A Dissertation of Warning by Green Day|| Neurotic Nihilism IV.3

Prior Note:

This is not a traditional dissertation per se— songs are expanded on based on necessary explanation and interpretation. What’s simply said is simply said; or the opposite depending on, as said, felt necessity. Green Day isn’t terribly hard to understand on a general listen; however aside catchy International Superhits there is possibility of music for the mind both aside and even within that. This is an analysis from the ears of Neurotic Nihilism’s broad thesis of thought experiments. 

Prelude.

2000 was the New Year, marking the culmination of a century on the Gregorian Calendar. The finale of the 20th century and moment of Limbo between Columbine before the nose-dive starting in the wake of 9/11… Things were still just as hyper-normalized in a sense; just as skeptical— neurotic and nihilistic: not quite off the tip of the buildings yet, but in a serene sense of false optimism on a wire in between them, so to say.  

On the third day of the tenth month of the centennial start, 13 numbers were given to public consumption as Green Day released their sixth studio album Warning. 

Met with some cringe to being a stylistic differentiation from their previous records, gaining praise for it just as well. Stepping away from the harshness of Insomniac, glittery Dookie, varying Nimrod for a direction more in tune to the likes of the Pixies; with more eloquent and ‘mature’ (for lack of a better word) prose; trappings later more prevalent on albums like 21st Century Breakdown or Revolution Radio. 

“There’s a sense of hope on this record, on a personal level for humanity in general. I don’t think there is anything on there that is too self-absorbed or dwells on the negative.”

— Billie Joe Armstrong, Frontman; ‘Green Day: American Idiots & The New Punk Explosion’ by Ben Myers

Uniquely, in the same sense as a slacker film, though the ‘worthless pessimist’ is notable throughout, there is a more optimistic reverence for the Limbo— in realizing ‘what it takes’ as the album declares on the final track Macy’s Day Parade, though, “the Knight of the living dead is on his way,” already, learning the hard way. 

1. Warning

Title-track opening as often happens, is the song Warning. “A public service announcement, not a test,” it sets up a common, but personally cynical tone following the listener throughout the album’s proceeding stages. 

With some exception, Warning is the first by Green Day to be so directly sociocultural. Taking aim at ideals of luxury; what  ‘really matters’ against simply getting “your philosophy from a bumper sticker.” To live without Warning, as a warning. 

2. Blood Sex & Booze

A nice commentary on S&M opening with the sound of a dominatrix beating the shit out of someone in studio— an event also filmed. Multifaceted in its scope, it’s as well insightful regarding certain chosen hobbies— as pointed out by underground artist Shane Bugbee, it is often easier and cheaper to see a prostitute than a therapist. 

Not daring to move, even though it hurts it feels so good. Predicaments gotten into; and wallowed in the results of for pleasure. What solipsism gets later explained in better detail on the song Misery on the supposed jouir in surrender of personal power to mundane extremes. 

3. Church On Sunday

    See: A Track Trinity || Neurotic Nihilism III.2

4. Fashion Victim

Dancing into the dog and pony show, Fashion Victim. 

Lyrically leveling bullets in an upbeat tune, it is Green Day’s equivalent to Marilyn Manson’s Get Your Gunn. A criticism of the Celebritarian culture of fashion and model-dom; as well as reaction to the shooting of the (slightly in)famous designer Gianni Versace. Owing inspiration from drummer Tré Cool wearing, “this t-shirt that Tre had on that had bullet holes in it and a slogan saying ‘Fashion Victim #1,’” noted Billie Joe in regards to the coagulating stimuli synthesized into the sonic number. Ironically, it being so groovy that it could be played on a catwalk, intentionally or all-the-while walkers oblivious to it’s levying vocabulary a critique rather than encouragement of their belonged institutions and influence. 

5. Castaway

Before there was Boulevard Of Broken Dreams, “a mission into destination unknown; an expedition onto desolation road,” is the song Castaway. Not a predecessor in the same regard as Black Eyeliner to Church On Sunday (and much later on  and under The Longshot, Kill Your Friends), rather a “sentimental journey into sight and sound.” The earlier song isn’t as heavy as the one later apart of their punk rock opera that is American Idiot. The idea is the same even though drastically and contextually different. What James Franco’s character in the comedic film The Interview said to be, ‘same-same, but different.’

6. Misery

Onto desolation road, a ride is hitched to Misery. When Warning is referred to as Green Day’s experimental record (far prior to 2020’s Father Of All Motherfuckers), it is due to tracks such as this; a sardonically bitter sonic groove in relation to other works. The beginning sounds like that of an 8-bit organ from some retro-spooky haunted house pixelated analogue arcade game. What could be characterized as the horror of mundane reality one can liminally exist within. 

