Potential

If you have a low tolerance for arrogance I suggest you turn away now. It's not that I'm so drenched in hubris that this will be intentional, acknowledged in the first remark, and still pursued. What it is though is musings on destiny.

We'll start with in how I don't believe we have one. We're not preordained to accomplish any substantial feat when we first set forth from the womb into the world. As we grow and generate our own little adorable cognitive psyche we do not become cogs in a predetermined machine nor to we slip into roles set out in the cosmic dance.

This is of course simply a belief system I choose to hold. If the opposite were true - and I was predestined to believe the above (that being a lie) I would of course be powerless to change it and well thats the kind of discussion best saved for M.C. Escher paintings.

What I do believe is that our souls are happiest doing ... something. A big problem with the world is that people don't figure out what that something is and get waylaid with all sorts of impressions and invitations and insinuations that what will make our souls happy is coincidentally something that when obtained will advance the agenda of someone else. Thus the battle for dollars and mindshare is ever continuing.

And its not that materialism is bad. Maybe some souls are happiest selling and some buying and some being envious and others happy as a fucking pig in shit breaking into your house and stealing all of your crap to buy black market prescription drugs. The problem as I see it is I do not see people actually engaging in a personal dialog and trying to understand what really makes them happy. In my theory the answer can be anything, but those who are cleaving to one thing or another without exploring the issue have not found their answer because in my experience finding that answer is a difficult path fraught with peril and I find it hard to believe anyone could accidentally stumble down it.

I don't know exactly what makes my soul happy. I'm very fond of sex, as well as all forms of multimedia engagement. I suspect to be happy I must continually dabble within both spheres. However I have a nihilistic approach to both spheres, and especially the people who purport to adhere to either.

I previously mentioned in sensationalistic passing that we have attended orgies in the past. We've stopped having anything whatsoever to do with the local swinging scene as in our opinion - or, let me say my opinion as I can only speak for me - the people involved were pretty off kilter.

I do have fantasies and visions of a subculture where I can exist in a sublime lack of self doubt and fear, and a big part of that would be the ability and comfort with expressing my sexuality in whatever way I see fit. But given the levels of social pitfall society builds around sexual expression, I can't accept a cavalier migration to that sort of existence as anything other than a self-destructive denial that eventually ruins everything it touches. So when we encountered a group that was dominated by men and women who would have sex with anyone, clearly (and openly) accelerated by all manner of drug, and these people were more than a little lazy about barrier protection in sexual behaviors, I was both fascinated and filled with a defensive urge to run as fast as humanly possible in the other direction.

The fascination stems from a carnal voyeuristic impulse, and that no matter how you slice it watching 6 or 7 women have group sex is all sorts of hot. The defense mechanism comes from the simple mathematics that while I am very open to advanced sexual frontiers this willingness is build on a foundation of openess, honesty, and trust. Nothing any of these people seems to give a damn about. My overall conclusion is that it would be nothing short of suicidal to engage sexually with these people.

And let me tell you how much I didn't want that to be the case.

It is, really, the same with multimedia; less pretentiously video games and movies. I'm a big fan of science fiction and fantasy, but the internet subcultures that build up around such genre entertainment is fucking frightening. It seems to be a quest to artificially create a social niche in which one can define oneself according to pre-shared community standards rather than a sincere expression of enjoyment or a celebration of an artistic work. I've attended one video game convention and found it very hard to relate to the people there - I feel I love video games more than anyone I met there, but I was unwilling to slot myself into a convenient fandom and thus was not speaking the same language.

The parallel to religion is perhaps very apt, and I as always am filling the role of the true heretic. Each subculture builds up certain things and I feel compelled to dwell on the deficiencies each thing brings to the table. It is not a pessimism, it is a hard and fast desire to be un-beholden to anything other that the reality of the experience and to pick and choose from various candidates. Indeed, perhaps it could be said I evaluate things not on what they do right or how good they are, but on how much they do wrong or how bad they are. Again this isn't cynicism, it is more a unflinching appreciation for honesty. Everything is terrible - some of it just tries harder.

And it is that trying that makes the critical difference. Picture two individuals attempting the same task. One will undoubtedly accomplish it better than the other and in doing so be "better". However we should not evaluate our lives based on the complex and multivalued standards of others, no, instead we should find out what is going to make our soul happy and strive to do that as well as we can. As long as we are open to some surprising understandings of the self this seems to be a foolproof proposition as its only real directive is "try" followed by "keep trying". I see myself surrounded by people that defy the fundamental honesty that is necessary to even begin that struggle, and it makes me sad.

But I'll try to be more open about that tomorrow.