30 May 2020

 I'm not fond of aggression, fighting, and death. Destruction has a finality, and it can end things in irrecoverable ways.

Yet I still eat meat, or even plants.

We still die, by old age, illness, accident, and more.

Some of us like to be masters of our environment, causing destruction to raise new creations.

...or maybe aggression is just a dominance game, establishing who wields power over who...

Also, humans are not the only forces in the world; yet part of life's success some times boils down to being able to fight instead of flying...

As we add in society and its rules, we start establishing alternate dominance games. Yet, we also add cooperation, and we see symbiosis.

Some might call me a relativist. Some might think I want to consider traditional good and evil under differing perspectives, differing lights. I don't know if it's true. Perhaps I'm attempting it just to understand why violence erupts. Perhaps I'm failing horribly.

A part of me has long been at peace with my own death. Another part understands the preparations are not in place for disposing my body and my meager estate... and my debts. Yet, perhaps in a sick and twisted way, when I attempted suicide in '98, I think I reached the point where I could accept my death. Maybe that got refined with death meditations around 2010, maybe not...

I do not think I am as willing to accept a confining disability, such as being kept in an asylum, or losing control of my legs (or other body parts). The loss of mobility translates into a loss of freedom, in my mind. That, in turn, is imagined as a loss of possible activities.

I think this is why I fear Alzheimer's more than death. I would not want to lose my mental ability, however weird it is. Part of the reason I fell off of taking my Depakote in '96 was because I could not reclaim my brain's alertness. I like to refer to my brain in that Depakote period as "slugs on ice"...

There's a part of me that's non-committal about others committing violent acts. I think my general feeling is "you can express your anger, so long as you don't cause harm to me, if I'm an innocent bystander". I don't know if I'm quite to the noble level of saying "you can cause no one (or nothing) harm, while you express your anger" To be honest, American society is awash in violent images - so it's hard to separate our actions from the messages we receive. I don't know if it's confined to American media; but I think we take particular relish in displaying physical violence.

I'm not entirely sure, "why?" aside from the old slogan, "sex, guns, and violence" perhaps. I do wish there was a bit more sex - but that twists off into its whole essay, I suppose.

I also think that violence is still a go-to reaction because it creates behavior modifications. Attackers feel like they gain power, victims fear that they lose power. I do not claim that's beneficial, per se... but I think the power dynamic is still there.

I'm trying to think of a clever way of saying that "I would rather be the chief, than the warrior." ...and that reminded me of cultural archetypes... and that "I'd rather be the shaman"

I do not like the idea that others have to suffer, in order for me to gain. I doubt we are all the way to a zero-sum game, in this universe.

...and yet greed and jealousy and envy and pride and the other deadly sins are all quite alive and well in the world; and they're causing all sorts of destruction, as they materialize...