Banal Confessions From A Confused Teenager

From Tides of Flame:

Am I a person?

Capitalism says no. I am your plaything. Buy me, exploit me, derail my lust for life with nonsensical material things, replace my being with your profits. I go to school seven hours a day, five days a week, forty five weeks a year, for nearly twelve years with the sole intent of becoming an active member of my “community” and achieving a high paying role in your little game of life. Rob me of my innate passion and bar me with deceit so you may prosper; long live the king!

What do I want from life, why, only the best, my sir, what can you spare me? Can I have a house? Can I have a family? Can I have stability? Can I have love? Can I be free? Yes? You’ll give those to me? But at a negotiable price. It comes on a sliding scale, you see. Be my bitch and I’ll grant you all the riches of the world, all the power to exploit the miserable slouches who suffer by birthright! Doesn’t that sound like a dream come true? Well it was, once upon a time, but now it is our reality, yours and mine combined. Try not to flee, I’ll hunt you down. You cannot escape, I am all around you, I surround you.

But what if this isn’t the life for me? What if I graduate from my dark prison cell and embrace the real world, the world of adults and money and suffering and homelessness and food stamps and you cut me off? What if my degrees mean nothing to those who sit in glass castles and they simply toss me aside, deleting my nine digit identification number from their records and leaving me to check groceries in my local Safeway, drowning under the weight of my mortgage and failed expectations? Don’t forget your change, sir! Here, take a dream as you leave.

I want out! Leave me a tunnel, leave me an escape route, please! This is not the life for me! I try to flee, but my total escape requires an enraged, fiery awakening of the masses! So revolt, fellow lovers of life, revolt in your homes and workplaces and public spaces! I beg you all, see camaraderie and not authority, humanity and not slaves! However, I fear an awakening of this sort will not come soon enough.

Luckily I’ve been grasped and shaken, but even so, you, my precious dollar sign, have extended your tendrils around those closest to me, locking me with a guilt you created into a life I do not want. Even my dissent is synthesized by you!
My loving parents want only the best for me; they want to educate me; they want me to attend a good college; they want me to find the economic stability I grew up without; they want me to find whatever happiness I can salvage. They want me to thrive. But we lack common ground. My happiness is no longer defined by their dreams. Of course they attribute that deviation to youthful naiveté, which it may very well be—after all, I am not omniscient, but right now this passion is what drives me.

For my entire childhood I lived with the goals of my family. I wanted the Harvard education, the six figure job in a skyscraper, the golden buckets of extra money. But now, in my enlivened state, these new passions and my old dreams seem entirely incompatible. Is that a navigable schism? I assume it must be; I talked with living proof just today. But how?
I guess time will tell, as that seems to be the only constant known to existence. But until then, I thrash around in a sinking ship waiting to stamp definitive understanding on a concept with no right or wrong answer.
What will become of me?

Comments

None of my business, of

None of my business, of course, but I think you should go to college, learn all kinds of new things, and train your mind for whatever lies ahead.

Who says Harvard is only for schmucks like Jeffrey Skilling and Andrew Kahr? If YOU go, you could be bumping some no-conscience scumbag off the admissions list.

And lighten up on yourself. You're only as "locked with guilt" as you choose to be.

seriously dude. chill out.

seriously dude. chill out. going to college is awesome. you should enjoy your privilege (that is privilege via the overlapping phenomena of family background and intellectual ability/drive/etc). if you can get your family and/or the state to get you to fund your existence for four years so you can just LEARN STUFF, for gods sake there is a lot worse of a place you could be. such as some kind of crimethinc-insurrectionist crusty living under a bridge and eating trash to assuage your crippling middle class guilt, which is sort of what i picture you turning into. plus, if you go to school you can always occupy it. don't apologize for what you were born as, make the best of it.

EXCUSE I

EXCUSE I

The author of the original

The author of the original post is disingenuous. Refrain from solicited advise because the solicitor is a liar just like any parliament or congress, president or prime minister.----------------I call "bullshit" on this post. TROLL!

no, da OG is real. i threw

no, da OG is real. i threw it on the ground...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAYL5H46QnQ&NR=1&feature=endscreen

dat og aint had their

dat og aint had their butthole tased by phonies. throw them on the ground...

