Final Day of Vacation
Somehow, I've managed to perfect my schedule today where I got an afternoon nap and woke up to the refreshing air of 4 PM. This is an extremely rare occurrence — trying to get me to sleep in the early afternoon is harder than taming a raging bull. Weird analogy but it works? It should, otherwise I'll cringe. I'll take this rare opportunity to write an article. It took me almost 3 hours to write this, I've gotten rusty.
## Life Report
And so it seems, my precious days of vacation and endless free time is over, for I'll have classes again tomorrow. It's not exactly what I would call "precious" though, most of my free time, about 80%, was spent in addiction and depression. Sadly, I spent a lot of days slowly losing my mind binge reading hundreds of manwha chapters, without taking a single nap. I wonder why I would do such thing, it reminds me of the quote from someone "Your greatest excesses shows your greatest poverty".
Indeed, I was overcompensating from my poverty of life, relationships, and opportunities. There was nothing to look forward to, no one to care for, and no opportunity to contribute to the community. It felt as if I'm drowning deeper and deeper in the ocean, where the light becomes dimmer and the weight of all the water above me becomes heavier day by day. There's no need to be worried, my dear reader. As long as I'm able to wake up at 5 AM in the morning and do all house chores on time, there's no way I'll be depressed.
That two months long, maybe three-month vacation wasn't that bad, for there are plenty of things I have learned. It's not only the manwhas I binged read, I binged read on nonfiction ebooks too — Tipping Point, Why Happiness Eludes the Modern Woman, and Doughnut Economics were the most interesting non-fiction books I've ever read this vacation. It told me about some important realities of life and the natural order of things that we have forgotten. Plus I found out that my highest standard reading speed was 100 pages per day so I can finish most books in four or five days.
Naturally, I discovered so many things about myself. I think the art of self-discovery is one of the greatest pursuits of knowledge — it's a living knowledge that will always come to surprise, amuse, and enlighten you. I believe that even if were to reach old age, learning more about myself is something I will always enjoy.
### Mystery of Conformity
First of all, I found it striking to see how pure my mind is, not bragging, actually yes, I'm bragging. It's not exactly pure but it's less corrupted and polluted than most people for some reason. We can say that it's probably because I don't talk regularly with other humans, not listening to music, and not keeping up with trends — but that still doesn't explain why the concept, idea, and practice of Conformity is still so alien to me. Everyday I'm always shocked to see the lengths people go just to "fit in" and appear "normal". One of my classmates even proudly said that they took a class that they already took before just so they can become a "regular" student — which really doesn't mean much, except you won't think of yourself as an irregular student anymore, and your schedule will be more similar with other students.
It was one of the most foolish and horrifying things I have ever heard. I cannot imagine prolonging my school days for any reason or retaking a class that I have already Passed just for the sake of being a "regular" student. They even paid for that additional classes. It's madness. It makes me think, why the hell everyone around me is trying too hard to fit in, while for some reason unknown to me, I'm trying my best to preserve all the authenticity, originality, and personality I have left, even if it makes me the most isolated or disliked person in the world? Why are they going to such lengths to be normal? Why am going to such lengths to be different? It feels as if I have unlocked a new piece of the puzzle but I'm left with more questions than answers.
## Chaos Hunting
I've observed that the main reason why I feel alive and thrilled when seeing shiny and attractive things is because something in body signals my brain to
prepare to Hunt, all the while increasing the neurotransmitter for reward, dopamine. Of course, I'm always consciously rejecting any requests and preparation to Hunt, for ten thousand excuses besides anxiety. Somehow, my brain is trying its best to convince me that Hunting is my life, my passion, and my purpose, as if doing that would make all my problems go away. It's been saying the same thing for so long, that I can't help but believe to some extent. There's no way I'm going to Hunt anything though.
For most people, Security is knowing that you can always trust your parents and friends hear out your stories of absurdity and stupidity, knowing that they will always listen and comfort you regardless of what you say. Most humans, as I've seen, do courageous things when they know that they can always reliably count on someone to catch their back when they fall. They say it's experience and knowledge that makes a person assertive and steadfast — something that is very far from the truth. A warrior willingly goes to war not because they are experienced and smart but because they think of their family waiting for them at home, the future of their nation, and the comrades that will welcome them on the gates of the afterlife. Most people stand their ground because they have others backing them. Rarely do people stand on their own but when they do, it's one of the most captivating sights you can see.
As you might have already expected, I don't have such thing as Security — that's why it's difficult for me to stand, much less hunt anything. It's easier for me to learn the arts of Chaos than to find a reliable comrade that I can trust. I theorize that Chaos is one of the sufficient conditions that allows a person to stand on their own without ever relying on anyone.
### Chaotic Definition
If you're not aware, Chaos is defined as the primordial state of the universe, the abode of possibilities, the ten thousand narrow paths and cliffs that allows one to reach their goal without relying on cause and effect nor requiring sufficient past history. It does not follow steps nor plans, it has no beginning nor end, it is the height of complexity, and resides in the glorious peak of Absurdity. It can be summed up in the sentence "Ten thousand seemingly meaningless and purposeless actions/things, coincidentally creating meaningful outcome(s)".
