It's Wednesday afternoon. I've gotten very little accomplished so far this week. Uninspired to write, feeling like a pseudo-prisoner in this room during most of the daylight hours, I've tried repeatedly to focus my mind on the vaguely defined tasks at hand, as deadlines loom. My mind rebels, refusing to process the information in front of it, refusing to create the mental constructs that transform themselves into code, refusing to comply. I procrastinate, thus prolonging my sentence. My dispair deepens.

Occassionally, I do manage to focus, and get a few tiny bits done. Then something distracts me. Sometimes it's my dad, sometimes it's a message from scott, or sometimes it's just a random noise from outside (or if I'm listening to my headphones, something in the music catches my attention). But much more frequently, the distractions are of my own making. My own cluttered thoughts run away with themselves, or I switch to check my email, or reload my web browser in hopes that something new and interesting will appear.

A rudimentary self-diagnosis would suggest that I might be afflicted with a transitory intermittent variant of attention deficit disorder. That would be one simple way of explaining it. Too simple.

I contemplate possible directions to write now. As is often the case when navigating the physical world, I have a fairly clear idea of where I want to go with it, but the specific turns and roads I take between here and there are negotiable. Some paths might lead to dead ends, but if I persist long enough, and maintain my sense of direction, chances are that I'll get where I want to be even though I don't know specifically what roads I'll take. Just like how I made it to downtown Denver on my bike a couple weeks ago.

I'll admit that the title for this rambling was directly lifted from a famous 20th century book, more commonly uttered in its German form. No inferences should be drawn from this fact, excapt that I like that title. I like it enough, and it fits my theme well enough that I'm not going to allow the fact that it was used by a mass murdering tyrant detract me from using it.

One area where my mind has been able to focus: reading. In the evenings, I've been reading Scot R Stone's The Chimes of Yawrana. The book I got autographed, and paid too much for. Thankfully, it is very entertaining so far. Classic style fantasy. But that is not what I am here to write about.

I've been devouring the works of Ran Prieur. Having already read pretty much all of his more formal essays months ago, as well as the so-far completed portion of his novel, I've delved into the archived zines, in which he took a more... well... Random Rambling-like approach, discussing events in his own life in tandem with many observations and opinions about society, culture, politics, and what-have-you.

His philosophical approach and mindset about life are, in my experience, genuinely unique. Maybe my range of knowledge is just limited, because I have never heard of anybody else who espouses the combination of ideas and goals (or lack thereof) that his writings contain. Some of what he writes feels like it's been at the tip of my consciousness for years, but I have had trouble articulating it, even to myself.

So in a way, when I read his works, I get a confirmation of my own instincts -- thoughts that often have been repressed and pent up withyn myself for years, of whose substance I had only a fading and partial conscious awareness. The words "kindred spirit" come to mind, though he is obviously much farther along with it than I am. More evolved.

Speaking of evolving, I'm about to used just such an example. On the theory of evolution. Yesterday, I found myself reading thoughts that had been semi-formed in my head since a few years ago, but I had never quite been able to coherently explain them, even to myself. It was just a vague feeling. Then I saw it crystalize in words on the screen in front of me. From Civilazation Will Eat Itself part 3 (discussing Darwinism):

The whole meaning of the Universe is that everything in it gets better and better at exploiting the whole for its own benefit. And we civilized humans are the best ever. We were single-celled organisms and later fish and later apes and then a series of ape-human intermediaries and then humans using better and better stone tools and then bronze and iron and money and the wheel and written language and guns and radiation and antidepressants. It just gets better and better! And fish and Indians and poorer people simply represent ourselves at a now obsolete stage of development, something we tried and finished and transcended, which gives us the right and obligation to master them through force, the same as it gives any more evolved person on the street the right to kill you and take all your money.

...

Our vain little blip of a civilization seems to stand alone in all history in crediting human origins to incremental transformation from other animal species through mindless random mutations and natural selection. In the face of this opposition, the priesthood simply decrees that all competing stories of human origin are mythical fabrications. Remember that the people who sustain oral histories are fully human, the best minds in their group, as smart as you or I would be if we had not spent thousands of hours watching television. And their stories are at least potentially grounded in honest experience, while Darwinism, even by our own records, is a mythical fabrication, pure speculation hungrily accepted as science by scientists desperate for cultural myths that owed nothing to the Church. Darwin himself wrote, in 1863, "When we descend to details, we can prove that no one species has changed; nor can we prove that the supposed changes are beneficial, which is the groundwork of the theory. Nor can we explain why some species have changed and others have not."

