Assorted Notes

WEDNESDAY, 21 JULY 2004

Appearance is the problem

Insights and frustrations of the past week or so, helped by the fact that I am currently reviewing material I wrote about four years ago, have formed a pattern of discontent with how I appear to the world at the moment – the same problem as four years ago, but largely absent when I arrived in Taiwan and did not need to make meaningful social appearances.[1] This appearance problem is directly related to needs (especially for intimate contact) that are not currently being satisfied.

Previously – like four years ago – I wouldn’t have properly understood it. I would only have known “I’m not happy” or “I’m frustrated,” and I would have wished for more money to buy better clothes and perhaps better transportation and I would have made lists of items that would have hinted at a more ideal self.

Now I know the problem is not necessarily who and what I am, or the specific environment, but how I appear to the world – although my appearance cannot be isolated from other things. I am thus relatively happy with myself, on my own, in my own private quarters in Benevolent Light, but what bothers me is how I appear. APPEARANCE is the problem.

It is an indication of the development of insight, of progress in my own understanding of things during the last four years that I can now identify and express the problem more clearly.

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[1] For the reader who did not read the depressing prose of the second half of 2000, or who overlooked or ignored it, briefly: I had to suddenly make social appearances again in 2000, which in 1999 were largely unnecessary because there were virtually no other South Africans in the city.

Just when you thought you knew yourself

Ask someone, “Who are you?” Intensify the pressure slightly by adding, “I suspect you don’t really know who you are.”

The reaction of many an individual to such an impolite question would illustrate the challenge that confronts all of us: Can you articulate who you think you are? Can you express it?

WEDNESDAY, 28 JULY 2004

The warped world

Thought at Crooked Town train station: I don’t have a problem with the so-called beautiful world; I have a problem with the price at which people buy membership in this world.

In a consumer society many people sacrifice on a daily basis their creativity and their hours – they deny their true nature, as it were – to enable themselves to accumulate sufficient credit to purchase membership in the so-called beautiful world.

That was my position a few years ago; it is still my position now.

Beauty without substance is, in the final count, just a pretty shell.

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MONDAY, 19 JULY 2004

Degree of escape

It is not a matter of escaping or not escaping – it is a matter of degree. I may currently not think of myself as an escapist, but when I look at the things with which I fill my days … the routine, the three-cereal breakfast, snacks and drinks, cigarettes, computer, movies, coffee dates. I don’t know a single person who can say there’s nothing they can do, today, to save someone’s life somewhere in the world or to drastically improve someone’s life. We all run away from things. We all hide in our own little worlds. And I’m not arguing against it (not now, anyways) – I’m just saying.

Why do thinkers think?

All thinkers – philosophers, writers, poets or anyone else who puts his or her thoughts on paper – who have come up with ideas that either follow on the ideas of other thinkers, or ideas that are relatively original, have done so because they were not satisfied with what had been given to them.

TUESDAY, 20 JULY 2004

It is a struggle, and you have to choose your side

I cannot do otherwise than to think, after watching Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, that you have to choose your side. There’s a struggle going on between good and evil, and you have to choose your side. The struggle lies much deeper than the average person believes or suspects, and it’s on the temporal plane – in this world.

Choose your side, and make it clear. As it works with identity – if you don’t define it for yourself, is will be defined for you, so it is with this struggle. If you don’t choose your side, in clear terms, you may just be counted amongst the “Silent Majority” on the wrong side.

* * *

[George W.] Bush and his cohorts have the mentality and approach to political power of medieval aristocrats. The ordinary man and woman on the street – or in front of the TV, or in the office, or in a factory, or on the battlefield – are as expendable as the peasants of old.

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FRIDAY, 16 JULY 2004

Question for reflection: We are what we are (particular “I”) so that we can fulfil our needs. If our needs are not being met, can it be said that who and what we are is wrong?

Why is “I” particular to environment? If the Homo sapiens is in harmony with his surroundings, if he more or less looks and sounds like most other Homo sapiens in the area, and if he manages to function within the limits of acceptable behaviour, he will have a fair chance of satisfying his needs.

What does it mean that Homo sapiens “Brand Smit” migrated from Habitat South Africa to Habitat Taiwan? It means that he was not able to sufficiently meet his needs in the former habitat; even though he had been surviving on a daily basis until his migration, he had seen the flashing red light of impending doom of his personal existence (I refer in no way here to the politics of South Africa and survival of particular ethnic groups – I am referring only to myself as an individual).

What does it mean that Homo sapiens “Brand Smit” wants to stay on in Habitat Taiwan? It means he considers this particular habitat as more favourable for long-term needs satisfaction.

“But,” one would say, “some of his most important needs are not currently being met, and if happiness is primarily a sensory issue, he is mostly not happy.”

What can one do?

“Brand Smit” has become a person who can survive in the particular habitat where he currently resides. Furthermore, he has forged an identity that he believes will make it possible for him to also satisfy his needs in other environments. But unrest is brewing … his identity only seems to be a working model!

Is my Homo sapiens model good enough to satisfy my needs in this particular place and at this time? If not, what does one do? And what does it mean?

SATURDAY, 17 JULY 2004

Yesterday’s point was if a modern Homo sapiens’ needs are not being met, then his identity – the way in which he relates to the world around him, which as its primary function should enable the person to satisfy his needs – is insufficient or even wrong.

[Of course, another possibility is that there’s simply not enough food and water for everyone in the area to quench their thirst and consume sufficient calories.]

* * *

The primary purpose of identity is to enable the Homo sapiens to satisfy their needs in the particular time and place where they were born, or where they find themselves at a later stage of their life.

A question can then be asked: Is my identity working, or is it not? Is who and what I am (given, or self-defined after critical process) a workable Homo sapiens model that enables me to satisfy my needs? If not, what is the problem? Is who and what I am the problem – that is, do I suffer from some malaise or disorder that hinders my need satisfaction? Or is who and what I am in this specific environment the problem? In the latter case, I have two options: I would either have to modify my identity to better fit the norms and values of the environment in which I find myself in order to improve my chances of survival, or I would have to migrate to another environment where who and what I am would at least not undermine my chances of survival to any significant degree.

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WEDNESDAY, 14 JULY 2004

I am going to annoy myself if I continue saying it, but I don’t think I am fully aware of the full meaning and implication of the given self/chosen self idea.

Fact is that people sometimes burn up decades trying to sort out what they are supposed to do. They spend years looking for “true” answers, their “real” selves, their “right” place in the world, where they supposedly “really” belong … without realising they basically have two choices: accept to a large extent your given self and function as such, within the particular framework of given place and time, or choose who and what you want to be, and where.

As I have previously also mentioned, the latter choices will always be constrained by the given self, by fate data and by needs of the community, and particularly to given time. Still, OPTIONS DO EXIST.

Some people may always remain a victim of given time and place, but ask yourself an important question: Am I a defeated victim of given time and place, or is there room for me to make choices?

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