The End of Selfishness. (Unanimated.)

Dm.A.a.

Ten Unknown Locals:

Ten Unknown Locals:

Ten San Diego Locals You Do Not Know, and their Zodiac Signs.

1.        Soundshift. c

Genre: Alternative Techno.

Song: Machine.

Sub-Scene: MintFam Collective.

https://soundcloud.com/soundshift-1/machine

If you have ever heard a machine breaking down, it is usually a sound of conditioned Angst for the contemporary mind. Yet imagine hearing those same industrial tones as glistening like rubies or the car-keys you’d misplaced and just now found. Behind them looms a sort of all most perversely protective presence: deep electronic chords with oscillating arpeggios drifting up and down and fading into moments of glitch and resonance.

Well come to the mind of Soundshift, the Alternative Techno D.J. for the Third Millenium, and the first local to kick off our publication of Ten Unknown Locals.

Soundshift’s average song is shorter than half an hour, but longer than twenty minutes. He tries not to be too assuming that people will listen to it all the way through. Yet the statistics show that, even if it’s only for a few minutes, people flock to his tracks.

Soundshift delivers us into a field of ambience that pacifies and relaxes us like a sonic anaesthetic. When he incorporates the slightest unsettling or “noisy” tone he yet manages to transmute it into a comforting sonic pacifier, owing to his precise ear for quality and serenity. An avid fan of Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson, he is not afraid to experiment. His experiments just often times tend to put us to sleep rather than waking us up. But hey. We need that. And if sleep is aimed at the purpose of dreaming, we might as well all ready be dosing when we hear Soundshift’s pieces, especially “Machine”, for the entire composition is nothing short of a soothing, beneficent dreamscape conveyed in sounds.

Precision is a Virgo trait, and Soundshift lives up to his Sun-sign. How many contemporary artists can you name that can drop a bass without sounding like they dropped some thing? Not many. Soundshift is the exception. Every tone, low or high, sounds tuned to the exact frequency it needs. And do not worry about him growing boring. Just as you feel ready to fade into the walls the bass and drums herald in the sounds of a broken slot machine singing the song of its own demise. And then the next thing that you know a peaceful organ from an other dimension mediates between all the competing voices and they all come to transform, learning some thing about themselves and life its self in the process, and laughing together about past difficulties, forgetting all differences. This is the sound of Soundshift. If Peace and Diplomacy were a sound, the sonic therapy of this mild-mannered local composer would be it.

2.      Spiralizer. a

Genre: Alternative Techno.

Song: Brotherhood [of Man] in the Third Millenium.

Sub-Scene: MintFam Collective.

https://soundcloud.com/spiralizer/brotherhood-in-the-third-millennium

Most likely, you will not hear the name of Terence McKenna in a college philosophy, sociology, ecology, or chemistry class. That is of course unless one of the students or professors present is a stoner or, to use Terence’s own euphemism, an “anarchoprimitivistic ethnobotanist”.

Yet the work of the late T. McKenna, whose influence has spread across continents (often through his own travels, towards both the edges of the world and of the mind), is not the special province of drug users. McKenna’s voice as a “trippy sample” has leant its self posthumously to various musical compositions aimed at the intellectual poet’s chief purpose, the common purpose of the American Counter-Culture: the expansion of individual and collective consciousness.

Rupert Sheldrake and Primitive Radio Gods aside, the most moving interpretation of Terence’s recorded voice is the track “Brotherhood in the Third Millenium” by local electronic genius Spiralizer. It’s precisely what one would expect of a D.J. like Spiralizer (and really of any one born under the Sun-sign of Cancer.). Let me sum up this project for you in the simplest terms available, before I spook you. Spiralizer is what you get when techno is set to a meditative frequency. It is the sound of aliens dancing at a club in a cosmic nebula. And weaving in and out of the most depravingly catchy, hypnotic beats you have ever forgotten just to come back to with renewed novelty is the cuttingly sweet voice of this nerdy Scorpio intellectual McKenna prosaically reciting the words “inspiring, challenging, amazing… for the human Soul… judged for the future… the brotherhood of man.”

And then, just like a dive under the waters of a Hawaiian Ocean, a key change leads us to the depths of our own collective psyche, only to emerge again in the midst of excitement, transcendence, and Armaggedon.

There is no “objective” style in which to describe the inspired sounds of Spiralizer, only pretentious and academic attempts contrived of weak grammar and ten-cent words. To convey true art we must be artists ourselves. If we are not, we can only abide in awe. I’ll try my best for the former, though I am inclined towards the latter.

Next to colleague and collaborator Soundshift, Spiralizer is San Diego’s most-beloved and moving Alternative Techno musician. Describing his compositions as humbly as “Chillout” or “House”, Spiralizer is able to produce collaborations that go on for half an hour each with the same seamless sense of ease as he produces singles that feel just as long in only eight minutes. And not one of his pieces “drags on”. They simply transport the listener to new levels of awareness, the function of a Church, Monastery, or Wildlife Reserve. Interlaced with it is an all most diabolical cleverness, weaving esoteric samples from nonetheless revered sources into a unique “found poem” of others’ voices constructing a mythological narrative that fades into a primal bass line sheltered by echoing pianos and ambient chords. Every thing is tuned to perfection, not a single rise in dynamic feels rushed or delayed, and by the end of it one does feel like McKenna’s vision of a “Brotherhood of Man” is not only possible, but painless, and kind of chill.

