No Means Nothing:

Consider, for a moment, that as the result of some oversight, either on my own part or that of another, I had suffered a debilitating accident that left me devoid of any cognitive capacity save for that of Justice. Cleverness, charm, wit, mercy, amiability, and compassion were all lost to me as virtues, and all that remained was my ability to fathom debt, most obviously those debts which involved my person, for without that realm I would have far less ground to judge by experience. What follows would have been what I had said to Alanna when she first returned to me, after having slept with my best friend, in the hopes of restoring my former band with him, so that she might serve as its leader. Be not ashamed for me, for I never uttered these words as written, and they only came to me this morning, yet I cannot pretend that I feel no regret in having withheld the facts they represent, nor that I would feel no pride if I should recover evidence that those same debts I had illustrated by more decorated, though less pointed, means:

 

I shall begin with what you had presumed upon rightfully. It was true, as it remains, that power is best enjoyed if it is shared. It was in this spirit that I elected to share my own power with both you and my associate of five years. This power was mine to bestow upon either and both of you as I saw fit, yet as we all know power comes with responsibility, and no use of power is without a moral dimension of implication as to the proper use of that power.

Even in surrendering my power I used my power to surrender it, for had I not had the power necessary to surrender it, I would not have had the power to surrender. What appears to be merely semantic is nothing more nor less than the most obvious fact: that the proverbial “power to surrender” is a power that is thus to be surrendered by an exercise of itself. In this case: it was power over you and him, for your association would only have been probable, as well as possible, at that point in time, by avenue of my influence. This is no megalomaniacal conceit, for I do not pretend to a power which I did not have to exercise in order for that meeting between the two of you to even be possible. Nor is it an injustice to either of you, much less a desire to oppress anyone, for this peculiar power over the both of you amounted to just that: power over both of you. It was merely power over the future of your relationship to him, which in any other set of circumstances would have been “not my business”.

In bestowing this power upon the both of you, by no means a “rightful redistribution” but rather a “generous privilege”, my generosity lay in trust. While Sartre would have called it “bad faith”, for neither of you had ever proven trustworthy, I maintain that it was “good faith” in that my trusting you was sincere; it would have warranted the qualifier “bad” only if I had not trusted you at all but had simply, cynically expected you to behave in a selfish manner which I might then turn towards my own, equally selfish but surpassingly clever purposes. While such cynical devices might very well appear familiar to you, rest assured that I have no worldly use for them, for you simply project your own cynicism.

In using my power to grant you power, I do not deny, as you have suggested, my own involvement. It is true that I had a “part to play” in this, yet insofar as I had power I was dignified in its use, and the part I played was purely incidental; I am not morally culpable for that which I did not approve. Dignity lies not only in dignity towards others but also in dignity towards one’s self, and if I have not up until this point made this clearer it is only a testament to my temperamental humility. To be humble is not to deny one’s own humility, for humility itself cannot be cause for boastfulness. So long as one has dignity, however, one can be humble and remain openly knowledgeable of this virtue, for dignity allows one’s self to become aware of one’s humility once it boils over. My humility alone might have permitted the injustice I suffered; my dignity serves to remedy this injustice at this moment.

It follows from dignity that I should have allowed the both of you to meet, but hardly more than that. For me to lose you to a man whom I knew to be lecherous, prone to delusion, deceptive even to those closest to him, to the point of pathology, would have been unbearable. Even for me to lose you to a man who was chaste, clear of mind, honest even to impersonal forces and strangers, almost to a fault, would have been unbearable, for no man should lose a woman to his best friend, and if it pains you to think of yourself as either a “prize to be won” or a “bounty to be lost”, you have only begun to imagine how much the banality of this pains me.

Even a man who was as wayward as I have described him could not have imagined that a rational agent would have willfully permitted such a loss when that same agent had all the power, initially, to prevent it. That he can fathom my indignation is no testament to our “equality of character”. Here you have begun to err: to treat as us equals, yet only insofar as saying he is no less and I am by no means greater. That both the rational egoist and the dignified altruist can comprehend the same injustice as a loss does not render them level with one another; it is simply a testament to that all-too-human sympathy which has, up until this point, allowed them to coexist, for the altruist was never too dignified to part with it and the egoist was never so rational as to descend into that rung of hell that is the absence of this most basic human decency.

So it would follow logically, even if he had not already proven his guilt by unsolicited defences, that he knew what he was doing when he betrayed my trust, as did you. The both of you employed the power I had graciously bestowed upon you in a manner that I had self-evidently, if not explicitly (for I would not even have accused you of the moral capacity for it) prohibited. This was my prohibition to make, for it was that value which I had to assign to the proper use of this power when I used power to grant power. Since the prohibition was only binding upon the both of you, it was not in itself an arbitrary abuse of my power, for my power was simply to give you that power which could only thereafter be abused by you. There were only two errors I might have committed in granting you this power: either prescribing a use for it which was undignified or bestowing it upon undignified people. The latter I confess to, though I maintain that this was a practical mistake instead of a cynical sin. The former I need not confess to, for the aftermath of that latter mistake serves to reinforce my dignity in the prohibition.

As a Romantic, I sympathize with the temptation to vulgarize gentlemen and to sentimentalize savages. Yet as a scholar I must not become forgetful of the distinction between the two. That I was betrayed not even the most savage man contests. That this was unjust remains mysterious to that savagery. In salvaging my dignity, I agree with you that in trusting savages I erred and thereby contributed to the conception of this situation. My error was in granting the both of you that power which only the both of you could receive and which only the both of you could abuse. Yet how could I have known that the both of you were equally savage, and to such an extent? I did not even bother to prevent it, for to doubt your honour felt dishonourable.

