Bloviation

Another word I quite like.

To discourse at length in a pompous or boastful manner.

Sociopath

I quite like this word and can see myself using it a lot henceforth. According to Wikipedia it is synonymous with psychopath, but has superseded it. Dictionary.com defines it as:

A person with an antisocial personality disorder, manifested in aggressive, perverted, criminal, or amoral behavior without empathy or remorse.

The American Merriam-Webster thing defines a sociopath as:

Someone whose social behaviour is extremely abnormal. Sociopaths are interested only in their personal needs and desires, without concern for the effects of their behaviour on others.

Misanthropy

Here's a word I just learned but should have known long ago. Well, I have heard it before, I think, but I just forgot about it. Silly really seeing how it should be one that falls from my lips every time I try and explain myself. What is it? Dictionary.com defines it as a 'hatred, dislike, or distrust of humankind.' I am therefore a misanthrope or misanthropist.

Incidentally another word I learned recently was autodidact, which is 'a person who has learned a subject without the benefit of a teacher or formal education; a self-taught person.' I suppose then that I can be said to be something of one of these. Or perhaps one with autodidactic tendencies.

Time Is Frightening

It just keeps on moving. What you are doing at this very moment will immediately pass into nothingness, it will be a memory only. What you did last week will become something you did a month ago, a year ago, ten years ago. The memory fades and fades. It may even pass out of mind completely before long.

I'm always thinking back to my school days - remembering those feelings I had then, the familiar smells, faces, awkward situations, the abundance of hope that I had inside me. I left in 1996 and that thought drives me crazy - I get these existential pangs of despair whenever I think about it.

I remember when I left in 1996. For the following days I was virtually pacing my room like a caged animal feeling overwhelmed that it was all over and that I would never see the inside of that building and most of those people ever again. a year later I'd think the same thought, again throughout 2000, 2004, and now 2008 - twelve year later.

It almost defies belief that it's twelve years since I left. It no longer feels like yesterday, but it certainly feels close enough for me to reach out and touch - I remember those people, the fashions, the fears, everything so well. I could almost be walking through the courtyard now seeing Danny, Phil and everyone else sitting on that bench.

What's more frightening is that I remember sitting in my bedroom in 2004 thinking these very same thoughts, 'wow I can't believe it's eight years... crazy'. Well that was four years ago and now it's twelve years since I left! My God, time just keeps on moving. Days just keep piling up. It's truly frightening.

I think I need to reread the Power of Now. This is driving me crazy.

This Be The Verse

I remember this poem by Larkin from 1999 and I've never forgotten those first few lines, strangely - they must have struck a chord. At the time I was a naive first year undergraduate and our rather stiff professor suddenly decided to recite it, much to the class's surprise. He seemed to relish in the surprise a little though, thinking himself a bit "hip" or something. As a result the display seemed a little cheap to me.

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

So true! And now a bit about Larkin:

Philip Arthur Larkin, CH, CBE, FRSL, (9 August 1922 – 2 December 1985) was an English poet, novelist and jazz critic. He spent his working life as a university librarian and was offered the Poet Laureateship following the death of John Betjeman, but declined the post. Larkin is commonly regarded as one of the greatest English poets of the latter half of the twentieth century. In 2003 Larkin was chosen as the "nation's best-loved poet" in a survey by the Poetry Book Society.

Nineteen Eighty-Four

Well, finally finished Nineteen Eighty-Four. Actually it didn't take long once I got into it - it just took a while to get into it. The first half took me about a week, the second half about four or five days then I whizzed through the last part in a couple of days.

So the story is set in a future dystopia. The world is divided into three super powers fighting with each other - Oceana, Eurasia, and Eastasia. It is written from the pespective of Winston, living in London, which is part of Oceana. Oceana is under the control of a totalitarian political party, i.e., nearly all public and private behaviour is regulated. In fact the party controls society to such a degree that they monitor citizens' thoughts, watch them 24/7 via telescreens - monitors installed everywhere out of which the party broadcast various things. Big Brother is head of the party, whether he is a real person or just a representation of the party is not clear. His image appears on posters showing his watchful eyes everywhere informing people that they are under his constant gaze - 'Big Brother is watching you.'

The book begins by introducing us to Winston's oppressive world. He is a party member, a member of the outer party, and he works in the truth department, whose job it is to rewrite history. The party is organised into inner party, which forms the core, the outer party, whose members perform smaller jobs, and then there are the proles, the proletariat, the great unwashed, workers and so on who live in relative squallor.