3.       Sl33py.boi _

Genre: Gangsta Rap.

Song: Not Sober.

Sub-Scene: The Suburban Shamans.

https://soundcloud.com/sl33py-boi/not-sober

The presumption that a young artist cannot be successful is every bit as naiive as the presupposition that a suburbanite cannot know the thug life, and local boi Robbie Pesta establishes the futility of both of these prejudiced notions. Just listen to the song “Not Sober”, a party anthem break-out that will be a hit just as soon as the Inspired Taurus gets off the creator’s couch and starts touring.

Robbie’s approach has all ways been simple: Simplicity. A dope beat, some sick drums, and some dope/sick rhymes render him within moments a Rap God, and when the curtains fall he is again just a friendly neighbourhood bro with backstage passes. If I tried to paint him up to be more, it would be an insult to his aesthetic. But I shall humour my self by insisting that THIS local M.C. and Producer is likely to uproot the San Diego Hip-Hop scene in years to come and transport it delicately (with the delicacy of a Bull in a liquor shop) to the Heavens. And he isn’t even drinking-age yet! Mad love for my homie. Representing the 858 and the 619. Sl33p in Peace.

4.      Cali3ns. `

Genre: Hip-hop.

Song: Love is… [Love].

https://soundcloud.com/cali3ns/love-is

Let’s be frank: when you make State or even National News you are hardly off the radar. But in the words of Alan W. Watts, what is closest to you is hardest to see. So this duo, San Diego’s closest approximation to the wild stylings of OutKast (and both groups have a Gemini presence in their midst, F.Y.I.), might pass undetected in public. Dre Trav operates low-key at a record store next door or so to Capricorn records, and who even knows what his partner does? But know this: If Downtown San Diego has a day-time sound, Cali3ns is it.

The word that surfaces to mind is “Sonorous”, and then “Solar”. In a genre polluted with negativity (and the controversy that comes with it), Cali3ns reminds insiders and outsiders alike that Hip-Hop is a genre of Hope. The poetry of these two rhyming aficionados break us back into the sunlight, the spotlight, and the limelight, cutting through the frozen Ocean in our Souls that Cancer Franz Kafka spoke of as the function of a novel.

“Love is… [Love]” is an anthem for the newborn child to recall its roots, even as it must spread its wings and leave the nest. There is no part of the Cali3ns aesthetic that is not aligned in the same direction: Freedom. Hip-hop has become so commercialized that the masses have forgotten that its hedonistic excesses are a form of destruction rather than the Promethean flame of Creation that rap was meant to be. Critics of hip-hop as degenerate would do well to remember a time when M.C’s were not denigrating but educating. And Cali3ns is K-12 and college in 3 minutes and six seconds.

Nothing says “Urban Poetry” like the lines

“And I can smell it from a mile away.

If it wasn’t written off the tongue

It was painted on your face today.”

And what would Dre Trav be without the classic funk carrying him along like a surfer’s dream wave?

If the Satanism of Lil Wayne, the vainglory of Kanye West, or the materialism of Jay-Z are cardinal sins and prisons for the Soul, Cali3ns are your trusted twins that show up outside your Prison Cell dangling a pair of keys, smiling in camaraderie with you.

5.      Matt Rivers. `

Genre: Busker.

Song: Time is Short, Road is Long.

Sub-Scene: Kettle Coffee. (only because you might not get to hear this song any where else.)

TECHNICALLY, Matt Rivers does not belong to us. He belongs to every one. The young Gemini Hitchhiker is a busker by trade and has made more money playing live with just his sweetheart smoker’s voice, painted guitar, and the occasional harmonica and kazoo than any of us would make working for the minimum wage. (in any economy.)

To name-drop politics in reference to Rivers is not inappropriate either. A mild-mannered radical by trade and birth, Matthew is not afraid to point out the ills of the World whilst offering medicine with his stylized rhymes and pleasant “howdy partner” tone.

“Time is Short, Road is Long” is a tune for an other kind of heartache. Every one with a love life can feel a break-up song, even if only in fearful theory. Matt’s been there (because where HASN’T he been?), so you can bet with him that you’ll hear not only sweetness or melodrama but HONESTY.

Matt’s lyrical genius grows with every new rendition of his tunes, adding stanzas, weaving a string of hooks into the all ready tight fabric of the rhyme scheme, and not missing a single note on any one of the instruments that he plays SIMULTANEOUSLY.

One local conceived of Matt as having come out of the womb with a guitar in his hand. And this pleasantly naiive metaphor is exactly the sort of nostalgic innocence that Matt Rivers venerates. His style sounds like some thing out World War One, drawing on a breadth of influence from ragtime, jazz, blues, and folk. If you ever wondered what it was like to know Tom Waits before Tom’s voice became an icon, Matt is your man. If you ever wanted to get drunk and talk disappointed love, Matt MIGHT be your man. (Though do not hassle him.) At any rate, if you should find upon asking for him that he is in Texas or Wisconsin or wherever, the wonder of the internet has made it possible for you to all ways have his song here to comfort you through thick and thin.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c28mfEi8Rz0*

P.S. He does a mean cover of Easy E as well, believe it or not. I’ve heard it my self, mere feet from him in person, one sunny Sunday afternoon at a bar that overlooks Grand Avenue in Escondido. True story bro.