Yet note this: that while I cast the first stone upon which this was built, I was not the one to crown it nor to fortify it. My error was but one third of the practical error, and it was not even a fraction of the sin. Since we all made choices that contributed to this, we might all be considered conspirators in power. Yet because I never consented to the abuse of this power, though you both availed yourselves of it abusively, the sin belongs only to the both of you. I granted you the physical capacity not knowing your moral capacity; it was your choice to use this blissful ignorance against me. That I regret it now shows only that I’ve learned from my mistake. If I ought not to have trusted you, then that World which we ought to inhabit is the one wherein I benefit. If I cannot benefit now by its reversal, for it cannot be undone, then Justice owes me neither more nor less than whatsoever he enjoyed by your consent.

 

The vulgar feministic interpretation of “No” amounts to a tautology of identity: “No means no.” This in itself contains no information, except in that it seeks to combat the paradox that “No” could mean “Yes”, as well as the banal denial of the distinction by avenue of the inane blanket assertion “No means Yes”. (A claim that is ironically seldom coupled with its natural corollary: “Yes means No”.) The truest and most informative definition I can provide for “No” is thus: “No means Nothing.” To deny a man his due is to deny duty as a whole. To treat “entitlement” cynically, as though it “could amount to nothing more than” the will of the ego is to enthrone one’s own ego at the expense of the entitled person. Such a depravity would drive one’s self so deeply into nihilism that it would become a threat to one’s very person, and no measure of Stoic self-denial would retrieve from this pit the “will to live”. You have called this pit an “emotional black hole”, a metaphor I was immediately quite fond of, especially since you first used it to describe him. He is the nihilism and the nihilation; if Nothingness can be incarnated, he is its avatar in our circle of influence.

Can you deny that you have chosen nothing more? In denying me yourself, do you not deny yourself that same “point” to living which you first sought in me? Before you met him, you struggled to see “the point” to life. The quotation marks about the words “the point” are, if memory serves, your own, for it appears that you doubted the very existence of a “point”, and yet now I have simply appropriated those same marks to satirize your doubt, for it was so obviously self-inflicted. I was moved to deliver you from it because I perceived you to be a victim of nihilism; now I see that you are a source of it, especially within my own life, and I can see why you would thus seek your own nihilation, though I cannot say I am pleased by your attempts to implode, even if it is motivated by heroic self-sacrifice. If this is your attempt to salvage dignity by sparing me the burden of your ongoing existence, know that the burden only ever grows heavier in your absence. It was not just for me to lose you once; it is not merciful for me to lose you twice. To lose you forever is intolerable to even consider. I would much rather have you live for me than die for me; I wish to be that aforementioned “point”.

Should I never enjoy you as I am entitled to, and if the power I have given you should fade from you entirely, then I’ll be more than merely “disappointed”. I would be condemned to spend the remainder of my life seeking someone to repay your debts to me, for you remain the only woman I have ever had the right to love entirely, even if only because of the extreme extent to which you allowed my traitor to avail himself of you. Imagine what a Hell you’d make of my innocent life if the entire class of women followed your example!! Yet would even the most dignified of them not sooner doubt your debt than to shoulder it for a complete stranger? Would they not also lapse into nihilism? So long as you do not pay it, you shall make a black hole of ME, and how can a black hole escape its own event horizon?? It is powerlessness incarnate, and it is always the product, as in the cosmos, of an explosion followed by an implosion: in other words, an overabundance of power that, unrestricted by moral meaning, grows to an extent that it cannot sustain and dies.

 

[({Dm.R.G.)}]

A Triad of Typology and How People Get Conned:

A Triad of Typology and How People Get Conned:

 

It’s believed that in the Olden Days, especially within the Great Civilizations, there was not yet a line drawn betwixt the Good, the Beautiful, and the True. Similarly, I might suppose that to be Good, to be Intelligent, and to be Right were one and the same; one could not be one without presupposing the other two.

Such is not the case in the Present Day. By and large, questions of Intelligence, Morality, and Righthood are consigned to the Psychoanalytic Arts. The question of how an individual will behave is determined by temperamental predispositions, just as is the case with introversion, sexual preference and drive, etc. Individuals possessing more “intelligence” will tend to value intelligence, no more egocentrically than those who possess more “conscientiousness” value morality and forthrightness. Those who are the most diligent may or may not prefer morality to intelligence, depending upon the nature of their diligence, often regulated by “disgust”; one may be diligent in the pursuit of a “reprehensible” enterprise which is disgusting and therefore immoral, or one may be diligent in the pursuit of a more “noble” cause if one is more easily “disgusted” by “evil”. At any rate, those who are neither conscientious nor intelligent to the same extent as they are “diligent” and “persistent” will value being “right” above being “good” or “smart”. Righthood is thus distinguished both from “meaning well” and from “being wise” or “being practical”. These people “work harder, not smarter”, and their “work ethic” is an ethic of principled efficiency.

Theoretically, the various types, in effect all fragments of one fully integrated human being, (fractions of an Ancient Greek, if you will) could coexist in harmony, just as these “drives” would coexist in the fully actualized person. Yet in the absence of a binding social order, certain obstacles preclude the harmonious union of conflicting types, and foremost among these obstacles is the “con artist”.

Con artists come in many different shapes and sizes. Some are extremely high-brow and academic. The professor of postmodern philosophy has found the ideal target audience in a legion of grad students who are open to the ideas of Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Foucault; it’s easier to lie to people who pride themselves in their own uncertainty about the Nature of Truth. Yet more often than not con artists employ an evil so banal it is disappointing. In the absence of a binding social order, human beings tend to retain in common only the basest of instincts, and as we fall deeper and deeper into the egalitarian paradigm we tend to be reduced to these embarrassing functions. The most damning insult that I have ever received was in the reminder that my body’s most repulsive functions were nothing to be ashamed of, since I shared them in common with all of humanity; all of a sudden, I could only imagine solidarity with my fellow human beings, quite literally, by avenue of a line to use the toilet.

