Knowing Knowing

 There is an extremely rare sort of knowledge, which is not knowledge but rather the knowledge of knowledge. This is the most valuable form of knowledge. This is the complete assurance that can’t be taught by school, work, or life, unless that life is particularly strange and charmed. I have had that sort of life, and so I know I know I know. This is the type of knowing that doesn’t have room for faith, doubt, hope, fear, dread, or any sort of human emotion, because it is not really human at all, but rather something completely transcendent in nature. This is the gold standard of knowing, something completely pure and free of blemishes that it is impossible to really put into words, impossible for those who don’t have it to ever understand, and impossible for those who do have it not to understand. This essay is not really an essay in the sense of my other essays -- it is only a singular paragraph -- but rather a statement of fact or record. As what has been stated has been stated, I will end the essay here and publish it without really publicizing it, and anybody who is supposed to see it will see it.

Northward

(essay from book.paul.town)

There seems to be a lot of confusion and inversion of reality going on everywhere, so it is
not surprising that people are confused about what should be sought out and what should be
avoided with regards to heat and cold. People think of vacations as relaxing on a beach with a
drink in hand staring at women in bikinis. People think of that sort of activity as something to
aspire to. People think that tropical climates are paradise. They are wrong, tropical climates are
hell on earth.

Everybody is familiar with the concept of Florida Man: The craziest stories always seem
to come out of Florida. The most insane people somehow thrive in Florida, Texas, and
California. This is not insane in a good way (although there are certainly many great individuals
from those areas), but rather insane like a man with a brain fever who has permanently lost the
plot but is still somehow able to walk about unimpeded. In a hot climate, things that do not know
how to prepare for hard times are able to breed and survive. There is no need for careful planning
or abstract thinking, just day to day survival. It is life on easy mode and life on easy mode means
unexperienced and uncontrollable undisciplined random number generator individuals who don’t
even understand why they’re doing what they’re doing. Heat breeds complete insanity. No longer
is there a clear link between action and reaction, good choices and success, bad choices and
failure. There is only constant confusion. Nothing really matters in a hot climate.

The heat makes people dull and lazy. The sun, an ever imploding ball of chaotic
exploding gas unable to situate or control itself, is a cursed object and while it is needed every
now and then, too much of it breaks down the body, the mind, and the will with poison. The sun
burns away its victims and makes them stupid. People are happy to lay in the sun and do nothing
with their time and waste away. People who love the sun do not understand that we should be our
own suns burning and destroying things, not being burnt and destroyed by a dumb object floating
in the sky. The heat is degenerate and it creates degenerates.

All of this is quite vague and anecdotal, so let’s get into some hard, cold, facts. The
northern zones of any country or continent are always superior to their southern counterparts.
There are no exceptions to this. What about the southern hemisphere, you might ask? True north
and south are inverted relative to their position and so the superior south in that case is actually
true north and the inferior north is true south. This rule has no exceptions. Think of all
degenerate people groups and you will quickly see how they are all from consistently warm
climates. The reason for this that only a certain type of hardy individual can succeed in a cold
environment. Inferior microscopic germs are enabled to grow and propagate in a warm climate
and this pattern also follows on a larger human scale. Behavior that would never succeed in a
cold environments slips by and goes unpunished in warm environments.

The brain is at the northernmost part of the body. This is because it is the most important
part of the body. Of course, the rest of the body is important and should be taken care of, but they
exist solely as a representation of the will that resides at the top of the human. This is not a
coincidence when combined with all the other mentioned facts. The sun is not your friend. The
heat is not your friend unless you are using that heat to modify something external. The cold is
your friend. The dark is your friend. The ability to plan ahead and allow other people to destroy
themselves by their lack of ability to plan ahead is your friend. Don’t fall for the delusion that
because it “feels good” to lay in the sun and play beach volleyball that there is any inherent value
in a useless waste of time and misdirection of energy only done by people too spoiled to
understand the value of their time and the importance of not wasting their life. People in the heat
melt their brains. It’s sad, but it’s true. Enough warm climate propaganda, heat leads to Sub-
Saharan Africa.

Space Travel

          There is a fascination with space travel that seems to be prevalent with a certain type of mediocre individual. This person who finds space travel interesting is generally not very successful in sports or interpersonal relationships. They generally are not very fit or attractive, and even take pride in their dweebishness. Having been made fun of for their physical and social deficits, they have decided to try making their weaknesses into strength. They have not succeeded in this effort, as normal and successful people still see them as losers, but they have succeeded in tricking other nerds into embracing their weaknesses and thinking that it makes them cool or finally socially adroit in ways they see well-adjusted individuals behaving.