*Turns out that by some miracle I found it. By Jove!

6.      Elizabeth Moyer. a

Genre: Indie Folk.

Song: Florida.

Sub-Scene: Kettle Coffee.

https://soundcloud.com/elizabeth-moyer/florida

Cancer is the Zodiac sign of Home, and “Florida” is the home of our own singing selkie, Elizabeth Moyer. A central player in the Kettle Coffee scene, the leading lady of the grunge revival band Lizard, and an inspired and avid poetry enthusiast and environmentalist, Liz is not only the epitome of the nurturing Mother archetype but the person you want to go to when you feel a nostalgia for the womb. Few voices are more sonorous, few compositions more comforting, and few styles so familiar yet novel and mysterious as the sweet and sultry sounds of Elizabeth’s unique, enterprising indie folk.

“Florida” is poetry not SET to music, but ANIMATED into music (not in the cartoon sense, but in the “bringing-objects-to-life” sense that we so love about Cancers). If you grew up listening to Modest Mouse, you recognise the sentimental vibe immediately. If you love music, you recognise the talent from miles away. The song is at once the purr of an affectionate feline and the growl of a catty territorial wildcat: “If you think this town could use a new vibration, get out of here with your expectations…” is at once the voice of an understanding and stern, tough-love Mother: Mother Nature. If you do not like it, you can leave. But wherever you leave to, if you follow my path, you shall find home.

7.      Mono Polly. c

Genre: Experimental Pop.

Song: Cancer. (My Chemical Romance.)

https://soundcloud.com/mono-polly/cancer

Cover songs seldom convey more than the original; at best, they break even. Yet when Poway local Alex Riccio’s mother passed away from lymphoma, this old favourite became the anthem of his family’s collective life. Now, three years later, shy extravert Riccio, alias Mono Polly, (not to be confused with Mono/Poly of Los Angeles) has found the courage to share his pain with the world.

I still remember visiting the Riccios’ home before it happened. Amidst the plentitude of family photographs was one of a young Alex back-stage in broad daylight with his childhood musical hero, Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance.

To think: this was the band that kids felt awkward about when they received tickets for their show as a birthday present! Beyond the mascara of M.C.R’s “emo/neo-goth” look is of course a band every bit as talented as Queen, just in a way that usually people do not consider comparisons to them sacrilegious.

We would do well to hold back our indignation when we hear the M.C.R. classic “Cancer” brought back to life by Mono Polly. This is not only a high point in M.C.R’s career. It is all so the peaking of Riccio’s unique and challenging style, a sound that he has self-professed as sounding like a “dream where every thing is textured and sweet”. The autotune cannot hide the pain, yet the dreamy aethereal Virgo chords act as a pillow to catch you from a fall of one hundred sad stories.

8.      Maxximus K. c

Genre: Electronica.

Song: Death Valley ft. XEnigmatistX.

https://soundcloud.com/zac-sarachman/death-valley-maxximus-k-feat

How many Virgos know martial arts and dress up like Steam-punk Anime characters? About as many as produce hours if not days of awe-inspiring industrial techno music. Apparently.

One of the great regrets of my life was that I did not pirate Edward’s entire discography before he decided only to showcase his experimental Noise Metal. Artists, right? It reminds one of Kafka asking on his death-bed that his works all be burnt before they could be published. Thank God that didn’t happen, and thank the same God that Edward’s music can still be found under the alias Maxximus K.

If you had visited his page earlier, you would have felt as though you’d walked into a kid’s video game, but on steroids. As Zac the Enigmatist once said to me, “every one and his mother has an experimental electronic side-project”. All though this was in fact an exaggeration, (I’m pretty sure my own mother is no D.J, regretably) it does hit home this brute truth: that any one can learn to use FL, Ableton, ProTools or even Musagi, but not every one can create a sound with them so novel that it sounds like the last glimpse of God you get before you come down from a psychedelic and He’s never seen again.

Edward is too modest to admit these things, as are all of the relics of his project. “Death Valley”, his collaboration with Enigmatist, is not a cutting-edge song by Edward’s standards, though of course it is far out by any other standard. The industrial ballad sounds like Nine Inch Nails set in a virtual desert (as was probably the working concept for it, in all honesty), a classic rock song for the millennial generation. It addresses vocalist Zac’s classic mythological themes of drama, delusion, loss of Soul, and death, spiced up by the fact that it was written ABOUT his collaborator on that very song.

To this day the song mesmerizes me. Whilst Edward is still in the game (to my best and most hopeful guess) it looms as a warning against the tortured artist fading into obscurity like the white hot flame of burning Magnesium. Thankfully, my most beloved local genius left us this piece as residue. It is a true gem, and the closest swan song for more hopeful times that we can have should Maxximus K never again attain the same grace as he had in those days of innocent obscurity.    

9.      Lee the Fourth. d

Genre: Alternative Rap.

