Neurosis

While one man, feeling physically ill, spends his time recuperating and concentrating on becoming better, looking forward to the return of his good health, another man, neurotic and plagued with malicious thoughts, when suffering from the same physical illness, spends his time consumed with his rage against everyone who isn't expressing compassion towards him, relishing the idea of a future conversation in which he'll be able to bring up this moment of neglect on their part, to add to his list of imagined grievances.

(Written in 2014. Posted now on Instagram.)

On Losing Selves

They lost themselves to each other. "No, they

lost parts of themselves to each other. They lost

parts of themselves, but they found other parts of

themselves. They gave parts of themselves to

parts of each other, but they mistook their partial

selves as whole selves, thus thinking they gave

themselves to each other." They lost parts of

themselves to other parts of themselves, but they

gave what they found to each other, so they lost

their whole selves, to each other. They lost the

selves they had previously known, and they lost

the selves they had found.

Edited: 21-7-2022

Posted on Instagram. 

Before I Forget

I almost forgot this thought I wanted to write about forgetting thoughts I want to write. I wondered, before I forgot, how many thoughts have occurred to me in my life that were (and still are) worth writing but which I never wrote down so I've completely forgotten. 

What a loss these thoughts are, if they ever existed. 

[Edited 7-12-2022. Now on Instagram, where you can like it.]

The Liars

A liar will lie to protect another liar's lie. This, the liar will do, not for an affinity felt between liars but because the liar wants you to believe his own lies if he ever uses a similar lie. If you doubt the other liar's lies, the liar will throw doubts at your doubts, to make you question yourself if it is ever his own lies that draw your suspicions. If you are good at discerning the truth this puts the liar at risk, so the liar tries to damage your truth-detection skills, or failing that, to make you doubt yourself. For his own deceptions to work on you, the liar needs your views of reality to be distorted. For his own lies to work on you, the liar needs you to believe all the other lies. 

Edited: 24-8-2022

On Rules

Rules between rule-makers, rule-keepers, and rule-breakers. Between rule-makers who break the rules, and rule-breakers zealous about the rules, and rule-keepers who don't believe in the rules. Between rule-keepers who would like less rules or no rules, and rule-breakers who want more rules. Between rule-makers who make rules they like and rules they hate, all the rules that benefit them if followed (by others), and rule-breakers who hate rule-makers for not making the rules they believe should be set (for others) even if they themselves would break the rules. Between rule-keepers who are punctual about the rules they keep but believe it is fine not to be so rigid with the rules, and rule-breakers who rage fanatically against rule-keepers for not being as zealous about said rules which rule-breakers lazily break. Rules, say the righteous rule-breakers to the unrighteous rule-keepers, are meant to be made and kept. 

[Edited on 14-10-2022]

Consequences

It was Ramadhan, the fasting man had no patience left. He got out of his car and beat the laborer who had angered him. He looked very official as he beat the laborer. Another man filmed the event, and posted it online. There was an uproar, and a law came out because of this. You were not allowed anymore to post a person's photo or personal data online without their consent.

(Not) Selling dogs can be a dangerous business…

A dog-owner wanted to sell his dog. A dog-buyer came to his house to buy the dog. The dog-owner's little girl told her dad she didn't want him to sell the dog. The dog-owner accepted his daughter's wish and told the dog-buyer he wouldn't be selling the dog. The dog-buyer got up in a rage, went to his car, brought back a sword, hit the dog-owner on the head, and chopped off his hand. The dog-buyer didn't get the dog and went to jail, the dog-owner lost his hand but kept the dog, and the dog lives on, freely, limbs intact.

True story.

Edited: 29-07-2022

Fears and non-fears

Afraid of making a mistake, I avoid doing something, while wondering if it's a mistake to avoid doing it. 

Although I'm worried that doing it may not be a mistake, still I avoid doing it, because what if others think doing it would be a mistake?

And though it would be a useful fear to have, I don't wonder if others would think avoiding it is the mistake.

I wonder why I don't wonder this. 

My Ego

He hurts my ego, and my instinct is to ascribe some moral flaw to him for hurting me. But since I know it's my ego that is hurt, I tell myself I should not react in defense of my ego. This makes me feel better, since I get to tell myself, "Look how noble you are, allowing him to say what hurts you because you don't want to defend your ego." Being aware of this self-deception though, disarms my defense, and I am left again with my offended ego. I am now very conscious of my ego, and my self-deception as a defense mechanism; I am also aware that these are subtle incidents in one's soul that others may not notice in themselves. This last bit is also a defense mechanism in which I am telling myself not how noble I am, but how everyone else must be just as bad, (although I'm also praising myself for noticing).

Edited: 14-09-2022

How



We're hurt by what others say and don't mean, and what they mean and don't say, and what we imagine them to mean, and madly enough, what we imagine them saying and meaning because it makes sense that they would, or that they could, the possibility exists and that is enough to hurt. 

Posted on Instagram. 

