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joie de vivre
Some people may have notice a little war going on.
An interesting discovery that might offend the more puerile visitors (who aim to offend members and readers alike) is simply this: the entire exercise seems to have imbibed me with a new joie de vivre which was previously missing.
Also I notice that the amateurish and coarse attempts at developing a community from the homemade forum ("out-of-the-box job") and the equally flakey technical skills of the users we have spoken about (here) points in part to an emotional substrate of society - the lower teen bracket.
The esculence of my utterings for these unfledged explorers being questioned of late has forced me to examine again the entire affair and wonder if the disclaimers were properly read or if (in point of fact) there simple needs to be an enhancement of teaching as to the nature of blogs, blogging, On-line journaling and the like.
As many seasoned blogger are aware blogs have become the place to put your rants, opinions and other thoughts. they can also be guides, reviews or even story telling methods. Hell you could bend one to be a small forum with the right skills. Above all a blog is a place for personal expression whatever form that might take.
Let us open by savaging the last post I read at this dudes website
I follow no crowd
he says, yet he follows the SLT crowd.
Goth is NOT original
he says and it's true.
We all follow a crowd, we all run with a pack and when we stop to see another pack running we point and say "look at the mindless clones".
The only freedom we truly have is that we may choose which pack to run with and we may choose how much power we give them (power of pack is directly equivalent to our fear of their rejection).
All this is why this blog has caused more offence than spitz ever will - the power of the pack was released on it's members. An apparent insider has fired his guns and now a tiny shiver of fear cries out "you bastard!".
So Matt emails me and tries in his own un-clever way to entice me to his website indicating I will be terrified by what he's written.
The poor lad does not know the difference between a trackback ping and an email. Perhaps it is unfair of me to engage with this guy in an exchange of words after all the most I could hope to do is crush some poor sods spirit. This coquetting and some what superficial "blog" is nothing more than a cry for help, an indication of the deep need for recognition, respect or even friendship. I would be a cad to attack a guy when he is down and a fool to think he would take the hand of friendship if offered by any member of this merry band of bloggers. So perhaps I should simply stop verbally raping his self image despite:
"I challenged this Matt guy to a blog duel. He probably won't accept."
What are we anyway? It seems we are just so many of the bullied kids from different schools doing what was done to us before it happens again. We are doing to ourselves what our tormentors did to us and yet so many of us realise the truth in the proverb:
Pleasant words are like a honeycomb - sweetness to the soul and health to the bones. --Proverbs 16:24
We think we are growing up - but we are not. We think we are become wise - But we are still fools. We feel we have become death the destroyer of worlds - but we are all just dust in the breeze.
We write our "revelations" on the nature of man and woman as if we are the first to think of them and yet we are doing what a thousand have done before us. When the realisation finally dawns that we have nothing new to add to the tomb of human knowledge the sense of mystical saint hood fades and where once we had told ourselves of our wisdom, insight and open minded enlightenment we finally reach the foothills of reality.
It is always a shock to discover that we are not reaching for the crest of the hill but are merely at the base a mountain. For the world is not hollow and you have not even seen the sky.
We like so many before us try to transcend the triviality of life and seek something better, something beyond. In truth we seek definition and when at last we have everything we strived for we discover our world is hollow and we have indeed touched the sky - the sky is cold and our riches are but lifeless trinkets evidence that our wisest sayings are nothing but callow utterances.
This is the current position of the young man who as yet cannot comprehend how a stranger so totally deemed as nothing can never-the-less shake his world and shock his most sensitive beliefs - the belief in the total rightness of his life.
Where does this concocted sense of self-righteousness come from? It comes from the heart.
At some time between the onset of puberty and now: the outcast starts to realise nobody much likes him (or her). Sometimes it is because they are smarter, taller, fatter or slower than the popular kids but the effect is the same. Bullied at school! Tormented endlessly as self-important, self-appointed judges condemn you and whip the crowed on to more of the same until it becomes the normal mode of life.
Sometimes we have embraced a dark clothed sub-culture and called ourselves goths at the very centre of this hell standing up and saying "fuck-you buddy" right there in the face of it. This type of person is usually acting self destructively in an unknowing effort to prove the tormentors correct. Sometimes a strong person of this type is actually growing to the point that the opinions of the popular kids is irrelevant or even less then the tormented kid's. They are going down fighting. But those of us who do are still fighting those battles years after the other kids have forgotten our names. Every last insult is like a poisoned tipped arrow and it is still in your flesh. Only the tormented kid can remove his own arrow tips.
For others, though, the change comes later when something finally snaps - the poison arrows or the torment given has worked it's evil magic. This snapping is the last vestige of hope that they might be accepted and be popular. Perhaps they are dumped or maybe they just get beaten up one too many times. The story is the same only the faces change.
In this hopelessness something dies and it is not without reason that the proverb says: "a hope deferred makes the heart sick". --(Proverbs 13:12)
At the point of total hopelessness a new light dawns and the victim asks "why me?" and the remaining vanity says "it's not fair, I deserve better than this" - The conscious utterance of this is: "I am not going to be treated like this any more". One of two things will happen:
1. The bullied becomes the bully throwing words around and making appeals to force to "control" those that would threaten the glass world and hitting back first at the world at general. The result of this randomly focus rage is the pointlessness that this blog has been witness to of late. You will notice that with this come the blaming others for the persons world. the new bully surrounds themselves with a large crowd of people who support and endorsed their new behaviour. They become the crowd of "popular kids" all the time blaming the world for the things that have happened to them.
2. The more moderate result is to simply locate a group that will not judge or might even accept and approve of the person without the need for them to change.
Whatever the out come when it happens to one of us the results are still the same. The pain and fear don't go anywhere although they may become numb for a while. It is always other peoples fault because it is too much to bear to look to ourselves for change - we fear that we might truly find that we do "suck" after all.
In bulk this is a US / UK divide with the "goth scene" in the US conforming to pattern one while the UK tends toward pattern two. That said the worthless and concocted mansonit/satanist/hate-munger group who follow pattern one do nothing to alleviate the problems with the media. (For more info into WIG (What Is Goth?) follow this link)
As readers will be aware I have a strong aversion to the ostentatious and vainglorious prating and preening of those in the alternative culture who call themselves goth and worship marilyn manson and other overblown, insincere idiot bands that call themselves goth-satanist-heavy-metal gods. These bogus leaders demonstrate a trite and tested method of hollow and insincere mock rebellion.
Their followers all acting in much the same way claim to be individuals and free minded which is the great irony of it all. May personal gripe is these egotistical and haughty bands and their clone-like supporters then call themselves goths, these goths then act with total disregard for society often spouting extreme anarchistic dogma. The result of all this rage is then focus indiscriminately and the result is that all goths are hounded by the media as dangerous out of control devil worshipping mass murderers. Just read what was said after the Columbine incident.
The truth is these people are Dark-Punk / Nu-Punk or perhaps thrash-metal / death-metal followers all of which (but especially punk) are musical rebellion, often anarchic and express rage, and frustration. Goth on the other hand has mostly been about artistic rebellion a rather more introspective and moody discipline.
Let us not live our lives by the uttering of some pompous and overblown egotists who, after all, are only performance artists for whom life is a stage and the slick veneer just a front for a counterfeit revolution. They promise much but have not the power to deliver even the smallest meaning, hope or value to your life.
The Greeks called in a fallacy of logic to say that there are only two possible options. A whole spectrum of options exist but how much are you willing to face?
# posted by Matt the Hat at Saturday, July 03, 2004 | |
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Get a life or die trying!
