Words from Daniel Johnston

We have sinned so many times before
We see no need to turn back now

Cuz we’re the world, the wicked world
Marching to hell
We know what we’re doing and we’re marching to hell

Come and join us, have some fun
Dance in joy beneath the neon lights

Cuz we’re the world, the wicked world
Marching to hell
We know what we’re doing and we’re marching to hell

We’re the world, the wicked world
We do whatever we please
Forget your cares, sow your wild oats
Cuz sin is a wonderful disease
Lie, steal, it’s all right
We have no worries for tomorrow

Cuz we’re the world, the wicked world
Marching to hell
We know what we’re doing and we’re marching to hell

We’re the world, the wicked world
We don’t believe in God
We don’t believe in anything
We find belief to be rather odd

We paint ourselves as our bodies start to decay
We’re getting closer everyday
We have sinned so many times before
We see no need to turn back now

Cuz we’re the world, the wicked world
Marching to hell
We know what we’re doing and we’re still marching to hell.

 

A recommended follow-up to Gagdad Bob’s book…

Eric Berne, the creator of the Transactional school of psychoanalysis, mapped quite clearly the dangerous mindfield of parasitic thought in his books Games People Play and What Do You Say After You Say Hello? Having encountered these books before reading Gagdad’s theories on mind parasites, I now realize what exactly Berne did that I found useful — he was identifying and classifying all the patterns that make up those parasites. He not only explicated the structure of (•), but figuring out what all those •••s are. The games make up the script by which you live.

My own personal theory is that since the first step toward O is brushing off your excessive •, the first increment of the first step is figuring out exactly what your own parasites are — what games you’re playing — and erasing them from the script.

This is just a short list. See if you recognize a parasite of your own:
Why Does This Always Happen To Me? = self-fulfilling prophecy
Let’s You And Him Fight = love triangle
See What You Made Me Do = when you screw something up, blame the person who distracted you; eventually that idiot will learn to leave you alone
Wooden Leg = using your disadvantages to gain leniency for your mistakes; “What do you expect of a guy who’s alcoholic/crippled/mentally ill?”
Now I Gotcha You Son Of A Bitch = when someone screws you over, you have carte blanche to exact revenge, no matter how disproportionate the reaction

 

Jamesian thought, of a different sort — thanks to Bob

I think
my essencial problem is that
I wound up trying to indemnatize the Eschaton -
a long with all the utther liftniks who taled me
that Ewwtopia ainsoph art ago
- but who wants to be perfixed, anywhy?
One gets entramped
(whyle look in around this big cosmos
too rapidly to take in
that it couldn’t Be anyother way
and still allow us two ex-ist,
which fits my deafintuition of “perfect”)
in the no-shun that the youniverse is
some thing to be chased,
that you can hunt down the abstracked
and marshal the generalized -
but it’s naught so easy
moving from the unriversal
to the spaceiffic
without buying a map and renting a van.
The real whirl’d only lux flawed
because, like a jewel,
we see something bigger
refractured in its factsets.
And we don’t buy precious stones,
especially not the third one from the Sun,
because we love these jewels per say
(unless there’s something unaw’dd about us),
but we’ll buy it
out of affection for the One who gets to where it.

 

Thoughts engendered by beginning to read my newly acquired copy of Gagdad Bob’s book

The universe,
against odds of about 1 in 10^123,
grows more complex minute by minute
over a near-infinity of minutes.
And at some point
about 21,024,000,000 minutes ago
it crossed the line into
an irreducible complexity
(no going back, in other words),
because for the first time
something came to be in that universe
that was capable of looking around
and saying OMGDudeWTFLOL —
the universe is now
capable of seeing itself
and uttering the almighty “Huh??”

 

So I think, for obvious reasons, that this is a REEEEEALLY bad idea

But my fiancee wants to travel to England someday.

And I can’t think of anything to say to her on the subject that she won’t brush off as mere paranoia.

HELP.

