How to Tell if there's a Conspiracy

Conspiracies exist. Everywhere. A conspiracy is defined as an attempt to do something unethical, which you don't want anyone beyond your circle of friends to know about. Of course, there are times when doing something unethical is necessary, usually to protect yourself. However, unfortunately, there are certain people in the world who are ignorant of the effects of unethical actions, which are always bad. These kinds of people commit conspiracies and think they'll "get away with it." You never get away with a conspiracy, but if you were trying to protect yourself, or something similar to that, then you may be able at least to survive the negative effects of the natural consequences of when the truth comes to light.

How to Tell if There's a Conspiracy:

You check the independent channels. They won't know all of the truth. This is because they're independent. They don't have a lot of social resources, so they can't access all of the truth. Some of them, you can't trust. Some of them have been infiltrated by conspirators who don't want the truth to be known.

You check the people who you think are committing the conspiracy. They'll mechanically repeat the exact same thing: "There is no conspiracy here." Or something relevantly similar to that. If they actually did make a mistake, and as a matter of fact they are decent people and not conspirators, they will send out marketing information revealing exactly what the mistakes were, who made them, and what they're doing to correct the problem.

You check the people who you trust, who have seen the truth. This is called an empirical observation. Eventually, you'll find a couple empirical observations through the appropriate channels which contradict the last mechanically repeated statement, "There is no conspiracy here." Then you know there's a conspiracy.

However. Even at this point, not all the questions have been answered. You don't know for certain who is the one committing the conspiracy. Depending on how much you've been hurt by the conspiracy, it's up to you to determine how extensive of an investigation you want to make to determine who the real conspirators are, and it's also up to you to determine how you're going to use violent means (like the government or the law) to neutralize the conspiracy and bring the criminals to justice.

This goes for corporate conspiracies, Illuminati conspiracies, government conspiracies, raver conspiracies, Satanist conspiracies, Buddhist conspiracies, etc.

Yes, Jimi Hendrix was That Good

I just wrote the following for pay (I hope) in an article of tips for learning to play guitar:

Read books.

Read novels, plays, the epistemology of Descartes, and the history of the Jewish people. This is perhaps the strangest advice you've heard, but it is essential. The pop industry makes millions of dollars off the idea that they can sell bad music that all sounds the same and no one will notice. Well, no one notices because they don't even know their own culture. As Bob Marley says, "If you know your history, then you know where you're coming from." He is a legendary guitarist and musician, not because he could play scales at the speed of light and make weird sounds like Jimi Hendrix, but because he knew exactly where he was coming from.

But then I thought about it: what if the reason why Jimi Hendrix could make all those weird sounds is because he really could play scales at the speed of light?

Why Time Travel Exists (or not?)

Proposition: If you will it to exist, time travel exists. Otherwise, it doesn't.

Why? Because if it is possible for time travel to exist (and I'm pretty sure it is), then someone will eventually create the technology if there is a will to do so. If YOU IN PARTICULAR will it to exist, then you will eventually be one of the customers of the time travel service, there having been a will for it to exist, which means that it exists. If you honestly, truthfully, and sincerely wish time travel to exist, it will exist.

If you don't will it to exist, it doesn't exist. Or if your will is insincere, clouded by delusions or destructive thoughts, it doesn't exist. Why? Because there is no reason for it to exist. Why would anyone want a time machine to exist if all it would be used for is to destroy the universe? Time machines don't exist to destroy the universe, but to SAVE the universe. Otherwise the universe wouldn't exist, and the time machine wouldn't exist, which means time travel wouldn't exist.

Imagine: time travel is invented in 30 years. You want time travel to exist for YOU. So you will it to exist. You spend time researching how to get access to the time machine. The research eventually bears fruit, or it doesn't. But you have a TIME MACHINE. So you have infinite time to do research, which means it will eventually bear fruit. Even if the research takes longer than the length of your life, it will still bear fruit. Because you have a TIME MACHINE. So you do research for your entire life. The research travels back in time, back to the beginning. You continue the research from where you left off. And so on, infinitely.

How does the research find its way back to you? Because the research is instrumental in time travel existing, since there has to be a will for it to exist for it to exist. The purpose of a thing is to exist relationally to everyone. The time travelers have no choice but to send your research back in time, because if they didn't, there would be no one to access the time machine, and therefore the time machine wouldn't exist, and they wouldn't exist.

Therefore, if you want it to exist, it exists.

What if time travel is invented after your lifetime? No problem. You'll research how to gain access to the time machine. The actual time it takes for time travel to be invented doesn't matter, because you have a time machine. So it exists.

Why Enemies are Blessings: Re. Morgan Freeman and Lanza

I'm glad Morgan Freeman wrote the response he did for the shootings in Connecticut. Because I completely disagree. And, actually, my disagreement has solidified my resolve to a) not kill every fucking body I see, and b) not kill myself. (Death, by the way, is not an "opposite to life." Another post for another day, perhaps.) The argument went a little like this:

Freeman: http://www.dailypaul.com/266479/surprising-message-from-morgan-freeman-he-blames-the-media-for-ct-shooting

Me: You're full of shit.

Freeman: Yeah? Why's that?

