Glorious return.

It has clearly been quite a while since my last post. France was wonderful, but it was also the sort of place that made me feel a bit guilty about writing blogs, if only because everyone else was doing it. It was largely what I expected, as an experience. I learned more of the language, had fun, and got to try out new things. What I did not do, of course, was make French friends, a feat that perhaps only two people in our entire program managed, and one could be called into question. I did make Canadian friends, for which I am grateful. New people, new friends, are important to me. I'm a very critical kind of person, and I need to move on frequently. Getting to know people enough to understand their flaws takes time, and if these flaws don't match my own, then I have difficulty remaining serious friends. I take the ones I can accept, and move on from the ones I can't. In the end, I have a selection of the best friends, and I'm constantly making more to make up for the fact that I'm not good at holding friends that I'm not that crazy about. France was stifling in this aspect; the majority of the people I met on the street could not be friended, simply because of the great gulf between my ability to speak the language and theirs.

Coming back to the US feels strange. Not in the sense that I hate it; I miss it dearly. I came to realize many of our shortcomings and weaknesses as a country, as a result of comparing it to others that I experienced in part while abroad, but that's not to say that I reject it. If I did, I just wouldn't have come back. But as always, my criticism of my country has only led me to realize how much I am dependent on it, and how much I need it. Being able to eat eggs and Slurpees again, I missed these sorts of things dearly. The American mindset, I have come to realize, is a very destructive and useless one; the US considers itself the 'best' country in the world because it's the current economic power. What happens when this changes, as it most certainly will in the future? What happens when we realize that money isn't everything? (We've been saying it for so very long, yet like hypocrites, we give no motion to believe it.)

I have come to realize as a result of my absence, that US culture is essentially based around the attitude of wastefulness and inefficiency. We see this as a good thing, so we overlook the majority of the ways in which we are wasteful, yet again, there will come a time in the future when we are no longer a world power, and we will have to deal with it. Britain did it. I only hope we can do it too. Maybe we might actually have to focus on human rights for once, because its something that we are hopelessly behind Europe on in most ways. I was originally quite angry and hostile in this analysis, and I thought of writing an angry blog about it. I decided that that probably isn't a good idea, considering my past history with angry blogs.

This post has been quite a long time coming. I thought of various ways to write it, but none of them proved satisfactory. Then, there's been the fact that I've been writing quite a lot in recent days. France was the sort of place where I felt a bit guilty writing in English, so I wrote conservatively. However, I still read quite a bit, and came to a few philosophical adjustments to my personal system. As such, I've got quite a bit to write, both to finish my novel and to record some ideas before they run away. All of these things mean that I've been putting this post off, and after a while, I began to wonder whether I should keep blogging at all. It's never given me too much positive feedback. At the same time, I feel like this life is something that should be documented. I want to be able to look back, and read these things. I want to know what I was thinking. I want to know how I will end up how I am. I want others to be able to as well, hopefully when my writing becomes accepted around the world. I can only hope.

A reading of both Nietzsche's The Will to Power, and Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Idea, has prompted me to make two realizations about philosophy. First, is that much of it is opinion. Logic is a device by which man follows chains of causality, yet it cannot create the first link, and cannot continue when the last link is met. It follows that we seek for these first chains, upon which to found pure logic, in our irrational, emotional, and opinionated sides. This explains the long held bias of philosophy for intelligence and art, and the reason why so many philosophers will argue passionately that their own artistic opinions are objective, and have definite meaning as some sort of key link in their philosophical system. Schopenhauer did it horribly, justifying art as the greatest action of mankind, while Nietzsche did it slightly better, but still classified certain arts and artists as weak and misguided, and others as indicative of great personal power. The inability for philosophers to metaphilosophize, to look at their system within the context of a series of systems (save to criticize and downplay) is shocking, and is something I find strangely absent in the moral philosophical field.

