Today I received a mail of someone saying how great it was that I was a 'graphomaniac'. I haven't heard that term before, but I could figure out what it meant. After a little research I found this:
Graphomania is not a mania to write letters, personal diaries, or family chronicles (to write for oneself or one's close relations) but a mania to write books (to have a public of unknown readers). ... Graphomania (a mania for writing books) inevitably takes on epidemic proportions when a society develops to the point of creating three basic conditions:
1. an elevated level of general well-being, which allows people to devote themselves to useless activities;
2. a high degree of social atomization and, as a consequence, a general isolation of individuals;
3. the absence of dramatic social changes in the nation's internal life.
Then I was going to write a short reply about how writing for me was just one of my tools I use to express my ideas about the things I'm concerned about. It didn't turn out very short, so I decided to post it here, it summarizes the reasons that fuel my writing. Ladies and Gentlemen, Mein Kampf (by Lucy Phermann)
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why thanks. It's not like I have a choice, ahah. This urge to make anything I can to burn down the mediocre world we live in so we can be reborn like a Phoenix is something that I just can't leave behind. Even if I wanted, I can't get rid of it. It's so deep inside me like breathing and pumping blood. I have an intelligent mind, an extremely peculiar way to view things, somehow 'rebellious' and I've always had a talent for writing, so that's one of the mediums I use to communicate and express my ideas. In the end it all stems from me being naturally.. fascinated, with the world around me. From my desire to pursue priesthood to my actual 'campaign' against religions. It may seem contradictory but it is very logic. As a kid and young boy, my fascination with the world pushed me towards religions. My fascination with the Universe has always been so, that to me the only obvious choice, and desire, was to devote my life to exalt the wonders of Creation and Creator. In a way, that hasn't changed that much, and that's the big irony, the contradiction is born from itself, and what pushed me towards religions ended up turning me in their biggest enemy, because, being so fascinated with the world, I just can't tolerate any kind of authority telling how far can you go, and dictating how should things be and how they shouldn't. It might seem a dangerous and anarchist way of thinking, and of course there's anarchism in it, tho not in the traditional way, my target is not a political system, it's more complex than that. My aversion for any authority and (external) moral, stems mainly from:
1st, a love for freedom. While many insist that freedom should not be mistaken for licentiousness, and that your rights end where the rights of others begin, I think that way of thinking contradicts itself. Who am I to set the limits for what you think is freedom? Who is anyone to set the limits of what me, or you, or her, think freedom is? Instead I think anyone has the right to stand up and fight for what they value.
2nd, and very important, because so many people miss this when they attack/defend similar ways of thinking, is that 'good' and 'evil' are extremely subjective, and I like that it's that way. While homogenizing the concept of 'good' and 'evil', 'right' and 'wrong' might help to make a more 'peaceful' society and possibly avoid conflicts between humans (not necessarily tho, because, even if they'd all think the same about what's right and wrong, that holds no guarantee that they won't do wrong) I think that it's very.. nocive, since it arbitrarily sacrifices so many possibilities creating a mediocre reality that's imposed above all others. So I don't think that it'd be very 'good' that we'd all agree and get along. I choose the conflict, I declare not peace, but war. If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot learn anything from me. Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to cast conflicts upon the earth: fire, sword, war; and how I wish it were already kindled! I'm not here to grant peace on earth, but rather division; For there will be five in a house: there'll be three against two and two against three, father against son and son against father, and they will stand alone. Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbour.I will not pity, nor spare, nor have mercy, but destroy, utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not, but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, and not one stone will be left on another; every one will be thrown down. I'm very serious when I affirm that I'm The Enemy of everything humanity holds dear. Love your enemies, love me. Because in the end I can be the best friend of this society. Everybody complains about society, and they seem to forget that THEY are society. I am society. I am the wish for more, and I change in order to perpetuate myself. There's an element of 'evil', if you want, in all of us and everything we do. If a set of values is imposed, or 'promoted' as the ideal, and consequently the only one that can be considered as 'acceptable', the equilibrium is broken. Conflict is what keeps equilibrium.That push-pull game. If everyone pulls on one side of the string, well, that doesn't make much sense.
