Yes, it’s unfortunate that he died. No, it’s really not important at all.

To sum up my feelings: Iran is falling apart, with innocent civvies being hacked apart with axes, and all people want to talk about is MJ. It’s disgusting.

I thought I was done with my period of rebirth, but I’m finding things that I still need to change. These things caused a great deal of damage to a relationship that I don’t want to lose. They caused a great deal of pain to myself, and they’re continuing to do so.

So I’m still fighting. I’ll try to log some of the things here.

Firstly, I have to deal with a touch of jealousy. I’ve also been learning to play chess, and I’ve been reading old sources on chivalry. No reason not to be the best person I can be.

Yes, some of us took action,  but not nearly enough. The issue was confused, and the people who did not care about the world were able to spin the information into something unrecognizable. Until recently, the debate continued as to whether humans caused global climate change, or whether climate change even existed. I still see people claiming that it does not exist. That is how deeply rooted this problem is.

The world needs my brothers and sisters, who have dedicated themselves to healing the land. It needs them desperately, but their healing work cannot go forward while the enemy continues to pillage the world. You cannot heal a man who is being tortured to death while you work. We cannot heal the land while it is continually destroyed. We do not have the resources available to heal all the wounds being inflicted around the world.

What the world needs is soldiers. The world needs people who are not only willing to heal it, but who will go out and challenge those who are harming it. Their ability to do such great damage to the world needs to be removed. Their weapons must be broken, and their will to combat must be shattered. The world needs men and women willing to dedicate themselves to this fight; it needs men and women willing to use whatever skills they have to tear down the strongholds of those who think it their right to attack our home.

The world needs soldiers to defend it just as much as it needs healers to repair the damages done to it.

Yep, it still really is. The capitalist system gave things a try, and it’s failed. It’s failed a few times. Just like mercantilism, and feudalism, capitalism has run its course and come up unsatisfactory. The capitalist philosophers, the founders of the movement, were brilliant I have to admit. But they were wrong. The world doesn’t work the way they envisioned it. The world doesn’t function the way it “should” according to an economist’s charts.

Capitalism is still with us, however, due to a simple thing; we have nothing to replace it with. The other systems have been tried and found wanting in various ways. It is because these systems have been found wanting that capitalism remains. If there was a viable alternative to the capitalist system, it would be easy enough to transition. But no, we’d be left with an economic vacuum, or a choice of other systems that we know don’t work the way they should.

What do we do, then? Our economy no longer flies true; its pilots can no longer reliably read the navigational tools they’ve been provided with. They’ve struck our precious economy against several metaphorical icebergs, and the most recent of these collisions has triggered the current crisis. It is vital that we find new pilots for the economy, and find them fast.

Finding new pilots is FAR easier said than done, sadly. We really aren’t left with many options. In all honesty, I don’t know where we should go from here. I do know that the system is broken, and it needs to change, but I don’t know how. Oh, I have some ideas, such as leveling the playing field between corporations and small businesses. My friend Corban and I were talking about doing just that only minutes ago. Hopefully I’ll have another post on that topic later.

For now, I’m left with the problem of finding a new system, a new set of pilots, for our economy. When the economy chooses to create new needs rather than meeting other, unmet, needs then we have a problem. The economy exists to divide resources and determine who gets how much. It’s a scarcity issue. The economy is a means to an ends. Unfortunately, I think we in America have mistaken it for an ends in itself

No. I don’t think we can change.

For fuck’s sake, it was still seen as acceptable to debate the reality of climate change until very recently. There’s no way we’ll stop dumping our toxic wastes into the atmosphere, into the oceans, into the world that is our home. They say you shouldn’t shit where you sleep; well, we’re ignoring that advice and have our fingers stuck in our ears while we pretend nothing is occurring.

Most of my own family does little to help the situation. It’s as though they can’t even make minor gestures, like using re-usable shopping bags. What. The. Fuck. If the majority of the population can’t even do things like that, how the fuck do we expect them to change in any meaningful way?!