            What is it about space travel that attracts losers and mediocre lower to upper middle-class individuals who lack any personality or charm? The most obvious factor is that space travel is seen as something “impressive” while still being academic, the closest thing science has to a sports achievement. There is some allure to space for everybody, the lack of gravity and distance from the rest of humanity are both something that have humanistic elements that even well-adjusted extroverts can find non-boring. The danger inherent in trying to leave earth’s orbit and survive where humans aren’t built to survive is genuinely adventurous. Still, the real reason that  losers and dweebs are so obsessed with space travel is that space travel is a symbol or totem for intelligence to them.

Nerds and losers and social outcasts weren’t good at sports or talking to girls or getting a good job where they interact with others in a pro-social manner, so they generally have some inferiority complex or bitterness. How do they address this general inadequacy? Do they look inwards and try to improve themselves? No, instead they carry a chip on their shoulder and slip further into the role social outcast. Instead of realizing that nobody likes them because they’re not fun or interesting to be around, the people who care about space travel, science, and rote factoids decide that they’re the “winners” in life and all the people who are better looking than them, more successful than them, and happier than them are just stupid. Thus, they grab onto things like space travel, things which are largely human interest propaganda, and make their knowledge of arbitrary and useless things into a core aspect of their personality.

Much like only kids or maladjusted losers have strong emotional reactions to people vaccinating or not vaccinating their children, the people who care about space are either kids or maladjusted losers. There is nothing interesting in space, especially not compared to what is on earth. The same personal pattern of people searching for external worth can be extended to humanity in general. We have made a mess of earth, we are disorderly and idiotic and unlikeable, and we are not looking to fix ourselves or be self-aware, but rather trying to escape consequences for our actions, imagining that if we can just leave earth and make earth 2.0 then we will be able to continue our irresponsible and pathetic habits unabated, that if we leave earth, all the existential horror that we feel about the mundane existences we all have won’t exist anymore.

No matter where humanity ends up, it has to exist with itself. No matter where the bespectacled redditor with a gluten allergy travels to, the bespectacled redditor with a gluten allergy is there. The obsession with space is the obsession of those who hate themselves and their lives who do not realize that they will still hate themselves if they’re in space, because they’re fundamentally loathsome people who have nothing admirable about them.

We have reached an apex of “good things” in the world. The ball has been tossed as high as it will go, and soon it will begin its descent. Those who place their happiness in external things, like imaginary space colonies or nirvana on earth, will be increasingly miserable, as they should be. Reliance on external variables for comfort and self-worth is decadent and weak, and the decadent and weak deserve to suffer and be shown as the sick warmish freaks that they really are. Instead of caring about space, people should care about themselves and where they’re headed over the next few decades. People should stop reading about “science” and instead do calisthenics and learn how to make things. Space is a cold, dark, lifeless place, and it isn’t all that interesting. You will never be an astronaut, you will never be liked, you will never be good looking, you will never be respected, and the people who made fun of you for being a loser in high-school will never apologize or ask you for help with anything. Science is a meme, the love of science is stupid, and people who have an emotional attachment to space travel are pathetic manchildren who should be sterilized.

Movie Review: Joker

(This is an essay from bookbookbook.paul.town)

First off, let me just clarify that this movie should not be watched by anybody under the age of at least 45, preferably with some serious active duty military experience to emotionally ground them and let them differentiate reality from fiction. When I watched this movie, I quickly got swept up in the thrill and thought that I was living in Gotham city, that I was Joker. Of course, neither of these things are accurate, I’m just a loser schizophrenic in New York in 2019 with a criminal record who lives at home with his mom and was probably adopted. With that warning out of the way, let’s get to the nuts and bolts as to why I rate this film ZERO stars out of five and insist that it is a culturally degrading and mental illness subliminal trainer for young adults.

The Joker wears makeup. What sort of healthy male individual have you ever known in your life that has worn makeup? None. No guy who wears makeup should ever be normalized in this way. I’m talking full on gaudy face-paint and disturbing fanciful clothes. The idea in the movie is that he is dressing up like a “clown”, whatever that is, but then you pair his appearance with his love of dance and you start getting a different picture. Sure, there is a whole subplot of romance with a women, but we all know how the mentally ill like to fantasize. Was that woman he fantasizes about really a woman, or actually a man? Was he really a clown, or just a cross-dressing homosexual? What type of parent in their right mind would allow their kids under 45 years old watch this movie? The kind of parent that should have their kids taken away and be investigated for sexual abuse. I’m not saying that all parents who let their kids under 45 watch this movie are sexual perverts, some are just unhealthy and stupid, but I would bet good money that the people who let their kids under 45 watch this movie have higher rates of family abuse than the parents who don’t let their kids under 45 watch this movie.