Secondly, I have finished a complete picture of the idea I had in mind at first, the moral system which I wish to lay out. It grew from my teenage years, and my obsession with power and the will to it, into something entirely different. To say that I support the will to live now, is an understatement, for it doesn't explicate the full philosophical meaning and implications of what I'm trying to do here. Reading Nietzsche, and seeing his flaws, helped me to see the flaws I once held in myself, and the errors that I made in my youth and impatience to make something of myself to the world. Seeing these errors, I have cemented my own position. I have come to a better understanding of it, refined and smoothed the edges. I would not say that it's finished. It's still a rather rough beast, and has quite a long way to go. But it's clearer in my mind, firmer. I can write a bit about it now, for an hour or two, before I run into a wall and must rethink. But it's better than before. It's better than nothing.

Not to say that I plan to finish it anytime soon. All the things I write in it now are just notes. Besides, my main project, my first novel, is nearly finished. Currently about 215 pages, it looks to be about 250 before I'm done, and now that I'm home for two months, I have quite a bit of time on my hands. I'm going back to work as well, but that still leaves me quite a bit of time every day, and while I need to catch up on my body work since I didn't lift a single weight in France, there's only so much of that that I can do. I have so much time, and I intend to finish this novel and be started on the next one before I go back to school. Now I only need to find a publisher really. Can't wait.

More France.

I've avoided writing this blog for a very long time, mostly because I simply don't know what I want to say. Most people, I'm sure, would be overflowing with things to discuss with everyone else while on this trip. I, on the other hand, have been trying to sort through these ideas and pick out the overriding trends in my thinking while I'm here. I understand that as I have been dropped into an entirely new environment, it is entirely possible that many new things will happen to me, and these overwhelming and conflicting experiences could very greatly influence my day to day thinking. Of course, I planned on having a more definite picture of my time here planned out a long time ago. I figured I would wait a week before writing this post. Instead, it took a month.

I love it here. Of course, I loved it back in the United States, so that really doesn't mean much at all. Things are very different; a lot of people ride bikes, bread, cheese, and wine are a far more important part of the average diet, the city is beautiful and filled with stores, and I'm enjoying my time. But that's not to say that France is any better than the U.S. It's simply different. While there are things that I enjoy very much, there are also some things that I dislike. Nothing is open on Sundays, our classes aren't terribly interesting, and worst of all, everyone seems to treat our stay in France like its a big deal.

I'm not saying it isn't. But I am saying that many people attach a lot more importance to this trip than it should have. Yes, we are in a foreign country, learning a new language, and of course this is bound to be intimidating. I find it far more difficult here to get used to doing ordinary things like respond to conversations fired at me from the street. I haven't yet found a job for our mandatory credited work project, because I'm afraid to ask people in French. There are many ways in which this place is very new and confusing. However, at the same time, most people seem to respond by either wanting to drink more or wanting to escape with their friends by going on vacation. I was always a fan of moderate alcohol consumption, and I don't see much of the point of going outside of France to explore other countries when this is both expensive and it gets us out of France, which I thought was supposed to be the main purpose of our voyage. I'm not condemning escapism; I've spent half the trip watching American tv shows in my room. I'm just wondering if people have the right ideas in mind when coming here, and I think that this is why they have so much trouble adapting, treat it so importantly, and often end up feeling like crap whenever the first bad thing here happens to them.

Again, I'm not sure exactly how I feel about living here. It's very different, and I'm learning the language very quickly, but at the same time I'm only realizing how similar it is to life in America. Yes, people eat different foods, take up different hobbies, are used to different rules and regulations and styles of living, and I've had my share of changing my lifestyle. I haven't had a chance to work out at all here, as doing so would require money I don't have, and have instead taken up running, which is a far healthier and more economic alternative in my situation. But I don't feel that this change is indicative of any huge differences in life. I feel like many of the unimportant aspects of life have been switched on me; I feel the basic human condition has not changed in the slightest. No, I do not mean to condemn the differences in culture as unimportant, as cultures are often steeped in years of tradition and habitual thought, and they are a powerful motivating force in the creation of identity for the individual and for everyone he comes in contact with. There is no place where cultural identity and history is more visible than in an alien country, particularly in one older than the U.S. (which might I add is many of them), but at the same time, I simply cannot understand it. Most men take society far more seriously than they should, and I feel that this is the reason why many people have issues when visiting another country for a prolonged period of time. Having taken the values of their own country too much to heart, they have difficulty adapting when those values are knocked out from under them.

