life is...insane

I woke up from a weird dream this morning. A friend of mine, E, told me about some new writing she will be doing about her dreams. I associate E with the field of psychology and so when she said she was going to write out her dreams I recalled that psychologists love to analyze patient's dreams--non-patients too. I thought it was pretty daring of her to expose herself like that, but I have yet to hear anything further about this project...

I don't remember my dreams. The moment that I leave my bed they are sapped from me. It's quite unfair because I would very much like to remember them, A) for the purpose of analyzing them and figuring out what my problems are and B) because I'm sure they would spawn great movie ideas if I had the time to think about them. The sad thing about this morning is that although I can remember I had a dream, and I remember it being significant because my friend had a conversation about writing out her dreams, I cannot remember what my dream was about. I was interrupted by a phone call from another friend, and that is why I happened to get a glimpse of the dream I was having and also the reason why I can't remember the dream.

The one thing I took away from the dream though was to send out my question of the day--I've found that whenever I"m on vacation I have time to text friends and ask them my question of the day. Any question that is on my mind during the day. Yesterday it was what people thought about people who elope. Today's question was why brilliant people tend to have abnormal psyches.

Try this exercise: picture any successful person you know that most people who know them would claim they are successful (which could pretty much be anyone, really...) and then see if you can't spot something peculiar about them. It doesn't matter if they are business-successful, religious-successful, or family-successful. There is always something "odd" about them. Take for instance the woman who is super-skilled with kids: she talks, acts, and thinks like a kid. In an "adult" world, she might be considered crazy--in fact, many soccer moms and van drivers ARE considered crazy. But she's "successful" too. What about Lois' father on Family Guy. He's business-successful, but when put in a rest home he goes veggie and they pull him out of retirement.--I think Seth MacFarlane has a point (just watch the episode and you'll see what I mean). I read in the paper yesterday about a local minister who is allowing a service for dogs...She's also building a dog area in the homeless shelter she is building. She sounds crazy, but it's also pure genius. People who wouldn't go to her church are going to go just because they can bring their dogs with. Homeless people are going to benefit from the companionship of dogs.

When I asked E my question of the day, she said that she thinks, if we get down to it, everyone is crazy. There is no correlation between being crazy and successful, because there is a 1.0 correlation between being crazy and successful and there is a 1.0 correlation between being crazy and unsuccessful. I pointed out to her that that defeats the purpose of defining society as "normal" because insanity is therefore normal, and she probably laughed knowing something I don't know--everyone is abnormal.
It prompted me to think about whether or not psychologists attempt to make people conform to society, or if they make people more crazy. It was an insane loop in the space-logic continuum::: shrinks make you "normal" by making you crazy, then they realize you're crazy and you need to be more "normal" again so they constantly "change" you and try to make you into something else, ever recycling the old you and making you new again. Meanwhile they get paid massive amounts of money.
Since life-coaching is similar to the head-picking process, one that I've engaged in before, in the same instant I got sucked into another dimension of the space-logic continuum::: Life coaches have a bad rapt because they are "unskilled" versions of shrinks. They say fancy stuff about light and energy and potential and burdens, and they pump you up into thinking you can conquer the world. They make you build a reliance on them to the point where they NEED you in order to feel successful.--even though their goal is to convince their client that their client can go off into the big scary world on their own and accomplish anything. Oddly, shrinks and psychiatrists' main objective is to help the client manage their life and emotions on their own.

I've had three people come to me in the last 24 hrs to inform me of their "problems" and/or progress. Most people, I think, just want someone to talk to, because talking to someone seems to patch problems better than actions do. Honestly, the advice most people need me to explain to them is that they should just say "Hakuna Matata" and not worry about it. Let things roll of your shoulders and don't let them sink into your skin.
 Not only do people hear put-downs all of the time, but our society and culture makes us think we need to look, sound, smell, act, and pleasure in a certain way, and when they sink in, they cause us all sorts of mental and emotional problems. All of the five senses are controlled and regulated by the forces surrounding us. Truthfully, they're just hegemonic arguments. We accept them because they are the "consensus" of our local society and the outside world. We don't question them. Many of them are planted into our heads at a young age when we haven't developed our reasoning powers to defend ourselves. Is that cultish? I think so. But then again, EVERY institution is therefore a cult. Every religion, every form of education, even our own families.
Is it immoral to convince someone of something that might not be true? Depends: does thinking that way benefit them and others, or does it harm them or others? Utilitarianism. When you look at life under this light, you realize that all of those crazy people out there, all of those cults, all of those cultures and lifestyles: none of them are judge worthy; it's not cut and dry when it comes down to judging them. The polygamists in the FLDS church, who I learned a couple days ago that they are professing the end of the world, the need for new baptisms, and that it's time to move to a new zion (suspected in North Dakota), there's really nothing immoral with the way they believe and operate. They are providing a meaningful life for many people, and from what I understand, they are also good hard workers for the outside community (to non-FLDS).
I don't think they're closer to the truth, but I don't see anything immoral in their behavior as long as they don't "rape" anyone (I forget...did I publish that ultra-controversial article about rape?--maybe some other time). Even the child marriages and all that stuff I can see as morally alright as long as it is the greatest good for the greatest number of people over the greatest amount of time. (I usually don't think about the 3rd dimension, time, but I need to be P.C. here.)