Me: Because you're spouting the same sort of crap that every cynical psychiatrist does. You want more "mental health research," and like any "mental health researcher," you're looking for the essential quality that makes people essentially and fundamentally bad people from the very start, so you can kill it, quarantine it, sedate it, and obliterate it from the human race.

And to top it all off, you're saying the essentialist quality has to do with desire for fame. FAME! Which shows that you, like most other Hollywood celebrities (I wanted to say "hacks" but that's going too far—in this case, anyway, there's actually evidence against that claim), you believe that:

1. Everyone wants exactly what you have.
2. While it was divinely ordained for you to have it, it was not divinely ordained for 99.9999% of the world's population to have it.
3. All the problems of the world would be solved if everyone just gave up on their dreams and stopped wanting what you have, and instead, adopt a submissive position and accept the crumbs that people like you allow to drop off the table.

Freeman: Well, I read your position, because like every Hollywood celebrity in the world I keep up with the writings of Nathan Foster. It seems like you claim here that you understand the inner workings of school shooters. You say, and I quote, "I have these kinds of thoughts running through my head at least 20 times a day...."

You go on to claim the following: "[W]hether or not the objective world is an evil place where everyone deserves to die will be entirely beside the point. It is quite possible, theoretically, that everyone in the entire universe will rise up as your personal enemy." Taken in conjunction with the post about "Absolute Eclectic Morality," It would seem that you, sir, not only understand the shooter, but empathize with him, and perhaps even agree with him. There is actual evidence, in these three posts, that you believe everyone deserves to die.

So what's stopping you? If you think you deserve fame, and you know killing a bunch of people will get you fame, and you don't think that it is necessarily ethically wrong to kill a bunch of people, why don't you do it then, and gain as much fame as you could ever hope for?

Now this thought is what really crystalized my position, and it illustrates the value of enemies. (Not that Morgan Freeman is a mortal enemy of mine, but he does have a point of view which I completely disagree with, and in this case, that is enough.) The rest of the conversation:

Me: For one, if everybody didn't deserve to die, they probably wouldn't all eventually die. And for another, while I may, from time to time, hold the belief that everyone deserves to die RIGHT NOW, unless I actually have the ability to kill every single person in the world—not just a handful of people in this or that place, but literally everyone—I'm really just tooting my own horn. Everyone is going to die anyway. Why do I need to speed up the process?

And besides that obvious negative point of view, there's a positive reason not to kill everyone as well. There is a possibility that they have something to teach me. See, I'm a firm believer that situations of ignorance are ripe situations for new and meaningful knowledge. As it says in the Bible, "Many are called, but few are chosen." It's perfectly okay to be chosen, or not to be chosen, to be the one who kills everyone in the world. And while it's not certain that there's a reason why I'm not that person, there's a possibility that there is such a reason.

Which leaves me with two options. 1) I should've been chosen but wasn't. In which case, I have an opportunity to root out the real enemy and deal with that spirit. Or, 2) I should NOT have been chosen, and wasn't. In which case, I had something to learn, and it's better that I wasn't chosen.

Freeman: Great, so with your manic/depressive psychosis and acceptance of others, you're going to choose the other option, and off yourself in the basement?

Me: I'm glad you brought that up, because no, I'm not. I'm just like everyone else; I'm going to die eventually, and there's no reason to speed up the process. And there may be an opportunity to make a difference.

Freeman: You seem to be making the argument that living in this world is completely ephemeral. The only reason not to actually kill yourself, or anyone else, for that matter, is based on distant probabilities that perhaps they have benefit to the world. This is also evidenced by your insistance, in your response ("My Perspective on School Shootings"), that to end school shootings, we should train in discovering other-worldly goddesses, rather than human relationships here on Earth.

Me: I do NOT make the claim that life is ephemeral. I DO, however, make the claim that where you live your life is ephemeral, as long as you can make out goddess-Buddhas. If my body here on this Earth is killed, I'm fine with that, as long as I can find a place somewhere else where I can make out Buddhas. The choice is completely meaningless.

Freeman: If the choice is meaningless, why not try your luck with another body in another world, rather this one, which obviously causes you so much pain?

Me: Obviously, Morgan, you don't keep up with my writings as much as you claim, or you wouldn't have missed this post, in which I claimed that it is precisely the decisions which are meaningless—for example, Coke vs. Pepsi, Planet Earth vs. Planet Venus, human-form vs. goddess form, etc.—that are the most important. And not only did I make that claim, but I considered it such an important claim that I advanced the further claim that it is actually the basis for a just and creative society.

Hopefully you know, by now, that I mean exactly everything I say. And if we take the eclectic view of my philosophy, you'll understand that I am completely committed to a) NOT killing myself, and b) NOT killing others. This is a profound vow which, on many days, is like choosing to drink a specific cola-flavored drink. But many days there's actually a moral reason to follow it.

The Era of Great Pain

It is possible that we are entering an era of great pain. This is an era where:

• Every concert is a "recreational activity."
• Every day of work is a "job."
• Every formal learning experience is an "education."
• Every animal is a "pet."
• Every blog post is "self-expression."
• Every tennis match is a "hobby."
• Every computer is a "computer."
• Every piece of food is "food."

Every hallelujah is cold and broken. Every experience is psychological. Every activity is a behavior. And every dissenter is "mentally ill."

