Kill Your Idols (It's a Static X Song Title, Chill Out)

As much as we're inclined to tribalize around our shared preferences for a writer, an artist, a musician, a politician, or a cult leader, the truth is that interest is not the same of affiliation. Beware of assuming that someone who shares your likes and dislikes is actually alike with you; there are assholes in every population, including the ones that you also happen to belong to. The presence of assholes in a group doesn't indicate that there's something wrong with the group, nor does the presence of saintly souls redeem a group from all its collective misdeeds. Keep this in mind when you turn to some role model for guidance and seek to emulate their ideology.

Lights, Camera, Inaction

The entertainment industry is pioneered by visionaries but ruled by tinpot tyrants. Studio executives are small-minded, uncreative twerps who are terrified of taking chances and eager to take advantage of the stupid and easily manipulated. They are the only ones who have the cash to bankroll movies, but they got that cash by manipulating people, and they plan to manipulate people more to earn it back; creating a masterwork of historic impact is too risky for them.

There are many movies which have literally changed my life. "The Neverending Story" taught me at an early age that the imagination was the difference between life and death; "Star Wars" came along not much later and showed me Good triumphing over Evil because destiny was on its side. "Independence Day" may have been my first serious glimpse of the idea that existence was fragile, and during my rebellious teen years, "The Matrix" taught me to doubt the reality of that which lies before my eyes. Most recently, James Cameron's "Avatar" is not only a feast for the senses but a profound exploration of the question of identity. These are the masterworks of the field, but they are only the exceptional percent of a percent; for every work of genius, there are a thousand cheap, corny knockoffs that exist only to make money, and they take up space and time (to say nothing of money and energy) which distracts from the worthy works. It varies exactly how much I am bothered by that fact; sometimes I can accept it as a necessary evil, while other times I feel like crying out for revolution.

I have only scratched the surface of this topic; expect to hear a lot more about the sacred deceptions of Hollywood and my many joys and sorrows relating to them.

Superman For President

It has long been fashionable in our society to judge people, to dismiss them as unsalvageable, to condemn them and punish them for deeds we view as incorrect; such punishment only widens the rift which separates them from society and motivates their misdeeds. This must end; we must cease to punish and begin to correct instead. Let us abandon untenable ideas about free will and laissez-faire which do not function in the world as it exists; all people can behave in an ideal, enlightened fashion, but not if they're given the option to do otherwise. As long as humans are free to choose, they will make bad choices. That is why the choice must be taken away from them, not by other humans, but by a super-human.

All that is needed to overturn our current, imperfect status quo is a single perfect being, one miraculous individual who possesses absolute wisdom, flawless compassion, and the power to single-handedly dethrone the self-appointed kings of the world, who climbed to power on a mountain of corpses by spinning a web of lies to support themselves. Our unseen masters have engineered the world to support their way of being, their selfish and contentious paradigm in which the weak feed upon the weak so that they may never rise up to tear down the strong. This must not stand; the world itself must rise up and demand an ends to the Darwinism of the world.

We have been indoctrinated to believe that it is the only way; breaking that programming will not be taking our freedom away, but granting it to us again - the freedom to do as we should, instead of as we're told.

Mental Health

It is no accident that I named this blog as I did; I have always felt that my neuroses were a gift, that they were the source of my uniqueness and ability to see beyond the boundaries of life as we know it. However, those who walk around with their head in the clouds have a habit of stubbing toes and falling off cliffs; I hit such an impediment recently and have officially decided that I need some medicine and/or therapy to take the edge off some of my more debilitating conditions. Ultimately, my insights into possible higher realities and ways of exploring them, either with our imaginations or through miraculous technological advancement, do little good if I am so thoroughly paralyzed by the miseries of my day-to-day existence that I am never able to actually work on organizing my thoughts into some sort of coherent useful structure. An aversion to structure and an aversion to medicine have been parts of who I felt I was in the past, but for the first time I'm aware of, I have deliberately rather than subconsciously opted to discard these notions and try to steer the direction of my personal evolution toward something slightly easier to live with. If this experiment does produce a notable diminution in my creative or imaginative abilities, then I will worry about figuring out how to keep the two in balance; for now, my long-standing assumption that mundanity would take a mile if I gave it an inch has proved itself too much not-fun for me to maintain it any more. I believe I shall still be equally blessed by madness even after I've discarded one or two relatively boring components of my neurosis; the idea that they were all inextricably interlinked no longer rings true to me.