What is intelligence?

 Intelligence is not easily demonstrated.

It is not demonstrated by sterile memorization and recitation of dry facts and figures.

It is not learning the names of all the element, completing a rubix cube, knowing your multiplication tables or naming every state. 

Intelligence is ADAPTIVE.  It is the ability to find understanding and pursue exigence in the face of minimal information or compounding and confounding inputs that are muddy,  unclear, inexact elements and data points. 

Intelligence is solving a novel problem, in a novel way. 

When intelligence is unavailable people often fall into patternicity,  a term invented by Michael Shermer.  This term describes what often occurs in the minds of simpler people,  where they struggle to produce understanding from sources they cannot derive understanding from and that causes them to SEE patterns where there are none.  In a desperate attempt to MAKE SENSE out of what may indeed be senseless they CREATE truth out of gibberish,  signal out of noise, and this is all done in service to ego.

The human ego DEMANDS this make sense, DAMNIT.  and if it doesn't, then i will MAKE SENSE OUT OF IT.  If i cannot, that must mean i'm stupid, and i can't live with that truth. 

No one wants to be stupid.  No parent wants their child to be stupid.  At one point in social being stupid really was that proverbial scarlet S that no person could bear the shame of.

That time is gone. 

You see, patternicity is common in conspiracy theorists.  That makes it useful to despotes  and propagandists.  That makes the simple minded effective tools for spreading misinformation, nonsense and imagined signs and signals from the sea of random noise.  

Intelligence is suspecting your source could be wrong or compromised.  Knowing that that data could change as new information is discovered.  

Intelligence is knowing that you cannot, do not, will not, EVER know everything.  

and having the lack of ego and the wealth of understanding to be confident enough to live with that. 

No one cries for the man on stage.

 I would like to be different.  I would like to FEEL different.  I am tired.  so tired of all of these patterns that funnel downward.  Each time i briefly think, "well, i tried everything i could.  i was honest, i was sincere,  i can't control how other people respond to that."  

And that might be true a few times, for a few people in your life.  Everyone has conflicts, if you don't, your a pushover or a people pleaser and likely spent much of your life being taken advantage of by others you want the approval of.  

I understand that.  I've struggled as an autistic man to know what the right road to travel is, should i mask, keep all my connections to others very shallow and surface depth, or should i unmask, and be my sincere entire self and hope it does kill them?

see, i knew in my 20's for certain i was not like others,  and came to think of myself as radioactive.  People would ask me for my insight and i would warn them not to ask me.  If they kept it up i would tell them. I would tell them all i saw about them, about the issue they had, answer their questions.  Most of the time that would just cause them to break.  I was a mirrored surface reflecting the deepest fears and insecurities they had, and now they knew that i saw them.  Tears usually followed, or brash flailing attempts at strength, a defensive reaction,  "Who the fuck are you anyways?  What the fuck do you know?!"  I'd heard that response so many times it became a running joke for me.  Not a funny one mind you, just  another dagger sticking out of the flesh.  I'd become accustomed to being abused, being kicked, being bullied, being shit on.  I walked through my landscapes like something scarred and mangled survivor protagonist from mad max.   There's so much more to tell but you get the jist.  

Radioactive.  Or gravity warping.  Those in my presence for too long tended to get poisoned or crushed.  They had to flee for their own safety.  

It's still the same today.  

I meet people, get invited into a group briefly, get comfortable, keep the mask up, and underneath it's disguise i am cool, confident, charming, interesting, a sparkling stone and gifted conversationalist, a gem, and standout, i breath life into things.  When the mask slips, things turn. I can't really explain to you in a way that does it justice, honestly.  It's happened so many times and in the same way that i can't even really understand it anymore.  I've come through the entire thing and out the other side in such a way that the data stream makes perfect sense and then becomes gibberish again. 

They love the mask.  The Thing that lurks underneath,  not so much.

You see eventually, this creature that i keep in writing, infinite lives in millions of lines of text have poured out of me like endless rains for decades.  The man i AM comes out in these words, but remains a glinting shadow behind my heterochromic eyes.  Perhaps one hides my self, the other projects my mask outward.   Sometimes that man breaks free, and speaks.  He speaks his feeling in run on sentences that baffle and confuse.  He casually says things like: "It's as if the 3 fates decreed "whatever suspicions you harbor towards people will always come to pass"  and  I must sit alone for eternity under Cassandra's curse."

and people grow still.  The entire chat thread ends and never resumes.  People leave and start a new one with him.  The calls stop coming.  No one knows what happened, or why, but they are upset, they are disquieted.  They want it to stop.   My honesty, my vulnerability, causes unease, and confusion.  