Song: Cold Metal.

https://soundcloud.com/leethefourth/cold-metal-preview-album-coming-soon

Libras are the most diplomatic and balanced of the signs. Just think of Friedrich Nietzsche. And Eminem. Yeah. Balanced. Diplomatic.

There is a paradox to this personality type, and it abides in the fact that what balances balance is imbalance. If you ever saw Lee the Fourth performing live at Atomic, you would notice this when he breaks out the Skeletor mask and performs his own day-in-the-life autobiography. His home-made beat features himself doing diabolical back-up vocals, and the whole song is a manic-depressive schizophrenic battle between Heaven and Hell. And the lyrics are totally smooth and all grammatically correct. As you would expect.

The best show-case for Lee’s style is his signature song, “Cold Metal”. Given that the logo on his business cards is a young man in mid-air with a kitana, over the name of the artist in oriental lettering, this is clearly his anthem. “Cold Metal” is what Nietzsche was talking about: triumph of the Strong-Willed, inviting us all to live a life without artificial impositions.

The texture of the song is compact, sounding like it could be on a Nike commercial, but is too cool for that kind of promotional spot-light right now. The rhymes are part-poetry and part-self-help aphorisms. Here is none of the brutish militant poetry of the San Diego Hip-hop scene. Lee IV delivers classy, intellectual verses that never veer towards arrogance but demonstrate conviction, never veering towards histrionic tendencies even whilst bewailing the fate they love.

We can’t wait for the album to drop. This guy should be on the map soon.

10.   Spontation. i

Genre: Electronica.

Song: Alone (Dinosaur Jr.)

https://soundcloud.com/spontationxo/alone-dinosaur-junior-cover

It is a little-known fact that all of our Western music is tuned to a diabolical frequency. Various rumours surround the cause of this, including one that Goebbels himself set us off intentionally during the Nazi Regime.

The frequency of all pop music and even classical music is 440 Hertz. The frequency of the Universe is 432 Hertz. It is the frequency that Mozart and Verdi composed at. Monks chant at this frequency often.

Those eight waves change every thing.

As tacky as it may be, I would dishonor this list if I included any one I did not know personally. And I have exhausted the alternatives. The last of our first ten is yours truly.

Spontation is the experimental electronic project of Dmytri Andreev, keyboardist of the now-defunct bands Fourth N Cedar and the Suburban Shamans. He has been composing for over ten years, and he has been recording that long as well.

His two most recent albums focus on shifts in consciousness that come about when we shift the frequency of what we’re used to to the frequency that our bodies most want. Pop music compels us all ways to settle for less than what the Cosmos had intended. Art music brings us home.

Spontation’s album “The Next Level Down” offers us the 432 Hertz alternative. Meanwhile, “a [pure and] clever field of barley on the Hill” takes us through the seven chakras, up and down, in telling a story of forlorn love. Yet these two instrumental albums are not as accessible as his cover of Dinosaur Jr’s “Alone”. More reserved than his other work, here the only thing that challenges us is the voice. Torment is best expressed with a bit of vengeance, it seems, for his vocals hurt us either by being so bad or so good.

The song is set in Spontation to 432 Hertz. It is 7 minutes and 7 seconds long, and its Beats per Minute is 108. If one wants to commiserate, space out, or defy, one listens to the music listed 1-9 on this list. If one wants to heal, with mathematical accuracy and emotive passion, Spontation is the Piscean healer, last of the Zodiac and last on our list for today.

If I may say so my self.

Dm.A.A.

Clever.

Made with the pencil and markers lying on my desk.

Dm.A.A.

The Redemption of Altruism and the Death of Satanism:

One of my favourite film scenes is the climax of Amelie. I shall not spoil it, but suffice to say it expresses the central theme of the film: a young woman who is a natural altruist learns all so how to take care of her SELF, and she finds this joy through an other.

The notion is that if all lives matter, as an altruist understands, then the altruist’s life matters as well. Doing what is good for YOU is of no issue so long as it does no harm to others, and a naturally empathic person will all ways be able to pull this off.

The very presence of altruists in society is what makes it possible to have your needs met without having to compromise any one else’s. The willingness to give is what makes it permissible to take.

Yet there is an undercurrent of Satanism in our contemporary culture that portrays altruism as weakness. It vilifies altruists as having malintent whilst all the while exploiting them. The premise for this attitude is that to be kind is to be weak and to be weak is to be bad. So it is unfavourable to risk personal loss even to those who have taken that same risk and suffered the same loss. Though there’s no justice in denying the less fortunate, for they are often victims of their own good graces and not random chance, the Satanic cynic perpetually blames the victim for making the more innocent choice. At an extreme, the Satanist even exploits the victim further by insisting that the victim owes some thing unto the Satanist. The Satanist will ape kindness but only with the expectation of reward. Genuine kindness needs no reward from its recipients; it only needs to replenish its resources somewhere else. So debt is an instrument of control by the cynics whilst charity towards those in need and from those in excess is the way of the altruist. Only the latter way can end the struggle between individuals for power, for, as stated in the prior paragraph, only by being willing to sacrifice can one make possible the receiving without the TAKING, taking being a term used for exploitative practices that end up in a game of zero sum.

