Monthly Archives: November 2016

Awakening to my Purpose


Friends,

Things are now in full swing for me; I’m back on the road a mere 8 months after returning from my last excursion, Just Might Be Ok, which saw me quest through Latin America to Ecuador where I found ayahuasca. This adventure, which I’m calling World Was on Fire, has a slightly more reined-in scope as its focused on the American wasteland that is the southwest.
8 months.

That seems like a long time to not be living this life even if it is the shortest time between departures I have yet endured. Part of me feels like I should have been back on the road on July 10, the day after my brother’s wedding (i.e. the only reason I went back home to Canada) but it actually worked out a little better this way as opportunities revealed themselves to me late in the game and allowed me to depart in style.

One such opportunity was flying down to the American SW for a job. Not only was it a nice little cashflow bump but I also got down here on the company’s dime.
Another benefit of departing later was that it gave me time to brainstorm looks, themes and aesthetics I wanted to broach as I traversed the American wasteland. I think all of that experimentation has paid off and culminated in a look which is badass yet softened by various effeminate accents and touches, but most importantly hearkens back to those two most ubiquitous American archetypes, the soldier and the cowboy.
Finally the delayed departure allowed me to test my feelings for my friend, Marijo whom I intend to meet up with over the next few weeks when she flies in from Asia. We had talked of traveling together when we met in Nicaragua earlier this year, but our paths diverged from that point. However, the feelings remained constant which tells me that it’s something more substantial than the strong feelings that surface during a romance in paradise.

So how are things going?

Very well. I was spot on about the goodwill I would receive in America wearing my veteran-status on my sleeve -people are very inclined to approach me when they suspect I’ve served. Beyond that when I engage them in conversation and tell them about my journey they become captivated; either they used to hitch-hike/backpack or they intend to one day and they want to be a part of my adventure.

Whatever it is that motivates people to reach out to me I am aware that there is an exchange taking place even though it may seem one-sided -After all, I’m not typically giving them gas money if they pick me up or paying for room and board if they furnish me a place to crash. Quite the contrary; people who put me up for the evening often furnish me with meals, rides or other above and beyond-type help.

So what are they getting out of it? Well if you’d asked me more than a week ago I would have said that they are getting a story, or a chance to be part of my adventure, or most importantly the glow of living up to one’s highest potential and helping another. That last point especially is foundational to what I’m doing out here: I endeavour to put people in situations where they can act on their better inclinations. I try and streamline and make more attractive the act of doing kindness by making it more interesting, sexy, palatable, etc. After all, it’s so easy to be negative or indifferent to others; it’s almost a reflex. So I’m trying to get around people’s default programming by putting them in an uncommon situations that said programming may not account for.

**As an aside, it’s a beautiful thing when people get that curious look and start asking me about what I’m doing -for all intents and purposes I’m a bum on the street but that descriptor is reductive and frankly inaccurate. After all I’m not asking for anything but I am incentivizing the offering of help.**

However if you asked me what people get out of helping me now, after what I’ve learned in this last week, well the answer has changed, or at least refined. I stayed with the Kramer family this past weekend in Oro Valley and on my last night with them sitting around the campfire they helped me realize that I have something else to offer. I was tapping my bongos along to some music while we sat out there and their son, Kadin put on a hip-hop instrumental and suggested I rap (freestyle). I was reluctant at first but then something occurred to me. Beyond the fact that I’d alluded to my fondness for freestyling in my Couchsurfing profile which I’d met them through, I realized that me dropping bars would amp up the evening and make it better for all.

It was my job to do this.

I rapped for like an hour to various beats and many laughs were had. Did I fuck up, stumble, and say dumb, vulgar shit? Absolutely. But I also said some slick shit and entertained them. I began to realize that this hobby I’ve practiced for years by myself or with fellow “heads” could actually be plied and used to entertain other people and it was an empowering realization. I started to feel like something of a troubadour, a minstrel even.

“The minstrel of the Dawn is he/ Not too wise but oh so free.

He’ll talk of life out on the street/ He’ll play it sad and say it sweet.

Look into his shining face/ Of loneliness you’ll always find a trace.

Just like me and you/ He’s tryin’ to get into things more happy than blue.”

-Gordon Lightfoot, The Minstrel of the Dawn

I’m at a point now where I yearn for a new opportunity to perform and entertain. Not in exchange for food or a room or out of a sense of obligation but simply because it is something that I have to give which can bring joy and so I want to give it freely and openly.

