A Rare Deluge of Emotion.

This is going to be different than my previous armchair philosophy posts. I’m swollen with feeling, and I really just need a moment to speak on my life. It doesn’t happen to me often, or if it does, I’ve gotten quite good at cramming it into the crannies of my subconscious.

To be frank, I’m falling apart. I’ll be thirty in a few months, and I am no closer to where I want to be. I’m about to move into a house with my friend (ex-girlfriend) and my sister, but nothing seems right. Everything is at a peak. Stress is mounting in the background of my mind, drown out primarily by my own demands for positivity and my responsibilities with the Mallory Bash web comic.

My parents have always struggled to get by, and now they’ll be booted from the house they’re in, hopefully with a cash-for-keys deal. Even then, the only income they have is SSDI from my aunt, who is one of my three parents. All three of them are in disrepair concerning their health. Two of them have had cancer recently and the third is busted from head to toe from a lifetime of manual labor. On that topic, I might also have melanoma, but I can’t find out because I can’t afford health insurance or a visit to the doctor. Especially not a specialist.

So I might have cancer eating away at me, and I don’t know about it.

I run a web comic that I love dearly, with a modest–but dedicated–readership. It’s growing in popularity, though, and that’s about the only thing keeping me going. I’ve got over three hundred subscribers. I’m an artist who knows nothing about automotive mechanics working as a parts driver at a suspension shop. I like my coworkers, but they all know that I’m itching for something else. It’s a good job that pays fair for someone without my particular dreams. But I’m tired of hearing people at the shop and other places I visit telling me that I missed my calling, that I’m wasting my life in this job because I’m such a good drawer. It’s not easy to get into the animation industry, particularly if you’re a tremendously poor boy in Indianapolis. I’ve got no network here. I’ve got no prospects. I’m frittering my time away working constantly at a job that isn’t what I want for myself and working on a comic that even my friends and family barely read.

I’m lonely, that’s what it is. And I’m exhausted. I’m tired. Of everything. To be clear on that, I’m not suicidal–never have been. But since this melanoma thing became a possibility, I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t occasionally almost like a relief to think about. I’m more concerned about my family than myself if it were the case that I died of cancer anytime soon, because I don’t know how they’d take it. Not well, of course, but how “not well” is what scares me.

I’m a storyteller. I need to be telling stories. I need to be in the animation industry. It’s not just a desire, it’s a requirement. But I’m so busy working and clinging to the little darlings of my own fickle fortune that I can’t seem to get out of where I am. I’m dying. I’m drowning here, and all I can think to do is stare at the sun on the other side of the water and hope that when the last breath comes, I’ll float back up and find myself in God’s good graces.

I’m almost thirty. I’ve lived a life of poverty and anxiety, and I can’t remember the last time I was truly happy, if I ever have been. Even so, I don’t feel like a pessimist. I have all these daydreams of a modest life and a family, with an animated series under my belt and a formidable list of charitable acts that I never tell anyone about. I know I could do good if I had the resources, and I don’t want anything grand. The days of desire are behind me, and all I want is some relief from this insurmountable stress. I feel like the weight of the world is on my shoulders and I’m hobbling on a busted ankle.

I also don’t feel like I’ve been treated unfairly. All things considered, I’ve been remarkably fortunate. I grew up in a very poor family, but I have a college education–and the debt to prove it–and I have a very tight, dedicated group of friends that I get to see every week. But beyond the external graces, I’ve got so little to show for my life that I can hardly muster a clear thought.

Everyone seems to have faith in me. Everyone keeps telling me that I’ve got all this talent, all this charm, that somehow I’m secretly some kind of rock star that hasn’t hit his stride. That I’m doing big things, and bigger things are coming. But they say these things because they want to believe them. I have nothing to prove them right. I have no evidence. And I feel like I’m failing them, and I’m actually somewhat of a burden. I need help all the time. I need money, I need time, I need care. I need people to spread the word of my web comic, but it really doesn’t seem to be happening, and I can’t bear the thought of myself being demanding of others in regards to my own life–my own goals.

I don’t know what to do anymore.

This move is going to be expensive, and I’m praying that it doesn’t fall apart. My car isn’t reliable, either, and I have no prospects for rectifying that issue. Not enough money, not enough resources. And all I’m doing is complaining.

I came back from Los Angeles with my tail between my legs. That’s the honest truth. I went there on an exchange program thinking I’d make a name for myself in a few of the right circles. But those circles are enormous and everyone out there is trying to get something from everyone else. No one trusts anyone, so it’s nearly impossible to get in. At least, that’s what it seemed to be. I wanted into Nickelodeon or Cartoon Network, and I’m working my ass off trying to impress them, get their attention. But they have a pool of very talented artists and writers right there in L.A., right there from CalArts. I’m just a backwater cartoonist with no way to live. No way to get to them. Why should they pay for me to move? I can’t blame them for that.