Absolutely

Absolutely hilarious............but I'm still right.

no you wrong

no you wrong

u both dieee

u both dieee

Harvard education

Harvard education expectations? Who in America thinks that graduation from Harvard is a realistic expectation? The author makes wild presumptions about American youth. The author is not an American. The united states government and it's affiliated multi-national corporate co-conspirators and collaborators are increasingly percieved more and more as disingenuous by educated low-wage-laborers of all races and mixes in modern American society.
Insurgency is possible in spite of the united states federal government. Anti-capitalism and Insurgency are natural human reactions to ecological and economic collapse by those who do not reap the rewards and profits from such devastation.
The occupy movement is a sign that a sense of class stratification and anarchistic theories are alive and healthy in the united states among a significant portion of the population.

geniuses, valedictorians:

geniuses, valedictorians: they exist.

Most of the people I know who

Most of the people I know who go to college also work because the grants/scholarships they may get can't cover living expenses (or even all of the college expenses). I guess there's always loans, but then what classes you take are put under the pressure of paying off debt when you're done. Yeah, if you can go take classes without seriously fucking yourself over with stress and debt... why not? But I think it may be a bit presumptuous to assume that this is the position someone is going to be coming from. Without much financial support, it can take much more than 4 years to even get an associates... which amounts to shit unless you dropped out of high school (in which case it shows that you can make commitments and such to employers).

Anyway - it's really shitty to flat out deny the many reasons why people become excluded from a middle-class background as an attempt to "assuage crippling middle class guilt". People go through a lot of abusive bullshit in school, in their family, in the shrinks office, or in other relationships that feel like they are everything when they're younger. For someone to possibly come from a background of having to grow up fast to still go on to read anything intellectual at all isn't something to shit on. If someone decides that they can finally catch a break by living under a bridge and eating trash... for fuck sake there isn't anything wrong with that. We all get pushed around enough without our potential comrades giving their two cents about lifestyle choices and personal characteristics which aren't in themselves any of their business.

edit: I guess the last paragraph about family values could indicate the potential of someone's parents to put them through college. But, plenty of parents have dreams for their kids which for some reason aren't realistic or would be at their peril to fulfill. There's a big difference between parents that can reliably pay for all that shit and those who would have to put themselves into debt to do so.

yeah, i kind of got the

yeah, i kind of got the impression this person was being like "i guess i could go to college, but is it PUNK?!" anyway i wasn't trying to say it doesn't matter how you go to school. yes, even us 'middle class' kids are pretty fucked up emotionally at least, but that doesn't mean you have to throw away all the opportunities you have just on principle, that's just martyrdom.

I think your impression was

I think your impression was clear, but I think it's a shameful stereotype and generalization. My point is that a lot of the types you're talking about may be run aways from violent homes, people who've been abandoned because of their sexuality, fucked over by the psychiatric-school complex, given to such daily shit in school that leaving seemed like the best option, had abusive sexual relationships that lead to PTSD or built on previous problems with depression/etc., had parents who were irresponsible with their finances or lost their source of income and could no longer support them, got addicted to drugs and flunked out, etc. One thing that is pretty clear is that whatever the case is, the community and lifestyle they've found is preferable to other options.

Privilege is a sociological category that only paints a bit of the picture. There's common experiences and typical values that people of some such category will likely deal with. But the individual is not a simple intersection of complex sociological circumstances. If anything, because someone's life-history and their social positions combine to create perplexing psychological dilemmas. Reducing all of this stuff to emotional problems doesn't cut it. Retrospectively examining the development of someone's character and choices doesn't account for the immediate, hazy, conflicting, confusing, painful, and frightening state of someone's mind when they're having an existential/identity crises as they attempt to work shit out they may never had the time for while being forced into compulsory systems of schooling. In the abstract, sociological sense... 'opportunities' seem to be just as immediate as the actual experience of daily life: as if objectivity has an instantaneous transcendental affect on the subject. Always doing what seems most objectively reasonable does not necessarily come anything close to what is most subjectively reasonable or necessary.

As a rule of thumb, I think that it's much more important to be able to go to college when you're ready (if ever) than it is to do so just because the opportunity exists. Even more, that it's crucial for someone to have real experience with what their options are without college ...to get to know life outside of a possibly endless transition from one institution dominating your life to another... and then from that contextual background, make a personal decision about what opportunities college (not education) offers and if it makes any sense for that person. In other words, getting to know yourself and your capacities in the world around you, heal from as much emotional damage as possible, learn what it's like to deal with shitty jobs and gain insight into the lives of those who you meet at those jobs (their background, decisions, where it's taken them, how happy they are, etc.), and allow your interests to expand and tastes to mature: first.