I haven't placed the same amount of importance on cultural values, and it is for this reason that I have not had as much difficulty here. Perhaps this is a blessing, or perhaps it is a flaw, and you may think of it what you will. However, I will tell you that it is responsible for ensuring not only that I am a happier man at home in the U.S., but also that I am a happier man here in France, than what seems to be the average. This stems from an unhappy childhood, in which I was forced by teasing and bullying at a young age to realize that trusting your happiness to society is often a bad idea. I have overcome the rampant individualism that accidentally resulted from this early development, but I still value my individual life more than my social life, which I consider a flaw that I should remedy; it is difficult only in the fact that there seems to me to be more of society to detest than to love. I have concerned myself not with society, but with the human condition. This is a flaw, but it is a flaw that is inherent to my being and necessary for my continued existence in such a manner as I live now. As such, I am sorry, but I cannot see in myself how it is so.

So, France. Yes, I love it. It's a different life, it opens my mind, it makes me feel great. I'm learning the language quickly, and I enjoy that. I haven't experienced the ups and downs of such a life that many do. However, I couldn't really tell you whether or not it's really that good of a thing. It's both pleasant and displeasing, and therefore no better or worse than the society from which I came. I wouldn't give up the experience for anything, but I couldn't really tell you what the experience is.

France.

Well, I've just arrived in Strasbourg, and gotten settled into the apartment where I'll be living for the next four months. I haven't gotten to see much of my host family yet, although we'll be eating dinner later, so there will be plenty of time.

First thing is first. I don't want this blog to become a travel blog; I'm sick of travel blogs. Everyone has a travel blog this year. I'm not going to bore you with the details that are France; if you want to learn about it, try learning the language and coming here yourself. This may sound a bit harsh and perhaps ignorant, but I can find no other way to say it. As always, the reason that I will write this blog is primarily for myself, and not for any readership (not that I expect there to be much of one), and for the most part, I don't care about the details.

Let me revise that statement. Of course I care about the details, I care about them very much. But at the same time, they aren't why I'm here. I'm not here to learn about the color of paint on the front door, or the way the flowers are planted across the street. I'm here to learn about French culture, to immerse myself in their lifestyle, to improve my skills in the language, and hopefully, to develop and mature in ways that I would not otherwise. And these things, these important things, aren't the kind of things that you can simply capture with a few words in a blog here and there. You can try of course, and that is what I intend to do, but you must always try with the understanding that you are doomed to failure, and a certain sense that you must at least try to focus on the things most universal, most human, and most real, in order to make any headway. The act of recording is not about the data recorded; it is about the analysis of the data itself, through which new data arises and the process repeats itself. You don't learn, and then blog. You blog, and then learn, and then learn again, and you do this until the day that your short existence comes to an end.

That being said, I experienced (and perhaps still experience) some of the greatest fear that I have ever known, preparing for this trip. Unsure what to expect, how I would get here, how everything would work out, all these things ran through my mind. My relationship with my girlfriend hit a bit of a lowpoint just before I left, though that has resolved itself, and I fear that for the most part it was just myself taking out my anxiety over the upcoming circumstances on her. My fear will pass, naturally, as I become accustomed to my surroundings, but until then my heart pounds too quickly, too often.

Writing has gone well. Over the course of the last summer, I've managed to put in an hour or two a day, as many days a week as I could fit. Of course, this didn't work out too well on certain weeks when I was working quite a few hours, but for the most part I held to this schedule as best I could. The result, so far, has been a little over 100 pages of what I plan to be my first novel. I'm terribly proud of how well it's shaped up, in my eyes, over the course of its writing. In the beginning, I had a very simple plan sketched out in my mind, a plan that I carefully built up and added complexity to, making me proud of my ability to write. There are certainly a few mistakes here and there, as I could not always remember exactly what I had written in past segments, but for the most part it is a terribly cohesive whole, moving perfectly toward the direction I want it to go. I feel roughly halfway done, maybe a little further, and it's probably the first thing I've actually wanted to see to the conclusion since I began writing.