I don’t even know where to begin. There’s so much I don’t know and so much of what they want is security. They can’t be faulted for that. They spend a lot of money on those artists, those creators, and they need some indication that they’re making a good investment. I don’t believe I’m entitled to anything from them, I just wish I could get an opportunity to show them what I can do. In person. There were so many gained and lost opportunities while I was there. I just wish I could go back. To be a part of it again, to volunteer and network and be with other storytellers. Say what you will about the L.A. sort, but they’re passionate about their craft.

I’m just watching this life drift by me, and it’s maddening. I feel like I’m crazy sometimes. I feel like the last kid picked in kickball. And I feel like a sad-sack just putting all this out, because it’s all just whining. It’s just bitching and moaning about problems, but everyone has problems.

I don’t know where to go from here. I don’t know what I’m doing. It’s hard to want to do anything when you feel like you’re running in circles around the same dying fate. I know I’ll press on, because it’s the only thing I can do. I just wish I could relax every once in a while.

I’m almost thirty and I want to be a father. But I can’t, not with my life in the state it’s in. Not with my finances as they are and my fortune looking so debilitatingly stagnant. One of my friends has a daughter, and the kid is just unfairly adorable. She likes to draw with me, and I feel bad that I’m attaching myself to her because I want a child of my own. It feels terribly sad, but most times I just ignore that feeling because I love the way she lights up and says my name when I walk into their house. She’s a great kid with great parents. A secure life. She’ll have all the opportunities afforded to her, and her parents will support her mercilessly.

Well, I don’t think I have much left to say. I think I’ve gotten it all out, except for the deeper guilts that I’ll just keep to myself for a while. I don’t believe anyone reads this blog, and that’s totally all right. It’s the reason I chose to use it in this way, for just this one post. It’s out there, so maybe I’ll start feeling the catharsis soon.

I’ll keep trying to fix my life. There is no other way.

Thanks for reading, those who may eventually see all this. I feel a little better now.

 

A Doppelganger for the Truth

If silence were the cure to all the world’s problems, we would argue how best to keep quiet.

Lie To Me

When given a choice between a short, simple, emotionally gratifying falsehood and a long, dry, detailed account of truths, people will choose the former.

It’s why we’re so damned easy to lie to.

Election Season: What Remains of Our Civility

I’m not generally a “think of the children” sort of guy, but I actually have been thinking of the effect they’re feeling from this election. It has brought out the absolute worst in almost everyone.

It has made reasonable people truly believe that anger is necessary to success. That to get what we want, we need to be ruthless in our speech, to tear down the opposition in every imaginable way.

When you do this, you cannot pretend that it is for betterment. No reasonable person believes that wrathful criticism is beneficial to persuasive discussion. You do it for gratification. To build up yourself, not to convince others.

I’ve seen some of my literary professors, who once discussed how workshop critique is only useful when the goal is to build and improve rather than shred, take up seething social arms against their opposition. I’ve seen them wield snark, cynicism, and shameless rhetoric to shake up their social circles–that is, provided their social circles aren’t comprised of obsequious praisers, back patters, and pretentious yes men.

I’ve seen friendships shatter, riots in the streets, and foreign leaders bolster arsenals in wait for the results of this election.

When you do this to someone else, you do it only for yourself. When you are cruel, and the blood boils, and it feels good to be angry, and you tear down someone else, it is because they will respond in kind and perpetually justify your continued pursuit of passionate release. It gives reason to continue doing wrong, because you can say it is only in defense.

We tell children when they’re young that they should strive to be kind, always. To be good in the face of insurmountable evils. Then, when they’re a little older, we tell them to be strong, to go to the defense of their friends and family. A little older still, and we tell them they have to fight for what they believe is right. Older still, we tell them that the world is unfair. As teenagers, they’re told that they have to deal with it. As young adults, they come to fight fire with fire. They learn cynicism as comedy. They learn snark as commentary. And then they fight, and they fight, and they fight, because now it doesn’t matter what the truth is, all that matters is that they’re strong of will and they fight for what they think is right because no matter who they are, what they think IS right.

And now here we are, fighting with all the weapons we’ve been handed over the years, and nothing to show for it but sound and fury and not a shred of evidence to any great truth.

We’re getting exactly what we deserve.

Who Do You Think You Are?

I find that I carry multiple and markedly variable ideologies depending on what religious framework I’m being asked to work within.

Many of you already know that I’m a Christian, if not a bit of an odd one, and that comes with a wealth of societal notions that are sometimes accurate and other times hilariously inadequate or outright false. I won’t get into the minutia of what I believe in this regard.

