Send me some mail
I wrote something today which I read over and thought sounded vaguely sinister. I'm going to repeat it here.
Ayn Rand once wrote in 'Atlas Shrugged', "There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible to live without breaking laws."
I think we live in that world today. And I think Americans bear a strange and disturbing resemblance to the inhabitants of Limbo in Dante's 'Inferno', where they are punished more cruelly than any other inhabitants of Hell... because they *think* they are happy. Over the past few months, I've become more and more dissatisfied with the concepts of corporate licensing, intellectual property, copyright, trade regulations, and export controls. And the time-honored method of protesting these things is surgically precise and intensely directed rebellion. America was founded on these principles. Truth is a virus, and information wants to be free.
Sorry if I'm coming off like some sort of political dissident and radical visionary, but, well... I am.
I read over this after sending it, and it occurred to me that this is quite likely to be how the Unabomber got started. I tried to console myself with all the people I have found online that have the same basic problems with these things, but then I remembered the Heaven's Gate cult and all the pages I read about the government using Waco as a scare tactic and hiding aliens in the desert and planting electric cobwebs in people's noses at birth so they can be tracked anywhere they go.
Okay, the electric cobwebs thing might be true. But nobody can really prove it.
What I'm getting at here is that I have a lot of things I feel like I want to say to the rest of the world. I don't really know how to begin with it, but I know I have a message I want to disseminate, and I know a lot of people are going to be a little shocked by it, and I know a lot of people are going to dismiss it out of hand.
So what exactly can I do to convince people I'm not some sort of kook? That I'm not some sort of freakoid liberal jackass running around yelling "The sky is falling, the sky is falling"?
Am I some sort of kook?
How would I know?
I'm totally convinced that what I believe is right. So was the Unabomber. So were the Heaven's Gate people. So were the people at Jonestown.
How do I know that I'm sane?
Is being sane a good thing?
I don't really have any answers.
I occasionally look at myself and wonder, "Who am I? What do I believe? What do I stand for? What am I doing?"... and there is no answer, and sometimes the silence is deafening.
I don't understand anything anymore. And it frightens me.
I look around and see people being stupid everywhere, and I want to say "What is WRONG with you?", and I don't... because I knows that everything would work just like it did in Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron, where everyone took off their mental inhibitors and looked at all the things they were missing, and then they put them back on and went on about their meaningless safe little lives where everything was easy.
I've never been comfortable in the world. Since I was about eight, I only felt comfortable online, but now even online is getting uncomfortable because it's too much like the rest of the world.
Bland.
Commercial.
Meaningless.
Pointless.
Someone once told me that the greatest secret of life was that there is no secret of life.
I prefer another take on that sentiment, that the meaning of life is to give life meaning.
Every life is different. Every life means something. Every life must therefore mean something unique and specific. I think when you find that meaning, when you find where you belong and what you're supposed to do, when you find your purpose, that you'll finally be comfortable.
I don't know why I don't feel comfortable here anymore.
This might be what people call a mid-life crisis. It's not really a mid-life crisis, I don't think, I just figure most people don't bother asking these questions until they're about forty or fifty.
I'm not even thirty yet.
I don't know who I am or what I want or where I belong.
I don't know what I want to be when I grow up.
I don't even know if I want to grow up in the first place.
I think we lie to ourselves, all the time, telling ourselves we want fame and fortune and all the things we call the American dream.
I understand Marilyn Manson's 'Antichrist Superstar' a lot more now.
I listen to 'The Man That You Fear', and I hear my own voice. I listen to 'The Reflecting God', and I see my own face in that mirror. I listen to 'Kinderfeld', and I hear things I never said, never dared to say.
I read his biography, and I see my own story and hear my own voice. I see that he was born less than a hundred miles from the place of my own birth. I see that I am exactly 61 days older than he is. I was an astrologer for a while, and I know that's significant. I look at what he's done and where he is, and I look at what I've done and where I am, and I say "We two are brothers, in the heart, in the soul."
I understand Nietzsche more now, too. And Kafka. And other writers and artists and musicians.
I still don't get the Grateful Dead. Maybe if I hadn't quit drugs I eventually would have.
I look at my upcoming relocation. I wonder if Seattle will bring me to a new place in my life.
And I take out the ephemerides, and I do the calculations. I cast the runes, and draw the charts, and I place the lines and planets where they belong.
And Pluto is in its dominion there, in the sign of Scorpio and the eighth house of death and regeneration. And I compare my birth chart, and I consult my tables. And I see a great metamorphosis on the horizon.
Then I got my wings. And I never even knew it.
When I'm God, everyone dies.