close behind

I tend to not be one for missives. Well, not so much in writing, in speaking I am sure there are those that can attest to the fact that once you start me on a topic I feel strongly about, the elocution won’t stop. However, all in all, I tend not to be one that sits at elucidate just how strong my feelings are on certain topics, and why I feel that way. Perhaps it is formed from apathy, or my own introverted indifference that I never have felt the need to explain why my value structure is the way it is. Perhaps it is formed out of the fear that who I am and what I believe is something so different from others, that it is easier to maintain a quiet belief structure, than it is to debate that belief structure. I do know that there is no perhaps in my belief structure, which may be the additional cause in that I believe what I believe, and before I decide on that belief I leave it in the column of indifference, so that once I settle on a value structure, it is there no matter what. It may just be stubbornness, but I also know that it is my own fucked up sense of self-integrity.

That said, perhaps one thing that I need to become more aware of is how strongly I do believe about certain things, and have the courage to talk about those things, no matter what the consequence is. Life is a series of choices, and no matter what input went into that choice, nor what consequence comes out of that choice, every second of every day is a choice that we can control. Some may not be able to control it to the degree that others can, and I am certainly not espousing some sort of rigid libertarian dialogue blaming everyone for their own place in life. However, we as people, as citizens, as animals can and do make a choice, whether conscious or subconscious every moment of our lives.

I think over the past 30 years of my life I have known this. The one fact I never wanted to come to terms with was that through the act of avoidance on those beliefs I hadn’t decided upon, I was merely prolonging an apathetic notion that infected the rest of my life. That the slippery slope of indecision gained more and more traction into who I was on a daily basis. I believe it is this indecision and lack of purpose around elements of my belief structure that leads to the normal modern American bouts of depression. That whether a system or way of life was designed implicitly or explicitly does not matter, what matters is that the system operates and that each day we all move through it, trying to find identity within the confines of who and what we are supposed to be.

Each day I see myself wake up, shower, eat and go about my day disguised in a pale form of the remembrance of the imagination of my youth. I don’t think it has anything to do with lost dreams, or desired goals; it has completely to do with the fact that the business of carving out truths from fiction makes one feel even more detached from a system and society that is not meant to foster evolution. The sole purpose of modern society is to do everything better, faster, smarter, uniquer, and more efficiently. It feels that in the quest to rid ourselves of inconsistencies, we all become lost in a cycle of pushing widgets out of a factory.

My profession is to manage the delivery of professions. It is to organize the ideas and notions of people into a consumable, detailed and simplistic map on how to do everything better. In itself this concept isn’t a bad idea. I am sure that you could point me towards a thousand instances in human evolution (or animal evolution for that matter) where someone pushing and organizing society solved a drastic calamity. In the end, the devil is in the details. If we all become efficient and overly connected, is not our imagination that forms in the crucible of our own solitude and desire to experience every moment through the eyes of transfixed grandeur lost. Are we not further separating ourselves from our own community of self, and further alienating the concept of witnessing new and soul altering moments. When one can download a picture of the pyramids, does one still truly desire to see them before they turn to dust. And if they do still desire to experience them, is that same desire multiplied or blunted?

I am by no means a Luddite. I think that out of everyone I know, I have one of the best understandings of the concepts of technology and where the past, present, and future will take us. I also by no means fear the standard technological boondoggles presented by the Assimovs, or Matrixes. But I wonder if by sharing a facsimile of outward appearance, something that previously we only did on an isolated communal level, with the rest of the world, do we all become a feedback loop of expectation? Do my beliefs and desires really matter in the maelstrom of a billion beliefs and desires?

I am more than aware of the irony and inherent narcissistic naval gazing these questions and thoughts are. But one core tenant of my value structure is when your back is up against the wall, that is when it matters to be who you truly are. I think at close to 31 years of age, it is now time to be who I am, and forget that the rest of the world may not want to fall in line, but at least the experience that I share with even just myself is more real then the display of expectation that I feel has led to the bi-product of the place our society is currently occupying. Throughout history, cultures and empires and philosophers and geniuses and the crazy have all had one thing in common: they expected a system to be just that a system. If my intimate knowledge of technology has taught me anything, it is that a system will always breakdown, especially when the eventually the only thing supporting the system is the system itself.

I am not sure (as always) where this missive came from and is going. I also am under no misconceptions that I am the first nor last person to question the need for falsified structure in a largely chaotic reality. What I do know is from here, who I am matters less about what is expected of me, and more about the experience of being me.