Look. Concerts are NOT "recreational activities." They are LIFE. In short, everything is pain. And "living in the moment" has lost all meaning apart from forgetting everything, as though the phrase holds little more promise than recreational drug use.

Work is not a "job." It is LIFE.

Learning experiences are not "education." They are LIFE.

Animals are not "pets." They are LIFE.

Blog posts are not "self-expression." They are LIFE.

Tennis matches are not "hobbies." They are LIFE.

Computers are not "computers." They are LIFE.

Food is not "food." It is LIFE.

We cannot go on as though everything is meaningless. We simply can't continue as a species if everything is trivial and forgettable. NO. Every experience should be profound and meaningful. We MUST take every form of being, doing, experience, and so forth AS SERIOUSLY AS THOUGH OUR LIVES AND THE ETERNAL SALVATION OF OUR SOULS DEPENDED ON IT. When we feel upset, or when we need a little pick-me-up, we cannot simply say, "Recreational activities help pick me up. I should choose a recreational activity that will pick me up. I think I'll go to a concert."

I can't think of any more meaningless thing we could possibly ever think. It is absolutely cynical and wrong. We should NEVER think like that. We should go to a concert because it will ROCK OUR WORLD, or we shouldn't go at all. We should get a job because it will FUNDAMENTALLY IMPACT EVERYTHING, or we shouldn't get a job at all. We should eat food because it will ALLOW US TO COMPLETELY REJUVENATE THE WORLD, or we should eat red-hot balls of iron. There is no excuse. Either you're part of the solution, or you're part of the problem.

If you're part of the problem, you're part of the Great Pain. You'll do nothing but cause everyone around you great pain. If you can't enjoy life, GTFO.

The evil of the machine thrives on insecurity. We feel we have to be "hip enough to be square." But there is NOTHING that makes life more beautiful than insecurity. And if we can't recognize that, then we should demolish all the Universities. We should set fire to all the schools and libraries. We should forbid all scientific and academic inquiry. Because all it will do is make the human race more cynical, more painful, and more evil.

Science is for risk-takers. Knowledge is for risk-takers. Comfort is for risk-takers. Otherwise it is the purest form of curse. And I believe our society is currently cursing itself. I wish EVERYONE would take a moment to LIVE IN THE MOMENT—which, properly understood, means NOT forgetting everything, but THROWING AWAY scientific knowledge, security, money, food, computers, "recreational activities," "jobs," "education," as UTTERLY MEANINGLESS, and living completely in the state where it is possible that the world will DISAPPEAR. That everything you've trained for will DISAPPEAR. That everything you've worked for and earned will DISAPPEAR. And you should live the rest of your life that way.

Ironically, if you don't do that, it would be better if it DID disappear, because all it will cause is Great Pain.

My Perspective on School Shootings

Approximately a year after my psychiatric hospitalization, and as a direct result of it, a number of thoughts I'd been having about the world culminated in a script for a short movie. It was about a school shooter. And it summed up the mindset of such a person in a simple argument, which I've not yet seen in circulation.

See, we tend to think that people commit school shootings because there aren't people "paying attention" to them. They lack the human interaction they need, and the human interaction they get is adverse to psychological health. So they attack a school or workplace in order to "get back" at the people who did them harm.

Now this view seems to make sense, but it leaves something important unexamined. It may explain the Columbine or Virginia Tech shooter, who shot their classmates. It may explain the shooter in Moscow Idaho, as well, since he probably believed that the government was the cause of all his problems, and therefore decided to shoot government employees.

But what about Adam Lanza?

Lanza shot a bunch of grade school children who had absolutely nothing to do with him. There was no reason whatsoever, according to the above-mentioned theories, for him to shoot these children. They were not his classmates. They were not his coworkers. And they did him no harm. This obviously points to this folk theory of school massacres as inadequate. In fact, the fact that the children did Lanza no harm is so obvious that, I bet, it factored in to his decision to shoot them. Which brings me to my own theory.

The thoughts I'd been having culminated in a simple, logical argument, which can be expressed formally. It goes like this:

1) Because of what I've experienced, the world is a very bad place. So bad, someone deserves to die for making it this way.

2) It's no one's fault in particular.

---

Conclusion: Everyone deserves to die.

Obviously no one has the power to kill everyone in the entire world. The next best option, then, is to kill as many people as possible.

Now this argument may have different flavors. It may take this form, for instance: "The world has been specifically designed to harm me." Or, "People in general exist for the sole purpose of harming me." Or any number of variants. But the key point is the same: existence in general is so awful, based on my own experience, that people who perpetuate this existence must be destroyed. Since it's no one's fault in particular, everyone must be destroyed.

Looking at it in this light, the meaning behind Lanza's apparently meaningless shooting becomes clear. Why unrelated children in an unrelated school? Because who it is does not matter. Everyone deserves to die, and the situation is so desperate that action must be taken right away. Therefore, Lanza decided to shoot as many people as possible as quickly as possible.

Another point ought to be mentioned in regards to the question, "Why first-graders?" Well, first-graders are relatively undeveloped human beings. They have not yet had the chance to become the kind of people who contribute to the existence that people like Lanza have come to despise. Better to kill them, Lanza probably thought, before they become that way, and save them from contributing to that kind of treachery.

