On individuality

I was watching the X factor last night, the most pointless singing talent competition there could ever be. I couldn’t help watching, of course. It makes you cringe and laugh. But it also allows me to question myself more, so it can't just be a thoughtless indulgence on my part.

What annoyed me most was the way most of the candidates seem to think that fame and success would define them as persons. Take woman X, whose reason for coming on the show was ‘to give her kids a better life and achieve something in her life so they would look up to her with pride’. Such a statement is so devoid of any logic and so contradictory or blind in itself that I won’t even bother explaining why. If people can’t see how flawed her reasoning is then...They probably won’t be able to understand even if I took the time to explain in stages. It would thus make more sense to carry on with my point.

As I watched television it made me realise that it is all really about a need for individuality, a sense of actually existing, being better, more important than anyone else. Most people want to stand out from the masses by any means necessary and they adopt a misguided belief that fame, above all else, will achieve that aim. We all have a purpose in mind, the difference is that most people’s aim is flawed from the start. This might be explained by low IQ or lack of logical reasoning. This in fact I suspect is the reason why it is so easy to manipulate the masses. Give them a false sense of worth that you identify as being their craving and they will lose themselves at once. Nowadays this technique has been so greatly facilitated by the illusions projected through the lens of the media that it is almost despicable. You could lure almost about anyone with the promise of fame and/or money. People think they crave those two things when really all they want is to feel a sense of individuality.

 Therefore the likelihood is that as of at least today I can assume that most societies as they stand do not permit such a thing as individuality. And now I realise that it is the constant promise of granting individuality which has permitted our current form of political system - capitalism- to take over societies or control the masses. Of course, as I can see it now, this looks more like a carrot and stick game than a reality. And still a majority do not possess the logic or are unwilling to use it to challenge the biggest delusion of our times.

Before the memories comes the rain

If there wasn’t even the slightest hint of pleasure in any of our actions then we wouldn’t bother in the first place. There can be pleasure in expectations of outcomes through actions, too. Thus we often force ourselves to do things we wouldn’t normally want to do simply because there is something appealing at the end of it. What it really comes down to is selfishness and its spectrum. What is called survival instinct in the animal kingdom has morphed into a destructive machine in man’s world. If I can assume so easily about others’motives and wonder endlessly about the whys of a world then I can easily imagine how anynone else could have ideas of grandeur in their head instead, justifying every action as legitimate or necessary.

It’s all a foul pile of garbage. Excuses, excuses. Men are the masters of dellusions. If there’s anything they have finally tamed it is the wondrous realm of lies and make-believe.

Pretence. Faux-semblants. Projection. 

Here are our talents. We don’t see the world- or reality, for that matter- as it is; we see it as we please. We don’t choose knowingly - or freely- we do so out of lust or envy or sloth.

Words are my only solace. The rest is out of reach. Reality is a sham, akin to a set on which all the pretty things one day were gathered. Everything around us- the buildings, the streets, the nice, glowing lamp posts- is made of cardboard the wind can blow to the ground in one swift stroke. It is cartboard we decided to see as gold. And that is why reality is a sham, it is nothing more, nothing less, than what we make it to be.

Anyway... We’re so poor and always on the verge of perdition that I’ve come to kind of like that way of life- almost. There’s a certain unfathomable charm to it and it does make me smile when I think of our life so far. In all my mortal flaws my spirit remains unspoilt. Take Paris, for example, or what I remember of it now. We lived in that flat in some council estate and it sucked. Not the appartment in itself but ever since our first cat had caught flees we’d had to remove all the carpet and I ended up with a bedroom whose floor was the concrete itself. Mum’s always been a cleaning freak and we weren’t to blame for the infestation of flees. We had a family for neighbours who were SO filthy that the corridor of the whole building floor stunk. Not only did they not wash but the children wore rags and nits as hairclips. Oh, and the parents were rude and brash while the kids were simply too young to have turned half as bad. They had two dogs the man of the house used to beat senseless. You’d hear the poor skeletal beasts roar in pain, high-pitched moans from big German Shepherds full of flees and years of neglect. Sometimes I’d go out to play in the square and I’d see him walk his dog- the other one had just magically disapeared one day, never to be seen again- and I’d see the meaning of despair in the glaze of its eyes. 