The worldview of the altruist is not one of an endless struggle of individuals but of a merger that at the same time respects and enhances the integrity of EACH individual. It is only because this ideal is so beautiful, especially when put effectively into practice, that so many intellectuals turn to Marxism. There is no other underlying cause for the Marxist trend except for the basic logic of human development, both on the individual level of moral growth and upon the collective level of mutual prosperity.

So it follows that an altruist like Amelie can enjoy the fruits of her actions with a clean conscience for she simply treats herself to the same kindness as she treats others. Yet the Satanic undercurrent seeks to vilify her, first by leveling with her and aping friendship, and secondly by blaming her by avenue of this same binding bond.

A true altruist gives to those in need and takes from those in excess. Yet a false altruist gives to the same people whom he takes from and demands the same exchange. This is atrocious behaviour. It is exclusive, binding, controlling, and dubious. It does not assess debt by what is necessary but by the PREFERENCES of the individual, even if that individual operates in an environment of self-inflicted privilege.

The Satanist insists that since life is a game of zero-sum and private debts then the altruist is only entitled to the support of those she helps. Yet those she helps, to the degree that that same help was needed, rarely if ever gain the power to re-pay her. If they do, it might be forgotten that she’d made the contribution to begin with.

The Satanist cannot accommodate a person who does not reciprocate. Yet this behaviour is all most cruelly laughable. What is there to reciprocate if the Satanist is but doing his job? The altruist EXPECTS all others to be as altruistic as she is, for altruism is a good and it is in the nature of a generous person to perceive the GOOD in all others. Unfortunately, it is likewise that the confused and arrogant are heir to a projection upon others of their own self-interest. What renders the altruist the more enlightened of the two is that the vision is sensible. If all men serve one an other, their way of life is sustainable. Yet to see ego in an other person is to find little solidarity; only debt can keep the hostile Other in check. Egoism inevitably produces a zero-sum game, even in people who are not as egoistic but are simply suspected (falsely) of ego and malintent.

Malintent its self becomes warped in such a world view for it becomes relative rather than absolute. This renders the Satanist a hypocrite, for he will insist that malintent is relative when he is himself accused of it, yet he will treat it as Absolute in his own accusations. When cornered with the facts of these contradictions, he pretends that he is less of a hypocrite than the rest of the world because he admits to it. In fact, we have even less reason to believe him when he does so, for it is of course in the NATURE of a hypocrite to accuse others of hypocrisy, and if some one is unapologetically hypocritical it is a statement of intent to project evil upon others and to assign false blame for one’s own shortcomings. It does not vindicate the blame nor establish the guilt of any other.

The altruist is entitled to the fruits of the world; her journey is to FEEL this sense of self-entitlement, for she has earned it by virtue not of any one individual debt but rather the very world that she has helped to create in her own image. Yet Satanists are threatened by this world. Their lust for power corrupts them, but they are much too insecure to compete with the altruists, so they begin to seek leveling camaraderie as a Trojan Horse for their agenda to defile the altruist.

At first the Satanist pretends towards kindness and does not require payment. Yet at moments of extreme frustration the debt occurs. The Satanist then performs an insulting pantomime of the victim, pretending towards a victimhood that never happened but that was the invention of a man who did not get what he PREFERRED. Preferences are the instruments of the privileged; to forego the preferring ego one must sacrifice for others. This the Satanist only PRETENDS to do.

The virtuous man is known by his fruits. His acts of self-interest are totally harmless. Yet since they threaten the Satanic agenda the Satanist is obligated to resort to manipulation, pretending that in fact objective harm was done. This is a long-held grudge that the Satanist ultimately uses to ROB the altruist of the altruist’s most dear treasure. This treasure is usually non-material (though not immaterial), so its value as property cannot be traced. Yet the treachery is objective. The Satanist delivers the last stroke by insisting that this was part and parcel with the altruist’s debt. The Satanist apes the victim one last time, insisting that he only wanted to be happy for once after all the sacrifices he had made for the altruist. He then reminds cunningly the altruist of all the times the altruist had acted out and all the harm the altruist had done. Yet in fact no harm was ever done by the altruist that was not self-inflicted by his envious witnesses. The altruist simply acted in accord with Nature. He wanted only to participate in a common human life, and this did no harm. The voice of the Satanist must not be rendered as equal to that of an altruist. He is not entitled to pretend towards victimhood. His guilt is written in his manifesto. One man occupies a world of mutual compassion that must be protected from greed and competition. The other man occupies a tormented and fragmented world of fear and manipulation. The altruist all ways acts in such a way that only one person could be excluded: the parasite. Any one can follow an altruist’s path, and even if the altruist receives a special personal reward it is due unto him for his valour. The parasite uses no valour in taking that same reward from the altruist as payment; if that valour were not working in his favour, the Satanist would condemn it. In fact, it was that very valour that the Satanist had blamed for the initial offense that would now seem to justify this new one. Yet all this evidences is that the Satanist uses others’ valour to his purposes, and when he cannot do so he condemns it for it was of no benefit to his own plot. The Satanist HAS no valour or courage of his own; he is the weaker of the two by any objective evaluation.

