Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Laconizein - 59



What of the deranged child who finding himself in a world of paraplegics, chooses to have sport, with them, pushing them down steep inclines, and secretly greasing their wheels with feces?

I would have chastised, such a child, back when I was a child myself, but having been brought up in this crippled world, that wanted me bedridden and comatose, I have come to know the real humility and charity of the sickly.
They would sooner break your knees that allow you to run around their rotating spokes.

Semantics - 2



It would be proper to explore what language is, given that it is the only means we have for sharing the content of our heads.

My position is that language is a code. A man-made code, evolved from less sophisticated vocalizations or chemical exchanges of information.
It is said that language is a more refined form of grooming; grooming being a social method, commonly used by primates, to establish and maintain social hierarchies and social relationships. Through grooming, later becoming linguistic exchanges and gossip, the individual reaffirms his/her own position within the group and keeps up-to-date on the altering social dynamics, enabling him/her to adjust accordingly.
We'll accept this as the superior perspective.

But language also inserts a different dynamic into social interactions. Gossip is this repetition of internal history; an ongoing narrative of the groups internal (inter)actions.
But humans are able to live beyond the boundaries of their time and place, making them intelligent, in relation to other organisms.
Genius being this ability to include in your analysis factors which exceed your lifespan – attained through knowledge: second-hand experiences – that can then be projected beyond the period of your aging and your death; genius being a mind existing beyond the limitations of his time and space, or the social frameworks and dynamics of the group he, just so happens, to belong to.

History becomes a communal narrative, lending itself to the pretense of genius.
A mediocre mind having access to the official narrative can appear to be intelligent beyond his capacity to be so, on his own, because he can read and memorize and recite the insights of others and the historical narratives of others. No real challenge there, except for the demands of maintaining access to the data and being able to recite it, if need be, at will, and in the “proper” manner.
The access it preserved through productivity and being useful to the whole. The shared knowledge is dispensed evenly to those who offer the proper deference and pay the price of admission; memorization requires no more than an average intellect and the desire and time to accomplish the feat.
This is what specialization requires. The expert being nothing more than a mind dedicated to retaining access to the communal pool of knowledge – the official and up-to-date narrative – and to memorizing precedent; precedent being another term for history in relation to a particular field of inquiry.

Language and learning language and sharing a common method of verbiage, a shared code of grooming, is this acquires access to the common narrative; a communal genius, equalizing, because it is shared between those who agree on the social contract, as a prerequisite to sharing, all minds who can offer the minimum of time and mental qualities required to access the information.
The internet has made the process even more efficient.
No matter how much of a simpleton you are, if you have an internet provider and a search engine, you can read and repeat the insights of millions of individuals over vast expanses of time and space.
Then the matter comes down to this unwritten shared, grooming practice. The data is judged by how it impacts this sharing and the already established hierarchies.

What is exchanged as information concerning our position within the group's dynamics, must preserve the group's existence, and remain loyal to the basic requirement of access and inclusion.
Language takes on a specialized form of acknowledging each other's shared commitments to the group's well-being.
Not only what words are used but how they are used and what emotional impact they carry, is already predetermined, and taken for granted, through the authorities we reference and how they are respected.
Those who challenge group dynamics or disrupt them or threaten to tear them a part, are excluded, in unison, from consideration. They are pariahs who are judged using a harsher more stringent standard, which is never applied to anybody else, if they remain loyal and dedicated to the shared rules.

Simply using terms like Nazi, Hitler, racist, fascist, Commie, sexist amongst certain circles (each circle having tis own list of emotionally laden words) and/or questioning the official dogma, is enough to box you into a category which is not to be taken seriously, or a category which should be expelled from the communal grooming, as soon as possible, because (s)he has not shown the proper deference to the shared ideals, has not learned the proper usage and application of terms, and what concepts are considered “out of bounds,” by the group’s unwritten rule.

Another method of unrevealed, dismissive, pseudo-intellectualism is the specialized forms certain disciplines construct to separate themselves from the others, as the ones who have learned the proper terms, and their proper usage, so as to justify the time and effort and money expended towards memorizing and learning the precedent: the official narrative of the particular discipline.
Often times the concepts are quite simple but they are delivered with such rigid, specialized terminology, that one begins to feel like something more profound is being talked about.
This is most evident in Religion and in Economics, where a shared text, with shared words (the slang of the trade), is part of the mystique, being promoted as part of the specialists own status.

