I'm not satisfied with my physical appearance. I'm too fat for my tastes and have struggled with finding the discipline to meet my physical standards. Over the past few days I've devoted time to thinking about the history of me trying to lose weight and why I've failed to do so. Ultimately, my failure stems from a weak commitment to self discipline. This weak commitment has manifested itself in an acute and extensive array of excuses I offer myself for being content with the way I look.
Yesterday I discovered that I over emphasize minimal progress in meeting my physical appearance goals. I recently lost close to 15lbs. after 2 months of rigorous exercise only to gain it all back when my discipline succumbed to a change in my daily schedule. During this regression I clung to the small changes in appearance I experienced from my previous hard work as an excuse to slack off. My thinking was, 'at least I won't have to start from where I started from three months ago'. Unfortunately, this thought is not entirely true. While I'm not back to my original size before I began working out, the mental discipline I need to make significant changes is still the same. I still make the same excuses and avoid the same avenues to success in fear of their difficulty and subsequent discomfort.
Now to the revelation that lead me to this entry. I discovered today that my desire to be liked by the opposite sex serves as a validation for the person I am dissatisfied with. The beginnings of this thought occurred last night while talking to a friend about her relationship with a guy who is overweight. They have been close friends for a year and decided to explore a romantic relationship with each other. Unfortunately, things will not work out mainly because the my girl friend is unhappy with the guy's physical appearance. She has not broken up with him in hopes that he grasp the extent of her dissatisfaction and recognize that he probably won't change. Of course this is absurd to hope for for the precise reason I discovered in myself. She is providing validation for his stagnation (sorry for the rhyme distraction) by hoping he will give up his pursuit. I told her however, that he will never do so because it's easier for him to deal with the idea that she might change than it is for him to confront his self-esteem. It took me nearly 24hrs to realize I use the affections of women as validation that I'm fine just the way I am; a notion I reject every time I take my shirt off.
So what now? I must embrace the idea that women may not be interested in me because I'm too fat for them. And as long as I'm too fat for me I should continue to embrace this notion. It's been my policy to grudgingly reject women I suspect might feel that way. Of course our culture suggests that this is valid because everyone knows that a person should love you regardless of what you look like. I've always thought this to be a completely stupid notion, but it's only now that I recognize how readily I embraced it when faced with the alternative of confronting my self-esteem. The only thing to do now is meet my standards of self I consider possible and reasonable to achieve. I know loosing weight can be done and it's more than reasonable for me to do it. Because of this new revelation it would not be proper, fair, or wise for me to accept the affections of any woman until this goal is met. This is the conclusion I've run away from and its been a major contributor to my lack of progress. So to all the women out there who I meet and those whom I've met let me state unequivocally that I am not available. I will not consider myself available until I can stand naked in front of the mirror with pride and confidence. This I declare on June 20, 2008.
If you think this entry was difficult to write, it was. But surprisingly not as difficult as I thought it would be before I sat down to write it. Let any embarrassment I feel serve as the motivation I may need if my discipline falters. Far to often we ignore our discomfort with things we have the to power to change. I will no longer accept a relationship that is below my standards; the standards I hold for myself.
Friday, June 20, 2008
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
The Nature of Evil
I recently stumble across what I consider one of the most profound conclusions I've ever thought of. Like many thoughts we think this particular thought was the product of other thoughts thought up be other individuals. In this case my conclusions on the nature of evil are the products of objectivist philosophy.
I remember sitting in my apartment one evening and the thought coming to me very simply, 'Evil must be sanctioned'. As it turns out this wasn't the entire conclusion, but it was enough to make me stop what I was doing and ponder the idea further. 'Evil must be sanctioned', wow! I then began to think what does this mean? What does this explain about the state of humanity? As most of my serious thinking is devoted to understanding how we, as humans, have gotten our current state of existence I was very pleased to have this breakthrough. I thought some more about this conclusion and was still not quite satisfied. Evil must be sanctioned.... what?. Well there is a lot of evil in this world and it's been around for a very long time. I'm mainly talking about philosophical evil because anything that persists in human existence that is the product of human actions is first the product of a philosophy that deems such actions necessary. And then I had it! 'Evil must be sanctioned in order to persist'; which easily translates to 'Evil must have been sanctioned in order to have persisted this long'.
