Hey, did you read the previous post? Pretty good, right?
I’ve never felt so proud about how well I’ve described my past.
About the chance I could really hold the wrist of someone about to do something beautifully extreme,
and maybe they’d finally stop in place.
But you want to know something else?
I read some things that made me feel quite on the mark.
Like maybe I’m the one firing an arrow into the very heart of everyone.
Did you watch the video I’m referring to?
Go ahead, it’s the one where the guy gets arrested after holding a blank sheet of paper somewhere in Russia….apparently it’s “Novosibirsk”.
And this whole thing is about the war in Ukraine, of course.
Anyway, the comments had me aching to get all of this out there.
Surely you’ve seen people saying things like this in response.
“Paper guy is a hero.
“Officer is a dick.
“Paper guy is a genius.
“Russian government is insane.
“Paper guy is standing up for something.
“Putin’s lackeys are pathetic.
“Paper guy is my reason for being.
“Ukraine is a victim of manchild narcissism.
“It’s just like the jokes about Soviet Russia, how embarrassing they’ve gone back to those days.”
I agree with those statements, pretty much.
I offer no objections to that kind of courage against unprovoked violence.
It gives me the same plasma in my chest as you.
I see that kind of inspiration as both reasonable and necessary for anything to get better.
There were some other statements I was sad to see, however.
“Paper guy knew what he was doing.”
“Officer gave him a warning.”
“Paper guy was being an asshole.”
“Russia isn’t doing anything you don’t see in other counties, even America.”
“Ukraine isn’t gonna benefit from his actions.”
And those lines do aggravate me.
They make me feel the same craving for justice as you.
But, if you’ve read these past 11 posts, you’d know that it doesn’t cause me to lose my cool.
I know when a person is hypnotized by a bold feeling of positive energy.
Like they’re the one fighting the more ugly and un-advanced version of nice-feeling vibes.
I will not confront the people in the wrong here, they aren’t worth it.
They aren’t my target. They’re not whom I need to read this.
I need the most well-intentioned and civilized and intelligently progressive human beings alive to totally read this.
If you want something vaguely resembling world peace,
you must see why the, uh, blank-paper-guy arrester
feels like a blank paper guy himself.
And by and large, kind of is one.
And when I look at the internet, I see, that overall,
people have trouble wrapping their heads around that facet of the antagonist in that situation.
Getting into the heads of the wrong side of history is still not being done enough.
It needs to be done to neutralize them.
I lift a quote from Reddit.
“‘There’s that moment when your intellectual self overrides your primitive self to do a thing.
You usually feel it the first jumping off the high dive or dropping into a half pipe for the first time.
That’s definitely in his face as he goes over the edge the moment he says, “I’m continuing.'”
I was already planning on writing about the blank paper guy in terms of “the heart’s three infamous positive energy directives”
and then, without warning, I get a shot of validation into these veins.
Because I know that very moment, in which a person feels as though
they’ve risen above what it means to be a typical human being,
and their hearts quiver with what feels like ultimate insight
into how to overcome the inexplicably despicable quality of other human beings,
as well as one’s own susceptibility to that kind of defilement,
and feeling this, you, despite, all
act, act, act, act, act, act,
rather than not act.
That’s what I’ve been trying to put my finger on this whole fucking time.
The paper guy-punisher, the war-enabling officer,
do you think he didn’t feel something similar?
Do you think his brain didn’t light up the same way as his victim?
He’s a less courageous man, to be sure, a less passionate man, of course,
but you think he didn’t get a similar surge inside his body?
You really think what he did was actually some kind of pathetic insanity?
You really want to call it complete and absolute absurdity?
I think deep down, you just fail to find the words
to express your frustration so big
that it could be viewed from outer space.
But I have not failed at that.
Experience this with me.
Here’s your tragic fallacy, here’s your way out of inter-human misery.
The sensation you feel when witnessing the blank paper man
do what he did
is still just a byproduct of the friction of three things moving around in your heart,
which all people share,
and perceive themselves as the much better version of, in general.
The FIRST is the ability to boldly fix problems by introducing other potentially unhelpful actions. (like the way the message-less paper tries to utilize a flaw within the nature of rules and laws)
The SECOND of these is the restrained quality of your actions feeling like the antidote to exploitation by others’ human will. (like the way the blank paper makes no real statements of its own and is really quite not assertive in and of itself)
The THIRD is the inspiring quality of other people finding peace in many kinds of extreme discomfort. (as in how he was being openly confronted with the possibility of being arrested and did it anyway, knowing what suffering could have awaited)
These things converge into something truly magnificent, human action at its most dizzyingly strong.