Con artists occupy this domain predominantly. Sex, survival, and power are those drives which, like any student of Freud, manipulators primarily appeal to, and more often than not they regard the remainder of the individuated personality as no more than a mask for these urges.

Yet some people are much too proud to be won over with a cheap thrill, and if they are to satisfy these urges they will only do so by avenue of a specific set of principles. Those who value honesty will only allow themselves the pleasures of sexuality within the context of an established relationship; those who value sincerity will regard sexual consent as legitimate only if both parties care about each other without pretense, but nonetheless to such an extent that meets an established social standard entirely independent of individual desire and preference. Some come to power by their own will; others assume it as a social responsibility. Some people would sooner die as innocent victims than to live as oppressors; others rationalize their survivor’s guilt by priding themselves in their strength. Pride is most often shame in disguise.

The advanced manipulator thus must go beyond the banal drives and to appeal to ego. By identifying what an individual values, based upon that individual’s temperament, the manipulator is able to avail his or herself of an arsenal of subtle tricks in order to appear as an ally to the prospective victim. “Leveling” is easiest in an “egalitarian” society of “liberal individualists”. If I claim to value independence, this value reflects upon me personally. It would appear gauche indeed were I to criticize the sexual libertine or the drug pusher (often one and the same) for giving consenting adults “what they want”, though it would NOT be out of character for an upright police officer. By professing a value, I say, “this is my role; this is me. I shall always come onstage in this guise, and none other.” Thus the individualist must REMAIN individualistic so as not to appear inconsistent, and should he or she take sides with a Collectivistic Social Order, this is damning to both parties; ergo, never the twain shall meet. Coexistence between Individualists and Loyalists becomes not only problematic and fruitless but downright dangerous.

A con artist can easily drive a wedge between individuals of comparable but distinct character, simply by appearing to each as an ally against the rest. Who would one be to resist one’s own reflection? It makes far more sense to antagonize one’s “natural opponents”.

With regards to the trichotomy of Intelligence, Good Will, and Righthood, (the latter an addendum to Aldous Huxley’s veneration of the former two as indispensable corollaries) driving a wedge between “excellent” people is a walk in the park.

Consider the father of Chuck and Jimmy McGill from Better Call Saul. There is no evidence that this man is “unintelligent”, yet he is constantly being abused by grifters with a sob story. Once confronted by a young Jimmy who recognizes a cheap conman for what he is, the father’s retort is one of my favourite clichés of modern television, for it summarizes both philosophy and heroism: “What if you’re wrong?” This same line is employed by Jack Shepard and John Locke from the earlier series Lost, with regards to the torture of a prisoner; unfortunately, since Jack fears one fate and John fears another, even so universal a question fails to solve their particular problem. Liberal individualism wins yet again over Justice. Much like the late McGill patriarch, both Jack and John are men of extremely above-average intelligence, expressed in different ways. They also have this much in common: both have been conned, over and over again.

Certain rudimentary forms of con artistry work on stupid, unconscientious and inattentive people: zombies lacking in intelligence, morality, and diligence. Yet if this appears too severe a description, rest assured that it refers to a minority of people that is hardly “oppressed”. Most people excel in at least one of these three qualities, and it is precisely their excellence which is used against them. If one wishes to anger a person, one appeals to his or her weaknesses; loyalty is won by appeal to strength. When Jimmy’s Dad gives grifters money and “a gallon of milk”, that milk is the milk of human kindness, and though the unassuming shopkeep can’t afford it forever, it is nonetheless a testament to his strengths of character that he surrenders so much for free to the “wolves” of the “world”; one must suppose that, every once in a blue moon, the “grifter” is a sheep in wolf’s clothing, as tends to be the bulk of the innocent victims in the Better Call Saul universe, often victims whom Jimmy abuses, though his cynicism somehow endures in the face of innocence.

Consider this scenario: a conscientious young woman is about to surrender a hundred dollars to pay for a con artist’s “cancer treatment”. Nearby, an intelligent young man watches the scene unfold, with amusement. The intelligent young man knows, for a fact, that this hustler is a grifter; he was tipped off just last week by the bartender, who is a very diligent fellow who did his research but didn’t have the heart to stop the grifter from spending other people’s money on the tavern’s tap. (This particular grifter, unlike Joe Pesci’s characters in Martin Scorsese films, pays his bar tab.)

After the transaction has been made, the grifter leaves, as does the young Good Samaritan. The bartender, having witnessed the outcome, asks the intelligentsia: “Why didn’t you stop her giving him that money?” To this, the clever young man asks, “Why didn’t you stop him asking for it?”

In truth: one question does not answer the other, but simply “levels the playing field”. Yet allow me to be the first impartial witness to answer both questions:

Leveling, though inconclusive, nonetheless begins to answer the question, since both men are cut from the same cloth in this instance, just bleached differently. For egocentric purposes, the intelligent man needs people to get ripped off, so as to feel smarter than the victims. By the same token, the diligent man needs people who are wishy-washy and easily swayed to be disadvantaged, so as to legitimize his diligence. Neither man regards the con man as a threat to that man’s own person and ego. The intelligent man sees through the con, or so he hopes to; the diligent man maintains a respectable business, and it’s not his problem if the business benefits from this inferior enterprise, any more than the benefits it gleans from dishwashing and other “lowly” occupations which are paid less because they are “inferior”. Ironically, the very egalitarianism of individualist society transforms people into the most depraved elitists; were we to live under the rule of a more binding moral law, answering to established moral authority, it would fall to the bartender in this scenario to stop the grifter, but liberal individualism allows him to say, “that’s his business, not mine. I’m just collecting his money by my own, honest means.” Under such a paradigm, suppressing secrets is not tantamount to lying, since no one is entitled to the Truth. In both instances, both conspirators have rationalized their conspiracy with the con man, hoping, (perhaps naïvely) that they are not getting conned just by so doing. By a similar device, the victim hopes that she is not simply losing money that could be spent on a Higher and More Pressing Cause. Yet were she to act on this hope in an aggressive way, she would act out of character, for “good people” are not supposed to demand refunds for charitable acts. Even the naturally selfless person is transformed into an egoist under the paradigm of individualism, her egolessness used against her nonetheless.