It's hard to explain, what it means to be content. Sure, you can have short-lived pleasure, you can enjoy a night out or a time spent with a friend, but pleasure has nothing to do with total contentment, which results from the planning of a purpose in life, and following it out to its conclusion. Victor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning might be a proper reference to make in this case. Purpose in life, and ultimately happiness and all reason for living, results from making our own goals and plans for ourselves, plans which are constructed so as to be challenging and yet not too much so, and then meeting them over periods of extended time. This is the sort of thing that I find myself coming into now, and the sort of thing that gives me the greatest joy.

It's so hard to describe the feeling of contentment, especially to many of the younger generation of which I am a part, who have not yet made their own lives, purposes, and dreams. I did not think myself too far apart from others, and yet here I am, looking back, realizing that the first part of my dream is well on the way to its conclusion. When I do anything, I compare the pleasure I experience now to writing, and rarely is it any compare.

It is also true that I have become perhaps a tad more hermit-like in the past year. I've come to greatly appreciate the value of solitude, and I love it perhaps more than anything else. This is difficult to reconcile with myself as a social being, and yet to me the glory of solitude is a natural complement to the other glories that are the social being; it simply so happens that the values which the hermit-life espouses, are the ones that I value most. I always had misgivings, during my month-long vow of silences, yet now I am finding this same vow of silence with me, whenever I have five minutes to myself. It is all the same to me, and it is all glorious.

I must go now, for I have tarried here too long.

Blah blah.

Yeah, so I haven't been thinking of this blog very much recently. This is because, as usual, I've been busy doing real things and so I don't often have time to sit back and think very much. Most of the summer has passed by, and I haven't written much of anything here. As such, I'll get it all out in one go.

For starters, I've been writing a lot, and I mean a LOT. I've been working on the novel that I began at the end of the last year, planning on finishing it before the end of next year. So far, I'm about halfway done. Add on to that the amount of shitty poetry I've been writing, and the random philosophical thoughts that I've been putting down in short bursts, and I've had quite a lot on my hands. The best part of it is that for once I'm actually seeing a novel through; this is the first time that I haven't gotten frustrated halfway and decided to quit. Instead, I'm right on that halfway point, and I'm actually quite excited to get on to more of it. On top of that, I have ideas for the next two or three books afterwards, and I have the sinking suspicion that I will actually finish those as well. If everything goes as planned, I may be spending my senior year hunting for a publisher.

On top of that, I've been spending my summer trying to catch up with old friends. Last summer, I saw all of my closer friends, but ended up ignoring most of the others that I wanted to see for some reason or another but couldn't. This year, I tried a bit harder, and managed to see quite a few of the ones that I've missed. It is natural that I should see less of them, as we've graduated high school and gone our separate ways, but catching up now and then is just as good in some ways, and it makes me feel a lot better than I did last summer about the whole situation, even if I still haven't seen many of the friends I've been looking to see.

My reading for the summer has turned largely to religions. I purchased a couple books on Hinduism near the end of the school year, as well as a copy of the Qur'an. I've just finished the latter, though I think that I much more enjoyed the former. The Qur'an, while indeed an important and complicated text, full of proliferated meaning and the accumulation of hundreds of years of cultural import, is also a terrible read in English, one of those cases where the real meaning and magic of it becomes lost in translation. The Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita, for example, are generally more straightforward and thought-provoking. This religious focus has prepared me for my next novel, which of course I do not plan to spoil anytime soon, but I will admit that it deals very heavily with my interpretation of religion, and my belief about the place of God in this world.

Other than that, my summer has involved a lot of the usual. Working two jobs, enjoying myself, seeing movies, hanging out with buddies, etc. There isn't very much that is important or revealing here. No grand conflicts, no epiphanies of thought, just plain old boring summer vacation. Blah, blah, blah. Now, I'm going to get to sleep.

If you're reading this, stop right now, and go found a religion or something.

The fame.

It seems like so long ago, now, that I began to have hopes and dreams. I went through most of my life without purpose, drive, or reason, and for this reason I hated my childhood and most of my high school years. It was the creations of these dreams, of these purposes in my life, that allowed me to escape depression and make myself into a somewhat competent person. Because of these dreams, I could realize my intellectual and physical strengths, and push myself to new heights.

