The Fortress
If you’re a bit of wordcel, you can can convince yourself of pretty much anything. You’ll write pages-long treatises completely logically consistent within themselves, carefully footnoted with citations to prior art from obscure philosophers who were just as miserable and cantankerous as you. If you’re observant, there might even be some novel and incisive nuggets of truth in there. Around these nuggets you’ll build a fortress and seal yourself in it. If you’re particularly persuasive, you might end up stuck in there with a few other misguided tagalongs. Your grumpy little philosophy will be logically sound and totally unimpeachable.
And it’ll still be wrong.
You felt you were wrong when you were writing it down. You felt you were wrong when you were explaining it out loud. But you still constructed this labyrinth because the whole time you kept saying “the facts force me to arrive at this conclusion.”
That’s how you know. If you’re hunched over the keyboard, pouring through PDF scans from history’s most irascible writers, finding choice quotes to support your position, thinking to yourself “at last have I discovered the TRUTH NUKE,” the demons have got you. When you’re thinking about human nature, the positive, simple, correct-feeling truths are the actual truths. The supposed blackpill is your own fucked up mindset trying to support itself.
There is only one recipe to slaughter these demons and it’s this:
- Walk next to bodies of water for as long as you can. Hours.
- Hang out in real life with friends who aren’t as fucked up as you so they can tell you to stop being retarded
- Combine these two activities if possible
- Turn your phone off and see item 1
True epiphanies are rarely like orgasms. They don’t come in one tense expulsion. They’re lessons which at first you’ll comprehend intellectually but not truly understand. Then you’ll integrate a little bit, and you’ll think you’ve gotten it, but it’ll slip away. Then you’ll re-learn and re-integrate a few times until you really get it. Not just understand it but really believe it. And then something will happen and you’ll be back on your bullshit until you re-integrate. I know I’ll end up in a bad mood at some point soon and have to re-read this essay a few times to remind myself it’s temporary. Don’t give up on the process! The demons are persistent. If you get good enough at flexing this muscle, cultivating the truth won’t be an effort any longer but just a choice. It’s not a never-ending doom-loop but a skill-building exercise.
There are some fucked up things going on this dorky little rock of ours, but it’s not fundamentally bad. Like have you ever seen a mountain? Have you seen a beach? Have you seen a beach, stretched out in front of a mountain, at sunset?? It’s impossible to sit on the sand looking at that and not just start straight up bawling, stricken with numinous surrender that such beauty is not just possible but given to us for free. Likewise, there are far too many people out there up to no good whatsoever, some of them probably reading this, but if you really get to know humanity, you’ll find that people are actually REALLY FUCKING COOL, and I will not let you talk shit about them!!
We’ve all gotten fucked over at times, some of us more than others. Probably we didn’t deserve it. It set us back weeks, months, years. It sucks. But both successes and failures diffuse into the noise eventually. You don’t have to carry the burden forever. People will help you. If nobody else will, I’ll help you. Call me.
Welcome to 2025. I love you all.