We could learn something from Norse lore. Ragnarok, contrary to the twisted Christian concept of apocalypse, is not the end of the world. It is the end of a civilization. The Jotun, the Giants, represent the forces of nature. The Aesir, the Gods, represent the forces of civilization. In Ragnarok, the forces of nature rise up and burn civilization to the ground. Rather than leave only a field of ashes, a new generation of civilization begins to rebuild, having learned the lessons of the past.

If our civilization cannot change itself, perhaps it’s time for us to have our own Ragnarok. If my parents’ generation cannot accept that change needs to occur, perhaps it is time that we of my generation turn away from them. We’re the ones who are going to have to rebuild the world when they’re gone. Why should we continue to suffer through their mistakes?

Maybe our new President will be able to bring about the change we need… You’ll have to forgive me if I’m not all too hopeful.

tl;dr- How much longer are we going to allow the generations before us to ruin the world that we’ll inherit? When will we decide that it’s time to act?

I am a hedonist. I toyed with the thought for quite some time, and kept discarding it because I don’t act to maximize short term pleasure. I play the long game, with an eye to the future, and for a while I didn’t think this counted. After thinking about it, I can most certainly see how I count as a hedonist. I embrace it this time around.

Hedonism, to me, is the pursuit of pleasure and happiness. I go with that happiness thing, though I take pleasure in much of life. Instead of being alcohol, sex, or drug obsessed, I take my pleasure in every experience. The taste of good food, the ache of muscles after a day of running around, a hot bath with a good book, these are things that I love. Beyond that, though, I embrace everything I feel. When I’m sad, I savor it as though it were some bitter delicacy. The pain from a cut or a bruise is exquisite; it sends shivers up and down my spine.

I take my pleasure in the experiences of life. Each sensation that I encounter is cherished, relished, and then allowed to fade as new experiences come. I can’t imagine life if I didn’t enjoy everything around me! I cannot imagine how people live in misery when there is so much to be enjoyed all around us.

When it comes to what I do, what I don’t do, and what’s expected of me, I tend to disappoint people. I don’t do things because I’m told to, or because it’s expected of me. I act when it will make me happy to do so. If I care about someone, then making them happy will often make me happy, and I act to please them. If they aren’t so important to me, eh… Well, yeah.

This way of thinking, and acting, has gotten me into trouble with family, with work, with school. Professors don’t like it when a student declines to do the assignments, it seems. What a shocker. To be honest, though, I don’t care. I don’t seek, or need, their approval. I don’t need something so arbitrary as a grade to make me happy, or tell me my self worth. Fuck that shit. I’m going to do what makes me happy, and society can go fuck itself if it wants to tell me I’m unsuccessful because of that.

I am a hedonist, and I’m going to do what I want. I’m going to do what makes me happy.

Well, my month long winter break is almost over, and I’ve come to the realization that I need to get myself back in the game. Sure, I might not care too much about money, or about grades, but right now those are the visible measures of my success and ability. I might as well focus on those until I get to the point where I can go off on my own, right?

Classes start on the 20th for me, and I do believe I’m only registered for two classes this semester. I’ll have to fix that. Four seems a good number for someone just getting back into productive society. I have a few plans for dealing with class, and with luck those plans will actually work. I’m sure I can pull it off with.

I’ll be augmenting my productivity in class with two blogs. This is one of ‘em, and the other will be at www.lewiskampf.com (that’s right bitches, I gots my own domain ). I figure I can use this one as a more personal blog, and the other as a more “professional” blog about my favorite pastime– politics!

Here’s to hoping I manage to stick around this time, ’cause if I don’t, I’ll have some serious ass kicking (my own ass) to do!

Shalom alecheim.

I am loyal to my friends. It’s exceptionally rare that I consider someone a true friend, and I can count the ones I have on one hand. Once you are my friend, though, I’ll fight to the end to protect you. Anyone who claims to know me, or claims to be my friend, would know this. I make no effort to hide it; my loyalty to friends runs deep.

I’m even more loyal to the people I love, also very rare. There is a woman that I love, completely, with all my heart. She knows who she is. She also knows that nothing could make me betray her. She knows that no matter what happens, or who comes along, or who I have a crush on, she’s always the one closest to my heart. She knows that if anyone ever had the stupidity to make it them or her, she wins, hands down.

