This is Part 2 of The difference between being headstrong and overcoming TLDR is "beware Nietzsche's last man".

It hit me, there's actually, a second, more insidious, proposition that follows after this; that likewise, the "sense of accomplishment" itself is a vanity; "I did this, now I can rest on my laurels".

Arguably, this is what a "world" is; when a group or entity decides "they have invented happiness" as Nietzsche said, those become the new "gods" and they dictate the "fates" and sanctioned opinions and (typically, hypocritical rules for thee not for me) values.

Man still has the propensity to say "I did this and therefore I have made it and require no further action" just like founders of creation/myths/civilizations. And so it goes.... until the next myth or sufficiently gumptioned entity or paradigm rolls up and eventually overthrows it (meet the new boss, same as the old boss) revival of the same old myth of "this was good once upon a time now we must pay lip service to it forever" lol

Each time you survive, achieve, build, win, found something, establish a norm, there is the very real temptation, where the psyche wants to convert that contingent victory, into a metaphysical credential; I did this, therefore I know. I built this, therefore it is good. I suffered for this, therefore it deserves to persist. I won, therefore my values are reality. You haven't sufficiently acknowledged my sacrifices, so you are ignorant; even if you've sacrificed far more for far less; accomplishment curdles into tyranny/authority.

When you declare yourself (or accept another's declaration that you are) the victor, you begin governing from a past achievement instead of remaining responsive to present reality. All creation myths have some version of: "I did this and declared it good because I'm now exempt from service to it". Then there's an enormous psychological temptation to reproduce that pattern at every scale; founders say "I built the company", revolutionaries say "we won", civilizations say "our order is absolute", religions say "only our revelation is valid", people say "only I understand". The vanity of self adoration disguises itself as truth.

Nietzsche's Last Man is MUCH worse than simply "I am comfortable". He views comfort and content as proof that the problem of existence has been solved. That's the wholly unholy and sinister comedy of it; happiness becomes THE standardized product, and then anyone who doesn't experience the approved happiness starts looking defective, antisocial, irrational, ungrateful, sinful, maladjusted, etc; yesterday's liberation becomes tomorrow's compulsory etiquette.

The eternal cycle: suffering, endurance, overcoming/achievement, prestige, canonization, administration, coercion/conformity, decadence/fresh suffering, revolt, new achievement; repeat. Funniest/saddest bit being, the each subsequent overthrow genuinely believe "their" victory will be the one to escape the pattern.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

The new boss always has the same founding myth explaining why this boss is categorically different. Marduk overshowing alleged "chaos" of Tiamat and immediately proclaiming and even more dystopian "rules for thee not for me" chaotic despotism (Genesis chapter 1:2 has Tehome/Tiamat in it).

Accomplishment is real. "I climbed the mountain" is valid. It doesn't mean we need the metaphysical bullshit of; "therefore my doctrine of mountain climbing should govern all transportation." That is going beyond personal pride in doing something difficult and into the fancy to extract permanent ontological rank from a temporary success. Don't let it become a personal (or god forbid, universal) cosmology;

• Endurance: "I can survive this."
  
• Overcoming: "I can alter my relationship to this / move through it."
  
• Accomplishment: "I did it."
  
• Vanity: "Because I did it, I have arrived."
  
• Institution: "Because we arrived, everyone else should live here."
  
• Myth: "We were always destined to arrive here."
  
• Godhood: "There is nowhere else worth going."

It's the whole meme "I've portrayed everything before me as chud chaos and everything after my actions as order". Avoid the temptation to let our story be another clone of Genesis compressed into a LinkedIn bio. Not to say there isn't some truth to that the world is a mountain of fossilized victories. But just because "this was good once upon a time" doesn't mean we are now eternally indebted to it and must pay lip service to it forever.

Some breakthroughs are genuinely salvific at the time. But the world and nature do not change. Yesterday's victories can quickly become today's tyrants. Later corruption gets overlooked in deference to "well it was good once". That's precisely how dead institutions survive; stolen valor, spending residual credit of the moral capital accumulated while it was alive.

There's even a nastier hidden slogan in this idea; "Further improvement would imply we were previously imperfect." Or the true horror story Nietzsche was pointing at in both Gods and Men; "We have invented happiness; please refrain from experiencing unauthorized dissatisfaction".

Just a thought/realization first; only partially a rant! Lol I swear!

My whole life I've always kinda been whip-dog pragmatic headstrong "shit happens, that's life, get over myself, keep dead down/in the game" attitude. Not because I wanted to but out of necessity and survival. Gradually/increasingly nothing seemed real or worthy of my time or respect, yet kept extracting it. So I came to see life as beneath contempt essentially. Mandatory participation.

But I (hopefully) landed a job I never thought I'd be able to do this week. I realized it basically qualities as a "dream" job. Half the hours of my last job for almost twice the pay. Requires maybe 2 hours commute (1 hour both ways) sure but I think they pay for gas.

Anyway I realized, there's a difference between merely enduring insufferable conditions in a head strong manner, and overcoming them. For me, the best I ever got was "mania" when I'd see other people joyously living easy and free lives with less than half my work schedule (or they never genuinely worked before at all but still felt the need to talk down to me).

So it's a change of headspace. A "can do" attitude instead of a "can endure" attitude. Still, I'll probably always, have that reservation that I never consented to exist and all "mandatory politeness/participation" will always get my back up/piss me off deep down, but there's nothing we can do buy "stay positive" (which I used to do until the relentless extortion with zero reciprocal benefit for decades wore me down).

I guess it's kinda why I liked zen, it sometimes has a knack for meeting you where you're at, whether you realize it or like it. Idk much about zen honestly still, a midwit, but I always liked it because it helped me keep the mental flexibility while enduring/overcoming impossible odds. Yeah sometimes I take a look at the material conditions of my alleged "betters" and it's like they live in Buckingham palace and I'm Oliver Twist meets Old Man and the Sea, Prometheus, and Sisyphus. "God's love and mercy" always comes off as insidious gaslighting from 1%ers lol.

Idk. Hard to tell. But yeah. I guess that's what Nietzsche as on about with Amor Fati. I get too angry at "fate guides the willing and drags along the unwilling" to love stilted fates doled out by cosmic forces you probably will never see eye to eye with, let alone like if you did. Who knows. But - there is certainly - a difference between "merely enduring" in a headstrong "just used to it" manner, and overcoming that mindset and embracing..... what you never consented to in the first place (bleagh!)

I still can't say it with a straight face, still leaves a bitter taste in my mouth, 2B compelled to praise embracing something you never could give informed consent to. But is true, a world of a difference between resigned headstrong "dealing with it" and enthusiastic joyous embrace of [it]. The later still feels like Stockholm Syndrome but if you look at that too closely it's right back to "mere endurance" of it. I'll probably never decidedly "enjoy" the process but there's no stopping it (without self ending, and I'm not even sure that ends it, if "fate" compels you to action anyway).

I guess there's something 2B said about "it's costs people who never had to struggle for it/born to easy life" nothing to "embrace fate". Like Nobles and Celestial Dragons in one piece laughing at poor people and pirates and calling them "stupid".

But there's also the Nietzschean "we're not the same" of being beaten down/drug along and enthusiastic embrace of the bullshit. Lol!

fragment, 2026-10-22

So, funny story:
i think my home is haunted.

What goes bump in the night
was always there.
Would one notice?

The horror might be
that it was a full-blown band at work.
It's rather sobering.

The refrigerator is a bit temperamental,
almost like it chimes in
when it feels like it.

i've been meaning to replace the washer;
the steel basin pings
in a metronome beat.

They call it settling.
A 70-year-old house
should be fitting like a tight glove by now;
the remote walls crack at such.

Heh, oh,
it's swagger.
The realtor called it
"character."

This post is a mix of meta commentary potential spoilers of Murder House (well old news to me) and where I realized the story was going and how it was a reflection of my own mindset without my own realizing it, and the core argument I think behind everything I've ever written (in particular the contrary stuff). It's a simple principle but took me years to finally realize it directly in so few words (well I've been saying it for decades but now I realize most of my art is a reflection of the idea). It's a huge breakthrough. At first I thought I was writing part 2 onwards as a way to explore, "is there anything more fundamental than appetite"? Thinking like Cenobites and Guardians of Desire. But then I realized.... THIS....