“And we’re gonna get high, high, high

 When we’re low, low, low

 And she screamed, ‘why, oh why?’

 I said, ‘I don’t know’

 The catastrophic hymns from yesterday

 Of Misery…”

Although not a concept record like American Idiot or to some extent that of 21st Century Breakdown, in being on an aforementioned “journey into sight and sound,” into desolation road from Castaway; the road is almost innately a liminal stretch of land; for leisure or, well, Misery in its ongoing listlessness. 

A parallel exists here and in Lord Of The Rings, wherein Bilbo Baggins leaving his hole sings: ‘the road goes ever on…’, scenery  bleeding through itself until the mind needs a relief. Escaping the normal through escapism of the normal. 

Like in Blood, Sex & Booze, it is not so black and white and the lines of mild mundane and miserable moping blur often, “panhandling Misery”— longing for its pleasure; even if it’s meaningless. Or on the reverse of this flimsily (somewhat self-) constructed tale it could be an escape from that Misery into meaninglessness. After all, to relay to Marilyn Manson: ‘we love the abuse because it makes us feel like we are needed,’ as the line in the song I Want To Disappear off the album Mechanical Animals goes. 

Misery is to get by. Like in Stephen King’s book The Long Walk when the character Parker bluntly stated the biological imperative in life to Ray Garraty: ‘it’s all a bunch of phony crap that passes the time. But don’t shit me. The bottom line is you still want to live,’ even in the ‘cosmic joke’ that suffering absurdly exists… because we love to hate it. 

An Ouroboros, but not so dualistic. 

7. Deadbeat Holiday

Green Day is a band that makes anthemic scores, notably as mentioned before American Idiot or the latest album Saviors with its arm pumping prose. Within Warning’s middle lies an anthem not given as much due as the former mentioned in spite of it being on the same level of track as Minority later on the album, if not somewhat more monumental in its tune. 

Deadbeat Holiday, taking much from the previously played parts of the LP and synthesizing them in a way that the title track grasps with whispers of but only encapsulating a fraction. To ‘live without Warning’ as the title track suggests to the listener, a state of revelry.

“Deadbeat Holiday

 Celebrate your own decay

 There’s a vacant sign that’s hanging high

 on a noose over your home…”

Warning is the anthem neurotically, albeit passively in presentation, proclaiming itself and Deadbeat Holiday is the neurotically logical conclusion to, “piss it all away.” But it’s all okay as to tie it back to the mutual faith of Church On Sunday, in that last chance, “at least you’re not alone,” ideally. 

Where Misery winds up, Deadbeat Holiday responds, “when all you wanna do,” is to, “not give up,” despite that being what would be necessary sustenance for a bruised ego…

8. Hold On 

The sentimental journey rounding back to misery, ideally in the Deadbeat Holiday it’s not alone. However setting the stage is the reality of it. Stepping onto and edge beyond a shadow of doubt: 

“When you’ve lost all hope

 And excuses

 And the cheapskates and the losers

 Nothing’s left to cling onto

 You’ve gotta hold on

 Hold onto yourself.”

Survival in a nutshell: people on similar streams of suffering serve simply to feed off one another. So with that it’s a cry, pleading for peace. Like John Flory in Burmese Days longing for the late life he supposedly led at one imaginary point, it’s truth laying from the lost treasures of youth. Moments of memory made to temporary energy, feeding on Misery. 

“as I hold to the break of Day…”

9. Jackass 

Harkonning back a lingering moment with Hold On; the touted line mentioning the futility of, “the cheapskates and the losers,” proceeding on Warning  is Jackass delivering its own delegation; on what can really be described as the advent of Misery, to go back on the road a tad further. 

Jackass is an impersonal mirror which the stagnation becoming apparent and known— “I guess I just can’t listen to this one-sided conversation again.”

Stasis is often in the synapses, embedded and causing neuroplasticity difficulty in recovery of mind. Grandiosely being bitter at being, “the center of attention got an honorable mention once again.”

There’s an old platitude stating that even a broken clock is right at least once (if not twice) a day, going endlessly on to that fixed point. Aside from the rhythm in music, time being relative is but a human measurement and with that:

“No one ever said that life was fair

 everybody loves a joke but no one likes a fool

 And you’re always cracking the same old lines again

 You’re well-rehearsed on every verse

 and that was stayed clear

 But no one understands your verity”

Verity as defined in the Webster’s New World Dictionary & Thesaurus denotes something of actuality—a principle taken to be fundamentally true that is. And with that round again it is back to Misery in the way Emil Cioran elucidated it in his seminal Short History Of Decay; the essence of his writing of the concept that in the apparent or supposed severity humans imbue events in life (as well as life itself) with such a grandiosity, it becomes solipsistic; believing that essentially no one has suffered more so much as to even comprehend it. We are solipsistic in suffering on set loops, in essence. 