In the area of philosophy the same holds true, to such a degree that the mere usage of the term "philosophy" has become pompous and arrogant, connected to academics and the endless recitation of historical precedent, and discussions through authority figures.
You cannot discuss a shared reality, without having to use the proper references (implying proper credentials) using the appropriate terminology, similar to repeating a Biblical prayer, by precisely repeating text.
Most of the time what is being said is quite simple and easily understood, by even the average mind, but it is immersed in particular terminologies, referring to how particular thinkers used the particular word, that it sounds as if it is far more complex than it really is.
Those who are obsessed with remaining true to their studies of precedent and the official narratives, are the ones who insist on using pretentious methods, play-acting to be far more wise than they really are. In groups this shared verbiage is defended with vigor, because a shared lie is a common truth.
A simpleton academic with no ability to think on his own, will prefer to engage the world around him via these surrogate authority figures, loyalty adhering to the terminology, repeating the concepts as close to how he learned it, as possible.
In groups there is no way they will allow any outsiders from disturbing their grooming, if he does not prove to be one of them by the precise usage of the words, in accordance to how it has been taught through the appropriate institutions, using the exact same words, referring to the same narrative, the same shared authorities and precedent.
What is being exchanged may be ridiculous, but that it is shared and part of the specialized dynamics of the particular sub-grouping, is what ensures that no interference will be permitted.
This is how the mind is contained through the limitation of words, or the connection with emotions or particular conceptions, allowing for no divergence that may challenge the official story, disturb the established internal hierarchies and expose the lies beneath the semantics.

Semantics - 1



I’ve become increasingly aware of the extent to which language has been hijacked and institutionalized.
If language is a mode of self-expression and a symbol of mental abstractions (thinking) then this is a reflection of how modern thinking and self-expression has been imprisoned, rather than released, by Modern education.  
You can't use the term Modern, in the sense that you are referring to the current, cultural, state of affairs, without having to go through the guy who, supposedly, coined it, or how it is being taught in academia.
No thought permitted, no creativity allowed, outside the already established coinage, the currency, the current.

I recall once using the Greek term autopoesis, in the original, definition, as "self-creating", and being assaulted by the established usage of the term as Mutarana and Varela chose to utilize it and what conclusions they came to with it.

I am surprised ego has not become trapped in Freudian conceptions and Will is still a word relatively free of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer.
If language is a medium of self-expression then self can only be expressed, in these days, through an other; a more famous, infamous, popularly acknowledged other.

I wonder if I can use the phrase "desert of the real," and the imagery it evokes, as a description of cultural decay, without remaining true to Zizek's analysis, and his Marxist leanings.

This is how the mind becomes trapped in institutionalization, and even philosophy, the practice of exploring the real world, becomes this stale, pompous, display of prideful entrapment in prescriptions and rigid texts.
Education, being what it is, eventually associates certain words with certain concepts, inexorably, attaching them forever in the minds of those who cannot use words in a creative way; these minds become trapped in the academically determined connections and thinking becomes imprisoned in linguistics.  

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Laconizein - 58

Nietzsche has become a modern day bogey-man.
Most infantile minds can only associate certain ideas with him, because he popularized them, particularly amongst generations brought up on the milk-and-cookies world where 'everything will be alright', 'love always finds a way', and 'goodness always prevails' was part of the curriculum of never questioning authority...or your parents.

The polemic against realism, as I call it, reminds me of the methods Christians use...because they too belong to that same camp, albeit on the same side they occupy the opposite pole.
With them anything honest concerning their crutches, must be shamed and degraded using the imagery and symbolisms they build their good/bad world views with.
Who would reject a loving, God, after all, but a demon, or a daemon?

Nietzsche, being an eloquent, conduit, back towards the Greeks, and the pre-Socratic philosophers, is the favorite personification of the "monster" of human cruelty, amongst the crowds of stunted intellects who having been retained in a state of youthful "innocence", have never developed the stomach for anything too spicy or harsh.
What they can digest must be delivered to them with a silver spoon and pureed so they do not suffer from indigestion afterward.

Nietzsche language does not help.
It is not only too poetic, going over the heads of those who have been made thick with comfort, to the point where they must be told things bluntly or in an exaggerated way, so as to make it obvious, but he also alludes to hierarchies and the inherent unfairness of nature, and her feminine ways.