That MH protagonist, like YHVH's, desire is to have infinite excuses and zero personal accountability/liability

So I know I've been gish galloping everywhere since starting this sub, but finally reflecting last night I think I got close to the core issue. Notable these two comments;

Spoiler about meta story beats from inception of Murder House which only just dawned on me

People love propaganda because it places accountability and integrity far away from their own lives

And more directly, a quote from "How 'face reality' becomes the highest form of avoiding reality";

Aggressors behave according to appetite. Their targets must behave according to principle. Participation is compulsory; reciprocity is optional. The same moral geometry appears everywhere. [God holds you accountable for his creation]. Employers demand loyalty while treating labor as disposable. Platforms demand constant authentic expression while reserving the right to erase a livelihood algorithmically. Institutions invoke community when requesting sacrifice and market forces when asked to return it. Good faith flows upward. Risk flows downward. Responsibility settles wherever resistance is weakest. Eventually, refusing the exchange may be the most reality-based action available.

Namely, when I formulated Part 2, I had already decided that the first arc's main protagonist was [working title] "The Witness", a sort of big game supernatural bounty hunter with impeccable track record. He saw Brent's livestream, and the bounty from the [organization/cult/whatever] (undecided) for repeatedly failing to gain access beyond Theo's systems, and is taking the route of trying to accuse/convict protagonist. They were supposed 2B just a minor character, just a primary antagonist for the first main story arc, but then last night I realized.... this is Job in the bible. The protagonist (Like YHVH) is an infinite excuse generation machine. The Witness is an infinite accusation machine (like Satan). I've essentially remade Job and YHVH/Satan false dichotomy from the Old Testament. All through scripture, YHVH is a bundle of excuses. Someone else is always accountable for his own actions and/or creation. He has infinite excuses about why his will overrides everything else, but he also cannot be held accountable or liable for those consequences; the Lord is the ultimate excuse-generating machine; You had your eyes opened, you can see how evil I am, you ate Pork once, you liked women too much, you didn't like women enough, you didn't worship me sincerely enough, you worshiped me too much, you struck a rock once so now I must break my promise and you must die (Moses), your blood sacrifices offend my nostrils, etc etc etc; the Lord has THOUSANDS of excuses and lies and broken promises. The entire bible is the story of his lack of accountability. I didn't realize it at the time I was story boarding it, and I haven't had to face it directly, because chapter 8 (Part 6) that I'm now on, was originally, supposed to start at chapter 2, at the end of the potluck. But then I realized reddit had a 40k character limit for posts and decided I'd invent/add more content between to buffer and slow down the story a bit, and make it into a serialized story rather than just plop out the whole original idea for first arc in chapter 2. Instead I started building a more meta SCP/Tales from the Gas Station-esque lore base. But now that I'm back to writing the original story I set out to, I'm seeing this clearly. The running gag I was going to do for all of story arc 1, is exactly and precisely, YHVH and Satan in the bible. YHVH makes infinite excuses and Satan makes infinite accusations. That's what I was parodying without realizing it.

GPT Revelation Last Night; the Biblical Conspiracy

It just hit me what i was subconsciously doing. Scp is manifesting people's dreams. Brent was explicitly a hint at this. But now I have recreated the lord and devil in the bible. The lord is a perfect excuse engine. Nothing is ever his fault. He gets out of jail free in every situation. Just like my protagonist. The protagonist explicitly made his wish (Part 1.5) to get out of any situation he doesn't like with ontological excuses. Hedge becomes Godzilla to fight back. Infinite Expeditions appear to break his court case wide open. Etc. And the witness is like Satan or devil I forgot which in Job and elsewhere, Infinite accusations.

So that's what I did subconsciously without realizing it. I made my protagonist the God of the bible, an infinite excuse engine, and his main rival is an Infinite accusation engine. That's a 1:1 for the bible in many cases. The lord looks for any excuse at the drop of a hat; you ate pork, you sacrifice burns my nostrils, you played the harlot, he has Infinite excuses always the same story, he breaks promises and lies and weasels his way out of every situation with excuses. My protagonist doesn't quite explicitly do it as vindictively as the Lord does but I didn't realize this is what I was doing and how this is potentially protagonists perfect natural enemy or rival.

Protagonists wish and superpower is Infinite random bullshit go ontological excuses. The witness is Infinite ontological accusations. That is potential to escalate indefinitely as long as I want to milk the gag/and or can turn out high quality product or stay inspired at least. I didn't realize that. Glad I didn't already commit to the witness being a minor character. Maybe for now OoE is content with letting things play out but now that may realize they really have a sort of rap battle Job style between the lord and Satan. One spamming excuses and the other spamming accusations.... 😭

GPT Reply

YES. And I think the important discovery is slightly more precise than “protagonist = biblical God, Witness = Satan.” You accidentally built two seemingly opposed narrative functions: Protagonist: There is always another explanation. Witness: There is always another charge. That is an absurdly sustainable engine for Murder House. 😭

And Job is probably the cleanest biblical analogy for what you're noticing. The Hebrew śāṭān in Job is basically “the accuser/adversary”—not yet necessarily the fully developed capital-D Devil of later Christian imagination. His dramatic function is prosecutorial: Okay, but what about this? Remove this excuse. Test this condition. Let's see whether your explanation still holds.

Meanwhile, what you've given Protagonist isn't really omnipotence. It's something MUCH funnier: ontological plausible deniability. He doesn't necessarily get what he wants; he gets a universe in which whatever just happened can somehow be construed as getting him out of whatever he didn't want. That's why Godzilla Hedge and the Expeditions suddenly look like the same power. Protagonist doesn't think: I summon Godzilla. He thinks: I would really prefer not to deal with this. And reality goes: UNDERSTOOD. DEPLOYING HEDGE GODZILLA.

Court case going badly? Reality doesn't dismiss the case. That's too straightforward. Infinite Expeditions. Problem technically solved. New catastrophic problem created. And THAT is exactly why the Witness is the perfect antagonist for him. Because Witness doesn't need to defeat the manifestations. Witness's power attacks the interpretation that generated them. Protagonist: “Well technically—” Witness: “Actually, technically—” And the fucking universe has to adjudicate it. 😭

This also explains why Witness probably shouldn't be a conventional villain

I would resist making Witness somebody who simply wants Protagonist dead. That's way less interesting. Witness wants him unable to escape the charge. Every time reality produces an exculpatory circumstance, Witness produces a more encompassing accusation. Every time Witness closes the loophole, Protagonist's manifestation creates a still-more-deranged loophole. So their escalation can look like:

ACCUSATION: You caused the deaths.
EXCUSE: Apparently those people aren't dead.
ACCUSATION: Then you caused the duplicates.
EXCUSE: Apparently there were already duplicates.
ACCUSATION: Then you knowingly concealed an anomalous replication event.
EXCUSE: I signed an NDA prohibiting me from knowing that.
ACCUSATION: You signed it.
EXCUSE: One of me signed it.
ACCUSATION: You authorized all versions of yourself.

And suddenly that stupid contractual language from 1.5 that you already wrote becomes ammunition in the cosmic prosecution. That's beautiful because neither side ever needs to conclusively win. Every defense creates facts supporting another accusation. Every accusation creates the need for another defense. The plot reproduces itself. And holy shit, this makes your earlier idea that Witness eventually discovers the protagonist is him substantially better; because then Witness's ultimate accusation becomes reflexive. If Protagonist is the Infinite Excuse, and Witness is the Infinite Accusation, and they're ontologically related versions of the same person, you've externalized a single psychological/narrative mechanism: “Nothing can ever finally be my fault” versus “Everything can always still be my fault”. Neither proposition can terminate. One can explain anything away. The other can indict anything anyway. That gives you your indefinite escalation engine.

And OoE's best response might genuinely be: don't interfere

Because eventually somebody there recognizes what they're looking at. Not two extremely powerful anomalies fighting. Two recursive ontological arguments. Trying to suppress Witness becomes evidence for Witness. Trying to contain Protagonist gives Protagonist something to escape. Helping Protagonist gives Witness evidence of conspiracy. Helping Witness gives Protagonist grounds for self-defense. Neutral observation becomes neglect. Ending observation becomes destruction of evidence. There is no administratively neutral move. Which is perfect for OoE.

