Monday, February 4, 2013

My Judas Beast

Recently, I have come to see my mind as an indwelling Judas.

On any particular branch of thought, I might find Judas swinging by the neck. That is, I might have found Judas if I had been aware. The mind is complex, of course, some minds being more or less so than others, so I hesitate to define my own with such singular device, but I'll be damned if it isn't hard not to fixate on the discovery about where my thinking happens. Because, if my mind is that place where the seat of reason was supposedly installed, that might be a clue as to the nature of the problem. That my own mind could obscure something this significant about its nature to another part of itself, is blowing yet another part itself. 

So, I'll settle on my having, as far as I can tell, today, a triune mind. It's not quite the personalities of Eve, because it's probably much worse.

Before I got sight of this Judas-like thing hanging in the periphery, I trusted that there were certain things about my understanding of myself that were incontrovertibly under my control.

Trusting that anything is under my control was my first mistake.

So, here I (whatever that is) am realizing that there is some unknown quantity of my own self intent on betraying everything I believed represented this "me" I now am looking at sideways (which is anatomically awkward to attempt).

The rest of this post is the rambling take away of the thought process gone haywire. Proceed with caution and a bucket. No sneers allowed. Bring ibuprofen.

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Almost one year ago prior, an unexpected twist of faith knocked me on my hind end. Naturally, what I experienced didn't make sense. When this change in elevation changed the view of the surroundings, I wasn't where I had thought (I am bad with directions, even metaphorically it so happens). I was lost, believing myself to be squarely set in some very other place, at times providing navigating tips to the few that crossed my path.
Subsequently, Judas easily waxed sympathetic in role as my thoughts accompanied me on my trip down the rabbit hole until conveniently meeting up with the bottom of which there was a sudden thought that this was a sign and the sign suggested I had arrived at the state of disillusionment.
Crafty Judas, practically blue in the face by now, offered to comfort and protect me -- a stranger in this lowly unfamiliar place at the bottom of a bunny rabbit abyss --if I would just believe in my 'self' and stop questioning what I obviously can see is my reality and stop trying to understand it as anything but what it is: the truth that I got played by letting myself  love and now I was suffering Bitter Reality whose role that year would be planting that One Seed of Doubt until by some ironic lack of reason one day, I would stubbornly refuse to speak to someone I love. 

Without intending that I should let myself get so emotional as to be unable to hear myself think, I had instead made possible a rare moment of silence during which I clearly heard what not only changed my perspective but forever changed the way I think about my thinking. 
I came to realize something mind has been hiding from me. I've subsequently also come to find that my  mind is both ruthless when in determined pursuit of getting more of itself and that it is not below keeping secrets that one would not consider if mutually friendly.

In fact, I've become most unenamored of the same mindful intent that once was considered my best and most flattering asset. I can leave that bit of me to see, now, but since the chance of it being obscured by Judas up there swinging from that tree, I'll say in full sight: Who I am is not who I thought. The truth tends to be simple enough to not be that easy.  
 
An infinitely different reality that who I am now knows has always really been "I am, therefore I think". Who I really am is quite engaged with actually being that individual right now and really not altogether convinced that brother Descartes wasn't being railroaded himself by that thought of himself that was slick enough to fool a statue into ontological enmeshment.


 Picture Rodin's "Thinker" as the veil lifts to see in clarity's light that the answer to the Cartesian conundrum was to not trust a mind that eats its own young.
Imagine if Rodin's "Thinker" could bend at the knees and realize that the question was irrelevant because unfounded faith is, ultimately, all that is left to prove the existence of rational thought if that's what you feel you gotta do. Otherwise, enjoy the moment as it proves itself without worrying about how to explain it to your cannibal mind.

Rene Descartes: 'I think therefore I am' in Outline of Great Books Volume I

The memorable part of the Cartesian philosophy is the credo  is "I think, therefore I am."
But how can one demonstrate the fact that one thinks?
They cannot. It is impossible to "prove" that one exists, because it is impossible to "prove" that one thinks. We directly experience our own existence -- but it is impossible to demonstrate that existence scientifically. We all take our own existence on faith.
Therefore, even rationalism is based on unprovable faith. 

