An old post from another board

This something I posted on May 16th this year at another board, where people know me fairly well. It seems appropriate to repost it here. The forum was entitled 'the muse that afflicts me. So I entitled my post "The muse that afflicted me was Calliope."

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If you have ever felt loneliness - self-imposed, crushing loneliness of the ironic kind (though not in a funny way - sometimes irony is not funny), then this post may be of interest, but otherwise you may want to read something else. It is rather long, and the train of thought may not always be clear. In an attempt to keep organized, I have added subheadings.

This morning

I woke up very early this morning. I was very, very tired, but could not sleep. I felt awful. Wrong, bad, afraid. The body is purely physical, and there are probably things I could do to lessen the discomfort. I am sure that stomach acid was involved. But the immediate cause was clear - my thoughts. The deeper cause was not so clear, but took a little thought.
At this point may I say how much I love the physical world. It is the only thing that is real. It gives us freedom, it gives us each a brain, that most wonderful of all tools - and it gives me a body that is even smarter than the brain. It gives freedom, because with some physical knowledge I could have taken some alkali and relieved the immediate problem without any further effort. (Though I chose not to - I needed to address the deeper issues.) The brain is so wonderful because, even as I felt awful, I knew that given enough time I could find a solution. So I went downstairs, sat in a chair, continued to feel awful, but eventually found the answer. Lastly, the body is smarter than the brain because it knew something was wrong before I (my conscious mind) did. My body tells me when I need to change. It tells me than things are right or things are wrong. Many times in the past my body has made me change direction, and saved me from wasting my life. The body is like the Holy Spirit, only real.

The problem

The problem, in general terms, was not hard to find. It is a problem I have wrestled with for the past three years (and unconsciously for most of my life). But this morning it came time to act. To change direction. The problem can no longer be ignored. Metaphorically, I am running very fast, head down, into a brick wall. And I am choosing to run on broken glass while carrying an unfeasibly large weight. And, to complete the analogy, it feels like I am hitting my loved ones in the face as I pass them, and they have grown very tired of being hit.
Literally, I have devoted my life to doing as much good as I can. See how pretentious that sounds? Even saying it makes me sound either arrogant or deluded, and further pushes people away. For the sake of historical interest, I will give a brief history of this, but first let's talk about muses that afflict us.

The muse that afflicts me

The muse that afflicts me is Calliope, eldest of the muses, the muse of philosophy and epic poetry. She afflicts me in a way that is most appropriate for a Greek myth: she torments me by showing me a vision that is noble and good (more on this anon), more desirable than anything else, yet will destroy me and make me miserable if I follow it.
It will destroy me because: First, it will alienate me from loved ones, and I need loved ones. Second, it riddles me with self-doubt. I concentrate on my plans, always looking for problems, always calculating the possibility of failure. Nobody likes a self-obsessed self doubter. Ironically, ignorant people who confidently plough into the unknown are generally happy (because ignorance is bliss) and attractive to others (because other people are lost as well, and want to be led).

A little history...

A little history might be in order. I was a very happy child, with unlimited self confidence, and I seemed to be good at everything I tried (except sports, but I never cared much for sports - though I admire those who hones their bodies and skills). At the age of 9 I discovered that there were serious problems in the world (starvation, torture, etc.). By the age of 12 I decided what I wanted to do with my life: find out why these things happen, thus giving the next generation a head start in solving those problems. I then wasted twenty years trying to believe that the church was the solution.
Now I am back on track, but those twenty years are years I will never regain. In hindsight I should have followed my dream, then let a career follow. Maybe I would never have married, but I would have been in a good position to find someone who felt roughly the same way as me. Instead, I put all my faith in a church that tied me in knots then betrayed me. Result: having wasted so much energy on nonsense, and tried to be a breadwinner and family man when it was not time, I now have low economic prospects, and commitments to people I love, but have nothing in common with.

