I apologize for my recent absence, especially when it seemed as if I were back to my old self again. The explanation this time is a certain small scale writing project the purpose of which is to explain the reasons behind everything that is wrong with the world. This new 'serious' essay of mine will be a return to the old style of essays that I used to write. Yet, I suppose, you couldn't really call them essays, as they were never really tightly focused on any one particular subject -- they meandered from one connection to another, which isn't really a proper way to write, if you ask anyone who really knows how to write. What you do when you really write is keep a laser focus on one subject and never, ever deviate, otherwise you're being tangential and your focus is poor and no-one will understand anything because of what you wrote.

Writing in this fashion has always been quite difficult for me, since this style is almost entirely contrary to my own way of thinking. I've always found that things that are connected to other things are more interesting than things that simply stand on their own. Like when I see a vehicle I don't just look at the vehicle itself, but also at all the evidence that might indicate where the vehicle may have been, and what sort of person owns it. Then I think about the things that are connected to those things, and then move outwards from there. So that I'm not just trying to understand a single thing, but also to understand its place in the world so that I may know its relevance, which in the end is all that really matters to me. Whatever may be said about my curiosity, I am not interested in things that don't seem like they can translate to some sort of greater understanding of the world. This is why I've always preferred styles of entertainment that are somewhat difficult to understand and very much involved.

But then again, I'm slow. Not a stupid sort of slow, but simply not very quick on my feet. My way is the way of serious calculation with no allowance for spontaneity. Given a choice, I would buy skis in summer and mountain bikes in winter -- thinking months and months ahead. Oftentimes I surprise people by not talking about things that are relevant today, but things that will be relevant many months from now. So this means that the moment a need or a desire of mine is taken care of I'm already thinking ahead to the next instance. The very moment I finish eating I'm already thinking ahead to my next meal; and once my birthday is over I'm already thinking about being one year older again. I don't even think of myself as 22, but as 23 or 24 already. And when I'm 24 I'll probably act like I'm 26, and so on and so forth.

This kind of thinking I believe is a consequence of having grown up on antidepressant medications. You see, because they forced me into an unnatural mental state, my own natural balance was altered to compensate for the adverse emotional effect the chemicals were having. When I felt far too happy, and I knew deeply that I shouldn't feel that way, I compensated by dwelling on unhappy things and forcing myself into a more neutral mood. This has resulted in an almost complete inability to enjoy any one particular moment -- I am either thinking about the past, or the future, and the present is just the only time I have to act in, not the only time that really matters. Sybaritic self-indulgence and pain relieving hedonism -- options for so many of my miserable peers -- are completely impossible for me. I have to live in two very bad places, the past and the future, in which both I'm completely powerless to even affect the most minor of outcomes. What is done is done, and what shall be will be, and there's no room for free will whatsoever. I am often quite defeatist.

I do not choose to be this way; it is who I am. My pattern is very similar to a lot of other high-stress personalities who are completely unable to relax because they never exist in the here and now, when things may be just fine, but in a future when bad things will happen and in the past where terrible things have come to pass. There is never that one, singular moment when everything makes sense, when all is at peace. I know that I have a horrible time sleeping at night because I feel as though I am being watched at all hours, no matter where I am. Ever since May of 2004 I have had this feeling and it has motivated me ever since. I have a neck ache half the time from constantly looking over my shoulder to see who's watching me.

Those who have not shared experiences similar to my own would discard this as a paranoid fantasy of my own making, while those who have could at least be able to understand my odd behavior. When I imagine a surveillance room where my every move is being monitored by strangers it's not just part of a delusion, but my own metaphor for understanding the harsh scrutiny of society at large. This scrutiny is something I've often tried to simply stop caring about, and I have succeeded at this on a few occasions. Perhaps I could have succeeded more had I not experienced so much anguish in my childhood because of that scrutiny.

