Dependency is Not Knowing

Lots of us go on and on about us and them, The Matrix, Sleepers or being truly awake. Lots of ways to say that the system and the culture that surrounds is ultimately working to force conformity, to force compliance. To make a mass produced, plastic people distracted by gadgets.

Now I have read lots of ways to Fight Back, to do something. What I rarely  see is the fact that most of us stay tied in and connected to this thing due to dependency, due to the fact that most of us can't provide the most basic building blocks of life for ourselves.

If you can't defend yourself, you need the Law and Law Enforcement to protect you.

If you can't make your own clothing, you have to depend on clothing stores.

If you can't produce your own food, you can't feed yourself without a grocery store.

Pretty basic shit and scary too. When I look at American Culture and the Archetypes of Women that exists the one that sticks out is the 1950's housewife. She could do things that are no longer considered relevant in today's society. She could sew. She could garden. She could cook.

With a loss of relevancy to what has been considered woman's work, there are now several generations even more dependent than before. Women that can claim the ability to balance a spread sheet but can't cook a simple meal or sew a button. Women who hail their freedom to vote, to work, to have casual sex, but they couldn't survive without all of their basic needs met by something else.

I am desperate to KNOW beyond a shadow of a doubt that I could provide these basic things for myself. Food, water and shelter. I work towards it constantly. Whether its trying to be in better shape (fighting shape Goddammit. This is the year!! ), learning to sew, garden, hunt, whatever I can think of.

For me, it has everything to do with the first part of this blog. That status quo thing that robs everyone of any free thought, in favor of distraction, that instructs to ask no questions.  I want to be freer of it (I think actual freedom is impossible) .

The moment I know I can do one little thing, that I don't have to get from that, I feel just a bit less dependant, just a bit less vulnerable, just a little bit freer.

I think for most of us, it's the dependency, that keeps us shackled and chugging along for that machine. Dependency, is not knowing you can provide those basic building blocks of life  for yourself.

Reinventing (Response to Dimitri)

Dimitri posted a blog about reinventing oneself on the internet and my response got about as long as the blog.

I did this “reinventing” oneself on the internet thing once. For those who don’t know I had an account at SIN, deleted it and came back as FS. Here’s the thing, it was stupid, pretentious, ego filled dumbshit. It didn’t feel that way at the time, but it does now.

While I have had some of my views refined through debate (because they didn’t stand up to hard scrutiny), I don’t really change my opinion to change or adjust how people feel about me. I have made numerous mistakes online and honestly, I want to own them. I want people to see, even via text, the way one can grow and develop if they take this seriously and put the ideas into practice in their life.

When I came back, I made a vow, which was simple, do the shit, and write about the journey. Rather than be someone obsessed with the way they look to others, show the journey. The mistakes, the trials, the getting knocked down and getting back up again. That way others can see an actual example of the way putting ideas to the Fire, looks.

I have been in unnecessary online arguments because someone hurt my pride. I have picked up and dropped different forms publically, I have doubted the label Satanist for myself publically, I have been mocked, threatened, put down, and a host of other things publically.
I don’t leave because I made a mistake of some kind and come back reinvented. I just let people see the missteps. Because everybody will make those and pretending otherwise is the height of Self Deceit, imo. There are people behind those screennames after all.

Too many people want to be viewed as perfect, think of themselves as perfect. Perfection should be the goal. A goal that is unattainable, but worthy of pursuit. If you think you are already perfect, you are liable to not work to perfect yourself.

Video Killed The Radio Star...

The title is from one of the songs that first touches on the consequences of technology. Consequences all of us to one degree or another face.

The main consequence of this internet phenomena I see is on social relationships. A seeming inability to connect with others offline, resulting in a dependency on the computer for any socialization that occurs.

They say in life you find friends at certain times an that the older someone gets the less opportunity they have to connect with someone else. I am of "that age." I have a lot of kids, I am happily married. I don't go to bars. I am not in high school. My interests are "unusual" at best.

Most people I meet, I meet through my kids. That's what we have in common, getting slapped with a fertile stick. So when I first started the online thing I grew to depend on it for quality social interaction. I get the "why", I really do.

I however, refuse to become that kind of person. So I have forced myself to find new outlets. Classes, Pagan Gatherings (fuck you in advance, you go find any other kind of occult group in the South), etc. It has worked.