What else can be said about this unwholesome and disturbing tour de force of evil? Well, this may come as a shock, but there is a bit of murder and brutality in this film. While the gore is lacking and the murders don’t seem to be glorified explicitly, there are clear undertones that make murder look cool and justified in cases of self defense, when in reality murder is never cool. It’s just not right to murder. If I murdered somebody in real life then I would be right to be thrown in prison. It’s not moral to murder somebody. This Joker guy kills a bunch of people as he spirals out of control, and this sort of stuff is not stuff that should be encouraged in the youth. Do you want to be inspired to murder millionaires and talk show hosts? Do you want to turn your city into an unstable warzone where police officers of the law are being attacked? No, none of these things are good. None of these things are healthy. None of these things should be normalized or justified.

This whole movie was weird. When I go to the cinema, I want to be inspired. I want to see the best of humanity. I want Jack holding Rose on the deck of the Titanic. I want to laugh, to smile, to have hope for my fellow man. I want to feel good and at ease. The Joker movie did the opposite. I was forced to consider the mentally ill, to be uncomfortable and sad about how this man seemed to be suffering with severe problems that were exasperated by his environment and life circumstances to the point of catastrophe, both personal and environmental. That’s not what good stories are about. There is no reason that somebody who does anything bad should ever have any sort of empathetic or understood light shown on them. They must remain monsters if we are to have a functioning society. The poor and weak are poor and weak for reasons of their own making, not because they get put in conditions that remove any possibility for success. The super rich and famous deserve to be super rich and famous, not because they were born into situations that removed any possibility for failure. Everybody gets what they deserve and the people suffering deserve to suffer, not this fever dream of Joker where the downtrodden upon rise up and revolt against their cruel masters.

This Joker guy was mentally ill. He portrayed a sort of character that deserved to be put down many years before when this film took place. He was a loser and unhappy his whole life. Once he got fired from his minimum wage job and was rejected by society repeatedly, he only found joy in destruction of anything that he felt did him wrong. None of that is admirable or good. None of that is something that should be praised. Is it realistic and logical? Yes, and that’s a problem. The world shouldn’t work like that. People should never be forced to face the outcomes that they generate through collective actions. Imagine a world in which we have to suffer for all the nice things we have that came from suffering people? Imagine a world where the poor and mentally ill get a voice and get some control over our lives? Imagine a world where you can’t clock in to a white collar job a personal connection got you and collect a comfortable paycheck and ignore the growing chaos that’s all around you? Is that a world you want to live in, where there are consequences for everybody instead of just normal people? That’s not the world I want to live in. I want to be comfortable, damn the mentally ill.

Little Games

            There is a certain need for danger that cannot be escaped, even though it is suppressed violently in today’s hyper-safe as well as hyper-monitored age. Without the feeling that an improper action can cause a negative result, there is barely any incentive to pay attention to what one is doing or how we are doing it. This desire for constant risk is something that pathological gamblers allow themselves to be destroyed for. It is not the victory that compels them to gamble, but rather the thrill of avoidance of disaster.

            In the modern world, what are some ways besides gambling that can scratch this natural itch? There are no real wars to be fought, no new territories to be explored. All that really exists is creating risk by playing games with interpersonal or social dynamics. What this means is taking risks such as being flirtatious in situations that may result in rejection, behaving rudely towards others just to see how far you can push them before they snap, and saying offensive things that you may not even believe in order to tempt fate to give us negative social repercussions. This precarious balancing act of social tensions is great fun, even though may come with times of reprisal and “social shame”, of which any truly adventurous person is not unfamiliar with.

            Behaving badly is the only way to really feel alive; the only way in which to feel one’s sense of space. There are no explicitly negative outcomes from following the rules and being a “good person”, but there are also no explicitly positive outcomes from that same behavior, unless of course you consider the bare minimum of living (a steady income, a small friend group, and a boring uneventful life) to be a positive outcome. I do not see the bare minimum of living as something that is agreeable to me, let alone bearable, so I cannot restrain myself from playing little games constantly.