138 years later and this is still true. Nor can we explain who the first mutant member of a new species breeds with, since, by the definition of "species," it cannot produce fertile offspring with a different species.

The one and only justification for Darwinism remains what it always was: that it is supposedly the only alternative to a non-negotiable doctrine of creation by a sky father deity.

Sometimes nobody sees a lie because it is so big. Any creative person over five years old can think of one human origin story after another that does not involve accidental DNA mutations or Jehovah. Of course most of these will be silly, but the point is, if you don't have a satisfactory answer, you don't cling greedily onto one bad answer out of fear of another. You keep looking. And in the meantime, you do what will get you thrown straight out of the control structure of this society, and admit ignorance.

I had to do some heavy clipping in order to narrow it down to those paragraphs. I was tempted to copy the entire chunk of text in which he weaved the finer aspects of his argument, but it was HUGE, and contained lots of references to other points he had already made. But I recommend that any interested parties with time on their hands read the whole thing, starting from the beginning.

(Then again, maybe nobody else will like it. So far, the few people to whom I have personally showed other works of Ran Prier, which I found fascinating and inspiring, seem to exhibit reactions ranging from apathetic neutrality to a vague sort of negativity.)

Now, to get to the substance of my own long little screed, largely inspired by some of the texts linked to above.

My Struggle

For as long as I can remember, my life has been a struggle. On one side, pulling at me constantly, is the machine to which I am stuck. It could loosely be termed as "civilation". There is a part of me that wants to be free of it, but there is also a part that likes aspects of it. Most of the time, whether I like it or not is ultimately irrelevant, because I am, I believe, hopelessly dependent upon it for survival. I am a prisoner.

It began as a child. Unlike most children in the western world, my parents did not send me to school until the ripe age of 10. This gave me twice as much time to develop "in the wild" as most kids get (or 4 times as much, if you consider that an increasing percentage of parents these days start their kids into preschool at age 2).

While most were spending the majority of their day sitting in rows of little desks, I was outside climbing rocks and playing in mountain streams, where we lived at the time. My mother took an hour or two out of each day to home school me. (Some days, more time was spent, sometimes less. Sometimes, none at all.) From her, I learned how to read and do basic arithmetic. From my dad, in the evenings, I learned many things about science and technology. (Though his teaching was even less formal that my mom's.)

You might be thinking that this couldn't be nearly enough to bring me up to the standards of students who spent 7 hours each day in class, plus time doing homework. You would be wrong.

During my first year of school when I entered the 4th grade, I got all A's, and often found my own knowledge was beyond that of my classmates. (This was private school, whose educational standards were generally higher than those of the public education system, or so we were told. I think that part of what we were told was correct.)

In the years that followed, some of my grades dropped down to B's, but that was mostly because I hated homework, became apathetic, and stopped trying as hard. Like many children probably do, I dreamed wishfully for a catastrophic event to destroy the place. A fire, a flood, a tornado. Anything that would make it impossible to ever go back would have been perfect. The best we got was an occassional snow storm to block the roads for a day or two.

My parents and other seniors would often talk about what life would be like when I grew up. I would have a job, I would need to learn better manners if I was going to get along, and I would eventually have a wife and kids of my own. I didn't particularly like any of these ideas.

Another thing about my early life. Prior to age 12, my parents had no television, which meant that the only time I watched tv was when I was at other people's houses. One of the things I wanted more than anything as a child was a tv. Now, I think I'm smarter because of I didn't have access to one until I was older.

Summary so far: During the first 10 years of my life, I was probably more "free" from the system than I've ever been since. This because I depended on my parents. (As a sidenote, virtually every period when I have been "free" since has been subsidized by them. That includes right now.) I also believed that when I became an adult, my assimilation would be inevitable. Fear of this was tempered by the knowledge that I would also have money to buy a tv, more candy and other unhealthy food than I could even eat, and a house where I could paint all the interior walls bright red.

Enter High School

I entered Boulder High School in 1993, as a junior. This was because the church school I attended went through grade 10. I was encouraged by my parents to go to a Seventh-Day Adventist Academy, the path taken (usually through force, but sometimes by choice) by most of my classmates. My parents said that I was old enough to choose which school I wanted. I chose public high school.

