There have been three strategies that have served me since I can first remember myself thinking about the world around me and inside me. The first strategy evolved from a sense of being confused by what appeared like chaos, an aggressive kind of chaos that threatened to infiltrate my mind and CAUSE me to lose my sense of self, "self" as my own orientation from which is established a viewpoint and location. I saw that I can see but don't comprehend anything I view in my field of vision. I had many kinds of sensations but only came to understand their meanings in retrospect. Thirst quenched by water became understanding of the sense of thirst. Hunger sated with milk but not water became a sense, differentiated from thirst. One by one my senses became a language provoked by what were at first unintelligible perceptions. The first thoughts I remember came with the feeling of being overwhelmed by a vast amount of information spinning around inside me, colorful shapes and forms moving about together with sounds of all kinds that I couldn't comprehend. There were also sensations, an itch in the crotch and on the ass, thirst and hunger, bliss, ineffable emotions but mostly curiosity and wonder. Where Am I? What is going on? A child is born with no sense of inside and out. It is all contained in a spherical yet somehow shapeless realm of self dwelling. I did realize, albeit wordlessly, that I am both stupid and ignorant. Stupid because I don't know how to think about what I perceive and sense. It all just kind of happens, for better and for worse. At first there was a lot of "for better" but then things just got worse and worse and worse as I began to comprehend the world of grown ups I was born into. I don't recall ever wanting to be like anyone of whose existence I was becoming aware. Not my father or mother or any teacher or neighbor or acquaintance or neighborhood friend. I had a constant sense of feeling sorry for people. I couldn't for the life of me then, say to myself in words quite what was so wrong, but something was definitely causing whatever there was around me to be far less "good" than it all could be. I realized I was ignorant about the world. I lacked information concerning what causes things to be as they are, people to behave as they do. I was an intensely curios child. I learned to read at a very early age and read everything I could in front of my eyes. There was one word I remember not knowing how to read after missing a day at school. It is perhaps the most very poignant word I know.
The word know.
I hadn't learned that the K before an N is silent, and the O sounds like there is an E at the end of the word, but there isn't.
We were reading from a book in class and it was my turn to read out loud. I reached the word "know" and sounded the K and read nah like this, K-NAH, but couldn't figure out from the context, the meaning of the word and I was bewildered, partly because I had the best vocabulary in my class and secondly because I was the best reader in my class, and here I was stumbling over the word everyone had learned the day before.
The teacher's helper approached me with a gentle smile. She leaned over me and put her longest finger, one with a perfectly manicured red finger nail on the word I was having trouble with. I can still smell the fragrance of her closeness and her nearness befuddled me. "The K is silent, Jonathan, and the O sounds like "Oh!"
"Oh!" I said. "It's the word KNOW!" She smiled at me more warmly and asked me what I think the word means. I answered, "It means something is in my mind." She looked at me somewhat awe struck, caressed the crown of blond curls on the top of my head, and walked away leaving me behind, myself engulfed in the wonderful sensation of both being understood and understanding something new.
As much as I recognized myself as being both stupid and ignorant, I was awarded accolades for my intelligence by my mother, who bought me a record player and a record to play on it. I had been chosen to join a special program for children gifted with a superior intellect. That day in school I first attended that class, became a date of infamy. It started with the principal showing me off to someone else, saying how brilliant I am already at the age of six. I knew about atoms and molecules, but instead of asking me something I could gain respect and praise for knowing, he asked me to read a very long number, one in the hundreds of millions. I couldn't and felt like I was generally disappointing and had made a fool out of the principal, who was surprised and disconcerted by my ignorance. Perhaps because I could solve addition and subtraction exercises far faster than anyone else in my class, he had assumed I know "higher" math? He actually blushed.
That day is the new class was a disaster. It was all a blur of confusion. The teacher was speaking too quickly for me to follow what she was saying, but everyone else was participating in the lesson excitedly. I got bored and began to day dream. When the recess came, the teacher had to awaken me from my inner explorations and said somewhat harshly, " Johnny, wake up and go out and play with the other children." I didn't know anyone. I didn't see anyone I wanted to know, either. I left the class and went out and sat under a tree, falling back in a state of reverie. The recess came to an end and everyone had returned to the classroom but me. The teacher's helper came out and woke me up with a push at my shoulder. Her voice was blunt. "Come on. What's the matter with you? Recess ended ten minutes ago and here you are hiding!" I hadn't a clue what she was talking about. Why hiding? The rest of the day was no better and every day after this just got worse, till finally we moved and I entered into a new class that didn't know whether I was a genius or an idiot. Maybe best to keep things that way?
My first life strategy became not to do or say anything that causes people to believe me to be brighter than I am to myself. Since then until today, every time I have wavered from this strategy, I was soon given reason to regret having done so.
The second strategy I developed was to do whatever I could to make people pleased with themselves. Feel better. Be better. This was a very successful idea. I was liked by everyone I wanted to be liked by, for a long while. I couldn't help feeling though, that I was "brighter", more enlightened than those around me. I can only speak of course, of the people I came to meet while growing up and until now. I seemed far more forgiving, more charitable, more concerned about the welfare of strangers, more tolerant of ill intended actions than anyone I knew. I never assigned people evil intentions in my heart. I didn't understand them, that's all I knew. However, as my relationships matured, people became to realize that I am brighter and more enlightened than them, which for some strange reason made them inevitably suspicious and envious of me, souring even the best of many friendships I have been blessed with.
The third strategy that I developed more and more as I matured, was to do what ever I could to feel better when I thought I needed to. After puberty, this became the exploration of my sexuality and anything and everything that causes me pleasures of any kind. This has been the most enduring and successful strategy of the three. Because of this, I took perception enhancing drugs which made sex an ever more sophisticated, aesthetic and ecstatic experience, when enjoying myself alone or with a couple of participants, in sensual and erotic explorations of the perceptions that are awakenned by vibrations of all kinds, together, all at once, one at a time, or in chosen cross references of touch and emotion or whatever comes to mind as being worthy of contemplation unto itself as a combination of perceptions.
What an exquisite instrument the human body can be when played upon by an enlightened and enlightening mind. How terrible to see what has become of it and how it is manipulated to cause people pleasures and pains, glee and guilt and fear and shame and blame, all so as to keep people stupid and ignorant and under the control of slave masters who are invisibly pulling strings and pushing buttons in the mind of mankind, to keep man's soul enslaved in the illusions of a Law And Order determined by Incomprehensible Chaos.
Mankind has deteriorated into a state of mind of willful stupidity, ignorance and the comforts of economic slavery during the most affluent times in human history!
What a waste of potential! Under other circumstances, THE BRAIN, educated correctly how to think with discretion independently, how to explore one's own mind for it's unique talents and faculties, THE BRAIN can produce states of mind that resolve all enigma and contradiction and ANYONE can think one's way out of the most virtual of paradoxes.
Lets see what happens next! 
_________________
November 11th, 2017
A Catastrophic Tragedy. Maybe Not!
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Jonathan Michael Robbins
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