Oh the irony

If you want to make the world the best you possibly can, then you have to enter the realm of ideas. Ideas are more powerful than actions, because ideas control actions. One idea can motivate action in a whole nation or a world. Think of ideas like freedom, love, democracy, religion, or wealth. And if you want to change the world, you must start from a premise that the whole world is wrong. The result? In order to help people you must distance yourself from people. In order to love people, you must become a stranger to them and oppose what they do.
"Surely you exaggerate" I hear you say. "Surely you do not need to distance yourself from people? Surely you do not need to oppose them?" To understand the exquisite power of the torment, you need to look at the depth of the evil in the world, and ask yourself about the alternatives to being a self-righteous jerk (my chosen strategy).

The world is evil

Most of the world is either unwilling or incapable of thinking rationally (see the dominance of religion, belief in personal life after death, etc.) That is not just ignorance (we are all guilty of that). It is evil, because the ignorance is willful - most people choose ignorance, and distrust those who, having paid the price of knowledge, disagree with them. So they fight against any new ideas, including better ones..
It gets worse. Even those who think clearly, spend practically all of their time and money on themselves or their families, and not on justice, absolute poverty, etc. What we call romantic love rewards those who focus on the (already wealthy) individual and punishes those who care more about the big picture. Justice is simply irrelevant to most people - they show zero interest in the economics of where their wealth comes from.
Of course, as a relativist, I cannot blame people for this. We are all in the business of ignorant survival. One person's selfish greed is another person's principled morality. I do not expect anyone to agree with me. Why would they want to?

My hopes and dreams

What are these abstract ideas I talk about? They are summed up, with reasons, in one of my web sites, www.AnswersAnswers.com. To dater, I have received many kind remarks along the lines of "I am happy that you have found answers that satisfy you" but it has failed to set the world alight. I think half of the 400 hits are from my own computer. As far as I can see from feedback, it is so far off the wall almost nobody challenges any of it. Those who do comment on parts show that they d not understand it. Which is my failure to explain, but to explain it properly would take hundreds of pages. I have compressed years of study and thousands of pages of notes into a single page. I think it is to far 'out there' to be understood.
Plan 'B' is to incorporate these ideas, in a friendly fashion, in a game I am creating. It should be finished in four years, and will illustrate the various principles in entertaining ways. But realistically I don't expect that to make much difference at first. People buy games to be entertained, not to be challenged. Plan 'C' is very short term - within the next week. I will upload a web site on Georgism that I hope will make things much simpler. But again I don't really expect the world to flock to my site and be converted. The ideas are challenging, even though they are simple. People do not like to be told they are wrong.
Long term, I think that people will come back and come back to them. I have spent a very long time on these ideas and they will stand up to a lot of scrutiny. They have depth. I think they have a fighting chance of making a difference in the long term. but the long term means when I am old or dead, and that does not help me now.

Looking for a moral way out

The obvious response is "clearly your holier than thou attitude does not make you happy. So try a different way." But this is where the muse really starts afflicting. The 'holier than thou' attitude probably DOES work. Even though it may make a person unpopular, that person (given a good family and a wealthy government) will probably survive reasonably well, with friends of a sort. So the physical costs are relatively low. But the potential benefits are immense. If I write down everything I find, my ideas can last for hundreds of years. I am probably wrong, but if a hundred people do this, or a thousand people, one of them will have genuinely good ideas. And that one person with good ideas will do more good for the world than the moderate harm caused by the thousands of failed thinkers.
So intellectually, being the lone searcher is a good strategy. Unfortunately, evolution means my brain is a summary of all my ancestors. Most of my ancestors, by definition, will be ordinary people with ordinary strategies. So when I consciously decide on a strategy that goes against everything my body has learned, by body screams "No! don't do it! Make friends instead! Look after number one!". I suppose this is what Paul meant by the spirit being willing but the body weak.
And like I said, my body is smarter than me (in terms of personal survival and pleasure, at least). My goal is to please both my mind and my body, to do the best I can AND be happy. But that is a tall order. I was not designed for that.