I’m big on loyalty. I like it in friends, and I require it in loved ones. Just because I’m poly doesn’t mean I’m not loyal. Just because you’re mono doesn’t mean you’re loyal. Plenty of mono people cheat. Plenty of mono people lie. Being mono or poly, being Jewish or Buddhist or Christian or Muslim, being a politician or a lawyer or a farmer or anything else, has absolutely no impact on your loyalty. Only you, as a person, can choose to be loyal or disloyal.

It’s time that people did that really un-cool thing, and took responsibility for themselves. They need to stop thinking they can declare others as inferior because of superficial differences, and they need to stop judging others as if they themselves were flawless.

As should be shown in the last post, I’m in love. This has put me in the interesting position of needing to trust this person completely. This is something so completely new to me, I have no idea how to handle it. So far, I’ve been forcing myself to trust that she’ll do the right thing, even though the paranoid person in me wants to nudge her into doing it. I know that if I do nudge her, it’s a pretty clear indication that I don’t trust her to have even basic decency.

I’ve spoken to some friends who have more experience than me in this, and they’ve all said I’m on the right track. I certainly hope I am. Trusting her is waaaaaaaaay harder than I thought it would be. My mind keeps wanting to pick at the situation, and find reasons to distrust her. I’m not going to let that happen.

Despite my paranoia, I’ve found the decision to trust her to be completely liberating. I’ve been able to let go of my worries, for the most part, and relax. That’s something I’m not used to. I feel pretty happy, pretty good, about this decision, and so I’ll stick with it. She doesn’t know about the decision, but she will once she checks her messages.

So, wish me luck. This is new territory for me, and so far I’m liking what I’m finding. Let’s hope the journey continues to be an enjoyable one!

This morning I woke up to something that meant a great deal to me, though I’m sure she didn’t think it as much. It was a pretty simple thing, just a “good morning” message from her. I suppose it says something about my past relationships that I found it to be incredibly meaningful for her to have even thought of me enough to leave a message. No one’s really done that for me before, and, well, it felt good to be on someone’s mind. So, I decided that I wanted to do something nice for her, to show that I’m thinking of her as well. There’s not much I can do except write, so here I am.

I realize that this will either come across as nice and romantic, or really creepy, but meh! To put it as simply as I can, I love ‘er. I fought with that for a while, telling myself that I certainly couldn’t love her. We hadn’t been back in touch for long enough for that to even be appropriate. I was raised on the theory that “love takes time to build, and the longer it builds, the deeper it is. If you fall in love quickly, it’s not as meaningful”. Last night and this morning, after talking to two wonderful friends (Corban and Jade), I tossed that theory out.

So, yes, I love her. She brought me back to myself. I had spent my time trying to be normal, trying to become what people wanted me to be, and I lost touch with who I really was. When I re-met her, I was reminded of who I had been. I was finally able to act like myself again, and it felt amazing.

On top of that, she’s done things for me that no one really did. She’s sung to me, drawn for me (she’s an amazing artist, by the way), danced and just goofed off with me. I feel like I can relax around her, and not worry about being judged for how I’m acting.

The thing that might come to bother me, though, is that I can’t have her. She has two other boys to occupy her affections, both of whom are all for being mono. She seems to be shifting toward that, as well, and that leaves poor ol’ Domnu out in the cold. Don’t get me wrong, though. Even though I’m pretty far down the totem pole, I still greatly enjoy spending time with her.

It is unfortunate, though, that it’s working out the way it seems to be. I’d love to be the Lancelot to her Guinevere, but I really don’t have it in me to be that much of a bastard to her two Arthurs.

She is so many things that I’ve wanted, and more. She’s smart enough to be my equal, she’s open-minded, and she’s just… amazing. =3 I used to think she was all the good things from people I’ve known in the past, but that doesn’t do her justice. The things I enjoyed in those people, she goes above and beyond.

In closing, I love her. It happened fast, and it confused me, but she means the world to me.