{∅, {∅}, {∅, {∅}}} : Rage Against the Meat Grinder

Herr Hentrich,
Definitely, you are no monster. Maybe a thought criminal. Well, a human being under attack by the gorts. However I am afraid that anyone against the gorts must be viewed as a "terroristic threat" and as you say charges can be trumped up. The world history has thousands of examples where those think are punished and the others who are the oppressors are flattered. Although I am also part of society, after all as a collaborator I am given a carrot and If I behave badly I am given a stick. I hope everything goes well for your mother. Aging is very tough. I am sure you are doing the best to help her there. And those in positions of authority will never feel comfortable with you because they do not know they are slaves. Specially the ones who are in the weapons industry.Ever saw the Lord of War with Nicholas Gage? You know that the root of the word for work in Latin means torture. Tripalium is the word, I think but I am not sure. I am also a slave, I admit, but I became aware of this fact too late. Stocking shelves would be no problem  but there is a problem, Those who are twenty year old are going to say to you that you are taking away their job.
Please take care of yourself there. Raúl

So tightly and narrowly is our range pre-set that each individual human being is not free even to choose what sort of a human being he is to be.I cannot choose to be a great composer or even a passable sprinter,I cannot choose to be an African or a Chinaman or a Victorian Englishman,I cannot even choose to be two inches taller than I am or freckled.I am what I am in a way that rules out nearly all human possibilities from the beginning and leaves me no remainder at all.

One of the great things Schopenhauer said, and I'm sure he's not the only one who has said this, is that we ought to know who and what we are, and not try to be something that we are not.

I guess we all learn who and what we are throughout our lives, and when we try to be something we are not, Nature puts us in check.  For example, I guess it has been about 10 to 12 years gone by now, and it seems a much longer time ago, that I had fancied a woman of African lineage, and, maybe because my head was filled with reefer and booze, I actually pined away after her for a solid couple of years.   I had experienced similar infatuations, but this one I pursued with such blindness to the impossibility of winning her over that I must have appeared very foolish to anyone witnessing it.

I went so far as  to research the possibility that all human beings originated in Africa, and that I was from a strain of albinos.   For awhile, I had taken these theories to science fiction levels ... but, by now, I have calmed down a great deal, and I don't really concern myself with the origins of humanity or the pain of wanting to be something you are not, in my case, perhaps I wished to be a man of dark pigment so as to attract the woman I found myself attracted to.   It is all very deep, too deep even for my tastes.

I have not only come to accept who and what I am, but I even respect my disinclination to breed, since there were not many women too interested in my demon seeds.  Like Schopenhauer, my personality may repel women.   I am far too serious.   But enough of this.  I cannot take credit for not reproducing; nor can I condemn too loudly those who produce many offspring.  As you suggest, we each are what we are by Nature, and it all plays itself out.

While sitting here working on some math (what else would I be doing?) I thought of something you had written, and I wanted to mention that there was a time I struggled with accepting my genetic make-up.  The theory that we all originated in Africa from dark pigmented ancestors does not give my personal skin pigmentation.

I'm just another creature with my own particular personality and temperament.

We happen to be able to communicate because we may share certain characteristics and inclinations.  It is good that we compare notes and exchange ideas.

Peace!

Senor Raul,

I must say your understanding of the world is very sound & Schopenhauerian.
I checked out"The Lord of War". Its very true to the facts of life.


Keep well in Paraguay.

I had a sudden insight-I need not understand math concepts entirely-I need not grasp all their facets,maybe I too am meant to only half understand math solution manuals-what a liberating idea.

This is what we need, Holden, a Liberating Idea, maybe even several liberating ideas.

What prevents the multitude from deleving into mathematics?  It is a daunting prospect.  When I first got back into "it," I wanted to dive into Multivariable Calculus and Differential Equations.  I did not want to review Trigonometry or Algebra or even Differential Calculus since I respect how such studies devour the seasons and years.  I was holding my own with the advanced subjects until I got bit by this bug that wanted to work through exercises with a genuine interest in learning things I may have skipped over or have not learned in a proper manner.

So I returned to the more fundamental subjects and am now going through a Calculus text (again, after 22 years!).

