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One Final Wank

You're always talking. About nothing. About yourself. Previous posts about pride and memetics aside, consider this: talking about yourself provides others with information (or meta-information), and information can and will be used against you. If you believe the legend that the word "I" is said with the most frequency in conversations, then your prideful-ass "self" could be putting itself in danger. This doesn't just hold for conversation, but for any sort of signal. The clothing you wear, the food you eat, the work you do, the places you go, and the people you're seen with.

It is best if I only know what you want me to know. Try to play stereotypes to your advantage by adopting a timeless style: talk and appear in such a way that minimal inside information is transmitted without your consent. You'll be tempted to say more than is necessary, but such words are merely self-indulgent.

Being raised in a post-modern world, you're familiar with the temptation to make known every dark secret, make very obscene gesture, and utilize social savvy to perform convoluted pseudo-scientific behavioral experiments for your own entertainment. It is perhaps this post-modern element in today's society--the lack of shame, the false loss of pride, the pride in having faults and making them known to the world--that almost invariably causes you to like someone less the more you know about them.

Most of this information processing, these signals, serve a single function: they get you high. You will advertise your political views; tote the accomplishments of your significant other, child, or special interest group (as if they were your own); and blather about the lines at Disneyland; often justifying it as meaingful debate, human bonding, or intellectual discourse. Truth is--nobody cares. At most, you get high together, but it's mere wankerism. You're like the romantic who never gets laid because he's always hoping for something and never doing anything to get it. You want everything to just fall into your lap. You see why it's such a popular ideal.

You have intellect, yes. It's what gives you the power of simulation, of experiencing things in your mind--your morally significant (if illusory) free will. Use intellect to govern yourself and society. Be pragmatic. Don't be a wanker like [some tosser whose blog has since been removed, and about time, too].

That said, I'm done wanking it here. By definition, there are just some things that can't be done. You can't teach the value of education. You can't judge the law-giver. You can't preach silence.

Act. Let the rest of the world figure it out for itself.

posted by Phlegm at 8/13/2004  (0) comments