for many. This will be the epitome of nihilism - the loss of meaning stemming from the death of a facade, and the search to regain the facade which holds no meaning anchored in Reality.
Imagine Schopenhauer's Veil of Maya surrounded in a gilded computerized skein projecting an infinite number of photoshopped images onto the Veil. The Veil begins to take the form of the images projected upon it. At some point, collectively for us, the Veil becomes those images. When the system that produces the images suddenly falls into crisis, so does the fundamental construction of the Veil. It will be a cataclysmic event similar to when the Mayans found their Gods destroyed during the Inquisition.
At all costs, the skein must be rebuilt. However, without the connection between the ironically original simulacra to the present, a new simulacra will emerge with no origin. Frightful and exhilarating, people will have to navigate the map covering an empire that is covered in a thick indecipherable fog.
There will be a thick nothingness oozing from frantic minds trying to recreate something that was doomed from its inception. At the center of this convulsion will be the remnants of the total communication that is sweeping through our culture like a storm now. As the private domain continues to melt into the public now, the struggle to adjust to the loss will be immeasurable for a culture locked into an extreme co-dependency on others for self-knowledge. The coming battle will be a battle for a reemergent self against a further reinforced total environment of the public domain. The challenge will largely be an internal struggle, as the continued loss of the private makes it more and more difficult to isolate one's self and create, in an intellectual sense, a new reality. People will be highly at risk of falling into all forms of totalitarianism - especially related to capital.
Now, however, we sit upon a tall precipice perched over the coming days. Each year we experience more the sweeping confusion at the continued loss of relevance between our markers of meaning and their origins. When the retro movements of retro movements of retro movements devolve into their lowest common denominators - sex and consumption - a growing hunger will be reinvigorated to act (as Thoreau acted against the Industrial Revolution). The question will be, "how?"
Society will continue to generate models to demonstrate how to cope, but it will only reinforce itself as it does already. It will not satisfy the masses, but as with Christianity - many will be dedicated toward holding onto its power as the power wanes. The battle will settle into individual grounds, and the large cultural issues we deal with now related to globalization, international justice, civil rights, and so forth will not be at the forefront of our problems. It will be a much simpler issue of identity:
What are we? Who am I? How do I make decisions about who I am and want to be, coming out of this cultural context?
Many of the problems we have now (and have always had) will continue to exist, but navigating through the meaning and significance of cultural markers will be of a practical matter nearly impossible. The fundamental problem of finding the self will take on new challenges beyond what we have now. We understand that we have a past and what the meanings of it are now, and to a much lesser degree of what it meant to those we refer back to. Generally, we aren't too well aware of what that past really entails, but we have enough cultural sense to find ways to navigate through it. There will be a day, when the distance between past, context, and self is so great that we'll feel the deluge of symbols washing over us. As the previous Classical and Neoclassical movements revisited a past to create meaning for today, we will try to do that again, but without access to context. We will have to find a new way.
I struggle asking anything from other people. This is because of any combination of the following:
A. I don't like inconveniencing others. B. I really don't want anything from others. C. I don't think I can get what I want. D. I'm not sure what I want. E. I'm afraid of losing something that I have in to get something else I might want. F. I'm afraid of getting what I want and then dealing with the responsibility of taking care of it. G. I don't think I deserve it. H. I don't think it is real. I. I don't want to owe anybody anything. J. I am depressed. K. I don't trust the person I'd be asking. L. It is too easy. M. It takes too much effort.
If you know me, you may recognize several of these reasons here. It might help explain my default stance which leads toward long nights alone in my house. This is not a complaint... perhaps consider it more of an apology.
If justice ever ceased to be a reactive system, then I would have nothing left to live for. In that unfortunate sense, I will always have something to fuel my fire.
Loneliness, alienation, sexuality, and all else be damned... justice and the higher causes of humanity can sustain me in spite of myself and whatever happens to be left around me.
And contrary to popular belief... the futility in these matters only provides more reason to take them on, not less. However, taking on an issue should not be confused with wasting effort with petty sensationalism. One problem at a time please.