Like Uncle Rico in Napoleon Dynamite… [see Neurotic Nihilism II.3: Exemplary Jackass]

10. Waiting

Undoubtedly the most optimistic and upbeat song in terms of lyricism and melody enters Waiting. A spectacular flash-mob celebration, if only you could just “wake up” from the aforementioned Misery and have some fun. Whether that moment of satisfaction is achieved can be debated:

“Dumbstruck

 Colour me stupid

 good luck

 You’re gonna need it 

 Where I’m going if I get there 

 at all”

Not a matter of when the arrival at destination unknown could be, moreso, “close enough to taste it, almost […] embrace this feeling […] on the tip of my tongue” as the verse triumphantly declares. 

‘Don’t get cocky!’ the captain of the Millennium Falcon in Star Wars Han Solo once sharply exclaimed, as though it’s too late to go back, “ready or not at all…”

So: “wake up!”

11. Minority

Inarguably the most played tune off the album, political in a newer poppy light that would be seen most acutely in similar form on 21st Century Breakdown. All that sensory revelry in anticipation from holding on, beyond the cheapskates and losers, mightfully aligning with “the minority.”

Thematically, in the structure of the album its declaration could be likened to Ayn Rand’s thought that ‘the individual is the smallest minority in the world’ in its cynical streak. Green Day out of the East Bay pink scene with their own politics apparent, do inherently diverge from the epistemologist of Objectivism on most everything else; do however fit together on some puzzle pieces. 

“I pledge allegiance to the underworld 

 One nation under dog 

 There of which I stand alone

 A face in the crowd 

 Unsung, against the mold

 Without a doubt,

 Singled out

 The only way I know…”

An instance of iconoclasm for the Pledge of Allegiance; and likening it to another concept it’s essentially the idea of Tuning In and Dropping Out of mob rule; naturally or by nurtured observation and experience. The conclusion being, “a free for all, fuck ‘em all, you are your own sight…”

12. Macy’s Day Parade

Existentially egressing from the lonesome end of the journey into sight and sound is a ballad infused with wisdom of understanding and longing. Closing Warning greets weary ears of fellow travelers to chords of contemplation and an ideal for supposed assimilation. 

Acceptance?

Taking heed from Warning (in terms of the title track) and running from it, neurosis ensues on some level; while fickle sadomasochistic direct participation is, the banality is longed for. 

Moments of Might in states of resting silent salience. Serenading the sound is an odd optimism within the saudadic lyricism denoting innate aspirations:

“Give me something that I need

 Satisfaction guaranteed

 Because I’m thinking about 

 a brand new hope

 the one I’ve never known

 ‘Cause now I know

 It’s all that I wanted…”

Unfortunately as “the knight of the living dead is on his way, with the credit report,” for finally figuring out the differences, or so one would seemingly falsely assume, and leaving the Jackass’ behind. Learning the hardest way…

Neurotic. Nihilistic. End of the day. 

Entertaining Envy || Neurotic Nihilism IV.2

1. Ending of (Burmese) Days

The climax of George Orwell’s Burmese Days is not in the valor of John Flory; resulting from his actions in the riot instilled by U Po Kyin’s efforts of libel against Doctor Versawami. Climax comes after the matter when it seems Flory is nearly to attain that late life he once believed to have lead: the past in the form of Ma Hla May’s dismay in full blind rage— though egged on by U Po Kyin’s efforts, the crocodile striking with the weakest spot— arriving at a church service, a funeral for for a mutilated young Englishman wherein he, as well as most everyone of note in the area was an attendee; including Elizabeth. 

Confirming in the Burmese spoken shrieks, the whole message of her fury; and obliterating any possible future for Flory’s late life with Elizabeth. 

Having shortly dealt with the outburst, the assembly dispersed and Flory made one final, futile and; textually visceral in its depiction of his pathetic desperation in attempt at attaining the conquest of Elizabeth’s hand in life. Rejected, he retires to to his abode. In a fast-moving-slow-motion-page-turning-scene Flory uses his gun to shoot Flo, a dog, and then turn it to his chest and pull the trigger on himself.

Subsequently committing suicide, which was quickly covered up by Doctor Versawami. Having regained his position in the society around them as a result of sharing Flory’s glory as his friend and actions during the riot, he was more or less for the time vindicated of the slander from U Po Kyin’s propoganda and about to be elected by Flory’s vote a seat at the English club. However, being dead the Doctor was left undefended from the unrelenting power-hungry crocodile and further seditious slanting slander reduced him to nothing. 

U Po Kyin, who the story began its telling with a description of, did not get to bask in his moment of Might for long either and died just after achieving all he envied. Leaving his wife fearful of Karma giving it’s due to him according to tradition. 