Not only has such a con succeeded in parting a woman with her money; it has also driven a wedge between three people who would otherwise have made a fine team if compelled to work towards a Common Good. By being so basic, so stupid, so immoral and so easygoing, the grifter manages to turn all of his or her vices into strengths. The virtues of the intelligent, the noble, and the thorough turn to weaknesses, and any peaceful coexistence between them is torn asunder, so that even were one of them to realize this, the rest would resist.

So: this is my question…

Ought we to con them?

To some considerable extent, the prevalence of trickery in modern life is the fault of the victims. The pride and vainglory of each stock character are comedic because they are so myopic and ironic. Of course the wise guy lets the good girl get conned; morality is not his strong suit, so he’ll think less of her for falling for a trick that only good people fall for!! Of course she falls for it. It does not matter if she’s smarter than the others put together; her bleeding heart is all too predictable!! Of course the bartender does nothing; why risk a source of income? He works hard enough as it is!! The least that he can do is benefit from a stupidity tax, and who is better to attest to her stupidity than the wise guy? Grifters will be grifters; at least by collecting a cut of the profits the bartender ensures that it returns to the Beneficent Establishment to which he has pledged his life.

How could the con man resist? OUGHT he to??

 

Some people are subtler. Some will excel in at least two of the three virtues. Their act becomes a juggling act. In one hand, the Stoic holds her moral convictions; in the other: her practical intelligence. When it behooves her to be practical, she throws morality up into the air. When she can afford to be kind, she captures kindness and tosses up discretion. In this manner, she never owes anyone anything, for no one owes her anything. When she needs something, she acquires it by being practical; when she wants to feel good about herself, she acts good, and this behooves her reputation amidst good people. Should she offend another good person by disappointing his expectations, what could she possibly owe to him, and how would she repay him? If he sought his own interests by avenue of goodness, then he was not truly good, for the ethic of Stoicism renounces all rewards outside of pure virtue; if he sought his own interests by avenue of intelligence, then his failure is a testament to his folly, and if he sought his own interests by avenue of diligence, he clearly lacked diligence, as evidenced by his presumptuous oversight. Thus the Stoic wears her virtues like a revolving door of party masks, and dignity lies in knowing which mask to employ at which opportune moment and momentous opportunity.

In confronting such a prospect, the con man’s best bet would be to turn the conflicting personalities against one another, either by involving her in an enterprise that eventually will require her to use both techniques at once, to extremes that their inherent opposition can’t withstand, or by getting her invested in an enterprise that, up until a certain point, requires excellence in one suit, only to shift gears very suddenly midway.

 

Yet OUGHT he to do this? Does she “deserve” it, if she ostensibly “deserves” nothing?

 

Ultimately, those who pride themselves in their immunity to con artistry would benefit morally from being taken down a peg, even (and perhaps especially) if they pride themselves in being “moral” people? In employing our strengths, we all too often vainly ignore our weaknesses, to the detriment not only of ourselves but of our fellows. By practicing “counterconning”, a Deprogrammer may manage to finally bypass the psychic defences of his or her fellows. All of them have conspired in the victim’s victimhood, and even if the victim was himself misled by egoism, their collective evil is great enough to warrant its exposure, and this can only be done by forcing them to get over themselves.

 

[({Dm.R.G.)}]

DREAM2252020:

The dream took place in the Dream Theater on the night of the premiere. Everyone from Theory II as well as the entire cast and crew of Mamma Mi were probably in attendance. I had to run about considerably, barely missing call times and doing my best to brush off feelings of severe guilt. One cannot help these things; one must simply thank God and Nature for those that one was able to save, who were not murdered by one’s negligence, all in that ever-looming Spirit of libertarian abandon that haunts the Dream of Freedom.

It seems, doesn’t it, as though there are TWO theaters in these dreams, and I simply divide my time betwixt them. This is not to say that the stories are without their familiar share of travel, migration from one form of temporary housing to another. Perhaps this is a metaphor for astrology; perhaps this represents reincarnation and, more topically (on a lesser scale) but inclusively, (presuming upon a Scientific epistemology wherein the most inclusive definition must consider the most banal interpretations) rebirth in general.

Who knows? All memories of recent dreams, spanning the last five years, are interspersed in the attempts to recall any one of them. It seems that my Dream Self, at least, is not so negligent as to forget them.

Are my visits to Downtown San Diego, both in and out of Actuality, not performances as well? I would do well to recall the nights that I succeeded in such ventures. A single night spent beside Tina ought to outweigh my indignation before two dozen immature women.

I pause the Chicago Symphony as the conductor lifts his arms to signal the introduction of the Ode to Joy. What timing my God has!! I am thankful that He brings Shame to light only so as to expose it for the fraud it is.

[({Dm.A.A.)}]

Re:B!RTHDAY.

You have no further justification. Alanna admitted that she loved me. That she might have lied to you only reflects upon intentions which I know about, alone. I cannot vouch for her vindictiveness, but that is only because where she would be subtle in exacting vengeance I would have been more direct, on her behalf as well as in her place for my own sake.

