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

Thanks for adding kindle to our little "virtual camp fire" here.

I will not divulge the complicated dynamics between my own mother and I at this time in our lives, but I am exerting a great deal of effort trying to remain patient while simultaneously growing more and more irritated with the redundant and predictable arguments.  She sometimes burdens me as though I were obligated as a "husband," and yet I appreciate living in a somewhat safe and calm environment - so it behooves me to not totally rebel from the conditions.

The last straw would be wasting funds and time on some "smarter phone."   I would strongly resent her demands to help her engage in the inane online activities her siblings and their offspring engage in.  I would rebel.  I have no children or wife for the Mind Parasites to torment me with demands for gadgets and distraction-intrusive technologies.   I refuse to allow them to reach me using my mother as their host!   

When I read that last sentence in the last post by Silenus (above), I was reminded of the Dancing Wu Li Masters, and how modern physicists began using terminology similar to the ancient mystics.   In general, I know nothing, really.  I only know some monkey's tricks for manipulating algebraic symbols in a mental universe with human-defined rules and logic-bound structures.    Then there is the reality of being a temperamental animal creature.   Are we not ALL total as-ssholes deep down in side?  From the snake to the snail to you and I.  I am not a pleasant creature.

I will try to focus on this point even as my mind is all over the place:  I am not alone in not knowing what I don't know.

There is something liberating in this stance.  I'm not sure how to express it or where it fits into the equation.  We certainly can't be aware of the extent of our ignorance.   By definition, we don't know it, so how could we be aware of any deficit.

There is no "is" of identification.   With which identity shall "I" identify with, the math student of today or the possible "I" of an unknown future, living in a cave smoking crystal meth, drinking booze, praying to be released from the Hell of physical existence?

Either way, in the end, we are nothing.   Regardless of whether I write a computer program or not, the animal body will eat food and poop, or it will die as all animals do ... a branch could fall on my head.  Anything can happen.   We are all 2 weeks away from dying of thirst.  All security is an illusion.

I humbly submit that I am rather "soft-skinned" when it comes to urban survival, and that I am not equipped to survive gang-culture prison cities.  I suppose I am in a kind of La-La Land mental landscape between this Hell World and the dirt which will liberate me by swallowing my bones.   I thank each of you for your respect and kindness.  It is a rare treasure in this life, and somehow we have managed to salvage some dignity and intellectual honesty --- almost in defiance of mass-scale hysteria networks polluted by celebrities and politicians.

This "not knowing" was what motivated me to return to old texts that I found particularly novel and authentic.  I was not content to delude myself with contentment with a "college degree."   I wanted to face just how challenging the high-school math curriculum was, and to give it the attention it deserved from the perspective of a fairly mature over-the-hill toothless 127 pound mathematical-computing geek.    The documentation left behind might serve as a prop in a Lovecraftian tale, but I am not the mad Arab ... just the tail end of a dying family they called "He Not Rich".

Rather than forever identifying fundamental theorems with that anxiety-ridden drama-filled time of my life (high school, parents divorced when I was 12, began alcohol use), I have returned to it as a different mental creature, after having been defeated by this world and lived to reflect upon that defeat.  I've lost a decent job, accepted that I had never wanted to reproduce, returned to college and then landed on the welfare payroll with millions of other marginalized and disenfranchised, over-educated "mental health consumers."

I stopped taking psychiatric medications in 2009.  There's something fishy in Denmark, but I think sometimes that it is only by not imbibing alcohol that I keep this fragile life together.  It might have easily fallen to pieces by now with just one temper tantrum (read: psychotic episode  ).

There is a chance that, when we view our "life story" objectively, the things that appear to be "failures" end up a kind of success; that is, it is not what it "is" since, as the story unfolds, the audience consists only of you in your subjective existence.   It is quite possible that there exists some prisoner in the most wretched situation who has the mental strength to endure mere existence, and to even find some laughter.   There are others who are too sensitive to extreme distress and despair.    Two weeks in actual combat destroys most men for life.  I understand that whatever mental health I do possess is most likely just luck, and that, had I been born into a rougher family, my life might be a different kind of Hell, or I might not have survived childhood.


An aside: If you proclaim loudly that you want no part in having your balls shot off, they diagnose you as manic-depressive or label you a "weakling" (Hitler's tactic).   In the wild west, when France and England and Spain and other nations were fighting over land in the Americas, the military commanders would entice various natives from several "Aboriginal Nations" to join their war by getting them drunk on rum and claiming they were "cowards,"  "chumps,"  or "pus-ss-ies" if they did not fight against "the common enemy" which was British or French or Spanish or whoever.

Booze, guns, and threats to manhood = "a war-loving nation"

I appreciate the imagined community of mathematicians and programmers who hack away at the Open Source computer algebra systems available these days.    As kind of an old dog who still manages to get a gleam in his eyes sometimes when I find myself enthusiastically learning, I guess my heroes are these math and computer geeks.

The thing is, up close and personal, I am a very disagreeable, most of the irritable man.

I only come off as "comical" because my anger and frustration comes out as joking around.  It's ok though.  This is just how I am - a bundle of nerves when others are in my face.   To this day, my mother is able to rattle my nerves.  I am getting a handle on it though, learning to "disallow" others "monkeying-around" with my moods.   

There is little honesty about the actual challenges we face in simply keeping our own heads together.   I find official textbooks, technical manuals, etc all have this sterile lack of authenticity about them, if only because there is never any mention of pooping and eating and preventing your throat from being slit as you read the text.