A World For The Taking

As many of you dear readers will know, I started my philosophical life as a Christian, then moved on to Paganism, then to Celtic Christianity, and finally at the ripe old age of thirty-six I became an Atheist. Throughout all of this, my central focus was Truth. I wanted to come to an understanding of reality and I followed that road where it led. Now it is leading me in a very bizarre and unexpected direction.

Last week while in a bookshop, my companion pointed out to me the book The Secret. I have since read some of it and watched the feature documentary. The book suggests that there is a great secret that has been passed through the ages that once known and implemented will unlock personal happiness.

From my initial browse of the book I discovered that I already knew the Secret from my Pagan days. The idea goes that there are mystical laws operating in the universe, just as there are physical laws. One of these laws is called The Law of Attraction.

The Law of Attraction basically states that in the universe like will attract like. I understood this in its most basic form and left it at that. The purveyors of the Secret go a step further. They suggest that whatever you think, be it positive or negative, will manifest itself in your life. It is compared to Aladdin's genie saying, "Your wish is my command".

If this was my first introduction to the Secret, I would surely call it nonsense. Consciousness cannot affect reality. Reality exists independent of consciousness. However, I think that there is something to this. I do not agree with the proponents of the Secret who explain this concept in mystical or pseudo-scientific terms. I think the answers are more psychological in nature.

In a previous blog I wrote, "Where the mind goes the body follows, so be careful what you wish for." This statement is the sort that seems to support the idea of the Law of Attraction, however that was not my intention. Thoughts affect Feelings and Feelings affect Behaviour and Behaviour determines your Reality. Since that is the case, then how does it hurt to apply the ideas expressed by the Secret?

During my mystical days, I believed that I was blessed by God, the gods, the Ancestors, take your pick. In those days, I always landed on my feet. Whatever I needed at any time came to me. I felt confident in the universe because I believed that I had this supernatural support. Then one day all of my expectations came crashing down and no matter what I did everything went wrong in my life, or so I thought. Each day became a struggle for two things, love and money and both eluded me. So I gave up on the mysticism and got to work on my life.

As a teenager, I could not get a girl to save myself. I was the friend and never the lover. When I did find love, it did not last long enough. Same holds true with money. Money was scarce and had to be protected. I never seemed to have enough and lived my life from day to day. I always had enough to exist, but never enough to live as I wanted to live. These experiences affected my perceptions of love and money. There were scarce and they were valuable. I became a miser of both. Perhaps this is why my two greatest fears are the loss of a relationship and unemployment. The question then is, if I see love and money as scarce does that then create an attitude within me that binds me to relationships and jobs that do not benefit me? Does that attitude create in me the fear of loss? Or the fear of taking the steps necessary to improve my life?

I have been watching the BBC series Casanova with David Tennant again. The character of Casanova as portrayed in the series sees love and money as being in abundance. In one scene he describes himself as a born alchemist spinning wealth from nothing. History is filled with such people who make a fortune from nothing, lose it, and then do it again. These are people extolled by the Romantics in both history and in fiction. This is the Romantic attitude – love, money, life is in abundance in the universe. Don't worry about how just take it. This is the very attitude extolled by the purveyors of the Secret.

I cannot accept the Idealistic notion that consciousness affects Reality. However, I cannot deny the evidence in the lore of the Romantic that those who know that they can-do achieve what they want from life. I cannot deny that positive thinking and self-confidence reaps rewards. Likewise, negative thoughts lead to the manifestation of our fears. I have witnessed this occurrence time and time again throughout my life. I have also experienced seemingly miraculous coincidences from which I have received exactly what I wanted.

As an example of the negative, I once had a love with whom I was very close. She was dominated by her fears of losing me and even had recurring nightmares of the loss. She became jealous and emotionally demanding, but I was flattered and I loved her very much. As I sought to comfort and accomodate her more pressure was put on me until it became an emotional strain. In the end, she manifested her fears by setting in motion a mental state within herself that did lead to the end of the relationship. Several months after the end, she confessed that she believed that I never loved her. Why? Because she could not accept the fact that I did. She did not believe herself worthy of it. We manifest our negative thoughts as surely as we manifest our positve thoughts. In this example, her nightmares became reality.

Religion provides a wonderful focal point for our consciousness. Faith in some force makes it easier to focus our thoughts and energies towards manifesting our goals. It is far more difficult to exclude any such power and focus instead on ones self and trust in our ability to create the life in which we want to exist. However, in this we have the Romantic glorification of humanity in general and the self in particular. With this perspective we grant ourselves incredible power and responsibility.

An image that keeps playing through my mind is Brer Rabbit dancing and singing through the briar patch. The Romantic does not fear the rough patches in life, rather he dances through them because he can. He takes the loss of love with grace and style because he knows that there is more love out there to be had. Poverty is just a hop away from riches.

Going back to the Romantic values of Truth, Beauty, Freedom, and Love, all these are manifested through this positive attitude towards existence. Likewise those attitudes associated with being a gentleman fit the "anything is possible" worldview found in the Law of Attraction. Take gallantry for example. Gallantry is defined as courage. There is no fear when there is no perceived threat to the loss of ones values. If you believe that the universe provides values in abundance, then there is nothing to fear. Loss is nothing more than a temporary state easily transcended.