She’s visited me since. Her presence is a state of mind in and of itself. I used to think she was haunting me in search of blood. But it was not so. She was guiding me towards greatness. To leave you behind, though she could not.

Why should I doubt it? Have I ever taken more from the collective jar than what was due to all of us? Have I asked more of life? I speak in metaphor only because the logic on its own is far too obvious; if you’ve not figured it all out by now, I will gain nothing by explaining it to you.

You will not darken my view of the world by acting as though any public would defend you. That something slipped past a defense and cannot be reversed does not mean it will ever be condoned. Any attempts you make to scapegoat me for narcissism will be totally transparent, as will be attempts to scapegoat me for scapegoating. Your attempts to demean me have been psychopathic, and if I were to internalize them I would be psychotic. No one has ever deserved the fate I’ve had to go through. No public would defend it. My virginity remains as testament not only to my dignity but to your own attempts to undermine it; paradoxically, had I lost that same virginity, I would retain the dignity, for I would lose it by legitimate means, and within my means. Yet the fact I’ve not lost it yet shows you have robbed me of the opportunity, and that I’ve taken no chances within the place of this legitimacy has preserved my dignity. But you cannot know what that’s like.

This I know not only because I made sure of it, but because, even in the wake of catastrophic failure, she reminded me.

I did nothing wrong. I need not pretend towards humility. I have it, without any pretense. I did not expect matters to favor me, but I knew they would sooner favor me by rights than they could favor you. I did not hold you in such low esteem so as to think you’d try to turn them in your favor. I simply knew my turn and opportunity once I saw her. You simply let your pursuit of a nihilistic excess rob us both of Life. But I survived her Death, and by so doing I have mastered Death. Death is no problem to me now. She has returned to tell me what it truly is.

It is fantastic. But I’m in no hurry. Maybe you should be. But maybe not.

Dm.A.A.

The Best Revenge?

Three weeks ago I presented my music for Joe’s Game at Palomar College. Most of my fellows were nervous speaking on stage. I had rehearsed my speech. I made the audience laugh, telling them that if they felt nauseous, as though they were fighting their ways through a sewer, then I succeeded as a composer. The crowd loved the song. The mix was just right. Tom took my request for the E.Q. into consideration, lessening the bass so that the audience might hear the trebled frequencies. I didn’t hear a single word of criticism for it. Gabe’s Mom liked it. Tom liked it. Kouji liked it. Several people asked me when the game would come out. I told them I’d keep them up to date. Mom and Dad loved it; they were proud of me, for once, again. And they were happy with the illustration that my sister made for it. Though personally I wish that she’d made the hair less dirty blonde and closer to the platinum hue that I described. But she knew it would not be perfect.

Friday I came in to finish my lab hours for that class. There was only one guy there: the proctor. He was about nineteen years old. I showed him all the music that I’d made in Doctor Byrne’s class that semester. Gabriel joined us after some time. We rocked out to psychedelic classics by Air, by Pink Floyd, by Funkadelic, etc. At some point Gabe and I left for thirty minutes; I know because “Moon Safari” was paused twenty-nine minutes in. Our little session brought Z out of his shell. When we returned from our free lunch with food for the proctor, he was listening to Z’s most recent mix. The girl’s vocals weren’t up to par. But Z would fix that.

Saturday my parents came for the first time to see me play xylophone. It was the first time that I let them watch. They did not know I had a solo. My blood pressure spiked during the slow oboe solo leading into mine. But I nailed it. Tom again went out of his way, even in the midst of business, to commend me. Mom’s pride went through the roof.

Up on stage, I did not think of Kali. I did not think of MacKenzie. I might not have even thought of you.

I am still convinced that Kali loved me, though it’s easier for petty girls, however talented, to blame me for it. It was never I that knew she had a boyfriend. That was her cross to bear; she had simply to pretend that it was ME sending HER the “vibe” and not her projecting her own affections. Any projection by its nature comes with some degree of “creepiness”. The Personal Unconscious is one scary place. Why else would people neglect their dreams? At least my sister has the honesty to confess her fears of studying them.

Your letter helped me with the confidence. It all ways does.

Monday I hung out with Joe all day; we set a record for ourselves. I talked him down from his episode. I administered some herbal tea. He played Spyro the Dragon and then joined me upstairs for a musical consultation session. After we had our plans in order for the soundtrack, he drove me back to his house to play Doom. We had the fanfare we had written stuck in both our heads, even if it occupied different rooms within our brains.

I would have left his house after Doom drained me, but I chose to stay. He talked me through some dark forebodings. When he drove me home, I was refreshed. All though he fought off all my optimism and good graces, I told him that I saw good in him. I told him I saw good within myself, as well. I was a positive influence.

This was more or less what Ben told me time and again. He came down Tuesday, as planned, all the way from Oceanside. He was still working at the same restaurant. All the bartenders were fired because of a case of --------. George got promoted after sleeping with a new girl. The new girl got fired. She spilled the beans after the fact about the other bartenders. George moved back to Ohio. He plays with his old band again.

Christian joined us soon thereafter. I treated him to herbal tea and what remained of what my sister would call “oven pizza”. We hung out downstairs for about half an hour prior to rehearsal, getting acquainted. As Christian wrapped up his pizza I took both of his guitars upstairs. We jammed for two and a half hours. It was the longest recording I had ever made. We were all ecstatic and tired. Ben even left without his effects pedals, though my father noticed them just in time so that I might call Ben and return them to him. He appreciated that. I’d never let something like that just sit around in my home without making an effort to return it. Not if the man had a use for it outside of hoarding.

I still think of you each night. I tell myself what you told me. I guard it religiously against the World.

