Like most of us, my dreams often take a back-seat to practicality. Take, for instance, my career path. As long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to be a writer. I love a good story, love the mystique of the writer’s life, would love to provide those stories to others. My sense of practicality has always kicked in and told me that it’s not a viable option, not a way to secure one’s future.

Much like the degree program I’m pursuing right now. I want to get a degree in economics, do some graduate studies in international trade. Instead, I’m pursuing a degree in business, though still pursuing classes that would be relevant to the possible graduate studies later on. Likely, I’ll end up convinced to get an MBA instead, pursuing something more practical, more applicable than my desired course.

But this is meant to talk about writing. I try it from time to time, writing stories here and there that I always end up destroying because they’re not good enough for me. I question myself constantly as to what it is I’m lacking in order to write a decent story and last night the answer occurred to me.

My life doesn’t suck.

In fact, it’s pretty good, especially of late. I have no serious tragedies in my past, no string of ex-wives with a deeply seeded hatred seeking to ruin my life, no tendency towards alcoholism. Looking back on all my favorite authors, how could I expect to be a writer without any of that? So I find myself once again accepting that I will never accomplish that dream of mine, though this time because my life is entirely too pleasant to achieve my dream.

In this case, I can’t say I’m upset about it. Have you ever lost a dream to life being too successful?

I got into a bit of a debate earlier today, discussing the merits, drawbacks, and general logistics of whether it would be prudent to require drug testing as a step in the process of receiving government aid in the form of welfare checks and food stamps. Personally, I voted ‘Yes’ my gut reaction; I absolutely think that the government, if they wish to present any sense of dispelling hypocrisy, must ensure that those receiving the benefits of the system are also following the restrictions of the system — that is, that those getting these forms of aid should be, on the whole, law-abiding citizens who are actually trying to achieve greater heights than suckling off the public’s teat. Over the course of the discussion, my opinion was changed somewhat. I’ve been convinced that to deprive citizens of the nation with basic necessities is, in fact, likely a dangerous route to follow; as such, I’d venture to change the question somewhat, with some additional qualifiers.

First and foremost, I’ll separate food stamps and similar programs for food, housing, and basic-needs fulfillment. These things should be available to all who need them — which is everyone — and should not be barred based on some moralistic view of how despicable these people are. Beyond that, though, I draw a line. Welfare checks, Social Security payments, unemployment benefits — these should be heavily restricted. If we can establish systems by which the aforementioned “basic needs” are met, then we can cut off the flow of additional supplemental income, “spending money”, for those who don’t fill some role to earn it, or otherwise behave the “good citizen” by criteria of following the laws, or by participation in rehabilitation or assistance programs. Drug screening should absolutely be a part of this process, and those unwilling to seek treatment, rehab, or other means of conquering their addiction, in short, do not deserve these crutches provided on the backs of the taxpayers.

This may sound cold, uncaring, or downright mean, but I simply cannot bring myself to care about those who are so far gone that they cannot even muster the strength to pretend they’re trying to help themselves. While there are other considerations — children, families, those who rely on the drug users and other less savory societal elements — the fact of the matter is, there is almost always going to be a better way to get help to those who need it without pandering to the selfish desires of the users. If someone cannot clean their act up long enough to get a job, then that same someone should not be able to lean on the public’s sympathies to gather resources. We live in a system built on capitalism; thus, it behooves our economy to remember that, while fulfilling the needs of each citizen is important, affording them luxuries beyond that is a tax (literally) on the rest of society, many of whom struggle to make ends meet from month to month simply because of the growing numbers being taken from each check to support more and more people who fall by the wayside of society.

What it comes down to is that I believe that people should have access to the help that they need, not the help that they want. There are a great many things that I want which I will never have; it’s a simple fact of life that not all of our desires are going to be catered to. Why should those who contribute nothing — who flaunt the laws of our society, who take our tax dollars to buy their next hit of crack or syringe-load of heroin — be given any greater pause? Why should they expect that all of their wants be fulfilled? Because society has programmed us to believe that ‘poor’ and ‘destitute’ are states that cannot be helped. Because we view unemployment as a symptom, rather than a result, of some disease — of course, there are always those who do try to be a part of society, but those people are more likely to be drug-free as they struggle to find a job, saving where they can to keep their families afloat in the midst of economic meltdown.

There is a line between being coldly apathetic to the plight of the common man, and tightening the nation’s belt against these apparent attempts at reconciling our socialistic desire to see everyone happy and healthy. I don’t ask that we cut the apron-strings entirely, but a carte blanche to those who don’t wish to be a part of society yet still reap the benefits as if they were is killing those who put their effort in. I say, leave charity to the nonprofits and religious institutions, and funnel those tax dollars to something more useful to the whole.