Confused at the notion that THIS is what i really am.

Not cool. Not superhuman.  Not confident.  Not charming.

I am desperate. Lonely.  Alien.  Spilling out over the sides and scrambling to keep it all in.  Sadly, i am earnest.  

I always imagine some idealized scenario, wherein i am embraced, that the others will show empathy and find my honesty and vulnerability brave.  They simple find it tiresome.  They didn't want a feeling, breathing, living, thing, 

they wanted a bright shiny toy to impress them and their friends. 

Watch him astound with language and stories and singing and light, enjoy the show and go home to your comfortable life.

No one understands what it is like to be dehumanized quite as well as someone who can't only PASS as human for a few moments.  For someone who lives such a singular and strange life that no one can seem to muster the effort to attempt to relate.  They just take what they can, and move on.

"All eyes turned up to the hero
Worn out self-abusive circus freak
There's one thing that you might not know:

There'll be another messiah right here next week"  

I'm finally there everyone.

I just want to be normal. 

What do you want I.E. what IS a problem?

 

What is, or isn't a problem, is sometimes a question of perspective.

Not always, mind you. If you have an abscessed tooth, getting it fixed is not something you can practically reframe to reduce the discomfort you are experiencing.

However, if you want to have a lot of friends, and you have tried and failed, you might think of this, as a problem. What do we do with problems?

Well usually, if we are of sound mind, we try to devise ways to solve them. In doing so we are adopting the most logically course of action, right?

Problem---solution- resolution of problem yes?

Maybe. First ask yourself, WHY is this a problem?

Okay. So following the example, why is NOT having friends a problem? Well, you could conclude that you will be lonely without friends, that your employment opportunities are reduced without friends, that you feel left out of the world without friends.

However, what about the fact that you feel a reduction of self esteem from rejection as a result of attempts to make said friends? Or that most people you meet you find to be judgemental, dimwitted, self centered slack jawed cowards that are unable to express themselves with anything approaching sincerity due to social convention flatting the landscapes of communication into a series of "acceptable topics" that reveal little to nothing about anyone or anything?

See? Perspective.

Maybe you are chasing friends because the world you live in prizes them, and you live in the world so, you emulate the people in the world you live in and pursue the things they pursue. That is what we are taught to do as autistic people right?

Craft a mask by stitching together strands of normality from the world and people around you into some LESS ominous MORE normal facsimile of a human being. But if you have to don a mask to make friends, are you really even MAKING FRIENDS? Aren't you making people believe you are someone else?

Wow, who is that guy will all those friends?? Impressive right?

Again, Perspective.

Humans AND whatever i am share some common features. One is that perhaps we are bad at understanding what we want, and also bad at separating what we want, from what we really need.

Stoics, absurdists, nihilists, Buddhists, they are all searching for meaning with different language, but the same goal. One is why worry, everyone is fucked. Another is why worry? it won't change the outcome. Another still is why worry, we are on a fucking rock in space and everything is arbitrary and made up, lawl, and one more is why worry, how will that help you to help others and return to the great rushing stream that is everything?

There are choices,

they are vast,

The track you think you are on is in your imagination and you can get off of it,

whenever you want.

Waging War

 What a profoundly useless thing i am.

Bouncing back and forth from one distraction to the next, pausing only to attend to the attention demands of my cats as they randomly jump on me, swat at my leg, or trill directly at me from whatever frozen throne i currently occupy.

I try to fight time, you see. By splaying open my veins and letting it drink my blood, just enough for me to pass out and wake up somewhere else.

Sadly, again and again i must repeat this until there is no more blood to give, and i no longer wake up.

No one beats time, you see, but you can be quite clever about how you choose to war wage. I had chosen to lose, intentionally, to rush time to consume me, to win by being no more, as soon as possible.

Time is happy to oblige, but like the eternal villain it is, it is in no rush.

It knows it will win, like it always does, and will do me no favors. It will not indulge my gamesmanship.

I cannot find value in the time, in what i could produce or what i could do with it, it is just a barrier between me and the exit. While i wish i could turn passion into progress, i am magnetized to the ground and there will be no heroes ending for one so utterly tied down to the tracks of quantum causality. You see every THING, is tied to something ELSE, and those THINGS are threads, that stretch into infinite futures. Eventually you reach a point where they all coalesce, where they are pulling you in a definite direction, at a predefined rate. At that point, you are a victim of choices past, the things you did, and that were done to you, have put you inexorably on to this path, and struggle though you might, you will not extract yourself from this. You will have your eyes pried open and held wide as you watch the things you know must happen, unfold.

