War

Ex-smokers often talk about the difficulty of breaking the habit. "The hardest part," they say, "is right after breakfast," or "during coffee break," or "right after sex." Why? Because that's when they were accustomed to lighting up. So right after breakfast, when they would normally be having their first cigarette of the day but aren't, their mind starts shouting at them.

"What are you doing?" it cries, tapping its watch. "You should be smoking right now. It's time!"

It's not the physical addiction that's difficult to overcome: it's the habit.

Habits are like ruts in your life-path. They're formed and deepened by repetition. Henry David Thoreau wrote,

As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.

After a year of writing daily, these last weeks have felt strange to say the least. Like the ex-smoker, my brain keeps telling me I should be here working on my next post.

So what am I doing instead?

Preparing.

You can't charge blindly into war. You need a strategy. You need to sharpen your weapons and train your soldiers. 

Every time that voice pipes up and yells at me to go write, I put my head down and keep working.

Remember the plan, I tell myself. 

First, I'm putting my arsenal together. And since my war is an internal one, a war of words, it is only fitting that I start with my notes.

Every book I've read int he last year is filled with highlighted passages and sections. These are the bits I want to study in more detail or the lines that rang with truth. These are my weapons and I've spent the last two weeks making a detailed inventory of them by manually copying all my notes into word documents.

It's as exciting as it sounds, folks, but there's no avoiding it.

I'm sure there's an easier way of doing this. I could probably export my Kindle notes without typing them up all but then I wouldn't get to revisit some of the ideas that jumped out at me over the last year.

Being organized facilitates the work ahead. Sure, right now it feels like I'm wasting time, like I'm shirking some responsibility or avoiding an inevitability, but I know very well that this is Resistance trying to slow me down.

When I finally get down to the task at hand, it will be with swords sharpened and armour polished. Not only that, but with a strategy for winning the war. No more going in blind for me.

Once I get all my notes transcribed, I'll start labeling and organizing them thematically. And in order to silence my nagging mind, I'll share some of my favourite highlights right here and throw in some rambling commentary to boot.

And what better way to start than with a few lines from Steven Pressfield's most excellent book, The War of Art!

The premise to Pressfield's book is simple to grasp. According to him,

Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.

Resistance is a force generated by the ego and its sole function is to stop you from bettering yourself. Whether it's a diet, new business venture, or that book you want to write, Resistance will find ways to confound and trip you up. It lies, cheats, appeals to your fears and insecurities. It's that little voice that tells you you're not good enough, that there's no point, that it won't work anyway.

Look in your own heart. Unless I'm crazy, right now a still, small voice is piping up, telling you as it has ten thousand times before, the calling that is yours and yours alone. You know it. No one has to tell you.

That's your unlived life. You know what it is just as well as you know your own name. You might bury it under the worries and fixations of the ego but beneath those layers of bullshit, you know exactly what your soul desires. This is the life you were meant for but fear pursuing.

And unless I'm crazy, you're no closer to taking action on it than you were yesterday or will be tomorrow. You think Resistance isn't real? Resistance will bury you.

Indeed! Like an anchor it will bog you down mentally, physically, and emotionally. When you get home and complete the mundane tasks of adulthood, the last thing you want to do is [paint/write/organize/exercise/think/study/build/plan] You're exhausted from carrying Resistance around all day. [Painting/writing/organizing/exercising/thinking/studying/building/planning] just feels like more work, anyway.

What you need to do is relax. Put your laptop away! You had a long day. Don't lace up your runners. Don't start that project. See that couch over there? It's warm and comfy and it's been waiting for you all day.

And then, when you're at the office, job site, or shop doing real work, you think to yourself, "I wish I could do what I love for a living!"

You could! But you never will unless you start. Only whenever you get the chance to start you cop out. You're tired. Not in the mood. Work was brutal. You just want to watch TV and unwind.

Meanwhile, you're not getting any closer to manifesting your unlived life. You're drifting aimlessly, knocking from port to port and acting lost when in reality you have the map and compass in your damn hands! And you feel this vague gnawing in the pit of your being, this nagging sensation that says you should be doing something else, that you were meant for something greater.

And you're right!

We come into this world with a specific, personal destiny. We have a job to do, a calling to enact, a self to become. We are who we are from the cradle, and we're stuck with it.

No, you haven't been robbed of your rightful destiny; you simply haven't taken steps to claim it.

Our job in this lifetime is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it.

Stop waiting around on uncertainties and future promises. Whatever your calling, whoever you need to become, the time is now. Don't surrender to procrastination, doubt, and the other lies Resistance peddles. It's your job to become the best possible you there is.

Now get started!

Thanksgiving Rant

The end of a melody is not its goal: but nonetheless, had the melody not reached its end it would not have reached its goal either. A parable.