Society, as I see it, is like a gigantic eye that can see everything but itself, and because of this one blind spot it might as well be completely blind. Observation without reflection is useless because it lacks relevance. If you see all and judge all without knowing yourself you can't possibly grasp the relative positions of things -- this is why I never say that I am objective, for I cannot be. What I can claim to be is subjective, but enlightened. The closest we can get to objectivity as subjective beings is to become as aware as possible of our own subjective feelings and emotions, without necessarily rejecting them. Just because an experience is subjective doesn't mean that it doesn't have relevance for the rest of mankind. In this way I suppose that I'm a little unscientific, though I don't really mind. As far as I'm concerned I need a little mystical thinking in my life if only to counteract an increasingly cold and detached intellectual life.

What I think I'm saying here is that I do sometimes act as though there is some inherent dignity to life, even if that dignity has long since been defiled. I don't think that it's something you could prove with logical deduction, since logical deduction by nature has a reductive quality -- we must follow Occam's Razor, of course -- so therefor anything we perceive to be magnificent and huge must always be explained in the most absolutely smallest way. This is the core of the reductionist philosophy, where the universe is reduced to its elemental components so as to explain it with as little assumptions as possible. This is quite a useful law when it comes to predicting outcomes, since it works in general to help elucidate a confusing subjective human reality. But can this philosophy really help us to understand life? To live and to grow and even survive for a few more generations?

How we understand the global environment is a good example of reductionism; we understand the components of our environment, the localized and simple day-to-day weather. Were we to assume that each weather event is part of a greater pattern, we come to see that human activity has caused irreparable harm to the Earth's environmental systems. Often there is little benefit to be garnered from such a narrow view of existence except even more confusion, the reduction of which is the general purpose of such an ideal. We need a systems level of understanding to know our planet and what we, as a system, are doing to it, which is a system as well.

That said, there is another side of the philosophical spectrum which always seems to see things as being greater than they actually are. Whether they benefit from it or not they must add deeper meanings to everything, and soon the universe is a grand and wonderful place again. People usually are attracted to these ideals because the reductionist view very often paints an incredibly bleak picture of our reality -- an inevitable consequence of a great deal of discarded assumptions and theories. So we get a great competition between those who want to hack off, and those who feel the need to tack on. We could call this competition the war between Science and Faith, though that's not entirely accurate -- and it's certainly not accurate enough for me. We could also call this a schism between the thinkers and the believers, and that would serve to explain a great deal. However, there are those who have a great deal of 'Faith' and thought -- people who have come to their grand ideas from over analyzing everything, searching for any little hint that opens up the universe, assuming that there is.

For the purpose of my own understanding I'll call these two different shades of thought Adding and Subtracting, and they both serve a large number of different lifestyles. However, neither of these two schools of human intellect serve my life in any fashion. I'm far too skeptical to be an Adder, and I'm too much of a daydreamer to be a Subtracter either. What I try to do in my ratiocination is reckon the actual sum total of my existence; not one digit higher or lower than what is actually there to be counted. I want to go in with no assumptions about the size of it and just open myself up. Not to accept anything, but to consider everything. Such is the purpose of this one particular moment in time. Sitting here in the darkness, hunched over my keyboard, listening to music. I'm trying to consider a different life, and I'm trying to understand what kind of person I need to be.

So far this entry has lived up to the statements made in the first paragraph. I have, as usual, diverged far from my original topic and got carried away with other ideas. These ideas, given enough time, will eventually lead back to and enhance the entirety of all ideas I've ever posited. For when it comes to the act of creation I am a gestalt thinker, and much to my detriment I have had great difficulties bringing my unwieldy concepts to fruition. I have to work in reverse and just hope that others can appreciate the inherent quirkiness of my methods. Now I leave you with this reverse product which is where I've arrived, and hope that one day I'll be able to work out exactly where I've started. Then I'll really have gotten somewhere, I think. But then again, I don't really know for sure. I can only try, and dream, and think. What else is there to understanding but those quiet moments of warm contemplation?

Spring is here, and if it has arrived for you as well I'd advise that you stop and watch the clouds slowly drifting by overhead, in perpetual movement. That, for all we know, is all life really is. Until I think that it's anything more than that, happy trials everyone...