Eleven To Twenty

Eleven to Twenty

11. There are three ways, in my not so humble opinion, a human "knows" about "something": 

a. Being taught by his elders (parents and teachers), say, for example, the existence of a God that has power over him, and would punish or reward him in accordance to his behaviors.

b. Empirical facts and the principles of verification and duplication

c. Logic, reasoning, and common sense.

At the age of 11, I determined that there was no Personal God as told to me by my parents and "conventional wisdom". From that moment on, I have regarded myself as a special human, endowed with a metaphysical precocity, at least with regard to the existence of God, especially after I learned that not until they were 15, 16 years of age that Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Friedrich Nietzsche arrived at the same conclusion as I did. I have a firm conviction that those who believe in God willingly practice a game of self-delusion. And that invites contempt and derision, unspoken mostly, from me. Man is the only animal that lies to himself. But not all humans do so. The ones who really respect themselves and take delight in facts and truths and knowledge and logic don't do so. 

12. Unlike Nietzsche who claimed that his blood flowed slowly, mine always races through my veins. I do everything quickly, including falling in love. I am a creature of contradictions. Inside me are warring opposites. I don't have integration. I vacillate from one extreme to the next. I don't forgive easily but I am always touched tremendously by acts of forgiveness. I never initiate attacks, but always counter-attack fiercely. I can take all valid criticisms, no matter how severe, but if the criticisms are laced with lies and dishonesty, the motherfuckers and bitches who make those criticisms had better look over their shoulders the rest of their fucking lives. I hate liars. It has been my observation that I often trigger the most stupid and extreme cases of self-projections from liars and losers. 

13. But perhaps I shouldn't be too hard on my inferiors--- the assholes and the scumbags. Perhaps I should adopt the attitude of Anais Nin, "What kills life is the absence of mystery." I would like to add that, besides mystery, life's meaning and flavor get deepened if there is an element of danger. Man is an animal, I would maintain, that does not like to live in peace for so long a period. He craves excitement, challenge, and danger. He thus loves conquests and wars. But unlike the human animals I detest, I first wage war on myself and then on everybody. I wage war on my body and my wallet. I feel alive when I put myself in danger. I want to know what I am really made of. I just re-read the headings of my posts of the last few months. They were all about musings about realities. I could be delusional but I have been trying to have peace with myself before I die. I have been slowly recognizing that I need to work on my temper, otherwise I feel I am superior in values and knowledge than most humans I have come into contact with. They are just into living like animals without developing qualities that set humans apart from subhumans. 

14. In Nietzsche's later works, Dionysus is no longer the spirit of unrestrained passion, but the symbol of the affirmation of life with all of its suffering and terror. "The tragic man affirms even the harshest suffering." One becomes what one is. We are bigger than the circumstances. We are more than just the sum of our experiences and choices. It's very easy to quit. Everybody can do that. It's much harder to say yes to life, no matter what happens to us. To do so, our lives must have a clear purpose and a deep meaning. Superficialities and frivolities are for hollow, straw men. I am not a hollow, straw man. I am water. I am fire. I am a solid rock. I have a clear vision of what my life is. It's no accident that I am an atheist, irresistible to smart, sensitive women, and excellent in debate. I read philosophy, literature, psychology, and just about anything that deals with humans and their make-up and conditions. On top of that, I make it fun to write and study languages. I am rare and I am arrogant. Very few humans impress me. Those who do are/were remarkably great and unusual whose outlook and conduct were something I need to emulate. They have/had a bigger heart or greater mind or commanding charisma. 

 

15. I used to digest and then contest, protest, and detest all the claims, reports, stories, myths, legends, reminiscences, yarns, and anecdotes about me. I don't do so anymore. I ration my precious resources. I don't have much time left on this planet. I am listening to my friend, the infamous assassin, Omar Sabat. He told me, "Roberto, mi querido amigo, just be true to yourself. Fuck public opinions. What are exactly public opinions anyway? Public is comprised mostly of folks that are uninformed, unintelligent, unkind, and unwise. So fuck the opinions these folks have. Shit, they believe in the "miracles" performed by an untutored, unlettered, uneducated, wandering, self-proclaimed prophet. They called him "Son of God" (sic!). Shit, they believe in the physical locales of heaven and hell. So, what they think about you don't mean shit because they already show they don't know how to think."

16. Okay, let's talk about love and sex and the complexities of the human heart.

First, everybody knows that sex is brush fire, quick and flashy and eventually petered out, until lightening strikes again. Love is a slow burn, an earthquake, and a tsunami of many interrelated factors. Love lasts much longer, sometimes a life time.

Second, love includes sex; that means sex cannot be more than a subset of love.

Third, having made clear the nature of sex (which is bigger than mere lust) and love, let me talk about the complexities of my human heart. After many, many ventures and adventures, incursions and excursions, into the arenas of love and sex, I have found out the following:

a) Women are sexually attracted to me, but only a few (2, maybe 3 so far) do truly love me. Love takes giving, sacrifice, understanding, and forgiveness. Love is tied with childhood memories and aspirations.

b) I am now interested in true loves, not a quick jump into the hay. I do love and care about my wife, but I still need to be loved by other women. I, however, am not looking for love anymore. I have become jaded,  cynical, and much wiser. Also, I am too busy to improve my body, my mind, and my wallet to dally around anymore. 

