2024-11-17 #
One of my favorite content creators as of late has to be @content_machine. My favorite series of theirs are skits about a near-future dystopia where there is government overreach into every aspect of daily life, shortages of basic necessities like water and shelter, harvesting of the human body, and hyper-capitalism, among other things. Here's a few of their best.
"There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!" - Mario Savio, 1964
2024-11-12 #
Belief in nothing brings a false sense of security, and possibly a smug sense of superiority. It's true that believing in anything can be dangerous, but at some point a value judgement has to be made. As societies decay, there's no basis or memory for why things are the way they are, entire value systems can be unsubstantiated but assumed to be way things always were. At the end of human civilization, most people go through their lives believing in nothing, living for nothing and dying for nothing.
Actual belief in anything requires risk, or skin in the game. Sometimes one must be punished by death for their beliefs, or non-belief. There are packs of hyenas ready to tear apart individuals from the crowd as soon as they deviate one bit. The casual cruelty of nomos, the body of law governing human behavior, can make man guilty of not following thousands of arbitrary rules at any time or any place.
The default behavior of hyper-socialized man is like an animal in captivity. Turns out that hardly anyone wants to breed in captivity, like most animals. We don't even need to go that far back in history to see where things went wrong, as global fertility has gone down drastically in the last century. In this shitty and inhuman age, the concrete jungle is where humanity goes to work to pay bills and taxes and die.
2024-11-06 #
New dawn. Just remember that no matter who is elected into office, there is secret information, secret police, secret courts, and a secret government running the show. It didn't start with [current political leader] and it won't end with [current political leader] either. The game has been rigged since before any of us were born. It's been rigged so badly, that all we know is a broken system for our entire lives, and we are forced to serve the system which subjugates us.
2024-11-01 #
I can recall a few strangely vivid dreams from years ago:
- I was shot in the chest and the wounds were filled with a blood-clotting agent, but there was no pain (was I dead? previous life?) I was even able to feel the viscous substance with my hand.
- Recurring dream where I am driving on a highway over desolate land, and the civil engineers who built the highway must have also been dreaming, as the road would lead up into the sky and come down or loop like a roller-coaster. During the dream I'm questioning the safety concerns of the people who built the roads, but I keep driving forward.
- The most wonderful dreams involve some esoteric underground locations, huge spacious man-made hallways, with colorful tiles, huge statues, and very few people. There were gatekeepers who wouldn't let me through certain passageways, and I already felt that I was trespassing. This one really reminded me of Kafka's "Before the Law".
I rarely have any romantic dreams, it seems like my subconscious has been trying to get me to be aware of danger more than anything. I just don't know how dreams might tie into reality, or if it's just the universe taunting me. I really want to believe that this life is a bad dream and I can just wake up but it's still the same nightmare.
2024-10-31 #
I don't think I've had a paranormal experience in my life, I can only claim that I've experienced things which should have had a miniscule probability of happening. In the G.A.T.E. classroom I was in while in elementary school, I was shown Zener cards and had to guess them. I'm no latent psychic, but it was interesting that was what they were seeking. This part of my upbringing feels memory-holed, they did some other experiments that involved low probability though I can't remember what exactly.
Do I think paranormal phenomena exist? Sure, but I also think that they must defy objective measurement. One won't discover a ghost through their image intensifier tubes or their thermal imaging cameras, because they're not strictly physical in nature. They must reveal themselves only to one conscious observer, as each qualia is meant exclusively for the individual.
"Chance and chance alone has a message for us. Everything that occurs out of necessity, everything expected, repeated day in and day out, is mute. Only chance can speak to us." - Milan Kundera
2024-10-27 #
Soul ascension. One who plays video games all day is probably closer to Buddhahood than anyone else. I have been playing Red Alert 2 with the Mental Omega mod and it is frustratingly difficult yet satisfying. I've beaten the entire campaign on Mental difficulty, and all the challenges on Hard. Most games I play involve some sort of fictionalized violence, with the exception of racing, simulation, and rhythm games. The story of Mental Omega is quite similar to the base expansion, Yuri's Revenge, where Yuri's faction tries to dominate the world through mind control. Isn't that a virtuous goal, world peace? It comes at the cost of the free will of everyone on the planet, but at last, world peace is achieved.
2024-10-26 #
Civilization is a scam. I was not put on this Earth to produce value for shareholders. I produce more value than I am paid, otherwise I would not be employed. This excess value is pocketed by my employer, and stolen from my pocket by government. I receive no benefits from this theft, other than them not knocking my door down. Before any statist mentions "what about the roads, hospitals, etc.," public transportation, healthcare, and amenities are so bad that they may as well be non-existent in the USA.