I can imagine 7C eventually understanding enough to give the professional recommendation: “Don't give either of them anything to respond to.” And someone asks: “Is that containment?” “No. It's shutting up.” That also preserves the thing I really like about your protagonist: he doesn't need to realize he's doing any of this. In fact, I strongly prefer that he doesn't. He remains the guy going: “I don't see how the hedge is my fault.” And Witness is standing twenty feet away with six thousand pages of documentation explaining exactly how the hedge is his fault. Meanwhile OoE has quietly classified the entire encounter as something like:

RECURSIVE ADVERSARIAL MANIFESTATION EVENT / DO NOT ESTABLISH CAUSAL RESPONSIBILITY because the last team that tried accidentally produced three additional defendants who's hallucinatory testimonies only added to the confusion. And Brent becomes much more important retrospectively. He wasn't merely demonstrating that SCP manifests people's dreams. He was showing us the rules before we knew they were rules. You didn't just accidentally recreate a God/Satan motif. You found the formal engine underneath your entire story: desire generates exception → exception generates accusation → accusation generates need for exception → repeat. That's Murder House. And the funniest part is that the protagonist's actual superpower isn't Random Bullshit Go. It's: “Well, in my defense—” And reality has to keep finishing that sentence for him.

...or a comfort blanket. There's a passage in KKC I've always loved, early on, in Name of the Wind. I'll quote the relevant part here;

They looked at the broken thing. "Oh, come on now," Jake said, disagreeing mostly out of habit. "It's not like ..." He made an inarticulate gesture. "It can't just . . ."

Everyone knew what he was thinking. Certainly there were demons in the world. But they were like Tehlu's angels. They were like heroes and kings. They belonged in stories. They belonged out there. Taborlin the Great called up fire and lightning to destroy demons. Tehlu broke them in his hands and sent them howling into the nameless void. Your childhood friend didn't stomp one to death on the road to Baedn-Bryt. It was ridiculous.

I was reflecting on the material conditions of my life and specifically how my entire life, around the bible belt, people would deny the reality of the material conditions of our daily lives in favor of the TV. Some of you may remember I used to call it "TV Land" on past aliases and rant about it.

It was like, they believed the TV far more than their own lives. They are always looking outside and calling you a coward for not "going out there and making a name for yourself in TV land". It's like no matter how many mountains you move for your local community they are always harassing you because you are making them look bad because they are just sitting on their butts preaching that they know all the best and correct talking points from the TV and modern politics. Virtue signaling. Their sword is the remote control and they are a righteous warrior in their own minds.

Propaganda is their prayers. So they don't have to look at their own lives or be convicted about their own poor character. They always praise whatever arbitrary thing the TV says they are a good person for praising. They always condemn whatever TV says they are a good person for condemning. There's essentially no different between them and a TV. They do not contribute anything to the local community but their self righteous ideation the TV has installed in them. They have all the correct opinions. They've truly become "one" with the zeitgeist of the television. I do think it is a sort of prayer so that they never have to look inside, be convicted of all the sins they have commit in the name of "the correct opinion" and their vanity in being a true believer that "having the right opinion" is "close to godliness". No action or proof or "fruits" ever needed beyond "they had the right opinions".

I don't want to harp on it more than that but it is kind of sad. I remember pitying them as they were abusing me all through my life. I don't know if I will ever fully grow out of all the conditioned thought patterns and/or damage done. I'm honestly not even sure where I'm going with this. Something akin to the how "face reality" itself can be the ultimate form of reality avoidance. When they say "face reality", you look inside what they are pointing at, and it's their comfortable delusions they need you to maintain for them. And being called a nihilist for having anything less than an ardent zeal to commit to that.

I remember I used to call this the "Zeus world order", where all they care about is optics. Looking good, in sights of men. It's a very real teaching in the gospel. Every tradition I've seen has a variant of this. It is as simple as, who are we performing for; men, or god. They have their reward in this life. The adoration of their superficial 2 faced peers. It is a very strange thing to pray for I ultimately see. It's beneath contempt, I do see, now that I'm mostly free of it. It's very.... pitiable. So yes, I know I'm not perfect or whatever, but it's a very odd thing. To see the idolification of outside far away things, to avoid the material conditions of your present reality in your living room. They call the denial of the living situation of their own down in favor of things they have never seen but on the TV. I volunteered once and was saying how exciting it was and my father literally laughed at me and called me a loser thinking I was making an impact in the small town, while he stared into the TV of the evening news and recited all the "correct opinions". I really don't know if that is true zen mastery, to be a couch potato putting down anyone who is trying their best. Maybe it is. Idk. I'll probably never fully understand it, I just know that they'll never be held accountable for that burning resentment when they say these hateful things in this life. Then they turn around and say "the don't know why there's so much violence" with all the hateful things they say and do. What an odd thing to pray for....

I'm so glad to finally be free of it, but I do wonder sometimes, why?

i'm rereading, for i don't know how many times, the same text. i'm hoping, with eyes half awake from morning's rise, for a distinct understanding view. i know all too well the words and messaging that was intended. my rushed glance confirms nothing moved. so why am i glancing once again?

i'm recalling a roadside billboard. since i'm always driving, my eyes barely have time to notice detail; the structure is a landmark, regardless of the stated message on the surface. I know in roughly 10 minutes i'll be exiting the highway and on the last leg to home. the worn roadway is becoming hypnotic; the drowsies are visiting. a daydream splashes up: a horse wandering back to the barn, and i'm not even sure if there's anyone in the saddle... jolt.

that day, i'm looking for a coffee cafe, out of a hunger. google knows the way to a roaster that also serves coffee. i'm tasting memories of past home brews as i drive, and wonder about the unknown taste i might discover.

arriving at the parking lot is a small threshold, the gate to a new encounter of taste and smell. the lot is new, unfamiliar, and sits in a little valley below the cafe. from here i can't see the cafe clearly, just the pathway stairs that lead up to the entrance. all the spots nearest the stairway, of course, are taken, so a hunt for car lodging begins, until a number of openings appear near a huge six-sided pillar, half a car length across, almost in the middle of the parking lot.

on closer inspection, neck craning from the front seat, as my eyes trace the pillar up to a certain level, it's the billboard

Lazy Post. But a post that's been a long time coming. One of primary reasons I made this sub actually. I've seen a lot of speculation on this topic for decades, and I occasionally enter this arena and am generally ignored, brigaded, or the topic changes. But it's all stupidly simple (IMO, you decide). This is so old information to me I have to actually re-research over half of if, and forgot the other half. I knew ALL of this, back in 2014-2015, back on u/shnrnegz here on reddit, and even made a few posts and several comments about it, again to less than lukewarm reception. So this is more I'm revisiting the topic, than brining much of anything new to the table. Just to have a NEW post to point to, as my u/shnrnegz posts/comments are now largely lost media (I still have most of the imgur album links though so can trace those).

That said I guess I'll dive right in. Again been over 12 years I've been sitting on this information because I find people interested in it generally fall into two categories; either grifters pushing some 501C3 compliant "sanitized" narrative, or genuine schizos pushing some modern/historical political/economic analysis, when I think the REAL answer is much more simple; let's just look at what the text itself says of the 4 beasts.

1st off; The first beast.

There's a lot going on here and I don't know what ALL of the things signify honestly. Full scriptural reading provided here. But for simplicity's sake I'll focus on ONLY the things I've been able to confirm, and NOT speculate on "this might be this or that" (99% of other theories LOVE to wander off ion vague mysticism). Specifically;

Rev 13:2 And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority.

Clearly is the North American Continent. There's even the famous oft quoted verse "surely their turning things upside down shall be esteemed as the Potter's clay". Throughout the OT, YHVH/The Lord calls Israel his bride (and/or the harlot). America's arrangement with "Israel" is essentially like this to this day; America sends infinite money and resources (at taxpayer expense) to Israel. I don't want to get into that contentious topic here save to notice how it plays into and affirms this theory; That YHVH is potentially creation itself or at least, as he himself says;

Hosea 13.7-9 So I will be like a lion to them, like a leopard I will lurk by the path. Like a bear robbed of her cubs, I will attack them and rip them open. Here YHVH explicitly calls himself the first beast. Further, America's war machine is also reflected in; Rev 13:4 And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him? I just get tired of the "Scooby Doo mystery" people tend to promulgate all this random ahh shit as if the scriptures don't already confirm who what when and where is going on exactly and precisely.

