Tuesday, January 08, 2008

A New Species


A new year demands new thinking. That and I'm just tired of the old junk. My brain, which I was beginning to think would never turn out anything interesting for my soul to contemplate, seems to have recovered. Weird shit is happening daily. My stress levels are down. I am back to fantasizing about various impossibilities, ones that have just enough reality attached to keep them from drifting into the void. My kids are cracking me up daily. In fact they should probably get the credit for getting me out of my most recent philosophical cul-de-sac. Them and Joe Strummer. In his new biographical documentary "The Future is Unwritten" Joe goes into a pretty good funk post-Clash and then after a while snaps out of it. He became something of a hippie toward the end of his life, which while not recommended, is OK if you've never been a hippie. Basically one day he woke up and said to himself, "I'm still alive." That's about all it takes if you say it to yourself in the right tone of voice.


An old employee just happened by today and it didn't surprise me that he was here given that I had thought about him a few weeks or days ago. What the fuck happened to him? Well, besides alcoholism, nothing in his previous straight life seemed to do it for him and after his folks died he just went nuts. Literally. Dealing drugs, smuggling illegals over the border, stuff like that. But he didn't seem unhappy. In fact he seemed to have embraced his demons in a way that calmed his own fears down, for the fear of the unknown can provide one with many a visit to Hades, sans the actual placement of the foot in hell. I am of a similar species of neurotic. Not so willing to delink from reality but with some aspirations. I'll report back after a lunch or two with this most interesting bloke.


I read a book, The Elementary Particles, by Michel Houellebecq. This would be the first book I've managed to finish without a gun to my head in a fairly great while. And what a book. In the end he suggests that the problem with humanity (I'm going to elide a great deal here) is that we are sorely in need of a new paradigm. Religion was supplanted by Rationalism which left us with soul killing Materialism. Which means the guy with the biggest dick wins. Back to a Hobbsian hell is hardly an upgrade. What to do? Become a new species, who no longer needs reproduction to define it. Sort of a moral eugenics I guess. Without the killing of inferiors. Just the raising of superiors. Like I said I elided a lot. Read the book if have the time, for just in the way he handles many thorny intellectual problems it is worth it. Translated from the French, of course. The irony about the book is that it attacks hippie idealism, something that sorta saved Strummer. But what is the same about both is that both get the bigger point: you have to live for something outside yourself. And that should be my mantra, because that's what I do better than the living only for moi.

1 comment:

ibfamous said...

i agree, live for something bigger than yourself... and that would be me! all donations can be sent to:

Sallie Mae Corp
1 Anal Probe Way
Hell, 60619

oh yeah, you are resolved of all sin and forgiven completely for whatever you thought was a good idea at the time. the rest, um... hey look, a comet (exit stage right)