Rebel without a clue, part two

I'm feeling a bit depressed after the first part of Rebel, so let me lighten the mood by playing some music. Music softens the senses and mine are sharp. As sharp as the peeling knife that cut the top of my right thumb while doing the dishes yesterday. I didn't realise this at first but the blood stains on the door, wall and coffee mug gave me a clue. Tired as I was, it took almost a whole minute while I feared for my sanity, before I finally felt a dull pain emanating from my thumb and saw a shallow cut about 15 millimetres long. It had reopened and small drops of blood were slowly trickling out. Next I see the walls bleeding however I'm afraid a simple band-aid might not help, because I've been on edge for a while now. Helping me to stave off clinical insanity is Mozart, and his K262 concerto performed by La Grande Écurie et la Chambre Du Roy under direction of Jean-Claude Malgoire. "An immortal masterpiece" it says on the box. There's some irony there but with the mood now set to a suitably light tone, let me continue my irrational but not insane rant about the coming end of the world.

Because the end is coming our way. Fast as an incoming comet, chilling as a new ice age, scorching as global warming, sweeping as a tsunami and inescapable as global slavery. At least, if some sources on the Internet are to be believed. A truth that has quite a bit of apostles in the world.
One of which is Albert, a friend of a nephew. Albert is something else and proud of it. He's the waving finger whenever you try to have a discussion about the upcoming elections, our national pass time. He's the warning voice saying that no amount of votes or politics can stave off the inevitable end of the world. He'll sometimes add that some of the authorities are in on the plan to enslave everybody. With motives ranging from greed to plain evil. Everything goes to achieve their goals. Even global warming is set up to kill off part of the populace. The question that never gets asked though is why a robber would burn money in order to get it. Albert would interject and say that he doesn't, he raises taxes to battle this so-called global warming and pockets the money. What the money will be used for is never stated. It might never be used at all because, also according to Albert, all forms of currency are about to disappear with the rise of the new world order.

His claim to this truth is incontestable because he has read it on a web page blog post opinion piece, much like this one. He is convinced that everything written down has to have at least some modicum of truth about it. Trough this lens Albert also looks at his preferred religion: having no preferred religion. He's the one looking for the red wire running through all the world's most popular beliefs. Believing that the thing they have in common must be the core of truth. Life after death is a good example because just about every religion assures everyone that they'll never stop being. The success of which is simple to explain. Few people exist who have the imagination to imagine not existing. Death reverts us back to the state we were in before birth: not there. Try asking people if they were aware of their personality before they were born and count the frowns. When asked about this Albert says he's had past lives, but he has trouble remembering exactly what or who he was. Luckily there are many people willing to help him remember. From would-be gurus to truth tellers. Albert has a lot to look forward to; caught in an infinite loop of reincarnation on a planet that is getting worse as time goes along.

Of course every religion has its "end of days" scenario and Albert has adopted a few. I could also be so arrogant as to say the world will end in my lifetime. Special as I am to be one of the very, very few people in the history of existence that get to rightly predict and witness The End. But if it doesn't happen, I'd look very, very stupid. Most of the time I look stupid enough as it is so I'm not going to take voluntary steps to make it worse.
It's mostly old people who tend to speak in terms of doom and gloom, because of the thing that looms largely on the horizon: their own demise. As if nothing has a right to exist if they don't get to. Most youth with health and prospects have optimism about the future. So what makes young Albert so gloomy then?
Albert insists he's always right about everything. When his girlfriend broke up with him, he was trying to get me to break up with mine. He said that all women are deranged freeloaders, and we'd be better off without. Or with different ones. Albert gets kicked out of school. That's OK, so should you, because the school system is used for indoctrination. Albert can't find a job. That's fine, you shouldn't work either. Cannabis can be bought just as easily on welfare. Albert is poor. Not a problem, you should be too and concentrate on what's really important. Like expanding your mind, man.
Albert doesn't care about his health, and why should he? Why should you? The world will end in 2012 anyway. As "predicted" by the Mayans. Be merry, have fun, relax and make love, not war. But what then if what he thought was wrong? Now you're uneducated, homeless, angry and crawling with STDs. I'm rather thinking he doesn't want to be alone. It all comes down to this one sentence: "if you are like me then that gives me and my actions legitimacy". Even though he values his uniqueness and independence above all else.