Let it be known that I have no relationship with the readership of my blog outside of the fact that some of my readers met me and then subsequently found themselves at my blog. I have made no attempts to create a dialog with my readers and to build a readership base. Nor have I submitted any poems to writing contests or publishers.
More than anything else I feel that reading my poetry (and whatever other labels you subscribe to my posts on this blog), and understanding it is a fundamental key to understanding me. However, I feel no driving need to be known or even appreciated by those that don't already know me. I don't want to be famous or in any "elite class".
I made a joke about austerity not too long ago, but perhaps there is some truth to it. With writing, my deeply competitive spirit drives only myself. I am lucky to have other venues for which to test myself in relationship to others. I have never felt that I've had anything to prove other than to myself. This accounts as much for my successes in life, as much toward some of my perceived failures.
Let it be known that I am a perfectly capable communicator that chooses carefully how to communicate, what to communicate, and to whom to communicate (if, in fact, there is a recipient). Fundamentally, this blog is for me - this is choice of necessity more than an aesthetic choice.
I will state, however, I welcome new readers and comments - though I withhold my right to uphold what I feel is the integrity of my blog. Feel free to direct any questions please toward me directly, or in the comments section of this post.
For those who have read this and any of my other posts - thank you for taking the time. For your sake (more than mine), I hope you find something of value from it.
Not to say that I don't like sex. Sex is a wasteland. At times, I feel my existence irretrievably headed towards wastelands. It is important to note however that it is nearly impossible to live within a wasteland. One can merely exist by traversing through wastelands. Understand as well that there are many wastelands to traverse through in life, and that sex is just but one of them. And don't be afraid to delve into the craggy spurs nestled on the edges of the frontier, just keep eyes set on the paths that wind about carrying a sense of movement in the journey. The last thing one generally wants is to be marooned... but even then, be aware that being marooned is a possibility that one may also choose for their self. Freedom, still, is unbounded.
The trick for the blind man is to navigate the world of sight as though he could see. To find a way to make all differences melt beyond the disparate divisions of alienation and to exceed distance with humility.
The trick is to live as a blind man that has found a way.
Deafness is a world I've yet to explore. I am much too fearful of it. Sight is deceiving, but the world of sounds gives life texture. Without sound, alienation becomes complete solitude. Solitude becomes complete oblivion. I'd imagine that transcending alienation becomes the primary concern, and a heightened sense of self is necessary. Beyond that, music literally must exist completely within you - and I lack the faith in myself to be able to bear that responsibility.
I have a kinesthetic relationship to each sense. Their value is connected heavily to the physiological reactions my body has to what I see and hear. Clearly movement is a relationship to my spacial understandings almost entirely based on vision. At night, when I stumble about to let the dog out I feel completely helpless at times. But, of more importance to my mind is sound. The rushing wind, which makes me feel more alive than any other sensation, would be lifeless without the roaring cacophony pulsating through my ears.
Don't ever ask a man to choose with these high of stakes, but learn from these musings. Extend further the awareness and gravity of self and illucidate memories and motions with the internal grandeur that pulses under the surface.
"Who am I?" becomes less important the more you truly question "What am I?" - which is much too often taken for granted, esp. by me.
expand on the silence with violence rivers and trees screaming violins believing is seeing neon sirens
awake in a dither pithy twitter strange sights this winter
a man that bleeds is a man indeed a kind deed returned is freed a dream slept away takes seed or does it just recede?
I'll take a road to nowhere and get there faster than you
it is my competitive spirit
I've heard trauma makes you closer but I think it is just tramautic
my membership to the brotherhood of men was revoked when I slid my hand down the back of my closed door and refused to gloat about any sense of emerging power
the disadvantaged position:
felt but not seen
seen but not felt
I float on the outside sweltering in concrete illusions sheltering ill-mannered conclusions
the damage unseen is heard quietly rebuilding cities spun from alabaster webs dangling precipitously from the shadow of a spider
like those hiding in household corners quietly building a sanctuary to perch from
I find mummified dead spiders preserved with crypt-like precision in my garage
lately, I find myself too sympathetic to spiders to crush them
at times, too lazy to capture them and send them outside
When faced with the questions about his motivations, he slipped into an old pattern he used when called in class and hadn't payed attention. He used humor, deflections, and a turned the situation back around on the person asking him question.
