It's a hard struggle, that between the desire to live healthier and
improve yourself – myself – and the responsibility to not become
an ego-driven maniac. Sometimes in the heat of drug-induced
introspection I have fallen into the trap of thinking that just
because the ego can be a destructive force, it should be completely
annihilated. I don't think that's true really, but sometimes in the
vulnerable state that hallucinogens usually induce, the easiest way
out seems to be 'admitting' that “I am a terrible person” –
self-effacing to escape the torture of thinking about wrongdoings.
This, however, is a false admission. Two reasons:
First of all, I'm not a terrible person, duh. Okay, I mean, maybe not, 'duh', let's not get complacent here, but to feel bad about something I've done wrong is a very good step on the way to being a good person, and so regardless of how bad something I've done may be, flagellating myself for it doesn't make it better. The danger in 'admitting' (and I use inverted commas here because really, an admission of something that isn't true is analogous to a 'discovery' of something that doesn't exist) that “I am a terrible person”, is that it leads me into absolving myself from whatever thing led me to this conclusion. So while I may behave for a while, sooner or later that guilt subsides and the cycle starts all over again. It goes from “I'm a terrible person”, to “I made up for that”, to “I'm doing sweet”, to “LOOK AT ALL THE IDIOTS, I'M AWESOME!” And then we're back to square one.
This then leads me to the second reason why simply reaching for the excuse of being a terrible person to justify past misdeeds is probably not the way to go; it leads on to the idea that the self should be destroyed completely. I remember a story John Lennon told during the 70s (if I remember correctly) about how he spent years following the Timothy Leary Acid Trip and thinking he was a worthless human being and should live his life hidden away within himself for fear of his dark inner nature wreaking havoc on the world around him. It took him years to realize that while the forces inside the human soul are sometimes destructive, they are also creative – the yin and the yang. We need both to survive, and to live lives worth living.
So when I reach out of well-worn reflex for the “I suck” card, I'm really being lazy and cheating myself out of an opportunity to improve. The self is required, as the whole of society, which is used as the basis for so many moral-political philosophies (“the most good for the most people”, “equal opportunity for all” etc.) is necessarily made up of multitudes of individual, indivisible 'selves'. The trick is to not let the ego run rampant and start sucking up too much attention and importance, it is a ravenous beast when allowed to run free and needs to remain as a player of equal importance as every other, lest it become, as Bill Hicks said, “another fevered ego tainting our collective unconscious.”
I don't know why I started writing about this stuff, but I'm very happy with my results, I just thought it all though as the words were coming onto the screen. I haven't done anything particularly wrong lately that I feel like I should apologize for – although if I had, this would be a great way of apologizing to my internal moral compass without having to do anything. GENIUS! But no, I was just thinking this morning that I haven't had any of those kind of self-effacing, 'Revolver' “my ego is ruining me”, I-just-fucked-up thoughts in a while, and I started thinking that maybe I was overdue for one. But then I thought, no, fuck that. I don't need to push myself back into another cycle of feeding and then starving my self of endearment, maybe I might actually be able to strike a bit of a balance for once, and maintain. Maintain. Ah, there we are.
The Struggle To Maintain.
Peace, Taco.
First of all, I'm not a terrible person, duh. Okay, I mean, maybe not, 'duh', let's not get complacent here, but to feel bad about something I've done wrong is a very good step on the way to being a good person, and so regardless of how bad something I've done may be, flagellating myself for it doesn't make it better. The danger in 'admitting' (and I use inverted commas here because really, an admission of something that isn't true is analogous to a 'discovery' of something that doesn't exist) that “I am a terrible person”, is that it leads me into absolving myself from whatever thing led me to this conclusion. So while I may behave for a while, sooner or later that guilt subsides and the cycle starts all over again. It goes from “I'm a terrible person”, to “I made up for that”, to “I'm doing sweet”, to “LOOK AT ALL THE IDIOTS, I'M AWESOME!” And then we're back to square one.
This then leads me to the second reason why simply reaching for the excuse of being a terrible person to justify past misdeeds is probably not the way to go; it leads on to the idea that the self should be destroyed completely. I remember a story John Lennon told during the 70s (if I remember correctly) about how he spent years following the Timothy Leary Acid Trip and thinking he was a worthless human being and should live his life hidden away within himself for fear of his dark inner nature wreaking havoc on the world around him. It took him years to realize that while the forces inside the human soul are sometimes destructive, they are also creative – the yin and the yang. We need both to survive, and to live lives worth living.
So when I reach out of well-worn reflex for the “I suck” card, I'm really being lazy and cheating myself out of an opportunity to improve. The self is required, as the whole of society, which is used as the basis for so many moral-political philosophies (“the most good for the most people”, “equal opportunity for all” etc.) is necessarily made up of multitudes of individual, indivisible 'selves'. The trick is to not let the ego run rampant and start sucking up too much attention and importance, it is a ravenous beast when allowed to run free and needs to remain as a player of equal importance as every other, lest it become, as Bill Hicks said, “another fevered ego tainting our collective unconscious.”
I don't know why I started writing about this stuff, but I'm very happy with my results, I just thought it all though as the words were coming onto the screen. I haven't done anything particularly wrong lately that I feel like I should apologize for – although if I had, this would be a great way of apologizing to my internal moral compass without having to do anything. GENIUS! But no, I was just thinking this morning that I haven't had any of those kind of self-effacing, 'Revolver' “my ego is ruining me”, I-just-fucked-up thoughts in a while, and I started thinking that maybe I was overdue for one. But then I thought, no, fuck that. I don't need to push myself back into another cycle of feeding and then starving my self of endearment, maybe I might actually be able to strike a bit of a balance for once, and maintain. Maintain. Ah, there we are.
The Struggle To Maintain.
Peace, Taco.
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