Isles of Scion

  It’s weird this disconnect I have. My brain seems to run on like a roller coaster. It starts off easily enough as I chug along slowly, ideas filling this barrel that is my mind. It layers itself like a cake going up and up, until finally I crash. But not the crash after caffeine, not that serene weakness to help cope with the excess of energy. It’s this flood of thoughts, this endless raging torrent of collective ideas. Astronomy, Politics, Education, Biology…everything that can relate does relate. Everything seems connected by no less than one point of separation in my mind. It’s this drop on the coaster that annoys me the most. It never seems to end and as I pick up speed it just gets worse.

  I find lately its left me with a very chaotic life. Sometimes I wake up at 7:55 without an ounce of lethargy. I’ve got the energy needed to accomplish what has to be done. Nothing excessive, I read at a moderate pace and I type or write as well as any average person. Other mornings I wake up with barely enough energy to operate my basic functions. It’s not to say that I’d ever not make it to the bathroom, that’s a level of dysfunction that I hope even old age will not beset upon me. It’s just this overwhelming drain, it’s not much of a surprise however. It ties in well with the long nights of thought. Staring at the ceiling, absorbing all the shapes that the outside street lights make through the blinds and curtain. My thoughts travel from one thing to another. Eventually leading back to a small collection of inevitable points.

  I wonder what I’ll do with my life. College has been one intense experience for me, because it seems to accentuate all the worst aspects of education. This building constructed atop a cracked foundation just seems to be expanded upon further and further, extra floors added with each passing moment. I wonder why I appear to be the only one watching the foundation give. The building rocking amidst the strong winds of reality. Is this how we have always done things in the past I wonder? Is it really the case that all of human history is merely a spinning wheel of the same events coated over with a thick layering of technology. Our bigotries, hatreds, and ignorance’s seem to carry on regardless of advances in understanding. As if our desire to fantasize overrides our ability to rationalize. We seem fine with this…and at times I admittedly am consumed by it.

  But then again that is what I fantasize about, once considered the cold world of brutality and malice I now see a warming mixture of balances. This isn’t to say we aren’t without our chaos, in fact that chaos is what makes the balance work. It is a law of averages, not of certainties. This is only one law that I’ve abided by truly without discourse, that is that there is only one law in the universe: That law is that all laws have but one exception. The goal after this for me is to uncover the exception. This perhaps is the function of my roller coaster. I collect the information I have attained and I attempt to diffuse it and fully understand all the things I’m visualizing.

  I really do wonder what I’ll do. Psychology to me is the ideal thing to be studying. The mind is very important to me, I want to understand it. I want to know what is going on. I’ve always listened to people’s problems, listened to the tales of young girls deciding between being a pregnant teen or an abortion. Or of young men battling with the reality of their homosexuality. I’ve listened to countless tales from people who outwardly would say they detested me. It was a fantastic mirage that even I was apart of, I had friends at home that I would never speak to in school. I was caught up in this mixture of reality and fantasy. This chaos of lies and truths. It was the laws of averages that gave me solace, the idea that I’d usually be ok.

  I think that’s been one of the harshest things to come to grips with lately. That the people I knew in school-the people I considered my friends-that we were merely friends of consequence. Amidst the collection of options in the room I was the least undesirable. It was interesting to watch the disconnect as we finished high school. The Internet was amazingly powerful in its portrayal of this. To watch those you admire, people you respect to a level once reserved for your kin, overlook you like a penny face down upon the ground. It stung deep inside me, like a hot knife neatly shaped and still red from the coals. I tried to overlook it, when I came to this college I found myself joining a club that was begun by one of those friends. I was the first person in the room…or was I the second. I cannot remember if he was there before I got there or after. Regardless next to him I was the first. I thought to myself "I wonder if anyone will show."

  People showed up. At first I felt like I had a new experience, a new group of people to meet. But I could sense it again, that feeling of consequence. Most of these people knew each other by name already and I was the odd man out. It was always the case that my humor was not sophisticated enough for ‘the gang’ and it was no different here. I never could quite grasp the ‘ho ho ho’ humor of people like Eric. I think that’s why I disliked him so much in high school.

  To me Eric Walquist was the personification of all the things I detested in life. Yet as I look back I can’t find a proper list of qualities that he possessed that I really hated. I think now it was more an issue of jealousy. His ability to steal the show, to be desired, it was…it was almost an art.

  It’s funny too, as I look at my reaction to the Board Game club, my subsequent inability to make the meetings…I can almost diagnose myself. I wonder then if my conceptualization of my own oddities makes them real or not. Am I acting weird because I’m having a break down, or am I having a break down because I’m acting weird. Is this just a case of history repeating itself.