Elizabeth moved merrily on. Much of Flory’s misery was seemingly as an effect of his own solipsistic projecting personal prides— though more akin to fetishes— and insecurities onto her. He envied a life he never let leave his head until his own actions eventually became his own undoing, then dying fully by his own hand. 

2. Exploring Envy

Prior to the culminating chapter of his 1934 book, Orwell wrote a stark remark against the covetous cognitive decline relating to the evocation of Envy:

“Envy is a horrible thing. It is unlike all other suffering in that there is no disguising it, no elevating it into tragedy. It is more than merely painful, it is disgusting.”

Contrasting the negative nature embodied by George Orwell’s characterization, is a more utilitarian approach to the supposed sin. Having dictated into his diabolical diatribe The Satanic Bible on the more useful aspects of the instinctual drifting towards carnal desires, the Black Pope, Anton Szandor LaVey wrote: 

“Envy means to look with favor upon the possessions of others, and to be desirous of obtaining similar things for oneself. Envy and greed are the motivating forces of ambition— and without ambition, very little of any importance would be accomplished.”

Then with a somewhat surprising disagreement to the radical egoism presented in LaVey’s familial philosophy, Ayn Rand in her book Return Of The Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution, purported Envy to actually be a simple place holder, substituting for, “the hatred of the good for being good” in emotional form. Dedicating an entire chapter to the conscious concept of coveting, ‘The Age of Envy’ denotes and admonishes an entire epoch of human behavior as being dragged down by it. 

“Superficially, the motive of those who hate the good is taken to be envy. A dictionary definition of envy is: ‘1. A sense of discontent or jealousy with regard to another’s advantages, success, possessions, etc. 2. A desire for an advantage possessed by another.’ (The Random House Dictionary, 1968) The same dictionary adds the following elucidation: ‘To envy is to feel resentful because someone else possesses or has achieved what one wishes oneself to possess or to have achieved.’ 

This covers a great many emotional responses, which come from different motives. In a certain sense the second definition is the opposite of the first, and the more innocent of the two…”

Typical to Randian fashion, though surprising to her making of Selfishness into a Virtue; Envy is seen in a negative because, (to use a term from LaVey as descriptor,) in unmitigated cases of psychic vampires— at least in her mind, in her ideal of the capitalist utopia Objectivism serves as philosophical justification for— leeching off those with the momentum from originality and with their own Roarkian brains and brawn. Disregarding Envy as sinful not because it breaks the commandment of ‘Thou Shall Not Covet…’, it is cast aside as it seems mental masturbation for people without many original ideas— what PT Barnum may have (possibly) called the ‘sucker born every minute.’ 

“The feeling is less innocent, if it amounts to ‘I want to put on a front…’ The result is a second-hander who lives beyond his means, struggling to ‘keep up with the Joneses.’ 

[…] 

Envy is part of this creature’s feeling, but only the superficial, semirespectable part… because it seems to imply a desire for material possessions, which is a human being’s desire  but, deep down, the creature has no such desire…”

Orwell and Rand differ in disregard to Envy; wherein LaVey said it to be a motivating factor for desire— a form of what in later books he would call and explain more, Erotic Crystallization Inertia (ECI for short) to draw from for one’s own thing. Egoistically, the Black Pope did just that in making Satanism; Rand in her re-defining and hijacking of the term ‘selfish’ also did the same— which as pointed out by LaVey, is or could be derived from ambition spurred by Envy. A read of her Journals proves as much as a read of Anthem does; even in her essay The Age of Envy she continues to prove that idea, even if unknowingly. Echoing:

“In regard to one’s own feelings, only a rigorously conscientious habit of introspection can enable one to be certain of the nature and causes of one’s emotional responses.”

To her point, that both Orwell and LaVey would likely all toast with one another to; is a simple question, even if it causes one to freeze in their sockets: What is a desire (or thought) without action and some attainment? Is attainment full success leading to a moment of Might? what is total success? or is such also another way of asking about Might in failure?

Illusory, why is it so grandiose?

Electric Myst || Neurotic Nihilism IV. 1.3

“       King. 

‘And can you, by no drift of circumstance,

 Get from him why he puts on this confusion,

 Grating so harshly all his days of quiet

 With turbulent and dangerous lunacy?’”

    —William Shakespeare, Hamlet Act III Scene I

While not directly correlated to the text of Shakespeare’s quoted play touching on the topic of decay; the poem is about decay and in a sense the more degenerative, addictive kind. Where sloth and Envy are rather negative in overindulged amounts— though Envy does require further study as it is a misconstrued, or rather more misunderstood term which gets too often interchanged with ‘jealous’ when it has differing connotations. In that Envy it also serves as the final prelude to a full dissertation of the album Warning by Green Day, or when fully typed up and edited: Neurotic Nihilism IV.2 & IV.3.

