Pesheur

Unfinished Business
2005-03-31 18:04:24 (UTC)

Problematizing Inaction

12:40pm 033105

I'm finally finished with my paper and as I wrote it, I
began thinking about the possible ethical solutions to my
dilemma of being an asshole.

1.) With regard to honesty, if I can only get my actions
to confrom to my language and vice-versa I won't have to
worry about lying, right? I have to take responsibility
for the things that got me feeling this way in the first
place and aggressively try to confront them in as "honest"
a way as possible. This means owning up and face-to-face
apologies (if I can work up the balls). I am going to try
and be straight forward with people as much as possible
and hopefully, my fear of guilt will keep me out of
trouble from there. I'll let my actions start reflecting
my language.

What implications does this have though for the post I
made earlier about the way that none of what we do is
original, but always informed by our context. Is my only
hope of agency within the system that caused my trauma in
the first place. I guess the key is that my subjectivity
is altered because of the encounter and now I have to
start acting on it to see what it produces: Maybe another
trauma.

2.) Discomfort: I'm going to try once a day to say
something honest or put myself in a situation that makes
me uncomfortable in order to test my boundaries. My
borders have shrunk over the last year or so, and the
number of immigrants currently living in Lee Nation is
shrinking ... Those goddamned border patrols! I need to
stop being afraid and start acting. I think most of my
problem comes from fear of responsibility itself.

3.) Aloneness: I have to make sure that I balance my need
for social interaction with some healthy alone time and my
normal tendency to share a lot with people with some
secrecy and silence.

4.) Intimacy: I've really let my lusts control where my
eyes and head move lately. I want to stop objectifying
women and actually resolve not to get into a relationship
this year. If it happens, it happens, but I want to stop
looking and posturing.

I would like, for once to simply Be. It seems lately, it's
been easy to get swept away in distraction ... which
brings me to my final goal:

5.) Drinking and smoking in extreme moderation. I'm
talking maybe once every two weeks. Right now, I'm up to
about twice a week and it's ruining me mentally,
physically, and emotionally.

Blah. What does any of this mean without my acting on it?
The answer: Mental Masturbation. I do enough of that
already.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm mentally retarded and if my
professors just humor me or try and bolster my self-esteem
with good grades. My fear of being stupid (as ridiculous
as this sounds) has kept me from trying to get smarter. To
be smarter would mean that I'm dumber now and while this
is true, I let my fear govern me; govern my inaction.

Was it Bakhtin who said, "Fear is the mind killer"? Or is
that from George Herbert's Dune. It's been to long since
I've read "Discourse In The Novel" ... I'm not even sure I
ever have.

Blah.




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