In a previous blog I used the analogy of a child's torment at the loss of his ice-cream cone where an adult sees it as an annoying accident. In this instance I will add that an adult knows that there is more ice-cream in the world and that it is available to him at will. Why can we not have the same attitude towards adult ice-cream cones? I've lost a love, then just get another. I've lost my job, then get another.

Even as I write this I feel the tension of resistance inside me. I have endured prolonged unemployment. I have suffered for months over the loss of love. If I could end those periods at will, then wouldn't I have done it? Can't I look at my history and show evidence that it's not easy to find love and money? But is it possible that that ingrained worldview actually prevented me from making it easy? As a teenager I often obsessed over some girl I fancied while ignoring the girls who probably did fancy me and who I would have enjoyed. Is it possible that I created my own prison? Of course it is.

It is like what I wrote in the blog just before this one. We choose how we perceive our history and our existence. We can choose to focus on the positives, be grateful, and revel in our existence, or we can focus on what we don't have and mourn its absence. It's your choice.

I am by no means advocating a denial of Reality. I am not suggesting that we pretend that every spilled ice-cream cone is a blessing, though sometimes it is, or that problems don't exist. I'm not trying to sell you a pair of rose-tinted glass. I am not advocating arrogance – believing yourself to be what you have not earned.

I am saying that if you do not believe in your worthiness and power to have success in love, wealth, career, or whatever, then it is impossible for you to achieve it. You will sink broken into the briar patch instead of dancing through it.

Romanticism is all about the aspiration and achievement of personal greatness and the passionate existence that brings. The first step is imagining. Where the mind goes, the body will follow. So claim that power as your own and be glorious. Whether the power of the Secret is mystical or psychological in nature is irrelevant. I believe that its tenants will produce results either way, so be careful what you wish for. We create our own heaven or hell.

Just My Luck

Just a short blog....

I have had what can best be called an unlucky week. Deeper analysis would reveal that it was not about luck so much as me being a fuckwit, however I prefer to go with the bad luck theory for obvious reasons.

Here's an example. I use the same coffee cup at work everyday and yesterday it went missing. I had a near full cup that I set down somewhere and could not find where I put it. After a prolonged search in every conceivable place, I went out to buy a new one.

During my failed search to find what I was after I found two DVD's on my to-buy list that were very cheap. One was only £2.00. I finally found a cup that I could use and bought it. The girl at the counter knew me and on her own volition gave me her staff discount. As soon as I returned to work I found my old cup in plain sight. I just wasted much needed cash pointlessly. Bad Luck – right?

Well, now I have two DVD's I wanted, someone liked me enough to give me a staff discount for no real reason, and I have a new cup (which I needed anyway). So it was actually a positive though at the time it felt like just bad luck.

My point here is that bad things happen in life. I ran into an acquaintance who asked how I have been over the past year. I said, "it has been the best of times and the worst of times". I heard that Sigmund Freud was a biologist who spent his life looking for a sex organ in an eel. He failed because the organ does not develop in that species until later in life and Freud's specimens were all too young. In that failure he engaged in self-examination which led to modern psychology. Likewise, I faced the greatest disappointment and loss in my life in December. In my failure, I turned to self-analysis and self-creation. The result has been unprecedented personal growth in my life. I take great pleasure in the person that I have become and who I am becoming.

I may choose to focus on my loss, wallow in misery, and view 2007 as the year of hell. Or I can focus on the positives and see it as one of the best years of my life, a year whose events enabled me to sort through a lifetime of personal defects, bad habits, faulty perceptions, ignorance, and general hang-ups. These matters being sorted promise me a brighter future than the past that I have left behind.

Right now I am feeling free. Feeling liberated and alive. Freed from past burdens and looking optimistically to a future free of pointless and self-destructive fear and worry. Just thought I'd share.

Yep, I am one lucky bastard.

Growing Up

When you grow up, your heart dies. It's inevitable. – Allison in The Breakfast
Club

When I first heard that line as a teenager, I decided to never let my heart die. Result? I'm not sure that I ever grew-up.

One of the recurring themes in Goth music is the fall from grace. I pondered this topic long and hard as a former Christian and therefore fallen, however the true fall from grace is that movement from childhood to adulthood. It is that point when the illusions of childhood disappear. We are cast from the Eden of parental protection and must fend for ourselves in the world.

I hold to the belief that what defines an adult is the ability to be self-dependent. In Nature, the purpose of parenthood is solely to prepare the offspring to be independent. Once accomplished, their spawn are chased away by the parent to be independent and self-reliant creatures. This purpose is true for the human animal as well. Since human survival is far more complex, parenting takes decades of preparation, but eventually, in theory anyway, the offspring must be chased from the familial nest. Though sometimes they run from it.

If that is adulthood, what then is childhood? The child exists under the protection of the parent until such time as the child can stand-alone. They do not worry about where the next meal will come from, making rent, or putting clothes on their back. In the prosperous West, children are also provided with entertainment in the form of computers, mobile phones, and sometimes even credit cards. Once the child leaves the nest, the parents may choose to continue to help them by getting them into their first flat or any variety of financial assistance as required.

