Jesus is imaginary, and therefore only useful when raised to an even power.

(pause for laughter)

Postulate: Grace is necessary, even in the absence of God. Prove or find counterexample.

It’s not so much a matter of my failure to always behave consistent with my commitments. It’s more a matter of my being human, and therefore, being always consistent with my commitments is simply never going to happen. Frankly, the more self-inquiry I do, the more I wonder if I really have my commitments figured out. After doing some watching of TV clips and reading people who are allegedly smarter than me, I’m wondering if I’m not committed to the extinction of all humanity. We sure are a stupid bunch. But I digress. This is about me.

Yesterday I took a computer to my sister and brother-in-law’s house to work on a specific piece of software. When I got there, the computer wouldn’t boot. It took several hours before we figured out that the SATA controller had gone partially bad (it works except for booting, which is kinda important) and several more before I had the computer back to where it had been when I pulled it from active service that morning. By the end of the night, I had encountered an entirely new and unrelated problem (still unsolved) so it’s not like I even got back to my starting point.

It was as if the computer was saying, “You think you’re gonna work on what you wanna work on today? Well fuck you! You’re gonna work on MY agenda today!”

I mention it because this is frequently how I feel about myself. I want to make money. I want to solve problems. I want to help people. And my… self… seems to thwart my own intentions and desires more often than not. Some days it’s all I can do to get out of bed. Some days I fail to get out of bed.

So where does grace come from? Jesus is not an actor in my universe, so he’s out. Other people either can’t or won’t (at least, they haven’t yet managed to) provide grace for me. I think it has to come from within myself.

This post is an attempt to find language to describe what I’m working on with myself right now. I am pretty sure that part of my problem is that I can’t describe my problem well enough, so I’m working on it.

I created this blog to help me sort out some thoughts about the thing I’m starting (placeholder name: The Human Ant Colony.) As such, the blog is intended as a service to myself. Practically speaking, that makes this site a part of my therapy. I deleted the two previous threads because they were not serving me. I struggle with hopelessness and that conversation made me feel pretty damn hopeless.

The defining incidents of my life have all revolved around my personal insufficiency. I’ve become someone who is driven to be “good enough,” and who is terrified of falling short. Until recently, I’ve been able to deal with that pressure by improving myself, but the metaphorical bar raises faster than my skill at jumping over it, and so, it seems hopeless that I will ever satisfy my own desire for performance.

The problems I choose to notice grow more urgent and more serious with time, and I am just one person. And I hate myself for being one person. For not having the vast empire and limitless resources with which to solve the problems available to me. Words fail to express the exact nature of the discord within myself. I want to be so much more than I am capable of.

To say that I am working on forgiving myself is grossly inaccurate, but I can’t think of a better phrase. Precision in language here is crucial: I am a meaning-making machine, and everything going on with me lives inside of language. The fact that I haven’t yet described it with words is a sure sign that I don’t understand it adequately, and that’s a problem. So this is becoming a focus of my meditation. The problem I’m working on is how I can relate to myself as I actually am, regardless of how I wish I were, or how I hope to become in time; and, reclaiming the part of my life that has been spent on depression due to this defective self-relationship.

Some thoughts:

There’s nothing about you that can’t be explained through your body and your mind, and your mind is just a word to represent the unique and quirky network that your brain creates. A “spirit” or “soul” is totally unnecessary to understand you.

The proper distinction between your body and your mind is that your mind is a meaning making machine (that is to say, a machine that makes things mean things), while your body is a meaning making machine making machine making machine (that is to say, a machine for making machines that make meaning making machines.)

I hope that clears up some confusion.

The Location of Meaning is becoming a more pressing topic that I must write about soon.

There’s a great quote by Albert Einstein: “It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.” My problem is that humanity is collectively deciding that it would rather divide and separate along ideological lines than reconcile and communicate, and that doesn’t work for me. It’s a problem that I think most everyone has long since given up on. I’m not OK with that. I’m staying with the problem. I think it’s worth solving.

It isn’t a perfect model, and there’s a little of crossover, but I think it’s more or less correct to say that (1) the only tool of clergy to motivate people is guilt; (2) the only tool of corporations to motivate people is money; and (3) the only tool of politicians to motivate you is fear.

And of course, guilt and money are really just specific instances of fear: fear of not having enough, fear of not being good enough.

The prevailing context of life today is that these are the “always and only” motivating forces for human beings: if you want to get someone to do something, you have to pay them, guilt them, or scare them into compliance. It’s pretty damn cynical.

I suspect that if you give a person everything they really need–which, in the grand scheme of things, isn’t very much–they’ll become motivated by forces much more interesting: expressing love, and contributing to their community.

(Okay, define “need.” Easy. A person’s needs are met If and Only If their fears no longer have power over them.)

This is a first draft since I need to get going, but I’d really like some feedback. Just grunt so I know you heard me.

You don’t listen.

You never have.

You never will.

And you’re not listening now, either.

I think we’ve all nearly forgotten that this blog was originally intended as a gathering place for my thoughts about the “church” I’m starting. Well, after many initial mishaps, I’ve set up a wiki so I can organize the thoughts in a more logical and less stream-of-consciousness way.

The wiki is viewable at: http://www.naptastic.com/wiki

In the next couple of days I will be locking it down so that only members can view or edit any content, and only the sysop can create memberships, but for now, feel free to browse, create an account, or post things on the talk pages (which are currently all empty.)

There are NO email notifications or verifications for anything, since the wiki lives on a server that can’t send outgoing emails. Just so you’re not surprised.