Thoughts on Introversion (II)

What a wee little part of a person’s life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself.

-Mark Twain

Introversion may represent an extremely small niche of experience among all life. Even among humans introverts are decidedly a minority. They constitute only 35% of the general population (40% of males, 30% of females), though they far outnumber extraverts in the fields of science and the arts. As a natural result of this minority, culture and society cater mainly to extraverts. This manifests most clearly in the social differences that arise. “Going out” and “having fun” is expected of us – these are external things that are easy for extraverts to understand and do. The inner world of introverts is inaccessible, so it’s often treated as though it doesn’t exist or is meaningless. If you’re not doing something, you’re “not doing anything.” Extraverts will say “Why don’t you go out more often? You never do anything.”

Introverts can feel pressure to conform for extraverted expectations. Those who don’t are labeled as loners or recluses, while those who do can suffer from a lack of the alone time they require. On the other hand this causes introverts to become more balanced – forced to develop their extraversion they learn to become comfortable with their secondary function. Extraverts feel little pressure to develop their internal worlds, and often their secondary function remains underdeveloped. This only serves to exacerbate the extraverted leanings of society, but the end result is that introversion is both a blessing and a curse. A man who carries heavy things all day becomes stronger than those who lead comfortable lives. But he still has to carry heavy things.

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See also:

Thoughts on Introversion (I)

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Alix Perez & Sabre – Solitary Native || 2007/Solitary Native/Old Flame

Scent Sense

“You smell good.”

Do you? A year ago I gave up cologne, shampoo & body wash, and traded my Old Spice for a mineral stone. And I eat clean. So I smell good. My sweat smells clean, if it smells at all. But I don’t smell good. I don’t smell like flowers or cedar, citrus or musk. I smell like a person. When someone says “you smell good,” what they usually mean is “your cologne smells good.” Telling someone wearing cologne that they smell good is like telling someone wearing a tux that they look black. It’s semantics, and it’s not.

I remember riding a streetcar in southern Germany on a hot August day. These days they wear deodorant like in the colonies, but not in the early 90s. To this day the smell of of body odor and cigarettes is an instant passport back to my childhood. The smell of a human is strong, primal. It evokes emotions that only barely ripple the surface of our conscious mind. It’s a chemical signature, imprinted with everything from genes and hormones to what you ate that morning. It’s an indicator of sexual compatibility. A friend of mine used to drink and smoke heavily, and after a twelve-hour shift you could smell him from a block away. But his girl loved it. She used to tell him all the time how his smell turned her on. Call it pheromones, call it whatever. She liked him, and he smelled like him. Not flowers or cedar, citrus or musk.

You could say that wearing scent makes us less human, but animals don’t wear perfume. Augmenting our bodies is perfectly human. I’d say it makes us less us. I say be what you are, smell like what you are.

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The Hold Steady – Citrus || 2006/Boys & Girls in America

Fiscal Responsibility

It was against this backdrop, namely, the ultimate and the infinite, that an organization known as the Vietnam Day Committee invited Kesey to come speak at a huge antiwar rally in Berkeley, on the University of California campus. I couldn’t tell you what bright fellow thought of that, inviting Kesey. Afterwards, they didn’t know, either. Or at least none of them would own up, despite a lot of interrogations and recriminations and general thrashing about. “Who the hell invited this bastard!” was the exact wording.

He comes on soft, in the Oregon drawl, like he’s just having a conversation with 15,000 people:

“You know, you’re not gonna stop this war with this rally, by marching… That’s what they do… They hold rallies and they march. They’ve been having wars for ten thousand years and you’re not gonna stop it this way… Ten thousand years, and this is the game they play to do it… holding rallies and having marches… and that’s the same game you’re playing… their game…

There’s only one thing to do… there’s only one thing’s gonna do any good at all… And that’s everybody just look at it, look at the war, and turn your backs and say… Fuck it…”

They hear that all right. The sound of the phrase—Fuck it—sounds so weird, so shocking, even here in Free Speech citadel, just coming out that way over a public loudspeaker, rolling over the heads of 15,000 souls.

There was no way one could prove Kesey had done it. Nevertheless, something was gone out of the anti-war rally.

-Tom Wolfe

Whenever someone mentions the occupy Wall Street protests I think of that scene, especially poignant when you compare the weight of the war with our current grievances. Let’s set some things straight.