But I find that things are much simpler in the atheist framework. From thatperspective, I recognize that without my faith I’m a moral nihilist. It’s something I hate quite deeply, but it is also, from what I can gather, the most accurate method of thought given our position without ethereal leadership. I hate it, but that doesn’t make it untrue.

If it truly is only us, down here, evolved via half-truths of perception to aid in survival, then we’ve got no empirical right to tell anyone else what is and isn’t best for them. Right down to the individual.

But we’ll do it anyway because of an unjustifiable fear of death, obscurity, and cosmic bewilderment. We’re just wired to form excuses for our desires and points of view.

In short, as far as I can gather, a universe without a single, imperishable creator bearing a particular perspective on it’s creation, is a universe that humans will never observe or understand fully, because there is no definable limit to the information. No theory of everything that can’t be questioned with absurd, but no less possible, ideas. We’ll never achieve anything more than “good enough,” and that’s the best case we can make.

Functionally adequate is not the same thing as “true.”

More likely in this scenario, the universe is our sandbox and we play until we die. It would seem only our impetus drives us.

—-

Considering this, the grand irony comes in like a typhoon. I believe in God only because I want to. Because I’d rather not live in an atheist’s universe. I have no empirical reasoning for believing, only that it prevents humanity from devolving into the chaos that would result from absolute reason, should we ever fully embrace it.

Some might consider me monstrous, perhaps a bad person for being unable to hold moral standing without a God, but to them I would ask upon what have they established their own morality? And where does their authority on the matter come from? From the self? There are over seven billion selves in humanity, all with different moralities. Who gets to decide among the myriad idiosyncrasies which modular collection is the proper morality?

To them I ask, “Who do you think you are?”

A Clockwork Ouroboros

One of our major problems is that we perpetually believe we live in the time of most progressiveness, of most accuracy, of most truth.

We’ll never achieve that time, because it is a fiction. Too variably defined. Something divine would have to come down and end any question of accuracy, because we can’t, as so varying and eclectic a species, and being the only authority upon which to judge anything, pretend to offer an unquestionable definition of such sought after abstractions.

War comes when we pretend that we can. Because we are all wrong and we are all right and we all pretend this isn’t the case.

Argumentum Ad Populum

If philosophy were a required course, we’d all be in a lot of trouble. Too many people would be confronted with the relativity of their deeply held considerations on everything.

The ones that scare us the most are those who realize that all of our rights are people-given and based on nothing more than the popular consideration.

You can decide on what you want and what you don’t want, but at it’s logical conclusion, you still have to admit that it’s all fundamentally arbitrary.

It’s really just you against everyone else, bartering your beliefs so you aren’t terribly alone.

The Impetus of Progress

In the end, we do things because we are compelled to. Not from hate, love, anger, reason, scientific understanding, or faith.

 

We do things because we’re afraid not to. We do things because things must be done or all is for nothing, and if we stopped to really think about it, we might be overwhelmed by fear. It is in the doing that we don’t have to ask why it is being done.

 

We have too many answers to that question and no reason to believe any of them.

 

Humans are fueled by the impetus of progress and fall silent in it’s wake. We fear that we have no purpose and mock others for finding theirs in equally absurd ideologies.

 

We are all bastards by our intelligence and children by our idiocy. We say we know a thing not because we do, but because we fear the not knowing. Out of vanity more often than admitted, and born of our torturous ennui.

 

We are justifiers, excusers, enablers, lovers of conflict who say that it must be so if we are to rid the world of conflict. We think backward but refuse the past its lessons. We come by hypocrisy innately, and through stubbornness and vanity we refuse anything beyond ourselves.

 

It must be me, it must be us and no one else. We are not to be controlled, though we are slaves to our nature. Our bootstraps will wear thin and we will fall, chests puffed and proud that we disappeared on our own.

 

We didn’t need help to die.

For The Love of Rivalry

I think it is important to consider the possibility that you’ve abandoned the thankless obscurity of reason in favor of impassioned rivalry–that in your capitalistic search for truth, you’ve found only the gratification of having an enemy.

This sort of pursuit comes in with all the fury and excitement of a hurricane, and in its wake is left a trail of busted, hollow nothingness. There is little left but the specter of civility–afterimages and ghosts of a thing that was never there, fabricated by our need for relevance.

Enemies die, but the truth remains.

The Pale Blue Sentiment

When people post images of the pale blue dot Earth and talk about perspective and insignificance, it’s still a sentimental response to the sight.

It’s no more reasonable than sentimental response to a spider bite or a fight with a friend. A wealth of feeling does not make sentiment more or less reasonable. It’s all human perspective.

We are both enormous and minuscule. No connotations necessary. We are big and we are small. We can only pretend to decide how much we matter, whether it is a lot or very little.