Ramble, ramble, little mind

It is said by some that if one happens to lose inspiration to write, one should simply write whatever. Explain the concepts to oneself, basically, while frantically writing without thinking. In fact, this proposition was given to me specifically yesterday, on Twitter. I know: best place to get advise, isn't it? But you may be surprised by the sheer amount of great individuals that have found their way to this service. Sometimes, their advise may just be exactly what you need, so here I am sitting. Writing, without thinking. Without looking at what I wrote, no plan, no way in or out, no direction. It doesn't really matter, some say. You just have to write something. Anything. So this is what I am doing. The thing I'd like to write about, really, should be about eighty pages long in the end. It's not that I do not know what to write, it's that on some days, my inspiration's just not what it should be. What helps, in fact, and bizarrely so sometimes, is to read something entirely different from what you're supposed to write. A different style, or thought, whatever.
However, I will tell you something about what I'd like to write about, just for the fun of it... Social media, more specifically all those sites we gather around day after day, communicating with the strangest, most lovely individuals. And yet, despite all of their efforts to save the world with kind words, the world is pretty much the same as it was before. With one big difference: everybody now has the ability to randomly share the most senseless thoughts on the most important topics. Senseless, not because they are necessarily wrong, but because they are being hyper-idealistic about what kind of effect these words may produce. Think about Iran. Have you heard of the magnificent Twitter Revolution? Have you got any idea why they've connected this term with a country in which most people don't even own a Twitter account? Because, as events were unfolding, tons and tons of kind westerners with hearts bigger than heads, were sharing opinions, pictures, all kinds of other material about the situation. To “raise awareness”.
I'm saying this, because in the end, that is where the story always ends. “But, nothing has changed, Ahmadinejad was still there, the protesters lost in a way, so what did you achieve, besides momentarily making the entire Internet collapse with all of your amplified noise and the great mind-boggling idea to attack the main news outlet?” “We raised awareness!” “About what?” “About what was happening in Iran!” “But did this awareness change anything?” “No, but still … people need to know what is going on”. Can't argue with that, now can you? They should in fact know what is going on. But thanks to the marvelous invention of the media (including televisions, computers, smartphones and about anything else that keeps us trapped in this schizo-like state of swirling messages without content), we always sort of kind of somewhat know “what is going on”. The question really is: who cares? If I raise awareness and people are outraged for about fifteen felt minutes out of their entire lives, how on earth does this help anyone?
Literally, trapped. Circulating images, everywhere. Tibet, Iran, Syria, Japan, China, USA, Spain, Greece, anything. We know exactly what is going on, we simply do not care. And even if we do care, even if we take out the time of our super busy lives to quickly post a critical comment somewhere along the lines of “have you heard about this or that terrible incident that I can barely get my head around because it is just so shocking, I can barely breathe, and neither should you because if you are not scared out of your mind about all the shit that is happening you are a heartless cold beast walking this earth with no regard for anything or anyone but yourself, in your happy 46 m2 apartment”, then what have we truly done except for judging everybody around us without even knowing what they care about? Maybe they live in a 20m2 apartment, or maybe they've just lost their jobs, or maybe they got one of those quarter-life depressions people are now talking about. Maybe they are exactly who you think they are and they really should care. But they simply can't, because it is way too hard for them to produce any kind of emotional reaction to what they see on tv.
And why should they, after all? It's all just a manipulated version of whatever is actually happening. It leaves out most of the causes, most of the history. It simply tells you: THIS IS HORRIBLE. And you look at it and think “it probably is, why else would everybody be so shocked”? And so you go along, you post a status and for about twenty-five minutes feel absolutely certain that you've just done good. You've raised awareness, after which you can comfortably go back to your mental slumber and play a few video games before you leave the house to do groceries. To buy some labor, as Marx would say. But he said so many things, after all, some of which were completely nonsensical speculations. Pretty to read, though. To say the least. Baudrillard would probably be rather shocked to know just how easily the warmth of your living room is penetrated by seemingly cold exterior events. But you cannot feel it, can you? Disgust? Some part of you does of course. Not the part that buys lunch at McDonald's or drinks Nestlé coco, but the part of you that turns away from homeless people so as to not feel the stabbing excess of consumed reality penetrating your tiny tiny hearts. The part of you that may just sit down next to one of these homeless guys, just to feel as if you've done something good today, not ignoring the suffering of the world. All this suffering … maybe, the concentration of violence on this continent was a lot higher in the past. Imagine all these little burnt villages and raped women in the middle ages. Now imagine them owning a tv, only to see that the world sucks at pretty much the same rate everywhere else. Fun, huh?
Now, finally, the pain is somewhere else. We can start all kinds of great organizations that play by the same bureaucratic rules as everybody else, we can click on a cause on Facebook or follow society-hating mutants on Twitter. Finally, evil is somewhere else and we can act. We must above all else share Kony2012, regardless of whether or not Kony was actually in Uganda at the time. Because we seriously couldn't care less whether the information is true or manipulated, whether our awareness-raising actions lead to anything at all (as long as we can say we did, all is fine and well). And it's not because we're evil, it's because we can't care about every single dying child in the world. We can't care about every crime the government commits. We can't simply throw all our stuff out on the streets, move to one of these crisis regions to actually participate in making their lives better. We cannot risk our lives. So we participate comfortably from our own home, just one little button away from world peace. If only the world would ever listen! Maybe it should, just like me, ramble on for a few pages. Or eighty pages. Maybe it is just about that time of the day … the time where you think: oh it's so senseless after all, I'll care about it all tomorrow. For now, I think there's something pretty good on tv about baby lions in India. So damn cute!