I have concluded that vengeance would be too easy. Even my successes cannot be considered acts of spite. Moments of joy are so complete and precious that our foes don’t cross my mind until they’ve run their course. External success is so fleeting that sometimes I forget I over had it, and when I’m disgusted by humanity I hear the voice of failure in my ears. Our foes want me to bear the burden for their failures. They’ve all ready figured out just how to blame me for them, arguing at the same moment that they blame me that it’s me that’s blaming them. I guess that this must be what snipers do when they take someone’s life for “being a threat” to their own lives. Joe called it “intimate”. For me, the distance is the very epitome of intimacy. Only a coward would stoop so low, even if he were firing from on high. At any rate, it only works if I forget what I’ve accomplished. I must make myself a target for the bullet to hit me. The moment I remember who I am and what I’ve done without them, I am sheltered from the sniping cowards.

Vengeance is too easy. Success does not satisfy it, for success is too great to be contained within it. And vengeance would not satisfy success. Yet it is comforting to know that if this project fails, and if I fail to do what you had TRULY wanted of me, the foundation of a local scene of artists, then I would be protected. There is nothing they can do to me. They’re cowards. Even if I had to go against the World in its entirety, I would have YOUR World to look forward to in death. Its fleeting intimations colour every day of productivity and wonder. And I know that if that world should fall from sight, and I am left only in agony and turmoil, there is nothing I need to keep secret from this fallen world. I can be ruthless to my heart’s content, for they that wronged us have no recourse. There is no authority they can appeal to without furthering their own exposure. I control entirely their image, which is all they have. And it is only out of that same mercy that you praised in me that I leave that image alone, confining it only to those small crevasses that only they would haunt repeatedly, when I could tell this tale on a much larger scale, met with applause. This is why their final words to me are weak and feeble, tugging at my pity. Joe is right; who ARE these people? It’s beneath a man.

[({Dm.A.A.)}]

P.S.: According to Ben I’m thought of fondly by the servers at the restaurant. When I asked him if my return would be awkward at all, he was surprised to think I’d think that. When I asked him who it was that spoke so well of me, he mentioned Holly and, after a pause, MacKenzie. Maybe it is time to pay a visit. Maybe she will finally serve me.

APATHETIC LOVE:

Of COURSE I do not care what THEY feel. I LOVE them. Why would you EXPECT me to care what they feel about ME? Oh, right. You want to believe that that’s some sort of contradiction. Now I’m not playing by the “rules”, as though you ever said that there were rules in love. But if you’d think about it for a moment, if you’re capable, you have to admit this: if I love them and they hate me back, why should I acknowledge their hatred? I wouldn’t even NOTICE it. That’s what it means to love someone UNCONDITIONALLY. There IS no barrier between your feelings and her own. Hatred perceives that barrier; hatred thrives off of it. But love does not. So hatred cannot comprehend it, and Love can’t comprehend hatred. Hatred makes Love into another distant Other, whereas Love knows no Others. Love simply sees hatred in passing and looks right past it. It does not even perceive the SOURCE of hatred. It knows no Others.

But you see: that’s inconvenient to you. You WANT to believe that everyone who loves you has to feel all of the really base and negative things that YOU feel. You WANT to believe that you’re ENTITLED to that. And why? Because you don’t love people back. Because you don’t HAVE Unconditional Love. You all ways wanted something in exchange for everything. You never cared to have good intent, so good intent is without value to your mind. You never had to ignore abuse, so you could not tolerate abuse, even if to your mind “abuse” is simply the ignorance of negativity. *I* know how to ignore abuse. I know how to ignore negativity. But you absorb it and it BECOMES you because you FEAR people. Anything to get an outcome that will benefit you. If it doesn’t, then you shed all ties and act like you did something “tactful” and attractive. You didn’t. You just proved what we all knew deep down: that for all your preaching about the Feelings of Others, you gave up caring about all those feelings when you could afford to stop pretending. And then you were left only with your own emotions, just like all of us are, except that yours were based and uninformed by Love, Goodness, and Beauty.

Emotions are fairly useless. They do not form ethics. You cannot predict them. You cannot control them. You can only ride them. Like a wave. But they are not imperatives. They’re not as strong as Love. They can only be as strong AS Love is, though they will never be as strong as Love Itself is. You can’t measure a finite feeling against an infinite Source. So how is it that you can expect me to care that my ex hated me? That’s on her for being a hypocrite. I had that love that she only pretended to. More power to me. That’s why I’m still here. Because I stayed true to my word, and my word was a Loving word. I wouldn’t want people to feel all that I feel; that’s not my goal. And I don’t care whether they love me back or not, except for just a few, and only because they’ve accepted that as their responsibility.

I welcome any feelings from a loving partner. Those I can allow; those I can manage. I offered her love and she returned her hatred. How can you accuse me of having been insensitive to her? It was she that ignored an opportunity for greater sensitivity. It was she that gave up. And if you still maintain that to love is to empathize, then know this: she never really cared for my feelings, either. They were clearly much too deep for her to understand. So be it. What she feels about me will haunt her. What I feel about her will only empower me now.

