A most hallowed day, Holla-ween

Sabbath, n. A weekly festival having its origin in the fact that God made the world in six days and was arrested on the seventh.

The Devil's Dictionary (1911)

October

"Cynic, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be."
Ambrose Bierce, in The Devil's Dictionary (1911)

"Cynic - a disappointed idealist"

This aforementioned thought, cynic - a disappointed idealist, has echoed and lingered in my thoughts for a week now. It is lifted from Neil Peart's "Ghost Rider", though the thought itself is not attributed to Mr. Peart himself. I cannot bring myself to remember whose idea it was in the first place, and in this context it hardly does matter.

I cannot call myself an idealist. There has never been a point in my existence where I have felt that I believe vigorously, blindly and strongly enough in a human-made abstraction (an idea) to justify such a predicament. I have come close though for another version of the aforementioned phrase is "Cynic - a disappointed romantic". An idealist, or a romantic for that matter, is a person to whom the natural world is not enough. It is through abstractions that the human beings make the world a better place for themselves, or condemn themselves to a dystopia beyond anyone's darkest dreams. I'd rather stay in the middle, that is to say, on the threshold of what is real. Taking one's head out the proverbial ass of second tier metaphysical constructs of sophists is never a wrong thing to do. The world might look a tad bit bleak, but I'd rather stare at the abyss of how-things-are than fill my conscious thought with delusions, and ad-hoc through another goddamn day filled with self-deception, self-forgetting and self-gratification.

There was a time when I thought I could narrow down the raison d'être into two simple words, and their absolute meaning, "to love and to learn". To place one's foundation of mental perception of existence upon something so fragile is frankly ingenuous, not to mention foolish and stupid. There is no amount of consolation and hope in this world to mend the wounds when that tower of nonsense falls. While I do think that such things as "to love" or "to learn" are important, for the lack of a better word, they simply are not robust enough to serve as a solid foundations of living, or meet the proper qualification of being alive. It is something only an idealist, or a romantic, would consider to be a plausible solution for Weltschmerz. These things, of course, mean different things to people. I know individuals who are more than happy to be tourists in their own life, some of them acknowlege it, and some of them are even proud of it.

It is not my profession to tell people how to live, but I suffer the consequences of the sleepwalk of others every day, and so does everyone else, whether they acknowlege it or not.

Absorbing (October)

Reading:
"Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work", Paul Babiak & Robert D. Hare

Listening:
"Snakes & Arrows", Rush
"Shatter, Eparistera Daimones Accompanied", Triptykon

Observing:
"R30", Rush

Playing:
"Assassin's Creed II", Ubisoft

Dependence

"Rely on what someone does, not what they claim to do."