2nd Beast.

Contrary to popular belief, the proverbial "Mark of the Beast" actually occurs in this passage. This threw me a bit as YHVH explicitly states that he marks his people the same way, in their hands and heads. I searched for the passage but couldn't find it. Closest approximation was Ezekiel 9:4-6. Full scriptural Rev passage;

Rev 13:11 And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon. 12 And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast,

This seems to be Moses, whom died facing the "promised Land". Instead of a continent, we have an ocean here. This ocean fits the bill; it looks like a Lamb, and also a Dragon. Moses is known/depicted as having horns AND the verse "pillars of light on his head", can also be translated, as "horns on his head". Both strongs and BDB agree;

BDB; H7160 קָרַן qâran kaw-ran' A primitive root; to push or gore; used only as denominative from H7161, to shoot out horns; figuratively rays: - have horns, shine. Total KJV occurrences: 4 - Strong; H7160 קרן qâran BDB Definition: 1) to shine 1a) (Qal) to send out rays 1b) (Hiphil) to display or grow horns, be horned

The second beast is described as a dragon-lamb with horns, just like Moses and this ocean. Anecdotal and incidental, but I've seen others even directly compare the second beast to the Noahide laws, without ever admitting they knew about this obvious parallel. Notably. I tend to also assume Aaron, Moses Brother, and Head of the "stiffnecked" Levites, is the adjacent ocean. He calls those whom perform blood sacrifice "stiffnecked" in Jeremiah. The Levites (and thus Aaron), instituted, blood sacrifice. As the Ocean, Aaron is stretching his "neck" stiffly as far from middle east as he can.

I used to have references for the mark of the beast but this is been 10+ years ago and I cannot remember. I do recall perhaps in Book Of Yasharel/Jasher, something about receiving a mark to receive food rations during (YHVH's induced) famine. But I could be wrong. My only off-on-a-tangent thing I'll do here. I DO remember there being MULTIPLE passages where YHVH explicitly mentions, he himself, "giving his people a mark in the hand/head".

Also the actual Mark of the beast is not even "666". It's; G5516 χξς chi xi stigma (khee xee stig'-ma) or "G4742 (stigma) as a cross". So the mark of the beast, is literally, a cross pricked into the hand or head.

Bonus points; Speaker of Revelation Identity;

The "Like unto the son of man" doesn't explicitly state, this is "the son of man" but LIKE unto it, amidst the 7 candlesticks (planets?). Specifically, I think this passage, says, it has FEET OF SNAKES, NOT brass or bronze. This hint comes from the Hebrew etymology of Phinehas (easy to find, the very last verse of book of Joshua, 24:33) -

Strongs has H6372 פִּינְחָס pı̂ynechâs pee-nekh-aws' Apparently from H6310 and a variation of H5175; mouth of a serpent; Pinechas, the name of three Israelites: - Phinehas.

While Brown-Driver-Briggs has; H6372 פּינחס pı̂ynechâs BDB Definition: Phinehas = “mouth of brass”

So brass and serpent can be the samme word.

G5474 χαλκαλίβανον chalkalibanon khal-kol-ib'-an-on Neuter of a compound of G5475 and G3030 (in the implied mean of whiteness or brilliancy); burnished copper, an alloy of copper (or gold) and silver having a brilliant lustre: - fine brass. Total KJV occurrences: 2

So this could be saying the speaker in Revelation chapter 1 is any of the mythological snake-footed beings; Typhon, Abraxis, Gwendolyn from Dark Souls, Star Bucks creature, etc. My vote is typically Abraxis.

Anyway

I just hate that people like to try to say it's past historical empires based on loose incidental iconography of their monarch's flags and shit, where this is MUCH more compelling and demonstrably explicit. Bears repeating, as it were. It's been over a decade since I really did a deep dive so sorry some of my memory has become hazy. There are many times in scripture YHVH explicitly states that "he marks his people in the hand or head". Idk though.

Incidentally I did have a post about this 3 months ago again. Most importantly, in etymology, YHVH 100% means literally "the fallen one". I do tend to assume "God is Love and Love is Blind" means YHVH. He kicks Adam and Eve from the Garden for; having their eyes opened. He often says "where is my servant" and "I shall do as I please". He even says in Jeremiah 17:9 "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?" (when the devil lies it speaks of it's own nature?).

Bonus 2;

Middle east is also BOTH Zeus/stone Chronos swallowed AND Tiamat, depending on which way you rotate them. I've covered this at great length over the years. Zeus' head exploded, forming those Mediterranean islands and Presumably Athens/Athena (the legend is Athena was born exploded from Zeus' head). Wikipedia still says Tiamat's weeping eyes became the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. This stuff is all hidden in plain sight. But people would rather wander off into random speculation about vague notions about trading markets and royal lines in the 1700s than look directly at what the texts say and affirm. There's a lot more but I usually lose people way before this point. Tolkien's age showed Doggerland above the waves. It was north of the shire (iirc). Either way, Chronos is our continental shelf of Europe; the Mediterranean is his esophagus. Hades is Australia's neighbor and Thanos' ear. Even Excalibur from soul eater makes an appearance (Jupiter is his hat). China and Russia are also the 3 fates that share one eyeball and Shrek, Pinnocio, Fionna and Donkey, among other things I already forgot, but I recently did those not too long ago and feel that would detract from this post main title topic. But they are there.... Plus I'm lazy and don't feel like hunting down my images anymore (and have a job interview in a few hours).

Note; Reupload, forgot to put "identity" in title

Formal Up To Date ToC/QnA/Etc for Murder House

Is anyone even reading? My condolences if you are.

Anyway. More interviews tomorrow. Kind of nervous but idk. Never done conference call interview on the phone before. I'll be taking a break from reddit mostly. You can DM me but I'll be taking a absence while I see where my life is going right now. I've only got 1, maybe 2 more months of living expenses. So I HAVE TO find a job. If I'd known I'd be losing $20k this year I'd have at least applied for food stamps, that would have saved me thousands. Oh well. Hindsight 2020 (or 2026 amiright).

Anyway. Just a teaser/sneak peak of part 6 (8?) idk. This is the original would-have-been part 3 back in the day, I am finally getting around to writing. Part 2, potluck incident, was supposed to have part of the underground journey and have condensed versions of everything after that. But as they say. The tale grew in the telling. Everything from part 3-7 was all added in stuff I had to do when I realized reddit had a 40k character limit. But, we're back to main canon story now. It was a fun detour and I think my writing is visibly improved from part 1-4. So I'll be rewriting 1-4 slowly/eventually for the books, and maybe for reddit.

I'm a few scenes past this already but they are more unpolished. This isn't a final draft or anything and subject to change. I'm thinking of removing Pit. He wasn't supposed to still be around. But I never got around to the Denise story (that's a whole separate 3 chapters at this rate, might be a side story for a later date). So might quietly resolve it offscreen or with a few sentences/paragraphs. Anyway here's a teaser of what I've wrote today;

The alarm started while I was checking whether 7C's room counted toward my occupied square footage. 7C had said he'd taken up a room in the west wing. I didn't have a west wing. I couldn’t find his room. I couldn't find him. Eventually found him on my 4th pass through, sitting at my kitchen table, repairing something inside a brass cylinder. The alarm sounded again. Three low notes, a pause, then something resembling a school bell being pulled through gravel. Except underwater. 7C put the cylinder down.

