psyche

I am in a strange state, having played various Command & Conquer games for almost two days with breaks only to eat, sleep and go to the bathroom. I am hopeful that I’ll learn a lot in computing next year and it’s a shame I have to play off chemistry against computing for A2. If I could do both, I would. Does anyone know if we can do five? Does Further Maths count as a half at A2?
Anyway, this is a society in which we are born into and given a choice: accept the system or be rejected and imprisoned/killed. The system is such that either one works and gains money required to live (because life has been monopolised by “civilisation”) or one fails at life, simply put. Previously, we sort of hunted for food, or something. Now the system provides us with energy and sustenance in exchange for co-operation (not in a political way - simply fuelling the massive machine that is civilisation by working and perpetuating it). We are disconnected from the real world, living out our lives fascinated by things which mean nothing, oblivious as nature is harvested, sinking into consumerism and decadence as the reality of nature becomes more horrific and less likely to ever be understood.

What is The Matrix? Guess. The really saddening thing about having been brought up in a mass-media culture is that the logic I know, the criticial reasoning I believe to be sound, may be such a narrow viewpoint that I will never understand the bigger picture, but hey, I’ll try!

We are the pwned generation, it seems.

Pax

If your response to the title of this post would be “Yes they are”, you have pure arrogance and I hate you. If it’d be “They’re not that bad”, you’re either an understating sympathiser or (argh) someone who did better than me and half-wants not to seem arrogant but is secure enough in their own power that they don’t care about silly quirks in their image.

We got the first wave of exam results back today, and as predicted I did moderately well (which wasn’t that well if the rest of the school is taken into account) and Elliot did extremely well as always (at least dying in his shadow will be less painful than living in it - I crack myself up). Anyway, no matter how these turn out, I don’t like them.

There is something wrong! It’s ironic that I try to get rid of these disgusting social traditions of arrogance, narcissism and shamelessness but at the same time am mediocre enough that my theories can, and will, be disregarded as disillusionment.

Again, perhaps this is true, and when confronted with superiors, I simply break down. So be it, then. In other news, and on behalf of William Morland, vote Veronica Belmont.

Pax

The sociology of a world in which we are all mindfucked and in which lies are almost always credible and people get away with everything is much more complex that I care to boast about.

Okay, firstly:

Fake Modesty
This is an important and prevalent device, which is also extremely annoying.

1: How was your Sociology exam?
2: It was okay but I know I’ve messed up every question because I’m really bad at Sociology.
1: But you said yesterday that you’ve consistently come top of your class in terms of test results, displaying extreme arrogance and tactlessness which was above the norm but low enough that it would look odd if I killed you.
2: Yeah… but… but… aw you got me, I can’t refute my own greatness.
1: *becomes enraged and then commits suicide*

2 is here using fake modesty and the following irrefutable paradox to boost their image (assuming there are other people).

I don’t know what it is about things but almost everyone (yes I know I do as well, don’t be a cynic) has such an inflated self-image that it’s unbearable but also consistently gets away with it. Hallmarks of this evil include:

• Responding to a speaker when they are addressing your group but not you specifically
• Being a dick
• Complimenting someone when they fail
• Falsely putting oneself down in the knowledge that people who are accustomed to telling the truth will refute it and boost your image
• Telling someone that “Person X is good at Y”, Y being something that the teller would like to be good at but has failed at. However, the teller has sufficient skill in, say, Z that the teller can appear to be accepting X’s power when in fact the teller is utilising a sort of fake modesty. “Oh I am terrible at Parapsychology. I’m only good at Sociology.” = “I tried and failed to compete with X’s natural/earned talent in Y, so I’m staying out of that theatre until I’ve done some revision, taken some tutoring, lied that I haven’t and then I can burst in and be a perfect little genius again.”

There are others but I’m murderously angry and thus cannot think straight or retrieve them from my brain. If only characteristics like greed, arrogance and sadism weren’t so highly correlated with natural talent or skill. I suppose it makes people who are smart or good at something but not total twats seem completely messianic - similarly it messiah-ifies people who can prevent their evil aspects from being seen, which is important in our media culture in which we hardly meet politicians: we only see their public image, which is theirs to shape.

Pax

Exams are over. I made some retarded errors in the Physics Challenge, and there were gaps in my understanding, but I did it, and fine. Fine, you know? Just fine. Stupid exams. It’s partly my fault that I’m so stupid, but not enough that I can’t blame others.

I ask you: Is it true that many compliments are indirectly self-aggrandising?

e.g.

