Living As A Hypocrite, Amongst Hypocrites

Note: When I refer to man I refer to the disgust of a living thing: Humans in general. There might be some handful of people out there who do not fit into this categorization, but if you are reading this post then you are probably not one of those people.

Man. Often have we compared ourselves to their fellow living beings, beasts. We claim to be virtuous, all-loving protectors of Earth, of our species and of the beasts living together on the planet. We always say they are smarter and superior to beasts, because our brains allow us to be capable of reasoning and logic. But how far have we gone with their advanced brains, really? If we are truly concerned about Mother Earth then why have we spent all these years raping her of all her resources and effectively stripping her of her beauty? If we are protectors of our species then why are we the only things that kill ourselves en masse? If we are protectors of other species then why do we enslave and slaughter them en masse for our personal benefit and entertainment? If Earth is our home, then shouldn't everybody be family, and shouldn't other living beings be our pets?

The truth is, the only thing that man is, is a bunch of hypocrites. Our advanced brains and intelligent thinking have only led us down one path. We have abandoned Earth as our home. Our home is in fact shrinking. First, we divide Earth into countries, separated only by imaginary borders so we can fight for domination over such false perceptions. Are we so different from the beasts that fight over domination of perceived territories? Second, in these countries we further shrink their homes into apartments. Thus, now a home is just the apartment we own, our family is only those who are genetically linked to us, our pet is an animal just for our makeshift entertainment and display purposes. Also, what has become of the notion that we are all-loving beings? Love has too been reduced from the self-disregarding love of everything to the self-perpetuating love of only those that which pleases us.

The truth is, man as individuals, do not care about anything that does not concern itself, despite how much it tries to portray itself as otherwise. An individual's life is based on chasing its own goals and its ambitions and engaging heavily in materialism and mindless self indulgence for the sake of personal comfort. Some might even claim to be part of religions which denounce such self-idolization! "God is dead!", literally speaking. God is dead inside all their souls. Most religions has become religions of hypocrites, choosing that religion only because they think that by mere belief in God will make their lives better. They will continue in their self indulging ways with complete disregard to the values and practices of their religion. Some do it more discretely, while some do it more blatantly, but both are just the same. As the saying goes: Hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue.

The driving force behind us--the knowledge that there is something out there that is even more pleasurable to be felt; we desire it with all our heart and thus sell our souls and our lives away just so we can attain such objects. But what if the greatest pleasure is not that of any material object can bring? What if it lies just within us? What if the greatest pleasure is self-realization? The realization that we should be working inwards, that we can be content with ourselves the way we are, without the need for external objects to make us happy. Only by being aware of our ignorance will we be driven to greater wisdom and happiness; for all ignorance and self-vanity arises from lack of courage in the way we appear to others. "Dare to know! Dare to speak! Dare to be!". Only when everyone of us sees the pointlessness in indulging in material objects and ourselves can we restore the beauty back to Mother Earth and to our lives, and only then can we be truly enlightened.

Until then, I will be living as a hypocrite, amongst hypocrites.

Power and Our True Selves

Many a revolution in the face of history has been a revolution for greater freedom of man. What is freedom really? Why do all people desire freedom? Freedom is the power to do whatever one wants, to be whatever one wants to be. Driven by our lifelong quest for pleasure(or happiness, whichever way you want to look at it), we all hold an ideal world in our minds, be it unrealistic or realistic, and subject to change every moment. Everything we do, we do to be closer to realizing our dream of this ideal world; Don't we all wish for the power to change the world? Do not be fooled though, for there are very different ways in which this power is derived.

Power from within, based solely on one's ability and one's will, contrasted with legitimate power, the power of the masses. Contrary to popular belief, the leader does not command the most power. The leader is granted power by the people, but the people can take it back in an instant. The leader thus must do everything he can to gain favor with the people. He will coerce the people with his words and actions, he will promise rewards in return for the power granted. He must do everything he can to keep the people ignorant, to make them believe that he knows best for the people, and does everything he can for the people. He must tread cautiously, so as not to invoke the wrath of the people, who will strip him of his title as they see fit. Ironic, for the leader is in fact dependent on the people for his power; no longer is the people his slave, but he is now slave to the people. It is power nonetheless, however it only shows how weak and dependent we truly are. Real power is strength from within, strength to overcome all boundaries, strength to create one's own purpose and beliefs, strength to know whatever what ones to knows, strength to build one's own ideal world, strength to destroy whatever stands in the way. This is ultimate freedom, this is the true self that we all desire, instead of the illusionary self that we are trying to achieve; the self-image that is dependent on how others' judge our appearances and actions.