I was talking with my partner in propaganda earlier today and the topic turned, somehow, to the various ways in which we are both prevented from excercising our full potential in our various work places. X has a never ending stream of projects to work on though is paid hourly, and I work in a creative industry on salary. They gave him a laptop to work on stuff from home, however he isn’t paid to do that and thus can’t. I have to drive half an hour every morning to come into an office to sit and do very little save be near my files, and am on salary. If I had such a laptop, I could occupy my evenings creating random art projects and using them for the company.

I’m on salary. Technically, I’m paid for the time I spend sleeping at night (though if those hours are counted, I’m paid a horrible hourly wage.)

The conclusion was that we should spark a revolution, and uprising against the ruling elite that are inefficiently using our resources. As it happens, we have this very website designed as a platform for our propaganda.

Rise, minions! Follow your masters into a new era! Overthrow the present ruling elite in exchange for…

That’s the problem with these things, isn’t it? What would we be trading it for? What would anyone who calls for an end to the present system be replacing it with? One of the general trends of counter-culture groups is screaming slogans of “down with the man” or various other methods of expressing disgust with the commercialization of the world.

But what would you replace the system with? Say all the anti-authority skaters in the world actually go their way and the government vanished. What would they put in it’s place? What type of world would we have?

Everyone has had their periods where they have been disenfranchised with the world and demanded change. (Those of you who haven’t, I’m surprised you’re reading this and I’m ignoring you.) What would your world look like if it was run the way you have said you wanted it run? Think realistically here, and take into account human nature.

Is your ideal world any better than our real one?

My job seems to be bipolar in nature. Not too long ago I find myself deluged with many projects all at once, uncertain how I’ll manage to get everything to print on time (all publications were delivered by deadline, by the way) and how I’ll fit little things like sleeping or eating into an already busy schedule. Then, like running into a brick wall, I run into a period of absolutely nothing.

I’m not sure which is more tiring; spending too many hours working on too many projects knowing I’m not paid enough for it all, or spending eight hours a day staring at an empty monitor without anything to do. A few things come up here and there, but my assistant grabs most of them, leaving me with wide expanses of zero productivity. I try to find productive things to fill the time, but there isn’t much of anything. We’ve streamlined the processes so much that there isn’t anything administrative I can take care of or the like. So, instead, I find myself desperately searching for anything to do, any form of stimulus at all.

Spending a day doing absolutely nothing can be as taxing though less rewarding than spending a day actually working non-stop. At the end of a busy day, you collapse into your chair, on your couch, or wherever you like and find yourself both exhausted and satisfied. You feel like you did something, like you deserve to sit there doing nothing at all for at least a brief time. But the end of a day of nothing, you have only nothing to look forward to. Time drags on with little to mark its passing. You find yourself just as tired from just waiting for something to do but without the sense of satisfaction that comes from a job well done.

I don’t know how people can do that. There are quite a few people out there who would be more than willing to do absolutely nothing all day for the rest of their lives. I just can’t fathom that. When I find myself with a long weekend due to a holiday or something or that nature, I start getting edgy about the lack of… well, lack of doing. It doesn’t even need to be productive so long as it’s doing something.

So where does this desire to do nothing come from? What causes one person to aspire to nothingness while another aspires to never stop moving, whatever the cost? What is it, truly, that makes the difference between the work-a-holic and the free-loader?

And really, which is better? The man who must constantly justify himself, or the man who is naught but a drain on others?

Who am I to judge?

There is a rather famous painting (okay, series of paintings) by René Magritte called La trahison des images (“The Treachery of Images“) which displays, quite plainly, a simple painting of a wooden pipe, and the words, Ceci n’est pas une pipe. — “This is not a pipe.” Magritte’s intended meaning is to differentiate a painting of a pipe from an actual pipe; that is, that by painting a pipe and labeling it as such, he’d be lying — after all, one cannot smoke from a painting of a pipe. The image itself becomes an object dissimilar from that which it is meant to represent; therein lies the treachery, for when one sees a graphical representation of another object in that fashion, we generally identify it by what it represents, rather than what it is — “That is a car” is far more likely than “That is a photograph of a car” and so on. I’ve always had a strong liking for this image and the meaning Magritte placed behind it, ever since I first encountered it and gave thought to the ideas being represented.