What do I mean by evil you ask? Evil can be described as the actions or thoughts a person engages in to avoid dealing with their insecurities. Ha, what I love about this definition (one I just cooked up while on the toilet) is that it requires a context for the examination of any action and not just a blanket declaration of certain actions to be evil. Allow me to digress for just a second. I'm cooking up an essay on why I don't agree with religion (mainly Christianity) and my definition of evil fits perfectly into it. Let's examine the killing of a person. Christianity will tell you that the killing of a person is sin no matter the context. I think this is absurd as there are many cases when killing another person is appropriate and necessary. Think about premarital sex, an action deemed evil by Christianity. What about the couple that have pledged their lives to each other in their hearts and minds? Should they have to wait until a ceremony before they experience the pleasure of sex? These and other sins are meant for people to follow instructions without the context of their reality, but what does this say about the insecurities of the authors of such rules?
Back to the point. Evil exists and continues to exist because humans are willing to make what they think are compromises between their principles and their reality in order to assuage their insecurities. In actuality, these 'compromises' are really sacrifices of mental autonomy that pave the way for the chronically insecure. The majority of human leadership is composed of the chronically insecure, those individuals who spend most of their lives running from the fact that they do not feel comfortable in their own skin and seek to master whatever existence they can of everyone else but themselves. The people who demand of others before they demand of themselves. The people who attempt to gain respect through fear and false pretenses. The individuals who will do anything to shield themselves from their own reality. How do such people gain power? The answer, as I discovered recently, is quite simple; by taking advantage of the insecurities of others.
Let me explain why this is such a powerful and depressing conclusion. This conclusion is depressing because it means the state of humanity is do to people's sacrifice of their principles. It is not do to the devil, or some other supernatural spirit that holds some kind of mystical influence over us that can be wiped away or forgiven by some other, more powerful benevolent influence. The responsibility of human tragedy lies squarely on each individual's shoulders; every second of everyday. And let me say that Christianity, and I imagine other religions, say mostly the same thing, I think the level of mysticism involved clouds the issue.
This conclusion is powerful in that it exposes evil for the frail, frightened, insecure child that it is. Something to be squashed at will by those with the strength to do so. Evil will always exists because humans will always posses the ability to ignore their reality. However, evil will only persists if people allow it to. Evil continues to exist because of us, not because it's inherent power, but because of the power we allow it to have. I can't resist this statement; but given these conclusions what does this say about God and the existence of the devil?
Unfortunately for us, evil has been allowed to exists for thousands of years in humans and because of this the options we have in combating evil are extreme and unpleasant. As I stated earlier the chronically insecure, the champions of ignoring self and reality, have been allowed to take leadership positions in areas that effect every aspect of human life. Many of these positions only exist because people have sacrificed their mental autonomy for what they thought was a compromise or a convenience. Sadly, the battle against the evil of humanity is a battle to the death, or to an existence many feel is unacceptable. It's funny because this has always been the case because the sanctioning of evil inevitably leads to death. It seems evil is showing us what is truly at stake when we allow it to exist; very, very ironic. Consider the choice African slaves had to make during the horrendous experience of being brought to America. Essentially Europeans offered them this choice, 'Come with us and you may live, or you can fight us and most likely die.' Think about what would have happened if every single African fought to the death. What would the slave traders have done? What could they do? The cost of capturing humans would have been too great. Many Africans fought to the death, and when captured, many Africans committed suicide, but not enough Africans made the choice to die rather than live a slave to stop the evil present in the minds of those Europeans.
Now let me say the evil that confronted Africans, and the evil that confronts the Sudanese in Darfur, and the evil that confronted the Jews in the 1940's, and the evil the confronted Cambodians in the 1970's is and was some of the most disturbing and powerful evil that can be confronted by a human being. The choice between life and, not just death, a horrible death, is one I cannot imagine. But, we know this choice is a reality because evil is now a perpetual element of human reality. Because of this we must strive to live life by principles we cannot live without; principles that, if sacrificed, would lead to an existence worse than the one brought to us by those who embrace evil.