17. Now, read every word in the following article by David Brooks. The article's heading is Mental Virtues. Everything I have written, done, or said stemmed from the points raised in the article. Having a college degree does not necessarily mean one is intellectually honest or brave. I have met many college graduates who are intellectual weaklings or cowards. 

"We all know what makes for good character in soldiers. We’ve seen the movies about heroes who display courage, loyalty and coolness under fire. But what about somebody who sits in front of a keyboard all day? Is it possible to display and cultivate character if you are just an information age office jockey, alone with a memo or your computer?

Of course it is. Even if you are alone in your office, you are thinking. Thinking well under a barrage of information may be a different sort of moral challenge than fighting well under a hail of bullets, but it’s a character challenge nonetheless.

In their 2007 book, “Intellectual Virtues,” Robert C. Roberts of Baylor University and W. Jay Wood of Wheaton College list some of the cerebral virtues. We can all grade ourselves on how good we are at each of them.

First, there is love of learning. Some people are just more ardently curious than others, either by cultivation or by nature. 

Second, there is courage. The obvious form of intellectual courage is the willingness to hold unpopular views. But the subtler form is knowing how much risk to take in jumping to conclusions. The reckless thinker takes a few pieces of information and leaps to some faraway conspiracy theory. The perfectionist, on the other hand, is unwilling to put anything out there except under ideal conditions for fear that she could be wrong. Intellectual courage is self-regulation, Roberts and Wood argue, knowing when to be daring and when to be cautious. The philosopher Thomas Kuhn pointed out that scientists often simply ignore facts that don’t fit with their existing paradigms, but an intellectually courageous person is willing to look at things that are surprisingly hard to look at.

Third, there is firmness. You don’t want to be a person who surrenders his beliefs at the slightest whiff of opposition. On the other hand, you don’t want to hold dogmatically to a belief against all evidence. The median point between flaccidity and rigidity is the virtue of firmness. The firm believer can build a steady worldview on solid timbers but still delight in new information. She can gracefully adjust the strength of her conviction to the strength of the evidence. Firmness is a quality of mental agility. 

Fourth, there is humility, which is not letting your own desire for status get in the way of accuracy. The humble person fights against vanity and self-importance. He’s not writing those sentences people write to make themselves seem smart; he’s not thinking of himself much at all. The humble researcher doesn’t become arrogant toward his subject, assuming he has mastered it. Such a person is open to learning from anyone at any stage in life.

Fifth, there is autonomy. You don’t want to be a person who slavishly adopts whatever opinion your teacher or some author gives you. On the other hand, you don’t want to reject all guidance from people who know what they are talking about. Autonomy is the median of knowing when to bow to authority and when not to, when to follow a role model and when not to, when to adhere to tradition and when not to.

Finally, there is generosity. This virtue starts with the willingness to share knowledge and give others credit. But it also means hearing others as they would like to be heard, looking for what each person has to teach and not looking to triumphantly pounce upon their errors. 

We all probably excel at some of these virtues and are deficient in others. But I’m struck by how much of the mainstream literature on decision-making treats the mind as some disembodied organ that can be programed like a computer. 

In fact, the mind is embedded in human nature, and very often thinking well means pushing against the grain of our nature — against vanity, against laziness, against the desire for certainty, against the desire to avoid painful truths. Good thinking isn’t just adopting the right technique. It’s a moral enterprise and requires good character, the ability to go against our lesser impulses for the sake of our higher ones.

Montaigne once wrote that “We can be knowledgeable with other men’s knowledge, but we can’t be wise with other men’s wisdom.” That’s because wisdom isn’t a body of information. It’s the moral quality of knowing how to handle your own limitations. Warren Buffett made a similar point in his own sphere, “Investing is not a game where the guy with the 160 I.Q. beats the guy with the 130 I.Q. Once you have ordinary intelligence, what you need is the temperament to control the urges that get other people into trouble.” 

Character tests are pervasive even in modern everyday life. It’s possible to be heroic if you’re just sitting alone in your office. It just doesn’t make for a good movie. "

18. Lao-Tsu had a point about the paradox of Nature and Man. The most yielding and flexible are the strongest and the most durable. We don't know the character and true nature of a human until he is tested on money, sex, power, fame, and attitude about knowledge (honesty about his knowledge or plain insecurity).