1 beats 2 at Tiddlywinks

2: Argh. I suck at Tiddlywinks.
1: No, you’re good! Come on.
2: Are you saying that so it seems even better that you beat me?
1: What? I’m sorry, I, being a member of the human race and subject to western society’s mindfucking, reject your strange social theory as abnormal and polarise the group against you. Goodbye, social retard.
2: *dies*

Pax

My sister has just received letters offering her a place at Godolphin & Latymer, St James’ (?), Heathfield (?) and St Paul’s. She’s somewhat inflated at the moment, because of her lack of professional tuition etc. and is also, along with my mother, displaying what is in fact the most flagrant spiteful bitchiness that I have ever seen. Ever. However, I hope she won’t make the same mistake I did and just not work, because then she’d be mediocre like me. Vicariously succeeding through her is not what I plan to do. I am now going to try to retain all these Chemistry notes.

Pax

The fact that no-one ever reads this stuff is simultaneously good and bad. To the point: ARGH. Most people using a Mac use it for some sort of retarded image factor without ever understanding any advantages it has ever had in any of its incarnations! I am disgusted - it’s not that hard not to be a narcissistic and sociopathic freakazoid with a penchant for gratuitous self-agrandising pseudo-soliloquies! Some people deserve death. Seriously.

Pax

I hereby turn my back on a world that I can never have. People do some things better than others. There is a lot of variance. Some people are at the fringes of the categorical map that envelops us. I’m sorry, but I would like to know! I would like to tell riddles in the dark! I would like to understand! Maybe I will be rewarded for my arrogance by being put in some terrible poverty or war, in which case, so be it! I deserve it!

SMITE ME!

Pax… oh, wait, no: Bellum

To be honest, my brain is off. I’ve been, well, not sleeping for a while now. At first I thought that it had few ill effects; I was tired but hardly out of action and fared well indeed - and still am doing so, apparently. However, there are a number of internal changes. Things I want to do appear to be drifting away and things are slipping and sliding into awkward positions and I wish I could get a handle on all this stuff but I just can’t. Maybe at Durston I was smart, but now I’m not. I possess neither knowledge nor understanding. I am a shadow - a shadow - of who or what I used to be. Whether what I used to be is idealised in my brain, I don’t know. I suspect it is, a little.

Anyway, there was another composer’s concert last night and it was okay. Some people (like me) couldn’t play what they had to play and others (like me) had written crap pieces with no dynamics, titles or structure (lol) but whatever. The music department pulled it off admirably. I’ve just written some disgustocrap (= disgustingly crap) piece, or disgustopiece, for my third piece of GCSE coursework. It’s pretty bad, seriously.

Quotation of the day (Composer’s Concert)
Elliot: (has been doing technology, not music, for the past one and a half years) *is in Cyrus’s vicinity*
Cyrus: (with an air of mild surprise) …I didn’t know you did music.

Lol that’s actually great. I respect Cyrus for assuming that Elliot could have been doing music for almost two years without being noticed. I genuinely respect him for that.

Also I have some fencing Nationals thing over the weekend, which sounds ominous. I’m going to do very badly. Really I am. But that’s not to say I’ll try!*

Anyway, I was just thinking BLEH. I wish that I could be an outgoing and fun person with lots of friends who did things. The cruellest joke of all is that I misunderstood things right from the start. I thought people were good at some things but not others - alas, then, when confronted with people at this school who are good at everything they need to be good at, I wasn’t intimidated but I failed. Ho ho! Total failure; meh, who needs to do well in exams, have a girlfriend, be a calculator, know all the chords, always keep their eye on the ball, set an example, sleep frequently? Oh, bollocks - I do.

*I meant “That’s not to say I won’t try!”… hmm… sleep deprivation, typo or Freudian slip, a symptom of a deep-seated psychological trauma? Ho ho, I don’t know.

Pax

P.S. I hate achieved talent. I hate natural talent. I hate genetics. I hate attractiveness. I hate personality. I hate hatred. I hate war. I hate peace. I hate life - not in a “ho ho i r go slash mi writsts 4 fun an den u’ll b sori ho ho” way, but more of a “Being sentient is the ultimate torture!”. This disgustocrap. Life is an impurity! I am not a nihilist but I am hormonal, sleep-deprived and ugly and therefore I will say these things! Long live the world, resting on its side!

Sometimes I really wonder what’s going on and why it never adds up. I feel like other people have felt like this, but they ignore it, paradoxically, and continue living a confused life until they die. Why be good or bad? Because it brings you happiness, or others happiness. What’s so special about happiness? Surely the same effect could be replicated by feeding in electrical signals to the brain, or by inducing a drug-enhanced euphoria? I don’t believe that the human condition makes sense. Life is fascinating and terrible. So be it.

Pax

Interesting to see people, like myself, lit up with the glow of arrogance. The School will fence Eton, the sabre team of which is apparently several orders more powerful than ours, soon. I can only hope that people will learn how to pull through!

Pax