Here's the thing, I don't need a person to agree with all my stances on things to develop a quality relationship with them. I just need to know they are one of mine in some fashion. A person I can move to my inner circle.

Flesh and blood relationships are better. Period. A person in front of you who knows you, really knows you. It's messier, it's warmer, and ultimately more fulfilling than any e relationship with an e persona can ever be.

That's what bothers me the most I guess. To me, the interwebz feels cold, like I can't trust anybody to be who they claim to be. I feel like a lot of people are forgetting that with risk comes reward. Any person worth knowing is worth letting in, worth dropping a front for. How can that really happen via mega bites?

Presentation Matters

In life the second you come into eyesight of another Individual, you are being judged. When you begin to speak to them, interact, etc others form an opinion.

Now this opinion is based on external features. You can be the World's best babysitter but if to have a cigarette hanging out of your mouth and every other word is a cuss word, you ain't getting the job.

A lot of people sit around and bemoan this fact. They say to never judge a book by its cover, take the time to get to know the person first. This is falsity on the most basic level. It dismisses the initial judgement. It dismisses the fact that these things matter, that what you present counts.

Now as a Satanist, how does one use this to their advantage? How do you use this whip, snap judgement call humans make to serve you, to make your life better?

In my opinion, LaVey captures this most accurately in The Satanic Witch. The art of manipulation takes many forms, including presenting yourself in a fashion that suits each situation.
If you deny this and cling to the idea that you deserve people to wait to figure out what you're really about, you will fail in life. You are being judged constantly, I am being judged constantly.

Does another's judgment of you matter? Yeah it does. If you want or need  something from them rather it's respect, love, affection, a job, whatever.  Then you will need to blend in and on some level conform to the standard they have set. Or else you aren't going to achieve that thing you desire. Pretty simple shit, eh?

When the major of my validation came from external factors, I never wanted to really conform to anybody else's standards about anything from clothing to the way I speak. It was really important to me to have a host of External things to define me. Without my torn jeans who was I? Without The Ramones being my favorite band, how would somebody get to know who I really was?

Now, I understand how these things are just that. The surface, the presentation. Not me as a person. That is bigger, broader and more in depth than the way I dress, who I hang out with or what I listen to. The judgment of others on that presentation, doesn't really matter.

What matters is my own judgement on my actions. I am harsher than my worst critics. I expect perfection, not good enough. I expect strength, even when others would run screaming away from a situation. I expect myself to be better, more than the average person I encounter. I expect MORE from myself than any critic I have ever ran across.

Why would I bother to hold myself to another's standard? I have a hard enough time living up to my own. I am a cruel bitch of a Master.

Looking For Answers

Looking for answers, within the debris that is the external abstractions that surround me. A constant barrage of information, truth, subjective perspectives, distractions, manipulation, lies, hidden agendas, distortion, media coverage trying to force me to conform, to be another’s ideal.
The more inward the compass for validation becomes, the easier it is to fight back against that onslaught of conformity, of stagnation and eventual living death. That’s what I see when I look at “them.” The living dead. People who have become so programmed to seek external validation they have lost their own minds, any original thought replaced by a Consumerist, ostrich in the sand mentality. Lost to any potential, any drive to be more than those that came before them.
I don’t want to be one of the Living Dead, one of the programmed, so I fight. For me, not anyone else. I want my children to be Individuals, outside of any sheepish mindset, but I can’t make that happen. They make their own choices, unless I want to be like the kind I hate and force some weird indoctrination. So it all bleeds back to just me.
That’s the base isn’t it? Just you (or in my case me). Deciding what’s wrong and right, you deciding how to live, who and why to love, coming to an understanding of the human experience based on well, personal experience.
Self Deceit then becomes an enemy of epic proportions. With you being the only true gauge of knowledge, your personal experiences, you and your own subjectivity is also the biggest enemy. Emotional responses, personal attachments, preferences, etc may cloud the answer you seek.
So finding the answers relies on realistic assessment of oneself above ego masturbation. Realizing your innate imperfection being the real key to self sovreignity. That way you can rise above the self deceit, the lies we all tell to ourselves to justify our nature, in favor of a glimpse at the Objective, the hard, the real if only for a moment.