When confronted with the objectivities of his treachery, the Satanist says what the altruist was much too generous to say before of the Satanist: that the offense is the result of simply not getting what one wanted. In fact, it was the SATANIST who ever acted out of such a sense of self-entitlement. The altruist who is accused of this same sin is only “guilty” of wanting his due, for he had all ways meant well towards others and was entitled to the same kindness in expectation; he too is an object in his own world, and as object he deserves like treatment. Yet the Satanist cannot afford this. For the Satanist the self-as-object is all ways an enemy to other objects. This is a function of the Satanist’s self-as-subject, which subjectifies the world as a zero-sum war game. To the altruist, the self-as-subject is no different from the Other-as-Object or the self-as-object; it may not even be distinct from the Other-as-subject. All subjects are to be treated with respect as objects, up until their subjectivity becomes destructive towards other objects.

The ultimate give-away that the altruist is in the objective Right is the very absurdity of his conflict with the Satanist. The Satanist proves his point by being a narcissist, yet he all so by so doing proves the LIMIT of his point. In the Satanist’s company, the altruist all ways suffers the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, and these are none other than the WILL of his oppressor who pretends to be his friend.

Once the altruist has the courage to take a leap of faith, he might find that he is an end in and of himself. Less cynical people, even if they seem jaded by demeanour, accommodate his needs, and he can see the world of mutual altruism for once from the subjectivity of a self-as-object. So it is that subject and object are finally married, the martyr becomes a saviour, and the Knight of Infinite Resignation becomes the Knight of Pure Faith, a la Kierkegaard. The world is no longer a futile attempt, but a working system. The future caves in before the present, for the false fears upholding this delusion are torn down.

The Satanist proves by betraying the altruist that life CAN be a zero-sum game, but not that it HAS to be. It is not THE world that is cruel, but HIS world. Once the altruist makes one change – to stop accommodating the parasite – it becomes clear who the parasite ever was. And this is not of course to be misconstrued as a formula for any one to use. To dismiss people as parasitic does not prove you to be right; this reading of my logic is a fallacy of reduction and of manipulation. It is rather that one who possesses the VIRTUE of altruism will OBJECTIVELY find a better world with people who ACTUALLY reciprocate his kindness rather than merely PRETENDING to. So it becomes obvious that the world-view of the Satanist was just a private rung of Hell that the Satanist himself was responsible for. By necessity, the Satanist must all ways win those small battles, for he strikes the unsuspecting. Yet by his victories he loses the larger WAR, which he had until this point drawn the altruist away from by compelling him by vice of false debt to focus upon the Satanist’s needs exclusively. The Satanist judges of the altruist for what the altruist does outside of the friendship, but not when it is actually of value to others, for the Satanist only regards others to the degree that they can be used to encriminate the altruist and to thus keep the altruist in false debt and away from this key transformation that comes about when the altruist DARES, for ONCE, to be selfish. Only when the altruist turns selfish can the World be seen for what it is: just. Yet a man who pretends towards altruism only with the INTENT of being selfish fails from the very start.

Dm.A.A.

Critique of Trans-humanism:

Transhumanism is predicated upon the false notion that the greatest human good is the greatest technological good, and that the greatest human virtue is the mightiest technological power. It is none other than a form of contemporary fascism; its allure is equally romantic and utterly catastrophic. All fascism aims at not the empowerment of the individual but its subordination to a group with no set leader. It substitutes for human will a program that all follow, and thus the stream of human life becomes merely a growing crystal, beautiful only to those who are not inside it. ultimately all such structures fall apart, for the human remains as an inconvenient challenge to the automatic autonomous autocracy of the machine. A machine with no conception of human error or will will never be able to account for every variable of individual failure. Existentially, the individual will simply be made to suffer for the very virtues of flexibility that Nature rewards, for Nature endows us with those same virtues, for its purposes, to watch them develop. When we mistake technology for an outgrowth of Nature we begin to serve technology instead of using it towards Natural purposes. Yet technology is too myopic a human achievement to withhold the energy that Nature grants. Technological man has little by little, yet with alarming acceleration, forgotten his roots, a mystery that he had only ever begun to comprehend. The technological revolution was long ago intuited as inevitable, yet so was the war with the machines. Human virtues teach us loyalty and compassion. A machine-man has not these virtues. They are merely a program and an instrument, with which his mind is identified. So he becomes a monstrous hypocrite, accusing others of his own hypocrisy for it is in the nature of a hypocrite to do so. He employs the semblance of compassion in the service of power, and he accuses all other compassion of the same cause for true compassion rests outside his programming.

Loyalty is natural; self-service is artificial, for self is a construct but Other is a Given experience. To become-machine is to surrender one’s loyalty to the Human Cause and to betray.

Technological culture requires us to express our birthright through the medium of machine. But as our dependency upon machine grows so does the tendency to confuse ourselves for machine. The pinnacle of this contemporary confusion is Transhumanism, which confuses efficiency for excellence, technological power for empowerment, and dependency for independence.

All millenials will have been faced with this unique psychological challenge since their birth. It is alien to the remaining older generations, though the insights of their Intuitives about our time can still serve us in discovering the Ocean of our deeper nature, which culture is perpetually trying to avoid our diving into, confining us to the metropolis and plotting for this city’s expansion to the ends of the cosmos. This would only be virtuous if it were not futile.

