Barry Puzzle

pinkphilosopher:

I have mostly spent today talking to people about Hitler. Always watch what books I’ve recently purchased to know whether or not you’ll need to avoid me for a week. Anyway, I’m learning so much that I did not know about Hitler before. The more and more I read about him, the more he becomes a real person to me, but of course not necessarily one I agree with. Seeing Hitler as a human being, with a real human childhood, adolescent angst, and young adult struggles,  brings to the fore something which needs to be noted and taken heed of for everyone in all times. Any of us could become a sort of Hitler, albeit our own versions. Any of us could choose to behave a certain way and disregard human suffering. Experiments have proven this to be true. Worse yet, even more of us are willing to stand by and either endorse or at the very least turn a blind eye to, suffering inflicted on others by someone else, as long as we do not have to take part or become victims ourselves. Humans have the capacity to be all things. 

The only real danger in reading about the Nazis is that they’re so awful, the temptation to think “Well, that could never happen again” is very strong. It could happen again, very easily, and Hitler has kindly given us a series of warning signs to look out for, including:

• pathological hatred of liberal thinking and the left in general;
• fetishizing the military;
• destruction of unions or any attempt to organise labour;
• fear and hatred of immigrants and foreigners generally;
• blind, unquestioning nationalistic patriotism;
• use of religious iconography and paradigms;
• suppression (and mockery of) any kind of intellectualism;
• elimination of corporate taxes, or any other impediment to corporations or private wealth;
• overt and extensive use of propaganda.

So, you know, if you spot any of that, be sure to point it out and don’t keep it to yourself. We tried that before and it didn’t work out so well. 

pinkphilosopher:

Becoming an Ubermensch is difficult but rewarding. Difficult because the hindrance towards success comes from within and rewarding because failure cannot come from without.

pinkphilosopher:

I’m giving it all I’ve got, this living thing. There’s not much else going on is there? Living in a constant state of rebellion against the almost unbelievable reality that I exist doesnt seem to be doing anything for me.

Sometimes I feel like my mere existence (or just the fact that someone like me exists on this planet) is a pure, burning act of artistic creation. I feel the same way about you. 

I don’t know how proud we should be, or ashamed, given that we were more or less thrust into this reality without our consultation, but there it is, our every waking moment a tiny rebellion.

The thing about art is that it doesn’t have to “be doing” anything for you. It exists independently of means and ends. It exists for itself. And so should we.

pinkphilosopher:

Sometimes, I go about my daily life with the bravest appearance of competency. I realised quite abruptly while growing up that to look like you hadn’t a clue was an invitation to ill-wishers. I learnt how to seem tough and guarded. It must be said that underneath, I literally have not got the faintest idea how lots of things in daily life work. I was in the supermarket just today when my boyfriend found me staring perplexedly at a deodorant bottle, trying to work out how to make it spray. He stared at me with a genuine expression of consternation and said ‘sometimes I worry about you. you’re not well.’ He explained that he could not understand how someone with intelligent observations on complex matters could be so stupid in practical matters. Because that must be how I appear; stupid. And I must admit, I am rather at a loss when it comes to daily living. This is a very shamefaced post but it must be documented. I haven’t got a clue about basic matters of self-preservation and survival. 

I get a lot of that too: “How can you be so clever and so stupid?” It’s hard to explain unless you’ve experienced it, but on one level, I think my brain subconsciously refuses to process trivial information. Unfortunately, without my consent, it regards most day-to-day essential life skills as “trivial”. My brain is fizzing and popping the whole time with literature, philosophy, stories I want to write, physics, religion, mythology, television shows, movies and the structure of comedy, keeping me madly awake for most of the night, but nothing in the way of something that might help me in the real world, where the humans live.

“That happens to me too!” No it doesn’t. Fuck off. You have no idea.

I used to try my best to learn how to be normal, how normal things worked, how normal people spoke, how they acted, but it just came off as insincere and even more weird than if I had not bothered, and it caused me to nurture a lovely array of tics and nail-biting and other indications of extreme stress. Now I just don’t care. I aggressively pursue the idea of being myself, and if that doesn’t work for someone, well one of us is leaving the room. And if Arrested Development is on, that person is not going to be me.

Of course there are negative reactions. There are dark mutterings about having a “selective memory”. Well, if I was able to pick and choose what I could forget, I’d probably start with everything I know about Celebrity Big Brother and The Bachelorette.

So, my short term memory is shot to hell, and I’m so anti-social that I’m more or less dysfunctional in a room with more than one human in it. To most people, that would be a insurmountable disadvantage. I have decided to, er, surmount (?) it by developing my core personality, which is that of an extremely sarcastic, cynical, racist, sexist, elitist asshole who can make you laugh at the holocaust and child rape. 

So if you know me in the real life, and your thoughts inevitably wander to “Jesus Christ what the fuck did he just say?” - now you know why.