On Love and The Outsider

[Gecko]

About a month ago I said in a post that I'd like to explore the darker regions of my mind and of the world, and now I feel that I'm starting to form something solid out of those two.

 

It's so hard to sort out all that I've been thinking, I'd love to share the entirety of these thoughts and emotions but of course that's impossible except through years of communication. I'd like to think that words only partly or remotely represent these things in the first place.

 

I read through a book recently called "The Outsider" (nonfiction essay). Though the language is very lofty and difficult to understand, and the logic equally as perplexing, I cannot help but think that skimming through this book has changed my life dramatically. (for better or worse) It has an equal effect on me as "Original Wisdom". Here is a quick description:

 

The Outsider is the seminal work on alienation, creativity, and the modern mind-set. First published more than thirty years ago, it made its youtful author England's most controversial intellectual.

The Outsider is and individual engaged in an intense self-exploration - a person who lives at the edge, challenges cultural values, and "stands for Truth." Born into a world without perspective, where others simply drift through life, the Outsider creates his own set of rules and lives them in an unsympathetic environment. The relative handful of poeple who fulfilled Wilson's definition of the Outsider in the 1950's have now become a significant social force, making Wilson's vision more relevant today than ever.

Through the works and lives of various artists - including Kafka, Camus, Eliot, Hemingway, Hesse, Lawrence, Van Gogh, Nijinsky, Shaw, Blake, Nietzsche, and Dostoyevski - Wilson explores the psyche of the Outsider, his effect on society, and society's effect on him. Wilson illuminates the struggle of those who seek not only the transformation of Self but also the transformation of society as a whole. The book is essential for everyone who shares Wilson's conviction that "a new religion is needed."

 

And here is a summation of the problems that the Outsider faces:

 

The Outsider wants to cease to be an Outsider.

He wants to be integrated as a human being, achieving a fusion between mind and heart.

He seeks vivid sense perception.

He wants to understand the soul and its workings.

He wants to get beyond the trivial.

He wants to express himself so he can better understand himself. He sees a way out via intensity, extremes of experience.

 

One of the general themes through the book is the Outsider's sense of unreality about society and his environment, where people lead fake lives for pointless values. All of our loves, hates, values, persuings, are but scribbles on a cinema screen, and mean nothing in the face of the "Truth" about the universe. People have been disconnected from their true selves for so long that they don't have the slightest clue that another way of life ever existed. They're so caught up in this belief that man can overcome any barrier; some believe that humans were meant to rule the world and ultimately the universe. The thing is, all of that essentially means nothing... all that we associate with the world are words that we impose on our surroundings; I could say that I "own" this tree, but that essentially means nothing, the tree is still the same as it ever was... it just is.

 

The thing is, I don't think I am an Outsider, but something inbetween the Outsider and the Insider, if such a thing is possible. I just don't know. I share a lot of values with the Outsider way of looking at things, with a few key differences: Although I agree that many of our beliefs, concerns and workings of society may be pointless in the scope of existence and of the Universe, they are real things that have an effect on people's actions. Another thing is that some Outsiders believe that killing another person is sometimes necessary to the discovery of himself. Whether or not this is true, I cannot see this as anything but completely selfish, taking away another's existence, one thing the Outsider supposedly finds so precious. The two 'values' or whatever you might call them seem to contradict one another.

 

That being said, things that I do find in common with the Outsider: the desire to live to extremes, (positively emotional if possible), to become more connected with the spirits and arcane powers. I also find that society serves largely as a prison where the inmates have been told since birth that they are free. I need not say more than what is conveyed in Original Wisdom.

 

I could be called an iconoclast (one who attacks largely accepted beliefs, etc.) in the category of love... though I haven't had much concrete experience in life, and never have had a 'girlfriend' in the sense, I have thought about it intensely enough to have strong belief in what I concluded.

I have come to be wary of marriage for the fact that it seems so confining and limiting to one's freedom. In a sense it all seems based on selfishness, and a futile attempt to have control in an ultimately chaotic world. I know that the basic intent isn't so evil; these two people just wish to live their lives together because they love each other so much. But it just seems so wrong to me: why should love need such a materialistic idea to bind them to one another? If they actually love each other, then they'll stay with each other anyways in the end... with marriage, how can you ever know if this love is real?

 

A meditation: 'infidelity' is only as evil as it is because people make it so by lieing to one another. Honesty must be preserved and chaos faced, suppressing emotions only produces more pain...

 

Let me try to paint a picture of my ideal lifestyle: People just stop trying to have control over every little detail in their lives, and just let it be. People learn to be selfless, while still containing love for themselves because of their ability to be selfless. Because of this selflessness, more people learn to gain satisfaction from helping others.

 

Some might say that the above is only a lofty fantasy, impossible due to the reality of human nature and the practicalities of society. But I strongly believe that these factors can be embraced, and in doing so destroyed. It's hard to explain what I mean by this, but that's the best way I can describe it...