Our illusionary self, the self molded by society, that which teaches us to love, be moral, to be just(by society's standards) and fair, only serves to deny us of our true selves. That which teaches us to think and act morally, to take others into consideration for our actions ,to do only 'good' and to avoid all that is 'bad', only confuses us. This difference between what we ought to do, and what we want to do causes us to double think all our actions, raising questions about ourselves. If we question ourselves, are we not doubting ourselves? Often we reminisce about our childhood, as it is during this phase where we had little doubts or worries. We gave little concern to how our thoughts or actions, to how others viewed us. It is during this phase where we were closest to our true selves. It is also during this phase when we were most free(but also most vulnerable to outside influences). When we were kids, we loved to think that we were all superheroes with superpowers. The adults, jealous, shrug it off as child's play. However is this not the makings of our true selves? The self that is free, that desires power, amoral yet innocent.
As we grow up, we find ourselves becoming more worrying, thus we feel weaker than when we were younger. We started to place blame on many external factors for our frustrations, to deny our sense of weakness. We find ourselves asserting that people who blames themselves are weak in an attempt to justify our ressentiment. In reality, the opposite is true, for individuals who constantly blames themselves are constantly growing stronger, because they acknowledge their weakness. They are honest; the truth is that all our frustrations can be attributed to ourselves, and ourselves only. Only by being aware of our weakness and ignorance will we push ourselves to seek greater power and wisdom.

You may agree or disagree with me, but in silent contemplation I found that I know(or attempted to know) more about you than you know yourself. For that you should be ashamed. It is not what we think about, but how we think that makes us unique.

The Love Illusion(revised)

This is a revision of the previous 'The Love Illusion' post because the last post was a little hard to understand.

Firstly, for the sake of simplicity, I will divide love into 2 kinds, selfish or love and selfless or love. In both terms, the word self is evident. In selfish love, it is love, but however it is love driven ultimately by the own self interests. I will attempt to use an expression that prevails in everyone of us to explain the difference between selfish love and selfless love: Our Preference.

If we hold our preference in whom or what we love, then it implies that we love one more than others. Putting the 'self' in love. This love is loved based on condition, and the condition is that of what the self wants the condition to be: on the condition that the person is beautiful, on the condition that love be reciprocated? Only you can name these conditions. This is conditional love.

Selfless love is love with no preference. Loving everyone equally regardless of their looks or their actions and how they will affect you is true selfless love. Selfless love is unconditonal love.

Instead of reaching out for the love that you can never grasp; the love that is portrayed to you by other people to be pure and selfless, we should not be hypocrites and accept the fact that love is based on self-interest, as does every single decision we make. We should work to turn our unconscious selfishness into our living consciousness.

Understanding Our Will to Power

Your will to power can be directly linked to your inner desire for pleasure in these ways. Firstly there are 2 kinds of pleasures: the pleasure of the 5 senses and the pleasure of the mind, or the self centered ego. The pleasure of the 5 senses are self explanatory. Pleasures of the mind can be divided into 2 types. By using basic sadist and masochist pleasures I will attempt to explain the 2 not so different pleasures.

A sadist is one who finds pleasure in making others feel pain inflicted upon them by himself. It is the direct pleasure of seeing your influence in other people. The joys of parenthood is based on this experience. The joys of parenthood is actually the joy of looking at your child grow up to be like you, to think like you and to act like you. It is through this pleasure that you seek similar minded people for relationships. The feeling of looking at your influence on other people is undeniable, even I, am writing this post because I want you to be affected by it, be it positively or negatively.

Masochism is a very similar kind of pleasure. A masochist finds pleasure in pain inflicted upon himself by others. It is the pleasure one gets by eliciting a self-expected response from the inflictor by one's owns actions. It is the pleasure you get by manipulating others without them knowing you are manipulating them. Emotional people derive pleasure from such means, they pretend to be weak and expected to be treated with more attention and care by others, which they usually get, thus indirectly manipulating others into giving them what they want. The joy of altruism is too, derived from such means. The pleasure derived from altruism is such that you expect to be treated the way you treat others, in this case with 'goodness' or 'love'. This ethnic of reciprocity has been drilled into us since we were young. 'Good' be treated with goodness or rewards, 'bad' to be treated with punishment or badness. A simple way of illustrating that altruism is a form of self-interested pleasure: When you do charity, you usually will expect the same response from the people whom you are giving to, but what if he goes against what you expect him to respond? What if he starts to curse at you, or even attempts to kill you? You will no doubt feel displeasure.