And no one,

will ever

believe you.

Thunk- an ode to not knowing how to stop

 When every thought has been thunk

and every ship has been sunk

I trace the lines on my face like a treasure map

Wondering where all the gold has gone.

-I can't help thinking everything has been thought, every fertile ground tilled, every hidden spring uncovered, tapped and bled dry.

For some reason that reduces things for me, it makes the thoughts less valuable, thinking they have already been expunged from the sacred halls of disorganized minds, danced elegantly upon parchment and spit hastily upon tape and the binary of the impermeant.

I want to be myself. I want to be One of One. I want to be irreducible even as i seek to package and label the ENTIRE UNIVERSE for my own gentle amusement.

For a mere snicker, for a half sigh preceding a laugh abandoned before completion.

I want to be THE one. For you. For me. For everyone. I want them to speak my name in hushed tones or in tones of revelry.

I do not want to be worshiped, merely KNOWN.

"That's the guy," they'll say.

"That's the guy that lives. The guy that is real. The subterranean creature that discovered a rare unknowable beautiful thing and who shares it with the world with wild unrestrainable abandon. He's is what we should all aim to be. For even in failing, we are wondrous and joyful. We are graceful like the licks of fires swaying as the tips of the flame disappear and falter. We are hope, and in trying we express our hopefulness dashing ourselves on the rocks of probability. As there is no fate so cruel as to be alive and resigned to never try again. "

This hurts.

For some people this is some kind of intellectual exercise. Some self aggrandizing flailing about calculated, measured, sanded by machines to a perfect roundness, cut with lasers into perfect edges and lines, no.. not for me.

For me to say something is for me to cry, and feel the channels cut into my face by the swollen tears and rolls down the craggy surface from my sunken eyes. Age has taken my smoothness, but it has not taken the sharpness from my blade. I must draw it to make ink, and mix it with these tears to swing madly at huge blank vistas.

They are worth nothing when i start,

and they will be worth nothing when i finish.

I'm not deluded, see i know the awful truth.

It's that nothing is awful. It's that the world doesn't owe you. It's that nothing is perfect.

It's worse AND better than that.

It's nothing. The world nothings you. As it nothings me. We are creatures designed to seek external cues to guide our internal light that are the only ones capable of creating meaning for ourselves.

The world doesn't hate you. The world doesn't love you.

The world doesn't even know you were born. Or that you died.

Or that i died, i came back, and that i am dying again.

Splattering myself on the fine lines of countless notebooks was never going to draw the EYE of the world, but if it made ME feel better,

if bleeding all that blood into ink made me feel stronger, smarter, more in control, less troubled,

than the price paid was worth it,

and i will pay that price again.

The passage of time, decay, entropy and many forms of failure.

Failure takes many forms, and we are not always the reason it occurs.  

Yeah, sometimes you try real hard to win the big game, but the other team is just a bit better and you lose.  That is not personal failure.  That is life.  Maybe you could have run faster you think, maybe you could have thrown farther you think, maybe the one catch or shot or yard you missed mattered enough to have swung the odds you think, but this way lies madness. 

There are too many moving parts.  Too many variables for you to blame yourself for this "failure" as you see it.  YOU lost, you think, forgetting the team. It has happened, and it will happen again.

Losing, or failing, is the cost of playing the game.  If you refuse to play out of fear of failure, the results are all together more dour.  The prognosis, worse.

To protect yourself from the possiblity of breaking your ankle out there in the world, you break it yourself, in your bedroom, and you never leave for fear of the thing you would instead make come to pass yourself. 

Hope your enjoying that cold comfort of being right about your own misfortune by causing it yourself because NO ONE ELSE WILL ENJOY HEARING ABOUT IT.

You will be ruthlessly negative, hopelessly negative, the one that always complains.  The one for which things are never good enough.  The latte is never quite right, The weather is never QUITE right, the food is never quite right, the boy or girl or job or show or car or shirt or child or pet or show or song IS NEVER 

QUITE

RIGHT

.........You were so exhausted by life so now you've taken to becoming exhausting to everyone else who is STILL trying. Still fighting. Still climbing while boulders and bolts rain down on them, while radical winds try to RIP them from the steep incline, rather then encourage them, root for them, hope for them, you snipe from afar, shooting covert arrows and throwing stones.  Because in THEIR EFFORT you see your own failures.  Your own compromises.  Your own hurt.  HOW DARE THEY NOT BE BROKEN.  HOW DARE THEY KEEP TRYING.  I wish they fell off the mountain and they were crippled down here.  

