Jan 20 2011

Today I went and spoke to a shrink, who assisted me in my constant introspection.

I always find it easy to talk to shrinks, which makes sense on a number of levels.

Firstly, I can treat it as an academic exercise; getting together with an expert to study the brain of this being designated 'Steve'.

Secondly, it's all about me, and who's ego wouldn't want that sort of focus?

That's not a major part of it, (At least I hope it's not), but it'd be deceitful not to mention it.

I was completely honest, (to do otherwise seems counter-productive), about all facets of my mind and past, Something you're unlikely to experience during my podcast or on my blog. Certain truths we keep to ourselves, certain others we share with the world. In between are the truths we only reveal to shrinks or other experts, in my case at least.

Not that I didn't try! Many times as a younger man I can recall attempting a deeper level of conversation with my peer group only to be rebuffed in various ways. Other people don't seem interested in discussing relative morality or philosophical outlooks.

I discovered today, or had it pointed out to me rather, that what I seem to lack is 'blinkers'. Those little flaps on a horses face which limit their view to the track ahead. What this does for the horse is remove the sight of other horses nearby. If it saw the horses it may be tempted to baulk, defer, fight, or otherwise react to the other horses which it perceives as above or below it in the pack hierarchy.

In my case the lack of blinkers means that I cannot simple 'put my head down and focus on my job'. I am barraged by the facts of what is happening in our world, and most of those facts are not good.

Normal folks develop walls or blinkers to allow them to cope.

I don't have that.

Every day I am slammed in the face with reality, and reality is cold and ignorant and dark and brutal and ignorant and selfish and ignorant and violent and above all, IGNORANT.

I think I'm going to be working on my blinkers for awhile.

A note to the rich

When I look at your wealth and your houses and pools and fancy cars, I don't get jealous of your success, I don't even see the sucess that you see.

I see a complicity in evil.

A willful self ignorance to rival the most pig headed of lowly beasts. You think you are commiting no evil by going to work, earning the money, climbing the ladders, but you are wrong.

In my eyes at least.

Take the possesions, the freedoms and the well being of the poorest human; everything we own over that is greed, pure and simple. Taking more than your fair share of the net wealth of the world.

Try as you might to convince yourself that you have earned your wealth, I can most likely prove otherwise. There are very few actually necessary jobs in the world. Engineers, educators, health carers, scientists, certain buerocrats and farmers. That's about it. The vast majority of other jobs are little more than work creation, and many of them take an extremely unfair slice of the global pie.

The ones who dissapoint me most are the really smart, talented ones who choose to sell out as a concious effort of will.

I know a few.

Some I even count as friends.

-Steve