Indignation

Nearly everyone craves some sort of power. The most accepted definition of power is all about having influence over those who have it in fewer proportions. It's the ability to get a person to change Their behavior against Their will. While this certainly can't be disputed, I think there are two distinguishable trends in might. There is the one already mentioned – the symptom of an unforgiving tradition, which I call petty power. I borrow this expression from the book called "The Fire from Within", written by Carlos Castañeda. In His enchantingly displaced vision of the universe, Carlos writes about the importance of being impeccable. There are strategies and phenomena in life which can aid people in attaining impeccability if They know how to take advantage of them. One of these potentially assisting elements are the petty tyrants. In my short reinterpretation, these are all the people who long to dominate others. They are petty because They are nothing compared to the ultimate tyrant – existence. There is no evading the underlying properties that be, only finding a way amidst them. What good is power over others, if we can't control our very selves? So, these people who ape the sublime essence can be used as means to understand how to let go of self-importance.

This brings us to the second type of power, which is rarely taken seriously these days. That is the mastery of the self. This requires the riddance of self-importance. Don't confuse this idea with having no respect towards one's own existence. What it means is having the ability to see beyond one's own self-serving bias. I call this type of power true power. Essentially, beings holding true power cannot be deterred by any outside force. Yes, They can be destroyed, theoretically. Yet, since They have no pride in individual existence anymore, but rather the devotion to a set of ideas, the feeling of being victimized is replaced by the sheer satisfaction of living in accordance to Their dreams. Any energy otherwise spent on dealing with suffering imposed by other beings can now be targeted on achieving an intent. Schemes conspired against such a calculated intent can be inspected and dealt with in a sober manner. While wondering about this, the concept of soft power comes to mind, which was developed a decade ago by political scientist Joseph Nye. The two are different, though. Soft power still aims to persuade others to join our cause (and thus willingly do what we would want them to, without forcing Them), while true power doesn't bother with the adoption of anyone's will. The latter exists only for the sake of its own inquiry.

Perpetuum Mutato

Change. A constant in our lives. We are mostly aware of the unavoidability of it, but to which level of awareness are we willing to adopt its notion? Or, to rephrase that: to what extent are we willing to endure temporal unease to achieve long-termed improvement? For years now, I keep seeking out what I dislike about myself and do my best to overcome it. It is not an easy task. Not because change is hard (it's inevitable), but because it just might be one of the bigger challenges to understand how it goes around. There are a few ideas I managed to gather that might shed at least a bit of light on how to bravely let ourselves immerse into the flow of everlasting transition.

There is this psychotherapeutic theory of which I'm particularly fond of. It is called Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy. It has many aspects which might or might not be beneficial to a therapy, but what I'd like to focus on here are some of the particularly defined ideas within it: irrationality and hedonism.

According to REBT, irrationality can be divided into three "absolute demands" through which we burden our own lives. These are the demands toward ourselves (I must satisfy people), others (people must satisfy me) and circumstances (things must go as I imagined). As You can see, "must" is the central term of irrationality. We cannot demand anything from an unpredictable life. Expecting anyone or anything to function according to an indispensable plan is ludicrous at best. It should be an imperative to understand how a moderate aspiration (which is non-absolute and accordant to wishes instead of demands) can improve our existence.

Too Late Is Never: An Introduction

Not so long ago a dear friend convinced me about making little time capsules to flow around the World, which He labeled "immortality projects". The main reason for these, He argued, is leaving a personal point of view towards the World, frozen in time. A few frames of a personality left afloat between other minds who could access them for the better or worse.

The form of an immortality project doesn't really matter – as long it has a relatively lasting imprint in the World outside its creator. If it is to be shared with other people, the better. Upon reviewing these time capsules of thought and creativity later in life, we might feel accomplished, embarrassed, challenged even. And that's the whole point.

So this little stream of ideas got me encouraged enough to finally start this blog which I have been contemplating for a long time. They say I can prove to be quite a complicated person at times. Not that bad opinions have a too consequential impact on me directly, but I do tend to listen to critique. I can't really say that I'm not complicated. More often than not, I fail to understand the complexity of my thoughts. I don't say this with the intention of flaunting… It just happens to be how I feel, and how probably most of us feel if we are willing to admit it.

We, human beings, tend to label ourselves and other things for easier comparison. This is to make sense of the phenomena we encounter. To have some comfort. I don't really like labeling myself nor others because no concept is specific enough to be fairly applied onto any personality. Alas, it seems to be unavoidable. So let's just say I'm a skeptic. I believe in the potential of everything anyone can imagine and more, all while knowing that we all die stupid.* What I mean is that there are more than seven billion of us around this planet – each with Their own little subjective ways of dealing with reality. It is hardly possible that anyone of us knows what exactly is going on.