Evil needs you. It needs you to be afraid so that you'll do what it says. It needs you to relinquish your judgment so that it can substitute its judgment. It needs you to say things are better with it in charge. Evil needs you to give up, but to keep on living so that it has a role. Evil will do whatever it takes to own you and control your reality, but it NEEDS YOU to do it. Many conversations about how to fix the world and humanity with my peers have lead to conclusion that there is no system designed to effectively discourage cheaters. It's only now that I realize what such a system would look like. It would be a reality where people's principles meant more to them than the prospect of living without them. Saying there is no system to prevent cheaters is a sad indictment on the moral fiber of humanity. Even worse, my peers are saying the depravity of humanity's moral fiber is irrecoverable. 'All it takes is one cheater and the whole system goes to shit' they say. I vehemently disagree. 'All it takes is one cheater and a large group of people that do not oppose such cheating for the whole system to go to crap'. How do stop of bully? You stand up to them, you show them you aren't afraid; that if they try to beat you up they may succeed, but you won't make it easy for them. A bully is made by those who don't fight back, those who give up their milk money without a fight. It's interesting that lessons from the playground are thought to be too simple for 'the real world'. Bullying tactics may become more sophisticated and certainly more brutal, but at the end of the day it comes down to this; fight or give up.
You may claim, like many of my peers do, that people faced with extreme evil do not have a choice. I think that short of total mind control this notion is a fallacy. What I suspect most people mean by the idea that people facing extreme evil don't have a choice is that they don't have a favorable choice or that they have a terrible choice. One of my favorite quotes from the Dune series is, 'You can die now or you can die later, this is the choice you always have and will always have' (this isn't a direct quote, I'm paraphrasing). Of course this is true, and while it's an unpleasant reality, it is a powerful one.
At its core evil is dependence and because of this evil can be destroyed. Unfortunately, to defeat evil it may require your own destruction or the destruction of something you love. Be prepared to die now; a human life finds it's value in the things it is willing to not live without. Do not betray these things should evil demand them. Evil has no right to them. Evil has gone far enough.
I remember sitting in my apartment one evening and the thought coming to me very simply, 'Evil must be sanctioned'. As it turns out this wasn't the entire conclusion, but it was enough to make me stop what I was doing and ponder the idea further. 'Evil must be sanctioned', wow! I then began to think what does this mean? What does this explain about the state of humanity? As most of my serious thinking is devoted to understanding how we, as humans, have gotten our current state of existence I was very pleased to have this breakthrough. I thought some more about this conclusion and was still not quite satisfied. Evil must be sanctioned.... what?. Well there is a lot of evil in this world and it's been around for a very long time. I'm mainly talking about philosophical evil because anything that persists in human existence that is the product of human actions is first the product of a philosophy that deems such actions necessary. And then I had it! 'Evil must be sanctioned in order to persist'; which easily translates to 'Evil must have been sanctioned in order to have persisted this long'.
What do I mean by evil you ask? Evil can be described as the actions or thoughts a person engages in to avoid dealing with their insecurities. Ha, what I love about this definition (one I just cooked up while on the toilet) is that it requires a context for the examination of any action and not just a blanket declaration of certain actions to be evil. Allow me to digress for just a second. I'm cooking up an essay on why I don't agree with religion (mainly Christianity) and my definition of evil fits perfectly into it. Let's examine the killing of a person. Christianity will tell you that the killing of a person is sin no matter the context. I think this is absurd as there are many cases when killing another person is appropriate and necessary. Think about premarital sex, an action deemed evil by Christianity. What about the couple that have pledged their lives to each other in their hearts and minds? Should they have to wait until a ceremony before they experience the pleasure of sex? These and other sins are meant for people to follow instructions without the context of their reality, but what does this say about the insecurities of the authors of such rules?
Back to the point. Evil exists and continues to exist because humans are willing to make what they think are compromises between their principles and their reality in order to assuage their insecurities. In actuality, these 'compromises' are really sacrifices of mental autonomy that pave the way for the chronically insecure. The majority of human leadership is composed of the chronically insecure, those individuals who spend most of their lives running from the fact that they do not feel comfortable in their own skin and seek to master whatever existence they can of everyone else but themselves. The people who demand of others before they demand of themselves. The people who attempt to gain respect through fear and false pretenses. The individuals who will do anything to shield themselves from their own reality. How do such people gain power? The answer, as I discovered recently, is quite simple; by taking advantage of the insecurities of others.