If there is one thing Albert and me can agree on is the existence of aliens. I think there's an immensely high probability of extraterrestrial intelligent life. Albert also believes that in addition to the transdimensional aliens looking over your shoulder as you read this, Draconians, Pleiadians, reptilians and archangels.
There's a theory that says aliens have influenced ancient civilizations. Part of me hopes they did. I hope the smoke, fire and hocus-pocus in the bible is only a description of the spaceships stopping by to toss out a bearded madman or some such. That way, when they come back somewhere around 2012, as Albert believes, every Catholic will have to admit their belief in god was actually alien worship. Of course the aliens, as superior beings, will see this flaw in parts of the earth's populace and promptly send believers to alien sweatshops, where they can continue their worshiping habits. In contrast, anyone who did not subscribe to religious doctrine but instead thought for themselves will be welcomed among the Alien ranks. And by the way, let's say humanity were to enter a galactic society, don't you think it would have to discard something as divisive as religion? I doubt that will happen though. So for now we are on our own. And we have to solve our crises ourselves.
As a professional problem solver, I'll have a crack at it. It's high time we come to the conclusion that we need to deal with the problem at the source. What's really taxing the planet? The root of all this evil is humanity itself. Or at least part of it. The part that makes us spread like a wild-fire, consuming even the air we breathe. How to deal with the situation? We can't simply remove people, that would be immoral. The solution might be then to stop reproducing the way we are. Though it might not happen because every scrap of humanity thinks it is entitled to reproduce itself and add yet another mouth to the teat of nature. Even Albert thinks children are the holy fruit of love and our only hope for the future. With fewer natural resources every excess child brings us one step closer to the fight of all against all. The inability of government to sustain its populace, protecting it from such a scenario in the first place, will dissolve government. The mask of civilization cast aside to show the hungry fangs of the inner ape. No, releasing your knowledge and fresh ideas upon the world is much more useful than releasing your genes. As it stands, I would much rather conserve the talent and knowledge that is in the world already in favour of an expanding population. This means we should prolong human life and keep up the quality of it as much as possible. Who, apart from the suicidic, would rather have a decrepit body at an old age over a youthful body at a high age? I know some of you will rightfully think that I'm hoping such treatment will be available for myself in my lifetime, special as I am. Some people might cry out that I'm just afraid of death, and they are not. Willfully ignorant perhaps, unable to change the fact of the unavoidable, best to cope with it as best you can.
But I would like to point out that they are wrong. They too do obsess about death. Looking both ways before crossing a road, wearing seat-belts, signing up for insurance. And they obsess even more about the health of their children. There's no such thing as DNA insurance. If your offspring doesn't survive, neither do your genes. And that's it for your personal branch of evolution. Luckily for those occasions the human race has sidetracked natural selection, so it doesn't really matter. Everybody gets to live. No matter how muddled the gene pool. Don't get me wrong, I'm thankful for it too, but I'd like to take matters to the next step.
The books and sites Albert reads have a different view though, every one of their readers are the pinnacle of human evolution, ready to ascend. So get down to earth and back to nature! Cast aside those inoculations and medications! Don't you know that no disease can kill you!? Their children to be gods among men. Prepare for the tidal wave of indigo children! For they will defy the global government, aided by aliens from parallel dimensions, aided by telekinesis and telepathy, aided by your dreams and illusions!
If you can't quite comprehend the words of that last sentence, don't worry. Just get any issue of X-men and you'll be up to speed within reading five pages. Just don't go believing what you read, or some person might write an arsenic blogpost about you.

Just in case though I'm already stocking up and saving up for a self sustaining underground bunker. I've got the plans right here, and a few shovels. I only need to convince a few of Albert's satanic friends that satan really is down there, near the core of the earth. After all, nobody has been there to prove otherwise so he really has to be. When they dig deep enough they will get to him eventually. Of course, a day or two in they will probably find it to be too much work and get back to playing Xbox. Leaving me with my personal underground lair.
This way I'll be safe for when humanity starts loosing it's mind. And by the time generations of post-civilization cannibals have chewed their way though the concrete walls in search of the holy grail, all they'll find will be my desiccated mummy and Mozart playing through the speakers for all eternity, until the Aliens finally arrive. Expecting a golden race of Illuminati and Elvis Presley. But finding nothing more on our brown planet earth than the corpse of a civilization that found it more important to consume rather than to construct.

Rebel without a clue, part one

Some observers might observe that I am not a very good observer. Because most of the things that are happening to me, are happening to just me and only me. Perhaps because most of it is even happening inside my own head! So I might want to observe very carefully so I can pick apart what's in here and what's out there.

There's always the one observer who proclaims that everything you know is wrong. You're taught by the wrong people. Craving the wrong needs. Watching the wrong television. Eating the wrong food. Worshiping the wrong god. Handed the flashlight of inquiry but kept in the dark, as to not overstep any boundaries in order to keep your attention on what you need to attend.