No, it was rather a glimpse of what unhappiness truly looked like, not just in a dog but in general. That day it felt to me like the epitome of pain and unhappiness in its most basic, intrinsic form. I then came to realise for myself that if a person was capable to inflict such pain to an animal there is no telling what that person could do to another human being. That, if anything, showed me the true extend of being human. Now, of course, it will take at least a life time to truly understand and define that extend for it is one thing to realise something or get a glimpse of a reality or notion, quite something else to truly understand its significance, the ramification beyond superficial knowledge where one only comments or utter empty statements- no matter how true they really are in the end- instead of being able to get to the latter through a proper reasoning.

Make-believe and reality as we see fit

I’ve written it before, I shall write it once more: money is the poison to men’s heart, which in turn will wither to a dead pulp. It will be the cause of destruction all around and for what? For a fistful of dollars. The so-called God, the one a lot of people believe in, is given false sweet names and a nicely tailored fairytale when it is but a mere reflection of their greed. God as we ‘know’ it is an ever adaptable, ever-changing excuse to worship what sounds shameful to the ear: bling-bling, money, shiny pretty things. We don’t have a God as the men of religion proclaim, it’s all a sham. What you believe in is a very intricate propaganda machine meant to control people. If there was a God somewhere, we wouldn’t have the first idea what or who it is. We simply could not comprehend even a glimpse of such a higher subject. The rest is part of a man-made fabrication. Delusions....

I was thinking about the French Revolution the other day. It was such a strong statement, a step towards the ideal of equality. “Liberte, Fraternite, egality.”

Chopping the aristocracy’s head off was a sublime symbol of revolt among the people but the rest that ensued soon became a farce. Perhaps it was planned as a farce from the start. If you think about it...Are we really free today? It sure feels like we have more freedom than we had a century ago...Or have we? I’m tempted to think that only the settings and ways of exploiting people have changed. Why? 

The ideals of the French Revolution were grand, the direction taken flawed from the start. The idealist goal was to give power to the people but it was done so carelessly and without enough thorough reasoning that in the end people chopped the royalty’s head off only to give power back to the Bourgeoisie on a silver plate. The people never got that power, they only think they did, but that again was an illusion. The only difference between aristocracy and the Bourgeoisie is that the former’s glory and power were given from birth while the latter’s stem from the new plague: money. So the surroundings, the settings have, indeed, changed, but not the problems themselves. They only morphed from one issue to another variant of it. We merely replaced crownies with more corrupted people, only the new ones had less money perhaps to start with. We were taken for a ride by the ‘bourgeoisie’. 

We never change the core of human problems, we keep interchanging players and unless the corrupt ones can be weeded out there will never be a better society, something that actually stands a chance to be fairer than ever before. 

Thoughts on a cold Thursday morning and the world

Every so often you wonder how certain people get to certain positions or jobs . You wonder how they manage to get where only the few selected best are meant to be when they obviously have nothing much to offer. Every now and then you realise that a member of their family knew someone who knew someone... Even better: they have parents who are already recognised for whatever it is they do. Others get to the top so quickly it can be quite dizzying. Then you realise that many have sold their integrity as one would their worthless possessions in a market. And then you wonder how come so many people with so little skills or suitability to the job ever got to where they are. 

Actors are a good example on how pointless inbred “talent” is imposed as though it was a God given right. Hence you can see how many of already famous artists’offsprings suddenly pop out in the limelight no matter how talentless those children prove to be. That’s life, I suppose. However, faced with the facts one can only come to realise how much harder the struggle for a better life already shapes itself from the start: the starting line is already tipped in favour of a category of people and the rest must fight so much harder no matter how naturally more deserving they might actually be.

It can be a good thing, in a way, for it pushes you to better yourself all the time and you are less likely to take anything for granted. But that’s only if you’re able to learn from past experiences otherwise bitterness and envy can take over your better side. Or you can let yourself be corrupted and pretty much lose your own self just like the rest.

I can’t help but think in matters of fairness. There is a flag in my head flashing painfully every time something unfair occurs. It is far too idealistic and indeed probably naive to think that our world could ever be based on something more than relative fairness whose degree relies on luck and social position. Universality and equality might share differing meanings but they both share the same burden: inadequacy in terms of numbers. The fact that people can think for themselves AND feel means that notions such as universality, equality and peace can only remain distant ideals. There will always be at least one person too selfish to keep their wants in check and that will always be enough to spread to others like a gangrene. Thus people are as much prisoners to the laws of probabilities than any other object or number.