I heard one say that life is a game of the fools and fortunately most meet the requirements. The enemy is inside us and the name is conciousness and the best is not think at all and not pay attention.
I really think this must be the main reason I try to stay focused on math. It gives this consciousness something to think about other than ... life itself.
It prevents me from becoming obsessively bitter.
I have no ambition and very little shame.
The lifestyle of the so-called successful does not appeal to me. I am content to be this loser in this game. If I were ever to wrote a book, I think I would have to speak to an outsider like myself. I would have to assume this sole reader would be relieved to read the kinds of things I would write about ... going through school grades 1 to 12, getting arrested while homeless, spending some time in jail, taking a lowly position as manual laborer while studying Schopenhauer at night, getting a formal education which I had kind of hoped would lift me out of the life of manual labor, and then, upon finding that nobody wants to hire a balding toothless skinny independent thinker like me, going on a 12-year drinking binge, in and out of county jail and psychiatric hospital, getting evicted from apartment year after year, until I reach the age of 48, at which time I come to the realization that I want to revisit mathematics and programming (and some philosophy and literature), but this time, not to find any kind of employment at all, but just to taste the sweet revenge of living as best as I can without caring about any of the values of mainstream society.
The great realization for me has been that writing how you think and feel becomes much easier once you come to terms with how would be receptive to the kinds of things you will be writing about.
I am not a salvationist - not a Karl Marx who thinks that if we just tweaked the social system or lived in community based societies, our disagreeable temperaments would suddenly become cheerful.
Is it so difficult to face these facts, that we do not like others and that we most likely only just barely endure ourselves. Liking or loving oneself is not a requirement.
Each of us cannot help but develop a philosophy towards living. Everyone must have some kind of philosophy. This is why I use the term Metaphysical Mutants. I think I got that from Ligotti's The Spectral Link.
Since I don't care about what others think of me and do not share the same values as most, it is perfectly natural for me to become more and more comfortable with the brute fact of being a stranger in a strange land.
Even when I use a search engine to try to zero in on what it is I wish to articulate, to see if anyone else may be writing about something similar, the hits are just nowhere near where my head is at or where I am coming from. This is the Twilight Zone, when you do a search for "studying math but never want to find a job," and all the results have to do with the same old bullshiit about "which careers require a strong math background" or some shiit like that.
Almost any time I use a search engine, I am dismayed at the commercial, status quo, conformist, corporate flavor of most of the results.
The reason I liked Ira Levin's This Perfect Day was because of the way he presented a society pf conformist positive thinkers and the idea of a being a willfully sick member.
Sick Member = Metaphysical Mutant
The key similarity is having no desire to being cured. In fact, there is a strong aversion to being cured, like in my early twenties when my sister was concerned that I had "lost my faith". She just did not get it. I mean, she did not understand that restoring my faith would represent a huge step backwards to me.
I lean strongly in the direction of a liberating kind of madness where I am free to hold contrary opinions specifically because I am not looking to be liked or accepted.
There are ways we can flip these scripts. By embracing one's status as a some kind of metaphysical mutant who experiences deep and constant cosmogonic discomfort, AND by taking the stance that you do not want to be CURED of this discomfort, that you do not envy the well-adjusted cogs in the biological and social machinery, you embrace your fate.
There really is no need to reach out to anyone about any of this, although, i have to admit, I, like Holden, check in at this message board almost daily. In fact, it is usually the first place I check out.
Sometimes I read something written by some kind of "recruiter for employment services" type who may do the hiring for some company, and I can feel myself becoming angry in an almost comicla and humorous manner. I believe I have genuine hatred for the kinds of people who succeed in the corporate world. Their games are not the kind I would want to be good at playing.
They may judge those who do not compete in their Rat Race Olymics as "losers," but in order to be a loser, you would have to play their game. If one does not play that game, it is not a matter of losing, but a matter of non-partiticipation and non-cooperation.
Why do I bother articulating any of this? It is what it is no matter what I type.
I suppose we each will do (or not do) what we will (or not), and we live with the consequences.
It's just that, reading something like
14 signs that you’re becoming unemployable, I witness just how deep into the Dark Side I have become. I am a living breathing manifestaion of resistance to this kind of mentality.
This is nothing new. I have been this way my entire life. I am not one of thier soldiers, not one of their brown-nosers or go-getters.
I have a bad attitude.
I don't want the things that they want. No, I do not want to be a good slave! I am a ruined slave who just wants to study mathematics, mathematically oriented programming, and read some interesting books in the middle of the night.
If I can't sleep, then it's ok since i no longer worry about waking up in time to report to work.
It occurs to me sometimes that the so-called well-adjusted and successful (gainfully employed) have not tasted the kind of liberation that goes along with being unsuited for employment. There is no way to explain to someone that black is white and white is black, up is down and down is up ...