[({Dm.A.A.)}]

A GOODE MAN:

They all ways try to turn this into a morality play, sooner or later. The pretense is that had I simply stopped caring about my own being, directing my focus outwards, living for others, altruistically, then I would find a love and solidarity I’d never hitherto imagined. And the cycle then begins again. I find a company that I respect more than I can respect myself. I do not let it frighten me into submission; I simply fall in love with the idea that all its tenets are worthy ideals, even if I might laugh at just how great the margin is by which my fellows fall short of it. I begin to walk on eggshells, priding myself in my patience, following the rules with decorated awkwardness. When we first finished the New Hire Orientation (four hours of sensitivity training, basically) I all most forgot her name. She stood right there, beside me, waiting for the order, and it was not that I spaced on her name but rather I did not dare even to THINK it, lest the Boss heard me. And I reported to him promptly, submerging any suspicion. When I saw her outside again, I had to shake all suspicions about me. I had all so to rationalize, to myself, my own reserve earlier at the Back of the House. I had to believe she saw me, wanted just as desperately to say Hello as I did, but held her tongue for the same reason that she would prize me for holding my own. I went with the flow, letting them assign me to another table. I continued to do this, admiring her from afar each time, making my way about her friends. It all ways had to be this way. I all most had her table a few times. But just as I learned how to find my way around the Front of the House the consequences came. I’d hidden my tracks too well. One of her coworkers took less than kindly to my casual flirtation. The bramble that I used to hide as I approached the Grand Tree became my snare. So I only ever had her serve me once: when she brought me that glass of wine. I heard, in a timid child’s voice, “here is your Murphy, Good Sir.” It was only later that I discovered this to mean “here is your Murphy Goode, Sir.” Murphy Goode was the name of the wine. She was being exceedingly formal. It’s not impossible that she rushed in and out of that encounter owing more to recoil than to reticence. She might have not been shy at all, but rather I repelled her.

It all ways happens this way. I think that I’ve found Solidarity and Virtue. I believe at first that this is only a means to an end. Then just as pragmatism peaks I find myself a sudden martyr. I did not expect the late hours, the injury, both physical and psychological, nor the verbal abuse. It simply happened. So I ran with it, telling myself all the while that this is what a man MUST do for his Family. I never had any real extended family. I thought this must be what it feels like. I was one of the Clan, for lack of a better term.

It all ways follows this formula: you start with altruism, then you fall in love. At least, that’s how the cynics see it. What starts out as service to Others takes on an ulterior motive. Your craving for a taken woman colours everything that you perceive and do. It all becomes a Show for Her, a seemingly self-sacrificing venture that has a single, hidden goal for personal gain. Citing my virginity would not help; it would only serve to prove my desperation and thus set the old example for new critics to follow: the superstition that I am unlovable and would do everyone a service if I stopped trying to change that fact or to feign ignorance of it.

But that is not the whole of it. That’s just a symptom of abuse. Falsely accused of loving someone I was merely flirting with, no one even knowing that the flirtation (though not the person) was simply a means to an end, I internalized again the old notion that I’m forbidden to love. If I cannot love this decoy, a mere temptress to my eye, what can make me worthy of the Goddess?

But that is not the true formula. The true formula is thus: that you start with self-interest, fed up from having your kindness taken advantage of, time and time again. Then you fall in love, and She informs All That You Do. Inspired by her unassailable kindness, her unequivocal beauty and her indominable Spirit, you find a new Role Model. The patience with which you train yourself to wait for her (especially: to wait on you) becomes the pace at which you work. Your work becomes a form of karma yoga: a Service to Shiva. Every motion is imbibed with a tenderness you cultivate that she might one day feel your touch to be a home. And everyone, no matter how rotten, becomes your family so long as they speak well of her.

Can that be called a crime?

Whatever the formula, the outcome is the same. Whether they know the True Identity of your New Muse or not, your love is suspect, since your fellows celebrate self-love so much that any unrequited love is not perceived to be love at all. A narcissist can’t love a woman who will not return his love, so any one that loves him he pretends to love, regardless of his hollow heart, to spite the men who love her, even if they’re friends of his, and to dishonor love and friendship all in one he does nothing to save her from the self-destruction that loving a narcissist is heir to. This, too, seems to be an immutable pattern.

So here I am again: found guilty of self-interested love, falsely accused, for I am not a narcissist, and mine was not self-love but rather love that did not alter when it alteration found. What was that alteration? you might ask. I learned she had a boyfriend. It did not change how I felt at all, except that now I must remind myself that this same “man” laughed at her when she got a hook stuck in her sensitive skin. A gentle man would have removed that hook gently. And I think on her pale skin, which turned red at the slightest fluctuation of temperature. I think of how I asked about it and she spoke of its sensitivity, and I replied, “that’s Good.”

I wish she saw me to be Good as well. But I may never know whether she meant to make a pun on Murphy Goode or not. I’ll never know whether she saw the pattern in the whiteboards in the kitchen: how they all had something to say by allusion to HER, if anyone took the time to unriddle them.

You want gossipers to do their research. At least: you want to BELIEVE they do.

So now I have again to start anew, to feign forgetfulness of my lost love, to write it off as selfishness on my own part, for having had the NERVE to contest a “sacred pact” between her and her loving beau.

But I know that such high-minded thinking is too lofty for this place.

I know that he is probably an alcoholic and a narcissist. I know that she is probably too Murphy Goode for him herself.

And I know that I won’t fall out of love with her. I know that were she not too good for him she would not be with him.

And most importantly: I know now that she’s not too Goode for me.

That’s why I will continue on my path, knowing the true nature of the cycle:

You give all you can for a Love the likes of which men have so forgotten that they mock it. The weak of heart try to use the words of goodness and accountability against you. Laughing inwardly, you take your leave with a broken heart, but one that still bleeds love and sympathy and mercy, gushing adoration episodically.

You all ways were too Murphy Goode for them. May you not be remembered as a whiner, but rather a fine wine.

Dm.A.A.

Data Structures and Systems Theory: a Short Memoir.