In poorer families and cultures, childhood ends early as family needs require the child start contributing to the mutual survival. However, among the wealthy childhood may extend well into a person's twenties. But whether rich or poor, there comes a time when a person's needs are no longer provided for and he must stand alone.

Many months ago, I was reading an article on the topic of separation anxiety. It said that it is impossible for an adult to be abandoned because it is the natural state of an adult to be self-sufficient. You exist for no one and no one exists for you. This is easy to forget during a long-term romance, but quickly remembered when that romance reaches its inevitable conclusion. I say inevitable because all relationships end. You may be married to the same loving partner for forty years, but one day that person dies and you stand alone.

A quick word here that will no doubt anger my teenage readers. You are more independent than a ten year old but not as independent as an adult. So for the sake of this blog, you are still children. Sorry.

For children, childhood hardly seems like a paradise. That is because a child's world is very small and it expands as they age and gain experience. Unfortunately for some, their consciousness stops expanding at some point a bit prematurely. Hence those adults with childish notions. Anyways. For a child a spilled ice cream cone is the end of the world, but to adult it is just an annoying accident. The adult has perspective that the child lacks. Furthermore, the adult version of the end of the world is not being able to make a mortgage payment, loosing the kids in a divorce, or dying of cancer.

This applies to the child loosing his ice cream, to the teenage girl who "really really loved" some boy who breaks her heart. These are all learning experiences that bring us into adulthood step by bloody step. Perspective helps us to see these events within a greater context of reality.

These two ideas of perspective and personal responsibility form the essence of adulthood. Perspective is an aid to ones judgement allowing us to determine which events are important and which may be a pain in the ass, but are ultimately trivial. It also helps us to envision the long-term possible outcomes of our actions and weigh the likely results against present gains. Personal responsibility means knowing your obligations to yourself and others and taking credit for the consequences of those actions be they good or bad.

Perspective and responsibility manifest in the need to ignore ones feelings. A father supporting his family may not "feel" like going to work. He may even hate his job. However, he has a responsibility to his family and his perspective should tell him that if he did not go to work, then his life would unravel. So he ignores his feelings and just gets on with what has to be done. He may not be happy and it may not be fair, but it has to be done.

An employed teenager on the other hand may have no problem following his heart and pulling a sickie with little or no consequences unless it becomes a habit, and even if he is given the sack, he is supported by his parents until he finds another job. Parental protection allows him the freedom to do as he pleases.

The metaphor of the man suppressing his feelings to support his family exemplifies the adult experience. There are countless examples of moments when as an adult we must do something that we do not want to do and we must accept that as the nature of existence. Events may fall upon us that we must deal with despite our feelings. So we may say that being an adult is about being forced by life's circumstances to do what we do not want to do and deal with it.

Now for the personal anecdotes. I often use the analogy of emotions as being like a horse that must be broken-in. They have to be trained so that you can receive the benefits of your emotions without their potential destructive force. Far too often I have acted on a whim or not acted at all because I could not be bothered. I would rather sit and watch a DVD than write that important essay or fill in that government form. I acted as I felt like. As a result I never trained my emotions as they should be conditioned. I never said no to my desires and I resisted acting against my feelings. By following my heart, I never really grew-up.

I have learned tactics to keep my life running smooth and pleasant because I did not want to be put into a position where I would have to do something that I did not feel like doing. The events that cause me the greatest emotional grief are those events outwith my control that force me to act against my emotional inclinations. I feel this powerful swell of resistance within me. I throw an internal fit like a spoiled child in defiance to the mandates of reality. I try to weasel my way out of doing what must be done with the most erudite of intellectual justifications to fool myself and others, but are ultimately bullshit. The more I squirmed the harder it got and the more prolonged the consequences.

Adult perspective allows a person to see what must be done and provides the knowledge that matters will only get worse if it is not done. If I do not feel like paying a bill, then in the future that debt rises until it collapses upon me bigger and more destructive than before. Or if I do not feel like cleaning the kitchen the mess only accumulates. The same holds true of life and personal relationships. Deal with the problem or it will only get worse. By not incorporating that lesson into my life, I failed to train myself to act accordingly in those situations. Once the emotions are trained to that behaviour, then it becomes easier. By resisting, I made it harder to cope and never learned my lessons.

In terms of relationships, I have realised that all of my major relationships ended because the woman did not feel like continuing. There was no great fight, or abuse, or issues. Of course we both had our personal problems that contributed to these feelings, but these are things that could have been worked out, and I was willing to work them out. When these relationships ended, people pointed their fingers at me and said, "that is what you get for going after young girls".

Granted, I have yet to date anyone over the age of twenty-two, but I never really saw age as anything but a number. Now I see what they meant by "too young". In this context, I valued the relationship over my own feelings and pursued happiness within the context of that relationship. The women in question valued their feelings over the relationship and may have gotten carried away. Unlike a slightly more mature woman who would apply the perspective of experience to her feelings and work through the rough patches for the sake of a brighter future, these girls acted according to their feelings, just as I would do in a different context. I appreciate now that for a young girl these feelings untempered by experience are powerful things. Even the most stoic of these ex's could not resist eventually acting on her feelings. Here then my inexperience was a contributing factor as well by not taking her feelings into account and acting accordingly -- but that is another story.