 

Current thought

There is nothing more infuriating than someone who does not comprehend the concept of sarcasm. They fall into two types:

1. The easily offended jerk who hears a sarcastic statement, takes it seriously, and explodes in righteous indignation at the outrageous thing you’ve just said.
2. The brainless shitheel who hears a sarcastic statement, takes it seriously, and agrees enthusiastically with the outrageous thing you’ve just said, inadvertently revealing the particularly perverse cast of his mind.

 

Where are the REST of these guys?

Anchoress links to an angry editorial by an American Muslim embarrassed at his coreligionists’ bloodlust; he condemns al Qaeda and the rest for perverting the potential of Islam with their bigoted and warlike ways. This is an honorable and admirable man; my only question is, where the hell are all the other guys like him? Why aren’t more of these moderate/reformist Muslims speaking out? Is he a voice crying in the desert, as I suspect, or does he speak for an increasingly large, angry and disgusted Silent Minority? My hopes are not high, but if only more like him speak up and stop hiding, they may be.

 

Dr Sanity taught me something.

http://drsanity.blogspot.com/2006/07/denial-and-displacement.html

“Displacement, too, is also an effective method for psychologically avoiding reality. It is a step above projection and is considered simply neurotic. While projection can often appear to be completely uncoupled from reality, displacement has the advantage of allowing someone filled with unpleasant emotions to have an acceptable object onto which to express those emotions. Note that in projection, the individual completely denies that he or she even possesses or is capable of possessing those unacceptable emotions–it is the ’other’ who possesses them, and wants to inflict them on you.”

This taught me something about myself, actually.

Whenever I’m around other people, I suspect & fear that they are trying to hide their true feelings about me, and that those hidden feelings usually involve some sense of hostility – in short, I’m thinking that they don’t want me to find out that they hate me.

What this says about my own state of mind is, mildly put, unsettling.

 

Perpetual Adoration and various strange sounds

Here’s a post by the Anchoress that seems to dovetail nicely with something an acquaintance of mine wrote over at Gagdad Bob’s; I have J.’s permission to republish it in its entirety….

****

… Bob: It’s probably late enough that no one will read this, but I was reminded today of Jung’s proposition that there are no meaningless coincidences.

I went – though I wasn’t on the schedule and in fact haven’t been to church in over two years – to Perpetual Adoration; any Catholic will likely know what that is. They had a paper in back for people to write the petitions for which they were praying; I wrote “Help for all those who are losing faith” and sat down in the back for thirty minutes.

And then when I left, I felt a strange urge to turn to the local jazz station – and THIS came on.

The best is yet to come and babe, won’t it be fine?
The best is yet to come, come the day you’re mine

Come the day you’re mine
I’m gonna teach you to fly
We’ve only tasted the wine
We’re gonna drain the cup dry

Wait till your charms are right for these arms to surround
You think you’ve flown before, but babe, you ain’t left the ground

Wait till you’re locked in my embrace
Wait till I draw you near
Wait till you see that sunshine place
There ain’t nothing like it here

The best is yet to come and babe, won’t it be fine?
The best is yet to come, come the day you’re mine
Come the day you’re mine

I never heard myself making this particular sound before, but halfway through the song I started crying and laughing – hysterically – at the same time.

I don’t usually give any credence to coincidences, but… I can’t help but think He’s trying to tell me something.

 

Ayn may not have seen it, but I do…

I don’t know what fears made Ayn Rand reject religion. You look at the Ten Commandments – the second half does not say anything out of line with what Rand said about not surrendering your life to someone else’s control. The point of them is to warn you against greed and jealousy.

Think what they say. Don’t murder anyone, don’t steal from anyone, don’t lie about them in public, don’t bang their spouse, and don’t waste your time hating someone else for having something that you want.

Except for the default “religion is irrational” position, the Objectivists have slightly more in common with Judeo-Christian philosophy than they’d care to admit.

Recent discussion of Rand on Gagdad Bob’s blog inspired these thoughts; if any Objectivists crossing here find it counter to their views on her philosophy, well, they can blame my lack of detailed knowledge.