I had had enough of church school. I hated the dogmatic approach taken by most of the faculty. I hated the contradictions. I hated the cruely exhibited by many of the students. (By this point, I had learned to defend myself psychologically, but the taste of it still lingered. One one trait my home schooling hadn't prepared me for during those early years was the ability to defend myself against verbal attacks. Believe it or not, many of the girls were meaner and more vicious than the boys. Though they no longer bothered me by the time it was done, the thought of dating any of them still made me want to vomit.) More than anything, I couldn't stand the thought of having my music confiscated by some holier-than-thou zealot. So high school it was.

In some ways, my experience there was liberating. No more dogmatic, Bible-thumping teachers. In their place were a several well-meaning but mediocre ones (maybe they would have been better if they didn't have such a nasty bureaucracy to contend with all the time), a few apathetic ones, and two who were very excellent despite it all.

There was a girl I liked who was always very nice to me, but I never quite got the courage to ask her out. She was both very smart and very beautiful. Years later, I would still be kicking myself that I hadn't made any move. I was ignorant, stupid, and fearful. Nuff said.

I had no friends there. There were some people who were were friendly, with whom I made casual acquaintances, but I found the the entire social structure of the place inexplicably isolating. Surprisingly, the group with whom I most frequently associated were not the computer geeks. They were the outcasts, the druggies, the pot smokers, and those who published "forbidden" underground dissidence papers and distributed them covertly in the halls. With them, I found at least some solace.

Late 1994, shortly after my senior year had begun, I found myself shutting down. I suppose it could be described as depression. I felt lonely even in the thickest of crowds. I didn't want to graduate. I didn't want to go on to college either. I didn't want to become further stuck into this world of mundane drudgery. There was no way I could win. I felt a vague feeling of needing to get back to "nature", but didn't know how. I just knew that I liked walking around in the open air, and wanted more of that. But the only life I could see ahead of me was a prison. I wanted to die. I listened to the Dirt album by Alice in Chains a lot.

I started skipping classes. I told my parents I wanted to switch to home schooling. They, foolishly or not, assented. I dropped out of high school.

I took solace in the fact that at least the republicans had won congress, and maybe they would be able to do something about the bad policies of all those corrupt democrats. I had become a regular listener and fan of the Rush Limbaugh show.

Home schooling this time around proved to be a dead end. Try as I might, I could not motivate myself, and fell behind. Farther, and farther, and farther behind. I never finished it. I would later get a GED. (Which turned out to be one of the easiest tests I had ever taken. Again, I had to ask, why bother with sitting in classrooms for years on end when the equivilent knowledge could be found more readily and easily elsewhere?)

Simultaniously to all this, I had a job working in a pre-school, supervising childen ages 2 1/2 to 5. For the most part, I found that job very satisfying. I stayed there longer than I have ever held any other job. In one sense, I hated the fact that my job existed, because I think it's best for kids of that age to be with their parents. But if they could not, I was going to do as damn much as possible to try to help them make it through with their spirits in tact. I like to think that sometimes, I succeeded. I also know that sometimes, I didn't. In a few cases, when the system got the better of me and I felt compelled acted on its behalf, I became part of the problem. Still, I think I did pretty well under the circumstances. In 1997, after 5 years of it, I was ready to move on to something else. But that's getting ahead of ourselves.

1995. September. Business had been poor, and there were not enough children enrolled to keep a full staff. I was temporarily laid off from my part time job at the preschool. (Though I didn't know it at the time, I would later be rehired mere months later when things picked up again.)

Both unemployed and having dropped out of school, I was at a dead end. In terms of my "life plan", that is. There was still plenty of stuff to occupy my interest. I was working on writing a game in C++ (which I foolishly thought would become a source of money), bouncing and I had started having the first programming fests. It was then that I got my first taste of the world wide web. Windows 95 had just come out, and even though my system was to slow to run it well, I loved it. Those were exciting times!

My parents grew increasingly worried about my lack of job or school. During one argument with my mom, I jokingly said that my goal in life was to become a bum on Colfax. I laughed hysterically. Nobody else thought it was funny. (Well, actually that's not true. I remember bouncing laughing about it as well. But he wasn't yet known by that name back then.)

What I am about to write has never been told to anybody before now. In the span of one 24 hour period, I read The Unibomber's Manifesto. Though I hated what he had done, I found most of his reasoning to be sound. What he said made sense. I too longed for the downfall of society as we know it, along with all the ills it brings with it. In fact, what he said made so much sense that I was ready, not to start lobbing bombs to people, but to venture off into the woods to live away from all the insanity for a while, and survive by eating twigs and hunting rabbits.