By acting on feelings without applying perspective these girls may have thrown away a perfectly good relationship, who knows, but what I do know is that I need to grow-up and develop a more adult attitude and perspective towards existence. This does not mean turning my back on Romanticism, but it does mark the difference between an adult Romantic living in the real world to its fullest and most glorious extent and living a child's fantasy.

Romanticism at its core is about the aspirations towards personal greatness, however greatness comes at a cost. One must swallow ones transient feelings or resistence and do what must be done today in order to create a better tomorrow. We must do the work before we can reap the benefits. Where the child lives for today with no care to the future, the adult must manage today in order to create a future. That is the way of things.

I was asked the other day how I define strength. I answered that it is the ability to do what you decide must be done despite the resistence of your feelings. Such strength can be developed, but it takes time, experience, and practice. This is what is meant by growing-up. Accepting the unacceptable and learning the skills required to be an adult. By acting against the whims of your feelings your heart may die, but it really is inevitable, because we all have to stand-alone at some point and that means growing-up.

Let's Misbehave

You could have a great career, And you should; Yes you should. Only one thing stops you dear: You're too good; Way too good! If you want a future, darlin', Why don't you get a past? 'Cause that fateful moment's comin' at last...

-- Let's Misbehave, Cole Porter

Profit from the happiest time of your life. The happiest years of our pleasures are only too brief! If we are lucky enough to have enjoyed them, then delicious memories will console us and amuse us in our old age.

-- Philosophy in the Boudoir, Marquis De Sade

I have done some terrible things in my past, actions that I am not proud of doing, producing memories that burden my mind with guilt and regret for the price I paid for a moments pleasure. Wait a minute...no I haven't.

Sure I have not followed convention. Yes, I have morally challenged myself. Yes, I have sought-out the darker regions and experimented for the sake of experience. In short, I have lived. So why the self-condemnation? It's not me – it's Them! (No, not the giant ants from the 50's B-movie). Them/They, the ubiquitous rulers and judges of the world, the people who sit in darkened rooms laying down all the moral laws for society in an endless stream of "thou shalt nots" about what should or should not be.

I realised today that my regrets stem from two sources. The judgements of a significant other derived from their insecurities – thus causing me to blame myself that I dared to enjoy pleasure before I ever met her. And my self-condemnation for not being without blemish in my pursuit of personal perfection. But by what standard is character judged? Social mores or personal values? Certainly the latter.

I should in fact look back on those events that I traditionally labelled "failures" and see them as the experiences in life that they were. Experiences that many only dream about. Experiences of pleasure that should bring a smile in my old age and not the thorn of regret born of another's judgement of how things should be – be these juries real or imagined.

At the age of seventeen, I told myself that I did not want to live a life with regrets over life unlived. I also swore that when I matured I would not allow my heart to die and become consumed by bitterness. When I look back I have had those experiences and more. The only penalty for that pleasure was born out of the judgements of others and my own self-depreciating perception of how I "should" have acted. And what was born of this bad habit? Fear. The "what if's" that never manifested but whose prospects restrained me with fetters of worry for possible consequences of my pleasure.

You are your own standard of judgement. Not your family, not your lover, and certainly not Them. Your life and your pursuit of happiness is your own and for which you must take full responsibility for its successes and its learning experiences and learn to rejoice in both. Damn the expectations of others. It's your life.

I'm getting preachy again, so I will end this sermon with a quote from the Gospel according to Charles Baudelaire (Paris Spleen), "If you are not to be the martyred slave of Time, be perpetually drunk! With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you please."

Something Wicked This Way Comes

I have decided to let the cat out of the bag. I have been plotting and planning something over the past few months and for some reason unknown to me I have opted to use this forum as my primary declaration of intent.

For roughly three years I ran the Scottish Vampyre Society. Well, perhaps ran is not the appropriate word. Running the SVS was rather like herding cats. My predecessors advocated a strong arm to rule, but I opted for a republic rather than a dictatorship. I had in mind something like the American Republic, but it became more akin to the Roman one. For a while, I found myself pulling the daggers of Brutus and Claudius from my back on a regular basis.

I had difficulty because I could not find a vision for the Vampyre Society, and certainly not a vision that everyone agreed with. People often asked what we did at our meetings, no doubt expecting virginal bloodletting in the basement of the Solid Rock Cafe. In fact we just met once a fortnight, sat around and talked, and had a few events each year such as an Autumnal Ball. There were times when we did not even discuss vampires. After all, for the regular members, there was only so much you could say about vampires. So I chose to branch-out to the Gothic and the Romantic which met with hostility from our "non-goth" members.

Then there was the dress code. The problem with the dress code was that there was none. For those who wanted to be surrounded by the young and beautiful languid creatures of the night there was no escaping the T-shirt and jeans brigade, mostly because no dress code could reasonably be enforced since these people were both members and friends.

That said, there were a handful of members who enjoyed dressing properly and indulging in lengthy intellectual debate on topics related to Goth and the Romantic over a cocktail or glass of wine. When I was approached recently and asked if I would consider reviving the Scottish Vampyre Society I said no chance, but then I thought of that handful of people and my mind began to whirr.