If someone is lucky enough to feel little inertia or negative connotation towards finally finishing 12 years and facing another 4+ of schooling and the only question is of social pressure from a subculture, then that's a story for the status quo to fall in love with. It's the story of Hollywood rebellious youth: SLC Punk!, The Anarchist Cookbook, etc. It's also a story that I think is rare. I also think that it is a narrative which is meant to further inculcate adolescents with values that are inauthentic and conducive to reproducing this society, while delegitimizing and normalizing the experiences of angst, world weariness, and outrage that are profoundly relevant to the lives of marginalized youth. This "and then the rebel went to college to learn how to truly think critically" bullshit isn't far off from the off-handed attitude towards gutter-punks/crusties/whatever that I've grown sick of.

Calling it martyrdom is also contemptible because it's very one-sided. From one perspective there is martyrdom in someone that has privileged opportunities they can subvert to benefit their comrades. From another perspective, if they 'throw those opportunities away' then that could be from a sense of self-determination. Neither milking opportunities nor neglecting them can automatically be understood as self-determination or self-effacement. So subjecting yourself to college when it isn't something you have clear, personal motivations for can be just as much a self-sacrifice as avoiding college because of some principal or cause. I understand the calloused perspective some have towards bohemian-types who may have a middle-class background: the conception of the bohemians as those asking for change, stealing shit, appearing to be lazy, chasing the next inebriation, spouting undeveloped thoughts about life, personifying subcultures which seem old/superficial/insincere, etc. It's enough for me to sympathize with why someone wouldn't want to associate with 'them' ...but not enough for me to sympathize with dehumanizing prejudices and belittling condemnations held up in a self-congratulating piece of advice for someone who may be dealing with radically different circumstances than what is assumed at face value.

So that's an elaboration of my emotions and considerations. A lot of which may be projected onto you because your comments resonate with past, personal experiences. But for the sake of conclusion, I recognize strengths in numerous decisions which seem imminent in adolescence. There is strength in the decision to sell your labor to support yourself. There is strength in the decision to make a commitment to intellectual pursuits or refining one's skills. There is strength in taking on the dangers of nomadic life. All of which I think have a place in anarchist struggle and personal development, the less superficially embraced the better.

Fucken right on!

Fucken right on!

Fuckin this. Very perceptive.

Fuckin this. Very perceptive.

A small glimpse of adult life

A small glimpse of adult life without work, loneliness, rent, want, and alienated forms of entertainment... that is enough for some to recognize the violence that has been done to life. A new project of trying to maintain such conditions will almost certainly bring them into direct confrontation with the many forms of power that maintain the social conditions we all know too well. Defense of this project and ones new life from society can quickly transform from ethics to ideology. Should that ideology become revolutionary, grand meaning and purpose can further reward them. But at this point, hopelessness can kill them. Many have been fortunate enough to take such a journey. When they fail through compromise, misfortune, suppression, or complacency they can often try again. The revolution may never be strong enough to relieve them of their struggle; but, nothing less can be ultimately satisfying.

It is very difficult to

It is very difficult to finally graduate from college at thirty-five. We are all weeping.

time to go prole strolling

time to go prole strolling

one of the trash bullies is

one of the trash bullies is in this video. who is it?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yvEYKRF5IA&feature=related

I am one of trash bullies,

I am one of trash bullies, and I don't understand this comment. plz explain

meh, all trash bullies have

meh, all trash bullies have boomboxes in "my" Republic...

...and sweet kicks...and

...and sweet kicks...and flatbrims...if those are still cool

they're not, t.b.'s have

they're not, t.b.'s have moved on to snoods

wuts snoods?

wuts snoods?

More like MONDRIAN GLOVES

More like MONDRIAN GLOVES HOLY FUCK

I wish this was written by

I wish this was written by just one American.

it was. she's cool. maybe

it was. she's cool. maybe she can end up distroing zines and throwing trash in the street.

there is only one answer:

there is only one answer: jesus.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLKk00OYKhU

society is absurd. what our

society is absurd. what our society calls ‘normality’ is absurd. this has been said many times. jules henry's ‘culture against man’ was saying it back in the sixties and it is no less true today. in fact, society; i.e. ‘the establishment’ that ‘normality’ is anchored to, has become even more absurd.