So what's the solution to this kind of problem? I can tell you with absolute certainty exactly what the solution is not. The solution is emphatically not psychiatric. Identifying and treating the "mentally ill" shooters before they shoot people will probably result in more shootings. Remember: I have these kinds of thoughts running through my head at least 20 times a day, and they did not start until after I submitted to psychiatric treatment. From my perspective, psychiatric treatment is almost entirely the cause rather than the solution to the school shooting phenomenon, insofar as psychiatry makes existence unbearable.

The solution is to make the world a better place. And I'm not talking, necessarily, about a one-piece-at-a-time strategy. For example, my strategy for doing this, partly, is to simply not exist in this world, and in that way make it better. For example, I've trained myself to see pictures, of goddesses or whatever, as living beings in and of themselves. Then I interact with these pictures, so I don't have to interact with the "real" world. Because the real world disproportionately causes me harm—harm for which no solution readily exists.

Psychology, today, is ill-equipped to deal with this problem. I always laughed when I talked with my therapist, because I would give him a long string of everything that had been going on, and how nothing had been going right, and the only thing he could say was, "Wow, that sounds pretty bad." Psychology has coping strategies for dealing with particular things which cause psychological problems. If the news is upsetting, limit access to the news. If a workplace setting is causing problems, take five minutes to visualize a better place. We have de-escalation techniques for dealing with problematic people. We encourage people to hang out with beneficial friends, rather than harmful ones.

But what happens when there are so many particular things, coming at you from all angles, and with such frequency, that it just seems like the world itself has set out to hurt you? What if you have no beneficial friends? What if it isn't the workplace that's causing you problems, but the entire world? At that point psychology has no answers, and in order to shut you up, refers you to a psychiatrist, who causes more problems. But why not apply these coping techniques to the world itself? Psychology will say that hanging out in seedy bars, for instance, will lead to having seedy friends, and therefore, you should not hang out in seedy bars. So if, living out your life, you have been completely unable to make more than maybe one or two friends who treat you right, why not stop hanging out in the world? Why not hang out with goddesses instead?

One might respond that we should make a commitment to live in the world rather than outside of it, in order to make the world a better place. Yes, of course this is true, but I think it's unreasonable to expect everyone to be able to handle everything the world throws at them all the time. If the world consistently throws us more than we can handle, we may need a temporary alternative.

But that alternative doesn't come from nowhere. Remember, even our pictures of goddesses are anthropomorphic: they're inspired by things in the world. It is quite likely, in fact probable, that our goddesses will behave similarly to people in the world, if we haven't trained our minds. And then, of course, there is no possible escape.

That is why it is of vital importance for people to come up with a wholesome, inspired, concrete philosophy of ethics, or "the way the world should be." This philosophy should be crystalized and clear to the philosopher. It should be founded on a solid basis, such as meditative experience. That way, even if the objective world continues to do nothing but hurt you, goddesses will nevertheless be attracted to your ideas, and, if absolutely necessary, you won't need to live in the world at all. And if your ideas aren't adequate, so long as you're honest with yourself, the goddesses will let you know, and you can revise from there.

Thus if we train people to be honest with themselves, self-expressive, introspective, and fundamentally inquisitive, we will have cut out the basis of mass shootings. If we allow people to question objective reality, formulate self-expressive philosophies of living, and have real and direct intercourse with our fantasies (rather than intercourse mediated through objective reality), whether or not the objective world is an evil place where everyone deserves to die will be entirely beside the point. It is quite possible, theoretically, that everyone in the entire universe will rise up as your personal enemy. But it is impossible for there to be any space anywhere in existence where a goddess-Buddha does not reside, if we've been trained to see them. That is the solution to hateful killings in the world.

The Insanity Machine

I want to give a little more time to the idea of God and why it's so problematic. I seem to be noticing a rift between American atheists and Muslim Arabs. Both groups are generally really good people. They are polite, friendly, and try to get along with everyone. But they just seem to talk past each other on the topic of religion. And more importantly to the topic at hand, the way in which they talk past one another illustrates an important point about religion.

I need a little more experience with Muslim communities. But every time I interact with Muslims I tend to think that they are baffled by atheists. They just can't comprehend the idea of someone not loving God. They don't see why someone would reject God out of hand, for no obvious reason. So they revert to their own cultural beliefs and come to what I believe is a defensive conclusion drawn out of sheer bewilderment—American culture is anti-God.

Atheists, for their part, simply can't understand why anyone would adopt what appears to be an insane idea without any evidence. Which is really a perfectly reasonable conclusion in most philosophical categories. They don't understand why any Muslim would declare belief in a God they can't see and who obviously (to them) does little to help anyone. It's like believing in an imaginary friend who tells you to kill people, they think.

Is this really a clash of cultures? I believe not. I think it's two groups of people talking past one another because they simply don't have enough information about the other group. There are critical pieces of information missing.

Here is one critical piece of information which, from what I tentatively experience, is really unique to the West, and particularly America. It's what I call the Insanity Machine, and it is associated with religion.

Here's how it works. The Insanity Machine declares a philosophical proposition to be ultimately, fundamentally true or false, and no argument for or against the conclusion is allowed. Every attempt to argue against the conclusion is met by absurdities in defense of the Machine. But here's the kicker: these absurdities all appeal to existential crisis, which is common to all human beings, and cannot be successfully repudiated without appeal to another philosophical proposition that is ultimately, fundamentally true or false. The Insanity Machine then uses the concept of infinite punishment in hell to declare that it's proposition is essentially correct, and appeals to your fear of this hell to bully you into dropping your conclusion, whatever it may be, and settling for it's own.