Picking skin:

Head constricted—

Intent spin.

Surface-level:

Breathe in the smoke,

Ease in electrical myst

4 shots—

Cold and enough:

Coffee glee,

Nice coating gleam

Sitting while nails tear mesh seams

Fated, faithful, fatal—

diabolical,

maniacal,

“Let’s get physical- physical”

Imaginary atypical,

hermit-hominid-hypothetical

Lost and never want to be found:

Up, up 

and around,

“On a sentimental journey into sight and sound…”

Crash and learn,

like Icarus’ wings burned. 

Pigmented Picture || Neurotic Nihilism IV.1.2

Exhaustion—

Forlorn; foreign caution…

Hollow hell,

Cornea swells,

Pupils divide—

Treason rules:

Believe it,

See it:

Seethe, relieve—

Addictive pet peeves

Concede, covet,

Rinse,

beautiful self-deceit…

Eat, sleep—

Bitch gritting teeth;

insert, alleviate,

Cell fracture—

New texture—

Dark mixture—

Pigmented picture,

Blotted stitch,

irresponsibly unscratchable itch

Always conniving,

Banality surviving…

Brutalism is contemporary:

Dark-data-Dadaist/

Lycanthropic entropy

Fleshy listless—

Shift is risk:

Staying is stagnation,

slow subsequent suicide—

Better a bullet in the eye

Blind to empathetic guise,

Smile-wrapped lies

Eternally rehearsed:

subject, place and verse

Abject ghoul

Plastic tool

Empty in Envy || Neurotic Nihilism IV.1.1

Poem in-part inspired by a part of George Orwell’s 1934 book Burmese Days touching upon the subject of envy; in regards to the book contextually it’s about John Flory’s envy to Lieutenant Verrall gaining the eye and kiss of Elizabeth as opposed to he— even if only temporarily (for both of them)… It both regards the text and does not. It exists as a partial byproduct of it, but with added scribbles as it is only one part of the thought experiment…

“Envy is a horrible thing. It is unlike all other kinds of suffering in that there is no disguising it, no elevating it into tragedy. It is more than merely painful, it is disgusting.”

***

Empty in envy,

What’s without pity?

Degenerate, senile

Techno-organic-cinephile 

Endless semi-bile

‘Make the most of it;’

in repetitive shifts

Drift downwind,

uplifting at constant bends

Apathetic trends:

swerve, 

no stop,

slight, sly-smile—

Emphatic, erratic—

“A fashionable cigarette…”

Distinctive whim:

Fairly alarming,

only slightly jarring

Inevitably ignored Warning:

‘curiosity killed the cat,’

9 lives;

still dies with time…

Raise to rays to raze—

Decay,

Inevitable delay;

“What’s in a name?”—

a delicacy;

Every-delaying,

changing but remaining—

Queer quotient;

inhumane introspection,

banal self-included seclusion…

Prelude;

Elude;

Beg to differ—

cynical,

Give it a while.

*** ***

Also see:

Sedition & Stockholm Syndrome: Analysis of Burmese Days Chapter 13 || Neurotic Nihilism IV.1

The thirteenth chapter of George Orwell’s 1934 work Burmese Days is a whirlwind in cases of power dynamics; as well as subsequent masks and manipulation. 

Entering the chapter is once again a meeting between English Flory and the Burmese native, Doctor Veraswami. In their meeting the Dr. reveals he has figured out more regarding the looming conspiracy towards him on the part of the local magistrate U Po Kyin’s vying for election to the European Club, climbing up the ladder through sewing literal sedition to levy attacks at the Dr., supposedly on the behalf of the Dr. 

Once again the analogy of crocodiles striking at the weakest spot is rephrased. Reformed to the new light of Flory siding with Versawami in opposition to the magistrate as being an English Oriental would technically supersede the current amassed authority of U Po Kyin in general conventionality; however, since the initial dialogue regarding the crocodile Flory gained what would seem to be a new Achilles Heel with her arrival to India from Paris and his meeting of Elizabeth. 

That arrival being the catalyst for the rest of the chapter, and rationale behind choosing the doctor even if the convention is to let such petty Native business happen regardless as it served to only increase the idea of needing the control English Oriental’s had. 

“He knew why. It was because Elizabeth, by coming into his life, had so changed it and renewed it that all the dirty, miserable years might never have passed. Her presence has changed the whole orbit of his mind. She had brought him back to the air of England…”

While a break from English convention on behalf of a native, an act where at the moment Elizabeth’s character would seemingly frown towards; the purpose is as strange as it would seem exactly for that, though ultimately a seeming nostalgia in her as a mirroring muse. 