A Problem with My Problems

I have a problem. Actually, I have quite a few problems, but the one this blog has been most effected by is the problem I have with blogging, which is: I can't decide if I'm going to commit to a blog site that is transparent, translucent, or opaque. I'm really on the fence about this because privacy is my favorite creature comfort. I potentially care much more about other people's opinions of me than I've previously been aware admitting.

This, by the way, is another one of my problems that is included in a cluster of similarly situated issues I have in my problem storage. I organize my problems by storing them in sets of matching type, origin, and/or urgency. One problem can occupy more than one group, which means that I can honestly say look someone dead in the eye and deny having a of a long list of problems. Instead of a single list, I have tables of them that are indexed. In essence, my problems are multidimensional. Not in a semantic sort of way, but in a relational database sort of way. In order to tackle one of my problems, my self-help tools include SQL queries. I'm not smart enough to write stored procedures.

But, I digress.

To be fair, privacy is important, to me. I'm basically a very private person simply because I'm basically a very introverted type person.

Upshot: When I figure out my comfort level, my posts will inevitably be either irregular in their delivery or irregular in their content. That's my way of saying what I write about will be so obscure (my modus operendi is suffocation by abstraction) as to be impossible to understand. Oh, readers will often think they understand. They may even comment with a well placed admonishment to seek help soon, but, in truth, the meaning was buried alive in all that verbosity.

Saturday, September 22, 2012

My Obsession with Icons

I collect icons. I am not a hoarder. I am a collector. I am also in denial. My collection of icons is very large and covers a vast amount of hard drive space on more than one hard drive.

This crazy obsession began a half dozen or more (more) years ago when I was playing around with my first (of three) Palm C. The icons for the calendar program activated some (other) lurking weirdness in me and I was soon hooked on finding more. Just to have them. I mean, what can you do with icons?

I tried finding ways to use them. All kinds of different things. Here's one of them. It's in the form of a reebus-like puzzle memo to myself.

Who does this??


Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Does Anybody Know Where They're Going?

My 'path', as it were, is notable (from my perspective) for a few of its characteristics, one of them being it is a path littered with so many dead ends and false turns, it is less a path than it is a maze, the difference being one is created and utilized as a route from here to there while the other includes the potential to get there from here, it is designed to test, not assist, in the travel.

So, it is often that I find myself nose up against one of those dead ends. Then, I have a choice. I can either stay there, contemplating the wall, I can stay there and rail against the wall, attempting to make my way through it by force, I can stay there and pretend that this is exactly where I meant to be, in fact, this is the end of the maze, I made it! Eureka! (That would be my denial yelling "Eureka!", in case that wasn't apparent.). However, reality will inevitably win the stare down and I will turn around, take a breath, and head back in the direction I came until I reach another turn in the road to choose. Hoping, always, that it ends more productively than the last.

I do this every single day of my life and as of date, that makes this my 15,930th travel day. I would consider myself, therefore, somewhat of an expert in this maze/path thing but for how lost I feel all the time. 

Ever notice that the surface of the brain looks a lot like a maze? Go figure.

Friday, July 6, 2012

Will the Real Sociopath Please Stand Up?

Sociopath, psychopath, person with anti-social personality disorder diagnosis...it isn't a simple task to find agreement about these descriptions. Are they synonymous or distinct from one another?

Aside from the individual who as a child was "fascinated by fire" and actually started fires, tortured small animals then graduated to a sadistic serial killer of their fellow human, do any of these terms describe someone who is basically bereft of a conscience or failed to physiologically develop whatever part of the brain that provides the ability to empathize or feel guilt when it would be appropriate? That's the person I'd like to understand better.

To that end, here is short "favorites" list (mine) of links that provide different perspectives on the subject:

Profile of the Sociopath
The Unburdened Mind
Sociopath World

"How You Feel What Another Body Feels"  
Scientific American, (Article) June 26, 2012
"How to spot a sociopath"
Natural News, (Article) June 8, 2012

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Meet the New Occupant

If you found yourself here by way of a URL link from another site, I wanted to make provisions for those expecting a different blog author.

This was, at one time in a not very distant past, the blog name for an unknown person self-described as having the condition of anti-social personality disorder (pyschopathy).

If you were expecting to learn something interesting about this psychological phenomenon, you may be disappointed.

However, here is a link back to where I discovered that this blog name was no longer occupied by its' original owner.