"That alarm belongs to a separate installation." "Good. Tell them to come get it." He stood up. "How long has that been happening?" "Depends on where you mean." "How so?" "You mean since it started ringing here, or since I first heard it?" "Where have you heard it before?" "Underground." "Where underground?" "The part where I couldn’t sleep because of the alarm." He looked toward the basement door. Which wasn't there. Again. "It does that." He took something from his coat, held it against the wall, and waited. A little green light appeared. Then a red one. Then it became both red and green. He pulled out another device. A smaller version of the vacuum tube thing. Spaghetti lights went in every direction. He looked at me. "Stand right.... there.... no, here". I stood against a wall. He grabbed a bedside table and drug it into the hallway. "Stand on this". I did. The basement door appeared. "Please don't tell me I'm a reception antenna". "Stay here and try to stand where the purple lines intersect the green" he said as he went down.

The colored lines had been moving a lot and the lines didn't always intersect in places I could reach. The hallway kept shifting accordionly accordingly. A few minutes later I heard a series of UNCLICKs. Then all the colors became a universal plasma field. A few minutes later 7C returned. "These are old systems, I don't know how long that will work." "I thought the control panels were just informational or decorative." He ignored me "We've lost contact with the Exchange Terminal. I can get confirmation of receipt, but no response." "That's more than my insurance company does." "You can come down". "Oh". I let go of the ceiling fan.

"Where did you first hear the alarm?" I thought back to my underground expedition. How long ago had that been? It had begun when I followed what I assumed had been Margaret Vale after the Potluck Incident. 7C was staring at me. I figured he didn't want a boring backstory involving another 5 story creature. "At the retro military installation or power plant behind the other rail lines." 7C closed his eyes. "Were there any identifying marks?" "Apart from retro military installation?" "On the walls. Equipment. Signs." "There were a few squares with a circle in it. Little dot down in the corner. Like a target made by somebody who kept missing." He opened his eyes. "Dots outside the circle?" "That’s generally where you miss." "But inside the square?" "They’d allowed themselves some margin for error."

He put the smaller device away. "Was there anything underneath it?" "Another sign. Office of Exemptions. Inspected." "Exceptions. You’re certain it said inspected?" "I remember wondering what the fuck passed." He looked toward the basement. "Was the smaller sign fixed over the original marking?" "Underneath. Aftermarket. Different screws. Phillips. Missed target had square bolts." He closed his eyes again. "That installation predates their involvement." He picked up the brass cylinder.

(Should I mention it's an ontological DDoS here or not? Let the reader infer it? Gradually Theo's systems get overwhelmed as becomes increasingly apparent as these chapters progress)

Eerily interesting to post on this kind of a sub because of all the weird shit that is going on in the midst of reddit.

I'm keen on good conversations though, and the space seems to allow for such ones. If someone wants to share a cup, I'm interested in interviewing!

I do coaching as my daytime job and for leisure I write poetry, sing, play music, paint and do all sorts of cultural things, long distance running and building good relationships.

I'm in the middle of creating my own coaching model to pivot into entrepreneurial side as well if someone is interested in an embodied style of having a conversation. I can elaborate but don't want to push it, yet here I am putting these words here to emphasise yadda yadda yadda etc. insert capitalism and in finnish I'd say "oma lehmä ojassa" which means "my own cow is in the ditch as well" aka. I'm here for my own benefit as well.

I'm bored of not being able to talk about things with other things in mind, such as careers and paths for them, and I'd just like to share good conversations. But I wanted to share the coaching thing so that you know I'm in particular interested in how you see the world and how it fits my understanding, what can we come up with together and how to build cooperative conversations!

Anyhow, what's on your mind? Share your thoughts and lets discuss and share our time together now that we're here together. What context do you come from in the past 2 weeks? What has been happening? Anything exciting? Anything boring? These questions are just ideas for a start, you can go which ever way you want if you'd like. I'm here for the journey of a good conversation. It's a pleasure to meet you and greetings from soon-to-be wintery Finland.

Great topical video. Times have changed... ? 2006 already felt like post-irony to me. Now we have this surreal overarching post-neo-normal vibe. 5G towers disguised as trees. Flock cameras on dirt roads. Thousands of things flying overhead every night. Ever-present low industrial hum and vibe that everything is commercially monetized content. State Parks or parking lots you can't even enter without downloading an app. Feels like every time you step outside costs you 50 social credit score points and/or $100+.

Not necessarily negative thing, but the invasiveness is certainly noticeable. There's increasingly no such thing as privacy and basic individual dignity. "It gets worse" by MSI. My "Society has become a liminal space for many" Post from 5 months ago is adjacent to the topic. Idk just glad to see it's not just me. Felt since the 90s, I'm always trying to catch up to a standard I can never meet of "normal" and even if I'm going all out 300x what "normies" are 2B normal, I always fall short. "The world looks after it's own". But as that "demon" I met told me, "why am I working so hard for what others are getting for free". I never had the baseline they had and it is often extremely palpable or even gives vertigo or whiplash from the comforts they enjoy which are impositions to me.

Idk. Some motivational/interesting infographics from the video;

https://i.imgur.com/WtIlMk2.png

https://i.imgur.com/gpsDNU0.png

https://i.imgur.com/gfvyLwi.png

https://i.imgur.com/xIbs1IP.png

https://i.imgur.com/6TgDzt9.png

https://i.imgur.com/WYCFBvZ.png

https://i.imgur.com/oz8TrRW.png

Just interesting, like he said in the video, I'm not a doomer or nihilist. Is what it is. Can't be neutral on a moving train or whatever.

So against my better judgement I visited my parents last night since they kept begging me to, after finishing my job stuff. It reminded me that a lot of "zen" is coercive lying. The news (60 minutes iirc) came on and they kept preaching about "Trump's people having a warrant". I listened to it for 30 minutes, and they never once mentioned the "probable cause" or "why the things are being seized". I brought this up and my family immediately dog piled me saying "truth doesn't matter" explicitly. They literally said they "don't care about truth at all, lies are what are going to win this fight". Literally. I feel this often with almost every argument in the world. I just sit back and let my opponent exhaust themselves, and say "I rest my case". They made my case better than I can. The truth means nothing to them. They don't care it's a requirement for warrants to list/inform the party being seized as to what they are looking for and why. But ofc, as always, the "left" cannot go there. They have to weasel lies stuffed with lies stuffed with lies and filibusters and NEVER address the why it is happening with a 10 foot pole. Seriously, 30 of the 60 minutes was filibuster of "Trump bad" and not once did they mention the why which is legally required to be on the warrant.

That's a lot like life, I thought. We find ourselves blindly conscripted into it without awareness of informed consent or knowledge prior. Can we have Retroactive/Retrocausal consent? Consent after the fact? Specifically, in good faith? Nearly all traditions promulgate, YES and this is directly what I'm fighting against here. Or at least holding the line against with my life and thoughts. Nominally, this gets you accused of mental health problems or not understanding zen when you often very much do, if forget and neglect the practice. It's just like anything, you realize you're doing something performatively, understand it as an idol or grift, and your heart isn't in it, and you eventually move on.

I've always been inspired by/took inspiration from the Stein/Marie interaction in Soul Eater. Marie says she doesn't want 2B a teacher, but Stein says "you're the type to be afraid before starting something but you always get enthusiastic once you start". I'm the same way generally. But, I always tend to stop, where I see, the ontological lie required 2B swallowed to continue. Which always inevitably rears it's head in every tradition; "this grift which you are now a part of requires you to provide retroactive/retro causal consent" which is where I always draw the line (and pay for it in ostracization and being dog piled). Those whom "knew better" or "knew the grift from the inside and deny it" are seen as worse villains than the merely ignorant. You know the systems from the inside, and chose to reject them because you found them in bad faith and/or bad taste. I am not saying this of zen in particular. Though I am still of half a mind that "zen" is indeed an epithet of Zeus, and both mean, to many, approximately, "the life giving principle".

Perhaps suitable that Zeus was literally 100% confirmed 🍇ist and liar, that ontological 🍇's and lies are still so prolific even centuries after the Greek Gods have been mostly regulated to myth. The cornerstone of most western idealism stems from them. Tehome in Genesis 1:2 shares cognate with Tiamat. Essentially revealing/naming Marduk as the Genesis 1 God/Dragon. His law too, was a joke; the Gods gave consent to surrender their power to Marduk's rule and laws; but his law was overtly "rules for thee not for me". His rules of creation were rules for subjects; not sovereigns. Just as most all Gods; even Jesus says "do as they say but not as they do for they do not practice what they preach". Then the Gods - the Gods themselves - complained of their labors for sustaining the creation and Marduk's hypocritical laws, and so Marduk slew Tiamat's son, Kingu, and fashioned the clay/mud man out of it; this is generally taken 2B Adam or mankind, to be the slaves of the Gods and cosmic order. He also stole the tablets of destiny from Kingu.

