I can't speak for anyone else but frankly for me self-knowledge has gotten a little old by this point. I keep doing the same stupid things over and over again, apparently incapable of learning from experience, and I am all, "Yep, that sure is me. God, I am nothing but overly familiar to myself." I feel as if there is some essential ingredient somewhere in this recipe that I keep failing to latch on to.
Is Self-Knowledge Really the First Step on the Path to Self-Actualization
Dude
You have not self-actualized yet because you have not formed a mushy kinship with your fellow humans.
Misanthropes cannot self-actualize. But that could be my defeatist attitude speaking.
Also, I'm not sure if I have even achieved total self-knowledge. Because of my defeatist attitude, probably.
It's all a big jumble of bullshit! BULLSHIT!
Now, I'm off to be alone and drink booze whilst wearing my housedress!
I haven't achieved total self-knowledge by any means
only sufficient. You can't get total anything. It's the 85% rule. Or maybe my belief that I have sufficient self-knowledge is in itself proof that I do not. I hate these metaphysical Zen riddles. Also what is posting on this board if not an admittedly flawed effort at mushy kinship with my fellow humans.
You're in panic-mode, for inner peace
Which means self-actualization will not come to you.
Also, do your taxes!
How do you respond the the above analysis and command? Poorly?
That just proves that you will never even remotely achieve this mushy kinship. Human-kind is generally bossy, self-righteous and insatiable. You lose!
Or do you?
I don't feel panicked at all
A little wistful, a little maudlin, yes. Panic is for the gainfully employed; those with something to lose. Based on my personal experience I don't think inner peace is an achievable absolute state; you can have only more or less agitation in your innards. But the less you have the less you want. Which makes it a commodity; something you will agitate your innards to achieve under our reigning social model. So you are right, I lose.
I think
The level of "want" is determined by the individual. I have virtually nothing now, I'm not gainfully employed, and at least for me, you're right. I want very little. I think this is a-typical though.
I've been obsessed with researching cold-resistant palm trees the past few days. All I want is year-round greenery right now.
In your picture, that's a California fan palm, no? That will not do. I need something more cold-resistant.
People plant wind mill palms (and other cold-resistant species) pretty commonly northward to Vancouver Island. Some are supposedly planted up to nearly Juneau with regularity. Also, Scotland, Ireland etc.
Which is bullshit. I thought it would have just as much to do with sun angle than low temperatures, but I'm mistaken.
Basically, all I want is to plant wind mill palms outside my apartment right now. Five plus months of crispy, icy bullshit will do this to SAD sufferers.
Runts of the litter
I just figure I am a product of over-population. I marvel at the terrible drunken heap of bastards that make up my family tree. It's a wonder any of them got laid. I think that my thirties will be spent developing the instincts that most people start having at eleven or twelve. I'm at the point that after years wasted in some delusion that my apathy and lack of motivation in every aspect of life was really a Year Zero minimalist vanguard of evolution, I want to know how to desire something and go after it--you know striving for success and all that.
One day my grandmother said, "You're what we called back in the day, a bachelor." When I explained to her where I lived she said, "Oh, a boarding house." And I realized, that I am a bachelor in a boarding house. That's my identity. I am unsatisfied. So now I have to change gears and unlearn all the bad shit that I have learned, but I feel the same. So therefore, I am doomed.
You are on the vanguard of the new depression era stylee
It's funny how these old-timey phrases carry ironic resonance into the present day that really isn't that ironic. We could go rob banks in the Dust Bowl . . . if there were still any money left in the banks.
I have found that all I really desire is not to be interfered with by the outside world and if there is one goal to have that is impossible under the present social system it is that one. Even Mexicans can't get away with subsistence agriculture on isolated farms any more.
My only hope
I have this perpetual fantasy that the world will flip upside down and strange currents of fate will transform my life like Stalin's unlikely rise to power out of the russian revolution. That's why feeble intellectuals are so revolutionary. It's like having a side bet with catastrophe.
Joined: 2007-09-14
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