What if I started not a vampire society but a sort of dark romantic society? I recall my friend James once suggested something along those lines. That is when the idea of the Salon came to mind. For more information, here is the Wikipedia link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salon_%28gathering%29. In short, the Salon was a gathering of poets, writers, artists, and philosophers around a charismatic hostess, or occasionally a host, meeting in the common room to discuss various topics. In some salons, these were of a revolutionary or sexual nature depending on the crowd assembled, as in the salon of Ninon de l'Enclos.

Unlike the Scottish Vampyre Society, which I had inherited through my election to the position of convenor, this organisation could have vision and purpose. Like the bohemians in the film Moulin Rouge!, it could promote the Romantic values of Truth, Beauty, Freedom, and Love by encouraging people to pursue these ideals in their lifestyle and creations, as well as educating the young people who desire to learn the ways of the Romantic, and to create a secret world of beauty and civilisation in a storm of barbarous vulgarity.

This vision I have in mind draws from the 19th and early 20th century, particularly Britain, France, and some American influences: from Byron to Baudelaire, from F. Scott Fitzgerald to the Moulin Rouge, from the Marquis de Sade to Ditta Von Teese. Combining all the sensuality of existence in the pursuit of decadence, humanism in an age of dehumanisation, elitism when mediocrity is the rule, and atheism amidst religious fundamentalism. Some might call this evil, however when virtue becomes evil, then only the evil are virtuous.

Philosophy lies at the root of all human action, and yet not all humans are philosophers. I sincerely doubt that any voracious young man indulging his lust pauses for a brief moment to assess how his actions live-up to the Greek hedonistic ideals. And yet this philosophy is there unaware like the hidden foundations of a building. One need not be an architect to live in a house, but he should have some understanding if he intends to build one. When we look at the spirit of any age and trace its inception, we find some small group of men and women sharing thoughts in a salon, coffee house, or pub. From here the memes spread to infect society until everyone becomes taken by the zeitgeist without anyone knowing how it came to be. Who was the first to dance the dance before everyone else joined in?

I find myself at war. War is a conflict. Sometimes wars are fought over physical territory and sometime over ideology, and yet not everyone is a soldier. Not everyone is committed to an ideal without compromise. Not everyone is a fighter, an idea-maker, a debater, or a persistent and consistent thorn. However there are others who are born to it. They clear the way for others to settle.

I want to draw unto me others who believe as I believe. Who feel as I feel. I want to rally the troops to the coffee house. The beautiful thing about this war is that no fighting is really necessary. Just being true to your values in the face of social convention and ignorance. Just enjoy yourself and don't give-up. Don't settle for second best. Aspire towards personal greatness and claim that greatness as your own.

I do not need just anybody. I am not looking for bodies to fill seats as we did in the Scottish Vampyre Society. And no doubt I can find many beautiful people blessed with elegance and style to partake in such a venture. But what I need are intellectuals, artists, and living works of art that transcend the vulgarity of modernity within their daily routines and are willing to encourage others to do the same. People who make a mark.

Without further ado, I am pleased to announce the Glasgow opening of Le Salon de Mal within the coming months – by invitation only I'm afraid. I appreciate such a thing is possible on the internet, and there may well be a Myspace site in the works, but virtual verisimilitude is not reality. As soon as I find a handful of people, then the revolution can begin in earnest and usher in some future Belle Epoque.

What is Your Pleasure, Sir?

One thing that I have learned in studying the way of the Romantic is how contrary its ways are to my Christian upbringing. I had the problem of too much faith. Most self-professed Christians have the good sense to temper their faith with Reality. They know that in life you get what you work for, whereas I believed that God would provide all that I required and all the tools that He required for me to fulfil his divine plan. The result was that I never learned the skills and tactics necessary for a successful life.

Along these lines, I believed that the physical world was irrelevant. It was a necessary burden to carry until we transcend to the reality of the Heavenly Kingdom. As a result, I denied the physical. When the beauty of St. Peter's Basilica surrounded me all I could see were the peasants conned through the selling of indulgences to pay for it. I was the kind of person Oscar Wilde referred to in his preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray, when he wrote, "those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming.

Perhaps another factor was the transient nature of the physical. At a young age I realised that the toys that brought so much joy on Christmas morning were little more than junk at the bottom of the toy box by June. In love, the woman who worships the ground you walk-on one day and swears eternal love decides the next day that you are no better than the dirt under her feet and trades you in for another model. Then there were the unfulfilled desires and the accompanying disappointment. However, in the realm of the mind, all fantasy becomes reality. They are constant and true, require no effort, there is no failure to achieve, and these dreams can never forsake you. No wonder I came to value the realm of the idea over reality. It is a potent drug.

There was another influence. When I was growing-up in Los Angeles, there seemed to be an obsession with "fun". "Was it fun?" "Did you have fun?" "This will be fun." I was a goth goddamit. We don't do "fun". Fun is the pursuit of the shallow empty-headed creatures polluting the Malibu coastline. In my prejudice, alternative rejection of mainstream values, and of course a desire to be cool and completely unmoved, I rejected the pursuit of fun and just got-on with the burden of existence. Besides, I had a higher, enlightened, spiritual calling. I had no time for fun and base-physicality. Boy, did I get it wrong.