Allow me to illustrate.

Human: "I am so happy to read that the Bible promotes love for all human beings. We should all be loving to one another."

Insanity Machine: "Bullshit. You have to hate Black people and Muslims or you're going to hell."

Human: "How can you say that?"

Insanity Machine: "Hate is actually love. God is love, and God hates people, so you have to hate people or you're going to hell."

Human: "Hate can't be love. That doesn't make any sense."

Insanity Machine: "It doesn't make sense because a demon is bewildering you. God has preordained who is going to heaven and hell for all eternity and nothing you do can change the fact that you're going to hell, unless you come to the conclusion that you accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior."

Human: "Why would God do something like that?"

Insanity Machine: "You can't argue with God. Everything I say has the authority of God and everything you say is from the devil. So adopt what I say or go to hell."

Human: "Jeez, what if a demon is bewildering me? How would I know?"

Insanity Machine: "You know because I'm telling you and I have authority. Believe me or go to hell."

Human: "Where do you get your authority?"

Insanity Machine: "From God."

Human: "How do I know it's the right God?"

Insanity Machine: "Because God says so, and if you don't believe in God you're going to hell for all eternity and you have no hope for anything. It doesn't matter if you know it's the right God because God has preordained that you will go to heaven or hell whether you know or not. Therefore you'd better know, or else you'll suffer in infinite burning pain for all eternity roasting and frying away in writhing agony forever."

Human: "What if this insanity machine is right? How would I know? I don't want to go to hell! What can I do? What on earth is the solution?"

Insanity Machine: "Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior?"

Human: "Well I think so but..."

Insanity Machine: "Shut up, fucktard, you haven't accepted anything because you disagree with me. Now accept Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior RIGHT NOW or I will PERSONALLY see to it that you roast and boil for ever and ever and your seething skin will flake and peel off and you will try to cry out in pain but you'll be in infinite darkness and you'll never be heard and every nightmare will come true and your eyeballs will boil and infinite pain forever."

Human: "Oh God! What do I do!"

Insanity Machine: "You worthless scum, I just told you what to do. Now do it. Do it, or else."

Human: "Christ! I accept Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior! Please save me from hell! Please help me! I can't breathe I'm so frightened!"

Is it just me, or does this look an awful lot like a confession obtained under duress? The human being, of course, then goes on to use every excuse to proselytize and preach hatred and intolerance for the rest of his life, causing endless varieties of pain and suffering, and feeding into a cycle of fear which makes seeing the world correctly near impossible.

Now maybe I'm just ignorant. But I have never seen a Muslim bear any hint of an idea like the Insanity Machine. But in America, we see it all the time. Literally everywhere. It pervades our entire culture. It is by far the most insidious demon I've ever seen, and you only see it in Christianity. And if I'm right, and no Muslim has ever really looked this demon squarely in the face, it goes a long way to explain the rift between atheists and Muslims.

See, atheists are actually very courageous. Atheists are more courageous than I am, because while I for whatever crazy reason can't seem to stop talking about God, atheists are psychologically able to dismiss this ridiculous and disgusting Insanity Machine as absurd and reject it. They go on to spread their beliefs against intolerance, fear, hatred, and the agony of the soul-rape that is the Insanity Machine by telling everyone to avoid God at all costs. Unfortunately, people who have never heard of the Machine simply don't understand.

Anyway, regardless of what culture you're from, I feel it is of utmost importance to state this concept, and name it. I've named it the Insanity Machine. Now, hopefully, anyone who recognizes it in a wild-eyed, crazy demon-possessed Christian can simply say, "Hey, that looks an awful lot like the Insanity Machine to me. Care for a Xanax?"

A Short Philosophical Examination of Love and Crushes

This topic is one that is of central importance to me. I remember one time, in a spiritually turbulent state, I ran away from my home town of Moscow, Idaho. In the midst of all the confusion and pain, I got a moment of beauty. I was treated to a twenty-first birthday dinner, desert, and drinks by two lovely ladies, who had only just met me a day or two earlier.

One of the ladies told me, "A lot of people come to this town and want to teach me something. Do you have anything you'd like to teach me?" Politely, I asked her, "Is there anything you'd like to learn about?" And she said, "Teach me about crushes."

A lot of the insight I believe I've gained into the idea of crushes, and of love, was expressed in that conversation. And at that particularly turbulent time in my life, the importance of insight into these things can't be understated.

The first thing I said was that there is a fundamental distinction between love and crushes. The two are not really the same. In other words, you can relate to the object of your affection as having a crush on her but not loving her, as loving her but not having a crush on her, as having a crush on her and loving her at the same time, or as neither having a crush on her nor loving her. (Note, I'm going to exhibit a little gender bias here and refer to subjects of affection in the male gender and objects in the female gender, not because I think all women are objects, but simply because I am a male and I'm speaking to my own experience, and can't speak to the experience of women, though I'd bet it's similar.)

So if love and crushes are so fundamentally different, in what ways are they different?