--------------------------

The concept of the overman is so misunderstood that it has become further evidence that what is being talked about, when one uses the term, is some animal dominance over otherness.
The idea of an ubermench is no more than a term referring to an overcoming of man's own insecurities towards time. Since time is what man measures himself with, then the concept points us towards an overcoming of man's resentment towards his own nature.
It is true, that such a powerful step will have a powerful impact on the individual and how others perceive him, making him terrifying and seductive, at the same time, but the intent, here, is not that of seducing or terrifying, for then we fall back to the master/slave dynamic of codependency.
Strength, superiority, power, to use his own term, affects otherness without intending to.

Such a evolutionary step would appear to the average man as a monstrosity, a godly entity, and in a world where existential anxiety and hatred of self, is part of the social stigma, urging all to strive to be, more and more, sacrificing what is most precious in the meantime, such a man, an over-man, would not have much in common with those that appear to be of his own kind.
But, as all change happens incrementally, such a "future man" is yet to appear...but we do have the presence of individuals who share nothing with others of their own species, except a sexual potential and a superficial similarity, because change occurs first in a subtle way, before it results in an observable and undeniable alteration.

Laconizein - 57

To this day, still, the idea that one must gain from something, immediately and directly, in order to consider it a more probable truth, infects the mind of the simpleton.
Having no other standard but himself, such a creature, projects its own proclivities, so as to make the bizarre comprehensible to it.
It accepts no possibility unless it comes clothed in happy tides and in words of comforting hope.
It cannot tolerate any hypothesis unless it is correctable and leads to an obvious flattery and comforting.
Even when it tells itself it is being selfless, it buries its interests in redirection and hypocrisy.

This is why it always looks for the easy gain behind all opinions.
And it has plenty of corroborative evidence to support its inclinations because it is surrounded by a majority who are and who think, just like that.
The idea that someone would consider a hypothesis superior though it insults, and hurts the one holding it, is so alien that it cannot wrap its mind around the possibility.

Humility, shame, guilt, is how it excuses and enforces its self-censoring perceptions, wanting the other to remain silent if he has nothing to offer which supports the common good, as this is defined by those who have taught him exactly what he wanted to hear, and what he need to hear, if he would remain stable and involved and healthy....in other words, productive.
The 'social contract' is this, mostly, unwritten, rule of mutually supportive mythologies, reflecting the shared commitment to each others welfare ; an sideways method of being selfish without breaking the rule which makes it an unwanted human trait.

This explains how the slightest hint at a hierarchy, or a natural drive to dominate, or inequality being the undercurrent making evolution possible, is accused of the vilest things imaginable.
Hatred becomes the first label used to dismiss and to embarrass, and to threaten...for love is the binding glue, though it be faked most often than not...and if one agrees with a proposition that goes against the popular, mythologies concerning the sacredness of life, the value of children, the equality of man, then the usual epithets suddenly emerge, like daggers beneath robes, to silence the perpetrator of the worse crime of all:
Honesty.

Laconizein - 56

No teleology required.
The very concept of an absolute is rejected.
Monism is but a human construct presupposing what it cannot think outside of.

Parmenides made words his foundations, turning sensual perceptions into a farce.
Heraclitus places perception above the words used to describe them.

Teleology goes against the principle of Flux.
Absolutes, the end, the telos, are but abstractions projected as destination that will never b reached.
As such Nihilism can take the form of a positive and a negative: the former defined by the terms God, One, (some)Thing etc.; the latter defined by the terms Void, Nil, Empty, (no)Thing etc.

The contradiction to both is activity, exemplified by Heralcitean linguistic contradictions.

In a sociological context nihilism has taken the form of Modernity, reflecting the positive form of Nihilism.
It describes the world as a thing, secularizing the religious branch of the same philosophical dogma that had proposed a God.

Modernity denies nature, proposing the idea that reality is a product of human will, unrestricted by anything that precedes it.
Modernity offers the ideal of progress, a towards higher and higher levels of existence, once more secularizing Paradise with the term Utopia.