One such is Albert, a friend of my nephew. Albert is something else and proud of it. He tries to cast a shadow of doubt on every aspect of life. Except for the ones he really likes. Speaking mostly in hyperbole he commits one of the worst sins: exaggeration. Contrast is turned to 150%. So when trying to discuss a black and white world with the man, you're either friend or foe. Apt words for someone ready to take up arms about what he perceives is true. He's strengthened in his convictions because he has quite a lot of allies who share his point of view. A body of men who've all agreed to be nonconformists.

He's a higher education drop-out. When asked about it, he'll state that the school system didn't really suit him anyway. To his credit though, he has tried a few different courses, from psychology to art. The first because of Albert's immense people-skills and the last because his boundless creative energies. Knowing Albert a bit, I'm sorry to say he might be lacking in both departments. He can help people and create art in the same capacity that everybody knows how to sing, or how everyone knows how to be a politician, or a soccer trainer. From the looks of it these are skills that don't require much if only you're born with the talent. But that can't be imagined. Plus there's training involved. His ambitions were well founded too, change the world for the better. Too bad then that his ambitions were quenched when he saw the volume of paper being handed to him on the very first academic day. The fact that changing the world takes a lot of work cooled him on that and he gave up on ambition all together. There had to be an easier way. Like flipping the switch that would make it all right. So he went in search for the switch. The one thing that will instantly reverse the wrongs into rights. A search for a holy grail that will end in the realization that there probably isn't one. I don't know what is the cause of this binary thinking. Perhaps it hails all the way back to the cave where problems were addressed as "food or no food", "crap or no crap", "sleep or no sleep", "woman or no woman" where the solution was to just take it, or in some cases drag it back to the cave by the hair. It sure took a lot of time before "to be or not to be" entered someone's mind and even depressingly longer before "god or no god". A sure sign that the binary brain needs a lot of education.

I was surprised to hear things went like this because any sane person knows it takes a lot of work to do anything in this world. And I'm not just talking about mending world hunger, even feeding yourself can be a daunting task sometimes. You might know what I'm talking about.
For example, whenever I want to make myself a sandwich I'm first faced with the fact that all plates, cutlery and cups have been standing in the sink for a couple of days, marinating in the remains of tea and coffee. The knives have a hardened crust of jam or chocolate spread and the plates have doubled in size with the crusted remains of past meals. I have to turn the hot water tap and wait for it to get warm. A time and energy investment that's hard to justify in the first place so since I have to wash up a few pieces I might as well wash all of them. After this form of ritual cleansing comes time to get a few loaves of bread. The bread is nowhere to be found. Except for the one inside the freezer, which is frozen solid to the inner left side. It's there just in case we ran out of bread and all bakers decided to go on strike because inflation had inflated the costs of production. The running out of bread happened the night before and the bread was bought only hours before that. But no matter, it has to go into the microwave to be defrosted. Upon opening said apparatus I realize it still contains some leftovers on yet another dirty plate. The food has long gone stale so it goes into the bin, which is located in the hall of the building. During the commute to the hall, the bread is melting to a puddle of dough and frost water because instead of inputting one minute of "melt some of the ice" I have put in "melt all solid matter". A common mistake because the defrosting function is only one notch removed from the "nuclear fusion" function. At this stage hunger is starting to take over from logic so I take the roughly loaf shaped item out of the radiation and reach for the butter - a cup of scrape-marks lined with crumbs and butter, achieving the worlds worst cocktail impression. Some fresh butter is obtained on the way back from the bin in the hallway where the crumb-cocktail finds it's final resting place next to the leftovers. When the phone doesn't start to ring when the sandwich is two centimeters away from your mouth, it's a piece of cake. But in the end, all I wished for was a sandwich. Wishful thinking simplifies things. Life never is.

Albert once read a book about wishful thinking. It was written by an American woman who has a degree from the prestigious university of www.degreesoftruth.com. But what's more, she once talked to the Dalai Lama and was infinitely blessed with a Buddhist physique and a revelation which lead to the book. Albert must have wished for a lot of money because he has been declining a lot of jobs these last few months.
His professional activities consist entirely of refusing work from the temping office. Mainly because the jobs are too mean. He was told by his parents and teachers as a child that he was special, unique, a gift of god. Through childhood and puberty he read stories about heroes and kings. Affirming this belief and so the need for a special destiny remains. No, he wants something important and meaningful. Apparently, he knows too much to be filling up cardboard boxes.
My critics are happy to point out that I never found myself predisposed to fill boxes as a profession. It's true. But I never pretended to know too much to do so in the first place. I only knew I wanted to do something else. So I set out to know too much. How do you know what to learn? By specializing in what you already know. How do you know what you already know? Recount your talents, and think about how they've expanded over time.

Albert knows too much because he's got the Internet. But that's a chapter I'll get to.