I had a friend who became obsessed with transhumant potential. One time, he took me to the beach, thinking it a favour to me, though I would inevitably have found some way to get there at any rate.

I went in the water. He and his other friends did not. He held it against me that I deviated. My defense is that I was free to, and so was he. I placed no limit upon his own freedom; that limit was his own programming reacting to unforeseen problems.

When he betrayed me finally I saw in him the threat that not only he posed to me and my loved ones but rather the threat that his own mechanical thinking posed to him.

He will only be able to defend his position by the same processes I have described.

The irony of my anecdote, that he could not go into the water, and that he could not understand the importance of this Natural Act, will be lost to him. He will rationalise that his own betrayal was Natural by the same token. Yet we must not try to naturalise what is artificial. Swimming is natural. It is participation within a common life that is our birthright. Predation in human beings is unnatural, for human beings have evolved, if not genetically then mimetically, the principle of loyalty to combat self-interest. Once self-interest, the construct of the ego, takes over, we are ill.

The aesthetic of transhumanism is an alluring one. Yet the agenda is mechanical and depersonalizing. It is nothing novel, but the ultimate reduction of humanity to the greatest sins of our times: the loss of the humanities, the bastardisation of virtue, and the marginalization of compassion. Nature is a system of cooperation, and the past is a vat of insight, but contemporary mechanical thought has brutalized the former and vilified the latter.

What is most alluring is the WILL of the transhumanist. But the passion that draws me to this person is akin to pity. I want to ensure this being’s salvation from the devouring tendency for tools to become idols. Technology is a highly evolved form of magic. Yet all magic has a light side and a dark side. The path of power-seeking for its own ends has all ways been doomed to failure. And this is no less true simply because it would believe that all benevolent intent were a façade for power. It is simply ignorant, for it has foregone the human power to attain benevolence. This benevolence is our birth-right. All other purposes end in nihilism and decay. The transhumanist agenda is a failure; its successes would be disappointments if permitted.

Dm.A.A.

Dream Nineteen, Parts II-V.

The remainder of the dream was fairly episodic, at least by comparison.

Recounting this should be smooth....

II.                 I’d awoken to discover that parts of my bedroom had been re-arranged,

Ostensibly beneficently. Yet it was not long after this that I found my self in self-admiration in the mirror,

And I soon wiped the grin off of my own face, for I was missing hair. I found my mother promptly. She confessed, without apology, that she had cut my hair whilst I was sleeping. I’m reminded of last night, I.A.L. I called the proper time to take the chicken out of the oven, but father still insisted on being the one to cut it, even though he had been absent at its being-withdrawn.

Yet I still managed to treat my curiosity by tearing off one of the hen’s tails. True to form it tastes like ass. Within the dream, my mother had cut my hair from the back, for I was sleeping face-down.

III.               Creature Com-

I was furious. Soon afterwards,

If memory serves, Pumpkin got out through the front door. I saw him dart right,

And I hoped that our visitors had not left the gate open.

Forts: (_)

True to form, they had. I ran with futility after my dog-

Friend, who was anthropomorphic now at least in his speed. He ran past an open garage. A car pulled out onto the drive-way.

As it passed I saw Pumpkin waiting for me upon the lawn,

His eyes a stern gaze. Running out in front of the red Jeep, I grabbed and all but pocketed my [beloved] Pekingese.

I could begin to interpret these last two episodes here, but time is essential. Whilst analysis remains important, it can wait, especially if what my heart suggests is true.

This Sunday shall be easy-

Going, but productive, so I’ll go easy on the analysis and produce a swift account of what had followed…

IV.              d

How I ended up breaking bad I can’t recount, for I cannot recall. But twilight found me any way in hiding. I saw a young man, Hispanic-

Looking, not unlike Mike Peterson, pushing a lawn-

Mower – the non-electric kind.

I walked up to him cautiously,

Discreetly letting on in some thing like a whisper that I needed cash and would be able to work for him. He had me take over the yards. I was taken aback. I was, after all, a fugitive. Why should I operate now in the open?

V.                 MEANWHILE, an alter-ego, older,

Was pulling off for our cause a sort of undercover, indoor heist. He used his phone for reference; it was a modern piece of technology that Kept him connected. By way of a chink in the proverbial cyber-wall,

He saw that he was not the only game-player on our grid.

Some one was playing cards. That one was me. The scene shifted back to my character. I’d given up the yard-work for the time being; the Hispanic guy was still out and about, due back a few hours later. I was in-

Doors, playing cards with an other youngster. I was going to gamble my way to get the money, or if that failed there’d be time to now the Lawns for the Hispanic.

Which was the REAL gamble?

I would not Know.

Dm.A.A.

Dream Nineteen, Part One, and Interpretation.

Dream Nineteen:

“Ugh, where do I start?” Kanye West.

I.                    The dream began, as far as I’m aware, at a College Debate Tournament. The architecture’s textures were highly defined under a vivid purple sky.

This time, I was Going In with guns blazing. It’s not impossible that the sky was in fact Marigold at some point, but then somehow I suspect that moreso of the buildings.

Interpretation:

Kresten never APPRECIATED what I had to offer. I then would have died for my friends, my only regret being that Mother and Maria (and even Father) would have cried. It would have then been a thankless task, for I would have been somber and not glad.

