negative symptoms
negative symptoms
are radioactive decay
of a part of yourself
into nothing
One thing people gloss over in the whole mental illness thing (because it doesn’t have negative social effects for anyone but the sufferer) are negative symptoms. These are parts of yourself that the metal illness destroys permanently. In my life I see less and less of myself by the year. Not many other people see this because there was so much of myself that I hid from everyone. But potential friends see it right away which is part of the reason I haven’t made a single friend since moving here five years ago. Part of friendship is the person’s image of you in their mind comes largely from when they first met you. That’s why I made friends when I was in school and had a job because I was more of a person then and was connected to worth-making entities.
I liken a life being destroyed by negative symptoms to a dog that is tied to a leash around around a tree. As time goes by he gets the leash wrapped around the tree more and more, giving him less room to roam.
A song I wrote about negative symptoms.
free will not
The same Christians that chime “because free will must stay intact” when confronted with the problem of evil are the ones whose prayers are pleas to change people. As technology improves and we have mastery over more and more things (like curing diseases for example) the onus becomes more and more on our just actions and less on God’s. More of the earth is subordinate to human free will than at any time in the past. If we say God can’t mess with free will this leaves us in a little problem. God is painted into a corner and reliant on his followers to plead with those in power to do the right thing.
I might as well complicate things by saying that a lot of decisions humans have made (like flagging tax returns, diagnosing cancer, curating news, and in the near future driving cars) are done by computer algorithms, not people. So we are trusting more and more of our lives to the will of computers. I don’t know any religious tradition that has anything to say about this, people just couldn’t imagine something like this happening. So do we pray to God that a computer will make a just decision on our behalf when it’s still just a Turing machine? Aren’t all computer algorithms deterministic so they are the ultimate expression of the lack of free will?
In a way artificially intelligent computers are analogous to spirits because their inner workings and thought processes are a mystery and they do not possess flesh. But they aren’t sentient, but there is always the possibility that a sufficiently intelligent computer might be operated by some kind of spirit. I know this is nonsense to most materialist philosophers but I think it’s a subject worth exploring.
flat world, flat wages, music
It is sobering to realize that I am competing with the entire world. My rates for web development are low because I work remote and compete with people from India. But in other areas I am too. When I post something on the Halfbakery I’m competing with every like-minded person in the world. When I post on a subreddit I’m doing the same. The upshot of this is bands are also doing this so they make their work available internationally. So I’m really getting into a South African band called KONGOS. I found them on a subreddit (I think AlternativeRock) via a Spotify app.
men, Christianity, and money
There is really no non-chauvinistic way to put this. Modern Christianity in America (especially evangelicalism and Mormonism) is geared toward women (that’s why they make up almost two thirds of some churches). And I (as well as many very Christian people) think what we have now in the faith is entitlement and consumerism with a cushy afterlife. And I think almost all women are more than happy with it being this way. It effectively pre-screens men for them. The men who are too poor and/or eccentric are preemptively weeded out. Even the stragglers in the faith aren’t considered being “Good with God” because they aren’t wealthy and settled down. It makes sense that men would be the ones with a vested interest in weeding American Christianity of some of its consumeristic elements because we are the ones who lose out. We are the ones looked upon as a balance sheets. Women are objectified less in the Christian world than in the secular world but men are objectified equally in both. And then people wonder why there aren’t any “good Christian men” out there.
Further reading: The Church’s Missing Men
Musicool
I think a dynamic musicians fail to take into account with regards to determining their success is the coolness of their fans. If one’s fans are cool said fans are going to be much more potent in spreading the message of an act’s greatness. I say this as someone who is the antithesis to cool. I like Starflyer 59, a band that has great music but never was cool because it was in the no man’s land between the Christian and secular space. My new favorite act is Molly Marlette. But having a thirty three year old forever alone liking your music might not help you much.
faith fit
The things that would make me a good fit for a cult are the same things that make me a bad fit for a regular religion. Regular religion requires one to play the requisite mind games of holding on to all these strange and magical beliefs largely by yourself. A cult you are in close enough contact that they are actively brainwashing you. I could probably believe anything if I was being brainwashed continuously, at least twice a week or more. There’s also the issue of community and hospitality, religion nowadays doesn’t have it but a cult usually does.
existing
(Saw this on Pinterest and loved it)
One thing you must understand about yourself is existence is a liability, not an asset. The more violently and specifically you impose yourself on others’ senses, the less grace you will be shown. Why do billions of people think God is great but ignore or even despise their neighbor. It’s because the former doesn’t seem to exist (at least not to the point where its existence becomes a liability) where the latter does.
Stories were made for man, not the other way around. Christianity introduced a story and then challenged you to get yourself on the right side of said story (so you went to the afterlife with better climate control). Now modern America is post-Christian but the idea that one is either on the right or wrong side of a story has persisted. It’s just that now it’s advertisers who present a story and challenge you to which side of it you want to be on. If your American Dream has devolved into a nightmare you are invisible at best but sometimes scorned.
I think if God did speak in a way that was beyond a reasonable doubt less people would love him, not more. This is because he’d probably hit a lot of people’s pain points. People are a lot more comfortable with the idea of God than God himself.
poetry, a game
i walk a fine line between hallucinating
and believing everything is a hallucination
just because you haven’t killed me vertically
doesn’t mean you haven’t killed my horizontally
by treating me like i’m already dead
and then crying foul when i start believing it
the people that show up at one’s suicide funeral
could have been a lot more useful
if they would have shown up before then
a mind game
is a pressurized compartment
with it’s OWN atmosphere
just hope it doesn’t get punctured
reality will rush in
and you’ll asphyxiate!
charity case – circling thoughts
I was called a charity case today by the most successful member of my family. In jest. But unfortunately there was a lot of truth in said jest.
I find it painfully ironic that the people who could most easily hook you up with a job are the ones who are the most scornful of you for not having one.
It’s also interesting to me that when I confront people about ignoring me for not having a job, they ignore said communication (talk about dereferencing a null pointer)! It’s the same as happens in an abusive situation, where telling people about it gets you more abuse.
ye olde poetry sounding dots
you need you
you need you
you need you
you need you
because being alone too long in pain
will cause you to go insane
and then when you look for yourself
they’ll be nothin’
being transparent with my friends worked too well
now they don’t see me at all
faith is like a windshield
it protects you when whole
and cuts you to pieces when broken
the mentally ill
are the Geiger Counters
that detect whether
Christians give off love