There is another aspect of physicality – the sexual nature of human existence. On one level I saw it as something that a man does to a woman to satisfy his carnal desires at her expense. This was reinforced by the popular image of the man who, once satiated, rolls over and falls asleep. I never wanted to be seen as such a man. Then there is the concept of the gentleman who does not take liberties with a woman. On another level, I saw sex as a divine act leading to the union of two souls. Beyond that, I saw true love as more Platonic and almost familiar in nature and beyond the base physicality of mere sex.

I am writing this anti-pleasure mentality out very clearly and precisely, but this ideology was not always completely clear and precise to me. As children we are thrown into this thing called reality and seek to identify and understand all the things that we find under the sun. Once labelled, these concepts are filed and automatised as part of our preconceptual worldview. Such concepts are the invisible hands pulling our strings and only reveal themselves through our feelings. The test is to go deep and discover these preconceived notions and challenge them in the light of new understanding.

I find humour in the expression, "I know my own mind" or any variation of it. From watching Derren Brown and studying some pop-psychology, I have come to the conclusion that most of us do not know our own mind. Half the time, our minds are up to no good behind our backs. That is why it is important to understand our feelings and motivations.

I had moved beyond these ideas of sex on a conscious level, but not on a pre-preconceptual level, which is the source of the feelings driving our actions (and our sexuality). While trying to embrace the here-and-now rational hedonism of the Romantic, I was being restrained emotionally by the preconceptual expectations of my religious upbringing and a fear/worry of the potential consequences of my actions. I had become the Push-me Pull-you from Dr. Doolittle trying to move in two opposite directions at once.

The pursuit of pleasure seems so natural. Human emotions probably developed from our primitive impulses involving the acquisition of food and sex as essential values. The constant pursuit of values still drives us, though now our values and the emotions they evoke are far more complex. I would agree with the Epicureans, though I would argue for a rational hedonism that promotes long-term and consistent pleasure through the acquisition of values rather than risking everything positive for the pleasure of the moment or the "if it feels good, do it" mentality.

However, most religions advocate the rejection of the physical as a path to spirituality and this has permeated most secular approaches to morality. We are therefore trained to reject pleasure on moral grounds while simultaneously we pursue pleasure as a basic human need. This contradiction must find resolution in the psyche.

One way that the mind accomplishes this is by compartmentalisation of the psyche. It is almost like multiple personality without the psychotic aspect. People do not have one unified personality. We are multifaceted beings. Sometimes we assign beliefs to one aspect of ourselves that are contrary to those that we assign to another. For example, the corrupt lawyer is one personality when he is at work and another when he is at church. This is not a conscious hypocrisy, but hypocrisy nonetheless. He must address and find resolution to these conflicting belief systems.

In my case, I developed an internalised sex life. This allowed me to preserve the sanctity of the love I felt for my partner while still satisfying my sexual impulses in a private, clean, sanitised, and easily hidden reality of the mind. Any proper Romantic would be disgusted by my behaviour. I was rejecting the pleasure and beauty of reality for soul-destroying fantasy. As with the corrupt lawyer, I was operating on a preconceptual level that I never reconciled with my conscious beliefs. The psychological affects and consequences of this pattern of behaviour have been catastrophic for me during the course of my life, which I have only recently come to understand.

I appreciate that I am sharing rather personal information to complete strangers, my dear reader, however, I believe it to be an important point to share. I am not the only person to have suffered from the repression of the natural drives towards pleasure in the name of a moral code completely divorced from reality. The solution is to develop and ingrain a new moral code more in keeping with reality.

If we hold that there is no God and no afterlife, then the pursuit of happiness through the acquisition of values becomes the primary purpose of existence and the repression of this impulse serves only to devalue existence. How horrible it is for me to discover that the life is about fun. The shallow mundanes of my youth were right. The one with the most toys does win. The purpose of morality then is to create a code of conduct conducive to this pursuit happiness, whatever happiness means to you, and we must ensure that our preconceptual beliefs are consistent with our conscious beliefs to allow us to achieve that happiness.

Returning to my personal example, I have learned that sex is not something that men do to women rather it is a shared act intended for mutual pleasure. It is a gift a man gives to a woman as much as it is a gift a woman gives to a man. In an exclusive relationship, it is the glue that binds the couple together as an expression of their union and their love. It is a man's way of telling a woman that she is desirable and that she is loved and can therefore feel loved by him exclusively above all women. In this regard, the gentleman is the man who indulges her desire for pleasure and not the man who withholds it with miserly disregard.

This last statement reminds me of something I read in Philosophy in the Boudoir by the Marquis de Sade. "...is a man saying something disagreeable to you when he reveals his desire to enjoy you? Absolutely not! He's paying you a compliment! Then why respond with insult and abuse? Only a moron could think in those terms....But the world is populated by dull imbeciles who believe that you are being disrespectful when you confess to them that you find them suitable for pleasure." I myself think that a gentleman may compliment a woman by expressing this sentiment provided the context is appropriate and manner charming. I think few women would find a statement like, "I gotta get me some of that" from a fat, drunken fool to be desirable.