For so many years, as stated, while not void of companionship (as showcased fully later in the chapter), Flory’s day-to-day had been miserable; a listless existence of drinking and smoking and going about his duties, waiting to return to England… During the course of the story, he even almost makes it even for just a brief period, only to be called back to Burma. Finding himself, somehow, thankful to be back rather than his country of birth. 

The relation between Master & Servant has historically been one of an inherently dubious quality, given the blatant implication of one authority subjecting another to its own bends. A mundane extreme throughout time of slaves and other such synonyms for servitude— even Thomas Jefferson had at least one of them as a concubine, fathering a bastard child with a slave being the way we know in his case; it wasn’t uncommon. 

Ma Hla May worked as servant to Flory for a vast majority of his time in Burma leading up to the arrival of Elizabeth. Detailed in prior chapters of the book, the relationship between Flory and Ma Hla is innately speculative and Orwell makes no secret the dynamic of their sensual busines; the implication in it began as a form of rape and to an extent remained so even though over time she may have seemingly became attached. Or as it would seem their case could have been somewhat of a mutually inclusive hypnosis within her Stockholm Syndrome…

All cards of which shifted against her favor with Flory’s eyes darting to Elizabeth, as opposed to her conventional comfort. Or, as repeatedly stated as his ideation a few times within the chapter, the decent life that late he once lead. 

Attempting more restraint regarding his whiskey and tobacco driven habits, the listlessly living he believed, and did indeed on some level have albeit, at least only of late. Essentially, vice literally vulgar to the veins slowed down in relation to what Carl Jung pointed out regarding muses as a mirror-style conduit for what one wants to see in their reflection. 

Flory’s home is Burma, India. Though he desires some part of England, which he seems to perceive Elizabeth as portraying. The comforting capacity that could be there in companionship that seems familiar and similar and the nostalgia she brings to him, as well as a probable procreative impulse for continued lineage and conventional courtship. 

Similarly to cutting back on tobacco and alcohol in the presence of Elizabeth, Flory disregards Ma Hla May all the same. Or at least, initially attempts to. Having, “ruined her,” by her own as well as general cultural standards, and apparent gained attachment, during the week of her initial expulsion sent a mere message demanding a payment of 50 rupees, though it was disregarded. 

Going back to Flory’s after a week, Ma Hla May’s character appears to him at his arrival back to his abode proceeding his meeting with Doctor Versawami. 

Disheveled, plastered in a heavy white mask of makeup on her face she pleaded for a pity she seemed to know wouldn’t be given, even if felt. Wailing on the floor, Flory in his mind acknowledges her pain is his doing, however given the dynamic of power in the hypothetical late lead life it’s next to nothing, until eventually readjusting herself and in solemn-bitterness marched down the path away from the home. 

Dynamic encapsulated by Flory as she leaves, in his understanding that, “It was true, he had robbed her of her youth…” but with his power, concern turns back to his prior pondering. The solipsistic misery wallowing:

“Where is the life that late led I?”

“Late-lead,” as if dead before it ever left the head…

Might of the Moment || Neurotic Nihilism IV

1. Might?

“‘…like the crocodile, he strikes always at the weakest spot!’

‘Do crocodiles always strike at the weakest spot, doctor?’

 Both men laughed…” 

     — George Orwell, Burmese Days

Contextually the bit of dialogue spoken between Flory, an English colonial and his native friend the Doctor in George Orwell’s detailed Burmese Days is a more lighthearted instance than the actual implications of the offhanded inquiry. 

Might as the momentary application; failure or setback is nonetheless always possible. Challenger had its moment, then like Icarus flying too high, crashed down like a tower onto avenues around… which leads to the question, is there any Might in the moment of a sinking ship? If it were true a captain always went down with the wreck there’d be none of us left. Napoleon entered Moscow to no avail, but made it farther than the later Charlie Chaplin impersonated Austrian painter. 

This is the confusion of strength and Might. Not being innately inequitable, counterintuitive it would be to wholly view them as intrinsically inclusive. Might denotes strength whereas strength is not Might perpetual in and of itself. Continued strength perpetuates as a byproduct of Might’s flashes. 

2. Retentive Evolution

Paradise Lost, while largely a work of John Milton’s autofellatio, stands to embark the delusion as Satan is depicted in the promethean bastardization of Venus we see the character as today; Valor and power only to in the end wind up nothing but a shriveled serpent, not triumphant traitor. Funny how in spite of this, power philosophies and platitudes are drawn from that specific archetype…

“You say you want a Revolution

 Well, you know

 We all want to change the world

 You tell me that it’s evolution…

 […]

 You say you got a real solution

 Well, you know

 We’d all love to see the plan

 You ask me for a contribution

 Well, you know 

 We are doing what we can

 […]

 Don’t you know it’s gonna be alright”

     —The Beatles, Revolution 1 

“You said you wanted evolution 

 The ape was a great big hit

 You say you want a revolution, man

 And I say that you’re full of shit.”