Just so you know, if I were to teach Chaos to children someday, I won't call it Chaos — it shall be called the Natural Order of Things. After all, the "first lick in the tabula rasa is the most privileged one". Unlike children, I'll have to put a name to the concept so older people can distinguish and understand it, and so I shall call it Chaos for them. Since Science and Society teaches people that Order is the normal state of affairs, that everyone must follow a set of steps to reach a goal, I'll teach people how to reach a goal without any steps, to arrive at a destination without a path, and if they want, they can also reach a goal they don't even know they wanted. This is the power of Chaos. Order is not even that different from Chaos, nor are they polar opposites — it's just one of the ten thousand subsets of Chaos, one among the ten thousand possibilities that you can believe in.
Anyone can participate and enjoy Chaos yet not everyone can endure it for prolonged periods of time. The most painful side effects comes from sheer emptiness and absurdity, that those who want to walk the path Chaos must transcend both nihility and infinity if they want to keep utilizing it in their daily lives. In a state of pure nothingness, anything can happen. This is the mindset that Chaos humans must adapt so if they want something to happen, they must first survive "pure nothingness."
Fortunately, it's something I luckily learned to do just a few days before the term break ends. When you expect a response or reply from your environment and you know for sure that there is great likelihood of receiving a response, yet you did not receive one — you will try again hoping that the first one was a fluke. However, when you didn't receive any response on the second one, you will feel bad that you refuse to try again for the third time. Yet if you managed to do it the third time, and the environment didn't respond — you will realize that you didn't need any responses after all, that you can be satisfied with both nothing and anything.
## Future Plans
The book Doughnut Economics was really good, that it greatly expanded my vision and plans for the future. The power of policies and laws to bend the behavior of a system is really fascinating, while the existence of complementary paper currencies are certainly magical. I didn't know there's a lot of open-source stuff that exist outside of software. The theory that rich people don't spend their wealth because they see wealth as a commodity and not as a token of exchange is thought-provoking. The proposal that accumulated wealth should be taxed or lose value over time through demurrage is definitely worth considering. I think the book was completely right in saying that sharing economy is the future — that people should share or at least allow cheap renting of their not-frequently used cooking devices, washing machines, 3d printers, and other technology.
Just as when I thought changing the content and structure of Family, Education, and Community are the greatest things we can do to change society, this book arrived just in time to tell me that changing the Economical system is something that is highly impactful as well. With all the crazy future plans I have to change the world, it's not too far of a stretch to say that I'm going to get assassinated in the future. How fun, it would be the greatest honor to see people do everything it takes to bring me down. I wonder, is it really true that many groundbreaking and mind-blowing discoveries have been intentionally stopped or hidden from the public? Statistically, there should be at least one. I'll have to find out what it is.
If I become rich, in addition to giving grants to talented and legendary people, I'll have to invest and sponsor in open-sourced technologies, proactive progressive non-profit organizations, gray hat organizations of piracy and privacy, and the groups of people who made the free stuff I use in the internet today, like adblock origin and Anna's archive. My purpose to create a generous and humanistic world for my future children and students to live in.
## Random Ending
One misunderstanding that people can have is that those who have mental disorders are also emotionally expressive, and therefore mentally ill people are somewhat "hot". This is not true, most mentally challenged people are less expressive than an average person, and those who do manage to express themselves do it in a way that other people don't understand. What are they truly looking for are not people with just any mental disorders but people with extreme anxious attachment, those with unparalleled obsession, or those with fun split personalities, all the while having enough sanity to communicate and express themselves in a way that other people can still understand. It's interesting that people see authentic emotional expression as one of the most attractive things about people beside their appearance.
If you're still not sure, I'll tell you now — I'm autistic, at least I might be one. Hidden rules that people have always known since childhood are something that always comes as a surprise to me. I had to study chatting style and communication patterns before I can chat online with other people. Without Chaos, it's almost impossible for me to know what I'm supposed to say nor when am I supposed to speak in real-life conversations unless people constantly ask questions and give reassurances. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why Conformity feels alien to me.
The realm of possibilities are really difficult for the human brain to understand for some reason. It's so easy to think "If there's a chance that I can win, then I'll definitely win." and it feels so difficult to think "The odds are against me, I'm not going to win, I should not expect to win, it will be a miracle if I do. I will not play games where the odds are against me". As someone thought a few hours ago "Knowledge is not playing when the odds are against you. Wisdom is playing anyway not because you expect to win but because the value of playing itself exceeds any possible prize."
Thinking of it that way, I'm neither wise nor knowledgeable. I keep playing when the odds are against me and expect to win. It feels terrible because I do not see any value in playing except for getting the prize. No, I'm not gambling anymore, it's just one of the bad habits, heuristics, that I need to be aware of.
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*"I'll tell you a fun secret: published articles at the bottom are also part of most recent, they're the negative articles."*