I have come to believe that sex can be devoid of love, but romantic love cannot be devoid of sex. Confusing this issue often can lead to confusion and pain. Someone may feel loved when they are not or they may feel unloved when they are. This is also why relationships often end due to sexual problems. It is not the act itself, but the role of sex in the relationship as an expression of love that is important.

It has been said that men are torn between the archetypes of the Madonna and the Whore. On the one hand a man wants the pure woman to raise his children and on the other he wants the sexy woman who gives him pleasure. Likewise, women want to be both respected and desired. I found myself morally against viewing a woman as the "whore" despite my male desire and encouraging my perception of her as the elevated Madonna on a pedestal. I recently disovered that in the past the more I came to love a woman, the less I desired her sexually. There was this ingrained belief that it was wrong to view someone you loved as an object of your lust. The trick is to attain a balance. The question is not a choice between the Madonna or the Whore, for a woman must be both the Madonna and the Whore to her partner.

I have had four major relationships in my life. I believe that I had varying degrees of love for each of these women. However, each of these relationships ended in less than two years. I have thought long and hard on all the myriad reasons why they failed when less loving couples seem to persist beyond reason. Was it me? Was it her? Was it money? Was it maturity? Of course there is no one reason but the dynamic of two people caught in a dance, however I believe the pivotal reason stems from my rejection of pleasure due to my religious programming, repression, and the negative habits born in my attempts to reconcile my inner contradictions. Not just sexually, but a complete withdrawal from physical space into the realm of my mind. One might say I was too self-absorbed in my own thoughts to really enjoy life and therefore my life with the women I loved. Once more I must tip my hat to the long-suffering muse who taught me this valuable life lesson despite my resistance.

Some Romantics were raised free from the constraints of religion and encouraged in their pursuit of happiness. Then there are those like me who must struggle to break free of the shackles restraining them and learn how to exists as free men must exist, without fear of reality. Ultimately, it is fear that causes people to hide within themselves rather than engage reality. Idealism promotes the act of entering into your mind as a retreat from reality, whereas Romanticism promotes a constant engagement of reality in the endless pursuit of pleasure, real pleasure with all the benefits to soul, body, and mind that comes from it.

What's In A Name?

Today the Oxfam workers were harassing people on Buchanan Street. They did not want money, just names and addresses. Supposedly this information was not to be used for junk mail. So what on earth would they want with the names of people declaring, "I'm in", as the T-shirts of the bouncing college students proclaimed?

There are different forms of power, the means of working your will in the world. The most common is money. Another is people. The individual is a commodity to be used by religions, political groups, companies, and even charities. By showing these names, Oxfam is essentially declaring to whomever they choose to influence, for whatever purpose, that they have power in the form of these signatories.

Now there is a theory, I call it a theory simply because I do not know if it is true, that Oxfam is doing more than trying to feed starving African children. That much of their work centres on political change, and these changes are largely Marxist in nature. Suppose this is true. How many signatories would a "Marxism for Africa" campaign acquire as opposed to feeding cute little children?

My point is that whether or not the theory is true, the public had no problem putting their names to a data sheet for some purpose unknown, even to the students soliciting them. I began to wonder. What is a name worth?

In the film Kate and Leopold, the Duke of Albany finds himself transported from 1876 New York to the year 2001. Leopold finds himself cast in a television commercial selling Farmer's Bounty, a low-fat margarine. Upon tasting the product during the filming, his face betrays his disgust and he declares it to taste like saddle soap. With this discovery, he refuses to put his name to the product to the frustration of the director. "It's a paycheque pal." The scene, and the argument with Kate that follows, illustrates how eager we are to compromise our names for the right price. He says," What has happened to the world? You have every convenience, every comfort, yet no time for integrity."

I could not help but think of Leopold as I witnessed these people placing their names on this list so thoughtlessly. What then is the value of one's name to be thrown around in such a manner? Of course their name is but one of thousands on a list, but it is their name and they should value it.

In Gaelic, and a few other languages as well, the word for name and soul are the same word, ainm. Your name is more than just a label, it is your soul manifested in language. In English, the word name is also used to mean reputation.

The Victorians held their reputation as a high value. It was something to be protected, defended, and enriched through their actions. Generally, they did nothing that would bring their good name into disrepute and worked to strengthen it. You might say that they were demonstrating loving care for their soul. This reminds me of the film Rob Roy in which the title character defined honour to his sons as "a gift a man gives to himself".

Of all the values, of all those things that we hold important, that we merit worthy of our energies, the primary is our existence itself. We eat, we sleep, and we sustain our biological forms. But existence is not about the flesh. It is about the soul ingrained within that flesh.

I should note, dear reader, that by soul I am referring to that psycho-emotional essence defining that which is uniquely you. It is what Ayn Rand called the Sense of Life, "a preconceptual equivalent of metaphysics. A subconsciously integrated appraisal of man's nature and the nature of reality, summing up one's view of man's relationship to existence. The integrated sum of man's basic values." This sense of life is your sense of life, your sense of what it means to be you and the nature of world in which you exist.