Hear me laughing

Theories. Knowledge. Truth. Reason. Humans have always had a certain knack for wanting to invent the world instead of letting the world invent itself. Control nature, don't let it grow “wild”. What does wild even mean? Not behaving according to its nature? But, are we really doing that ourselves? I hear a lot about people's “inner nature” or society's “current reality” - usually these opinions circle somewhere around two of our favorite buzzwords, around “good” and “evil”. Yes, it is so simple to say this. That society is currently evil and people are tired of consumption. That society is at the height of its capabilities, that no culture has ever had the mind-blowing knowledge and technologies we are currently able to enjoy (and maybe, just maybe, putting on a pedestal?). Easy is it, to determine that people are “inherently good creatures” manipulated by their governments and “wrong societal standards”; or that they are “downright evil” and can only be controlled by a well-functioning “rule for and by the people”. The people. Who are they anyway? The abstract concept of what a human “is”, or the masses of people that want “the same thing”? Controlled, or controlling? Theories. Knowledge. Truth. Reason. Don't fall prey all too easily to people who are here to tell you what “life is all about”. How would they know? Have they lived every possible life a human being can choose to live? Can they know, with absolute certainty, that their path will be remotely valuable to your mindset? Science is a marvelous thing, fascinating to its core. I can only be happy to be living in times where the possibilities to “figure things out” are accelerating, because what person wouldn't want to “know” the deepest, most hidden truth? Regardless of whether or not we get it, we love to know. Theories. Knowledge. Truth. Reason. Yes, they are seductive. Very much so. But here's the question, the one that people dislike the most. Not the one asking whether there is a sense to life, but the one wondering if we will ever know. Are we not a billion times too tiny, our brains too small, our lives too short, to ever find out what we want to know the most? What is life? How to live it? Who cares what I do in life? Should I behave a certain way? Do I have an inner nature at all? Can I raise my children according to eternal laws of goodness that will make them into the most lovable people ever, like science is trying to tell me? Or is it all just chance? A coincidence, a good or bad turn, a new part of a story that will never find an end? Theories. Knowledge. Truth. Reason. Feelings. Yes, feelings. We should never forget that whatever drives these first four, it has to be something that elicits a response in our minds. A happy response, excited, fascinated, drawn to something, seduced by something type of response. Can you feel it? The never-ending line of questioning? Let go. Just let it all go. Happiness. Sense. Life. Love. These are things you can find. But it won't be in someone else's theory, it won't be through knowledge alone, even if it may help. Being human, it doesn't mean just this or that, it's everything. It's you. Love your life, before it's over. Love yourself. Find that the only truth that matters, the only theory that helps, the only knowledge you can be certain of, the only reason to do anything at all is how you feel about what you do. Grow wild. Don't let others control you, don't control. Become one with yourself, and you will see that it truly happens to everyone willing to go the extra mile. Passion. A deep, burning fire. That is the only inner nature I care about, the only way to let yourself be invented by a world instead of trying to invent it, trying to make it “true”. Yes, it is the only way to be, instead of trying to dominate what you and others think life should be. Life isn't for or against anything, life isn't moral, life doesn't make the distinction between good and evil. You do. You and your Theories. Knowledge. Truth. Reason. 

Thoughts on happiness

Everything I ever wrote, I wrote for the same purpose. Happiness. How many people miss out on such a simple thing? And if they do, can we then call it simple? Maybe many of us never find it because we are looking in the wrong places. But then, it is pretty hard to know where the right ones are. I'm not really sure if anybody knows that, yet there are people – and quite a few in number – that did find it, and held on to it and that, up until today, have never lost it ever again. No matter how hard it got, they just did not loose it anymore. So, how do we explain this? The sixty year old man, at the train station, with the smile on his face. A smile, so deep and pure, you cannot imagine this man without it. It's almost too beautiful to be real, and that in itself, is sad. Or, to take another example, the happy couple that walks down the street. Not in a touchy feely manner that makes you want to vomit silently in a corner, no, but the togetherness kind of happy. The one that looks real, and that, in its very own soft and honest manner, probably is. Yet again, so crudely wonderful, it's hard to imagine that these people could loose it. Ever. And even if they should, how would they then forget this? How could they believe it's impossible to find, when they had it right there, in that very moment? That, too, is sort of sad to the observer. Happiness often has this effect on us, is it not? The thought that, as you look at it from a distance, you may never feel it. You may never get there. Or, if you did, that you may never hold on to it forever. Is it just temporary, this happiness? Is it that this particular man, or the dreamy couple, or anyone who looks deeply touched by contentment, just got lucky and that this luck, no matter what, is doomed to fail? Is it just an exception, only there for a few moments, to consequently vanish and leave us staring into the same old abyss we had once denied our gods in? Is that the true reason why happiness can make us so incredibly sad sometimes?