  —Marilyn Manson, Disposable Teens

Between 1960 up until the 1970s the world glimpsed as what was probably the largest widespread adoption/ adaptations into movements that prior seemed somewhat underground. Namely and known are the Hippies, Black Panthers and Weather Underground; in part given their hub in US history as a undeniable phenomenon in world happenings, as well as how the latter mentioned managed to smuggle a bomb into the Pentagon…

Most of the common consensus in hindsight, was a false optimism of accomplishment, and most were to counterproductive in their pride to acknowledge or perceive it; leading to the inevitably and invariably harsher, more nihilistic next generation of counterculture: the Art That Kills- Aesthetic Terrorist movement. 

Art That Kills by George Petros is a book exploring
 this multi-decade group of creatives

Likewise with much of the focus being on American soil tends to negate that in the other Western nations, similar trends sprouted. At that it lacks much of a perspective that is more realistic than the superficialities of American pipe dreams. 

The Dutch Provo Movement was a short-existing blip in the broad genre of 60s cliques of activists, not terribly indistinguishable from most others except in the fact they did not adhere to a solid, grandiose vision of success. “Provo realizes that it will lose in the end.. Provo is an image,” an idea, as they wrote in their own literature, rather than a perpetual collected effort itself the movement is an archetypal ideal… 

3. Awkwardly Applying

Ideas are interesting as they are ideas. Application is awkward; assimilation and adaptation are both neurotic in their own right. 

“Are we demented or am I disturbed?

 The space that’s in between insane and insecure…

 Oh therapy can you please fill the void?

 Am I retarded or am I just overjoyed?”

— Green Day, Jesus Of Suburbia 

Prior to the production of an actualized Broadway spectacle, the album American Idiot was already described as a ‘punk rock opera’ due to the nature of it being a concept record; telling the story of disenchanted, disenfranchised naïvety which ultimately concludes in the subsequent suicide of the St. Jimmy and banal seclusion of Whatsername. 

All that to say the general idea can be summed up when Ghandi said his line about being the change you wish to see. Internal revolution in order for external. Personal is the only revolution which can be perceptual; that does not make it mighty by any innate means as it is so constant a tendency for humans to, “build it up just to burn it down,” and no one, if it were so, would leave the psychoanalysts chair, not even the analysts— then where would anyone be? 

4. Bullet 

Probably, albeit speculatively but intuitively, it’s likely we’d all bite the bullet.. in the Church of Euthanasia such would be an interpersonally personal revolution; their touted line being ‘Save The Planet, Kill Yourself!’ it’s equivalent to Christian sainthood almost even if atheistically. Tax exempt as an educational institution, Chris Korda’s aesthetic terrorist-posthuman church is a goldmine in the context of case studies in Terror Management Theory. 

Ultimately their view is the Earth grows increasingly in population when already substantially overrun by a cancer-like organism which has enough awareness to ruin it not only for themselves but every other ecosystem on the sphere for fellow and future inhabitants. Similar to Darth Treya’s secret mission in Knights Of The Old Republic II to completely sever every living entities connection to the Force, the solution given by and in spite of surprisingly acknowledged futility and biological impracticality of voluntary human depopulation. Intuitively, it’s an unrealistic hypothesis. Even if an inevitable inheritance of extinction exists, given that suicide is ultimately the form of symbolic ego fulfillment in the mind of a caged creature; biology tends to override ideology in the end with its imperative to blatant forms of instantaneous annihilation, comforting as it may seem. 

Collectively conscious mass simultaneous suicide isn’t completely crazy but it’s not a common denominator. The instances that can be poignantly used, while evident of many things, really seem to go to show groups of people whose psychology, like most anyone is prone to pathos and wind up exiting to Hale Bop like Heaven’s Gate as a byproduct. With that however even then permeates the Mortality Salience diagnosed by Terror Management theory; wherein, “conceptions of the supernatural world were probably in place around forty thousand years ago, with the advent of what anthropologists call the Upper Paleolithic Revolution, or the Creative Explosion. This era was marked by the simultaneous appearance of art, body adornments, burials and elaborate grave goods in many different societies… The concurrent emergence of material manifestations of supernatural beliefs and extraordinary technological advances is consistent with the notion that the sophisticated cognitive capacities associated with consciousness could serve our ancestors well but dressed in a supernatural universe in which death could be forestalled and ultimately transcended,”  according to the book Worm At The Core, further purporting the death desire is absurdly based on a denial of the event nonetheless. 

Jonestown in Guyana or a person jumping off a bridge, the ultimate differentiator is choice of beverages present or provided. 

