~*~ 2024 ✝ 08 ✝ 29 ~*~
~*~*~*~*~
there was once a time where i felt like i was truly connected to the network. it now seems to have passed. i believe that i can recount specifically the sagas, each separated by transitional events.
i'm not sure if i ever was more alive, but at every point in my life, even before throwing myself into the deep ocean of the internet, i've felt as if my happiness has been capped or limited by the nature of circumstances. parenting, education, vocation. they represent to me the harshest possible limitation to place on a human life, because they are each instructive ways of enforcing dogma so all-encompassing that it dictates the bounds of reality, & defines very clearly what it believes to be the furthest reaches of life, the peaks & valleys of consciousness, & proclaims by its own self-appointed authority that these phenomena are only made possible by its own self-sustaining echo chamber effect. "i am the alpha & omega, the beginning & the end" - mothers & fathers, kings & queens, gods & godesses - all of them are just characters in a play. totally artificial, & with no voice of reason to foil them, the stages of life where one is controlled by or at the mercy of the judgment of such figures are guaranteed to shape the outlook on the limits of reality, the possibilities of life. in other words, i've always been hyperconscious of the decisions of others leading my own, & especially as a child & teenager, my life was frought with shock & horror at the increasingly high & constant rate at which governance or authority over my own personal agency was passed around between institutions.
perhaps i was just a very self-important child, & perhaps i have grown from there to be greedy for agency. perhaps i just have low enough self-esteem to try to explain away such observations as personality flaws. regardless, i believe agency to be the cheif precious resource in my life, as nothing brings me greater joy than to free myself from the ever-encroaching threat of losing myself & having my agency washed away into the endless ocean. i like to be as many steps ahead of whoever is 'watching' me as is possible. if i'm working, i'd like to be very far ahead of work, such that tomorrow's work was completed yesterday & that any taskmaster or managing decisionmaker is never quite sure of what to do with me. if i'm playing a game one-on-one, i'd like to be similarly very ahead of the rulebook, & to be free to choose my opponent's undoing, so that they similarly are not quite sure how to condition me. if the game is solitaire, then i would like simply to be as fast & efficient as possible, & to always be learning a new technique or optimisation that hasn't yet totally assimilated itself as consolidated knowledge - foremostly, i choose to be like this out of the same paradoxical desire to have any onlooker perplexed. my game of solitaire isn't anywhere near as good as the curiosity it piques in uninformed onlookers, to whom i must seem to be either a crackpot, savant or buffoon, depending on who's looking & their experience with the game of solitaire. it gives me a resolute sense of veracity to my own value in the world to form this meaningful connection with the world & the people in it, as i believe it teaches a broader degree of systems thinking that seems to undermine the learned helplessness of a perplexed onlooker & replace it with stalwart, self-sustained confidence. perhaps it is due to too many video games that i am like this, but i believe this is my intelligence at work.
however, not all onlookers respond in that way. most of them are actually disinterested, defensive, sometimes even offended. i could chalk it up to life simply being this way & paint humans as very stressed & sensitive creatures & leave it at that, but i again feel an inner brightness compelling me to dispel any doubt that human potential is a glass ceiling, a false series of barriers held up by people far too superstitious to even try to see the actually quite deceptive machinations dancing on the other side of them. even when they can imagine past these barriers, people often feel taunted or teased by these things. it's common cliche to express possibility in life as a numerical or statistical formula, with positive change eventually classifying itself as 'miraculous', as if each day is a repetition of the same circumstances. under this thinking, the systems of life are believed to be orchestrated, rising & falling in time with the baton of someone who they are quite unfamiliar with, someone they can barely see, let alone identify. they experience the emotional swells, plataeus & paradigm shifts as though they were forcibly impressed upon them, like if the audience of a film were physically battered by the elements of whatever conditions were onscreen. they believe that they are part of it, they understand that they are affected by it, but they never stand up & leave, as that would free them from the familiar safety of sitting together with their peers & break them out onto the stage as character actors.
~*~*~*~*~