3rd. And also extremely important. This has a lot to do with the previous idea. Not only are 'good' and 'evil' very subjective and the presence of a general moral nocive, but those are things that the individuals must find out for themselves. You can't expect someone to value something or value something yourself, if what is causing that 'valuing' is that you're being told not only that that particular thing is worth to be valued, but also that if you don't value it then you're a bad person or something is wrong with you. I see most people values stem from this system and I think that's one of the reasons of the big apathy and dullness of our times, or what I call 'The Age of Vacuum'. People live too worried about fulfilling the social standards that they're demanded to play. And yes, there's a wish of many people to be 'good persons' and so they defend honesty, peace, love, patriotism or any other badge, but not because they've taken the time to think about the nature of these things (and of the things they oppose to), to live them and see the role they play, not only in their lives, but in the way society is organized, to really find out what's the value they have, and both their positive and negative implications. Humans lifestyle is based in obedience, a domination-slavery scheme kinkier than any BDSM practice. Homo Homini Lupus. Many people believe they're making a good to society while they're just being pawns, and even the ethics of job resemble more a remunerated slavery. People work basically to get paid and nothing more. Go to schools not to explore and learn, but to accumulate knowledge so they can make a living. The same pattern is present in religion. People do not want to be bothered and burdened, with existential worries when they can have the answer given by someone. But again, most don't really know their religion, practicing a 'light' religion (and that's an oxymoron, religion is not something that you can just carry in your pocket) and just taking for granted what they're told about what's good and what's evil, sin and virtue. In the end, you're only getting a conditioned response and it all becomes a contingency contracting and a lot of conditioning. If you live in a certain way, you can earn salvation, eternal life in a post-mortem universe, money, fame and fortune, respect, love, etc. But if you don't then you'll go to hell, you'll be a nobody, a loser, a failure. I think people should realise how the patterns that they buy without even realising, can be just tools to use them for the interests of those who promote those patterns. People should wonder where all their beliefs, habits, values and needs are coming from. Who dictates our morals? All this 'tacit agreement' about what's acceptable? Do they come from religion, politicians, industries, the media? What determines the general perception we have of the world? How advancements in technology and science can be used for the convenience of those who have the power? These are important questions that people should answer by themselves, because if we continue living our lives based on the interests of a few, things can go pretty ugly; they're already going pretty ugly. This way of living has more of machine than it has of human. Our lives resemble an endless series production, each time faster and faster and we don't even know where we're going. Not even where we are standing now. People can't value anything if they don't have the time to find its value. People can't value anything just because a book, institution, politician or celebrity says they MUST value it. Just because they're supposed to. You value something when for your own experience it acquires meaning to you, a personal meaning. So people should not mistake my aversion for 'faith', 'religions' and institutions as a sort of antisocial behavior or 'rebel without a cause'. I care, and I want people to really care. That's why I attack traditions, because they tend towards decay and stagnation. The more you repeat something, the more automatic it becomes, and in following traditions, people forget and detach from what really matters.