I had a peer who was a communist. I'm a pretty firm Capitalist, but he and I got along well. He seems like a bright enough man. At one point in my life I investigated communism--back in my naive days as a young teen when I thought there were things wrong with society and that we needed to fight on every social conflict. There were aspects of communism that I thought were realistic--socialism really--but eventually I realized how realistic Capitalism is and how it trumps communism.
Now I'm more moderate. I take the trump cards out of the capitalist deck and the ideal aspects of socialism and I'm left with a quasi-idealist version of Social Capitalism. I see it as possible only if all participants are voluntary and sanctioned in a capitalist world--hey, we ARE in a capitalist world! In other words, kid, if a small band of people want to form a social community in which they share everything and work towards the same goals and everyone is completely equal and all decisions are made by a majority vote of a committee, that's fine. In fact, you'd be surprised at how many communities are exactly that. Stalin and Lenin and Hitler and Jang Qi Shek-- whatever his name is, they were all successful, but they were also crazy. They overlooked the fact that Communism is bureaucracy and at the head of communism there is still a guy in a fancy chair giving the yes or no, much like any monarch or president.

I could go on for a long time about government. My own government has the same problems that any government in history has ever had. I think all governments share the same problems and, as yet, no one has been able to find solutions for them.



I too am insane[[I know it's hard for you, my readers, to fathom, but I'm just as insane as the next guy, maybe even more--hopefully]]. I'm just like any other insane person in that I don't know what make me crazy. The fact that I think deeply about things and come to anti-conclusions, conclusions contrary to popular society--ya, that's insane. The fact that I want to be something important in the world and think my ideas are new and exciting and my skills are unique when what I say echos what ancients have said and my 100k's of people have the same unique abilities as I do--ya, that's insane.
 Some days I go on hyper spurts where I razz everyone, take no prisoners, bully everyone around me that I care about and assert my domain. It's probably caused by the fact that I'm just a little fish in a big pond and no one gives a shit about me and probably wouldn't care if I dropped dead--and it would be hypocritical of me to want them to care about me because honestly if most of the world dropped dead I wouldn't care that they died. I typically don't care when I hear about people dying across the globe. I typically don't care when soldiers die or terrorists die. I don't even care when young girls in a city next to my hometown are kidnapped, raped, and left to die in the woods.Yes, I think it's bad, sad, and disturbing, and I think the killer ought to be kidnapped, raped and left to die in the woods as well (viva Dexter), but I just don't care about that kind of stuff. I'm a little crazy, cut me some slack. I barely care that my own grandmother has been dead for a year now. I'm not going to fake these feelings. When they happen, they happen.

Right now, I'm just trying to figure out what I care about in life. I'm in my mid-twenties and I feel like I haven't experienced anything even though I know I have. I've experienced many feelings and emotions. I've liked some, disliked others. I've met MANY people and learned from their experiences. I have a good memory when I am prompted to recall it, and I constantly recall my past experiences just so I can reassure myself that life is grand because I've experienced so much and improved so far... (I'm doing it right now). I think it would be great fun if you and I compared lives--our memory of them at least--and we came to a conclusion about who has had more experience. I imagine we would take turns saying one thing we did and asking if the other person did it or not. They would then say, "oh yes, I've had that before: this is how it turned out. Have you ever..." I'm sure we could go on for a long time, but whether because I've had more experiences or because I have a better memory, I would win. [[I'm gonna call this the reminisce game]]

Well, I'm turning into a crazy Nihilist so I better quit.
...
I've said it before but I'll say it again: for the time being I'm going to focus on figuring out what I really care about. That way in the future of my crazy life I'll at least know what to hold on to and what to give up...