Reaffirmations for Summer 2020: Idealism and Distress.

You know: when you talk about Idealism, you’re talking about just how great and awesome Life would be if only everyone did just a little more. A little here, a little there. To be a little bit more open, or a little bit more kind. To work a little harder, so that those who have to pick up lots of slack enjoy a life that’s easier by far than what they would have had to do instead. Usually, the Idealists are the sorts of people who WOULD do all these things, and they often have to push themselves so much each day to make things work for those around them. Since the Idealists often excel in these qualities, it is predictable that those who fall behind might grow envious of them, and if those shortcomings might be rationalized and recast as virtues, the Idealist might even be portrayed as intrusive. Yet one conceit which is entirely beyond justification is the accusation of self-interest. It may be true that such a change as the Idealist envisions would be of inestimable relief to one’s Self, which stands to benefit by a far greater margin than those who disadvantage themselves ever so slightly. Yet the simple fact that their disadvantage is so minor and the Idealist’s advantage is so great is precisely what renders the transformation Just, for such a set of affairs may only come to pass when, up until this time, the Idealist has had to shoulder an unreasonable burden on behalf of the average person.

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

The Damsel in Distress is one of the oldest archetypes for a reason, since she represents the birth of the boy’s moral development. She presents him with a challenge: given power over a helpless embodiment of femininity, one doubling as sex object and mother figure, he has the choice whether to inflict harm or healing. While boys who grow up on hero myths might easily inherit a feeling of entitlement to those whom they rescue, the deal works, since the rescue is executed and the greater evil assuaged by the Hero, however self-interested the intent.

The simple act of choosing heroism over exploitation is an exercise in self-restraint, courage, and conviction, all invariably heroic qualities, not because they cannot be corrupted towards ill ends, but rather because higher goals cannot be attained without them, and these higher goals are not mere pretensions but rather expressions of the longings of the most piteous and helpless victims.

The Damsel in Distress is not disgraced by her powerlessness, since most often it is the fate of those possessing a more mysterious power: that of vulnerability and innocence. The Damsel in Distress redeems the Hero’s cumbersome and heavy-handed masculinity, but only by being totally vulnerable to him, grotesque though this predicament might appear, and rightfully so, for it was produced by the exploitative means of her villainous captor. The very distinction between the role of captor and liberator, by one’s own choice, establishes the boy as a man, superior in dignity.

At that point, though, the challenge falls to the maiden, for she undergoes the same sort of transformation. If she feels no debt of gratitude towards him, or, feeling it, she acts against it, she has remained a girl, a child of the Universe, entitled to her own innocence but not much else. Her rescuer is like a Father Figure to her, whose love must be unconditional by default, so that she owes him nothing in return, and if he should argue otherwise, he becomes a tyrannical abuser, no better than her ogrish captors.

In this context, it is no surprise if she should seek the company of her fellow girls, who coddle her and assure her that, since she was innocent to begin with, she owes her savior nothing, for he was simply preserving the Natural Order of Things, and, if his intent were self-interested, then she ought to be commended for deceiving him towards beneficent means, and the test of his character will ultimately lie in his absence of personal passion, regardless of whether such a feeling of entitlement would precede or follow the Heroic Act. 

Yet clearly such a matriarchal conceit does not live up to the ideals of any Goddess of Justice, for it forces all men to renounce their own bodies completely in service to weak women, feeble and restrained not only of body but of Heart and Mind, the latter by their own Nature and Volition, disincentivizing many men and producing not only more villains but, among women, a greater tolerance for villainous, barbaric “men” without “creepy” ulterior agendas.

It should be obvious, however, that such agendas represent not so much a hidden evil but a biological longing for moral order, one which redeems the human body as a Source of Moral Authority. The woman who rewards her Saviour with Love becomes akin to a Goddess in her own right, whereas the other remains a temptress and a child. Just as the boy who takes advantage of the Damsel fails a test of Manhood, the girl who does not honour his sacrifice fails to mature into a Woman. Their reciprocity is dependent upon the trust the boy places in the girl by setting her free, as well as the respect she shows for his hopes for the two of them.

In Actual Life, these sorts of relationships govern all good business, for while we all must fend for ourselves we are tasked with doing so by noble means, noble means which, since they are essential, cannot be separated from practical life by being sublimated as ascetic martyrdom. In business, we all want something, but we must be willing to risk loss in order to empower our associates, that they might reciprocate. 

This risk is no more an invitation to say “No” than the bondage of the Damsel in Distress is a form of consent. Disappointments in business are not the results of lofty expectations but of treacheries; the lofty expectation is, in fact, the End in and of Itself, the Goal without the pursuit of which nothing good gets done. 