Thus it was that I realized that now was the time. No job, no school, nothing to tie my to this world. That very day, I wrote a very long note to my parents, in which I attempted to explain why I was doing what I was doing, and that I would probably be back after a few months. I left it on my bed, packed a few trivial items into my backpack, and set off on foot. I was going to go into the mountains and survive. This was what I thought.

I made it all the way from Louisville to Boulder. What brought me back was not the thought of missing the Deep Space 9 season premiere, though I did think about how I would miss it. Nor was I compelled by thinking about my abandoned programming projects, though I thought about them as well. In Boulder, I passed a McDonald's, and realized that I was hungry, and I had no money. Too hungry. I wasn't going to make it into the mountain wilderness. It must have been around 9 or 10 at night.

I used a payphone to call mom, prepared to talk about how everything I had written in the note was a mistake. She hadn't read the note yet, nor had it been discovered by anybody. She came and picked me up. She was curious as to why I had walked to Boulder, but I just said I had gone on a long walk and not realized how late it was or how far I had gone. Or something like that.

On the way home, as I ate the cheeseburger my mom had bought for me, I felt utterly defeated. I had gone out with no clear or realistic plan, and I had failed. Maybe the Unabomber was right. Maybe there was no hope outside the sphere of violent and extreme measures.

In any case, for me, it was back to the drawing board for a while. A long while.

Thus it is that now, when I read Ran Prieur say that he was just "a hair away from being the next Unabomber", I react not with the incredulity that most other people might, but with understanding, and gratification that there exists at least one person who has managed to find a way to exist happily on the fringes without resorting to blowing up people's hands. Here is another who also knows. A like-minded spirit.

1996 would render me another defeat. This one would come in the form of a manic breakdown, during which I underwent forced hospitalization. It was at that time that I was officially diagnosed as bearing the bipolar "disease" of manic depression.

After many struggles, under heavy medication, I learned to pretend that I was "better", that I was compliant, and that I was well. Eventually, after many difficult moments (and a few pleasant ones), I was released. I continued to pretend. But I did not forgot who I was. Never entirely.

After my recovery, I went back to work at the preschool, who now wanted me on full time. (Despite knowing where I had been, and what I had been diagnosed with, the director of the place still wanted me as an employee, and still fully trusted me to be around the children, whom she also dearly loved in her own way. Give credit where credit is due.)

1997. I knew I didn't want to work at the preschool forever. The wages would not be enough to support me living on my own, and even if they had, I wanted to move on. Doing it full time was also wearing me out. I needed a change.

So I followed the path of next-least resistance. When a recruiting letter arrived from ucollege.edu (probably sent either because of our family's affiliation with the church, or the fact that both of my parents were alumni), I decided, with encouragement from my parents, to make a visit to the campus. I liked what I saw, and enrolled to start as a freshman in the fall of 97.

Thus my college life began. When I started, I was anything but certain that I wanted to major in computer sceince. In fact, I wanted to do something other than that, but I wasn't sure what. I felt like I had enough knowledge around computers already, and wanted to broaden into other areas. Besides, from the look of it, I didn't think their courses were going to teach me much that I didn't already know. My only problem was that I really had no idea what other areas I might like, and honestly, none of the other choices on the menu looked all that appealing either. (Score another one for feeling like what Ran Prieur described in one of his writings.)

So I wandered in and mumbled something like the following: "Well, I'm undecided right now, but computer science seems like a possibility." Using the scant information I had provided, the administraters put me on the only path about which I had indicated any level of interest.

I found the computer science cirriculum to be even more excruciatingly dull and basic than I had thought possible for a college level. "Now this thing is called a mouse. We press the button that's on top to do something called clicking. See that little thing in the bottom left hand corner of the screen? That's called the Start Button. Now press it. Move the mouse up to select an item. That's right."

I don't exaggerate by much. (Ok, so that particular class was the most hideous example. Another class, less like kindergarden, covered pascal, which I still found very limiting after years of working in C++. But I got what I signed up for.)

What I did find of value at the place were a few very good friends who I met. Some of them are still in regular contact, as evidenced by recent fests. For that alone, I consider the time I spent there worthwhile.

Religion. I'll just say this: It took going back one more time to witness it as an adult of my own free will to make me realize with certainty that Seventh-Day Adventism is not for me. Because of ucollege.edu, I know. There is no doubt left about that.