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

When I first started the Meme Merchant, my intention was to write for a year and then convert my articles into a book. I don't know whether I'll do that now but I do know that my year is up (it's actually been a year and a month, but who's counting?) and it's time for me to move on to some new projects.

Before we get into that, I'd first like to say thank you to the people who helped, supported, and inspired me over the last year. 

Steven Pressfield: I've been writing on and off for decades but I never had the discipline to write consistently until I read your book, The War of Art. Your take on the writer's path and the obstacles that obstruct it really put things into perspective for me. It's so simple: the most important part of being a writer is writing. I get it now. Every day I wait for the Muse to visit me and she rarely misses our appointments.

Jessica: thanks for giving me some valuable feedback regarding the look and feel of the blog. I hope it isn't too hard on the eyes!

Big Shaq: thanks for giving me feedback on the length of my articles and suggesting that I post on the same days every week. Having a structure and routine really helped me get organized with my writing and I think it's probably helped with my traffic as well. As always, you're a sexy scholar and a gentleman.  

Thanks to Dan Meilleur for his contribution and for letting me read an advance copy of his Atheist's Bible. I look forward to reading the finished product when it's ready and I hope to work with you again in the future.

Thanks also to Tom Ippen for his excellent piece on the role of war in the modern world. It's a must-read and timely reminder, especially in light of recent and ongoing events in the Levant and Ukraine.

Thanks to Stephen Harper for being the worst prime minister in recent memory. You'll be happy to know that you single-handedly shattered my political apathy. Well, that's not quite true: your flunkies helped quite a bit, too. In any case, 2015 will be a historical year for me as it will mark the first time I vote in a federal election. I am eagerly awaiting to do my part in getting you and your Northern Republicans out of office.

David: thanks for putting me onto Alan Watts and the video attached below. I've re-watched it more times than I can count! The perfect balance of truth, beauty, and #pewpew. Greatly appreciated.

Kyle and Aaron: you two are by far my most vocal cheerleaders. No one has shared my work with others as much as you two and I am deeply grateful and humbled by your support. Not sure what I did to earn it but I'll do my best not to lose it.

Thanks to Cyrus the Great for being so goddamn awesome. Yours was a shining example of wit, wisdom, might, and philanthropy. The world desperately needs more leaders like you. October 29th is marked on my calendar, dude. Your life is worth commemorating!

Jason: thanks for suggesting that I write about the teachers' strike. I know our opinions on this topic differ and I hope you weren't offended by my assessment of the situation. That post, by the way, drove more traffic to my blog than anything else I've written and I couldn't of done it without your suggestion!

And Crystal, my little pendeja: your aggressive and shameless promotion of the aforementioned teachers' strike piece made me feel like I was actually part of something greater, like I took a stand and it meant something. Thanks for getting behind it and for pushing it out to your people!

Tarek and Youssef: thanks for putting me onto Paul Hawken's "Ecology of Commerce. Now if only our politicians read it and applied its principles to policy making! Thanks also for showing me that the Law of Attraction does indeed work. How else do you explain the circumstances of our meeting? It's not every day that you meet strangers in the Sheraton hot tub, strike up a conversation about politics and religion, and go out for dinner afterward! You guys are classy as fuck and I wish you both the best. If you're ever up here again, drop me a line!

Almost done.

Thanks to Socrates, Zeno of Citium, Lucius Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius for putting into words what has long resided in my heart. Discovering Stoicism earlier this year was like coming home for the first time. It clicked instantly.

Your collected works and ideas have had a profound effect on how I view the world and operate in it.
You've helped me get off the treadmill and appreciate what I have. You've taught me to regard the universe and my brief time in it with reverence and awe. More importantly, you've confirmed what I always believed: that happiness is a state of mind completely unrelated to the external world and
available to anyone who wishes to grasp it.

Last but not least, thanks to DJ Candy Pants for supporting and believing in me. I'm blessed to have a wife and best friend like you. Your love is like fuel: it drives me to be the best husband, father, and person I can possibly be. I can say without a shred of exaggeration that you are my inspiration and the sole reason I put down the toilet seat. Thanks babe!

Okay, so what's next?

I'm going to shift gears a bit. Instead of writing about all these heavy, confusing topics, I'm going to keep things really casual. I'll update you guys on the projects I'm working on, drop samples, or document my oddball opinions and observations about news, pop culture, or anything else that takes my fancy.

Come to think of it, that sounds a lot like what I'm doing now! Only, I'll be doing a lot less of it going forward. Expect shorter posts and fewer of them.

Thanks to those I mentioned above and everyone else who has taken the time to read my work. I hope you derived some value or benefit from this blog: I know I did!

Cheers,

Oscar

Semantics

All this time I've been talking about how ideas shape our world but I neglected to discuss a key piece of this phenomena. Ideas alone can't do much. In order to have an impact on physical reality, they have to spread from person to person. The topic of this article is not the ideas themselves but rather their vehicle: words.