For one, love is among the class of things which lasts forever and which can be applied equally to everyone. You can say, truthfully, that you will never stop loving someone. Crushes, on the other hand, are not among that class of things. You cannot say, necessarily, that you will never stop having a crush on someone.

Love is also nonviolent and caring. Crushes, on the other hand, are essentially violent. This is why they're so scary. You feel as though the object of your affection could literally crush you, and that would be perfectly okay, and that if you could just kiss her once, it would be good to go off and die somewhere because your life will be complete because nothing you could possibly experience would ever be even a close approximation to the experience of that kiss.

Love is a nonconceptual thing. It cannot be defined, and therefore cannot be limited in any way. Crushes, on the other hand, are conceptual. In many ways they are the epitome of conceptual thinking. When you have a crush on someone, you conceptualize her to painstaking detail, individually running your mind over every one of her features, everything she ever said, every look she ever gave you, and so on, obsessively, for days upon days. You are extremely attached to the concept of the woman you have a crush on, and this is the essence of what a crush is.

What more can be said about love and crushes? It seems, from the foregoing, that we should strive in every way to adopt the former and avoid the latter. That having a crush on someone is an ethical failure. But this cannot be true, because it is possible to both love and have a crush on someone, and love admits of no intentional ethical failures.

I believe there is a way to ethically have a crush on someone. It involves intimate knowledge of the idea of what a crush is, so one can avoid its pitfalls (anger, tears, frightening behaviors, and so forth). It is perfectly acceptable to be enthralled by the concept of a woman. But, in my opinion, one must have an agnosticism of this concept along with the enthrallment. If you love every minute detail of someone, but remain open to the possibility of details which you do not know—some of which, perhaps, may be frightening or even ugly—then your crush is ethical. And if combined with love, it can even be an enriching and positive experience.

How can something so crushing possibly be enriching and positive? Because crushes have the potential to fundamentally transform the way you see the world. Imagine you are completely enthralled by the concept of a woman. You look at her once and cannot help but skip a breath. You think of any detail of her—the way the carries herself, the way she does her hair, and so on—and are inescapably ravished by the absolute beauty of it. But, you also love the woman, and are willing to accept her for her faults (even if you can't see them yet), willing to withhold violence and even take on violence for her sake, willing to give her what she needs—even when she needs to be free of being a concept, and so forth. And, therefore, you are also willing to be agnostic of her features as a concept, because these features change—and new ones appear, and old ones disappear—and love does not change.

Think of what this implies if you can maintain both the love and the crush, and if the crush never surpasses the love. It means that if some ugly feature of her appears, it may surprise you, but eventually you will be enthralled by it. Suppose you experience paranoia and are into conspiracy theories. Almost always, your crush will inevitably become the center of the conspiracy. You'll think she's a reptilian or something. But you love her, and you still have a crush on her, so inevitably, you become enthralled by the idea that she's a reptilian, and love her all the more for it. And so forth. Any negative feature or character trait that you can possibly think of, if she somehow adopts it in your mind, you eventually become enthralled by it.

Crushes therefore have the power to transform the entire universe from something negative to something positive and worth living for. When combined with love, both the love and the crush can feed off one another, and no matter what negativity you experience, the object of your affection has the power to change it all.

I used to think that the only right way to deal with crushes was to give them up. But this only caused me more pain, because of the emotional sterility of being without crushes, and the humiliation and fear when you inevitably develop another one. The only right way to deal with crushes is, I think, to learn to sincerely love everyone, in case you develop a crush on them.

This attitude is not only desirable, but necessary. Inevitably, you will develop a crush, and if you're not prepared, you'll be completely consumed. It happens all the time: people become emotional wrecks because the person they "loved" (read: "had a crush on") didn't "love" them back. Well, if you love them, in the real sense of the word, it doesn't matter if they "love" you back. Or maybe they marry their crush and end up beating them when they do something they didn't expect. But people who love each other don't hurt each other.

I've had a number of crushes. But I wasn't completely consumed. By any of them. Or, if I was, I recovered. I was lucky. And because of it, my life will never be the same. They are psychicly dangerous things, crushes. They hurt. But learning to navigate the madness can be essentially wholesome. Crushes: ultimately, an experience worth having.

Experiment

Experiment.

The word seems less like a thing and more like a praxis. It seems like a thing we do that involves a certain way of seeing the world. But of course, the word has another meaning. It's not just a verb, but also a noun.

But even the noun seems to carry a lot of verb-ness with it. An experiment is simply a record of the action described by the verb form. But to me, this doesn't carry all of the insight that the word itself implies.

Armament.

The word is similar to the first. For one thing, it rhymes. But I think the relationship goes deeper than that.

What is an armament? It is not a singular thing. It is defined by Webster as "military weapons and equipment." Plural. The insight about the word and its use of the suffix "-ment" is that it is an accretion of something, specifically arms.

Experiment: the accretion of experience. An experiment is nothing less than an accretion of a bunch of experiences. Yes, there may be a scientific method, but really, the scientific method is just a way of clarifying the act of observation, and therefore, of experience. I think this is what "experiment" really means. It doesn't just mean following the scientific method, but systematically experiencing everything. This is what an experimenter does: systematically experiences everything.

Now, what does this insight have to say about the nature of:

Enlightenment?

Certainty vs. Doubt

When does doubt arise?