But now when I look back on them, it is quite obvious that they have changed, a result of maturation and development. When I started off, I didn't really have much of a plan. I simply wished to be the greatest man in the world, and I really only wanted to be that man so that I could prove to a young woman that I was a worthy. But then, when I began to truly try to reach this limit of perfection, it became clear to me that I was going about it all wrong. Perfection isn't something you achieve for the sake of something else; it can only be achieved for its own sake and nothing else. And then, it obviously became clear that perfection was more than I could ever hope for, and that to pursue it was sort of foolish in the first place. I wanted to be strong, I wanted to be wise, I wanted to be famous. I wanted to do it all, and I wanted to be the first person to ever have done such a thing. The fact that no one had ever done it before, was just evidence that they didn't want it as hard as me. These foolish thoughts were my only comfort.

These thoughts never died out; as all things, they simply evolved and changed form. I've come to realize that it is simply impossible for any man to be perfect, and that this is true regardless of effort. It is also true that fame and fortune are largely accidental traits; they don't actually mean anything. They provide the appearance of wealth and happiness, but only this appearance. For anyone who truly has physical and spiritual wealth and happiness, fame means nothing, as do all appearances. Therefore, I have followed the original trend of my beliefs, and yet constantly cut out the weak and unintelligent aspects, trying to move ever toward whatever end it is that I am destined to accomplish.

I still want to be strong, smart, and renowned. I wish to be loved, and I wish to be able to love everyone. But, faced with the impossibility of loving the whole world, and being loved in return, (for to be human is to be limited, no matter how hard one tries to remove his limitations), I have come to accept only that love and strength and intelligence which I can earn and hold for myself. There is still a shadow of the old dream, which has not died, and never can. The new one may appear different and strange, older and more mature, but at its base it still has the foolish thoughts of a sixteen year old who wants to conquer the entire world.

The name of this blog is far more poignant today than it even was the day that I made it. In the beginning, I didn't have any plan here. I wanted to charm the world, and I wanted to control it all. With these simple thoughts in mind, I made up a name for myself, and worked on without a thought. Now, the title is so perfectly fitting. It captures exactly what it is that I've always worked towards, and yet at the same time all the absurdity and evolution that has already preceded to obscure that very meaning. I suppose I shall look back on this blog on my deathbed, and I will smile, for I will truly have mastered the world by then. Not in the way that my sixteen year old self would ever have thought, but in the ways that matter nonetheless.

This is the challenge of every generation, I believe. To attempt the impossible, to move forward and upward, while at the same time coming to understand our limits and the strange quirks of fate that hold us back from perfection. We are like creatures in an ocean, constantly swimming to a sunlight above that we can never reach. Sometimes, we may grow old and pass on, but our will and strength, our love and wish to prosper, can be passed on to our children, and they can take up the unending battle for perfection after we are gone.

This is that spark of the dream that still remains in me. The wish to improve, to increase, to grow ever upwards. Yet, now there is the spark of limitation in me as well. The wish to understand, to comprehend, to limit so as to create a perfect medium. Over time, this second spark, the downward spark, will overcome the upwards one, and I will prepare for my death. But now, in my youth, it is the upward impulse which prevails, and I understand what it is that I now must do.

It is my time. It is the time for me and all members of our generation. It is our time to either make our mark, or fade from all knowledge. Many wish to leave some bit of themselves behind, some evidence of their passing on the general lifestream of society. At first, we overestimate our importance. We hope that we can be everything, and control the mind of everyone, become all-important and all-knowing. The men and women like me in the world, we struggle and fight to make ourselves known, whatever the cost. Those that are victorious will find that they have only made some tiny mark on the world, some minor scratch on the surface of the human strata. Yet, for the enlightened mind, this becomes enough.

I have studied these creative and destructive impulses in man, the upward and the downward, the unlimiting and the limiting, and I have learned to balance them in myself to create the best possible life. It is upon this balance that I have founded all glory in my life, to which I have credited every victory. This balance is the basis for enlightenment; perfected by perhaps a half a century of study and practice, perhaps I will achieve true enlightenment. Perhaps I will one day achieve Nirvana, or consciousness with Brahman, or find the perfect Tao, or be welcomed into heaven, or be at one with the world.