  I do it, I act like a chameleon of sorts. When I’m around people I acquire the traits they possess that seem to be the most admirable. It almost feels like I can’t stop it, I feel their ‘personas’ their voices, their body movements, cliched reactions. I begin to do these things almost reflexively.  It was very bad in junior high and high school, you are placed in close proximity to so many personas and so many different cliches that its almost impossible to mix them all. I apparently did it quite well however, because years after high school people still say hello to me by name. Yet I never remember theirs.

  It’s not even that I don’t care either. It’s just nearly impossible for me to get names, they seem almost unimportant. It’s the face that interests me, that’s what I remember. It’s the moment that I forget a persons face that any emotional context I have with them is erased. I remember when a girl I had very strong feelings for in high school told me to get out of her life. It was amazing, I watched her face fade from my thoughts and it was over. After that I couldn’t even make myself like her again, a while later she left me a note on my online journal and said that she loved me.

  I felt nothing and that was a wonderful thing. I like those moments of nothingness, not for their cliched emotional context, but for the relaxation. When I earnestly am not thinking about a single thing I am incredibly happy. However this is difficult as the act of deep thought is nearly erotic in nature for me. Not to say that I would lie in bed with a dictionary, but it is very pleasurably for me to build worlds…to construct stories. Even now I wonder how much of my past is real. What actually happened and what was just a dream. I dreamt a lot when I was a child, I was able to recognize at the time that they were dreams while they were happening. I would stop the chain of events transpiring in my dream and begin something else. If I was walking down the to mailboxes for my inevitable death by a stranger, I would instead stop walking and sit. I’d watch all manner of oddly misshapen car pass by until finally my alarm clock would go off and I’d awake. If the dream were especially unpleasant I’d just open my eyes. It was very refreshing to be in complete control of something that once seemed out of my control.

  But to be honest I don’t dream much anymore. I think I run out of things to dream about after a long day of thinking. It’s almost like my brain is wired backwards, where all the wildest of events plays out as I walk around and as I sleep its a state of pause. A dark blink between the moment I unknowingly lose consciousness to the next instant when I awake.

  This feels good though. I usually can’t get my words out anymore. I like writing because you can ramble and for the most part keep your points intact. When I talk in person it has to be an abstract conversation, or something I’ve rehearsed in my head, or else I’m destined to fall. I love writing yet I rarely can make the jump. To escape what comes from writing. I wonder to myself recently if I were to finally get my story going full bore, if I was to finish even just the first book. If it would calm down. Because as it stands I’ve got a very large surplus of ideas. These things that came to me in Astronomy, English, Psychology and Philosophy. These ideas that consume me as I’m listening to the lectures.

  Probably why I hate lectures. Every time the professor says something interesting I end up traveling off into a long train of thoughts about how that information pertains to the real world. I begin to look at it in the grand scheme of things…and as it stands I think that is hurting me around test time.

  I do have troubles blaming myself however. It really does feel to me that the Educational system was written on a weekend over a few bottles of Scotch. What I find most humorous (Ironic perhaps) is the fact that I’m reading a textbook about Learning, from a Professor who studies Learning and Behavior, and the very book explains why (in complement to my own thoughts) the Educational system is inherently miss shaped. It’s no wonder people seem so absurdly stupid these days, its almost a given considering how they were taught.

  We don’t go to school to learn anymore, it appears to me that we go to school to not fail. If I could just listen to lectures and write papers on how I feel about the topics I think I’d do well. I have so many things in mind when I think, I can ramble on about the (in my opinion) grand meaning or application of concepts. The tests we take now seem to show nothing. They take students on a linear path that could easily be ascertained by merely reading the book. It’s almost as if the Professors have become nothing but dispensers of exams. It’s a shame too, because so much could be acquired from Education and from College. But we’ve marketed education now, it’s no longer a matter of bettering mankind, but instead of reaching the most efficient means to profit.

  I’m not entirely sure where I was going. But I know what I want to be doing. I just see a few inherently unnecessary walls blocking my way and I can only hope that the people I talk to will feel that same way.

PS. I imagine its obvious that I was mostly self taught English (seeing as I failed or nearly failed English every year of school). I apologize for any gratuitous use of commas or miswording.