With me.

Because i miss them.  

On some level you do. You miss trying, you miss being on that mountain.  You miss when people heard your complaints as you both clung to the sides and responded with, "I know RIGHT? This is fucking CRAZY!" because you were trying, and yes maybe even failing, TOGETHER. 

It's a relatable state to be in.

A human state to be in.  Try to be brave.  Try to try.  You may not win, but the alternative is truly a fate worse than failure.

I am garbage.

 I am humanoid garbage.   I am worthless. 

I am part of a system wherein billionaires and millionaires can get away with raping children, sex trafficking,  fixing presidential elections, gerrymandering to steal districts,  insider trading and accepting bribes to accumulate mass personal wealth, and all but drinking the blood of live babies on national television under a backdrop of a giant MAKE AMERICAN GREAT AGAIN billboard while legions of blood thirsty demons cheer in support. 

There are no consequences for these inhumane actions.  No laws that are adhered to or enforced.  There is no punishment waiting for these bad actors in this world,  and no karmic receipt appears to be manifesting as we suffer at their behest.  They harm us and the ticket is hand waved.  They steal from us and the supreme court protects them.  They hate us and try to kill us with every action.  They Black Bag protesters and anyone non white or opposed to their doctrine of hate. They try to extract more from us each and each waking hour in the form of lower wages, higher taxes, lower benefits and draconian loopholes we must jump through to receive the meager stipend they allow us. 

There are no laws now.

If there are no consequences for bad actors, for the purest of evil, then the fact that laws exist at all is an illusion.  If the laws only apply to the poor,  then they are not laws, they are polite suggestions that money renders ineffectual.  Those 800 billionaires own 67% of all the wealth in america, while 50% of the population of the U.S. owns 2.5% of the total wealth of the country.  

So 175 million people,  own less then one twenty fifth (1/25) of what 800 billionaires own.  

There is only one conclusion I can draw from this.

I am trash.  Subhuman garbage.  I do not deserve to live because i am told so by my government each and every day.

Every time i go to the dentist and they tell me my insurance does not cover dental i am told that i am garbage and deserve to suffer and die.  Every time i go in for medical care and am presented with a bill that dwarfs what i make i am being told by my government that i should just go die. Every time i vote and it ends up being meaningless because the electoral college and citizens united have rendered the idea of a popular vote obsolete THEY ARE TELLING ME TO GO DIE.

I have no voice, I have no influence, i have no money, i have no power.  I am paste to be ground down to build parking lots for Porsche's and Buggati's. 

I am told to vote, to protest to organize but also shown that my vote is worthless, and that if i protest i will be shot, harassed, imprisoned or deported.  I am told to take part in my local government that is equally corrupt and worthless.  I am told to do these things while i struggle to not die from exposure.  To not die from lack of health care. To not die from lack of basic resources and food.  I am told to work 40 hours a week.  No 50 hours a week.  No, 2 jobs.  No 2 jobs and work in government.  Also your rents going up.  Also food prices are going up.  Also the value of your money is going down.  Also we can't afford to give you a raise this year in a soft market.  Also those immigrants are why we can't give you a raise.  Also nazis are pretty cool actually.  Also women should be enslaved maybe. Also police wear masks now.  Also we don't need police.  Also death squads with no remorse and no code of conduct and no oversight sounds better to us. Also beating colored people might be what we have to do to protect your job.  Actually now your job IS beating colored people. Actually it's okay to call them colored people.   

Remember that.

And we are supposed to endure this?  We are supposed to be MENTALLY HEALTHY while this occurs?  We are supposed to seamlessly continue to function while we are lied to by pedophiles, thieves, grifters, liars, drug addicts, losers and morons all the while they are fucking killing us?  

It was passive once, they just didn't care about us.  Now it's active.  THEY WANT US TO DIE.

To what end, i don't know, but i know one thing for certain is that I AM GARBAGE. 

We are social creatures and we judge each other ruthlessly.  We accept that social stigma is how we keep a society in line and that natural social pressure keeps anti social behavior in check by pointing it out and insulting and berating those who would act out with anti social behaviors. 

We also judge ourselves by how others appraise us.  

So given all this information. I know what they think i am.

Given what you know now, 

What are you?