And all because, as a foolish boy of sixteen, I dared to dream so, and never to let go of this dream.

Cutting back.

Wow. Well, first thing's first. I meant to write this shortly after the last one, but I just sort of kept on forgetting until it ended up right here. My summer has been very good so far, which might be part of the reason why it took so long. I keep feeling like I have nothing to say.

I've been trying to work as much as I can, at both of my jobs. Of course, I'm not getting very many hours in the first, and the second has been unluckily unprofitable for the first few weeks. However, things are starting to get back to running smoothly, so I'm feeling better about the whole situation. I've also been writing quite a bit, putting in an hour or two every day, and working out quite regularly. Of course, I've been behind on the reading I would like to do, but I had to suffer somewhere.

Writing has been moving along perfectly. I've gone back to writing my fantasy prequel / mildly philosophical coming-of-age tale, and at the rate that I'm working on it, I may even have it done before the end of the summer, which is massive for me. There would, of course, be tons of proofreading and all that to do before ever actually submitting it to be published, but this is still a huge step forward.

Writing used to be quite difficult for me. It wasn't fun, it was work, and I had to do it on my own time, which hurt me a lot. As such, of course I couldn't do it for very long, only in brief spurts and jumps. Worse, I would write something and then simply be out of the mood for a week or two, only delaying the process even more. But I put my mind to being a writer, and stuck through those odd bits. My vows of silence were the first and best step that I made to correct this. Focusing on nothing but writing for a month, I could truly make progress, and teach myself to begin to enjoy my writing. Now, this has begun to come to a head, and I can write for an hour or two without even realizing that time is passing. It's nowhere near the amount of time I'll have to be able to put in when I go professional, but of course that won't happen for another two years.

Speaking of another two years, it's something that I've been considering a lot lately.

My parents made some comment as usual, to the extent that I wasn't working enough, that I'm not going to be able to sustain myself on the amount of money that I'm making. I need more hours, and better jobs. Now, they're right. I've been thinking about it, and trying to realize where it is in my life that I can cut back. There's only one main place that I can do so, I realize, as much as it hurts: weightlifting.

Lifting weights requires a lot more energy than simply living your life. Not only do you need to consume the calories to do much more physical work than the usual human, you also need extra nutrients, proteins, and calories in order to properly build muscle and make the most of your exercise. When I go to France in a few months, I'm not going to have access to a gym attached to the school, meaning that I would have to arrange for a membership in a French gym. When you factor in the time spent weightlifting, of two hours or so every day or two, the amount of money needed to purchase a membership in a gym, and the amount of food I would need to consume, it becomes clear that I cannot sustain this sort of life when I go to France. Perhaps, even when I come back I won't continue.

I will continue to run and get in my cardio, as well as remaining stretched out. These are relatively low-demand types of exercise that are highly beneficial to my health, and they don't require any gym equipment. Looking at it now, I don't think I will ever go back to weightlifting.

I've made the claim before, to myself and others, that I don't ever think I will be addicted to anything in my life. It's true, because after my high school years and the terrible addiction that I suffered under back then, I've learned my lesson. Any time I grow too attached to something, I generally realize this, and let it go, generally overnight. This is the same thing I tried to do with my girlfriend, until I realized that I did truly love her, and my affection wasn't a bad thing. Often times, the things we become addicted to hardly are bad things, we've just made them so. Routine is the death of all meaning, and when something becomes so routine that it is unquestioned, so all meaning fades and it becomes nothing but mindless action. This is why a bit of alcohol is a good thing; it shakes up life and makes things interesting, and this is also why too much of it is a bad thing; when alcohol, or anything for that matter, becomes routine, it loses all meaning, and becomes more detrimental than beneficial.