[AntiLove_SuperStar]

Everyone believes they are an Outsider, they just label it differently.

 

Tread carefully with all this introspection. It's a tough habit to break when it starts to break your heart.

[NJRon]

Don't think so much that you forget to do.

[Spugly Fuglet]

If your feeling like and out sider then read this

 

(Copy Right )

Terry Bisson

 

THEY'RE MADE OUT OF MEAT

by Terry Bisson

 

"They're made out of meat."

 

"Meat?"

 

"Meat. They're made out of meat."

 

"Meat?"

 

"There's no doubt about it. We picked up several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, and probed them all the way through. They're completely meat."

 

"That's impossible. What about the radio signals? The messages to the stars?"

 

"They use the radio waves to talk, but the signals don't come from them. The signals come from machines."

 

"So who made the machines? That's who we want to contact."

 

"They made the machines. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Meat made the machines."

 

"That's ridiculous. How can meat make a machine? You're asking me to believe in sentient meat."

 

"I'm not asking you, I'm telling you. These creatures are the only sentient race in that sector and they're made out of meat."

 

"Maybe they're like the orfolei. You know, a carbon-based intelligence that goes through a meat stage."

 

"Nope. They're born meat and they die meat. We studied them for several of their life spans, which didn't take long. Do you have any idea what's the life span of meat?"

 

"Spare me. Okay, maybe they're only part meat. You know, like the weddilei. A meat head with an electron plasma brain inside."

 

"Nope. We thought of that, since they do have meat heads, like the weddilei. But I told you, we probed them. They're meat all the way through."

 

"No brain?"

 

"Oh, there's a brain all right. It's just that the brain is made out of meat! That's what I've been trying to tell you."

 

"So ... what does the thinking?"

 

"You're not understanding, are you? You're refusing to deal with what I'm telling you. The brain does the thinking. The meat."

 

"Thinking meat! You're asking me to believe in thinking meat!"

 

"Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat! Loving meat. Dreaming meat. The meat is the whole deal! Are you beginning to get the picture or do I have to start all over?"

 

"Omigod. You're serious then. They're made out of meat."

 

"Thank you. Finally. Yes. They are indeed made out of meat. And they've been trying to get in touch with us for almost a hundred of their years."

 

"Omigod. So what does this meat have in mind?"

 

"First it wants to talk to us. Then I imagine it wants to explore the Universe, contact other sentiences, swap ideas and information. The usual."

 

"We're supposed to talk to meat."

 

"That's the idea. That's the message they're sending out by radio. 'Hello. Anyone out there. Anybody home.' That sort of thing."

 

"They actually do talk, then. They use words, ideas, concepts?"

"Oh, yes. Except they do it with meat."

 

"I thought you just told me they used radio."

 

"They do, but what do you think is on the radio? Meat sounds. You know how when you slap or flap meat, it makes a noise? They talk by flapping their meat at each other. They can even sing by squirting air through their meat."

 

"Omigod. Singing meat. This is altogether too much. So what do you advise?"

 

"Officially or unofficially?"

 

"Both."

 

"Officially, we are required to contact, welcome and log in any and all sentient races or multibeings in this quadrant of the Universe, without prejudice, fear or favor. Unofficially, I advise that we erase the records and forget the whole thing."

 

"I was hoping you would say that."

 

"It seems harsh, but there is a limit. Do we really want to make contact with meat?"

 

"I agree one hundred percent. What's there to say? 'Hello, meat. How's it going?' But will this work? How many planets are we dealing with here?"

 

"Just one. They can travel to other planets in special meat containers, but they can't live on them. And being meat, they can only travel through C space. Which limits them to the speed of light and makes the possibility of their ever making contact pretty slim. Infinitesimal, in fact."

 

"So we just pretend there's no one home in the Universe."

 

"That's it."

 

"Cruel. But you said it yourself, who wants to meet meat? And the ones who have been aboard our vessels, the ones you probed? You're sure they won't remember?"

 

"They'll be considered crackpots if they do. We went into their heads and smoothed out their meat so that we're just a dream to them."

 

"A dream to meat! How strangely appropriate, that we should be meat's dream."

 

"And we marked the entire sector unoccupied."

 

"Good. Agreed, officially and unofficially. Case closed. Any others? Anyone interesting on that side of the galaxy?"

 

"Yes, a rather shy but sweet hydrogen core cluster intelligence in a class nine star in G445 zone. Was in contact two galactic rotations ago, wants to be friendly again."

 

"They always come around."

 

"And why not? Imagine how unbearably, how unutterably cold the Universe would be if one were all alone ..."

 

 

the end

 

See we are all made out of meat, all the same, all of us

[Gecko]

LoL, pretty cool story.

 

But that's the thing, people seem to have forgotten that 'they're made out of meat', just like any other living thing on this planet

[NJRon]

Yeah... like artichokes!

[Gecko]

Yeah... like artichokes!

 

Exactly!! Thanks for giving context to my argument!