The thing is, I only devote myself to a textbook if I can track down the solution manual as well.  It is liberating to take the approach that, if I need to look at the solutions while working through the problems, then I only wish to understand the material better.   It is a different approach than exams and the like, where one is forced to memorize without understanding.   I don't concern myself with remembering formulas, but only trying to understand the problem before me. 

The thing is, what once represented a means to escaping manual labor has now become a way to endure time, the time of a man liberated from manual labor.   Of course, I could endure time with alcohol and music, but due to my particular chemistry and temperament, such a lifestyle leads to altercations with neighbors, landlords, and ultimately, with the police.   

I do not see the purpose to this existence in general or the purpose to my life in particular.   Right now, helping my mother gives my life purpose, but as far as what shall occupy my mind, it really looks as though devoting myself to several textbooks, often one book at a time for however many months it takes to get through it, is enough to motivate me to want to remain cognizant and as mentally sharp as possible.   In other words, my desire to continue this long path is what keeps me going day after day.  I have no incliniation to hit the liquor store first thing in the morning or even at the end of the evening.

You see, Holden, as you well know, developing mathematical maturity appears to take a long time.  I don't know about India, but the popular culture in the USA is all about instant gratification and tangible results.   For instance, the Department of Vocational Rehabilitation invested funds into my education from 1998 to 2002.  I did well academically, graduated with honors, but I never got a job.  I ended up stocking shelves in a foodstore (night shift) earning far less money than I was earning as a park maintenance worker before setting foot in the college scene.  Needless to say, I was becoming depressed and even quite angry.   Of course, the government types might look at the money spent as a waste (I still owe student loans after all this time).  You know why.  They want results, and to those types, results mean "career" ... "job" ... a "normal life".

This time around, I am involving no official or formal educational institutions, and I do not need to beg for grants.  All I need is access to used books and an environment where I am not bombarded by instrusive vampires sent by their Masters to torment me and keep me from discovering the University Within.   It's as though formal schooling were a conspiracy preventing one from discovering the accessibility of true education.

We hear so many complain about the cost of education.  No.  It is the cost of schooling, the cost of exams, grades, the latest textbooks (criminal education industry) ... the cost of buying a wardrobe and a car so as to look "successful", the cost of dentistry, etc ...

People go into debt for the privilege of having a position.

Once one has been liberated from the daily grind, and then frees himself from the inclination to be permanantly inebriated, then, that one will wake up with nothing to do, nowhere to go, no one to know ... and THAT is the most perfect condition if one wants to peck away at math skills drills. My plan is literally to spend every day possible doing this.   While one may not seem to be making any progress, as this becomes my life, and since there are no time contraints or rules, I am free to look at the solution manual as often as necessary!   There does not have to be a goal in mind.

The gorts will never be able to fathom this.  The gorts demand a plan.  What are your goals?  Where do you see yourself in five years, in ten years?

"What do you mean he studies math all day?  Why doesn't he just find a job?   He's 50 years old, for God's sake.  Where the hell does he expect to get studying Calculus?  He must just be goofing off all day scribbling in his notebook.  Is he lazy?   Is he a paranoid schizophrenic?"

G O R T S !!!!

So, some people enjoy reading science fiction or horror.  Last year I made a decision that turns out to have been significant.  I decided not to get a Kindle eBook reader, and to, instead, invest in hard copy textbooks, blank notebooks, a calculator (or two) ... I am into the actual textbooks and the notebooks.  I like notebooks with NO LINES.

I even like old style pencils.  I try to use a mechanical pencil, but most often I use the old style pencils 2B Tombow 8900 or Mitsu Bishi 9800 2B. 

The great thing is that I am under no obligation to study.  Many would most likely rather see me harassed all day by a cranky supervisor so that I would be more likely to storm to the liquor store, have a little tantrum, and be hauled off by the Zoo Keepers. 

Now, what is it that Tolstoy wrote about Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishement?  I know I have mentioned it before.  If R----- could have just been content to stay in his apartment thinking his thoughts!   This is when he was most himself, when he sat alone thinking.