Suicide is in a way a social contagion though, an escapist egress based on the shortness of human lives concluded from illusory assumptions of characteristics. Revolution against the inevitably innate, “when it comes to efforts to transcend death, not much has changed in the last forty thousand years… many ingenious approaches to immortality have arisen. All serve the same purpose: to diminish existential dread by denying death is either inevitable or the end of one’s existence.”

5. Self-Esteem: Synonym of Ego

“Everybody wants to change the world, but no one wants to die”

—My Chemical Romance, Na Na Na (Na Na Na Na Na)

Wisdom is limited to understanding of amalgamated perceived experience. Might is the futile attempts at making that matter, because if our ideas don’t have some intrinsic worth, surely neither do we. 

“Then I wonder how much more I can spend

 Well I guess I should just stick up for myself

 But I really think it’s better this way

 The more you suffer

 The more it shows you really care, right? Yeah

 […]

 I may be dumb but I’m not a dweeb

 I’m just a sucker with no self-esteem”

— The Offspring, Self-Esteem

Explanations regarding the concept of Mortality Salience often prefer to substitute the simple, yet vastly complex word of ‘ego’ for the less self-aggrandizing perception of the two-termed phrase of ‘self-esteem’

Self-esteem is a way of gauging neuroticism in regards to ego, rather than a completely equivalent synonym. 

***

6. Application in Awkwardness

Whether I’m more or less neurotic is unclear; what is, is it is a label and idea which is utilized as a way of broadly encompassing various queries about the human condition. It is a thought experiment for thought experiments and lasts as long as the questions in relation to the experiences of being Neurotically Nihilistic do, if they ever should truly subside. 

Observed, not answered. 

Intuition, not default definition. 

The thesis encompassing Neurotic Nihilism, “what’s a good Nietzschean without Neurotic Nihilism?”

Neurotic meaning, according to the New Webster Medical Dictionary, “one who has a neurosis or behavior suggests having one,” and with that; Neurosis implying, “a functional nervous or emotional disorder, less serious than a psychosis, marked by severe anxiety, depression and the like, without any apparent physical origin.”

Nihilism from the Latin Nihil meaning nothing, literally and metaphorically. Prescribed somewhat contradictingly as the “belief in nothing,” whereas it would be more of a neurotic agnosticism. 

Understanding myself as well as in the current present possible; I know that I embody the definition of a living neurosis walking nihilistically through existence. Synonym to this would be a better understood phrase of ‘mentally fucked’— The Body Keeps The Score but as Anakin Skywalker said in the opening scene of Revenge Of The Sith, and echoed by Rusty Cage for his Family-Friendly Noose Song, “this is where the fun begins!”

Manic, depressive, passively suicidal or just listening to music it’s an experience which can be dissected and will, as a way to understand and evolve from neurosis while simultaneously, unconsciously, growing it to and with each circumstance. 

I am skeptical to a redundantly reductive extent that ensures neuroticism. Not a curse or a blessing, nor is it atypical or too queer of a thing, even if in isolation it gets maniacally grandiose at times; in spite of that hell, to paraphrase Dostoevsky, it’s preferable to the many masks employed by those mysterious mirroring entities of external consciousness. 

7. A Short History of Decay & A Fucked Brain

“History confirms skepticism; yet it is and lives only by trampling over it; no event arises out of doubt, but all considerations of events lead to it and justify it.” anti-philosopher Emil Cioran explored in his potent pull of a book A Short History of Decay. 

Cioran’s book is akin to Nietzsche’s Human, All Too Human but with a more invocative (as in invocation, like a mystical rite) quality that likens it more to the poetic polemics found in the infamous Ragnar Redbeard’s tome Might Is Right. Less like the latter as it’s not a lyrical lambast, it’s a deconstructing diatribe in the same lineage. Not attempting sagedom in its prose moreso the banal comedic horror of the idea nothing truly matters at the end of it all. 

***

If I burned all my writings and destroyed all recordings I’ve made, disappearing to whatever end, it would be all to easy to simply sign my name in A Short History of Decay and have it serve as a posthumous note. Not so much an argument, “not a life sentence, but a death-dream” for none of it. Nothing. 

But, egotiscially, those aren’t my words or works and introspective inspiration they may have, they are mere tools made by other fools. 

***

Ironic

Idiotic

Septic symphony.

Not pity just a vibrating scream;

Something new to mean—

Misery is exclusive to me!

Sleuthing is suffering,

Traveling ends in cadaver skin flaking

“In the dirt, in the dust: it’s an Ordinary Loss”

All a mess, longing

Ethos imitation

Serotonin blows and superstition sews—

Why even watch a show?

Days go and worms only grow

19 out of 25 years and an imagined hundred to go. 

Solipsistic,

It’s near impossible to tell friend from foe

“Everything I think I know is just static on the radio.”