Looking for my tribe

As indicated, my approach tends to alienate people. At a distance, people see someone who disagrees with what they think. Close up, they see a man who appears to care more for books than people. And the fact is that I disagree with most people on a lot of things. If I ever come across as agreeable, it is only because I have learned when to keep quiet.
The world is a very big place, and no doubt there are people out there who think as I do. But after years of searching (mainly on the web, their natural home) I must conclude that they never form a critical mass. The closest I have found are Georgists (qv Henry George). But Georgists are thin on the ground, and so they get their social life in other areas - as Christians, Republicans, with their own families, etc. There is no social side to Georgism. Georgist discussion boards are all about economic technicalities. Last month a Georgist discussion board was launched that tried to go further, but so far there are only two regular contributors, a young anarchist man and myself. He's a nice guy and all, but he's not what you would call a community.
I feel like the last dodo, wandering around making dodo sounds and never hearing anything in return.

Looking for my tribe on an emotional level

Although my ideas are very unusual, my experience is surely more common? Surely many people feel misunderstood, lonely, etc.? Yes, and I spent a depressing few hours finding them on the Net, only to discover that my brand of being misunderstood is truly unique. It's pretty bad when even other lonely people don't understand you.
For example, I concluded that, on an emotional level, I don't want to save the world. I searched for the phrase "I don't want to save the world." Lots of people say that, but none of them have ever tried. And most of them don't even think it is possible. When they despair, it is the despair of someone who has a minor setback but they basically agree with their peers on all major issues. I am not like them.

Big Brother

I think that is why I keep coming back to the book 1984. Not as a commentary on Mormons, but as a commentary on society in general - any society. It is hard to kick against the pricks. Somewhere deep inside we all want to love big brother. We all want to believe that everything is OK and we all go to heaven when we die.
I think it would be easier if I was less optimistic. If I could just rage against the machine and say, like most people, "it cannot be done." Yet it can be done. It just requires a very high price from the people who do it. Especially since most of them will fail in the attempt. The book 1984 was all the more tragic because The Party COULD be defeated. The party was extremely inefficient. It had all of the weaknesses of Stalinism without any of the strengths (as well as murdering millions, Stalin saved millions by industrializing a medieval economy). The Party could be defeated either from within - by catastrophic failure - or from outside, by any nation that could, by healthy competition, offer party leaders more wealth and comfort. Today the world is the same. The present problems CAN be overcome in relatively simple ways, and almost certainly WILL be overcome eventually. So to give up trying and say "I love big brother" becomes doubly painful.

How I overcame this morning's awful feeling

Well enough whining. This story had a happy ending, at least for now. I resolved that, at an emotional level, I don't want to do my best. I don't want to help the starving. I don't want to tel the truth. I just want to be loved, even if that means selling my soul. But do not worry, as a relativist I know that the universe does not care what I feel or believe. It only cares what I do. (That is, only the things I do will make a difference.)

So I hereby resolve two things:

1. I resolve that I will no longer care if what I do is right or wrong. I will of course carry on with the morals and direction I have. But I will no longer examine it or listen to criticism. You can only afford to care when you are young, and still have time and energy to change direction and start again. When you get older, you need to stick to your beliefs regardless. I have spent a very long time making sure that my beliefs are as true as I can make them. I will now stick to them and no longer entertain the possibility that they could need changing again. That is how progress happens. Politicians who doubt themselves do not make good leaders.
2. I resolve that I will no longer care if I make a difference.
   I will simply focus on my art. My art is my game and my web sites, which happen to contain quite a bit of economics and philosophy. I will no longer care if they are read or if they make a difference. I will only be true to myself. Great leaders do not wonder if they will win. They have blind faith that they will win, or die gloriously in the attempt. The only way to make a difference is to stop worrying about making a difference.
   And when I had thought these words, the fear and despair left me. Now I am at peace.
   I suppose this is a genuine religious experience. When you stop asking the big questions and just accept what you have decided, you feel so good. There is a time for questioning and struggling, and there is a time for just being. I have done enough questioning and struggling for a lifetime. Now I will just be.

Well that's all. I feel better for writing that. A lot better. Thanks for reading.