Moments of power and grace with no comparison.
But if that’s the case…..
if that really is so…
(now feel the rain fall)
why would it be crazy to fight that person?
Would it really be so dumb, so arrogant, so pathetic, to stop such a moment in its tracks?
Wouldn’t it the opposite of insane?
Regardless of the morality, regardless of the terrible implications, regardless of how nauseatingly indignant that act of brutality makes you and me feel upon seeing it,
would it really be absurd?
No, no….it’s far from it.
It’s not absurd in the slightest to arrest “paper guy”.
No matter how much it makes me sick to see modern governments do that to people, calling it absurd is an absolutely pathetic thing to say.
It’s got to be among the most down-to-earth, clear-headed, steady-hearted things that a human being could possibly do.
Who even knows how much the officer cared about the war, or the government, or his president, or any international struggles?
Who even knows whether or not arresting such a protestor actually induced any shame or joy not within him?
The fact remains, you can be absolutely sure, to that officer,
it felt like…..
it had to be…..
(the rain keeps pouring)
about as normal and reasonable a thing that any adult could or would ever do.
Even if it is exactly the type of thing that makes being human with other humans so often so wretched.
You have to put the right kind of collar around the emotion of “I am being very strong and very reasonable as well” if you wish for these things not to happen.
How often do you become similar to the well-mannered officer,
sending off an innocuous person to who knows where?
How often can you feel your heart seeming to take a certain shape,
before doing something you know is not quite nice?
While every cell in your body tells you “I’m destroying a really nasty person?”
How many millions of times in your life
have you tried to unashamedly get the best of someone who was acting like
they were doing nothing wrong?
And by and large, may not have been?
How many times do you do get involved with that, do you see that and fail to get the words to describe that?
It could be family, it could be work, it could be shopping, it could be anything you perceive as something involving opposing the intentions of another sentient being.
In those times, you go ahead and become
the one who does something
you know seems kind of crazy
and pretty hard to defend
and really kind of freaky
as your heart does bend
and tell yourself, without any words,
as you feel huge,
“hot damn, this other person thinks they’re solving an issue by becoming one, which is kind of cool, but they’re still kind of a piece of garbage.”
and
“wow, this person is doing something that’s really kind of passive and restrained, which is kind of admirable, but they’re still utter trash.”
and
“my fucking goodness, this person’s really getting out of the old comfort zone, which is astounding, but they’re still in general, an asshole.”
You overload in a sense of fighting nasty human energy that thinks it’s great human energy.
And that high guides you so hardcore that it has no antidote.
And it’s not like you don’t try to fix this.
It’s not like you haven’t held yourself back at the brink before.
I am not implying that in the slightest.
You just never find the words to make it consistent.
And nobody has, not once.
Maybe until now, at least.
………….
I would say this world does need blank paper people to do weird things and fight injustice.
But we need even more badly
is the power to prevent people
from being utterly secure with that part of their hearts that tells them
“I am totally winning against someone, with the power of good vibes”.
That’s how wars start to begin with in a world
where bread and water are mostly easy to acquire.
Where good movies actually move us but we end up doing things quite unlike a friendly protagonist.
We do that by following
that very unprimitive feeling.
The only way
for us to unfuck this situation
is us to agree to stop yourself
when you feel you’ve risen far beyond the ordinary limits of good human energy,
and have to push against someone’s strong-willed plotting,
to make your own little life contain anything resembling value.
When you feel so very ultimately more like a person,
than any other person, it may be time to just let the tides roll out.
rather than making endless cascades of aggravation.
Contributing to the cycle of mystical feeling disgust for someone else,
that feels as natural and endearing as the will to go to the bathroom.
At the very least, you can use this stratagem to not lose your balance completely when someone becomes intolerable. To fight the tiny wars involved with two humans being two humans, causing the least harm indeed.
As an American, I believe that can actually happen.
I believe we are ripe for taking a concept like “The Heart’s Three Infamous Positive Energy Directives” and using it to UNFUCK the average wretched human encounter.
Not that most encounters are wretched.
I wish I could scream out,
“It’s time to stop telling stories
and start living the fantasy
of extreme control over oneself.
BECAUSE YOU ACHE TO TASTE IT MORE THAN ANYONE!”
The Found Emotion (Invoke Yourself) 