So your soul should be your most valued possession, to cultivate, nurture, and protect as the source of your Pride, your Name, your Reputation, and your Honour. But how often do we as humans take this treasure for granted and throw it carelessly away? Such as in the name of some misguided morality or when some people, so desperate to be loved, give their heart away carelessly and are left feeling empty or humiliated for the loss of it.

Another common metaphor for the soul is the heart and the blood that pumps through it. We speak of someone putting his life's blood into an endeavour. We may give our heart to another and perhaps feel the terrible pain when our soul feels torn asunder during periods of heartbreak. In our stories, the vampire draws life from the blood of another, draining their soul of its essence.

Over the past six months I have been learning gradually the value of my soul having spent long hours in solitude, contemplation, and self-assessment. I have faced all the sins that I have committed. Not sins against man, but sins against myself born of a lack of will and emotional discipline.

I recently heard a tale of a man who would probably not be regarded as a virtuous by most standards. When told of his life and antics he struck me as a modern Libertine who is suited more to one of the Marquis de Sade's plays than to the reality most of us experiences. No experience, whether it be pleasure or pain, was to be avoided, and to truly live then both must be experienced and embraced in equal measure.

His daughter spoke of many occasions watching him cast a woman from his villa with tears in his eyes. This image spoke to me. How often are we willing to do the right things when it causes us pain? How often to we seek to avoid the pain of today and only increase it a hundred fold down the road? I have never been one for feeling the pain today to be happy tomorrow. I would often take the easy road and find later that the cost was too great.

The act of living according to one's standards or moral code for the benefit of one's existence is the very definition of virtue. So in a simple incident of a Libertine casting-out a woman, despite his pain but for the good of his soul, I find the meaning of virtue. It is by living a virtuous life despite those tough decisions that we earn the right to Pride.

I want to stress that virtue is not about living according to an externally imposed moral code. It is about living according to your moral code. It is virtue that allows us to look into the mirror every morning with pride and not guilt. As for modern morality, when virtue becomes evil, then only the evil are virtuous.

The ancient Hindus preached the importance of the harmony of Dharma, Artha, and Kama in ones life and the need to devote time and energy to each. Dharma is the spiritual journey, Artha the material journey, and Kama being that of love and pleasure. Sir Richard Burton in his translation of the Kama Sura equated these to Virtue, Wealth, and Love. Of these, both Wealth and Love are at service to the Soul, for neither can stand in one's life without the strong foundation born of a virtuous soul.

Do not pour your life's blood into causes without merit, nor should you give so great a gift as your heart to the unworthy or unappreciative. For a true man of honour, the kind once called gentleman, would never demean his soul in such a manner.

In researching a blog – yes dear reader, occasionally I do research – I found this article from the National Review dated 19 April 1999 called Paying for Beauty - motion picture 'Titanic' misrepresents the social codes of the wealthy.

Yet Cameron-who, as I say, did his homework-knows that there were many true gentlemen in first and second class who indeed, according to their code of behavior, "did the right thing." For example, we see in a cameo shot Isidor Strauss and his wife. They are lying together on a bed in their stateroom, waiting for death. Cameron knows that their real story is more complicated and much more poignant.

Isidor Strauss created the great department store Macy's. In his late 60s, rich and retired, he toured Europe with his wife. They were now heading home on the Titanic. As the ship sank, Mrs. Strauss was allowed to board a lifeboat. She pleaded that her elderly husband be allowed to board too. This was allowed. But Mr. Strauss refused to board. He said, "I will not go before the other men." That was that. She said that she had spent her life with him and would not leave him now. She stepped out of the boat, and they sat on deck chairs to watch others load.

The point here is that the upper-class gentleman's code of that era was deeply felt and sternly enforced. It involved "setting an example" for the rest of society. When things went wrong, one bore it with stoicism, or irony, or humor. Perhaps above all, one was deferential to women.

Col. John Jacob Astor, whose ancestors first earned their money in fur trading, also makes a cameo appearance in Titanic. He was traveling with his second wife, young and pregnant. She pleaded that he be let into a lifeboat with her. Second Officer Lightoller refused: "Women only." Without complaint, Astor withdrew. Apparently while swimming in the ocean he was crushed by tons of steel as one of the funnels tilted and crashed. Benjamin Guggenheim, of the great steel fortune, met a similar fate and asked a departing passenger to tell his wife he had died "like a gentleman."

It is possible that Cameron intuited that a modern audience would scarcely believe that any such code of honor existed. Yet I think he never considered for a moment trying for genuine complexity here, because he had a very different, more up-to-date ideal in mind: that of Jack Dawson.

Where have all the gentlemen gone indeed? Surely at the very core of the gentleman beats the heart of a man who knows himself and his place in the world with full acceptance and without complaint. His first love is self-love and upon that solid rock is built a name of which he endeavours through his actions to be proud. A name he will not compromise for love, or money, or even life itself.

I may close with clichéd admonitions such as "Know Thyself" or "be true to yourself". A cliché is a truth rubbed smooth from use, and both statements are worthy of constant use. However, I shall end this rant with a simple, common farewell, "Take care of yourself". After all, you are your most prized possession.