4th and last, but not least, reality. Humans appeared on this planet thousands of years ago. They've evolved and developed a highly specialized nervous system that has made them the dominant race on this planet. They've become aware of a reality that none other animal had perceived. And through all the years of human history, they've been trying to find out the answers to understand that reality, religion and science being the biggest tools they have used for that task. But, until the date, in spite of all the theories and dogmas, the Universe remains unexplained and a mystery. Our very lives meaning is not totally clear. And we must be very careful about the answers we give, because, depending of that answers, we'll organize our lives in a certain way. Those answers affect greatly the way we perceive reality and the way we live day to day. Old institutions have proved themselves unable to provide those answers. 21st century humans live a very important and peculiar stage of human history. A world has died and there's nothing to replace it. 21st century man continues out of inertia, holding unto the obsolete because there's nothing new to believe in. When religion and science have proved insufficient, where can they turn to? Indifference? New age? Another religion? Personally, I don't think any of that can help us, but that's something that each person must decide for themselves. I think we must search. We must actually live life. Discovering its mysteries, enjoying everything it offers, feeling it. We must abandon our fears and hopes. We must reconsider many things about how we perceive the world. And this is very important, because humans are capable of incredible things, with consensus as the only requisite. And if we can find an exit of this stagnation we are sinking in, I think we must do everything we can to do it. I don't think that being the architects of our own lives is that bad. Tasting the world with our own mouth, delighting ourselves in its flavors, its endless flavors, bitter, acid, sweet.. that's not bad at all... As Hermann Hesse says on his prologue to his novel 'Demian':
"...what a real living human being is made of seems to be less understood today than at any time before, and men -- each one of whom represents a unique and valuable experiment on the part of nature -- are therefore shot wholesale nowadays. If we were not something more than unique human beings, if each one of us could really be done away with once and for all by a single bullet, storytelling would lose all purpose. But every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world's phenomena intersect, only once in this way and never again. That is why every man's story is important, eternal, sacred; that is why every man, as long as he lives and fulfills the will of nature, is wondrous, and worthy of every consideration. In each individual the spirit has become flesh, in each man the creation suffers, within each one a redeemer is nailed to the cross.
Few people nowadays know what man is. Many sense this ignorance and die the more easily because of it, the same way that I will die more easily once I have completed this story.
I do not consider myself less ignorant than most people. I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books; I have begun to listen to the teachings my blood whispers to me. My story is not a pleasant one; it is neither sweet nor harmonious, as invented stories are; it has the taste of nonsense and chaos, of madness and dreams -- like the lives of all men who stop deceiving themselves.
Each man's life represents a road toward himself, an attempt at such a road, the intimation of a path. No man has ever been entirely and completely himself. Yet each one strives to become that -- one in an awkward, the other in a more intelligent way, each as best he can. Each man carries the vestiges of his birth -- the slime and eggshells of his primeval past -- with him to the end of his days. Some never become human, remaining frog, lizard, ant. Some are human above the waist, fish below. Each represents a gamble on the part of nature in creation of the human. We all share the same origin, our mothers; all of us come in at the same door. But each of us -- experiments of the depths -- strives toward his own destiny. We can understand one another; but each of us is able to interpret himself to himself alone ."
Indeed, I think humans are unique, but they're not living like that, they're not being treated like that, but instead they're living and being used like gears in a machine. And that's something I will never tolerate. I think we can be more than that. We can create a much more meaningful world. Why live in a pigsty when we can build a castle? just because after a while the mud begins to feel good? Each person must approach to reality on their own. We are alone, and die alone. But that's not bad as we could think. And that doesn't mean we can't share with each other. But only we can live our own lives. It's ridiculous pretending that everybody lives under a same reality, same set of values and same beliefs. It's ridiculous that we must be told every single thing about how we should live: when, where and what clothes can we wear, how many hours we must sleep, what we can drink and what we can eat or consume in any other way, what kind of movies we can watch, or music we can hear, what books should we read, what to believe. Who can we fuck or fall in love with. What kind of sexual acts we can engage into. What can we question and what we can't even touch. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. I think we're creating a society of robots, made of flesh. Curiously, contrary to the traditional 'tin man' image we have of a 'robot', this was the original meaning of the word. The word 'robot' was created by Josef Čapek, and used by his brother Karel Čapek in his science-fiction play 'R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots)' to designate a race of genetically engineered humans, happy to serve. The play popularized the word robot, which displaced older words such as "automaton" or "android" in languages around the world. In its original Czech, robota means drudgery or servitude; a robotnik is a peasant or serf. I think without genetic engineering, the work is already well on its progress. We become more and more soulless each day.
That's where this 'graphomania' as you call it comes from, and it's funny 'cus you only wrote me 4 words and I write this long reply, but writing is one of the best things I do, so I make full use of it. But writing is just one of the tools I use. Everything I make is aimed to contribute in some way to bring the Age of Vacuum to an end. So I hope you enjoy reading my stuff but specially finding out by yourself what do you think and feel and what can you do about it.
Lucy Phermann
Your EneMe.
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