so, the good news is that you recognize it when you are young. however you live your early and mid years of life, you won’t be under the illusion that ‘normality’ with its striving for ‘success’ within ‘the system’, is something to be valued. you will have more years to do something useful with your life. living under an underpass in meaningful relations with others can be infinitely more valuable than keeping a gerbil cage spinning in anticipation of increasing material rewards and recognition coming from those that have achieved ‘big wheel’ status in the gerbil hierarchy [my apologies to gerbils, who, like caged parrots and whales in aquariums, don’t have the physical escape options that humans do.].

instead of bitching about ‘your plight’, celebrate your early awareness. i know a lot of people who blew their first thirty or forty years ‘believing’ in the system before the shit of disillusionment hit their fan. many have never recovered. look around you, what is the ratio of zombies to conscious people? i’m not saying your parents are ‘zombies’ but as happens with slaves, their loss of hope of escape has been extinguished and conformity is the only possibility they can see short of destruction under the jackboots of the establishment. because they love you and fear what will happen if you revolt, they will persuade you to conform. they have been culturally conditioned to care more for your material well-being than for your spiritual well-being because it is they who cannot bear to see you risk being struck down by the brutal power of the establishment. a parent can deal with their child dying while risk-taking in something they love to do, like exploring, surfing, scuba-diving, skiing and sky-diving, because the spirit is flying in those circumstances, but no parent wants to see their child sequestered behind bars or hunted down and shot in ambush, as can happen in going against the establishment.

everyone who has been co-opted by the establishment tries to convince us that our material well-being is more important than our spiritual well-being, but what they really don't want to see is the crushing of the spirit, because they are living the experience of it and, without pills/alcohol and/or materialist pleasures to keep one's mind off it, it is hell.

you say;

“my total escape requires an enraged, fiery awakening of the masses! So revolt, fellow lovers of life, revolt in your homes and workplaces and public spaces! I beg you all, see camaraderie and not authority, humanity and not slaves! However, I fear an awakening of this sort will not come soon enough.?

but you/we ARE the awakening. the sleep is co-optation, the belief that one’s best interests lie in trying to make the most of having to live in an absurd material-over-spiritual values based society. such a belief translates into a life of non-contribution to the needed transformation from absurdity to non-absurdity; a life that validates and reinforces absurdity. holding on to the tension of being non-absurd in an absurd society is contagious. it grows the tension towards a collective ‘turning point’. the turning point may not come ‘soon enough’ for your ‘material self’, but your spiritual self will continue to grow rather than to atrophy.

gypsy 83 is streaming on

gypsy 83 is streaming on netflix

those that live by putting

those that live by putting reason before spirit are without spirit. to them, those that put spirit before reason are like vampires or werewolves that must be stamped out in entirety to keep the lineage of spirit-over-reason from breeding. nothing is more threatening to those who live first by reason than those who live first by spirit.

when the tv news journalists report on protest in syria or egypt, why do they not ask ‘what percentage of the population do these protesters represent?’ because they see ‘spirit’ being put before reason and who wants to see spirit crushed by reason? some do, and they are still in power. in our so-called ‘democracy’, the greatest weapon of protest is when protesters are coming from spirit before reason. the homogeneous political factions of the left or right are obviously coming from reason before spirit; i.e. their spirits have become the slaves of reason, theory, politics, .. and if we are slaves to a different flavour of reason, theory, politics, we, as slaves of our brand of reason, seek its dominance. we don’t mind seeing the other guy's brand of reason crushed, we enjoy it even. but no natural human likes to see spirit crushed, whether that of a horse or a human. that is why no-one is asking what percentage of syrians or egyptians are protesting, ... because we see them as coming from spirit rather than from theory.

in this forum, in contrast to activism on the street, people compete for dominance in the field of reason. if spirit is invoked, unless its utterances are grammatically correct and well-reasoned, it is mocked. this forum includes participation by many that do not respect spirit first, reason second, ... people who would ridicule the semi-literate posts of ‘primitives’ without regard to the fact they are coming from ‘spirit-before-reason'.

this addiction to reason over spirit sources the colonizer mentality of Western civilization, a mentality that worships science and reason and gives crushed spirits in sacrificial offering. it is a civilization that is in collapse and opening the way for its own subsumation by a culture that would restore the natural primacy of spirit over reason. a culture of spirit over reason that does not negotiate with reason-based power hierarchies made of spirit crushers squatting on the subjugated heads of the spirit-crushed.

really interesting stuff

really interesting stuff emile, id be interested to hear how this connects up with your other ideas about Nietzsche and how we're not actually in the driver's seat, etc.

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