May I Offer a Suggestion?

I just watched a video that warms my heart, a beautiful soul who has had a breakthrough of sorts. The beginning of the end of a harmful obession, and more power to this person, I say! Let's hope it's a pebble that starts a landslide.

As some of you may know, I was a member of a violent religious cult for most of my 20s. Nothing to be proud of, but it is what it is. What remains from those days is a little bit of wisdom from lessons learned, and a lot of anxiety. A LOT! Trying to cope with it has been my uphill battle ever since. One thing that seems to help is learning and practicing little creative skills, especially since I've retired from the working world. Idle hands and all that. My hobbies now include kite building, basket making, boxing, kali fighting sticks and nunchucks, boondoggling (look it up; I never knew there was a name for it! lol!), juggling (I'm actually pretty good, I do balls and clubs and rings and scarves), wood carving, wood burning, origami, tissue flower making (I made TONS of giant flowers for a party last year, took a week!), slingshot marksmanship (poor man's archery, and more fun imo), and I even recently took up skateboarding again after a lapse of 3 or 4 decades. Of course, not everybody has the free time I have these days, but the important thing is applying one's self to something interesting that takes you out of the kind of headspace where those dreaded feedback loops of anxiousness and depression lie.

Anywho, these are some of the things that help me get through the day without driving myself crazy. Maybe I'll go into some of them in more detail eventually, and if anybody is ever interested in talking more specifically about this stuff, be my guest to post your queries and helpful hints here. I'm always looking to learn. And again, best wishes to those of you who have your own psychological issues. I get it.

Dayim, I almost forgot the bongos! Like, cooool baby.

Oops, Forgot to Title This One. There You Go.

So, you've decided to abstain from having children for this, that or the other reason. Now what?

NOTHING! Go live your life and stop hanging around bitter old men whose time has passed but whose egos demand constant gratification from others. Otherwise you've become part of the side show, and is that what you want to do with whatever time you have remaining? Glue your lips to the too-often exposed posterior of an old fool who was too terrified to ever wander out of his government provided thumb sucking station?

Look, it's one thing to recognize that procreation causes a lot of problems for people. That's a given here. But really and truly, there's only so much that can be said about the situation before you start repeating yourself, right? Granted, re-statements can be valuable for clarity's sake, and new folks are always coming along, So if His Nibs aka Professor Greyroots really needs an audience to prop up the ever-so-frail shanty of his self-esteem, there'll always be new pilgrims prostrating up to his feed trough for a lick.

Unfortunately, there's a stink wafting up from the salad bar, so my advice is to consider what you eat, and where you go to eat it. Oh, there's still nutrition to be had if you limit yourself to picking off the top. But that poisonous undertaste should at least give you pause. Then consider that the chef cares nothing for you. In fact, he openly despises you, and the only reason he's even pursuing his line of thinking is because of a basic category error. You see, he has conflated the category of 'thing' with the category of 'kind of thing', and so he literally believes that until everybody is dead, he will continue to be alive. Bottom line is he's a monist of one stripe or another. Surprise! (not really)

In the meantime there are hummingbirds to feed, people who need our help and encouragement to make it through the day, and of course many other things of wonder to be experienced that will generate lots and lots of more beneficial chemicals in your brain than tongueing the slime hole of a toxic sea slug who, quite frankly, has nowhere else to be.

AN is an idea, people, not a lifestyle. Grow the fuck up already.

UPDATE: Same goes double for the 'science' nonsense. Professor Greyroots practices the science of 'Whatever supports my ideology, THAT'S real science!" Thus any idea that runs contrary to the notion of a single, spatially and temporally closed universe is verboten. You see, the Professor is terrified of existences going on forever and ever. Can't say I blame him. However, science and wishful thinking are sort of a blur to the Professor, and so his existential list is conveniently truncated to one of limited probables, and everybody who thinks differently is shit. Or anybody who even recognizes his misplaced surety in calculating probablilities even though he has absolutely no mechanism by which to judge the merit of those probablilities! That's one cwazzzzyy wabbit!

Internalizing Determinism- A Beginning...

I started feeding hummingbirds this year (along with other wildlife; it's amazing the variety of critters one encounters in the city). I have feeders all around the house now, including an interesting domed one I picked up recently (keeps out the bees) hanging just outside my screen door. Big Boy is feeding as I type (sort of the on-site bully, but blood is never drawn and there's plenty for everybody...what can you do? shrug).

In the evening, they all come in for a late dinner. Long, drawn out drinks, and when they fly off for the last time of the day you can actually see them dragging their tight-as-a-grape little bellies behind them, off to the treetops to enter their nightly state of metabolic torpor which helps keep their little candles from burning out before morning's light and another day of feeding. Believe me when I say they are the first ones up in the AM and the last ones to say goodnight in the PM.

There he is again. It's been a little cooler the last couple of days here in the California desert, and they're venturing out of their shady hiding places a bit more. Sparkling little fish splashing in the atmospheric sea, and sometimes they'll almost let me touch them. Sometimes they'll wait outside the door as I refill a feeder, 3 or 4 hovering there outside the screen door. Little ruby throats pulsing with light. And I know all this is just space-time wiggling around, but so am I, and as I soar above the rooftops in search of nectar along with my little friends, I am reminded of the kindness of those who have set nectar out for me along the path of my journey. A bit self-serving of an observation, I'll concede :)

If you believe the logical consequence of antinatalism is hatred and personality worship, you are mistaken; on more than one level, as a matter of fact. Unfortunately, if you see things that way it is precisely because you never had a chance of seeing things any other way. Same here, for the freedom of the hummingsbird's flight is only contexual, and in absolute terms there is, indeed, no escaping the cage. You'll either spend your days in rage against the cage, or you'll learn to live with it. Either way, you're never getting out of that cage.