Best,
-Andre Guantanamo

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Inconsistency and Contradiction

Friends,

I despise inconsistency. And my friend, this world we live in makes it damn near impossible to be consistent. Why? Because everyone looks at reality at an abstracted level. Their level of abstraction may be morality, or race, or nationalism, or gender, or familial love, or economics, or more likely they have more than one type of abstraction (i.e. having “deep convictions” about both American global primacy and the sanctity of all human life -huge contradiction there) that they compartmentalize in their head and which make them do mental gymnastics in order to prioritize which concern tales primacy when there is a conflict between their views. Take race and gender -the race/gender flavor of dissonance actually came up in a recent discussion where someone took issue with me describing sexual assault allegations as a “quick and easy way to deal with problematic men.” They challenged me on this and I described how these allegations had demonized specifically black male sexuality and there was literally no response.
They knew rape was wrong but they also knew that many a white woman’s lie about being raped by a black man had led to a black man being lynched. In this situation, wat do?

Now pay attention because here is one of the two times Ayn Rand was ever right and worth referencing (please keep in mind aforementioned “universal reality based on natural laws”): “There can be no such thing as a contradiction. If you find you have a contradiction check your premises; one or both is flawed.”

So let’s assume both race and gender are both flawed. What other lens/school of thought/bias/level of abstraction could resolve the#reparativerape contradiction my friend struggled with?
Well we could move laterally and examine it through a different abstraction like sexual orientation, marxist, Christian, or instead of moving laterally we can move up the chain of causality and see where race and gender et al. share a common root. It is from that point where can be begin to perform more useful analyses of reality and put forward more informed deconstructions of the world around us (read: opinions).

Until then we’re arguing fantasies that exist in different fictional universes. “Can you fit more Banthas into a tardis at warp 9 or would its mithril construction prevent that?” -did that make sense? No. Good because that incoherent, inconsistency is exactly what I see 92.3% of the time in comments sections. And really it’s analogous asking if a black escaped male slave is justified in raping the white female plantation owner who had his disabled son euthanized. Frankly, I’m surprised Tarantino hasn’t filmed that scene yet and I would love to see a film-maker play out a scene like that (minus the absurdist disabled son element) in order to see if they could make an audience cheer rape.

Do you hate nazis? Of course you do -it’s easy and you’re a lazy fuck. So in American History X Edward Norton, a neo-Nazi gets raped in prison by fellow NNs. Awesome, right!
No. It’s a horrible thing to watch. No Nazi should get raped. But as always lets be consistent: rape is a form of violence on the same continuum as all forms of violence and so consistency dictates that we instead say no Nazi deserves to be treated violently. But whoa, now we’re sounding anti-semetic and contradictory because we all know that unless you categorically condemn and denounce a whole generation of early 20th German people you are an anti-semitic.

HO, CONSISTENCY!! Cans’t thou mayhaps once again resolve our contradiction so that we can go on enjoying gefilte fish in our lederhosen with no compunction?

Consistency: Mayhaps I can…mayhaps I can…

First, is it really consistent to call one man a Nazi and another a Sioux Indian in light of the fact that they share the same biology and physiology? *** CONDITIONING ASIDE, THEY AS MEMBERS OF THE SAME SPECIES RESPOND COMPARABLY TO THE SAME CONDITIONING -THIS RESPONSE/SUSCEPTIBILITY TO CONDITIONING AS OPPOSED TO THE NATURE OF THE CONDITIONING ITSELF IS IS WHAT SHOULD BE DISCUSSED ROOTED AS IT IS IN CAUSALITY*** -sorry for capsing
If we further streamline our earlier statement about no Nazis deserving violence to “no humans deserve violence” you’ll notice two things:
1. You can’t argue with that statement. Not without adding another contradiction.
2. The magnitude and scope of that statement and the subsequent imperative which follows is immense. Preventing violence against humans is something you could devote a life of work to. On the other hand #preventnazisfromgettingraped is something that may trend on social media for two days -trivial, equivocal shit. Remember, “to be great is to assume great concerns.”

You might say that removing all nuance, labels and separation from people excuses bad behaviour, but I would argue that the application of and identification with said nuance, labels, and separation are what give rise to bad behaviour in the first place.

In summation, i hope this rant has stayed on a tack of coherence or if not, at least made some errant overtures toward it. In the words of Peter Joseph, “I am less interested in what people think and more interested in how they came to think it and how they maintain it as valid.” Right now there are a lot of dumb arguments out there predicated on constructs completely decoupled from reality and its rules. Under these circumstances it is impossible to be consistent and sadly whenever a contradiction erupts between two, say…capitalists about the degree to which government should have its hand in the economy, the tendency is to redefine oneself as an “anarcho-capitalist” or “neo-liberal” accordingly rather than to question and re-examine the assumptions behind government and economy to see if they are still empirically defensible.

More than anything develop a system founded in the principles of natural law then challenge that system by using it to deconstruct every situation you can. If it proves inadequate then strip away what is unnecessary until it becomes simple, universally applicable and lacking contradictions.

Then act on that.

Best,

-Andre Guantanamo

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