What's all this then

Ambrose Bierce at Wikipedia

Just in time for the end of the world, or the end of "western" civilization, or the end of the internet, or what ever parochial interest you find yourself breaking into cold sweats over in the middle of your isolated and lonely existence -- we all experience life as unitary actors and each of us dies alone -- here is one more in an (apparently) infinite series of digital confessionals for future anthropologists and psycho-historians to ponder and synthesize into some vague understanding of just how insane this current iteration of the human race happened to be.

I have never been a fan of the term "blog" as it obtains both the inherent collapsing laziness of modern (English) speech and  the rampant narcissistic idiocy of what passes for social engagement. We live in a culture so enthralled to its own presupposed magnificence and probity that navel-gazing and self-regard now approaches a new, readily accepted form of art, as matter and light might be drawn towards an event horizon and extreme tidal spaghettification into nothingness. Conceit has been promoted so far beyond the cloistered board-rooms of self dealing corporate hacks and the ratified marble halls of government largess and larceny that it dominates every aspect of our economy. Conceit is now a higher calling, an industry of monumentally nauseating proportions, deceit: the coin of the realm, and denial the packaging, marketing, and public relations of our vanishing imperial wardrobe.

H. L. Mencken at Wikipedia

If I'm "lucky," this will go viral, and it will change my life entirely. In all probability not for the better, so why bother?

Posterity, I suppose. That and the fact that I've been told too many times in my near fifty-one trips around our star to write a book, presumably because I'm not an idiot and therefore have insights of some marginal value to a world increasingly pressed beyond the margins. Intriguing, perhaps.

For the better part of the past year I wasn't sure if I was experiencing life as Isaiah or Job, torn between "Hear me O America, you ignorant, self-absorbed, murderous slut," and "WTF God! You're betting on my tolerance against your sadistic pestilence?" But after reading a brief account of Ambrose Bierce's life and rediscovering the punishing, sardonic honesty of H.L. Mencken's own misanthropy I feel much more secure in establishing those literary outposts as a frontier, the line of a Pale to remain comfortably beyond. Misanthropic? Not so much, I mean only when I breathe.

"Funny" Stories ... and other low-grade nightmares

This past Christmas eve I was very fortunate to spend time with a dear friend – a solid cat – whom I had not seen for some months and we were able to not only enjoy each others company and intellect with ever increasing volumes of Stout and steeper spirits, but were animated as well (as always) to discuss the pressing social and political conundrums of our age. Bodhidharma came up as point of reference, and my brother dropped a lodestone of knowledge that I will push about in Sisyphean futility to my last nicotine choked breath. After x number of beers and an even less discernible coordinate of shots a paraphrase is all that remains, no less memorable for the veil of inebriation through which it flew.

Bodhi Tree at jamesgritz.com

In short, the brother – my Number 1 Cuz – told me that after Buddha had sat under the bodhi tree and synthesized all his acquired wisdom rendering the veil of human ignorance impotent and surmountable, he was confronted with a stark choice. Should he go to the trouble of telling anybody — or not? Pause to reflect on that moment somewhere in the South Asian subcontinent circa 250 BCE...

Two and one half millennium ago human beings were no different than they are today; all that has changed are the telephones and the toasters. We are still the same willfully ignorant, selfish, problematically superstitious and psychotic hairless apes we were in Buddha's day. The only material difference is the existence of free public libraries, obviating the need for mendicant wanderings and yogic tutelage from which to procure an even broader understanding than that which Buddha achieved.

There shouldn't be any need to tell people how to behave;  they've already been told — a very large number of times. The books are in the library. Library cards are free. Libraries were the Internet before there was an Internet. Imagine how much more Internet-like libraries are now that they're all linked together ... on the Internet. What are you: stupid? (The law of large numbers indicates that yes, you dear reader, are very likely and imbecile.)

James Baldwin at Wikipedia

The Two Ignoble Rules for (Likely) Imbeciles

Rule No. 1.  Don't be an asshole.
Rule No. 2.  See Rule No. 1

But wait! There's more: because human beings are complicated ... and complex ... and being the crazed chilly chimps we are, we can therefore never leave well enough alone. So here are some corollaries for the above.

Corollary a: It is rude to suck.
Corollary b: Given the steady state of human enlightenment in the general population: you (and I) probably suck.

With respect to this confidence is, unlike myself — regrettably, very high, and the way I see it James Baldwin is still the greatest Twenty-First Century American writer ... and he's been dead almost 25 years.