Ah, Mighty blog!

Ah, beautiful blog you, it is time for my monthly

Well, or actually, I think my finale.

When I started this blog, I believed in being honest, even if it meant being irresponsible. I've learned that's a sort of violence.

Or rather, I still think that one should be outrageously and irresponsibly honest, but one should be compassionate in doing so, and not violent, as I have often been. I've made fun of people's beliefs, trinkets, religions and their dreams of meaning. Shame on me.

I was not skillful.

Use effects function. What "use" have I practiced here?

So here let the Dude lie in peace. I'll let this blog stand as a tribute to things I thought, and how my society taught me to say them.

I often said them badly. I've disrespected my readers with hasty writing and careless speling.

So, Please be compassionate with me should you read something here that immaturity moved me to write. Especially if you happen to be reviewing me for employment at your fine fast food establishment, or the Nobel Peace Prize or some such thing.

I am in the process of creating a few other web pages (perhaps one will be a blog....) that I'll post the addresses to soon.

Over and out,


Luckymortal

Genius cubed: Gould Bernstein Bach

As they say, not all musicians believe in god, but they all believe in Bach.

Heh. I love this song and video

Heh. I love this song and video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDlEXQaMBpk&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Emyspace%2Ecom%2Fthebirdandthebee

Long overdue definition of "ambition."

From Wiktionary:

Noun
1. An eager, and sometimes an inordinate, desire for preferment, honor, superiority, power, or the attainment of something. (material copied from Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913))

This is the kind of ambition I'm talking about. Not something exclussive to the clowns on the Apprentice. "an eager desire for... something."

I think that if we're honest we all cary around an image of who we want to be. That includes a desire for... "something." Right? The problem is why do you want it? Sometimes the answer is easy. I want to eat because I'm hungry. But sometimes the answer is more difficult. That's becuase the value is symbolic to us not utilitarian. And that's what I mean by "meaning" in life. Not some grandious concept, but simple symbolic "meaning" we assign to the things we want. The mundane thing I think all of us deal with when we look for a new car or a job or a house.

And that's the relation between Ambition and Religion. Both are a matter of believing in something that can't be proven. A leap of faith. It's about believing in something because we WANT to, not becuase it's true. Both are symptoms of the same human need: for meaning.

A day in the life of little Timmy

"Eat up up Timmy, your poo is getting cold."
"Ok, mom."
"And Timmy! don't you put your fork down on that table! You mind your manners and thrust that fork back into your bloddy eye socket where it belongs!"
"Awe, do I have to?"
"Timmy, you don't give your Mother guff!" Said Dad. "Timmy, you know that bloody oozing eyeballs are a proud tradition with the men in this family."

The flesh burning hot coals were particularly flesh-burningly-hot that morning on the way to the "Plato School of Coal Mining and Personal Dismemberment." The smell of his burning callases wisked TImmy away to a magical place in his memory. He thought of the day when his grandfather came up from the mine amid a pirade of flesh searing, moans and dancing ponies. Timmy admired his grandfather's devotion to duty. As was expected, after a life of toiling for the Lizard Man boss, Gramps severed all of his limbs but his left leg and hobbled out of the mine to present them to the Boss. Someday Timmy hoped to make the family proud: somehow he'd find a way to even chop off his left leg: now that would really be something.

A few years ago, the family wasn't so sure about Timmy's father. He went through a rough period where he got into some trouble, and we weren't sure he was going to pull through. He went off and became a musician, and gave up good honest dismemberment work altogether. When he came back to the fold the whole family was so proud. Timmy imagined how the same might happen to him. What if he didn't get into the Academy? He imagined how he might turn down a wrong path, the feeling was so VIVID. Eventually, perhaps he'd come back to the mine, and take a wife. Maybe he'd even become a councilor for troubled youth who were headed down the wrong path. He'd be able to really understand those kids. Maybe he'd even become a famous councilor, and lead a whole generation of kids back to the mine...."

Ambition:

"Because the creator of the universe of the universe just dumped us out here in the middle of fricken nowhere, and nobody has any idea what we're supposed to be doing."

So, if you're out there God, now would be a good time for boomy god voice, or burning bush, or something. You gotta teach someone how to pilot this rusty ol' hunk of rock....