Let me explain why this is such a powerful and depressing conclusion. This conclusion is depressing because it means the state of humanity is do to people's sacrifice of their principles. It is not do to the devil, or some other supernatural spirit that holds some kind of mystical influence over us that can be wiped away or forgiven by some other, more powerful benevolent influence. The responsibility of human tragedy lies squarely on each individual's shoulders; every second of everyday. And let me say that Christianity, and I imagine other religions, say mostly the same thing, I think the level of mysticism involved clouds the issue.
This conclusion is powerful in that it exposes evil for the frail, frightened, insecure child that it is. Something to be squashed at will by those with the strength to do so. Evil will always exists because humans will always posses the ability to ignore their reality. However, evil will only persists if people allow it to. Evil continues to exist because of us, not because it's inherent power, but because of the power we allow it to have. I can't resist this statement; but given these conclusions what does this say about God and the existence of the devil?
Unfortunately for us, evil has been allowed to exists for thousands of years in humans and because of this the options we have in combating evil are extreme and unpleasant. As I stated earlier the chronically insecure, the champions of ignoring self and reality, have been allowed to take leadership positions in areas that effect every aspect of human life. Many of these positions only exist because people have sacrificed their mental autonomy for what they thought was a compromise or a convenience. Sadly, the battle against the evil of humanity is a battle to the death, or to an existence many feel is unacceptable. It's funny because this has always been the case because the sanctioning of evil inevitably leads to death. It seems evil is showing us what is truly at stake when we allow it to exist; very, very ironic. Consider the choice African slaves had to make during the horrendous experience of being brought to America. Essentially Europeans offered them this choice, 'Come with us and you may live, or you can fight us and most likely die.' Think about what would have happened if every single African fought to the death. What would the slave traders have done? What could they do? The cost of capturing humans would have been too great. Many Africans fought to the death, and when captured, many Africans committed suicide, but not enough Africans made the choice to die rather than live a slave to stop the evil present in the minds of those Europeans.
Now let me say the evil that confronted Africans, and the evil that confronts the Sudanese in Darfur, and the evil that confronted the Jews in the 1940's, and the evil the confronted Cambodians in the 1970's is and was some of the most disturbing and powerful evil that can be confronted by a human being. The choice between life and, not just death, a horrible death, is one I cannot imagine. But, we know this choice is a reality because evil is now a perpetual element of human reality. Because of this we must strive to live life by principles we cannot live without; principles that, if sacrificed, would lead to an existence worse than the one brought to us by those who embrace evil.
Evil needs you. It needs you to be afraid so that you'll do what it says. It needs you to relinquish your judgment so that it can substitute its judgment. It needs you to say things are better with it in charge. Evil needs you to give up, but to keep on living so that it has a role. Evil will do whatever it takes to own you and control your reality, but it NEEDS YOU to do it. Many conversations about how to fix the world and humanity with my peers have lead to conclusion that there is no system designed to effectively discourage cheaters. It's only now that I realize what such a system would look like. It would be a reality where people's principles meant more to them than the prospect of living without them. Saying there is no system to prevent cheaters is a sad indictment on the moral fiber of humanity. Even worse, my peers are saying the depravity of humanity's moral fiber is irrecoverable. 'All it takes is one cheater and the whole system goes to shit' they say. I vehemently disagree. 'All it takes is one cheater and a large group of people that do not oppose such cheating for the whole system to go to crap'. How do stop of bully? You stand up to them, you show them you aren't afraid; that if they try to beat you up they may succeed, but you won't make it easy for them. A bully is made by those who don't fight back, those who give up their milk money without a fight. It's interesting that lessons from the playground are thought to be too simple for 'the real world'. Bullying tactics may become more sophisticated and certainly more brutal, but at the end of the day it comes down to this; fight or give up.
You may claim, like many of my peers do, that people faced with extreme evil do not have a choice. I think that short of total mind control this notion is a fallacy. What I suspect most people mean by the idea that people facing extreme evil don't have a choice is that they don't have a favorable choice or that they have a terrible choice. One of my favorite quotes from the Dune series is, 'You can die now or you can die later, this is the choice you always have and will always have' (this isn't a direct quote, I'm paraphrasing). Of course this is true, and while it's an unpleasant reality, it is a powerful one.
At its core evil is dependence and because of this evil can be destroyed. Unfortunately, to defeat evil it may require your own destruction or the destruction of something you love. Be prepared to die now; a human life finds it's value in the things it is willing to not live without. Do not betray these things should evil demand them. Evil has no right to them. Evil has gone far enough.
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