When someone is rude enough to inquire as to "what I do,"  I hit them with the truth.  I do math ... I study math books ... regular undergraduate college textbooks ... doing the math drills that countless youth partake in high schools and universities all over the planet.   Would I be better off stocking groceries at a food store or pumping gas or serving donuts and coffee?   

I did not say these jobs were below me.  I imagine it must take great patience to work with the public.   I am asking if I would be better off?   Would society or even the species be better off if I would just submet to humble employment?

I do not think so.  In fact, I will be bold enough to say that society is better off if I am able to enjoy a calm, almost spiritual, engagement with these subjects that seem so daunting to a 16 year old or even a 30 year old.   Let this 50 year old Steppenwolf relax with these old (and new) books.  Let him take his own sweet time.  He's had a rough trip.  He's tired of wandering around.  And, while he can be an interesting person to get in a conversation with, he's not your ideal employee.  What's more, he's not trying to be your ideal employee.   One thing he takes from Kant as philosophical gospel truth is that no man should be subjected to the will of another man.

Regardless of society's silly metrics, how each of us is measured, how we rate our worth and value by earning power or position in society, it is all nonsense at bottom, a great deal of monkey business - Planet of the Apes.   What are we?   Subjectivities.   Seeing myself as a subjectivity allows me to see all others as subjectivites.  Yes, even all the gorts, beneath their masks and their projected images are also subjectivities that also have to endure all the misery, want, and anguish of their individual existences.    Life is not a peep show!    No one can ignore Truth.  We stand in this Truth, the truth of what it means to exist, to have been born, to know we and everyone we know will vanish into thin air.

So, no we do not have to understand every problem we come across.   I am all for going to the solution manual and seeing if this helps ... I have had to tackle many problems this way.   I try to take notes that give a better explanation than the solution manual, making sure to note which ideas were difficult to grasp.

As for the disappearing posts, I apologize.   Sometime I think I sound like I am complaining, and so I might just delete something, hoping no one has read it yet.

I will remember to try to resist this compulsion since you might get some insight into yourself by hearing about my anxieties.  The things is, at the moment, my life is not particularly rough in any way.  Life is generally filled with anxiety, but my particular life, in this present moment, does not feel too rough at all.

According to Schopenhauer, if we find ourselves in a cheerful mood or in a moment free of pain and anguish, we really owe it to ourselves to appreciate this, and not to ruin it with worries and anxieties.   This may be impossible for anyone who sees in all creatures their own self, for its a throng of struggle, woe, murder, and horror.

As los hombres de Freehold say, "Take it easy."

Senor Raul,

INR 30000 is about 441 USD or 415 Euros.Thank you for your kind words.
My life is Kafkaesque.

Senor Raul,
Thanks for your comments,much appreciated.You are one of the aware ones is proven by the fact that you visit this almost completely unknown message board instead of spending your time with 2 billion sheeple on face book.I cannot say that I think that the sheeple will become more aware with time. I mean this kind of Enlightenment,and I don’t mean the Renaissance-type, I mean of  the dark kind,this DARK ENLIGHTENMENT is meant only for a handful of people in each generation.
Its been that way since the beginning of time,and I don’t see anything that can change that. 
Keep well in Paraguay.

In the spirit of "Dark Enlightenment" I tracked down some gems from illusion city, some English translations of Albert Caraco:

 in the Chaos Handbook (Breviare du Chaos) he wrote:

“The cities in which we live in are schools of death, because they are dishuman. Each one of them has become a den of noise and of stench, for each of one has became a chaos of buildings, in which we ammass ourselves in millions, losing our life’s reasons.Unfortunates without escape, we feel to have put ourselves, willing or not, in the labyrinth of the absurd, from which we will leave only when we will die,
for our destiny is to continue to multiply ourselves, only to die in great numbers. At every turn of the wheel, the cities in which we live in advance slowly one against the other, desiring only to confuse with each other: it’s a run towards the absolute chaos, in the noise and in the stench. At every turn of the wheel the price of the grounds go up, and in the labyrinth which devours the free space the revenue of the investiments builds up, day after day, hundreds of walls. It’s necessary that money give revenues and that the cities in which we live in advance, so it’s right that the houses double their height at every generation, even if the water is missing half of the days. The builders only desire to escape the destiny that they prepare for us, moving towards the countryside.”