Modernity denies sensuality, contradicting its own obsession with materialism and hedonism, proposing the concept of a hidden world, a more real reality: a changeless one. It replaces the striving towards the Divine with the striving to rediscover the hidden immutable Thing; the knowable Object/Objective.
It replaces the notion of a primal perfection, a beginning, with the notion of a perfect end, a coming completion.
This si why it denounces all categories that inhibit its progress, its drive, towards this absolute; it destroys natural types, categories, the very idea of a determining, restricting, past.
The past, for it is automatically inferior, in the upwards ascent towards the Idea(l). This is how nurture, the immediate, exceeds the sum of all past nurturing (nature), tuning man into a self-determining, free-agency, that reinvents himself with every birth...with every sunrise, the potential for reinvention is renewed.
A Modern man owes nothing to his ancestors except a recognition of their inferiority, for he has, in his mind, surpassed them. He is selfish, in the most contained way; his perceptual-event-horizon never going beyond his own perceptions...which he then rejects as superficial and illusory.
His mind is free to speculate, to imagine, to detach itself from the given, so as to construct his ideal world.
Christianity exemplifies the foundational commonality between a past, denied, and the immediate, totally surrendered to.
Logos supersedes perception, and so what is said is real, and what is sensed is senseless, a fake, superficial, an artifice.

A Modern is free, because he says so....because he can think and symbolize the term in his mind.
He lives in a world he invents, and what he invents is uniformity: the comforting, world of unifying oneness.
Everything loses its vulgar natural source. Love becomes mysterious, as is the female who comes to represent it; equality becomes his hidden commonality; cooperation becomes a Holy metaphor, accompanied by the prerequisite sacrifice of selflessness; identity becomes a letter, with an excluded middle and with a logic stemming form its own presuppositions; math becomes his priestly chant, with its binary monism, implying a singularity it can never point to.

Laconizein - 55

The absolute is used to defend the absolute.
God has Satan, good has its evil, one must have its nil, and the sheeple must confuse social behavior for the herd instinct.

Nuances are not easily understood by those whose mind can only grasp the extreme, the supernatural, the absolute.
Therefore, when speaking of love with them, it is an either/or proposition. It must be a total abandonment to the instincts, turning any exploration as to what this automated response is, into an undesirable dirtying of an otherwise pure virtue.
Its power, its value, rests in the complete abandonment to the feeling.

Hatred, takes on the role of the poison in the purified ointment.
If you do not accept love as your Lord and savior, then you must be driven by a devilish hatred.

Then, at times, they bring up complexity, to hide their own simplistic thinking.

Laconizein - 54

The absolute is used to defend the absolute.
God has Satan, good has its evil, one must have its nil, and the sheeple must confuse social behavior for the herd instinct.

Nuances are not easily understood by those whose mind can only grasp the extreme, the supernatural, the absolute.
Therefore, when speaking of love with them, it is an either/or proposition. It must be a total abandonment to the instincts, turning any exploration as to what this automated response is, into an undesirable dirtying of an otherwise pure virtue.
Its power, its value, rests in the complete abandonment to the feeling.

Hatred, takes on the role of the poison in the purified ointment.
If you do not accept love as your Lord and savior, then you must be driven by a devilish hatred.

Then, at times, they bring up complexity, to hide their own simplistic thinking.

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Laconizein - 53




We might divide man, in the usual dualism that comes so naturally to him, into two psychological groups, in regards to freedom:
The first, being those who think that they are already free, and only need to be awakened to the fact; a motion, demanding nothing more than a slapping of one’s own face, and a thrashing about in numbness.
The second, being those who think they are not free, nor that they can ever be totally so, and must pursue freedom, as a predator chases its prey.

Who shall decide which one is more noble and closer to the real?

One sleeps, slapping himself silly, not feeling a thing; the other races into the woods, saliva dripping from his teeth, almost tasting the flesh.

Let me be a runner, because this world is too beautiful to be nothing more than a dream, and the flesh….the flesh promises so much more.   

Sunday, April 7, 2013

Mind Control

 How censorship and control have become sophisticated.
The illusion of freedom, consisting in product choices and product placement. 


Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Modes of Thiking: Bottom<>Up

There are, in my view, two general methods of engaging reality:
1 - Bottom-Up 2- Top-Down...and the combinations thereof.

The 1st I consider more natural, more primal...because an organism begins to be conscious of the immediate, and has no concept of anything above, beyond, it...nor does it care.
We may consider this organic thinking.
It begins with the sensually perceived, and attempts to extrapolate, the unknown, from the known....the not perceived from the perceived; it involves a projection, using imagination, and it evolves to find an advantage by finding patterns in the sensually perceived to predict the yet to come; offering the organism the advantage of efficiency and preparedness.
The quality of the projection, the imagined, is naturally selected...gradually resulting in heightened awareness.