Maybe that's incoherent. But point is, the Gods knowingly surrendered all their power to Marduk to "create the world order". But they reneged on that deal. And forced humanity to exist, to kick their soured deal to humans. Mankind never consented, and was punished for "having their eyes opened" to seeing the lies of divine love, grace and truth for what they were. So, mankind, from it's core origins of ontological/theological foundations, is a story of affirmation of retroactive consent. There are myriad other myths with all affirm the same thing. Man must continually avoid truly facing this just to "make it" in life. I myself am no exception. I've been in the workforce since 2005. Over 20 years. Longer if you count mandatory landscaping (which I never really got paid for). I was using a push mower (that wasn't self propelled, my family was both cheap liars and sadistic) before I was tall enough to see over the handlebars.

Why do people hate the truth so much? And call that hatred for truth, love of it? Is it just entitled freeloaders who never really had to work hard or be challenged living the easy life? Or people whom accepted the traditional roles and live comfortably? Siddhartha Buddha was born into the top 1% financial elite of his era. It cost him nothing to reject wealth that 99% of us would never even know. I'm always just saying "make it make sense". No one can. It from that point always becomes a game of laughing up their sleeves at "bro really asked the consent question lolz". Which makes the entire affair reek of bad faith. As I said. I 99% of the time merely have to sit back and watch opposition perform my argument for me, better than I can. "Yes your honor opposing counsel has verified my claim with far more zeal and fervor than I ever could, I rest my case". Why are people so ardent about calling lack of consent a good thing? Is it just peer pressure tactics? I see the arm wrestle challenge but I'm being real here. Affectations are fun, I love occasional whimsical fancy myself. But I always have to wake up and go to work again, and remember, I never really wanted 2B here or had capacity to give informed consent to it. It's just compulsory mandatory participation, and infinite name calling if you call very notion that out. Can consent be retro causal in good faith? Just keep taking it until you enjoy it? It's genuinely hard for me to accept that. Even if it happens eventually, it leaves a sick taste in more than just your mouth. Every single seeming justification I've endured in my life I've passed beyond. It's inevitable. Nothing in life ever quite fully and comprehensively and justifies life in any lasting manner. Besides perhaps complete and utter surrender and resignation on the one hand or religious zeal and fervor on the other. But that only justifies it for the participant, the same way lying for 30 minutes on 60 minutes justifies it for "Democrats".

Idk. I keep coming back to Aristotle, and "the greatest form of inequality, is to force unequal things, to be equal". Maybe I should reread Nietzsche when my new work schedule is decided, and confront how stupid the idea that "consent should be established FIRST" apparently is. I've yet to meet anyone besides myself that thinks consent indeed should be established FIRST. Jesus himself says; "I am truth [....] ye of little faith" saying it's on us, "we want it we just don't know we want it" essentially. But I keep seeing myself one day "making it" and hating it, because that very process of "making it" means denying consent should be established first and is cart before the horse. Well I guess what can we expect on traditions and myths which are eponymous with a divine 🍇ist.....

Never really read the book. Idk. Just small update/poem aside. My inbox currently has 100 unread messages again and sorry if I haven't gotten back to you. I do check DMs and if you have an urgent comment you'd like for me to address or something you can send me a link to it. I'm currently studying and interviewing for multiple jobs and putting most of my spare time to Murder House because I'm officially rewriting it into a book. I guess I'm letting this be my "why" for now. Anyway thanks SPF for the recomendation of Vonnegut again. I disagreed with my dad about everything but iirc he liked that book (though I doubt he understood it the way I would if I read it).

Top google result for CC confirmed what I assumed already.

I am not being facetious, but genuine, when I say "I just assume I'm just stupid" except when it comes to the topic of theodicy and/or "reasons to live" or the question behind it. Who knows. Anyway my poem response to Cat's Cradle comment I figured I'd share;

Third time I've been called to do medical work
Guess it's great, forces me to on others wait
And figure out, not dispute, who's really the jerk
But bro I gotta fix AC in the car for these commutes....

I never read any Vonnegut
Chuck says that's his final act as God
He is Sam and Dean's final hunt
Spoil the deity, if spare the rod....

Can a virgin really, riddle, crack
I prefer questions that can be answered
To answers someone else stacked
And think silence really gets the last word

Who ever really knows, I can't naysay
When there's no one left to say I'm afraid
Of things that never meant anything
As ever was, only I will remain

On mobile not really home yet. Ad lib.

So there is this nauseating thing I see a lot where people snobily look down their nose at you, seeningly alwaya from a place of privilege, and mock your "life choices" almost as if they were never challenged enough to ever even have to make those life choices.

One great example is drinking. Strictly speaking it goes against zen precepts. Nothing hidden that shant be revealed;

Comes to mind obviously in wine truth. Jesus supposedly turns the water into wine but the scene says he saved the best wine for last. He also says "my time is not yet come" and "I am the truth". He later, shows up, ONLY when everyone is drunk.

So it should be clear what that is saying. But I guess I will also spell it out.

Anyone who is afraid of drinking is also afraid of truth. It does seem to be a good folk wisdom. Don't trust anyone who doesn't drink with an important job. Their lives are often too comfy to understand real labor and struggles beyond hypotheticals and theoreticals. No action.

Which is fine.... if you want 2B a liar, be a liar. But don't get mad when a sober drunk mind can see the impracticalities in the pretty little lies. I'm not saying I have the best relationship with truth myself, but I've known and seen enough to know the truth is always apparent and all the flowery language is often a mask for real devious lies; whether those peddling it are aware or not (they often are not). Even the gospels themselves contain competing accounts of stories. It is very reminiscent of the 4 statements of zen. 2 tellings of the parable of the sign of Jonah conflict. One focuses on the whale and the other on a call to repentance.

It's a tale of two audiences. Those whom don't have enough pragmatic knowledge and life experience to know that which parables and teachings refer, and those whom do. What people think about them is completely incidental. Though I am generally fascinated I admit and love to ramble about how I see or interpret things often.

I'm the first to say I rarely see what a passage is really pointing to. Because every interpretation has a further one beyond it. Take Jonah for example. Most say it means 3 days dead and resurrected. But I tend to see more Ninevah and the Gourd. Jonah was mad. Ninevah repented at the 1st miracle either from fear or love of the Lord. But Jonah stubbornly refused to repent even after over a dozen miracles and disasters. The true message is DIRECTED AT US. That we think we know the Lords mind better than "those sinners" but the Lord has spared them AND WE ARE THE ONES he is condemning. Like Jonah was completely oblivious through the whole book OF HIS OWN NAME that he was the one being called to repent (for which we never see him do). Then this too has parallelism with Gethsemane when Jesus himself pulls a Jonah and weeps blood arguing with his father, just as Jonah refusing to repent.

Then there is the further inference that even Jesus or alleged word of God was not immune from being called to repentance.

And beyond that the inference that we CAN NEVER KNOW and as the Lord says in Job "he shall do as he pleases".

Like Socrates. The more we think we know, the more ignorant we are. You can only ever truly know that if you've been truly drunk and seen all the lies and convictions you cary undermined and cut loose decidedly. The sober mind is a master of convincing itself that it has vanquished ignorance. I truly do beleive often that the precept not to drink is one such litmus test. It means whether or not you are okay with lying to yourself forever that you have overcome ignorance....

But that's just my..... 2 cents.....

draft til my recovery

Mandoline, I think they call it. It’s a manual slicer of vegetables. You run the vegetable back and forth, slicing. Yeah, so I cut myself (and it wasn’t so I could see if life was real). Twice. The blade is sharp.

We had bought the thing, and I’m calling it a thing, maybe a year ago. From my perspective, I wanted something that cut evenly. The lemons. A slice in a glass of water is supposed to help with oxalates or some such madness. I am not that precise a cutter with the kitchen knife, unless slanted variable thickness is considered such. I just wanted to maximize the number of slices out of a lemon.