Erotic nuerotic
sensual stupidity
catatonic clarity
disjointed reality
where are we

Can’t tell
friend nor foe
can’t feel
fake from real
can’t break
fear’s wax seal

criplling cognitive
catastrophies crushing
human happiness
heralding harm
pain and poverty
injustice insulting
man and mind

Ingorance excites
endless evils
coming forth
like wicked weevils
leaving us wishing
for another meal
but hunger rises
as we succumb
to impish guises
trickery and treachery

In the end
our own nuerosis
cripling condition
co-morbid ignorance
will end our existence

I think there is an incredible untruth in this world: the idea that nothing can really be done to alleviate harm, poverty, and all other negative aspects of life. - Me

  In the US alone, each year 711 billion (and rising) dollars is spent on the military budget. Vast amounts of this money are used to maintain archaic weapons of war and weapons of immense destruction, enough nuclear weaponry to devastate every living organism on the planet lies within the borders of the US alone. Millions are spent each month on dead end projects and used as tokens of appreciation in response to sponsoring a political party or party member. A recently hotly discussed topic was the Alaskan “Bridge to Nowhere” which was a 400 million dollar project to connect a single airport and 50 residents of a small pair of islands to the city of Ketchikan, Alaska. While “as far as I know” much of this money was blocked, there was still a road built that cost 25 million dollars and was merely made so that the money quote “wouldn’t just go back to the federal government.”

  So we’ll just use these three incidents, these things that happen monthly in the case of pork barrel spending, and yearly in the case of the US military. Firstly the idea of 400 million dollars for a completely pointless bridge. What could be done with 400 million dollars if spread effectively? Well the WFP (World Food Programme) provides a service where for the purchase of a 60 (51 some places) dollar bag you can feed a single child for an entire school year. Every 5 seconds a child in the world dies from hunger something that people take with stride whenever they hear it. This means that the money to be spent on that bridge could/should have fed 6,666,666 children, at the cheapest I’ve found online it could/should have fed 7,843,137 children. That is almost 8 million children alleviated from the fear of not eating, able to study and help further themselves and in doing so further their own countries. With the 25 million dollars spent on that road they could have alleviated hunger from 490,196 children by being smart shoppers for an entire school year. I find this hardly unreasonable as I can manage for a small bit more than that for a year myself.

  So what is so impossible about this? If we can hand millions to oil companies and millions to building some silly bridge to 50 people, why is it so impossible to feed nearly 8 million? How is it acceptable for this to be the case? When did we begin relying on the mean-world hypothesis to justify all our feelings about things we cannot individually heal.

  The US government alone could alleviate most world diseases and all known world hunger for 195 billion dollars year. This is an astounding number until you realize that this much is spent by the US military on Iraq every hour: 14 Million dollars. That’s 274,509 hungry children that could have been fed every single hour of every single day during this occupation of Iraq. It has been cited on countless newspapers and web sites that the cost of the Iraq war will reach 3 trillion dollars before its end. That’s 3,000,000,000,000 dollars, the most expensive military project since World War II. But we will return to that in a moment.

  We spend 589 billion more dollars on military than our next greatest competitor (in military terms), we spend 641 billion dollars more than our second largest competitor and finally we spend 71 billion dollars more than the entire rest of the world aside from China and Russia. This is absolutely ridiculous. Yet when people are told this they shrug and make a minor disapproving comment. I am starting to feel that I’m the only person anymore that realizes we are in a Democracy. A government that is ruled by the people. 43% of federal taxes goes to the military, nearly half of all the money that the population of the US pumps into the government is spent on sustaining nuclear weaponry (Enough to equate to 150k Hiroshima Sized Explosions), inventing new more efficient ways of killing people, and throughout it all still not appropriately raising the income of the very soldiers that sustain the military. Now in reference to the US Military Annual budget I’ll let a video do the talking.

  http://truemajority.com/oreos/

  I think the flash video here says it better than I can, while the information is slightly outdated in one respect, China outspends Russia on the military budget, mostly thanks to the immense amount of money the US has loaned from China to fund the Iraq war (One of the major reasons we now have a 10+ Trillion dollar debt). However the rest is pretty straight forward.

  When the ball falls, and the fingers start getting pointed it comes down to those who make the true decisions. It is not the job of the government to act with piety, in fact the large complaint of many people is that the government and politics in general are filthy. However this is always used as an excuse to stay out of politics, thusly leaving only the filthy people to participate. We cannot demand the best from our government without choosing the best for our government, if US citizens keep electing greedy uneducated people they will continue to see a government that acts with intense greed and little thought. We decide who lives or dies, as (for now) the worlds most powerful nation, it falls upon us to help the world. If  you treat those around you with respect and help them when they are in a time of need, the will in turn do the same for you. However if you treat those around you as if they are criminals, or deserving of their fates, they will likewise return the favor in kind.

  I don’t want to hear from people anymore that it is impossible to alleviate the issues of the world. If the argument of “Throwing money at things fixes nothing” then why are we spending so much on the military? I feel in the balance of creation and destruction a simple law must be ascertained. We can do as much good as we can do harm, considering that we as a nation have the force to eliminate all life on Earth, likewise we have the power to elevate all life to a level of least agony. How can one nod understandably at the thought of a single bomb killing millions in a few short seconds, but argue against the concept of feeding the same amount.

  Anyone in the educational field especially should not take this view of apathy, because it is the views of the teachers that will in many strong ways adjust the views of the students.