Most if not all of our actions ultimately consist one if not both of these underlying pleasures. Now I will attempt to explain how the government supresses our natural will to power to satisfy their own desire for power. Unlike conventional means of control, which controls us by directly restricting our movement and actions for example: slavery, they attempt to control us by playing on our inner driven self desires. They encourage us to express ourselves through materialism along the lines of social norms. The interests of all the entities that you are under control of (government, religions, the military, educational institutions) are intertwined with corporate interests, and those entities also participate in the management of social expectations through mass media. They play on our inner desires by placing advertisements with subliminal messages everywhere and endorsing products with people with substantial power, thus making us desire those products as well because it now signifies our power. Associating these items with power makes us want to buy that item. By making us desire these 'powerful objects' and us getting what we want, we feel we are in control of our lives, we feel powerful, this is the illusion of freedom. In society, because they have suppresed our true destructive and violent selves, our desire to show our power is now our desire to make ourselves known to others. We have all become vain. Vanity is the fear of how we appear to others. Everyone is vain, no matter how un-vain you try to portray yourself to be. It is not only the media and advertisements that makes us want items. Government institutions can make us need something through laws or out of fear. For example: Education is compulsory and so is paying school fees. Or your doctor can tell you that you are sick although you are not to make you buy medicine. Thus began consumerism. Consumerism is how they keep us ignorant of our inner selves, and how they keep themselves in power. The whole basis of society is to keep us docile so we will not try to take control from them. However, there is one problem. The more we get what we want, the more we will expect to be given, or the more 'free' we become, the more freedom we expect to get.

No doubt after reading you will feel displeasure because I am asserting that all humans are inherently driven by the self-interest to desire and to destroy that which restricts us from desiring. It is only your ego trying to deny that you are 'bad'. But is it really a bad thing? It is only a society that makes it up to be bad. There is no such thing as a common 'good' or 'bad'. 'Good' and 'bad' things or actions are usually justified by each individual solely by his beliefs, and society is trying to impose its beliefs upon us. Thus, I tell you, do not fall prey to the tricks of those above and around you. Rise up! Do not be content with the illusion that they have imposed upon you! Unleash your true inner human desires upon this world! The person who is the most humane is the one who is most powerful! We can only desire true freedom if we are not restricted in anyway, not in the mind or in the body. And restriction is placed upon us only by other people, thus the only way of attaining true freedom is by destroying them. This is our will to power! Our biological imperative!

The Love Illusion

Disclaimer: Before you attempt to read this post, this is a warning. This shocking revelation might affect greatly or even destroy what your life ever stood for depending on whether you interpret it positively or negatively. Read at your own risk or don't if you feel that you still want to keep intact the meaning of your lives.

Love, the only true, pure emotion(or so we think) that gives meaning to most, if not all of our lives. Most of us think we live just for our loved ones. Most of us think of love as extremely selfless. You guys must be wondering why i used the word 'think', that's because I'm here to say that the love that you know of is the most selfish thing ever, one that drives the real meaning behind our lives: Our will to power!

Let me ask you this: Do you really love someone, or do you really love only the feeling he/she brings you? The love that we know of is one that is most probably classified under the second feeling. Love is where two mutually selfish people come together because they make each other feel better. The same can be said for your love of things, you only like them because of the feeling they bring to you when you use them. Underlying all love is our strive to become master over all space(ownership) and to extend our force; our will to power. Our love or social relationships is when people encounter similar efforts on the part of other bodies and ends by coming to an arrangement (union) with those of them that are sufficiently related to it: thus they then conspire together for power. When we say we love someone, we will usually think that we know whats best for him/her. Why? Because we want to impose ourselves onto them; our will to power likes it when someone listens to us, because its a sign that we are in control, that we are powerful. We only love things that does or say things that we like because it is an ego boost; and hate things that says or does things that make us feel bad, constantly avoiding them because they hurt our ego. Ask yourself this: Are you more likely to like something or someone that listens to you, or shares your common interests? The answer is most probably yes, that is how most of us choose our friends and relationships. At the bottom of every decision we make, lies our self-interests. Whatever we say or do, we expect a benefit to ourselves for return, be it immediate or not. Taking the above as example: We only make friends that agree with us, we say things that is acceptable inside our clique because we expect them to say something that is pleasing in return, to reaffirm our very existence for power. The same can be said when we do charity for the poor: We always expect a thank you in return, or expect them to smile and nod and treat us with respect. When they don't, we label them as rude, ungrateful. In this situation, am I right to say that we only do charity for the reassurance that we are 'good'? Our inborn self-defense mechanism too, serves only to protect our powerful ego. Do you always find yourself putting blame on something else? That is the work of our self-defense mechanism. To deny our own inferiority, we tend to blame external factors for our frustrations. It is always something else, never is it the fault of our infalliable, ever powerful ego!

Religion, too is will to power. People believe in religion because it strengthens them, it makes them feel stronger and smarter then others who do not believe in their religion because they have the backing of their god and they think they know the 'truth'. They too feel at an advantage over others because they believe that they will have a better afterlife.

It is in human nature to lust for power, which explains why humans are inherently selfish, shrewd, and this forms the major framework for all society where people pursue their self-interests in as many ways as possible. It is why there is a need for morality in society. Morality is a mutual agreement between people to prolong and protect their existence just so they can enforce their power on others for as much and as long as possible, until their very last breath.

The world and the will to live is the will to power -- and nothing besides!

True love, however do exist. If you truely love something, you will not expect anything in return for your love. This is the true selfless, pure love. If you truely love someone, you will not try to intervene in their lives. True love is letting nature take its course. If you truely love someone, set him/her/it free.