A New Nose

Her wedding was coming up and she wanted a new nose. Her old nose was fine, but oh the photos she could post of her honeymoon with her new nose! So she took her old nose to the doctor and asked for a replacement. Her new nose brought her headaches at first, then swelling, then bleeding eventually, finally landing her in the emergency unit in the hospital, and the courts soon after. Her fiancé had left her new nose, she told the courts, and though it wasn't clear why, her job also quit on her new nose. She sometimes dreamed of her old nose laughing at her, mocking her new nose.

[Edited on 04-10-2022]

The Cat

The cat ran out. The man ran after the cat. The man who ran after the cat passed a boy walking his dog who said the dog had scared the cat that ran away. The man who ran beat the boy walking his dog who said the dog had scared the cat that ran away; this upset the dog that scared the cat and pushed the dog to run away. The dog returned, but would not eat nor drink, and slept all day. The court fined the man who beat the boy who walked his dog that ran away and then returned: 5,000 for beating the boy, 40,000 for the dog that ran away and then returned, and 1,000 in legal fees; the court wasn’t told what happened to the cat that ran away. 

(Short story in six sentences. I posted this on Instagram. It was inspired by this article.)

This Blog

My idea for this blog is for it to be like a notebook. This is where I’ll post drafts, notes, thoughts, incomplete writings, and writing exercises like short stories in six sentences and so on. This way there is less pressure to only post what is good. If I post something, it doesn’t have to be the final version, and I can keep editing it as I see fit. I’ll add in the dates every time I edit. 

I suppose I’ll find out more about what I’ll do with it, if anything at all, as I go along. 

Excerpt from The Culture of Narcissism

"Our society is narcissistic, then, in a double sense. People with narcissistic personalities, although not necessarily more numerous than before, play a conspicuous part in contemporary life, often rising to positions of eminence. Thriving on the adulation of the masses, these celebrities set the tone of public life and of private life as well, since the machinery of celebrity recognizes no boundaries between the public and the private realm. The beautiful people—to use this revealing expression to include not merely wealthy globetrotters but all those who bask, however briefly, in the full glare of the cameras—live out the fantasy of narcissistic success, which consists of nothing more substantial than a wish to be vastly admired, not for one’s accomplishments but simply for oneself, uncritically and without reservation."

- Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism (1979)

Orwell's Animal Farm as a call to reading

Ever since I read George Orwell's Animal Farm, I've been handing it out to just about anyone I know who hasn't read it. Aside from its content, which is why I started recommending it to others, it’s also quite short and easily read, appealing qualities for non-readers or readers not used to fiction. 

In terms of content, while there are various takeaways one could get from the book, I believe one of them should be an urgent encouragement to read and constantly educate oneself. 

Let us review the events just enough to prove this point and not to spoil it on those who haven’t read it yet. In the beginning of the book, after the animals revolt, they take it on themselves to learn how to read. Some of them learn well and others find they cannot, no matter how hard they struggle. Those who master reading end up becoming the ruling class, whereas the various lesser abilities to read by the other animals determine how much they could be fooled and controlled. The other animals do not reach the level of the pigs, who are the only animals to master reading and writing in Animal Farm.

So those who can read fool those who cannot read. It is as if the author is warning us of the dangers of not learning by ourselves, as we end up being taken advantage of by those who know more. We often put our trust in those we think know more, and their interests may often come before ours. Think of religious clerics and secular intellectuals in our times who try to persuade people to blindly follow their causes, not always to the people’s benefit, but for some advantage that this intellectual class will benefit from.

Different media channels, each with their own agenda, present us with their own version of current events, how can one determine the truth, if that is at all possible? Orwell himself writes in his excellent essay, Notes on Nationalism: “Probably the truth is discoverable, but the facts will be so dishonestly set forth in almost any newspaper that the ordinary reader can be forgiven either for swallowing lies or for failing to form an opinion. The general uncertainty as to what is really happening makes it easier to cling to lunatic beliefs.”

The reading required here is not reading as leisure or as a hobby, it is a necessity if one does not want to be manipulated into an undesirable situation. Orwell writes in another essay: “To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.” What Orwell is writing of here specifically is seeing beyond our biases. Unlike propaganda and disinformation in general, these are internal problems that make us refuse to acknowledge unmistakable facts, or forget contradictory opinions we often hold. We may forget our own moral codes and laws simply by reversing a situation, by changing the sides involved in a conflict. For example, should we see a certain group of people we disapprove of for religious or political opinions being oppressed we find ourselves justifying it to the greatest extent, perhaps shifting all blame on the victims themselves, and should the situation be reversed we find ourselves appalled by the oppression and the justification that uses the same words we have used before. Try this as a thought experiment: replace the sides in any controversial event to see if your opinion of it stays the same.

Orwell recommends keeping a diary of one's opinions to keep track of these changes, reversals, and contradictions. I suppose in this day and age, many of us already record our opinions on the Internet, whether on Facebook, Twitter, or other social media websites. 

Returning to Orwell’s Animal Farm, I’ve started asking readers to imagine if they had to be a character in the book, who would they choose? Then I would ask them which character they thought came closest to representing them in reality.

The obvious answer is that no one would wish to be a character in Animal Farm, and the only way out of that is through constant and rigorous self-education. If you haven’t read it, don’t take my word for it, go read it for yourself.