It's a zombie movie trope that the real threat is not zombies, but other humans. Status and hierarchy must be re-established after a crisis, and this typically results in tyranny. The biggest threat that anyone will ever face is the state. A renowned Sophist of ancient Greece, Thrasymachus, argued that justice is the will of the stronger. Rights only exist as a legal fiction, as they can always be reneged by tyrants. Hence, I am an unwilling tool of a system that I have no stake in, this is the scam that permeates modern society.
2024-10-22 #
Americans have so many contradictory values in their morals and beliefs that it's impalpable. I have on my reading list, "America Against America" by Wang Huning, a scholar's take on how America will destroy itself, first published in 1991.
One of the strangest phenomena is how one part of America is actively working to destroy families and encourage all sorts of sexually deviant behavior, while the other is trying to ban pornography. None of them have any solution to the low fertility problem, while every Western government is undermining their own citizens by importing the third world. There is no incentive structure to fix anything, and the outcome is predictable.
2024-10-19 #
I've thought a lot about how base reality may not be the physical universe. My current thoughts are that consciousness forms base reality, and that it exists outside of the physical realm. Much like a child's lack of understanding of object impermanence, I think that actually this naive worldview may be true after all, and we grow to accept the illusion of reality.
This is probably congruous with Chris Langan's "Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe", and even though I've read a lot of material about it, I still don't quite understand it, perhaps it is meant to be so arcane? CTMU mentions a lot about "telic recursion", how the universe basically defines itself from a previous state. If so, then a previous state may imply discrete rather than continuous, and that there is a infinitesimal unit of time (Planck time).
A related concept that may challenge or validate the conscious model of reality is the double-slit experiment. Some smart guy, Eugene Wigner, said that consciousness is that which can collapse the particle-wave duality. Perhaps our observable universe is being calculated from our local point of origin, the first consciousness being as old as the age of the known universe.
2024-10-18 #
I've been thinking a lot about the value of a human life. The way that people are treated in this shitty and inhuman age, it's not surprising that most people are just seen as beasts of burden, or tools to be used. Create value, pay your bills and die. Social atomization seems to be at a peak, almost everywhere in the developed world has a below replacement fertility rate and every government's solution to the problem is import as much low quality human capital as possible.
If any cog in the machine disappeared they could be easily replaced. Many people die deaths of despair, usually as a result of some unseen bureaucrat deeming that person's life to be worth precisely zero. Any given person exists to create surplus value and die as soon as conveniently possible. A society as cannibalistic as any modern hyper-capitalist hellhole doesn't deserve to exist.
2024-10-11 #
I've recently read "The Rape of the Mind" by Joost A.M. Meerloo, a Dutch psychoanalyst who served in WWII. First published in 1956, it's quite old by now, but the nature of war hasn't changed. What's perhaps more relevant now than ever, is that the techniques used to brainwash military enemies, are used upon civilians by their own governments.
A fantastic thing is happening in our world. Today a man is no longer punished only for the crimes he has in fact committed. Now he may be compelled to confess to crimes that have been conjured up by his judges, who use his confession for political purposes. It is not enough for us to damn as evil those who sit in judgment. We must understand what impels the false admission of guilt; we must take another look at the human mind in all its frailty and vulnerability.
Remind anyone of January 6th? Consider that the government in wartime develops and tests these techniques in a military context against their enemies, so they can apply these tactics in lawfare, against their enemies (citizens). The Reid technique was practically designed to elicit false confessions using psychological warfare tactics. Merely knowing about psychological warfare is not adequate defense against it, everyone has a breaking point.
The terrorized victims finally find themselves compelled to express complete conformity to the tyrant’s wishes. Through court procedures, at which the victim mechanically reels off an inner record which has been prepared by his inquisitors during a preceding period, public opinion is lulled and thrown off guard. “A real traitor has been punished,” people think.
The "struggle sessions" in China during the mid-20th century are another example of effective psychological warfare against citizens, during which my grandfather was persecuted. Perhaps this is why my parents fled China, not knowing that they would be fleeing to Weimar America.
The US today has devolved into something worse, a totalitarian police-surveillance-terror state that would have made the former USSR jealous of its capabilities. It has created a citizenry of submissive cowards, as Dostoevsky has put it, "every decent man of our age must be a coward and a slave", because dissention could mean death. But until death, all defeat is psychological.
2024-10-08 #
Feels like I'm wasting my life away on trivialities like work, not being able to exercise agency in my life. Living every day as if it could be my last creates this sense of urgency, and yet I feel like I am wasting it by overanalyzing, procrastinating, sulking on purpose. I am tax cattle #284,349,562 and the less productive I am, the less the system feeds on me. Once you understand that the government hates you, a lot of things make sense. Joker 1 was about what you want to do to the system. Joker 2 was about what the system wants to do to you.