            When I was younger, the little games I would play would be neglecting to do my schoolwork and throwing out my food instead of eating it. These sorts of behaviors would introduce stress and tension into my interpersonal relationships, but this would be the only times in which I would ever feel alive. This later progressed to stealing small things like snacks or pocket change from family members, not because I wanted those things, but because there was a risk that I would get caught. This sort of behavior is not conducive towards respecting others or finding them particularly bright, because after a very short time you begin to realize that most people are unable to comprehend the idea of a person doing bad things out of boredom rather than some strange compulsion.

            Little games are what keep us alive. Without constant risks and secrets, one quickly becomes a dullard who falls into all sorts of unhealthy, mediocre patterns. There is no room for truly adventurous pro-social behavior, since all established systems have become rotten and foul, so one must invent their own sorts of adventurous habits that might be considered “anti-social” if they wish to remain people with souls. It is in the moments of playful danger that we can really ascertain what we care about and don’t care about, and remain grounded in a sense of mortality that most normal individuals seem to have forgotten.

            One game that I’m playing now is the habit of smoking. I don’t really need to smoke or feel a great desire to, but I have decided to actively take up smoking while around certain people in order to play a trick on them. To them, I appear as if I’m an addict. To everybody else, I am not somebody who smokes. This sort of split personality is something that doesn’t really mean anything other than an expression of boredom, but it will confound anybody who is talking about me behind my back, much like how I have gone out of my way to have different types of personalities depending on the individuals that I am around.

            Is this manner of serial social and psychological experimentation particularly useful or beneficial to society as a whole? No, in fact it is probably more “harmful” to the greater good than not, as it will result in the post-mortem of my existence being confused and contradictory to the point of nonsensicalness, but it is useful to me. This is how I stay sane, how I do not go out of my mind in boredom, how I do not entertain much darker thoughts and behaviors that I wish to banish from my being.

            Speaking of behaving in completely different manners depending on who one is surrounded with, this is a very useful sort of game that allows one to see how different types of behaviors generate different types of outcomes. Most people spend their life being completely “themselves”, forming some brittle and shallow existence and character that is devoid of depth or nuance. They can be read like books, and not quality books but rather poorly written books. The worst part about these people who do not play little games is that they do not know what they are missing.

            People who do not play little games do not have the perspective that game players have. The person who has been many people or messed with many people will understand external motivations and fears much better than somebody who is constantly stuck in a non-performative, non-protagonist role. Without playing little games, you get stuck in loops of behavior that are the loops of behavior that everybody gets stuck in. When you are stuck in the same sorts of loops that everybody else is stuck in, what is interesting about you? What sort of perspective do you have that everybody else doesn’t already have? Nobody is interested in people who don’t play little games, because everybody intuitively knows that if you don’t play little games you become a boring automaton of whatever society you were born into.

            Live a life that is interesting. Do things that are not out of insecurity or rage but rather curiosity. Act in a manner where you do things because you wonder if you can do them rather than trying to get something out of them. Can you lie to somebody to their face and get away with it? Can you steal something and get away with it? Can you order drugs off the internet and get them without running into legal trouble? There is only one way to find out, and if it turns out that things go wrong and you get in trouble, who really cares? You’re not doing things out of a pathological need, but rather out of boredom. This means that you can just switch up your little games as needed in order to avoid repeated mistakes that might have serious repercussions. There are an almost infinite amount of little games that you can play, and life is very short, so what are you waiting for?

Anticipation and Experience in the Age of Corona

            With the arrival of the Coronavirus or “Covid-19”, a respiratory bug that sometimes results in death for old people as well as those with pre-existing conditions like lung problems or diabetes, I have noticed a few stark dichotomies of individuals emerge. One group is people who don’t believe that this is a big deal or will kill all that many people. These are the individuals who tend to be older and live in a delusion that life should be like a constant vacation for them, that they are invulnerable to bad things happening, that bad things don’t happen anymore. These people are essentially mental invalids, having grown up in the world’s best economy, never having to deal with any sort of economic or social realities that people younger than them have been thrust into, and thus are incapable of imagining a world where there is a genuine threat to their health and safety. Combine their Pollyannaish worldview with their worship of the stock market and property values, and you get people who are overly eager to discount any caution and insist that everybody keep the party going –even if that party has the chance to kill them.