I don't consider myself a particularly “lucky” person etiher, you know. Apart from the fact that I am talented at ruining things, a lot of things around me also just get ruined by circumstances far beyond my control (or anyone else's). I have this joke with a friend that God probably sits up there, watching me, waiting eagerly for me to feel good so that he can finally go back to amusing himself by throwing random obstacles my way. Just for the fun of it. I love that joke, because I really like to imagine Mister God Himself gniffling as he chooses another grand coup from his “torture tools”-box. On the other hand, I can't believe that life works that way. It is far from what I've learned. Truly, it's not that some people are simply better off than others, a kind of lottery that works in a completely random manner. No, no, no ... life just isn't fair, and it also never will be. Yet, personally, this is exactly why it indeed appears very fair to me. Or am I crazy? In the end, there's one truth that will never disappoint you. Namely, that you can only securely rely on the fact that you cannot really rely on anything to make you happy or unhappy. If you look for blame, be it in yourself or in the “evil” people around you, then you sort of deprive yourself from gaining on happiness. Most importantly, you become less free. And the feeling (because it's nothing physicial, trust me) of freedom is the closest you will ever get to eternal happiness. Yes, I know, sounds pretty easy. It really isn't. Here's a flash to all of those comfortable people out there – happiness is essentially not easy. And it certainly doesn't come for free so maybe you should quit the lottery type of thinking, that limiting and boring one in which you just sit and wait around. But for what? Really, once you reach a certain age, there are no easy years anymore in which you can avoid suffering and pain. You wish. On the other hand, there is also no comparable type of joy. I mean, seriously, nobody telling you how to live, where to go or what to believe in? Finally, you're allowed to breathe that grown up air! But then, why is it that all you would really love to do is to go back to being that child that always complained about its lack of autonomy? Maybe, you still do not really deserve it. But don't worry, it may not be easy to reach, yet whenever you start learning a few essential lessons, you are on the right track anyway. A few of them, I have listed already, right? Do you remember? Wait, just let me recapitulate for a sec'.

1. Eternal happiness is not void of suffering, it only improves your capacity to live with it and learn from it faster and more constructively. At the same time, your good times become better. Life is fuller. It contains more, but truer, emotions and that in itself enlightens you if you learn to draw the conclusion I already mentioned before: “it's not that some people are better off than others”... it's all about attitude!

2. Freedom, as in realizing the wisdom in that last statement above, is the closest link to happiness you can find in life. Freedom means comprehending that life is indeed not a lottery, and that you're not just eihter lucky or unlucky – whatever that means. But that, in each and every single circumstance, you are you and contentment is right in front of you.
3. Freedom is not a physical experience of being able to move without constraints in space. It's much rather a spiritual recognition that the power to be free is in your mind. When viewed this way, no physical constraints can ever break your sense of freedom, unless you let them. And yes, this includes being “locked up”, because sometimes freedom means nothing more than realizing that, although they can lock up your body, noone but you holds the key to lock up your mind.
4. He who does not realize one until four limits him or herself in quite a damaging way concerning the attainment of happiness. If you limit yourself in that way, you do not have any automony. And, until you start changing inside, you never will. Fortunately (for them?), though, people with a severe lack of autonomy often also lack that very recognition.

Sounds a lot like “stupid people are happier people” to you because, basically, I just said that if you do not realize your lack of autonomy, you can also not really notice your lack of freedom or, consequently, your lack of happiness? Not really. There is nothing admirable about being a numb fuck, who's dead inside, particularly while you're still alive. Not daring to be free, happy, or to simply feel is not the same as being happy. It is, in its simplest terms, being dead. And you may not be unhappy when you're dead, but you're also not the opposite. Actually, you're a little bit of nothing. Is that your goal in life, my friend? Because if it is your goal, just close this page, 'cause this is not for those that love to dwell in self-pity, or those that enjoy to avoid experiencing most or even all kinds of feelings. This is for people that believe in this reality, that simply love the idea of life and know, in the most accurate sense of the word, that there is “more to life”... please, without attaching any kind of nonsensical belief in the afterlife to, especially, this latter statement. No, it is for all of those mad people around us that know, deep down inside: God exists, but I am the one creating him, it's me who's in control of my life. That means: whenever I cannot control the huge amount of crap flying my way – and, well, I can't – I can still control what shield I will grab to avoid it hitting me right in the face! Again, just get it: Life is not about fairness, it is not about getting what you want ... It is about being happy anyway, even when you're not and there's no single reason to be, because you learn to never, ever, ever forget that apart from death, you can survive anything. Yes, anything, including God's magic “torture tools”-box.