Let's suppose we ask a question. I'm drinking a cup of water. The question is, how do we know it's water? You can come to absolute, unfettered certainty that it is water. Why? Because the definition of water is, "a clear, tasteless liquid that quenches thirst." You look at the cup of water: it is liquid, it is clear, it has no taste, and when I drink it, my thirst is quenched. By definition, this must be water. There is no question: it is certain. If it turns out one of these parts of the definition is false, it must therefore not be water.

Let's suppose we ask a different question. The question is, are my perceptions reality? You cannot help but have doubt. Is this water clear, or do I merely think it's clear? I don't know. There's no way to be certain. We can be deceived. There is doubt.

What's the difference between the two questions? The first question has nothing to do with the self. It is a simple, objective question. Is this water? Of course it is. The fact of it being water proceeds from the simple knowledge of experience. I experience it to be water, and because the thing is defined by the experience (i.e. the experience of it being clear, the experience of it being liquid, the experience of quenched thirst, etc.) it must by definition be water. But do I perceive it to be water, or not? The question doesn't even make sense. It either is water, or it isn't. Perceptions are irrelevant. Do I merely think it's water? "Thinking" is the problem.

If you experience it as water, it is water. If you don't experience it as water, it isn't water. If you perceive that it looks like water and it may or may not be water, you're being pretentious.

On Divine Inspiration

I think the argument that religion is bad for humanity, put forth by Christopher Hitchens and others, is faulty. Religion is of positive benefit to us all.

Of course, there's a good instinct behind the blame of religion for world problems. Peoples of the world use religion to harm others. They say that because God spoke to them, they have the right to kill others. Christopher Hitchens said that such a belief is essentially totalitarian. It puts ultimate truth in a single person, or a single book, at the exclusion of others. But I say this is nonsense.

To understand why this is nonsense, we should unpack the ideas at play here. One is of an ultimate power, or God. There is also the idea that this ultimate power can inspire others disproportionately. Then, there is the idea that this ultimate power having given divine charter to individuals over others leads to violence.

It is at this last point where the idea fails.

Think about it. This is not an argument against religion; it's an argument against power. It is the divine charter itself that people have a problem with, not the fact that it is divine. And I say this is wrongheaded. People need power. Power is part of what makes us who we are.

I think this is the time to lay down some working definitions. When I'm talking about "divine inspiration," I'm talking about the product of religion. Many religious texts claim divine inspiration. They say, essentially, that this particular text came from God and has the authority of God in a sense. There are also many people in the world who claim to be divinely inspired, and claim the authority of God in a sense. What they are saying is that God has transferred some of His power to them. What I'm saying is that, contrary to many people's belief, this idea of having been divinely inspired is not at fault when these people choose to behave negatively. It's like having a car. Having a car gives you a great deal of power, and enables you to do things you wouldn't be able to do otherwise. However, of course, you may choose to drive drunk, and as a result, kill people. You wouldn't be able to kill people if you were just walking around drunk. Having the car gives you the ability to choose foolish actions which harm others. But I don't think that's an argument against cars. It's an argument against stupid decisions. Same goes for religion.

Suppose anti-religious people had their way, and God never divinely inspired anyone. There would be no change in human nature. Individuals or groups claiming inspiration leading to a better world would have no ability to garner public support and effect change, because, by definition, they would have nothing these other people didn't have. On the positive side, you'd never have people resorting to heavy-handed or desperate tactics in the name of this inspiration. But I'd rather humanity at least have the choice to effect change, even if the choice can be corrupted.

And that is the essence of my argument in support of religion. People who are inspired by God have a choice to behave positively or negatively. If there were no divine inspiration, there'd be no choice. And nothing would ever change, for good or bad. The fact that a huge number of people choose to use their inspiration as reasons to behave badly reflects badly on us, but not on religion.

Some Thoughts on an Age of Aquarius Part 2: Seduction

All parts include: Part 1: Ignorance; Part 2: Seduction; Part 3: Compassion; Part 4: Psychiatrists; Part 5: Hacking vs. Lying.

Seduction

This is the easy one. Everybody knows about this. There are two parts here: 1) You might be enticed to do things you don't want to do that will hurt you, and 2) you might be enticed to do things you do want to do that will hurt you.

In the first, I'm talking about pornography and death. An unmonitored child (and the fact is, whether you like it or not, every child is unmonitored at some point) WILL eventually access pornography and death. I did myself as a child. (Well, pornography. Not too fond of death.) I tend to think there are natural (or if not natural, cultural) barriers in humans against doing things that are evil, like having sex with young children or killing someone for sport. But the fact of the matter is, a couple of bozos out there will at some point decide to rape kids and kill people—and put it on the Internet. And as meticulous as Google is about weeding out the negative images out there, I myself, through no fault of my own, have come across fecal-play pornography and a corpse in the street with knives all over sticking out of him. I searched for completely unrelated terms, and those images popped up. You can't fight it: it will happen. Only you can figure out what to do.