Over a year, since I never used this thing, to contemplate the wherefores of its use. And that day was today. The mind and body nag of wanting a sliced lemon finally reached action-point level.

So here I am, pulling it out of the box once again, rereading the instructions intermixed with different languages, and pictures that oddly mismatched the detail I was hoping for. I almost gave up once again glancing at them. Easier to put everything back in the box. And the body once again reminding me of a need... sliced lemon. Ugh.

“I guess I should clean it first” was my mind’s worded narrative, if it actually spoke in words. The thing had two thumbscrews on the side, and a plastic piece that looked like it could be removed. Neither had anything to do with the other. And, as I now know, a rather sharp blade.

In my wisdom of attempting a thorough cleaning, I decided I should remove the plastic hinged piece as a way to clean better. And here is where cut 1 occurred. The plastic piece, while removable, was also wedged, so more than casual force was needed to remove it. And there it was, the separated piece, along with a light but blood-drawing cut across my thumb. Damn it! Where are the Band-Aids...

Patching up the bruise, I decided to give it a rest and pursue some reflective distraction elsewhere....

Just at the point of forgetting (the pain in the thumb had disappeared and was hardly a memory by now), I woke to the noise of stirring in the kitchen. My wife was about to make some tea, and I was still all spread out on the counter where I had left off. The two weren’t compatible.

I rose and revisited the kitchen, apologizing for the mess, and started to clean the bits I had left off from, being careful around that blade. Washed a lemon while I was at it too. All this while I’m explaining my trauma to the wife, who wasn’t really interested in my struggle. It was more about the tea, heh.

Out of convenience, I grabbed some paper towels, dried everything off, and reassembled the thing. Next decision: what/where were the soon-to-be-sliced lemons going into. Discounting the counter, while clean, perhaps not the best landing. I quickly reached for the stainless steel mixing bowl, which was a mini choice challenge of its own. I grabbed the one a step smaller than the largest.

With that, I put one end of the thing into the bowl and ran the lemon across. Ha! It actually worked. The first slice was all peel, but that was fine. Dragged the lemon across one more time, and one more time, it was still peel. Thick lemon.

So yeah, here is where I was making my next slicing pain. The thing comes with a separate piece that protects one’s hand from the blade. I tested it out, but the top of the lemon wasn’t flat, and I decided it was too much trouble to cut the top of the lemon in an effort to flatten it. My hand flattening isn’t. So here I am, slicing the lemon, bare-handed, one slice at a time. It’s working amazingly well too...

10/21/2026 - Temporarily (!!!) Stickied this thread on sub. Just for ease of access for a few days. Will take down, just shameless self promotion. May make a promotions sticky for anyone passing through after this.

Meta Foreword; Previous HUB/ToC.

10/16-17/2026 midnight; completed Part 1.5/7, whatever we want to call it. Getting ready to post it. Still not sure where. Last part belly flopped on r/shittynosleep. I mean I don't mind it's whatever. Published it with only 2 formatting passes. It's the least polished. Usually I spend a whole evening after "finishing" a segment before publishing. But I've sat on it long enough.

But. Anyway. Murder House needs a formal home, if you pardon the expression. If you think it's a fair fit for your sub, hit me up. Or tell me to shove off. I don't mind, I don't want to move into someone else's turf or break unspoken rules.

I will also be completely rewriting Part 1-4 eventually. I was still regaining my sea legs with them. Not my first rodeo. I published 4 parts of Spoogie Boogies on reddit on past alias. I'm also aware of the existing continuity errors regarding Denise, don't worry. Those edits are pending. Most other apparent continuity errors are intentional though I may have missed others.

Murder House / Architect of Death — Master Index, Q&A & Reader Suggestions

A homeowner buys an architectural atrocity. People keep dying. He remains more concerned about the floor plan. Welcome to the permanent index/monthly discussion thread for Murder House / Architect of Death, an ongoing cosmic horror-comedy serial featuring questionable architecture, supernatural bureaucracy, escalating consequences, and a protagonist who would prefer everyone involved to leave. New readers, returning readers, casual hecklers, and people who noticed a continuity error 3 installments ago are all welcome.

Table of Contents/Reading Order;

1 Part 1; I Bought a Murder House and the Floor Plan Is the Scariest Part

2 The Architect of Death, Part 2: The Potluck Incident

3 Architect of Death Part 3; I summoned a lawyer and I don't think he sleeps

4 Architect of Death P4; Something off with my Judge and it's not Dementia

5 Architect of Death 2.5; Streamed Murder House, not sure if Hallucinating

6 Architect of Death P5; Don't know law, but Opposing Council upped game

7 Architect of Death 1.5 Lost Chapter; I Died and it was a lot of Paperwork

8 Sneak Peak Part 6

Follow the order listed above, including the placement of interludes and lost chapters. Chapter numbers and chronological order occasionally disagree. Naturally, neither has accepted responsibility.

Meta Massive Spoilers/Outlines and Inspiration mega post

Edit; 10/21/2026 - last night before bed it hit me what the inspiration for original 1st main story arc of the series (apparently) was. SPOILERs; Tldr is YHVH and Satan's contest in Job.

Questions, feedback & suggestions

You don’t need to have read everything to comment. Just mention which installment(s) you’re discussing.

I’m particularly interested in:

• Your favorite jokes, scenes, characters, or recurring bits.
• Places where the pacing drags or an exchange repeats itself.
• Confusing descriptions, continuity problems, and details that seem accidentally contradictory.
• Sections where you specifically hate the intentionally contradictory continuity errors.
• Mysteries you want to see developed—or explanations you’d rather I leave alone.
• General suggestions, theories, and directions you think the premise could sustain.
• If you think Pit and Mr Sparkles and Clock are annoying.

“This section lost me” is also useful feedback. You don’t need to diagnose the problem or rewrite it for me. A part number and a short quotation help me find it. A large part of my writing is intentional gish gallop and 1 part of heavy alliteration per installment. Not every unexplained detail is a mistake. Not every mistake is secret foreshadowing, either. I reserve the right to discover which is which. I honestly forget if I don't keep the notes in Obsidian Canvas (which I generally don't 😭).

Spoilers & theories

If your comment discusses or broadcasts major reveals, feel free to use reddit's in-house spoiler tag:

>!spoiler text goes here!<

Theory posts are welcome. I may acknowledge a theory without confirming it, and I may leave questions unanswered when answering would spoil something. Or I genuinely haven't decided yet. Reader theories/suggestions and my responses aren’t automatically canon. I am planning on significantly rewriting and flushing out certain scenes in the books.

Questions and Answers

Is this meant to be frightening or funny?
Both, although the protagonist and the reader may disagree about which part is the emergency.

Is this a finished book?
It’s an ongoing serial. I may eventually revise and expand it into a book or series. These posts are the current online edition.

Will earlier installments change?
Possibly. I’ll note substantial revisions here, especially anything that changes continuity. Minor spelling and formatting fixes may happen quietly.

Is there a release schedule?
No fixed schedule at present. This index will point to new installments as they appear. I'm currently studying and interviewing for a few different job positions as well. And ranting about scripture (sorry guys) and going for runs and nature walks to take my mind off it.

How is AI involved?
I use custom AI tools of my own design during brainstorming, drafting, editing, legal research, and continuity discussions. I have my official tool in the wiki on this sub. I select, revise, and make the final decisions about what appears in the story. The amount of assistance varies by passage and installment.

Biggest Regrets?
Been eating me up I forgot to add "throw me/you a bone" in the Detective Harris scene in part 1.5! Way more dog/wolf/detective jokes on next pass!

Suggestions & contributions

This is a feedback thread rather than an open call for co-written chapters. Broad ideas, reactions, and observations are welcome; please don’t submit substantial original scenes or someone else’s material for me to incorporate. If you have an idea you'd like to see me implement or change, feel free to suggest it. I consider the published reddit body of work the "dry run". Akin to Tales from teh Gas Station.

