by Jamesscotthenson | Jul 27, 2017 | Blog
The book (soon-to-be movie) Ready Player One describes a
world where things have gotten so bad that almost everyone retreats to this
fully immersive virtual world called The Oasis.
It was a great read. It might also be a scary look at
our future as a species.
If we are talking about ways to avoid dealing with reality
as it is, there are few things more effective than video games. Before I start
to sound like a tyrant though, I’ll admit that I play them. I really enjoy video
games. I have since I was a kid. I still do. I can definitely see how
they took over for other forms of intoxication at times, and have probably
taken up more of my time in the final calculation.
The dangerous thing about video games is how they trick us
into thinking we are accomplishing something.
We level up or get a new weapon or open up a new area, and
those reward centers in our brain tingle with our achievement. We kill a bunch
of ninjas or headshot a bunch of bandits and build a house up on a hill and
accumulate a huge number of guns, but when we turn the system off nothing in
the real world has changed.
The house is still a mess. We still hate our boss at our
minimum wage job. Our partner has still left us. Our grades are still bad. The
lawn is still not mowed. Maybe we are still just a jerk and people don’t like
us. We have played a game all day and accomplished a lot of things, but none of
them are real. For a while, things felt better. The noise in our head was
quiet, but nothing has actually changed.
I guess we better turn the game back on, right?
Or, we could leave it off and actually do something about
the things that are causing us pain.
Everything we have talked about for the past few days is not
good or bad in and of itself, but they all become harmful when they get out of
hand.
Video games are no different. In all honesty, they probably
destroy motivation more than anything else I see, especially in young men. I do
believe they are addictive. Combine them with pot and you and you have a recipe
for never leaving the house.
At least we have our online trophies though.
by Jamesscotthenson | Jul 26, 2017 | Blog
I am going to drop (or at least cut down on using) the word
intoxication because I am tired of it.
We are talking about the things that separate us from
reality. Let’s just leave it at that.
Ideas and ideologies and “truths” are one of the easiest
ways to be separate from reality. They teach us to deal with what is through
the lens of beliefs and theories about it, rather than the thing itself.
This really got ahold of me when I started growing as a
person. I got really caught up in ideas and beliefs and I thought I had the
right ones. It was an odd thing. I stopped really thinking about the world in
any way apart from these ideas and beliefs. They dictated my beliefs about
things before I even encountered them.
I was vocal with these ideas and ideologies. I tried to
share them with others, to convince them I was right. I got personally attached
to them, despite having no hand in their creation or any verification of their
accuracy.
Why this is problematic or intoxicating is difficult to pin
down. It seems annoying at worst, which may be true, but I don’t think so.
Ideas and beliefs matter.
Even if they are “true” they separate us from reality
to some degree because thinking about something is not the same as experiencing
it. You can know everything about weather systems and how they work but it’s
not the same as standing in a storm.
Untrue or half-true beliefs are even worse. They separate us
from reality by a layer of deep distortion. This can lead us to judge others
before we meet them, to assess situations before we know all the facts and make
decisions based on pre-constructed sets of responses instead of the actual
situation at hand.
Ideas and ideologies changed how I saw the world and then
continually validated that change through self-reinforcing interpretations of
events.
Reality had to pass through the lens of these beliefs before
it could reach me. All lenses distort in some way. The only thing I want these
days is to shave my lenses down as thin as possible, but the mind really likes
ideologies and ideas to process things through. Even the idea of being
intoxication-free is an ideology in and of itself, and is, therefore, in some
way, distorting.
It never ends.
Thanks for reading.
by Jamesscotthenson | Jul 23, 2017 | Blog
Motion seems to be one of the most intoxicating things for
us as people.
We like the idea of advancing, of creating, of doing
something. Of being smart and knowing things and having answers.
When I quit using chemical intoxications, I didn’t have a
lot going on. I was pretty much lost in the world. I got into school because
that’s just what you do next, and something clicked. I started doing really
well, making good grades and writing papers that people liked. I got positive
feedback and started to feel like I was going somewhere.
This is as intoxicating as anything else and is not a good
unto itself.
I was still avoiding the noise in my head, still looking for
ways to dull myself to all of it, and I’d found it. I threw myself into
“growing” as a person. I read all the time, I learned all I could about
everything. It was all-consuming for a while.
I am not trying to say this is as damaging as intoxicating
oneself with chemicals. I don’t know anyone who has died from learning or
school or feeling self-satisfied in these things. I am only saying that this
became my new way of avoiding dealing things as they were.
I threw myself into self-development and self-improvement
and self-understanding. All of these begin with one specific word.
I became a little oblivious to a lot of things during this
time and became obsessed with leaving the old me behind. I tried stuffing a
whole lot of baggage into different closets and dressers and in the attic and
air vents. Rather than dealing with it, I was just going to sprint away and
leave it behind.