Perhaps the thought of martyrdom had been the source of my estrangement in my adolescence.

At each tournament, I felt the presence of my friends, who never once showed up. As a Debate Judge, I would have imagined Kresten and I spitting fire in the College Circuit, staging daemonstrations for the high schoolers, etc. I even thought that I could invite Andrew, Kresten, and Tony to judge. I figured they would be delighted, for their intellectual enthusiasm would find the same awe and admiration at these young minds as did mine, free from a blemish of envy, for such thoughts never crossed my own mind.

By this I do not mean that I boasted of my own humility and then extra-

Polated onto my ‘dear’ friends. I mean rather that envy did not even cross my mind as a conception. It was alien to me.

I was going to set the people in the whole League straight. I had no fear remaining. I was independent to a fault, though unapologetic for that very fault. I was to be a Martyr to my own cause. As I ascended the staircase indoors I thought of my ascent to the top of the League. I planned to go to my last round totally unencumbered. I would spend the first few rounds ‘wowing’ each member of the audience. Then in the last round there’d be armageddon. ‘I don’t care what some NIGGER says…’ I was pleased.

I would return home from my broad adventures eager to convey what I had learned to my dear friends. Yet despite the wondrous effect they’d had upon my psyche, they grew skeptical of my advice and unreceptive. I was puzzled. This was OUR group,

After all, and had we not all ways pooled our resources?

Kresten spared no [moments for] hesitation after he got his first consistent job.

The condescension that had been welling up without warrant

Then began to spill out in a torrent.

And I wished that he would chill out,

For the storm was so abhorrent.

Didn’t want then to call him a sell-out

To the norm. But now…

He tried to keep me in my debt.

So easily he would forget.

How  he refused all that I had to offer. And abused me.

With a scoff or taking

What I could not spare.

Faking it like he would care.

Forsaking it beyond repair.

Absconding with a jealous glare.

The Hell of his treachery everywhere.

The lechery that he would dare

to lecture me with such an air

As though we tried so wretchedly

To just repair the World.

How wretched he must be

When all his reckless treachery

Does come unfurled.

Dm.A/A.

I recall the proto-Fascist farming bastard talking to Ugo. Ugo, dying of cancer, can let the whole world starve just so long as his select few survive. What arrogance to think that your select few, just by being YOURS, are so important! What childish clinging to your chance surroundings! And then I remember K.

How he APPLAUDED Maddie Leyland for the Three Conventions: Work, School, and Romantic Relationship.

Status in short. I wonder just how many college kids are just like Ugo: concerned only with their half-baked and childish opinions. Some never even bother to ask themselves who THEY truly are, much less who OTHERS are, or how to reconcile the World of Others with the Self, and finally with Its own self.

And I think of men I called ‘my friends’.

How they refused to be ‘mine’,

but just took all that was mine.

How they forsook all the divine.

How they mistook it for my own and they looked at me like I was all alone…

And how they pursued only their own ends.

What lonely sad excuses for ‘my friends’.

What ego they displaced on me. Where’d we go

Wrong to be [acting] so damned dis-

Gracefully?

I would have died for them. But they could not even bear to watch me walk off with some girl, for once happy. For ONCE!

Kresten should have KNOWN that Ally never made me happy.

I had made that clear to him.

But he could not see past his own damned ENVY. What a bitch. And neither was he there for me when I most needed SOME one. ANY one.

In fact, he’d threatened to call the Police.

What a bitch. And to think I pardoned his soft soul.

Before he got these lofty visions of himself.

Hardened and ‘in control’.

He even thought that Bono was a douche!

How many years must one live

To deduce that some men simply Like to Give?

My friends were every thing to me.

OUR vision. OUR project. OUR cause. One for all, all for one.

But I could never get a job again.

Not when our Future waited.

Had I not delivered? So it was I never lost my self to peer pressure. I Knew that solidarity and individuality were mutual.

Not only COULD they co-exist; they HAD to. They were all inter-

Dependent. Just so long as the CAUSE was greater than the SELF. And yes:

All the parts of my philosophy that LOOKED defiant to the point of egoism: I had learned them all from Kresten. If a man refuses all the wisdom that I have to offer in exchange, can I be called ‘dependent’?

No. He is but ignorant. And ignorance is our greatest evil. Men like Kresten and Andrew hear a lot of talk and often talk it. But I’ve NEVER seen them walk my walk. Not once. I came home never to a gathering of musketeers,

Of Merry Men, of Knights or Honorable Thieves.

I Knew no loyalty. Only whatever royalty conceives.

I did not even know that they were mutinous,

plotting so jealously against me.

Oh how zealously I trusted

Those who lusted

After all I had.

I thought their crowns were star-encrusted.

Yep.

I was that mad.

Dm.A/A.

Ugo’s select few,

if they are any bit as selfish as HE is,

will turn on him before the end.

His only defense:

That in the same damned self-defense

He’ll never lose a friend.

For Ugo is the Ego

Who endures because it has no love.

But they’ll all see me go up the stairs as I just rise above.

Dm.A.A.

How marvelous. I did not even notice: we have made it back to the same stair-case. Ascendancy.

Overcoming.

Dm.A.A.