Aimless rant

So I'm bad at doing what I set out to do. That's fine. I have a long history of starting these kinds of things and then never following through.

I was going to make this a more public post somewhere else on the internet less anonymously and then decided against it. But I still wanted to write it.

I've been somewhat discouraged following the #GamerGate controversy that's been going on mostly because it's sad to see history repeat. Then again, there have been some surprising victories from the "pro #GamerGate" side, such as advertisers pulling out of Gawker and so on and so forth. But ultimately I don't hold much faith for the movement. And why not?

Well, the underlying problem has more to do with the creep of "progressive" and "liberal" ideology that's been infecting the West for decades. I put those terms in quotations because the actual meaning behind those terms (the connotative meaning, if you will) is vastly different from the definition you'd get by looking in a dictionary. And yet the cognitive dissonance of the majority of people who label themselves with such terms is so massive that they don't see how what they believe and support has nothing to do with what progressivism or liberalism is actually about.

(Unfortunately, this seems to happen with basically any term that can be used to describe one's beliefs. It's why I don't identify as a "Christian" even though I read the Bible and believe in the teachings of Yeshua. But anyway.)

Here's the thing. The "SJWs," (social justice warriors, or really just people drinking the modern "liberal" kool-aid) as they are called by pro #GamerGaters, have already won the far more important battles. Which ones are those? Well, when you think about it, there really five major societal institutions that more or less indoctrinate the thoughts of its populace. They are the educational system, the news media, the entertainment industry, the judicial system and to a lesser extent, corporate culture. And these "SJWs" have pretty much dominated all of these arenas, and are now just more or less mopping up the few remaining frontiers where they aren't dominant.

In fact, it's kind of funny that they're finding such staunch resistance over a hobby that basically amounts to nothing. Then again, that same hobby is basically the last place one could escape from such insanity. Unfortunately, while we were all busy escaping, the "SJWs" were busy winning the culture war and now it really doesn't matter what happens in this fringe entertainment subsector because really, that's not going to change the root problems. Just look at how the main stream media is reporting on the issue to see how they've already won over the news media.

They've had the education system by the balls for decades. And it's very hard to get people to understand that public education doesn't really promote learning so much as it does indoctrination. That's not to say that it's entirely useless, but you do have to be born lucky (a lot of which has to do with winning the genetic lottery and/or being born into a good neighborhood with good schools and teachers who give a fuck and teach important things... then again with the emphasis on standardized tests and teaching to the test there's not a lot teachers can do any more).

But the real kicker is that none of this is new. One need look no further than Glubb's "The Fate of Empires" (google it, read it, it's only about 16 pages) to see what I'm talking about. Nor is my opinion new. Nor is anyone's opinion. And yet everyone goes around spouting off at the mouth as if THEY somehow have the most important opinion on the subject or as if THEY somehow have some amazing revelation or insight. It's all already been said, more eloquently and more poignantly and more concisely, somewhere, trust me. And it is for this reason that I ultimately decided against making this a more public post.

I mean, for fuck's sake, Solomon wrote about this problem THOUSANDS of years ago, and even then, he was saying this was an ancient problem. And I close with a quote:

That which has been is what will be,
That which is done is what will be done,
And there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there anything of which it may be said, “See, this is new”?
It has already been in ancient times before us.
There is no remembrance of former things,
Nor will there be any remembrance of things that are to come
By those who will come after.

Taking the plunge

For going on the greater part of 4 years, I have felt like a zombie who has lost everything that ever mattered and made me a remotely interesting or likeable human being. This has been exacerbated by the loss of nearly every friend I ever had prior to 4 years ago. Indeed, even among the relatively few people who remain in my life from prior to that time, I regularly and meaningfully communicate with zero of them. I suppose I had been spoiled previously in life with a relationship that was unique. I met someone online when I was around the age of 11 and continued to talk to that same person for 11 years at considerable length, breadth and depth.

To give you an idea, from March 2004 to January 2009, my AIM chat log with him weighs in at 181,773 words. From March 2004 to October 2007 our log comes in at 74,999 words on MSN. And from October 2006 to October 2007 ~alone~ our log on BitWise clocks in at 129,861 words. It should be noted I met him in approximately 1999, possibly 2000 at the latest, so that's four years of conversations that didn't get logged. Also conversations after 2009 weren't logged, but because I had enlisted in the Marine Corps by 2007, our conversations kind of dropped off anyway. We ended up parting ways with some finality in 2011. The total count is 386,633 - by means of comparison War and Peace is around 580,000 words and The Bible fluctuates between approximately 700,000 to 900,000 depending on the translation.

I had a couple other people I had brief periods of similar intensity with, but this particular friend was notable because he stuck around.

In any case.

These days, I virtually have zero meaningful conversation with anyone. There are a handful of people who I could be having meaningful conversations with, but recently (as in the last 4 months or so) I have been making poor life choices and forsaking things I think matter for things I know do not. Rather than continue along a path of spirtual development, I have fallen back into old habits of escapism and entertainment, trading conversation about metaphysics and eternity for schlock about internet memes and video games. I have no one to blame but myself.