So in our little corner of the Blogosphere, folks have been talking about ambition. And it's such an interesting subject to me, that recently I've written about 60-70,000 words on the subjet. And to me, what ambition, REAL ambition is about, is trying to find some way to give life meaning.

Because, frankly, if this is just a pleasure cruise, I want my money back.

But the problem is most people can't see how life can mean anything without buying into a whole lot of nonsense that noone can possibly prove. I guess you've just gotta pick something or other to beliee in and stick with it.

For example, GOD can give your life meaning. Its easy, you just join his club, and then you try to get more people to join the club under you, and if you get enough people to sign in this life, you get a Brand New Mercedes M-class when you die. So life HERE has meaning becuase you can get level up points for the next world. Cool!

The problem is, firstly, no one actually knows what the parking is like in heaven, or how good the public transportaion is, or how the Mercedes handles on milk and honey. And secondly, if some dope tells you that killing 1000 Arabs gets a lifetime of free oil changes, you can't prove him wrong.

And there are all different kinds of road maps that people use to find meaning, not just religion and as far as I can tell, they're just all the blind leading the blind. Here are some examples:

There's the famous, "keeping up with the Joneses:" OR: I don't know what the fuck I want, but if I'm doing better than that guy down there, I must be doing ok. The problem is the guy down there is looking at the guy down the street from him, he he doesn't know what the fuck to do either.

And there's the similar: "My dick is bigger than average" roadmap. People feel ok so long as they know that %50 or so of the people are a little more fucked than they are: "Got a car, a dog, a house and a family. Hey, I'm living the american dream."

The "whose your daddy." Where people feel ok, so long as they beat there parents. Whatever that means.

But if "winning" the game doesn't make you feel like your life was meaningful, you can try to find meaning through conflict and pain. Win or lose, conflict makes life FEEL meaningful. So everyone's going around poking themselves in the eye-- if they learn to see again, "they've overcome the odds" and if they don't, then they have a damn good excuse for being miserable-- at least they've got a place that way.

My favorite is the "prodigal son" roadmap. People do their best to make their lives all shitty. IF they pull through, they become a kind of hero. If not their lives are filled with meaningful conflict for years to come! It's win/win, hooray!


then there are the ambition. It's just the same? What's the most ambitious thing you can think of? Becoming the first NObel prize/ Oscar winning/ best selling author/ President of the United States of America? Prove to me that that means anything.

What will the perfect Job, house, car get you? Happiness?

Then I have a short-cut for you. Quite a while back psychologists started studying the brain chemistry of happiness. They did a bunch of tests on a bunch of people and were able to establish the peramiters of human happiness. Then they did a test on this buddhist monk.

Holy shit! This guy must have brain damage! He's off the scale in every way-- they thought they'd found the happiest most content man in the world, and that it must have been a biological gift. But then they did some other Buddhist monks, and they found they all had the same kind of happy content brain damage!

And they don't own shit, have family or drive sweet cars.

And yet, I'm writing this novel... this meaningless novel... Why?

So what do you want, and what does it mean?




And as a final thought Touche to Scott on Complacency. In my book I call this the "belief paradox." Believing in the sort of things that can give life meaning always leads to people doing shitty things to other people. But not believing in that sort of thing makes people the weak willed tools of the people who do believe those things.

What are we to do?

Stand back children, there's enough heaven to go around!

It is the secret power of Ambition that it makes us all both charlatans and fools.

And I am a charlatan and a fool.

Meme

Taken from: http://patrickmurfin.livejournal.com/

I never do these, but you know why I like this one:

Here are the rules:

1. Grab the nearest book. (Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.)
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 3 sentences on your blog along with these instructions.
5. Tag 5 people.

Here are my results:

In groups of four, list all the problems you see in this neighborhood. Next to each problem list a solution. Share your problems and your solutions.

Jesus, do you hate me?

Awe, This video reminds me why I LOVE Morrissey. Somehow I missed this one when it came out. Only Morrissey can be so touching and so funny at the same time. I think that it's because the songs are sincere, but Morrissey's sincere way of dealing with things is this sardonic humor. Anyways, This video is both hilariously funny and very moving.

I have forgiven you Jesus: