Philosophy @ MindSay 
“Transitions of life”
Antonio Garcia
Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.
-Anais Nin
Transitions are not really transitions but the consequences of following life as is. The weight of the world and all that encompasses through seeming disparity and uncertainty can be heard in the voice. Sometimes the silence of a voice speaks louder than any functional linguistics could comprehend in illuminating the state and thoughts of an individual. Language is the quantifiable tool we use to express ourselves, but what if there are times when language can not suffice in explaining what we say in silence? Our contemplation and thoughts of ourselves and the world join at the crossroads of life. We participate in a world we don’t understand while comically shouting that the world doesn’t understand us. Perhaps we are living in the wrong world or the world that we know has been created outside of our desires. The transitions in life are the hardest to understand. Many sink into depression or anger as they try to see what there life is to be. What we forget is that life is because we can only live in the moment. What we desire life to be is a fantasy fetish produced by popular culture and promises created by groups who ignore the individual and seek only themselves. Our refuge in such uncertainty should lie in the certainty of ourselves. We can only take charge of the present and reflect on the past. We can’t relive the past just as we can’t project what we will be in the future. Such contemplation is not only vain, but useless. All of us “dream” of what would like to be. We set goals because we believe that certain things we obtain or do make us accomplished. Yet, with all the accomplishments we forget to ask ourselves are we great people? I mean great in the sense of being great to ourselves and those we love.
“An intellectual is a person whose mind watches itself”
- Albert Camus
Graduate school is the most complicated of times for many people. We transition and pursue intellectual levels not experienced by most people. We are privileged in this way to be able to take advantage of such knowledge. But are we really at more of an advantage than the high school graduate who has a family? It is subjective and very dependent on the individual in understanding what constitutes happiness, accomplishment, and sense of self in the world.
I've looked at life from both sides now
From win and lose and still somehow
It's life's illusions I recall
I really don't know life at all.
-Joni Mitchell
The world has constructed a formatted plan for everyone. It is a simple plan that outlines who will be what by projecting a hierarchy of worthiness, value, and success. More so, the world has given freedom to all to criticize the lives, identities, and sense of self determined by each individual. We are therefore placed in constant fear of being judged. We may, with such cliché sensibility, say that we are the hardest judges of ourselves, but is it really true? Everyday we judge our self in comparison/contrast to someone else. We want to be as smart as…, as great as…, as good looking as…, and so on. When we look truly at ourselves and neglect to see ourselves for who we are; the greatness we bring the world through being ourselves.
The judges of normality are present everywhere. We are in the society of the teacher-judge, the doctor-judge, the educator-judge, the ''social worker'' -judge.”
-Michel Foucault
A deep sigh and release of air from the pit of our lungs signals the desperation we feel in wanting to see ourselves everyday but can’t. We are restrained by the judgments and critiques of others and lastly of ourselves. We stress about the things that have no real value on who we are, but who we think we would be with them. We need a release to be ourselves and become blind and deaf to the world. Most often I see this in alcohol or some other mind altering substance. The brief escape and numbness will numb the world, but it numbs our ability to feel ourselves too. The negotiation becomes a very complex matter of how we feel we are in the world and who we feel we are in the world.
“Pain is inevitable as long as you are identified with your mind.”
-Eckhart Tolle
Until we come to the realization of ourselves we will strive for a fantastical utopian vision of ourselves while ignoring and neglecting who we are. Our sense of who we are becomes diluted by obligations and responsibility and the ubiquitous “what if” mantra. What if we did what we felt rather than what we think we should do. The conflict really becomes a matter of emotion versus what we feel is our logic. The balance of the two is hard to maintain. Too much feeling will lead to a dulling of the senses to guard one’s self and the over indulgence of thought will only serve to isolate one’s self from the experiences which breed emotional landscapes.
“Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve. “
- Erich Fromm
Pleasure is always derived from something outside you, whereas joy arises from within.”
- Eckhart Tolle
We are by nature emotional creatures and thoughtful animals. We are cursed by the gift of the two. We turn to our logic to guard against insensible emotional responses. We attempt to remove ourselves from an emotional encounter of experience through thought, yet the truth is that all that we do is emotional. Every experience creates emotion and every thought we have creates an emotional landscape of negotiation. Our world becomes not the one we see with our eyes but the one that we wrestle with as a created pathology within ourselves. It can be restrictive and tormenting or emancipatory and rewarding.
Love is union with somebody, or something, outside oneself, under the condition of retaining the separateness and integrity of one's own self.
-Erich Fromm
I feel the more we think and believe that thought should override the stupidity of the chemical romance of the nervous system and synapses triggering, we fall into delusion of believing we can experience life without emotion and purely by thought. At times, I believe that we even use our thought to create emotion. We think we are in love and allow our thoughts to rationalize such a response, yet guard against any apprehension of mistrust as well. So which do we subscribe to?
The most beautiful as well as the most ugly inclinations of man are not part of a fixed biologically given human nature, but result from the social process which creates man.
- Erich Fromm
It is a matter of understanding that the world is an objective reality made subjective by the individual, and more so when that individual understands his/her own being. We find ourselves in the things of the world, but can we find ourselves as a thing of the world?
THE LIFE AS THE PROCEEDS OF LIFE – A man may stretch himself out even so far with his knowledge; he may seem to himself ever so objective, but eventually he realizes nothing therefrom but his own biography. Nietzsche, Human All too human.
Our life is an experience. It is emotional regardless of our logic, but it is nonetheless always ours...
I've taken a trip through my iPod in recent days and realized I have MOAR music that I could ever listen to, or ever choose to, but keep it on there because I have so much space (160 GB). Anyone who knows me will know that I'm very selective about music choices.
I steer away from most major labels because they're part of the capitalist racketeering scheme that has taken over the music scene in the world, not just America.
Anyway, I want to be a part of the music scene in whatever city I'm in, and to do that it's best to offer something to a band or something like that. That's why I need to get a bass sometime in the future.
I know musical influences have a huge impact on the music being created here and now. My largest influences would have to be (not in any particular order of importance) Deathrock like Christian Death, Rozz Williams, and Tragic Black, Black Metal like Aes Dana and Cradle of Filth, Atmospheric Metal like The Gathering and Ulver, Melancholic like Antimatter, the Silent Hill Soundtracks, Marilyn Manson (think Holy Wood), Katatonia, Coldplay, and Agua de Annique, Female-Fronted Metal like The Gathering, Agua de Annique, Tacere, and Otep, many of the Top 40 from the 80's and 90's, all the song memes like "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" and "Never gonna give you up", most all Ska like Distemper and Arther Kay, Political Punk like Anti-Flag, New Mexican Disaster Squad, Choking Victim, Leftover Crack, Citizen Fish, and Thought Riot, Powerpop like Forever the Sickest Kids, the Maine, and Hellogoodbye, Political Rap like Immortal Technique, NWA, and Public Enemy, Romanticized Rock like My Chemical Romance (first 2 albums) and The Used(talk about closet music), and the anti-genre misellaneous bands like The Bastard Fairies and Mindless Self Indulgence. Jesus Christ that's alot, and I doubt many people recognize many of the those bands.
As for musical philosophy, it's somewhat difficult. I'm not sure exactly what kind of music I want to make, assuming I'll be that high in the band/project to make decisions.
Well, the best description I can come up with is this: Music with purpose, slightly romanticized but not without the hard-hitting slap of reality, something the gives both feelings of reality and feeling to the listeners, music that is both fast and brutal; slow and melancholic. Some of it needs to have disgustingly powerful breakdowns, follow-ups, and long ass intros. Other parts need to be straight forward, to the point, and short. Some of it needs to be orchestrated to the nanosecond of beauty, and other parts should sound over-dubbed and shit-quality. Much like a rollercoaster, I want my music to send listeners for a ride. It doesn't have to be any particular genre either, but my preferred genres to play would be like the ones I listed as my influences.
If there could be a huge mash up mix of what it would be like, try combining these songs:
"Demolition Lovers" by My Chemical Romance
"Bring the Pain" by Mindless Self Indulgence
"In My Grave" by Choking Victim
"Saffron's Curse" by Cradle of Filth
"Smeared Eyes" by Tragic Black
"Cemetery Drive" by My Chemical Romance
"Living the Laws" by Choking Victim
"Memento Mori" by The Bastard Fairies
"Romeo's Distress" by Christian Death
"Pulse" by New Mexican Disaster Squad
"It's Not a Fashion Statement, It's a Fucking Deathwish" by My Chemical Romance
"The Weight of the World" by Antimatter
"Earthquake" by The Used
"Beautiful One" by Agua de Annique
"Coma Black" by Marilyn Manson
"I'm not Okay" by My Chemical Romance
"Le Combat Des Arbres" by Aes Dana
"Shimmy Shimmy Quarterturn" by Hellogoodbye
"Nightmare Heaven" by Arcturus
"Elenor" by The Gathering
"Life is Pain" by Leftover Crack
"On New Tablets" by Thought Riot
"Whoa" by Forever the Sickest Kids
"Girls Do What They Want" by The Maine
"Thank You for the Venom" by My Chemical Romance
"Suburbian Dystopia" by Tragic Black
"I don't know you but I came to dance" by Forever the Sickest Kids
TL; DR: There's a shitload of stuff I can use to make good music if I put some effort into it.
Would you do meth if it was legalized?
No way in hell.
Have you seen what meth does?
I've had a close friend die from it.
Abortion: for or against?
For, mainly because of situations like rape.
Would our country fall with a woman president?
No, what the hell does gender have to do with it? It's the decisions and actions of the person that determine the future of any country, not whether they are male, or female.
Do you believe in the death penalty?
Yes. That may go against my Zen Buddhist beliefs, but, if we let every person live who killed another, it would lead (and has already here in WA.) to major over- crowded prison cells, more murders, and other problems.
Do you wish marijuana would be legalized already?
Yes. It's a just a plant, and has proven medical advantages.
Are you for or against premarital sex?
Well, I would be a hypocrite if I didn't say for. :p
Do you think same sex marriage should be legalized?
Absolutely. Just like the Q: on a women president, gender should also never have to be a issue of legality! 2 people are in love, so where's the problem?!
Do you think its wrong that so many Hispanics are moving to the USA?
It's true there are a huge number of Hispanics, many of them illegal immigrants, crossing into the US. But is it wrong for them to do that? Honestly I'm gonna have to go with a yes and no answer. They have a right to live a better life, but they should do it in a legal way.
A 12 year old girl has a baby..should she keep it?
I guess it depends on the situation. If she wants to, and knows the responsibility and has support from family and friends, then sure.
Should the alcohol age be lowered to 18?
It doesn't matter. Sadly. Because I think, especially in todays world, if a minor wants to get liquor, they will find a way.
Should the war in Iraq be called off?
Yes. I think it should have a long time ago.
Assisted suicide is illegal..do you agree?
It is in Washington. So I guess yes.
Do you believe in spanking your children?
Nope. Not that it's wrong, I just know from personal experience, it didn't change my wrong doings a bit.
Would you burn an American flag for a million dollars?
No, because no matter what I'd be mad at and want to show my point, it won't change the problem. I'd sink that million into a more productive way of solving what upsets me.
A mother is declared innocent after murdering her 5 children in a temporary insanity case..what do you think?
I think the whole 'innocent by reason of insanity' is...well...insane, and way over used.
Are you afraid others will judge you from reading some of your answers?
Lol! afraid? Hell no.
Who do you think has the guts to repost this?
Well, seeing that all humans have guts, I'd say anyone who feels like it. ;)
In all of man's wisdom and majestic reasoning there is but one antagonistic to his brilliance and that is love, woman, and the love for a woman. I'm not sure why such things perplex man, but they are of importance to not only man, but woman as well. if this were not so then Cosmo would have to review its quizzes titled "what he wants" or shows like sex and the city contemplating and negotiating the difficult, and often irrational, world of relationships and love. Men in all their accomplishments as males erecting buildings in their name and relegating all gods or spiritual enlighteners can not make sense of the woman and rarely understands love. I believe that this is so because love is an internal struggle within man and woman is an external struggle to redeem the internal substance of "love." Love should not be too broadly conceived of as the tickling sensation after or before the first kiss. No, rather love is a complicated schizophrenia of euphoric pleasure that we crave after the first drop. Love is the feeling of knowing someone is looking at you possibly with the same tickle and how will you both succumb to the satisfaction of such feelings while making it present to one another? I find great enjoyment and vivacity in the simple pleasures often taken for granted by those who are appropriately (whatever standard that is) titled "in love." Those presumed to be in love and married are often the must banal and dispirited people. That have overdosed and gorwn tolerant to one supplier and such tolerance reveals problems of novelty and sparkle that was once part of such a story years ago, or perhaps even weeks ago. Is it possible to loom and bask in the tantalizing appeal and fetish of love? I believe it is possible in the smallest things as well as possible to always find it in one thing. This some may call the soul mate. A person so designed and in tune with you that explanation of such coincidence becomes lost in the fantasy spectacle of attributing it to divineness rather than humanness. In the several billion people in the world how different can you really be form one another until you find someone who shares with you and in you a multitude of things? But its ore than sharing its an appeal, an appeal of attraction of the physical, spiritual, emotional, psychological, and intellectual. It’s hard to match completely and so perfectly with another on these ideals, but it happens. Often they happen briefly and we accept them as they know that this was the moment we shared and that time has expired. In rare occasions, we figure out how to prolong such engagement so that we can partake in a perpetual and rejuvenated sense of love with someone. How to do this is not possible to discuss here or anywhere for that matter. It is only possible to understand that love is a small satisfaction of giving one's self to another.
We treat love as a grand spectacle and parade it around like something that can be understood in the same manner as an (in)animate object. It is a sense of being. It is abstract, but connected to the real. It is an authentic emotion and a manufactured one driven by the commodity exchange of corporate irrealities like Hallmark. To make sense of love in the manner that I am referring to is to remove all sense of conditioning and experience one’s self without the centralization of the self in the process. Simply, participate with someone else in a manner that aggrandizes them and expresses a true love for them as a person who is beautiful and fulfilling in your life. This maybe misunderstood as some type of liberal erotic philosophical flirtation, but it is not so. We should find beauty in another and come to understand that that beauty is a mark of our love for that person.
In those we hate we cannot find beauty. Beauty is a sense of the physical, spiritual, emotional, psychological, and intellectual. Our societal conditioned selves are attracted to the standard of society and our environment. So what beauty is pure in the sense of what we see as a true to the self of that person? That which we cannot see we attempt to feel. What we feel in emotional, spiritual, psychological, and intellectual extensionism becomes the threshold of seeing the beauty and thus the love. The beauty is merely the first stage to becoming loving to someone. Love is the extension of yourself to another in the rejection of want and desire for your “self,” but rather the want, desire, and pleasure of the person to whom your are extending yourself.
What I call extensionism is the connection we feel with others and to varying degrees. The epitome extension and the quintessential appraisal is our discovery of the person who can perpetually extend themselves to us and we to them. This is what I think the soul mate is. Suppose we could use a type of “scope” to see the energy of people. Suppose even more so that we could see that energy represented in various colors reflecting the attitudes, beliefs, emotional, intellectual, and so on characteristics of a person. If this were a reality we could see that those who are so called soul mates may indeed share a bond, like the atom, in which such energy is constantly in transferal motin for one person to another creating a ring, which is a perpetual never ending cycle, between those people. Of course, when people get married the ring is supposed to represent a similar type of attribute to the couple relationship characteristic, but do we really understand ourselves and the beauty of others which becomes our love when we keep our eyes open only to the physical and neglect to understand the others?
Matters of the heart do not exist in the sense that it is of anything remotely attached to the heart. As an abstract and metaphorical comforting we utilize such expression, but we must understand that our mind has more decree and sovereignty than the physical apparatus of the heart. Perhaps, because we so fondly refer to our heart in many expressions and sentiments of love and affection because it is the organ that sustains life in the body. In a romantic sense of the organ it is an expression of extension that someone becomes an apparatus suited to sustain our being.
I have come to know many people, but not all of them I love. I have spent hours with people who I do not hate, but I do not love either. And then I reflect on the moments when I have shared love with another. Sometimes in passing without any vocalization, but rather a simple gesture of affirmation. Sitting on a bench chatting with a student and feeling a sense of love in that I am concerned only with the concerns of the student. Sitting on a couch and feeling the irrespirable moment of uncertainty in wanting to give up myself to know another. Such conversations are internal desires to extend one’s self to another while losing one’s self to another. It becomes a euphoria of a purgatory realm of neither nor. You are neither fully engaged in loving nor completely removed from loving. It is a realm of negotiation that cannot be understood in logical terms of reasoning but only in the exploration of being and knowing of one’s self in order to give that self to another.
If you wonder how such extensionism takes place it most often occurs in dreams. Though in dreams it is not always love that is projected but the wanting desire to extend the malignancy of one’s self on to another so that they suffer in the same way. True to the dialectic of love is the hate or more so anything that is of intention is not of love. For love in its truest sense connected to the self is a selfless understanding of wanting nothing and desiring only for the other person’s contentment. When we desire to extend a part of our self that is in struggle, conflict, or most often pain to another person we are not desiring fir that person but succumbing to our own desire to make ourselves feel love. Can love be such a reflective act or is it meant only as an exchange?
People talk about loving yourself but what does this really mean? How do we love ourselves if we do not know love with another as reference? I think when people discuss the notion of loving one’s self it is not true in the literal sense, but implicit of an exploration of the self needed to understand the selfless extension that surpasses the egoistic desire for one’s own want in order to selfless give to another’s want. Loving one’s self is merely understanding how to love which in turn results in understanding the small moments of love given by others. It is a process of opening another dimension of seeing by feeling. As if we could see the world for what it is that is what it means to love yourself. You embark on a self exploration of understanding in order to understand others who are understanding you, or at least attempting to.
It becomes difficult to understand one’s self and even more difficult to understand another. The more we try the more perplexed we are in understanding the dimension of a person. It is hard to accept that man and woman are so uniquely conditioned and “lived” that they are as unique and varied as snow flake, each one representative of a unique life, shape, and experience. People are in need of love, but more willing to extend hate before love. The unique beauty of each person reveals that the world is not lost but found every day in individuals with illustrious stories and glimmers in their eyes. It is in these small exchanges that we come to understand life, love, and beauty as something uniquely connected to our inner being and then a transmittance (or extension) of our self. Sometimes we sit on park benches watching children play and small and do not realize the love we have for them even though we do not know them. At other times we sit hopeless searching for something that already exist in hallways because we’re uncertain of what arouses us on the inside. We ignore that tickling feeling because we have been told it is the danger of life. The tickle is the treachery of sanity and certainty because it is the unknowing cognitive reflex of energy interacting in an extensionist way of loving.
So we sit and we sit in silence with thoughts dancing in our heads and sensations running through our body. This moment is the euphoric hit we long for and become addicted to. How can we simply state what we feel through emotional action and loving embrace? Should not such natural awakening be a prompt for action? We say things like “I know deep in my heart” or “I just felt something,” yet we ignore and watch the moment in which we could have loved drift away. Such timidity should not interfere with the uncertain chance of acting on the tickling sensation. We should boldly move and smile to the pretty girl with book, randomly admire a person’s feature, and more often than any tell someone that they are beautiful with our eyes shut. Such would be love unconditional. Such unconditional love would be the comfort and serenity that we seek once we close our eyes forever to the world.
I occasionally watch a Ted talk (sometimes interesting speeches by people generally renowned for their intelligence or creativity) and they recently compiled their "greatest hits".
The one at the top is one about a very interesting occurrence. Jille Bolte Taylor, a brain scientist, personally experienced a stroke and relates how it affected her perception and outlook on life. In relating this, she explains how the stroke shut down the left side of her brain, essentially removing the mediator of her consciousness, removing the filters that get applied to the massive amount of input that our brains take in and removing the ability to organize the information in the context of her "self". She describes the feeling of losing the sensation of being an entity separate from her surroundings, of being unable to tell where she ended and her environment began.
She described this as nirvana, and makes it sound quite wonderful.
My mind, unfortunately, always insists on taking ninety degree turns from what it is told. I like to have perspective, and I get that by tending to move perpendicularly.
Anyway, she describes this state of mind and relates how she can see how "compassionate" the universe really is.
First off, I think all she is really describing is the attempt of what is left of her left brain to organize and perceive amounts of data that it is not normally accustomed to getting. I could attach logic meters to each of the pins on the back of the video card in my computer and watch the lights dance telling me that signals are being generated, but I would be unable to organize them into anything resembling the image I see on my computer monitor. Perception is reality, and the perception that she formed in her diminished state should be considered no more or less valid or well formed than the one that any of us working out of our sense-making left brains right now are. She wasn't "seeing" reality to any extent greater than the rest of us are, she was trying to make sense of inputs, just as any of us are.
Second....off, why do these people who have these out of body deeply mystical experiences always come back telling us how compassionate and full of peace and love the universe is? I've waxed before at my fear that the universe is at best completely indifferent and at worst actively malicious towards everything in it. If anything, there is more evidence that the universe hates life and consciousness than that it loves it. Google "extinction event" and see how many times Earth has taken a big smack from an asteroid, or a megavolcano has thrown our planet's environment into disarray, killing a sizable portion of the life running around at the time. And that's just on one planet. Is this a "peaceful compassionate" universe at work? Wow, I'd hate to see it pissed off at us. Now, consider the design of life itself. Living organisms near the bottom of the food chain (plants, plankton) soak up ambient energy and nutrients to maintain life functions. At any level above that, it's murder to stay alive. Disregard man and our moralizing, and see that supposedly good and glorious nature itself is chock full of organisms that rely on terminating the life functions of other organisms in order to gain the energy and nutrients to maintain their own life functions. This does not look like the shape of a compassionate universe to me. No, my most deeply seated fear is that the very fabric of our universe is a weaved not with compassion and peace, but with violence. I'm guessing that when some mystic or unfortunate neuroscientist perceives that the universe of full of love and light, it's because that's what we ~wish~ it to be.
So, that's my big question, Buddhists and philosophers. Give me one good reason I should not believe that the universe is a fundamentally violent place. At the end, I'm guessing I'll just have to concede that the universe is neither violent nor peaceful, that those are entirely products of our perception. All the universe really does, is exist. No more, no less. Nirvana achieved.
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