Words are symbols that represent concepts, notions, feelings, and meaning. When I say the word "chair," an image instantly materializes in your mind: a four-legged contraption with a flat section for your ass and a piece to support your back. The chair in your head probably looks different from the chair in mine but that's to be expected. Cosmetics will vary based on past experience and memories but the core concept, the essence of "chair," is the same.

Simple ideas are more easily carried by words than their complex or ambiguous counterparts. When dealing with simple or static ideas, language exceeds its mandate. When dealing with nebulous concepts such as "truth," "reality," or "God," misunderstandings emerge. Disagreements become more frequent because definitions vary from person to person.

It was my use of the word "sin" in this article that convinced me to write about semantics. When I shared the above piece in a Stoic message board online I got the following feedback from a user named TheWhiteNoise1:

Not too bad except: "For most people, the knowledge of sin is nothing more than an opportunity to practice denial and willful ignorance" is absurd to me because sin is not a reasonable concept to me and therefore not in line with stoicism.

Clearly TheWhiteNoise1's definition of "sin" differs from mine. My guess is that he/she reacted to the Christian connotation of the word, which is unfortunate because the context of my article was distinctly un-Christian. My reply went as follows:

Don't get hung up on semantics. You're letting words have power over you when it should be the other way around. We own words, we make of them what we want. Call it flaw, weakness, whatever, the idea is the same.

Thing is, I get into these types of misunderstanding all the time.  It's fully my fault, too, because I insist on using words as I see fit, definitions be damned!

We have to remember that we invented language. Words work for us, not the other way around. We rule them. We determine what they mean and how we use them. If they were rigid or absolute, their definitions wouldn't change over time. When old words are used in new ways, their meaning changes by consensus. Language is fluid and we direct its flow whether we know it or not.

Language evolves, just like everything else in the universe.

I enjoy taking charged words and making them my own and I don't mind switching between different words to describe or express the same idea. It's my belief that concepts such as "God," "soul," "sin," "salvation," and "fate," among others, all have valid counterparts in modern language that work in concert with our scientific understanding of the universe.

Let me give you some examples.

When our ancestors wrote about the human soul, they were merely describing human consciousness. What is consciousness if not the essence of the Self, the knowing, observing entity lurking behind your thoughts and driving your decisions and actions? Science still can't explain what human consciousness is or how it emerged so it's not like we're contradicting an accepted definition here, just using a different label to describe the same mysterious thing.

When our ancestors wrote about heaven and hell, what do you suppose they were talking about? As the poet John Milton once wrote, "The mind is its own place and in itself, can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven." In other words, heaven and hell are internal conditions of the mind, not actual places you go to after you die.

A mind rooted in the hateful, bitter, jealous, paranoid, anxious, and unhappy manifests for its owner a world fully furnished with dangers and painted in sombre colors. On the other hand, a mind rooted in love, joy, compassion, hope, patience, and humility manifests for its owner a world of stunning beauty furnished with awe-inspiring miracles and permeated with the infinite Love of God.  

Which brings us to the G word itself.

When our ancestors wrote about God they were talking about the highest power they could conceive. The barbaric God of the Old Testament represents the cutting edge of Hebrew imagination at the time. Yahweh was literally the greatest being these people could dream up, and they painted Him with all of their hopes, fears, biases, and grudges.

What is the highest power conceivable to a modern, scientifically literate person? Is there something that is all-seeing, all-knowing, all-present, and all-powerful, and whose existence can be fact-checked?

When I use the word God, I mean the sum of all things--all matter and energy--along with the seemingly intelligent laws that govern it. If you've been following along, this is more or less the pantheistic God of Seneca, Aurelius, Jefferson, and Einstein, among others.

You are not a single unit: you are the sum of your limbs, organs, fluids, and intellectual capacities. Your liver isn't you, but it's a part of you. Likewise, the individual parts making up the whole are not God, but a part of God.

When taken together as a whole, these parts constitute the ultimate power, the unity of all things, infinitely divisible but to which nothing can be added.

God is the sum of existence, the Alpha and Omega, the self-created and eternal Universe.

This is usually the time when someone objects, saying: "We already have a perfectly good word for the universe. Why call it God?" To which I would let Paul Harrison, president of the World Pantheism Movement, reply:

To call the Universe "God" or "divine" is not at all meaningless. Although it does not tell us anything extra about the Universe itself,  it expresses the powerful emotions that pantheists feel towards the Universe.

Intelligent design is evolution. Salvation is self-improvement and fulfillment. Fate is the external world you inherited from your ancestors, the result of cause and effect stretching back to the Big Bang itself. Free-will is freedom of choice.

I could go on but I'm quickly surpassing my 1,000 word limit so I'll summarize my view on words with this quote from the late Alan Watts:

The menu is not the meal.

/rant over