            The majority of individuals who aren’t mentally addled boomers are those who now understand Coronavirus to be a highly contagious and deadly (for older and sickly people) problem. In this grouping there is a dichotomy, and this is where things start to get interesting. While everybody with a sound mind is admitting that this is going to kill hundreds of thousands of people, some people are saying that this is the end of the world, and some others are saying that it’s not a pleasant reality but it won’t cause the collapse of civilization in any meaningful way.

            What is the reason for this “end of the world” vs “things suck but we’ll get over it” difference in mentality? Simply put, life experience. Very few people have ever had traumatic or truly painful things happen to them. By traumatic or truly painful things, I do not mean death of a pet or loved one, or getting in a car accident, or getting taken advantage of, but rather something that consists of genuine suffering and pain to a level where it feels that life itself can’t possibly go on, that the universe is tearing apart at the seams, that there is no way that anything will ever get better. What ends up happening, as anybody who has gone through this and come out the other side will tell you, is that of course things get better, the world keeps on turning, the distress that was felt strongly is gradually realized to be foolish and shortsighted, and a new perspective that puts things in their proper limited context is reached.

            Most people don’t have the unpleasant luxury of the aforementioned life experience, haven’t ever been pushed past their personal limits and really felt what it means to suffer, and so most people don’t have the knowledge of what actually bad things entail. Another thing they do not have the knowledge of is that the anticipation of something bad is almost always worse than the bad thing itself, and the terror of prediction is what is causing emotional problems.

This anticipatory distress is what is going on with Coronavirus, where people are imagining that once bodies start piling up, the negative emotions they feel now will get even worse and things will start to break apart. This is not the case. If/when bodies pile up and death is in the air and everywhere everybody looks, people will realize that it’s not that big a deal. It’s unpleasant, but what can you do? There’s no way to change reality and make it better by feeling sad or upset, so there’s no reason to be sad or upset. Tears won’t bring back the dead from the mass graves, so to cry is weak emotionalism that should be reserved for women and children who can’t be expected to know any better.

As anybody who has dealt with truly bad things knows, bad things aren’t half as bad as the anticipation of bad things. People will suffer, people will die, businesses will go bankrupt, houses will be foreclosed on, certain people will kill themselves or get addicted to drugs to cope with their emotions, but life will eventually return to normal. Everything always returns to the manner in which it is structurally organized to behave, even though there are temporary disruptions and problems that cause abnormalities. Being locked down and unable to go shopping or whatever it is that people want to do is the “new normal” for a temporary amount of time, and people with life experience will see it as the temporary thing that it is, whether it is temporary for one month, one year, or five years. Bad things are manageable and able to be dealt with. Hysterical mania and emotional discomforts aren’t logical or reasonable or useful, and so these things need to be completely discarded and recognized as useless and foolish.

The Universe Revolves Around Me

Life is.... strange. I do my best to keep a humble perspective, to always temper my enthusiasm and insights through the lens of various "mistakes" I've made, through the "mishaps" I have incurred. Through all of this, there is still a strange sense of unreality that pervades everything.

It would seem that I have had a far greater impact on the world than I would have liked to believe. After all, nearly everything I have done has been because of a sense of detachment that stems from an underlying humor that most people don't seem capable of understanding.

Whenever I look around me, all I see is disappointment. I see people incapable of planning long term, people wrapped up in strange behaviors that can only be understood as a form of mental illness on their part. I am not an egomaniac -- far from it -- but there seems to be a perpetual "catch-up" game going on being played by everybody who isn't me.

Who are the people playing "catch-up" trying to catch up to? Me. They say things that I said years ago, they do things and interact with people I interacted with years ago, they start believing things that I tricked others into thinking I believed years ago.

This whole rigmarole is getting quite tired for me. I wish people would get their own ideas, their own goals, their own dreams. This doesn't seem to be happening, however, and as time passes, people seem content to slip further and further into my shadow. I don't know what I can do at this point, to tell the truth, because everybody else is just too slow to come up with their own ideas or form their own communities that are not influenced by me in some manner.

I guess this is the curse of greatness, to not have any peers or people ahead of you. There are things I'm doing now that won't be understood until years have passed, if they're ever understood. I am forced to continually innovate and improve myself, not because of any inferiority or insecurities, but rather boredom at the general state of other people.

Hopefully this situation changes as I get older and slow down, and in my seniority I can look on the people who come after me as equals or even superiors, but I seriously doubt this will ever occur. All around me I see people running out of steam, falling into traps, and in various stages of implosion, and there never seems to be any recoveries on their part. Life is unbearable for geniuses like myself.