I think the most interesting thing is actually contained in Magritte’s oft-quoted explanation of the meaning behind his work: “So if I had written on my picture ‘This is a pipe,’ I’d have been lying!” (cited in Harry Torczyner, Magritte: Ideas and Images, p. 71.) This is a clever ruse, to be sure. What Magritte indicates is that the words, not the image itself, are the crux of a lie; the image itself only is what it is, and however we interpret that determines whether we lie to ourselves within our own minds. If you look at the painting, without the words, and come to the conclusion, “That is a pipe,” then you’re practicing self-deception of a relatively high order, convincing yourself that you are witnessing things that aren’t truly there, like a psychotropic drug user playing with his hallucinations in the rain and imagining that they exist with him in the private world of his own manifestation; the only difference is in the crutch we use to arrive at the same incorrect conclusion.

Words themselves, though, are an entirely different animal. As Magritte noted, if he’d said that the object was a pipe, then he’d be lying; to say that it’s not a pipe, though, seems nonsensical and abstract, as if pulling on some semantic that we’ve already long since forgotten but may have been mentioned in passing during some dull moment of grade-school education. With words, we can express truths and untruths more plainly, but the deception can be infinitely more complex. Nobody who looks at the painting and thinks they see a pipe is actually fooling themselves into believing that the object is something other than a painting; they’re merely identifying the recognizable object being presented in the medium used. When we craft similar misdirection in words, the audience may be left with no further frame of reference by which to separate what we’ve said against what is real — the image itself is removed, and we’re left only with the inscription which describes what is or is not present. I could say, “I have a pipe hanging on my wall,” and this could mean a wooden device used for smoking tobacco, or it could mean a painting such as Magritte’s, or it could mean that I am merely stringing these words together to encourage the listener to believe that which I wish them to believe, whatever my motives for instilling that belief may be. I could say, “I have a Magritte hanging on my wall,” and this could mean that I have the painting itself, or a reproduction thereof, or a human corpse, or any of a number of other things, or, again, it could mean that I’m practicing a deception to obscure some other reality.

For the record, I do not have any pipes, paintings, or corpses hung on my wall. These are merely examples.

When we weave distortions from truth with words, there is a process. First and foremost, our statements must seem reasonably believable. If we desire to succeed in our misdirection, then the fabrication must seem at least as plausible as the truth, within a measure of reason, based on a condition I’ll refer to as the human tendency to accept. In most situations, unless there is some prevailing force or reason otherwise, we tend to believe one another. Now, in certain contexts — courtrooms, business meetings, political races — we eschew this for a pointed disbelief, hence the “burden of proof” that exists in those contexts, but in everyday parlance, we see little reason to question whether our coworkers had a sandwich for lunch or are thinking about buying a car or have been collecting stamps for the last 37 years. There’s simply no reason to doubt that people will, on the whole, be relatively honest about the things they do and say within standard conversational context.

Enter the internet. Here, everyone has seen and done everything they could ever dream; that is, the prevailing force here seems to be that of the suspicion and doubt as cast by the reader. If we’re intelligent, we have a tendency to question most anecdotal ideas anyhow, but on the internet, this is amplified by our own ability to conduct immediate topical cross-referencing research — which, again, we may find reason to doubt, sending us spiralling into ambling investigations from Wikipedia page to Wikipedia page, before landing on a forum that attempts to debunk “misinformation” in the Wikipedia pages, fought back by waves of internet faithfuls spouting citations and references in print, until the sources being cited are brought into question by the conspiracy theorists — that is, after all, just what the Illuminati allowed to be published — and we find ourselves in an ever-twisting realm of wondering whether everything we’ve ever seen or heard or known is, in fact, built on a foundation so fundamentally constructed of erroneous (or intentionally skewed) information and “fact” that, through the lens of scrutinous examination of reality, ceases to be relevant because we can no longer account for the full-fledged accuracy of anything. We find doubt sown into our every intake of information, fueled by the constant paranoia of an ever more connected framework of individuals teaching us to question everything down to its core.

So, what is better? Do we accept the painting at face value, and call the image a pipe? Do we agree with Magritte, that this is not a pipe, that the image abstracted from its meaning is an object all its own? Take it one step further, and say, “This is a chromatic arrangement of chemicals meant to represent a pipe” or “This cluster of matter-forming atomic elements translates as electrical signals through our own atomic makeup in such a fashion that we believe ourselves to be viewing a representation of that which we have been taught, over time, to accept and recognize as an object referred to in English as a ‘pipe’?”

Such microscopic views of things have a tendency to eliminate any sense of beauty in a thing; accepting the beauty for what it is seems to leave us living in a dream-world, separated from reality. If I said I knew which of these conditions was the more favorable, I’d be lying — right?