Wall Street’s fucking beautiful. Because it’s going to destroy capitalism. Capitalism requires infinite growth to survive, but it’s a system based on finite resources. See the flaw? Capitalism was born in a time when labor produced product and product produced money; in that reality it’s a viable system. The stock market created a reality where money is both product and payment, a feedback loophole that literally makes money. Money’s created from money, and in the process it’s become less real. Money went from gold to fiat currency to pure mathematics. The problem isn’t Wall Street; Wall Street is the solution. Running capitalism in the 21st century is like trying to run CS5 on an Amiga. Wall Street is waving the flaws of capitalism in our face; it’s the herald of change, and it’s going to run the system into the ground by turning money into valueless, meaningless numbers.

That said:

In the meantime, here’s how you occupy Wall Street. You don’t. You don’t invest in stocks, you don’t get a portfolio, you don’t get an IRA. Don’t own a credit card. Don’t get a loan. Stop shopping at chains. Keep your money local. Rent from a person instead of a corporation, buy your food from farmers, put your money into a local bank or under your mattress. Don’t go to college. Live in a different country. If you can’t walk the walk, don’t bitch. Getting mad at Wall Street execs because your investment portfolio lost money is like protesting soccer because you got your ass kicked by Pelé.

If you don’t like a system, you don’t hold a rally. That’s their game. If you don’t like a system, stop being a part of it. That’s the only thing’s gonna do any good at all.

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Chad Valley – Ensoniq Funk || 2010/Chad Valley EP

Why I Don’t Give a Shit About Retirement

As of now I’m self-employed, and I plan to be for as far ahead as I care to plan. When you’re self-employed you pay twice as much in taxes, you don’t get a 401k, you don’t get cheap insurance, and you don’t get a pension. People don’t want you to be self-employed. They’ll remind you that you need those things to have a comfortable retirement.They get a little worried when you tell them you don’t give a shit about a comfortable retirement.

Most people work safe, incorporated jobs for 40-odd years, saving up their sick days to take a three-week vacation one year. Retirement’s the carrot on the stick, the milk and honey for a lifetime of work. And then they spend most of it sleeping and watching TV. Sure, I could do that. Or I could live like I do now.

I have an extremely low cost of living, mostly because I’m not in debt and I don’t feel the need to buy useless shit or throw money into funnels like smartphones and mixed drinks. I live in a gorgeous area where everything I need is within biking distance. I’ve mastered a skill that allows me to earn money without a college degree. If I want, I can pay the bills working 30 hours a month. If I feel like saving up for something worthwhile like a month-long road trip, I’ll work a little more. I love what I do, so I don’t mind if I have to work three hours a day.

Sure, I could work 40 hours a week, make twice as much. Math: that’s a 400% increase in labor for a 100% increase in earnings. Besides, I don’t need the money. Nothing I want costs $20,000. I’ve got no desire to buy a house. If I want, I could do this for the rest of my life. If I felt like it I could save for retirement. I could get a Roth IRA; $100 a month would make me a millionaire by seventy. The thought makes me laugh – I’d have even less use for a million dollars at that age than I would now. Nope, I’m not doing either of things, not now. I don’t give a shit about retirement.

What’s retirement, anyway? Twenty years of not working with a little travel thrown in? That sounds exactly like what I’m doing now, only I’m in the prime of my life when I can truly appreciate it. I don’t need anything a retirement has to offer; I have it already. Everything I want to be doing I’m doing. I’m pursuing my happiness in the present, not the future. I could die today with no regrets. I feel like I’ve lived. To have this for thirty, forty more years? So much life – the thought almost scares me.

I could go on living into old age, if I’m in good health and feel like sticking around for things. Still, those of us who make their mark on the world do it in youth and adulthood; rarely is something notable accomplished in senescence. Nor do I have any desire to linger on past my due; when my health, strength or mind reaches its limit, so do I. I look forward to dying as much as I look forward to living. After a life like this, I’ll be happy to retire permanently. That’s my retirement. Choose yours.

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Brokenchord – A Girl of 13 Summers || 2011/A Girl of 13 Summers/Orion

The End of Materialism

And having food and clothing, with these we shall be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.

-I Timothy 6: 8-10

As I mentioned in a previous post, we’re beginning to see a new economic paradigm emerging in the free-data environment of the internet. As expected, it’s meeting with resistance in many forms. Intellectual property is a common subject brought up in discussions of copyright in the digital age; the joke is that the only true argument against information freedom applies only within the monetary economy that information freedom is trying to transcend! Intellectual property is first and foremost a concept created to protect private wealth (primarily of corporations) based on information. Ideas have monetary value, and must therefore be protected within a capitalist economy. In a post-scarcity/trans-monetary economy there is neither monetary value nor private wealth, and concepts of intellectual property are not only impossible to uphold, but a hindrance to progress.