Looking back, I've been addicted to many things, in the sense that I made them a routine part of my life without even meaning to, without even thinking about my decisions. I don't see this over-attachment as anything debilitating, because I've gotten over it. So the same is with myself and working out. I enjoyed it immensely, and I still do. There's nothing wrong with it, but it's simply begun to become too routine. It's beginning to lose meaning, and become an addiction. I can't have that. Now, it is time to say goodbye to it, even though it was half the reason I pulled myself out of depression and ever stayed alive in the first place. There was a time and a place in my life for it, and that time is passing. It's time to use the time that I spent honing my body, and hone other things. Perhaps I will return, but only when the time is right, and not until then. Now is not the time.

As such, I'm slowly moving myself off. I'm cutting down on my workouts, and focusing more on the aspects of exercise that I will be keeping. I'm moving towards the right balance, a sustainable balance, that I can use in the future.

Life is grand.

Maturity. Intelligence.

I've been very busy recently, what with finals and the end of the year and other things on my mind. However, I've managed to work in a good deal of writing as well, so I've been feeling rather satisfied with it all. Recently, there have been two major things on my mind. The first is maturity, and the second is intelligence.

Maturity is something that we seem to assume out of everyone nowadays, but it also seems like very few people actually have it. There have been divisions in my group of friends recently, spurred on partly by the incompatibility of several of our members, and mostly from the amount of drama and passive-aggressive behavior that has been going around. The thing that has really bothered me, however, is that both sides consider themselves the reasonable ones, that neither considers themselves to be guilty of anything. In every case, it is exclusively the fault of the other party.

I would argue that this is rarely true. Certainly, there are times when one party is entirely at fault, and the other is entirely deserving of a bit of scorn and derision to make themselves feel better, but this is very rare in comparison. Most generally, both sides are at fault, and the fight amounts not to a redress of grievances, but an attempt by both sides to make the opponent's issues seem bigger, so as to ignore their own. Even if only one side is at fault, the other side will often be overzealous in their righteousness, creating fault for themselves.

Now, it is of course too much to wish that people would act with perfect maturity in arguments; no one is capable of such a thing. Even then, acting with maturity would generally mean that fights are altogether avoided, as all possible faults would be quickly and effectively dealt with before they become full blown fights. But it only hurts me to realize that people that I know and care about, and deeply respect, are capable of lapses in their maturity levels. I don't wish to claim any moral high ground here, either. I act with surprising immaturity at times as well. But the fact that I am able to recognize this, rather than pretending that there is no problem, is generally superior to the idea of myself going about committing immature actions and not knowing about them.

In light of recent personal development, as well as the problems that I've seen around me, I've tried to act with more maturity. I've been trying to listen to both sides of the argument between my friends, and come to an understanding of the grievances on both sides. I don't have any perfect knowledge of the situation, but perhaps a more clear picture than most of the others. I've also made efforts to apologize to some people that I've hurt in the past. By the time I recently wrote them apologies, I felt that the issues involved were long dead, but I sent them anyway, to try and make something better out of my relationship with people. Just today, as I was packing my things, one person that I had apologized to talked to me for the first time this year. Of course we did not talk for very long, and I did not properly express myself to this person, but the way in which she responded revealed that she respected the decision to apologize, and it was that respect that I am working towards.

I want nothing other than the respect and love of the people. I understand that I may say hurtful things, I may judge quickly, and I may often act without respect in the moment. But I don't intend any of these things, and I am trying to change the way I act. I am trying to be more mature, I'm trying to get people to understand that I am truly a good person, even if I struggle, and even if my methods differ from what everyone expects of a 'good' person. That feeling that I felt this afternoon, that I had done this right, that I had truly earned someone's respect, (or at least some tiny portion of it), made me happier than I've been in quite some time.

The other thing that has been on my mind is intelligence. First, there was the question of what intelligence is, a question that has not had a satisfactory answer provided. Here is what I have divined for myself.