The 2nd, I consider idealistic, and tends towards the extremes of naive Romanticism and Nihilism. It begins with a conclusion and works backwards trying to integrate the perceived into the already established goal; the already “known”, yet never experienced.
In this case, the immediately perceived is overcome, bypassed, and rejected, because of the problem it poses, and the adaptation it demands. The mind is seduced by a hypothetical, which, most often, has little reference to the sensually perceived. This intellectual leap (a leap of faith) offers a solution to the immediate, by totally ignoring it, or by totally contradicting it. The power of imagination is used to annihilate the perceived.
This kind of thinking can only sustain itself, for long periods of time, within sheltering environments, where natural selection is overturned, or curbed in effectiveness, due to some willful intervention by some powerful protective entity.
This detached, detaching, projection, begins in primitive minds, as a way of explaining what is terrifying and mysterious; it offers an easy explanation to an immediate stress, by distancing self from its possibilities.
At first it has a minimal effect, as praying to the thunder gods, to protect one's self from the overwhelming, and dangerous, phenomenon of lightning, has only a small influence on an organism's behavior, when faced with this danger. The organisms will (re)act in the genetic ways, natural selection has programmed into it: fight/flight.
It is no more than an additional measure, along with the normal fight/flight (re)actions, offering the mind a comfort which increases the effectiveness of its instinctive (re)actions.
The supposition that thunder and lightning are caused by some hypothetical Will, is a supposition that begins with a conclusion and then finds justifications, in the environment, to support it.
At this stage the Top<>Down thinking still remains attached to sensual input, and it uses the non-experienced as a way of explaining the experienced. Its focus is on preparation.  

Then it gradually becomes a hypothesis that finds comfort in the interjection of a mediating familiar: a vision, a shaman, a leader, a priest...a mystical figure, which bridges the distance between the not-experienced and the experienced.
Now, control factors in, as the intermediate Will offers its services at a cost; the authority makes demands upon the individual.
The unknown turns to the known, ambiguously, through the holy-figure; (s)he/it is the one that connects the projected known to the sensually known.
The imagined, but not experienced takes on a familiar form, turning it into something which can be experienced and dealt with on a level the mind is comfortable with.
By doing so, this intermediating figure, most often a masculine energy, becomes necessary, and those who are willing to pay the price for being comforted, must surrender to his authority; he is the expert, the authority, who, for a price, makes the projected hypothetical more pragmatic; he is the one who takes the presumed conclusion and justifies it to the ones who cannot, in a way which offers them peace and guidance.

As human knowledge increases, turning the once mysterious into phenomena we become accustomed to, the unknown increases proportionally.
Knowledge creates complexities of (inter)active parameters. The more we know, the more complicated our world-view becomes, increasing our anxieties....because now the possible, inflates in relation to the known.
The shaman, the priest, is still needed. He continues to provide the comfort that the unknown is known, or that it can be known...at least, in a greater part, by him...and he offers his insights, as reassuring gifts, to those that depend on him, for a price.

Increased anxiety demands an increase in the measure of detachment from the known, required to maintain the simple mind comfortable in its environment; an environment still mysterious to it.  
The more indifferent the world is exposed as being, all the more the presumed, projected, conclusion, must reject and contradict it.
Nihilism emerges as a necessary psychological (re)action to increasing awareness.
The more complex the world becomes, all the more it must be simplified.
Because the immediate, the sensually perceived, cannot be denied, without surrendering to insanity or solipsism, the solution must be placed in the conclusion…in the hypothetical beyond and/or immanent.

The conclusion, the goal, becomes the "beyond", the "future" (Paradise/Hell - Utopia/Dystopia).
Hell and Dystopia become fantastic representations of the alternative, if the more desirable goal is rejected; a desirable goal no less fantastic (Paradise,  placed in the beyond; Utopia, placed in the immanent).
The more undesirable the perceived is, for the mind, the more intolerable it is to the mind, all the more fantastic this projected final, conclusive, desirable, goal must be – sheltering from the immediate decreases the level of tolerance for the real, making the fantastic increasingly popular and viable.
The Modern Day shaman, the professional expert, the priest, is now the one offering justifications for the fantastic.
The presumed particle is sought ("God particle"), though no such thing has ever been found: the presumed beginning is sought (Creation, Singularity), though no such thing has ever been experienced; natural divisions, of sex and genes, are rejected, though no such rejection is applied to any other species except for man; “rights” are defended, rationally, though no such right has ever been found anywhere outside human artifices, exposing the underlying emotion corrupting reason; all types of mutations are explained, in the most forgiving way, and defended, if they do not disrupt the shared agreement, though no such practice has ever been observed anywhere in nature, except in manmade environments.