Romantic/love interest. I found nobody there in whom I was really interested in that way. Maybe I wasn't spending enough time looking in that direction. But I think I was. I was just at the wrong place for that. It would eventually become one of the factors leading me to want to go elsewhere.

1999. After spending 2 years at ucollege.edu, I did not return for a 3rd. Thus, I became a 2-time dropout. It was around that time that this section of my website began, and I formed the habit of regularly typing my thoughts into a website, instead of occassionally writing them down in notebooks that nobody else would ever see.

I did actually complete a preliminary application to go to CU, but never followed through beyond that. The desire just wasn't there.

I spent 6 months in a basement, absorbing my mind in fantasy worlds which seemed to me to be infinitely better than the one I was in. Some of the writers behind the fantasies managed to cleverly weave their stories into modern settings, thus connecting my imagination in some faint way with the world which actually surrounded me. I got involved in the fringes of the online Xenite community. I decided, independent of my parents increasing nagging, that I was ready to give the world another try.

In 2000, I got lucky, and landed a high paying corporate programming job. I threw myself at the work, and enjoyed it for many months before it even started to get old. I also learned a lot about many things.

I gradually came to realize and accept, through both first hand experience and reading, that government is not the only source of oppression, censorship, and hierarchial control. In fact, it may not even be the greatest threat to freedom. In terms of robbing people of their freedom and putting them in velvet cages, Corporate America has at least as much to answer for as any socialist utopian planner or welfare proponent. (I would later see that corporations and government in our system work as two hands as part of the same tyranny. One would not be able to function as it does without the other.)

I would become a dropout of the corporate system shortly after it would commit the act of laying off a bunch of my coworkers without remorse. The official line, of course, was that I was fired, but it was my actions that made it happen. I had committed the unforgivable sin of open defiance. No matter how good a worker you are, or how much profit you help generate (not to say that I was all that profitable to begin with), that is the one sin that cannot be allowed to pass.

A 3-time dropout.

During the months that followed, I came very close to completely falling out of the system's clutches. Ok, maybe not out, but into a radically different state of being than I had ever been before -- homeless, without shelter, and without money. At the time, I felt that I was ready for it. I was ready to be homeless. I was ready to let go of all my possessions. I was ready to be free, and die, if that was to be my fate. I no longer feared starvation. At least not nearly as much. Others seemed dismayed when I talked of just letting it all go. I was content to let it happen. Or was I?

I had done what I wanted with my life. Education system? Check. Full-time work in a cushy job? Check. Fallen in and out of love? Check. Lived on my own away from my parents? Check. Done the club scene? Check. Bought a tv, a 5.1 sound system, and a bunch of cool movies? Check. Gotten laid? Check. (As readers who have been around here for a while know, that last item, one of my final acts before exiting the money job, had ended up requiring a cash, but it was worth it for the experience. My only regret is that I didn't get the chance to go back to the same person one more time to complete things.)

Civilazation? Check. Been there, done that. Ready to move on, and if it means this heart stops beating, so be it.

Of course, my parents were less willing to let that happen than I was. And since I didn't really have any other path planned out, I accepted the humiliating experience of moving back in with them. Both of them. Even though they now lived in separate residences.

And I got another job, this time as one of the service workers who I had so often idealized. Tried it for a while, learned a bunch of shit, found myself miserable, and dropped out again. Keeping count?

This time, I went into one of the much-despised sales jobs, which not only threatened to suck and grind up my very soul, but also ended up paying me less than shit when I ended up in bad locations through no control of my own and I didn't sell much. I dropped out of that one faster than a hot potato.

Now, there's x13. Will I drop out of this too? Probably, but not quite yet. The signs that my being is rebeling against it cannot be ignored. Indeed, when my mind and body, through little or no control of my own, decide that they are hell-bent on getting out of something, I can no more stop myself than a child whose hand touches a hot burner can keep it there.

However, I am determined to press through it for a little while longer. Not just because of self-interest, but out of loyalty to scott.

The last thing that happened before I started writing this was that scott told me that the check he gave me last week had bounced. (My own bank hadn't shown anything yet, so I heard it first from him.) Turns out he wrote it before funds that he thought had been deposited were really available. (Banks are so annoying in that way. 50 years ago, I could understand having such delays, but in the age of electronic transactions, there is no excuse for it.)

