April 26, 2017

I am feeling particularly miserable today. Maybe it's the political shit happening. Maybe it's the fact that Spoiler Warning, one of the last LPs I still watched regularly has collapsed. Shamus Young's blog had a reputation for having a more civil, thoughtful comments section. The comments there got so putrid that pretty much everyone abandoned ship.


If the best-case scenario is total self-destruction, maybe Comments Sections shouldn't be a thing. Feel free to discuss in the comments below The only reason I don't disable mine is because nobody reads or comments on my shit anyway, except for the occasional spam bot.


Yesterday I got through all of the vanilla content in Dark Souls 3 without dying. It did not give me any pleasure, any satisfaction, any clarity or closure or any peace. I had no one to share that victory with. I can't even use the "tree falling in the woods and no one is around to hear it" metaphor, because even a squirrel or a bird would notice if I chopped down a tree. Even if it was a big tree, and I tried many times before to chop it down to no avail.


I don't have anyone I can hang out with. I don't have a lot of money at the moment to buy some new game to provide a momentary distraction. Not a whole lot of options vis-a-vis "comfort food". Not much of an appetite lately anyway. I don't like the dreams I've been having, so I don't look forward to going to sleep. I don't have the energy or willpower to do anything that MIGHT bring me some satisfaction.


I have no centre. And thus, no foundation to build a life or personality off of. I could see myself putting in the effort to be better, to be ANYTHING if there was someone who depended on me, someone I wanted to impress. But everyone is married and busy, and they wouldn't want to be with me anyway.


Things feel pretty fucking grim right now.


END OF LINE

~A.H.

Love Is Not Selfish

How many of you have heard the phrase: “You have to love yourself before you can love anyone else”? The idea is that if you love yourself, it will naturally lead to caring about others, and not caring about yourself denies you the ability to have meaningful relationships. 


But wait, what about bankers? What about bible-thumping bigots? What about mass-murderers and dictators? What about lobbyists and corrupt police and senators and congressmen and gangs? What about rapists? What about hollywood executives? 


These are not self-loathing people. Psychopaths have high self-esteem. They love everything about themselves and continue to make the world worse because that initial self-love never spread out. Why wouldn’t they? They want everything for themselves because they see themselves as more important and more deserving. Hating yourself is not necessarily always what makes you hate others, so why would loving yourself be the only entryway to loving others?


You do not need to love yourself to love others. That’s bullshit. I hate pretty much everything about myself, and I cared about people. Certain people, at least. I was a humanist for most of my life, and my own self-loathing didn’t stop that. Even years after I should have stopped having any personal investment in the human race. Long after I should have given up on the species, I was still hoping and caring.


If I still care about anyone, it’s not because I had some epiphany or some moment of self-acceptance. It’s because I’m not a psychopath, and love is not selfish!

END OF LINE

~A.H.

Fail Whale: The Revenge

Look at this steaming bowl of rhinoceros shit. This is what recently showed up in my inbox, courtesy of Twitter Inc. I've had automated messages before. I like to think I know what an e-mail forced out of the rectum of The Machine looks like. There's a certain rhythm and familiarity to an e-mail that has never had any human involvement.

But this? This is the work of a person. A person with an inflated sense of self-importance and a wounded ego. This is the result of someone exerting imagined authority. Look at the passive-aggressive tone, buried under seemingly mature-sounding soft language.


There's a suspicious aroma in the air; the smell of someone trying to quit an argument they're losing. Let's examine those two highlighted parts, shall we?

▼