mahiwaga

I think the book in The Chronicles of Narnia that left the strongest impression on me was The Magician’s Nephew[site by Keith Webb][on wikipedia]. The setting that I remember most strongly is the ruined and blasted world of Charn, destroyed by the White Witch Jadis by using magic that seems strongly allegorical to nuclear weaponry. I was struck by how the monarchy of Charn started off being benevolent and wise, then became corrupted and evil, eventually spawning the monstrosity that is the White Witch. I also remember the hue of redness encompassing Charn. (Was C.S. Lewis trying to evoke medieval visions of Hell?) What was interesting to me was the explanation for this reddish light—Charn’s sun is a red giant star. While this could’ve just been an idiosyncrasy of this particular world, it actually evoked in me the idea that the civilization of Charn had existed so long that their formerly sun-like star had exhausted its nuclear fuel and was beginning to cool and expand. For some reason (although this is apparently not the reason for its destruction), this also reminds me of the destruction of the planet of Krypton, but that is neither here nor there.

In a work that is so theologically-based, specifically, Christianity-based, it is hard not to think about theological issues, and the idea that popped into my head is the question as to whether corruption is an inevitability without saving grace.

Now the laws of thermodynamics tells us that disorder ever increases, so it would seem that in fact, this is the natural way of things. And yet, human life, and life in general, seems to belie this basic law, and points to the fact that thermodynamics is, at its base, a statistical argument, and cannot easily predict local effects or the ultimate fate of an open system. It cannot be denied that some branches of evolution have led to more and more complex ordered organisms. While we we cannot ever prove that we evolved from primordial slime forming the first prokaryotic cell, we know for a fact that we all start out as a single eukaryotic cell in the womb (or in an egg in some organisms.) We also have a lot of evidence that mitochondria are descended from prokaryotes. In the long run, yes, it is still an increase of disorder because our complexity comes at the price of the creation of our waste products which are incredibly disordered.

My point, however, is that it would seem that it is inevitable that people can start off good and noble, and over the years and the generations, they will definitely be evil and base. Lewis’ commentary on the monarchs of Charn outline this idea and apply it to government, and I can’t help but immediately apply this to the decay of the American Republic.

The interesting thing is the idea of error-correction. This is part and parcel of our modern information culture and economy. The brilliance of the Internet is based significantly on the idea of error-correction. Error-correction mostly prevents the inevitable corruption of ordered information (although we all know nothing is perfect) and better than 99 times out of 100, things turn out O.K. Life itself is pretty good at error-correction—the replication of DNA is wonderfully faithful, although clearly there are errors that are made. (And yet errors are the basis of evolution and increasing complexity and order.)

I think one of the unique things about the American Republic is its basis in a potentially self-correcting document—the Constitution. But, more immediately, the checks and balances established by the Constitution are also error-correcting.

The reason why the Republic is in such crisis is that the Bush administration and their adherents are greatly intent on (1) dismantling these checks and balances and (2) destroying the Constitution. Once these error-correcting mechanisms are disabled, we put ourselves on the fast-track of inevitable corruption, evil, and atrocities and crimes against humanity (and while Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib are bad enough, you can be assured that things are bound to get much, much worse. With error-correction disabled in DNA replication, what you inevitably get is cancer. And I tend to think about Empire this way. Empire is analogous to cancer—eventually fatal to its host in the end.

So, if you wanted to be unnecessarily mystical, you can think of error-correction (and selection pressure) as the Hand of God. God® and His Saving Grace™ are the only way to prevent the inevitable corruption and decay of the universe, and the only way to actually increase local complexity and order.

(And by stretching some metaphors, Bush and his cronies are necessarily agents of Satan, who are interested in disabling error-correction.)

The notion of sacrificing your life for others, embedded in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, closing paralleling the New Testament, brings to mind what I find to be a viable adaptionist claim: that some individuals need to die for the good of others in the same genetic pool, which is probably pretty harsh if you happen to be that individual so chosen by selection pressure.

And in the current state of mind I’m in, in the state of solitarity that I’ve been living, I can’t help but ponder that maybe in my particular local segment of the genetic pool, I’m that guy. (What a convoluted way of developing a Messianic delusion.)

I can’t help but review my misfortunes in what is ultimately a commentary on my reproductive fitness, and for the past 11 years, I haven’t really made any progress.

I feel stuck.

Part of this is the fact that I’m scared shitless about reaching out and meeting people. I used to be able to do this with at least half-hearted enthusiasm, but now I’d really just rather cower in my cloistered cell apartment and stare at the world through the filter of this computer screen. I don’t know what it is that is so paralyzing about trying to, at the least, make new friends, much less try to date women, but I’ve simply decided that I can’t do it, and that’s the end of it.

The other thing that I feel is impeding me is the fact that I can’t seem to figure out what I find enjoyable. There was a time in childhood and adolescence when I actually had fun once in a while, but it now seems like a distant memory of an echo of a dream. A psychiatrist would say that this is a classic symptom of major depression, this loss of pleasure in formerly pleasurable activities. But what did I used to do? Play games, I suppose. Dance. Write. Sing. I have definitely lost interest in playing games. I don’t do much singing and dancing these days. About the only thing I feel compelled to do is write, and it isn’t so much for the purpose of enjoyment, but more to get my thoughts out there, instead of forever swirling futilely through my mind. I’ve long viewed my need to write as akin to my need to defecate, urinate, and breathe.

So what do I do when I actually have free time? I read a lot. Most of my friends would say that this is probably not a good idea, because God knows that the last thing I need to do is do more thinking. I have finally come to agree with my friends’ diagnosis that thinking about things has gotten me into much more trouble than its worth, and I’m trying to figure out ways to not think. I probably should get into meditation. That may do wonders for my mental hygiene.

