5/31/95 1:03:50
Hmmm.
I did some thinking today in the library (don't I always) and realized that the
reason stupid people don't like me is because I don't like them and I let them
know it through body language. I also thought for a while about the concept of
parenthood and adoption and how our tendency to keep pets measures in. I figure
that people often obtain pets as substitutes for children. It assuages part of
the human need to feel needed. Sidetracked thought
here: Now that higher divorce rate has sprung from the liberation of women by
integrating into the workforce, perhaps this will convince a lot of people not to have
so damned many kids. Sidetracked thought: This
is why I feel a basic revulsion for people who keep stupid pets. A yappy, intolerant,
ribbon-festooned poodle named "snoogums" speaks for the mental state of its owner in
a certain way. I think: "If this is the kind of creature you have to choose in order
for it to be fully dependant on you, you can't possibly have much to depend on."
People keep yappy, aggressive little pets that answer only to them as a kind of
placebo to counteract their own weak, insecure tendencies. For example, it seems
that they always imagine the third party looking in, and derive a feeling of
superiority when that third party realizes that this creature will only favor
their owner. Sidetracked thought: This idea of the
need for dependance fits the frame of the mother who always speaks to her son in
babying tones- she is mentally establishing an imagined dependance upon her. I have
observed this in the habits of my own mother, especially when I am trying to convince
her to quit smoking or do something else that she does not favor.
Sidetracked thought: I realize now that my revulsion for stupid people is inconsistant
with my affection for animals. I also realize that my tendency to stay away from them
is consistent with my tendency to stay away from stupid animals that may try to kill
me. When I smash a fly that is bothering me, I do not blame it for all the worlds ills-
nor do I blame it for the other flies that have bothered me in the past. I do however,
smash it. I realize that to kill anything out of turn,
even to assist in its supposedly inevitable demise, is against greater human nature;
however in specific instances, when I am of the opinion that there is absolutely no
future for this animal except helpless torment, I choose to off it. I feel revulsion in
the very process of offing it sometimes, which I accept as proof that I am not heartless...
But sometimes I am displeased by the idea of existing in the same world wherein such
suffering is occuring- even if it can be out of sight and sound by simply running around the
block. Sidetracked thought: The state of desiring a state and
actually being in that state are often two radically different states of mind. Some
are actually incompatible with their desired counterparts- and are often inconsistent.
Fighting abortion by killing doctors, for example. Pound for pound, killing a doctor
destroys more human flesh than ten thousand abortions. Cutting your arm on a washboard
kills more human cells than an abortion, in fact. Folks see the irrelevance in this and
try to sidestep it by claiming that the real value of human flesh is in its potential-
and a fetus is a potential human. I see this as medically flawed- a baby is not
just a potential human, it is a human. But a zygote- how long could it
survive when not encased in the mothers' body, sharing her blood, absorbing her nourishment?
Not even seconds, I suppose. So this would seem to invalidate the "potential" argument;
however one can latch onto that fleeting few seconds of life as justification for leaving
the fetus inside the mothers' body. Well, what if the mother decides to slough the zygote
off by dosing up on estrogen pills? Did the pill murder the baby, or the mother? (Did the
gun kill the victim, or did the murderer?) People point fingers at the mother and
scream "babykiller!" (which is automatically incorrect as she didn't kill a baby.)
Well, pretty nasty things happen to babies whose mothers smoked crack, too, but
pointing at the mother and screaming "baby crippler" is obviously not going to
help the mother, nor the baby. Sending the mother to jail because she smoked crack is
not going to help the baby either, but then, it should compound the charges if she
addicted her own baby- so how is justice to be served if this is a life sentence? By
legalizing drugs, you shitheads. Still, there was the fact that she addicted
a minor (her baby) (legally pursuable only because the
baby was born after it could have potentially survived outside the mother). This needs
punishment- but I'd suggest punishment in the form of rehabilitation and education. So
what's to keep hordes of crack-dependant mothers from holing up in the rehab center their
whole lives? The stipulation that rehab life is to be clean life, and if you are
caught lighting up in rehab you are tossed out. What a tangled web we weave when we
practice to improve. Now I remember a tiny part of the
dream I had last night. There was a black woman in it, must have been over a hundred years
old, whose body had been nearly destroyed by years and years of hard drug abuse. She was
laid out in a hard wooden bunk on the wall of a disheveled house in the middle of a slum.
I believe that she had convinced me to pick her up and carry her outside so she could meet
her contact, who would give her another dose of her drug. She weighed nothing in my arms
as I stepped outside. Without warning, I began to float up into the air. As I passed over
a lake, I either slipped or deliberately dropped her into the water below.
Telepathically, she told me that the cool water around her body was a better high than she
had been hoping for in the drugs, and that she would die now, because she figured she was
finished with her life. Slowly she dissolved into the water and disappeared.
Sidetracked thought: In the latter half of this century, with the advent of computers, we
are coming to realize just how impermanent human life is. A person is an individual
only through their memories and their connections, and memories and connections are
impermanent, as is the definition of the individual- the language through which we
exchange these commodities has a sinister life of its' own. We define our lives
through what we have immediate access to, and reach out to other things using our
first concepts as stepping stones. In this way, our past determines our reaction
to the present, and thusly our future. Sidetracked
thought: I suppose this is why travel is said to be broadening- you can go to environments
where the more conveniently accessible materials are radically different.
Sidetracked thought: We think in three dimensions, eh?
Than why is everything we "see" in our heads a two-dimensional image? Because we
are shoving concepts through our senses, like a tape recorder playing a tape. Aside
from the connection of an image to a word, we have spatial relationships recorded- and
this is why we can shove the relationships through our visual sense and "view" the chair
from any angle. Sidetracked thought: This is why artists
are sometimes the "channels" for what they express on the canvas: They are the recorder
that plays back the image, that builds the raw feelings and concepts into something that
the senses can transfer accross communication lines in the physical world: aural music on
tape, visual art on a canvas, words on paper, inflections of speech and dancing and the
whole range of "artistic" pursuits... This is why art is not the presentation of one
concept, but of many, juxtaposing them- "it's all in the changes, man!"
Sidetracked thought: If Trent keeps publishing grindy hardcore music, I won't have to.
2:50:45
This is the kind of crap I get when I write down what I think.