Winston feels alone in his world, he questions the party, but dares not voice his dissent because to question the party, even in thought - Thoughtcrime - means death. Even such things as a flicker of the eyes can be picked up by the party. However, for his sanity, he keeps a diary of his thoughts, this provides us with insights into his thinking.

He falls in love with a young lady he suspected of being a member of the Thought Police. She followed him around and appears by all externals to be ultra loyal to the party. He believes she is onto him and contemplates killing her. However, it turns out this exterior is cunning cover for her dissidence. They begin an affair meeting in out of town places away from the cameras and hidden microphones. Or so they think. This goes on for some time until they discover an old room rented out above an old antique shop in the prole's part of town - a squalid area not subject to the same scrutiny as Party-members' accommodation.

They keep the affair up for a while, they talk of finding the Brotherhood, a supposed secret alliance set against Big Brother. Winston works with a member of the inner party, O'Brien, whom he suspects is a member of this brotherhood. They meet one day in a corridor at work and O'Brien gives him a signal to come to his apartment for "work" - a most unusual offer. Winston takes this to be O'Brien's way of reaching out to him as a member of the Brotherhood. He heads over to his place and reveals all. O'Brien informs him that he is indeed a member of the brotherhood and gets him to pledge to being a member - this pledge includes lots of strange things like throwing sulphoric acid in a child's face if the brotherhood command it. He agrees without reluctance such is his hatred for the Party.

The affair continues and Winston is slipped a copy of the Brotherhood's handbook exposing the party. At their rented room in the city Winston reads from the book and finds all that it contains concurring with everything that he has thought about the party until this time. Suddenly the windows smash, big brother's voice emerges from behind the wall, and the Thought Police enter the room. It turns out he has been under surveillance all this time and O'Brien as well as the shop owner, are members of the Thought Police. They have been watching his every move for the past year and his every move in the secret room through the wall.

The third part of the book begins. Here Winston is subjected to torture or the worst kind for weeks and months on end. In fact he is not even sure for how long as he is in such a state. Slowly he is purged of his rational suspicions about the party. 2+2 no longer equals four, but can equal 5 if the party says it does. There is no objective history, only a history created by the party. The party is the only thing that speaks the truth, and he must submit. There is no objective reality. Eventually he does submit. But he still retains one shred of humanity - his love for her. This proves to be his final purging. He is taken to room 101, a room in which one's worst nightmare is realised. Here he is threatened with having his face torn to pieces by the overgrown rats of prole town. He snaps under the pressure and bleats out the one thing that will save him - give the torture to her, his girlfriend, let the rats tear her apart – and he means every word of it.

The book draws to a close. Winston is released a changed man. He awaits his death which may come at any moment - always a bullet in the back of the head. He meets with her in a park, they no longer feel the same. Evidently she was also tortured and cracked under pressure in room 101. Their hearts grown cold now. As he sits sipping gin in a bar, his new hobby, the telescreen announces Big brother's success over Eurasia in a battle, and it is at this moment his conversion is complete – his heart wells with love for big brother. His will has been bent. The book ends.

Depression: a Guide

A Step by Step Guide to Feeling Depressed

It occured to me while I was washing a week's worth of piled up dishes today that it would be useful to list all the thoughts and beliefs that contribute to making me feel so unmotivated and depressed. I had a quick flick through How to Win Friends and Influence People last night and Mr Carnegie makes a very good point in a preliminary chapter on how the human mind is so utterly useless at retaining information and how we must revise things on a regular basis in order that we don't forget them entirely.

The list:

1. Be harsh, critical and punishing with yourself especially about past events
2. Play back painful past events over and over in your mind reliving the emotions
   
3. Take a completely unsympathetic view of yourself, your actions and life
   
4. Call yourself names, caricaturing yourself by focusing on some negative quality or action
   
5. Take a simplistic unsympathetic view of all things devoid of nuance
   
6. Sit at home neglecting yourself, avoiding enjoyable activities and human contact
7. Do nothing productive whatsoever, instead sit in your own mess wallowing endlessly
8. Make your happiness dependent upon the approval and esteem of others
   

Alternatively:

1. Be gentle and understanding with yourself, you're a human
   
2. Beating yourself up about past events = depression, nothing more. Stop it.
3. Take a sympathetic understanding view of yourself, you're human
   
4. Remember that humans are a complex mix of positive negative and neutral
5. Remember that things are never as simple as they seem - many factors are at play
6. Do things that you enjoy and work on building a heathly social circle
7. Be productive, have realistic goals, keep yourself occupied
   
8. Approval addiction = dangerously vulnerable junky-like state. End it now.