When I throw the ball to you, you do not call me arrogant for expecting you to catch it, and though I part with it willingly, it is not with the expectation that you might do with it whatever you will, but rather that you will serve the team as I intended for you to. So it is in Love, and this is but one function of the Hero’s encounter with the Damsel in Distress. These stories are not merely the sublimation of perverse heterosexual fantasies; they are tests in refinement for deep-seated and inextricable biological impulses. Maturity for the Man lies in the boy’s ability to set the girl free; maturity for the Woman lies in her ability to reward him. All else is simply conjecture; the moment that we begin to deconstruct the intent of the Hero,

“… the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought;

And enterprises of great pith and moment,

With this regard, their currents turn awry,

And lose the name of action.”

The Good Life always comes at a price.

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

NOBLE LIMITS:

I will be remembered as a tireless lover, perpetually bringing the chalice of service to my maiden, only to have it smacked aside, tossed to the slobbering dogs, perpetually by the hand of gratelessness. Once I’ve been pushed to the brink of madness it could be no testament to my own finitude but rather to my perseverance, for those who pushed me harboured such short tempers and narrow limits that they would depend upon my patience, only to pretend I was their equal once my patience was expended. It was thus that I was blamed for my own suffering, rendered a victim of my own kindness but of an other man’s device, for my own rage was turned against me, though I only raged against those that I loved, taking my rage (towards those I hated) upon them, when they too took the same rage, and towards the same and proper targets, out on me. How depraved is he or she that blames the victim, for while I lived to believe that the one purpose driving a heart’s beat is to be harmless and to heal those that have been let down, remembering the wisdom of the sages that ensured that victims would not dwell in powerlessness, yet a class of ingrates let me down, for that same virtue whose power they fear when they fall short of it becomes their downfall, and they scorn it as though they had had no part in the infraction but had simply witnessed self-inflicted harm. I have to ask: why did they hesitate to take the harm that they deemed self-inflicted then upon themselves?? What other motive could there be except to lunge to the friend’s rescue, only to discover in the depths one’s own involvement in that same friend’s pain? Only a few times can I now recall when I had to absolve myself of that same guilt, denying to the death that I’d had any part in my friend’s injury, and that was only when the pain that I’d inflicted was my own, for I’d been pushed then to the brink that others have not seen, for they’ve not known such distant limits as were mine. If the pain inflicted was my own, for what they deemed to be betrayal (towards them) on my part was nothing but the breakthrough of my own suffering blood, my bleeding heart overflown and my own feet betraying what had been a noble stance in an ignoble public dance, then what was the failure but their own, again, to save me from the depths of drowning, as I would have plunged in to save them, had it been then THEIR breakdown and not mine?

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

The Blue Magician: (528 words.)

To defeat Jacob the Green Marxist, I must play all blue against all green. The only reservation that I had was produced by systematic self-deprivation. If consumerism is mere bourgeois conceit, then so is deck-building. The thought of building one immediately upon having contested him was not lost to my mind, but as my father rambled on about the Game Over algorithm his redundancy (and my preoccupation with it, as well as with him and his feelings) dampened my passion for the task at hand, especially in the midst of other impending business.

Hence it was during a brief half hour after missing my first train yesterday that I attempted to construct an All-Blue Deck, found myself short (at hand) of blue cards, and tried to combine blue with green. This proved ineffective land-wise.

My strategy for a strong deck, secretly an attempt to beat Jake and to smash a mirror (at least half of which, the former half of course, he had surmised in his typically vocal, unreserved manner), was just as inadvertently the reflux of dreaded Systems Theory.

I know the path ahead now, not only in games but in Life.

My Blue Deck shall draw on my entire reserve of blue cards. Only the best will do, though I shall be generous in what I consider Great.

They will by their nature(s!) lend themselves to Cooperation. They shall not be coerced into it. This is PURE Marxism: the liberation of the Individual.

At all times, people die and suffer. If one were to take personally a collective problem, acting as a Messianic Figure, then the emotion of Joy would be lost one’s self perpetually, and just as soon would die the motivation to create a Better Life, either for Self or Others. If it did not die within one’s Self, it would die in Others by contagion of the disease, and as such one would perpetually fail in one’s attempts to aid Them. Other as Others would be reduced to the proverbial “They” (the Jews, the Communists, the Bourgeois, Women, etc.)

Manic Depression is seldom a solution. The perpetual state of Strife, interrupted only episodically by the sense of a short-lived Victory, is wrongfully repressed but rightfully suppressed. I shall no more be oppressed by internal guilt than by external suggestion. War remains a last resort.

It must all ways be so.

The Gods Themselves will guide me along this heroic path. My journey now turns towards Home. I must be careful not be robbed of what I have learned by thieves of glorious virtue.

Joy I shall no longer disown, for it is my stronghold, my reward and bounty, with which I shall be generous in sharing. I shall live as though Paradise were all ready here, (for it is!! And it is more ubiquitous than Hell, by its very Nature) and by so doing I shall express Heaven in terms of Earth and create a New Reality. Trickle-down economics works when the treasure trickles down from Heaven. And that I know to be more than a bourgeois fantasy. It is all that’s ever worked for me. And

Grace shall lead me home.

Dm.A.A.