I had a walk this evening and took the camera with me in case I find some interesting motives.

I found a thin log that used to be there to mark someone’s private property, but it was there for so long without anyone actually maintaining it, that it rotted away and collapsed. I found that to be a very good visual metaphor for things that I see everywhere lately. Aspects of society that were put there centuries ago when they were important, but since everyone caring about them died, it all crumbled away into something derelict, something so far removed from practicality that nobody even knows why it was there in the first place.

It’s not just that, either. I found things in my memory that were there, just waiting for me to make some sense of them while they were crumbling away, because I no longer cared enough to even pay them a thought. Things related to my native family, that got somewhat revisited when my mother died. I let the last connections to those people rot away almost two decades ago, when it became clear that those people are so perpendicular to my path that keeping any contact with them is pointless. My mother was always a pathological narcissist who destroyed all lives she touched; I broke all contact, and didn’t even come to her funeral (was it this year, or the last…?) because I believed she was truly dead and didn’t feel the need to check. My father was concerned that maintaining connections with a scandalous son who has two wives and believes in things that are very non-Christian will cause him issues with his Catholic friends and patrons, so he basically gave me a phone number that went straight to voicemail, but he could call me from it when he needed me. I shrugged and stopped trying to keep in touch. I was recently “pinged” from above to inspect some things regarding my brother. I used to think that when I started on my spiritual path in 1993, he did so as well, but I was recently given access to astral prints created by him in this period, and that was a shock, because he did nothing but maintain impression that he did, and remained the product of our parents’ upbringing in every way. What he actually did was electronics, and he became very good at that. Spirituality-wise, he basically picked up the lingo form me, but no transcendental experiences, nothing. At some point he basically invented some fake buddhist nonsense, proclaimed himself a Buddha, proclaimed himself immune to karma, and is currently a fake guru to the cult of one; himself. I didn’t know that 20 years ago when I broke all contact with him – because he was an egotistical, jealous, snarky bastard without any sense of respect or propriety – but I didn’t realise he was a completely fake person, not just a weak and nasty back-stabber. What I did know was that I was done with his shit and no longer had time for this. He was always an energetic chameleon; when he was around me, he adopted my patterns, and when he was around total assholes, he adopted total asshole patterns. Also, he thought he’d boost his ego by being rude and arrogant with me, especially in front of my students, which confused and disturbed people without any good reason, and he would do his Muttley snicker of glee, happy that he made a mess which means he exists. After a few of those, I simply let him go his own way, not giving him much of a thought. I hear he’s slandering me behind my back, but since he has negative charisma, the only effect of this is destruction of what was left of his reputation among the people unfortunate enough to have to deal with him, or who had the misfortune of taking him seriously at any point.

So, all of that is in about the same condition as that piece of wood, that was once a ramp that performed a function, but since nobody cared for decades, it rotted away from lack of energy and care invested in its maintenance. That’s how many things in my life ended – I just no longer cared whether they are there or not, and eventually they just stopped being there, and I still didn’t care enough to check. I simply had more important things to do.

I swear, people who know little are so much more annoying than people who know nothing. This is the case everywhere – you have people who dabble in psychology and go around sharing their oversimplified, mostly wrong ideas about people and society. You have beginner photographers who heard something about the rule of the thirds or sharpness across the frame and now they endlessly annoy people thinking how every photo has to be composed according to the concepts they heard of in order to be good. Or you have people who just discovered the Bible and go around preaching about this or that sin and how you need Jesus. Or people who discovered spirituality and now they can’t shut up about karma, reincarnation and vegetarianism. Or people who developed some inkling of energetic/spiritual insight and now they annoy people about how impure their aura or chakras are. You know those people. The “saved Christians”, the Hare Krishnas who discovered the “truth” about reality and now they have to preach in order to save the rest of you unwashed masses. The astrology chick who’s all about Mars entering Virgo. The vegan who’s saving the world from cow farts.

The people with simple solutions to complex problems who annoy others to no end with their ego tripping of having an imagined higher ground over others. We all know them, we all sigh deeply, roll our eyes and pray to God to give us patience.

I recently read about something called Matrons’ revolt; essentially, it’s a psychological phenomenon first described in the ancient Rome, where women in their 40s or 50s, basically women whose children grew up and left home, have some sort of an identity crisis because some biological switch flips, and they no longer see themselves as mothers, and start figuring out who they actually are. They first look at their husband, and if his role was merely to provide and protect as part of bringing up children, she decides she has no use for him any more and divorces him. Then they start looking for the meaning of their lives and get into activism, politics, religion, spirituality, philosophy; essentially, they are having a female version of the mid-life crisis, and it seems to be a biological thing. Also, it seems to trigger only if a woman is financially in a position to be independent, which usually means the upper societal classes. Poor people can’t afford the luxury of that kind; they need to stick together and figure out how to pay the bills and get food on the table.

The reason why this was so interesting to me is that it provided an elegant explanation for a phenomenon I encountered – older women, always some kind of upper middle class, who think of themselves as accomplished, esteemed, basically better than others and occupying a higher societal tier, who for some reason got into spirituality, and of course, since they are so awesome, they automatically assume they have a good understanding of it all. They eventually intersect with me, I see that they are a vacuous non-person with a super inflated sense of self-worth, and I summarily dismiss them. Then they have an ego inflammation and proceed to tell all who would listen to them how I’m no good, which suits me just fine, because if anyone would believe them, they’re an idiot and I don’t want them to have a good opinion of me anyway.

It’s kind of funny – I found an algorithm for “spiritual” Karens. 🙂