In the second, I'm talking about scams. The Internet has ubiquitous access. This means you can use Google+ to access new friends and business contacts. However, it also means you may access a scam. Obviously, a scam will hurt you, even though you may want to participate. That's how scams work: They make you want to participate, then screw you and it hurts. The thing is, though, that at least partly due to the nature of the Age of Aquarius, these scams are becoming more insidious. I myself was part of one for a while. I saw an ad that advertised, "Free MacBook!" I knew it was probably a scam, of course. But the ad was in Facebook, and I found it hard to believe that Facebook would allow something illegal to enter their site. So I decided to check it out. I was clicking along, and it asked me if I wanted trial versions of products they had to offer. I clicked yes, thinking that "trial" implies "free." But I didn't read the fine print. The fine print said, essentially, that if I kept the product and did not act to cancel my contract, the site would send me monthly supplies of the same item, whether I asked for it or not, and charge my account the exorbitant prices they asked for the stuff—mostly useless crap like vitamins for pets laced with caffeine. I got myself out of the thing, but only after spending a good sum of money for no good reason except curiosity.

Curiosity may lead to disturbing things. Some may argue that it's better not to have access to any scams, pornography, or death, but I think the positive aspects of the Internet outweigh the negative. Ubiquitous access, when vetted properly, can be used to advance one's career and enrich one's life. Turning Art is a great way to access emerging artists. I love it, though it costs a lot. But hey, so does art.

Some Thoughts on an Age of Aquarius Part 1: Ignorance

All parts include: Part 1: Ignorance; Part 2: Seduction; Part 3: Compassion; Part 4: Psychiatrists; Part 5: Hacking vs. Lying.

Ignorance

The Internet has to do with completely open information. There is no unopen information on the Internet, because even if you hide things, by virtue of being "on the Internet," it can be found. Unfortunately, this has it's problems.

For one thing, there are certain pieces of information which aren't true. I ran into this problem on Facebook just recently when my friend Gideon caught me in an untruth. I had shared a picture of an indigenous South American who was crying, purportedly because the Brazilian government refused to listen to him, and moved forward with a plan which would destroy his homeland. Actually, he was crying because it was his cultural practice to cry when visited by distant relatives. I had shared the picture assuming everything said about it was true, when in fact, it was not. Which brings me to a point about the age of Aquarius: information is everywhere, but it isn't vetted by any authority. Therefore, it unfortunately may be false. Thus there still needs to be some respect for the authority of facts, or information will become meaningless. This is ignorance of individual things.

There is another kind of ignorance at play on the Internet. Because you have access to ubiquitous information, you may be lulled into a kind of false sense of security and believe you know all the truth when you in fact are ignorant. This is a general kind of ignorance. This happened to me too.

Back when Fukushima melted down, I found a website with very studied and learned people who came to the conclusion that Fukushima was essentially a media lie. Meaning, Fukushima posed no danger to the public, while a corrupt Western media continued to repeat maliciously that it did. They went to great lengths to secure their own trusted media outlets, and stream several of them simultaneously, watching and taking notes. They also studied the blueprints of the Fukushima reactor in depth, and proved why a core meltdown would be completely impotent in terms of human danger. Needless to say, this was all wrongheaded. The facts came to light, and, of course, Fukushima is now known as one of the more serious nuclear accidents in history. The people, including myself, who participated in this orgy of fact finding were not wearing the condoms of skepticism.

Both these kinds of ignorance result directly from the democratic nature of ubiquitous information. One should be careful about aquarian information, and make sure it is in fact correct.

The Negative Magnolia

Searching, finding, classifying, using, reading, talking, reporting, sitting, standing, walking can all be done in entropy. This entropy has a dulling effect on the mind, like carbon dioxide has on the planet. Experience can be closed — it can exist inside a building with no windows. Keeping busy keeps you in the system; it keeps you indoors, breathing old air and reading yellow pages between musty book covers. I look for these things, like a bee looks for flowers.

The open door. It is defined by spacial constraints, but it is an anti-object. I walk outside: which brings the new. The sparkling air brings externalism — I feel fresh. I don't refer to internal things anymore. I don't refer to flowers within flowers. I can go inside an object, I can go through an anti-object. If you think about it, it's a beautiful thing — the door. It's a happy thing. If we had no doors, no cracks in the walls, we could have no objects. If we had no objects, we could have no doors. Really, looking through the anti-object is as beautiful as looking inside the object.

Conventionally Ultimate

Edit: This experience has actually happened to me. Every two weeks, on the dot, I experienced extremely ultimate physical pain while I slept, beginning at my incarceration in the mental hospital, and lasting several months. Eventually it faded, but there is no possible way in human existence to experience more physical pain. It was as though every nerve ending of my body which had the capability of feeling pain was fed overwhelming supplies of the molecule responsible for pain. The dreams only reemerged once, recently. In the recent case, I was on a reality television show, and the pain was accompanied by the words "Medication Alert" on the screen. I felt the pain coming on, and the usual hopeless inevitability, but this time, I was saved by the unexpected presence of a Dharma teaching. Please be human. Please oppose psychiatry.

Question: Is there such a thing as ultimate pain?

Answer: Yes, I think so — in a sense. Pain is a concept like everything else, and thus can exist in pure form in an entropic environment.

Question: What about in another universal formation that allows for more of similar elements?

Answer: Yes, that too would be ultimate. They're both ultimate in relation to their constructs.

Student: It's like for one man something is ultimate, while for another man something else is ultimate.

Answer(er): Yes, sort of. Except, concepts only make sense in regards to their universal formations, so the idea of "ultimate" is really the same in both cases — there is no hierarchy.