After he was sure of what had happened, he immediately went out and deposited the money, plus a little extra. Fortunately, I haven't tried to pay any big bills this week, so no bad effects have resulted. Besides, there's a part of me that can't help but think that after being such a slacker, my karma has earned a little jolt.

My struggle. What is it? It is constant internal conflict between being a part of the system of civilazation, and breaking away from it. Sometimes, one side gains an edge within me; sometimes, I swing toward the other side. Generally, I think I tend more toward embracing civilation, but every now and then, a jolt from the innermost core of my being compels me to push away. Those jolts have been getting stronger every time, and have occurred with increasing frequency.

As I have described, this started happening long before I started reading Ran Prieur, so I have not suddenly fallen under the spell of some magic propaganda. But what I learned by reading him is that the word drop-out need not be worn with shame. He has succeeded at dropping out to a degree higher than I had imagined possible, especially at that age. If he can do it, I think it should be possible for me too, provided I put forth enough ambition and effort.

That last sentence is just too hilarious. I can't stop laughing, because he repeatedly states that he is where he is because he doesn't like to expend much effort, and prefers to make things as easy for himself as possible.

The challenge I have yet to meet is learning how to drop out without the cushion of my parents to fall back on. I suspect it will be a hard fall when it happens. I plan for it to happen. I want it to happen. It is inevitable, not because of some character weakness within myself, which is what I allowed myself believe for years, but because it comes from a heretofore unacknowledged need within myself. I need to detach.

So I work to prepare myself, so that when the time does arrive, I won't be completely helpless. As to whether these preparations will do any good in the long run, I don't know. I've gotten more comfortable with dumpster diving, although I have yet to find a place around here that I could come close to surviving on. During a few scouting missions, all the potentially good stores I've checked have used sealed compactors. Maybe I haven't looked hard enough.

I still find myself irresistable drawn by the lure of my addictions. As time has passed, my tv, movies, and other possessions have gradually transformed themselves into a ball and chain, yet still, I acquire more. Things you own end up owning you.

Why do I do this, especially when my money could be better saved in preparation for my own personal apocalypse? When I explore the reasons, I find that my stuff (particularly relating to entertainment), besides psychologically compensating for what I felt I lacked during my childhood, also provide some semblence of meaning to what seems like a largely empty life. Thus, I cling to them, even as they lead me down the path to poverty. This, as much as anything, is where the system keeps me in its clutches.

Thus, I simultaniously fantasize about selling or giving away all my movies, my tv, my sound system, my furniture, books, and virtually everything else that I find will be extraenuous on the path ahead, even as I think about going to Best Buy tomorrow to pick up a Britney Spears DVD, or The Matrix Revolutions, or another Buffy set, etc, etc, etc. This, I know, is madness.

My car is beginning to feel the same way, as I just went into debt again to buy another 6 months of insurance against a cop pulling me over to ask for proof of insurance. I'm also paying for another year of registration fees, and took Tobias in for his first emissions test yesterday. (The biggest waste of $25 yet. The fact that he passed with flying colors came as no surprise to me, as I know he was engineered to comply with California's ultra-strict emissions regulations, which are much more stringent than Colorado.)

With a bike, I now feel that on a day to day basis, I could do without a car. Even if I get a "normal" job, I could make it work, either by making sure I live close enough to the sweatshop to commute by bike, or take mass transit. It could be worked out.

But I am not ready to part with Tobias yet. At least not until I have taken my epic, multi-month-long road trip. After that, perhaps. Until that has happened, I do not plan to voluntarily part with my car.

It is dark outside now. I biked in today, and I plan to bike home. I hadn't planned to type this long, but I think I knew deep down when I started that this subject was not going to be a quickie. Not given what I wanted to cover. I think I got through most of the points I wanted to make, and probably forgot a few.

My struggle is not resolved, and perhaps it never will be. The contradictions linger, pulling at me from both sides. I like it when they pull me with ideas that appeal in a positive way. I like the parts of civilization that let me watch movies and play video games. I also realize that they are inextricably tied to the parts that want us all to be slaves and suck our souls dry until we die a death of dispair.

I like the parts of anti-civilization that allow us to roam free, be spontanious, and re-establish some form of connection with the real world (a.k.a. nature). I don't like the parts about starving, getting bitten by bugs, and rained on in the cold. But even worse, I don't like what the system does to those who have the courage to try it.

Where will my life lead? The struggle continues. May I not only accept that fact, but also find a way to derive fulfillment and wonder from the struggle's very existence. Now, off into the night.