I also like to write random, rambling screeds filled with pseudo-scientific, pseudo-philosophical trash. There is, I guess, a part of me that revels in my quasi-erudition. There is a simple, childish part of me that is entertained by the sound of complex words, and the unexpected juxtaposition of what at first glance seem to be non-sequiturs.

So this is the only thing these days. And I’m not that good at it.

I suppose I should, at the last, get serious about this and try to learn the craft. I’ve gotten away with half-assed attempts of creating narrative structure, and if I look at what I’ve written in the past with a critical eye, I have a hard time with plotting. This applies to both the essays I’ve written for various academic purposes as well as the unfinished stories that I’ve dreamed up. I can think of the setting, I can think of plot outline. If I’m lucky, I can think of the characters. But I can never get the characters to believably move from scene to scene, much less get to the point of it all.

There is perhaps something profoundly screwed up about my frontal lobes. I’ve always suspected that I have some executive dysfunction, with this inability to rationally order my actions so as to get to my goal. Sometimes I feel like I like creating my own mental versions of Zeno’s Paradox. I always seem to aim for the half-way point instead of actually going for the actual end, and then if I magically actually get to that half-way point, I aim for half of that again. Clearly this makes everything I try to accomplish become an infinite task, and I don’t know. Maybe it’s all related to the fact that I never liked finishing books (although I do, nonetheless.) Finishing a book has always had this let down effect on me. Sort of like waking up from out of a good dream—now I have to face the real world again.

So that’s what I should do with my free time, I guess. Write. Write like I’m serious about it. Write like I actually want to get published. Not this masturbatory ranting that I’ve been going at for the past (nearly) six(!) years.

I think, for now, the matter should be closed, and I shouldn’t think about it again unless something changes drastically. I will not go out there looking for people who might make my current existence less miserable. There is nothing I fear most than finding someone I really like and then managing to screw it up big-time by getting infatuated with them, and so I’m just going to stop, and, unless things change, I’m just going to have to let the invisible hand of selection pressure eventually rub my genetic material out of existence. So it goes.

Interestingly, both S¹ and Ben have had recent conversations with me expressing their concern that I’m not “out there” looking, and yes, it does appeal to this primordial desire to not be alone, but the amount of brain damage that I would have to repair in order for this to be a sensible goal seems so gargantuan that every time I think about it, I just have to give up in despair. I think I just need to stop thinking about things that make me despair, which if you ennumerate them, are actually quite numerous. And given that I’d rather not really regularly drink myself into unconsciousness or smoke myself out into a stupor, I’m hard-pressed to think of ways that I might be successful in achieving this endeavor. Sure, it’s easy to bury myself in work, but that is clearly not healthy either. So I guess there’s meditation, although I have heard good things about the successfulness of narcissism.

Despite my sophistry, and my intellectual understanding that I am not a freak for not wanting to be with someone, I guess I’m just a victim of society’s bias against people who are alone. For the longest time, yes, I couldn’t stand it. It drove me crazy. I have cried about it. I have sat around in a daze, dead to the outside world, pondering the ways I’ve screwed things up, all the things I’ve failed to do, all the women that I’ve been infatuated with but didn’t do anything about. But whatever doesn’t kill you only delays the inevitable only makes you stronger (hahahaha!) so I’ve learned to live with it, kind of. There have been days where I didn’t think it was worth being awake, or even alive for, but those moments pass, and after all these years of (mostly) self-inflicted insanity, here I am at least coming to grips with the way that my brain is abnormal, for better or for worse.

I know better than to inflict my unique flavor of insanity on another sentient being, and so I stay away, despite this desire to not be alone. It’s the least messy way, at least for now.

The reason this came to mind is two-fold: (1) last night someone started having chest pain, and up to that point I had been feeling sorry for myself. When an actual clinical situation came up, I found myself cheering up a little, which just goes to show how my life revolves around work, and that’s the only thing that is even remotely fulfilling. (2) My mom told me about a pharmacist at her work whom she’s worked with for a while, who always recognizes her on the phone. She was a widow who lived by herself, and for two days, she didn’t show up to work and she didn’t call in, so her boss ended up calling the police to check up on her, and they found her all dressed up for work and dead on the floor of her bathroom. This reminds me of novella written by Peter S. Beagle entitled “A Dance for Emilia” which is based on his relationship with his oldest friend Joseph Mazo. The opening scene describes getting a phone call where the character Jacob finds out his friend Sam died of a heart attack, except he wasn’t discovered for a couple of days because he lived alone.

This got me thinking about the down sides of living alone, namely, it takes a couple of days before anyone misses you, and I guess it’s kind of terrible thing, to keel over dead on your bathroom floor. If it’s instantaneous, I guess that’s not too bad, but imagine if it takes a while for you to die, and you’re just lying face down staring at the tiles, unable to get up, and you have to ponder dying alone. At least when you die in the hospital, there are other people around, even if no one does come to visit you.

The other thing that got me contemplating dying alone is when I did something to my back the other day. I am clearly not a kid anymore, because I tried to lift my mattress, and my lower back just seized up and I fell onto the floor onto my side, unable to move without causing excruciating pain. I was lying there for at least a few minutes, wondering if I was just going to lie there all night until I fell asleep and maybe hopefully by the next day my back would be O.K. And I was thinking that shit like this wouldn’t happen if I lived with someone else.

But I guess you learn self-sufficiency one way or the other, and I just fought through the pain and got up. I was sweaty with the exertion and the pain, but what else are you gonna do? And I thought about growing old like that, when I’d be less and less able to get myself up, and it’s kind of depressing.

But I guess we’ll cross that bridge when if we get to it.

Yeah, that shit is depressing, but what are you gonna do? More importantly, what am I gonna do? For now, nothing.