Most humans are fearful of appearing stupid and ignorant. However, instead of using that fear to work on their mind and expand their knowledge, most human animals would just lie, pretend, and bullshit their ways through life. In trying to be knowledgeable when they open their mouths, they invite contempt from folks like me who are in the know. I don't know what's wrong with being honest and say, "sorry, I don't have a fucking clue about the topic/subject, so I can't really comment on that." Instead, the assholes and scumbags would open their mouths and start pontificating. The spectacle is so fucking absurd and ridiculous that it even becomes funny. I run into animals like that all the time. I lose respect for them right away and start looking at them like a pile of shit by the roadside just recently deposited by a roaming mongrel. A warning: any motherfucker who talks to me must be prepared to back up, support, and substantiate their comments and observations with facts and logic, otherwise I will lower my formidable knowledge and logic on him like a crushing, wrecking ball. Actually, I usually just walk away to the nearest toilet and take a leak or a dump. There's no point of correcting ignorant, stupid, unread assholes. If I had real power, I would line them up against the wall and shoot each motherfucker right between the eyes. I swear I would. They don't deserve to live at all. They just waste resources on this planet. This planet is for real humans who respect facts and logic, who are generous with money, gentle and caring during sex, who are not crazy about power or fame. This planet is for gentle, caring humans who have morals and patience to work for a better planet free of unnecessary contamination and exploitation. This planet is not for animals which shit where they sleep and eat. 

19. I keep saying over and over again that one must know his place in society, especially how he is viewed----rightly or wrongly---by others. After the two physically vertically challenged and intellectual midget bitches made gratuitous and false comments about me, I have been meditating on intelligence (really knowing oneself and others), silence as opposed to lashing out in anger and spite, nature of love (forgiveness, forbearance, not vengeance), and appearance and reality. If a person does not love you or stops loving you, you must confront a sad but plausible possibility that maybe deep down you are shit and are not worthy to be loved and cared for because nobody would walk away from something/someone that is good and precious. So instead of saying things that belittled the man who had just dumped you, you must rise to the occasion and use the event to better yourself. But the two bitches were too lazy and stupid to do that. That's why they are being stuck at being stupid, ignorant, and poor. They fall back on excuses and insults instead of hard work to better themselves. They don't the will power and the intellectual resources. 

I am not saying I was never spurned or dumped by women. I was, and very much so, especially in my stupid, lonely, salad days. But after each time I struck out, I tried to find out the reasons for my failure so I could learn from them. I wanted to grow. I didn't let failures define and constrict me. I used failures to enrich and to wise me up. Then one day I hit upon a formula of success, but I didn't forget my dried up, barren, awkward, clumsy years. I am now a cool, urbane, better-dressed, financially secure (no woman in her right mind would go out with a perceived financially unstable man), pleasant, witty man. No wonder women have flocked to me and found me a pleasant company. I just met a woman. We interacted for about an hour. But she let it known through two intermediaries that she likes me tremendously. Well, I like her, too, for she is a good, kind woman. But I am not chasing her. I love my wife and am mindful of my responsibilities. At my age, taking things lightly is what I must do. I am much more at peace with myself now. I don't need to jump into bed with a woman to prove my attractiveness. 

20. I recently read two posts by two women and I was struck how fragile the human mind was.  Then I read the comments on the posts of the two women. That set me think about human ignorance and frailty. In the end, salvation and help come from within. Yes, we need help, but we can still survive without help if we are strong and don't give up in our struggles, especially when they are non-physical in nature. Life is full of selfish, self-righteous, loud-mouthed, power-hungry assholes. I am proud to say that I didn't seek help from therapists or anybody. I saw from early on human cruelty and indifference. I helped myself by reading, thinking, and going to the gym. Nowadays, I could tell the level of a person's emotional strength and intellectual integrity by the way they handle money, view love, and deal with the issues of fame and power. 

The following is what my friend wrote about therapy. His words hit home with me. When one has a lot of aha moments, one gains self-confidence and one knows that ultimate salvation comes from within. Wisdom has a price. It varies with the individuals and the circumstances. Truth is the mountain top. There are many ways to get there.

"To look into the mystery of the next moment without fear is emotional courage. It is one of the most useful tools a person can possess. 

IMO  Self-improvement ultimately comes from within, just like happiness. It comes from that inner voice, but often a third party influence/avenue is needed to help that voice gain confidence.  Everyone has the capacity for this emotional confidence, but it is harder to call upon for some. 

Confidence = Self Trust

Self-discovery is the real learning we do in life and it is something we mostly attain in solitude. Someone does not hand you an "aha" moment.  It happens inside.  They can trigger it, but it is you that puts the pieces together.

Personally, I have chosen meditative self-coaching, for lack of a better description. The most magnificent "aha" moments for me have come in moments of the purest stillness.  I do seek out and absorb tons of outside material, but I generally rely on my own self-reflection regarding any topic. 

 "Aha" moments don't approach you from some particular place or direction. They sort of envelope you in what feels like a warm ball of comfort. It is almost like it was there all along and you finally noticed it. It didn't come from outside.  The best way to understand it, is trying it!  But, I will warn you that it is a lot like poker. Meditation is long periods of nothing happening, sprinkled with moments of pure rush.

I personally, like the idea of all the ants trying everything in the forest and reporting back to head-quarters. Perhaps that is what is really going on at a grander level we cannot understand.

Oh yes... the poker part so I don't have to put a silly OT in the subject line. :) 

Confidence makes you a better poker player and it is OK to fake it, until you can make it.

The warrior that survives, carrying the many scars from battle, will exude the greatest of confidences."