2024-10-07 #
If human life is so precious of a gift, it is squandered by human civilization. Most people live in neo-feudal societies as serfs, who are forced to pay their dues to the system that oppresses them. Slavery never ended, it was just extended to include more social classes. Not much has changed in regard to the superstructure of societies.
The state can kill any of its own citizens with impunity, they have the ultimate power: “he who has power to destroy a thing has the real control over it,” as Frank Herbert wrote in Dune. It is a funny thing to think about whenever doing anything that one is compelled to do, such as obeying orders, paying taxes, working, etc. It is so rare to have actual liberty and autonomy, perhaps such a thing only exists outside of a state.
2024-10-06 #
Looking back at the Salem witch trials, it's easy to assume that people were superstitious and gullible, but in fact the brutality of human behavior hasn't changed much since. It was a time when an accusation was effectively the same as a verdict, even though witchcraft isn't provable. Witches would be "swimmed": if they drowned then they were not a witch (but dead anyways), but if they floated (knew how to swim), they would be burned at the stake.
Witch hunts never really ended, they have been adapted to modern times, cancel culture is just one incarnation of it. One might have the wrong political views, and be witch hunted for it, and so on. It may involve state terror, in which a state uses all its power and authority to smite an individual who has done nothing wrong. The modern anarcho-tyrannical state seizes any opportunity to terrorize ordinary citizens. Solzhenitsyn said that "a communist system can be recognized by the fact that it spares the criminals and criminalizes the political opponent", but communism is not a pre-requisite. In fact some of the most prolific mass murderers have been communists, but rather than learning from the past, modern states are learning how to commit mass murder without needing ideology to justify it.
"Give me the man and I will give you the case against him" - Soviet secret police chief Lavrentiy Beria
2024-04-24 #
Do you know what is truly disturbing? The fact that civilization no longer serves humanity; it is you that exists to serve civilization. Your purpose is not to live and die for yourself, but for the system that subjugates you, and not only is this your reality, but it is one that you have come to accept, and that like you, your descendents will inherit this burden by accepting their place in this world as an object rather than a human being.
There is no future, only a waning past, and after that- nothing.
2024-03-25 #
Life just qualitatively gets worse over time. The same things that bring pleasure become less pleasurable. There's just less enjoyable content to consume, everything becomes more or less repetitive.
I am increasingly convinced that it's inconsequential whether I have children. I am still scared about what happens during and after death. I'm certain I'll either die suddenly, or old and alone. I'm not sure what the point of all this is, what arbitrary goals am I supposed to maximize. How I'll be judged when this life is done.
Everyone I know will be gone one day. This is obvious in the abstract, but I don't seem to act in accordance with this knowledge. Interactions just seem too normal.
There are only so many entries I will write in this short life. Time just seems to pass faster, maybe because death is closer than I think.
Lying, killing, destroying. War could be on the horizon, but it hasn't reached me yet. I'm anxious whether the USA will collapse slowly or catastrophically.
2024-02-26 #
Midazolam is given to the dying in palliative care, to ease suffering in passing. Prior to death: restlessness, insomnia, anxiety, lack of appetite, stress. Taxes must be filed for the dead by the living. Debts in this world cannot be transferred to the next. Conversely, even after the dissolution of the government there is a continuation plan to collect tax revenue.
2023-11-16 #
I am overwhelmed by feelings of fear and complacency. Fear of losing my middle income lifestyle one way or another, and the complacency of it. I haven't been poor since university, but I like to keep reminding myself of what that was like.
Thinking about death again lately, how I will leave this world with nothing. Not like I can take any fancy possessions with me, so might as well enjoy them while I can. I probably have too many things, some of which I need to sell, but I'm too lazy.
2023-11-06 #
I took a long break from writing anything, as if my mind went illiterate in 2012. Lately I have been suffering from poor sleep, likely sleep apnea, but also mental restlessness, as my thoughts keep racing. This has prompted me to write down some thoughts.
Currently feel like I am waiting to die, most likely from disease or accident. Life has been incredibly stale since getting a job in LA, that was in 2017. These years have gone by so fast, with maybe only a few interesting events or vacations in between long periods of boredom.
Happy automatons living out their lives, having their ChatGPT training set conversations. Having human relationships feels more and more alien to me. I am the alien to everyone here, like the Lebanon Hanover song goes. Humans generally need communities and relationships to not be suicidally depressed.
Part of why I stopped writing at all was the pressure, of having some sort of audience, even though fewer and fewer people read any form of long-form writing as "text at sample velocity" has proven to be dominant. At least my own diary is like a no-audience underground. The real reason is that I had not much to share, not even with myself. Mindlessly going through each day, work is a real mind killer.