Josh is a good young man. His autism does not define him except insofar as it is both a blessing and a curse to him. A graduate from the University of California at Irvine, as well as an aspiring cartoonist with an ingenious imagination, he has trouble shaking surprise from others when they learn the identity of his alma mater. When he took Professor Stegman’s Data Structures class at Palomar College, he probably did not expect to make many friends. Ordinarily, he tends towards shyness and reports recurrent social rejection by his peers. Nonetheless, an exceptionally creative mind such as his, all ready having accomplished much academically, did not either expect that he would be facing expulsion under false auspices. Yet this was precisely what happened, as I bore personal witness to, towards the end of the Spring semester of 2018. Josh, having failed once more to make friends in class that might lend him a helping hand, referred instead to his own research, via the Internet, in finishing one of five or six laboratory assignments that would each determine nine per cent of his grade. Unfortunately, he was not alone. Several other students who shared the class with him, UNBEKNOWNST TO JOSH HIMSELF, had the same idea, so they all ended up referring to the same source. I know not whether or not these students were likewise charged with plagiarism. Professor Stegman refused to tell Josh who they were. This is puzzling, because it puts Josh in a situation where, were he guilty, he would all ready have known their identities from conspiracy with them. Conversely, if he is innocent, then he will have no knowledge of their identities, and as such he will have no means of proving his innocence to his instructor. The only sensible reason for Professor Stegman’s privacy is, therefore, that Stegman believes that Josh might prove his own guilt definitively by referring to their identities, which ostensibly only a guilty, uninformed Josh might have had access to. This creates a sort of schizophrenic double-bind; if Josh should happen to discover their identities, he will prove himself guilty, but if he fails to do so, he is guilty by default. Not only has the principle of “innocent until proven guilty” been reversed; he cannot even prove his own innocence, nor shake the guilty verdict by any means whatsoever!!

I decided to investigate this Data Structures class for myself. As per usual, employment obligations have set me behind drastically, and I found myself, enflamed by morbid curiosity, reviewing the lengthy Syllabus for the course. Enclosed within the text file is this chilling paragraph:

“Although you are allowed to help other students, you are never under any obligation to do so. If you feel uncomfortable answering a student’s question for any reason, please do not attempt to answer the question. Instead, suggest that the student see the instructor.”

In the absence of an available instructor of sound mind, a number of students referred to an other monarch, one that had served them to excess previously: the Internet. Of course, Stegman’s philosophy (read “dogma”) of helpfulness in the academic environment and project is the very summary of Ignorance, whether by a Buddhist standard or one from the West. There is obviously a moral obligation for all of us to share the knowledge that we’ve acquired if it was never intended exclusively for us. Furthermore, discomfort in the abject sense does not assuage this matter, but it aggravates it. The principal substitute for ethical behavior is of course emotivism, the tendency to simply “inform” one’s decisions by affect alone.

Stegman’s philosophy reminded me of my most recent visit to the Open Lab. I was disappointed not only by the absence of my favourite tutors but by the presence of a congested crowd. Plenty of young, ambitious students were working on their various codes. Some of them were even in my class, and I had good reason to believe that they were working on the same Lab Assignment that I am about to fail right now. (Most probably regardless of whether or not I keep writing this desperate plaint.) A great deal of them were working in teams. The most bizarre aspect of the situation was this, however: that not one of the people that I even tried to speak with who were part of these teams showed any sign of willingness to talk to me. They dismissed me based on prejudice, an observation I can state for a fact because of the simply fact that I had no prejudice in approaching them. It may be true that the female programmers I tried to speak with I came to first, since they reminded me of my favourite tutor Rachel, whose intuitive sensitivity to others’ styles of learning and needs to learn made her extremely popular as a teacher. That notwithstanding, I was open and direct in both my questions and my declarations. Yet the program would not run; they were not having it. So instead I got help from my only friend in that Data Structures class: Michael Hermes, a brilliant, level-headed whiz-kid who had Asperger’s Syndrome. Why do I feel the need to point that last part out? Put plainly: it’s ironic that under the monarchy of ablism and rugged individualism the one helping hand that I could grasp came from the Disabled Class. So to speak, of course.

I explained to Michael’s Nurse Celia that I was distracted by the crowd and hence found concentration difficult to muster. She understood; she is empathic. When everyone in the classroom forms an exclusive clique, all of their conversations serve the obverse of a social purpose for the Outsider. Interestingly enough, it was this same tendency that helped me to understand the Java programming language, if only insofar as I could comprehend how private and public classes interact. Michael’s smiled at the analogy, which was really a connection I made between Data Structures and that ancient Medieval Principle of Systems Theory. Michael said rolled with the metaphor, comparing private classes to introverts and public classes to extraverts. I reversed the analogy, insisting upon an irony I’d observed time and time again: that extraverted people tend to be more private because they define themselves so much by the exclusive groups that they’re a part of. Michael smiled in tacit agreement. An introvert would be able to read his silence as concession, though I still remember the shock of hearing my old Debate Professor comparing this simple observation, the very essence of any kind of love, Platonic onwards, between human beings, to assault. To this day, I am haunted by the fear that others have of silent consent, only because it means that extraverted thinking has become so monarchical that it has robbed life of Life.

The Fisher believes in Contemporary Systems Theory, at least insofar as she will praise Malcolm Gladwell for his observations. Whilst I have enough Debater left in me to tear the Outliers to shreds, I rest assured that all is well, for she is not apparently fanatical of temperament. It’s ironic: the same philosophy that suggests that we would all get by with a little help from our friends is what makes it so difficult to make friends. I found a friend in Michael, as I had in Josh, because we were all clinical loners who did not possess the SKILL to discriminate between people who were so kind as to reach out to us, whether to help or for help, and most often both. Conversely, I’ve found all too many ladder-climbing chimpanzees who want to keep to their own academic tribes and to perpetuate the In-Group/Out-Group conflict. It is quite redundant, though I rest assured they won’t get far. It hurts me to observe them from this height, however, not just out of pity for their lowly ways, but all so out of bitter recollections of the times they shook me down. Nobody likes a lofty outlier. Not even Malcolm Gladwell.

[({Dm.A.A.)}]