One of the hidden dangers about this form of intoxication is
that not only will there not be anyone cautioning you, everyone will be telling
you how good you are doing. Especially if you were a train wreck up until that
point. No one will caution you about this path, which is dangerous.
We can get every bit as caught up in growing the self as we
can in drowning it in intoxicants, and we are still doing one basic thing:
avoiding what is.
It’s less harmful, but it’s still not reality.
by Jamesscotthenson | Jul 22, 2017 | Blog
We’ll take a break from the whole intoxication thing for the
Sunday Pop-Up.
I haven’t enjoyed the blogs as much as I usually do this
week. I don’t like talking about old stuff. Most of the blogs seem to be
writing themselves though, so maybe there is something there.
I have spent well over 20 hours this week working on a new
website. I really hate the Embracing Fate name, so I will be rebranding within
the next few months. One of the best parts about writing a daily blog is
getting to move every single post over to a new website. It is giving me the
opportunity to add pictures to every post and swap out the ones I pulled off
Google Images with license-free options though. It’s also letting me re-number
in all the places I made mistakes. I went through and did this a while back,
only to find I’d missed a mistake on the 6th post. That took a while to sort
out.
We took Max to his first movie this week.
We saw Despicable Me 3 at the Alamo Drafthouse. It was
completely forgettable. One of those movies that they phoned in because they
know people are going to show up no matter what. Christian-themed movies seem
to bank on this built-in audience. I always wonder if there are
Muslim/Buddhist/Hindu oriented movies that do it in other countries.
Anyway, the villain In Despicable Me was another 80’s era nostalgia trip
that seems very popular right now, so I enjoyed that. Max loved the experience
and still talks about eating popcorn with the bad boy and the lasers.
I watched Logan with B this last week too. I was really
impressed with just how good it was. I ran out of love for Logan/Wolverine in
the mid-90’s when he was on every superhero team and had like 9 different
titles to his name, but this movie reminded how much there is to love about
him. I really enjoyed the little girl in the movie and how feral she was too.
It’s funny how most every movie we see these days seems
centered on an apocalyptic or near-apocalyptic future.
It’s like we’ve given up all hope for anything good coming
our way. The constant drumbeat of doom from the news media cannot help. Deep
down, we all want the world to end, just a little bit. It sounds
interesting and fun and would force us into recognizing our existence as being
about more than a new car and what the lawn looks like. Maybe it taps into some
primal desire to survive instead of just being alive.
Or maybe we are watching it because we want to familiarize
what terrifies us.
Who knows.
I’ve had a few people throw out ideas and questions for
future posts, I will start on those once we wrap up this intoxication series. I
have a big project I am starting today to surprise Barabara with when she gets
back from training in Austin. She keeps trying to catch me off guard with
questions so that I will tell her, but I’m not 6 so it doesn’t work.
I hope everyone has a great week, thank you for reading.
by Jamesscotthenson | Jul 22, 2017 | Blog
We are talking about intoxication as anything that distracts
us from what is.
I am getting a little tired of the word.
I am writing about my own experience with it over the
years and the things I used and use to avoid dealing with the noise
in my own head. That’s it.
I don’t think I take a hard line with any of this. Most
everyone I know and work with engages in some kind of intoxication, whether
it’s alcohol or weed or something else. I take a hard line with myself because
I have learned how easily I become attached to things. I don’t want to die
having never lived in reality as much as I am able to as a human.
None of this comes from a place of morals.
I really don’t have an issue with others choosing
intoxication, especially when it isn’t bringing any serious consequences their
way. I definitely don’t take an issue with it when it isn’t my business. Which
is most of the time. I do hate to see anyone limiting their life by not dealing
with the root causes of things. I hate to see anyone medicating symptoms
while the disease eats away at their life. I am not always able to do anything
about it though.
I have a unique job. People come to me seeking something
better for themselves. It is exciting when I someone who really wants to sweep
away the layers of delusion and intoxication and take a good hard look at their
life. Not everyone is seeking this though. Some people just want to figure out
what’s not working and move on, and that’s cool. They want to put a bucket
under the leaky pipe rather than spend their time and money and energy to
replace everything that has rusted away, and that’s cool.
I get it.
Sometimes, simply not-destructive is a great improvement in
one’s quality of life. That’s worth shooting for.
I’ve spent a great deal of my life watching intoxications of
one kind or another take people’s time and energy and spirit, and sometimes
their lives. I’ve watched intoxications take the most capable and charismatic
people I’ve ever met and turn them into incapable, toxic creatures. I’ve
watched intoxications take people’s time and money and families and careers.
I’ve watched kind people become cruel and gentle people become violent. I have
rarely watched intoxications do much good for people.
I am not perfect. I do not think I ever claim to be. As
you’ll see in the days to come, there are still ways I intoxicate myself. There
are still things I use to avoid reality and to hide my face from difficult
things. Sometimes there are things in front of me that I just don’t have the
heart to deal with right then. I just try to keep my intoxications as neutral
as possible these days.
Sometimes I succeed, sometimes I fail.
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