Intelligence is not rote learning; monkeys can do that. Even then, in the case of rote learning intelligence isn't actually very helpful. A more intelligent person in terms of rote learning would be able to memorize faster, but this doesn't guarantee that he would learn any better, and this doesn't mean that he actually needs this speed. For example, let us say that one man can learn the intellectual skills for a single profession, and master them, over the course of his lifetime. Now let's say that a second man could do this same thing over the course of half of a lifetime, and with the other half master a second job. The problem here is, he doesn't need a second job! A certain amount of knowledge is necessary in order to survive, but after that amount is met, then at some point the accumulation of extra knowledge ceases to have any practical purpose, simply because it can't be used. In this problem, the first man is actually more successful, despite the fact that he is less intelligent; he has his life set for him, whereas the second man simply wastes his time and effort out of boredom, and is unlikely to be satisfied at this point.

It is also clear to me that intelligence is not all that society has cracked it up to be. Society has, for some time now, begun to impress upon us the idea that intelligence is the most important attribute of man. First, this importance was foisted on us by the philosophers and learned men, and then the public in general. The problem is, that this isn't true. A man's strength, his willpower, his stamina, his skill with the canvas or the instrument, these are all equally good. However, society has long convinced us that intelligence is superior, and given men of intelligence a disproportionate share in life, because theirs is the 'better' life. Let's be honest. The only reason that we care about our intelligence, is because it is the evolutionary quirk that got us on top of the earth in the first place. We only hail it because it benefits society, not because it actually benefits a man any more than any other attribute of himself he could choose to hone. Intelligence is responsible for our high level of technology in the world today; this amount of technology is superfluous, and we would live much happier lives without it.

It is also clear that there exists a negative strain of intelligence, the intelligibility of being stupid. For example, there are many students I have known in my classes to speak forever about topics which are tangentially related to their basic material. From a literary standpoint, the purpose of intelligence is to divine meaning. But there becomes a point at which this divination of meaning becomes superfluous, simply because certain meanings were not originally intended, or do not carry sufficient evidence to warrant their exploration in the text. These people are doing thing right by the textbook; they are finding meanings when they talk longer. But the fact is that they are still somehow doing it wrong. It is clear, then, that there is an aspect of intelligence which is negative, that is, that it restricts itself and in the process is actually more effective. To give an example, I believe that a man is benefited by a study of philosophy so that he can develop his ideals; however, I also know that spouting my ideals in certain situations will not benefit me, but probably get my ass kicked. This is an example of negative intelligence at work; in knowing when not to be intelligent, I can actually be more intelligent. This negative intelligence is commonly referred to as 'wisdom' or 'street smarts', and it is the type of intelligence that is valued in the east over the positive intelligence in the west. This is why we consider buddhist and taoist monks to be far more intelligent than the ordinary man, despite the fact that they study little and produce little; because they have mastered the art of not knowing moreso than anyone else, they have appeared wise and intelligent to us.

It is also true that among comparable levels of intelligence, a man with an intelligent lifestyle is more valued; in other words, intelligence is not necessarily seen as an attribute in all cases, but a way of living. Of two men who both score similarly on standardized tests, one can be sloppy and inefficient in his personal life, while the other is neat and dedicated to the furtherance of his studies. Both may be equally intelligent, but one is more effective and more respected. I would argue that many of the 'great men' and 'great women' of the past century are not necessarily any greater than other, similarly intelligent people, but that they have simply adopted a lifestyle that is more conducive to intelligence, and thus optimized their intellectual capacities, rather than minimizing it as the lazy intelligent man does.

In the face of these criticisms, I have come to understand for myself that intelligence is not necessarily the end-all of life, unless one is a slave to the construct of society, which is the only thing that truly needs intelligence. Having thrown off this yoke, I now wonder what I've spent my life doing. It is also clear to me that despite the fact that I've dedicated my life for the past few years to learning more and being smarter than everyone else, no one else shares my passion, and no one has any real use for intelligence. The true man of the intellect, that is, the man who has dedicated his intelligence not to picking up a job, but to furthering his intelligence, has few options available to him after study. The most prevalent one is that of the teacher or professor, but I learned for myself, not for others, and I have no will to teach. Where does that leave me? Men of intelligence can always make their way in society, but only by distinguishing themselves, and the available options nowadays are few and far between. I understand that most likely after college I will continue to work in fast food until I can get a book published; I certainly wish that society was more forgiving to the hand that feeds it.

But that is enough for tonight. I must sleep, for tomorrow I must write much more.