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Bottom<>Up thinking begins with the sensually perceived and works upwards, towards the Divine. It Wills itself upwards, when the world tumbles in the opposite direction.
It begins with experience – the sum of one's known past – and then adds to it the ongoing perception of the world, to formulate abstractions which have references to the sensually perceived world.
These abstractions can then be projected forth, using the imagination, as hypothetical, theoretical, overcomnigs of the immediate.
Nothing is presumed which does not offer reference points to the sensually perceived immediate, and so no nurturing is accepted which does not have a basis on previous nurturing, or the sum of all past nurturing, we call nature.
This kind of thinking is more pragmatic and natural. Its need is to become as lucid as possible, since awareness evolves to offer the organism a survival advantage.

Top<>Down thinking, begins with the presumed known, yet not experienced, and then works to integrate the experienced into the not-experienced.
It begins by taking something for granted and considering it “self-evident”.  
Because this is easier and more comforting, the many are seduced by it.
This, in turn, necessitates a fantastic presupposition, one which directly contradicts the sensually perceived, so as to offer comfort and guidance and hope to as many minds as possible; minds, now sheltered from the immediate to such an extent and for such a lengthy period of time, as to make the experienced, the past, intolerable.
The more dependent the many become, upon this annulling projection of a presumed known, supported by "experts" who feed into this, all the more vehemently they defend its "reasoning", and its "logic".
These shamans, experts, build careers upon this role…or face ridicule and severe social consequences.
This kind of thinking is idealistic and nihilistic. Its need is to preserve the final, the already decided, which is always heartening and accessible to all those willing to pay the price to the right authorities.
The inclusion of all is part of the power of its peer pressurizing suggestibility.
 It seeks a distinction from the past, as it is this past which troubles it and restricts its imagination.
An unfettered imagination is called fantasy and/or delusion.
These minds call it “freedom”, for now they can identify with anything their minds come up with, if this does not contradict with the shared agreement. They rejoice in the easiness of finding an escape from a past that they consider harsh and restricting.

But, there is a third type.
This type walks a tightrope between the previously mentioned two, and it can be called Modern.
It refuses the determinations of the past, but it also rejects the projections of a coming perfect future.
This type is what we call, these days, the "individual".
Its definition of individuality is contained by the presumed points in space/time which it calls its beginning and its end – its birth and death. In the intervening space/time it is totally dependent on the modern experts, the current experts; it remains constantly up-to-date, in tis affiliations.  
It feels no connection, and no gratitude, for, and towards, the past, because it is essentially unhappy with the outcome; but it can neither accept the fantasy of a coming future which will save it from existence.
It wishes to live in the "now”...the undefinable present...the contemporary.
Detached from both past and future, it feels no allegiance to anything: not to its ancestors nor to its decedents.
Such a mind is enclosed within the boundaries of a stunted ego.
An ego so pressured into temporal boxes that it needs to inflate itself to such proportions, as to compensate for this loss.
It values hedonism, materialism, spontaneity, living in the moment and for the moment; it surrenders, in other words, to its basic animal nature, wanting to find nothing more valuable than its ephemeral existence.
It is most vital in its early stages of untapped youth...and this is why it values adolescence, and childhood, so much. As it grows older it tries to hold onto this puberty, because its creeping mortality makes it feel increasingly empty of all meaning.
It may, for this reason, give itself over to self-numbing, as it approaches its own death; when the pleasures subside and the materials it may have amassed, fail to offer it comforting, it turns to religion, or some other form of nihilistic spirituality, popular in the age it is imprisoned within.
Nihilism has attained its apex.
Not only is the past rejected, creating the illusion of self-creation, and the choice of identification, but the future has also been rejected, as being a childish projection of fantastic possibilities, because such a mind can now only be soothed by such extravagances.
What remains is a jaded, cynical, husk of animalism; totally dependent on professionals, and completely identifying with the things it owns and the job it does – with its own profession.
Even its family, if it dares to contradict itself by having one, will be no more than an accessory to its castrated, meaningless, life.
Distraction from this contained world, it has placed itself in, or has allowed others to place it in, will be its highest priority.

All hail the rise of the Modern Man.