The spiral staircase plagues me.
The irritation and constant nagging doubt of "am I becoming stupid" has surpassed the comfortable drowning levels and is beginning to rise past the brightly painted red "wow I'm seriously irked" line.
How old were you when you became self-aware?
Everyone does, right?
Well, in theory.
And yes, in practice, everyone comes to a point in their development where the concept of "me" becomes something to ponder and possibly get on the road to solving.
Thing is, there's so much else in the way of actually hashing out solutions, isn't there? There's high school popularity contests, there's parentally-instilled ambitions, societally-instilled greeds and money goals, and on and on... There's fashion, television, boyfriends and beer and coolness and HOLY SHIT but you sure can get lost in all that stuff, can't ya?
There's sports and hobbies and and and (now there's sexuality and gender issues and politics and of course history just gets bigger and bigger)...
And so lotsa people do.
Lotsa people become what I so dispassionately call the "TV people" who, frankly, do just that. Get up because the alarm rang, go to work because That Is What You Do Next, Go Home, Watch TV, go to bed, wake up because the alarm rang...
Problem is, so much of that is necessary, right? Like laundry and relatively clean household and food and on and on - and geeks seem to sacrifice larger chunks of that (like home decoration and fancy wardrobes a la Martha Stewart no-time-for-Living) for the purpose of spending more time inside their heads.
I happen to, of course, favour that particular solution.
But I have no reservations as to the fact that it is entirely because that's how I grew up, and those are the decisions I made, of brain over brawn and knowledge over comfort etc...
Only lately I've been discovering comfort, right? Because I'm getting handed enough money to do it, because I want to understand how and why the system works, because there is a certain enjoyment to everything, and I want to be able to Do And Understand EVERYTHING.
Of course, I overestimate myself, arrogant Monstre that I am, assume myself to be immune to human pitfalls, and immerse myself in something until I forget myself, and...
..well, the point was that I'd forgotten my epiphany about epiphanies.
Y'know, the obvious one about how shock forces you to stop and think and forces you either into utter hibernation or into premature self-awareness...
...both of which, I realized today, result in the same thing.
You end up one of the TV people, unless you're extra special.
See... Here's my next theorem.
American living, where society is SO FUCKED UP that anyone walking into the hormonal jungle of adolescence is slapped so hard in the face with UNJUSTICE that they HAVE to begin introspection too early.
See, in the old world, where my parents come from - there's a reason they believe in "children should be seen and not heard" and "children have no right to opinions" and all that stuff that was so horrifying to me as a kid.
Because back there, when the first tier of Maslowe's pyramid was the most consuming thing...
...children learned the useful skills, and when they mastered those and as adults had the time for introspection (or, as far as I'm concerned must have become BORED OUT OF THEIR MINDS) -- they became self-aware when they were good and ready to.
Here, in the land of the Kwik-e-mart (hey, I bought a cola at one of those FOR REAL in Orlando!) -- it's all convenience. You don't need to spend your developmental years learning survival.
In fact, nobody knows any of that anymore, unless they learned it in their adult leisure time (when they should have been coming into their knowledge kinda thing) and blahblabblah...
My point being, in the land of utter lack of priorities, we're having at Maslowe's pyramid back-asswards, and it's fucking us up.
Royally.
Because the shock of becoming sentient too young makes TOO MANY PEOPLE block it out later on when they're out on their own and have to fight to survive.
And TV is suuuuuuuch a nice analgesic, dontchathink?
It has even got easier answers to your questions than old man God does.
So I was wondering why so many people I know ask their questions so much later than me.
Then I look at them again, and at their cultures, and at how they left home so late and all that -- and I have to admit I may just be a little green on those really difficult days.
Because they're going about things the right way.
Where it doesn't have to hurt, where there's no time wasted on the healing of childhood scars.
I'm still trying to map out the convolutions of my nightmare-ridden mind, and while most people (unlike the thinking people) just give it up, other people have a better chance at The Renaissance Man title.
Cuz it doesn't have to hurt for wisdom?
Like I said, John is my living example. Idyllic childhood, yet he has the capacity to understand pain.
Yet he is lacking in a sense of responsability.
Then you've got half the world with an over-developped sense of brainwashed social responsability -- and no understanding whatsoever. Totally selfish responsability, and in too many cases, these people Had Once Understood, but forced themselves to forget to make the burden easier.
(like people who were Real Bad Kids but who look down on Real bad Kids today. Because they've forgotten, because they've forgotten the WHY)
And then you've got the sociopaths, the angry ones like our good old Reverend Bob and All The Gamers In the World, and the happy ones who've learned to balance it all, or who've found themselves a place like Steven and Marc-who-only-does-things-because-they-make-sense...
And one side wants genocide, while the other wants Callahan's Crosstime Saloon, and all I want is acid in the water supply.
Well, maybe I'm wrong.
Maybe it's too much.
Maybe people aren't as stupid as I think they are, they're just not as strong as the circumstances.
Maybe we just ought to SLOW THE FUCK DOWN.
Heh. Coming from an amphetamine freak, that's funny.
But maybe that's my problem too. (Only I know it's not, I know I know it's because we have so much to do! So many wonderful things to do... We're just doing them WRONG, ALL WRONG!!! Where in europe they learned everything years ahead of us - reading, writing, cooking, sewing... They learn it faster and harder, but they learn it in the right order...)
Only thing is, I'm still afraid to miss anything...
...but maybe that's why Maria used to call me The Big One out of the three of us, but they've all accepted the things I still haven't learned to accept.
It's just that I'm louder about the things that I have understood.
Okay. I'm running myself in circles again, I can feel the caffeine kicking in, but I got my point in there somewhere.
And it bugs me that I've known this all along, yet managed to forget it again. Maybe I am becoming A Yuppie.
In any case, it's here, it's digital, and it's been physically ingrained into posterity.
Like an acid trip that I'm less likely to forget. ;)