"Look, man, just tell me why you did it and I'll let you out of here. You won't ever have to see me again."
And so he said everything, until the moon careened heavily into the earth; smashing apart most of New Mexico, Arizona, and the northern states of Mexico. The reverberations rang across the globe in a jarring deep pulsation. One might imagine a pimped out GTO lowriding down the main drag, blasting the subs out with an Easy-E track on a calm summer day. Except this was deeper... this rattled everything, including other sounds that were already sounding. This rattled time, and the motion of sea gulls trying to glide through the gentle currents suddenly turned to crashing streaks like cluster bombs into the docking yard.
At some point, the words ceased to be words. The desk with the person sitting in front of him ceased to be desk and a human being. The lamp and its phospherous photons ceased to be entirely.
When he stood up and walked outside into the eerie silence he didn't feel awakened or renewed. He felt the pinched requisition of balance staggering over his tense muscles.
His car was filled with garbage that he never bothered to deal with. Opening the passenger door, he sloppily dumped the fast food wrappers, coffee cups, stained clothing, broken CD's, and worn-through bowling shoes into the street. A middle-aged woman in a yellow dress watched him do this from her third story office window across the way. He looked up at her, and her curious yet disinterested gaze left him feeling agitated. He kicked one of the bowling shoes against a concrete parking block, where it flipped upward and landed upsidedown on the hood of a vehicle near his. After entering the car, he drove off without turning on his stereo.
The next destination didn't matter so much, but he drove there anyway with a sort of automatic familiarity.
I think a key characteristic of what defines someone as a "savior" is a complete lack of self-interest. In fact, a consuming obsession to work outside of one's own interests entirely. But, by accepting the calling, it becomes a self-interest and the only natural conclusion is some sort of death. This is why people who are actually successful at helping people demonstrate a high degree of humility - being a "savior" and being humble simultaneously is not possible.
The world moves slowly, and spins off as if it were eclipsed elsewhere on a distant horizon. And prematurely gazing into the dark expanse toward gravity wells slowly gaining in strength. In my life, there will be no black holes, just shadows bending toward the thought one.
Answering, "how are you?" - most of the time I don't know how I'm doing, at least in generic phrases or ideas. To go along with that -
"Happy" - can't say I know what that really is. Most people think of it as a sort of contented state, and generally I don't feel good when I'm content. I need to be challenged all of the time. When I'm not challenged, I'm not happy. So when everything is "good" and I've got nothing to complain about, that is probably when I'm least "happy".
"Bored" - I don't believe in it anymore. When I am doing nothing, potentially for hours on end... my mind and body continue in their own way. Growing up, I spent a lot of time on my own. I can handle silence, loneliness, and inactivity. If for some reason I don't feel that way... I'll do something.
"Depressed" - I have throughout almost my entire life suffered from a sort of malaise or ennui at my surroundings. The absurdity of life is crushing at times. The fact that I exist at all is a miracle... not in the sense that I'm alive and its this sort of amazing gift from God, but that I've actually chosen to life and participate in the world around me. The struggle I have with talking about "depression" is that I know that a certain vaccuous hole exists in me and always will... is that depression? is that just my personality? I am able to live just fine, people think that I'm funny, I'm successful in my job... this state of being seems only to effect me in a general sense, mostly external to others on their periphery. I figure if I can continue to exist and live as I do, I'm winning the battle.
Brought in with Dick Clark. Not the best way to go:
Not a lot of thoughts for this year. I know I'm going to be staying in the same job. I've had a very turbulent last few months and I could go for some emotional stability now. I need to finish cleaning my house (almost done). Play more music and soccer. Keep writing.
I've been resting as much as I can over the few days off I've had recently, and its been amazing... I needed it so much. Hopefully, you'll all see some real new writing soon.
