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08.16.04
I'm so ashamed, so afraid of the spiteful part of me; the part of me that has the ability to stretch out my invective to other souls. It is the ugliest thing I've seen spill out of me. I think I've hit upon an idea; that is, that the individual ought to direct all suspicion, all derision to their own souls. I guess I haven't hit upon it so much as unearthed it. I haven't dwelt upon it as a reliable mantra for years now and I'm not entirely sure that I wish to begin doing so this day. Still, it has an appeal, doesn't it? That I am sure of my own depravity is an impervious proposition. No argument can pierce its skin. How can one argue with my poor estimation of myself? It is the method of ending the debate, of closing the door. I cannot advance, but I cannot hurt, and for that I might be inclined to give up a whole lifetime's worth of advance. I suppose this undue fixation on self-loathing is not entirely unprovoked. I provoked it by trying to defend an unethical position. By necessity, such desperate acts tend to imply that I have poor ethics. Only, wasn't I attacking an attitude, a haughtiness about good ethics? Was I not trying to hold off the fiery arrows of a sort of judgmentalism? No, I am still trying to rationalize an irrational suspicion of ideas that are purely ethical. Man invented politics for this purpose. Am I consumer? Am I murderer or, at the least, torturer? Am I affluence? Am I fattened? Am I soulless? I don't want to give concession to these conversations any more. They end in more hate for others and their hate for me. I want only to hate myself and leave the rest alone. It's a juvenile ideal, to be certain. This is why Poe is so characteristically identified with adolescents: his work undermines the breadth of human existence. And perhaps that's what I'm so frightened of: that I might be called into a position of responsibility and asked to account for it. In these moments, these holy moments of judgment, I am lost. If I deny the complicated ethical implications of every one of my actions, or even downplay them, I become a malicious, ignorant shit. If I buy into every accusation, I must live my life as a paranoid lackey. I think it is a poor existence, to live so suspended. |