Even when I was better about spiritual development, I still had this feeling like I was missing those qualities I had come to appreciate about myself prior to 2011. What prompted this post and new blog was when I began to probe my past tonight and was surprised to find that I wasn't quite so great as I remembered being.

I first began blogging (apparently) in August of 2004 (which would have been the summer between freshman and sophomore years of high school) until November.  I switched platforms and started up again in April of 2005, and for some bizarre reason ended up gaining something of a readership that wasn't exclusive to people who knew me in real life. For various reasons in April of 2006, I nuked my known domain and started another one with the intention of being anonymous (since my lack of anonymity was impacting me), but never truly carried through on this idea. The temptation to get friends to read my "deepest" feelings and thoughts proved too attractive a lure.

If memory serves, I kept that domain until at least 2009 or 2010, though I changed the title and layout and other things like that several times. I also began blogging for larger sites in this time period. February 14th, 2010 is the date I attribute to having perhaps the greatest impact on my life - if not true for my whole life, it certainly is the date that changed everything that came afterward. I still infrequently blogged at the larger sites up until perhaps March 2011, and it was in this period that I made my own blog (which had all the content from 2004) private.

After 2011, I'd unsuccessfully try several times to "get back into the swing of things" and eventually moved platforms AGAIN and put up the archives. Nothing stuck. So why am I trying again?

Well, for one, I'm not putting up my archive on this particular blog, or at least not in its entirety. 2009 was perhaps my most active year for blogging, and part of the reason was because I was bored and lonely on Okinawa. Another part was because I began doing serious self-reflection on what had led me to that point in my life and why I was where I was, which included digging through materials like emails and private messages and chat logs as well as just regular introspection. So with this fresh start, I'll be importing an older piece only if I'm directly commenting on what I had written before in order to compare and contrast.

I've been rambling, but earlier I said I had been checking into some of my old posts in order to see what I liked so much about myself and was surprised to learn that I wasn't so great as I had remembered. Frankly, a lot of what I had written is downright painful to read. Unfortunately, it was encouraged at the time by people who continually told me how intelligent, thoughtful and perceptive I was. It even attracted the notice of girls and women who had, themselves, attracted MY attention. There's this sad and somewhat incomprehensible history of females in my life who seem to be drawn to me only because I'm miserable and broken, and all of my horrible behavior towards them is self-justified as "being honest" and other such bullshit. We're getting ahead of ourselves a bit, but trust me. We'll get there.

It is strange what memories we carry with us. I know as a matter of fact that I was emotionally abused growing up - how severely compared to others, I cannot say, but it was severe enough that I grew up suicidally depressed and eventually ended up being diagnosed Bipolar Type I and retired from the military (the events beginning in February 14, 2010), ultimately with a "100%" disability rating from the Veteran's Administration. Because my mother was the abuser, I developed an extreme complex towards women in general. The reason I spoke on memories is because while I can remember that I was abused, I can no longer recall very specific instances of abuse (even if I can recall, for instance, curling up into a ball on my bed, face hot from crying, swearing on my life I would "never forget" what my mom had just done to me). I also brought up memories because I have a particular one from the 3rd grade that, with hindsight, I would come to realize would characterize much of my interaction with the opposite sex in the future.

I was new to the school and yet without many friends. It was recess, and I was by myself on the swing. I must have looked down or something. A girl I didn't know ended up approaching me in an attempt to either cheer me up or get to know me or something along those lines (I don't remember specifically). My response was basically to be a shit to her. Ironically, I would end up developing a crush on her much later, but since I had initially been a shit to her, there wasn't much chance of anything developing significantly between us, and indeed we just grew more and more distant as we went through middle and then high school. I moved to Utah for a year before enlisting in 2007, and had virtually written her out of my life. Irony is at play again when sometime between 2008 and 2009, through the magic of Facebook and the internet, we reconnect. I don't have the logs to prove it (since I stopped logging conversations for the most part around 2007, as it became to much of a pain in the ass) but I distinctly remember at one point making a half-joke half-serious "if we aren't married by 30 we should marry each other" sort of arrangement with her. After a little digging into some things tonight, though, I'm pretty sure I just ended up being a shit to her when she called me out on my shit and unsurprisingly we haven't talked in years.

Anyway, that was an awful lot of words about myself primarily for myself. I intend to remain as anonymous as I can, even though there's already plenty of identifying information in this post. At the very least, I will NOT be linking this to anyone I know. Anyone who ends up reading it other than myself will be someone who stumbled upon it through the magic of the internet, which, as it grows, becomes increasingly less likely. Perhaps when I'm done with this exercise, there'll be something here useful for someone else - but I'd like to think I've learned from prior haughtiness that I don't actually have all that much original or poignant to say.

I don't want to close by saying something extremely cynical that I may not agree 100% with, so I guess I'll just log in to Omegle with the topic "meaningful conversation no a/s/l" until I get too depressed to be awake.

Oh, and, if you think you know who I am, please keep the secret to yourself or at least between us. But probably better to keep it to yourself. If I find out people I actually know are reading this, odds are it'll be shut down real fast.