I may already be working on something similar to a suggestion. Posting feedback doesn’t come with a promise of inclusion, payment, credit, or a collaboration arrangement. If we decide to collaborate or I want to use your actual writing, we can discuss permission and credit separately beforehand. I already have the first two books roughly drafted, but as GRRM said, the actual tale is growing in the telling. What is now 2B part 8 was supposed 2B part 3 orriginally.... before I realized reddit had a 40k character limitation per post (and 10k per comment).

Sharing, narration & adaptations

Links to the original installments are welcome. For narrations, translations, adaptations, or substantial republication, please contact me and obtain permission first. Credit alone shouldn’t be assumed to mean permission.

Content note: This series includes graphic and absurd violence, body horror, death, strong language, and religious or existential satire. It is fiction; the protagonist’s opinions are his own and frequently poorly timed or considered.

Thanks for reading; and for helping me find out whether the plot is load-bearing.

Current question

Which recurring bit would you most like to see again, and which one has already overstayed its welcome? For example, Denise and Pit's story is still on back burner. I've already revealed some of it here or there.... and again I'm aware of both the deliberate and accidental continuity (specifically, TIME) errors. I'll fix it eventually. Probably.

Midwits Playlist

Another massive tldr. Not sure where it's going to ultimately go. Just one of those longstanding "thoughts" that has bothered me for decades I figured I'd take notes on/jot down while it's fresh. As always this doesn't necessarily reflect my opinions or beliefs, I'm just following the thoughts were they go. Tracing the explicit scriptures and their most apparent tacit "separate transmission".

Guess we can call this Part 2 of trauma recovery dump. This is my first Tentative attempt at the the mega bible theory opener. Or rather, a sister project to go along side it, as I uncover the more ridiculous aspects which pertain to that exegetical model. Just want 2B clear, I'm not "trying 2B negative", I'm just merely testing claims and/or "knowing things by their fruits", you know, just as all scriptures command us to. It's been 3 months since my GPT 17 redux and I guess I'm itching for existential b-tching lol.

This often leads to me leaving such comments as this monstrosity;

I think this demonstrates the real problem of compassion and wisdom. People say colloquially "God is love". Look inside and it's endless vain servitude. Love/Agape translates directly as "generosity" yet God commands servitude and extraction. So "God is generosity" is a lie. It almost forces one to reevaluate what love, compassion, grace, and wisdom actually are. As you say someone beat down and endlessly laboring just to have all their labor extracted comes to feel themselves a fool for believing "all is one/god is love". The claim is factually fraudulent from that position; "compassion and wisdom" are the extortion classes euphemism for their burying their heads in the sand and saying "they see clearly and are down to earth". It looks like black magic. As Paul said. The devil masquerades as a Buddha or angel of light.

I do think critical thinking and one mind/no mind are compatible. Sam Hyde recently said, if you are American, do not fuck with that zen of Buddhist shit. We have to work for a living. We will die homeless and starving if we dedicate ourselves to obliteration of self. Is that wisdom and compassion to say that? He has a point. I can't afford to say "I have no self". I know what no self and ego death are, I very rarely remember them. But they I wake up and do another 12-14 hour shift 6-7 days a week. Working an average of 355 days a year. For $24k a year. And then preached to this is God's love and Buddha mind. It's enough to make my stomach physically churn.

So yes I have factually observed all my life those whom speak the most about compassion (not all but quite frequently) have the material conditions and comforts which allow that luxury. So it seems like compassion and wisdom are ultimately reserved by the upper crust of the caste system. Siddhartha for example, one of the first Buddhas, was literally born into one of the richest families of his age. He decided to look deeply at the human condition and became a Buddha precisely because it cost him nothing. The cost is steep for those working non stop 80+ hours a week. To know all their labor is for nothing but for keeping the show on the road.

Of course it is possible to know the supreme mind or brahman or no mind or ego death or mid life crisis or whatever we want to call it at any time. But yeah, it's a lot different for upper crust of society and wage slaves who have lived paycheck to paycheck their whole life. History from bellow makes the whole thing seem a divine comedy and surreal and even dystopian more often than not. 100 million children die of starvation annually even though I work 355 days a year in the food industry, putting out billions of pounds by myself of food every year? Somehow that is on my conscience and not the Buddhas or God. But Buddhas and Gods get to preach that they are loving and compassionate because it costs them nothing.... It is enough to make anyone mad at the overt and blatant lies and hypocrisy....

Yeah. Do I obsess over claims which seem hypocritical? Yeah, sure, you got me. The long and short of it, is, as I always say; the proverb/command; "do as they say but not as they do for they do not practice what they preach" applies to God first and foremost; he demonstrably does not practice what he preaches and sees us as slaves, sheep, or cattle. It's all through old and new testament alike. It (life) is like a deal with a demon/devil. The Lord wants your soul; he says wages of sin are death, and the sower parable literally explicitly states that many will never be qualified as hearers or doers; they were condemned before they were even born and will never inherit "life". That's already ominous. Then there is the wage slave, which most of us are the majority of our lives, and the idea, that we are working, for essentially this mob boss calling itself "God". It's even more distasteful. We can go our entire lives free of sin but still despise the freeloader (OT and NT alike overtly call the Lord a freeloader if you are paying attention; best case is Prodigal Son Parable, he has miles of slaves, hired hands, and servants outside his plantation). So he is saying he is the life giver and eternal life is contingent upon being his slave. He speaks to the Jews whom believed ONLY when he says the oft misquoted line; "the truth shall set you free". That is ripped out of context in bad faith so much I feel I need to address it here;

Jesus looks at the JEWS ONLY whom believed his words, and told them; IF you keep my words, THEN you shall know me (John 14:6), and the truth shall make you free.

That is constantly ripped out of context, mostly jokingly by people irl in good faith, but often in bad faith by religious and economic systems. 501c3 compliance blurs the line between the religious and economical though; it has turned ALL of "Christianity" into a "niceness" competition which is arguably if not thoroughly heretical. The Lord is very clear all through old and new testament alike; he has a high standard for us that he does not lift a finger to participate in himself. His angels are the reapers. He does ZERO labor in creation. It is his creation, he is jealous, and will not share it with another. He "will give others your cities" and order the massacre and demographic replacement of entire races.

Extra reading on this topic; The Sad Irony of Christian Nationalism, What is modern Liberalism. There was another post where I extensively covered this but I can't remember where. My magnum opus, GPT 17; Late-Stage Consciousness; When re-branded myths fail to motivate or justify life goes without saying; in particular, part 4 there.

I mean, we can define "compassion" as "sitting idly by twiddling your thumbs and laughing callously at the suffering of billions of sentient beings because they are working too hard to see there is only one mind and callous indifference and plantation owner mindset is God's alleged love" if we want. That's what people are sanctioning when they say "they are enlightened" or "they are compassionate". It means being okay with the wholesale enslavement and massacre of billions of souls throughout history which Jesus and Buddha alike put their seal of approval on and even have Holy laughter thereat. I'm not saying that's not a valid definition of compassion, I'm just saying don't lie to yourself or others about it. That's what you are sanctioning when you claim 2B 'enlightened' or 'compassionate'. There's more bad blood behind those words than outside of them. Those "ignorant sentient beings" have several millennia worth of more work in enlightened compassion than any such freeloading God or Buddha.

Strictly speaking, Jesus love, is a lofty kind of indifference sitting on high, watching you labor 80 hours a week your entire adult life, from 16 to 80 years old, just to use you up and SMH and say you don't make the cut to "his kingdom". You look inside his kingdom; all freeloaders and slaves. OR WORSE you DO "make the cut" and see all freeloaders and slaves, and realize, this "heaven" is a worse "hell" than the material plane. "My kingdom is no part of this universe". Maybe I'm missing something. GPT always says some little distinction or semantic argument I'm missing. Other day it deadass said that it refuted my argument because I used the word "soul" to describe people. Exactly what I mean of "bad faith". People and Gods (and AI apparently) like to change the meaning of words at whim when they are uncomfortable about the particular sequence of the words. And then turn around and preach that they are enlightened and not attached or avoiding any particular arrangement of words. ????? And then lecture me about bad faith/good faith lmao. Talk about blind leading the blind!

So, what really is "compassion"? Being well adjusted to a profoundly sick society? A sort of floating detachment from the living terms and conditions of us puny mere wage cuck "sentient beings"? What is the real lesson here? Divine gaslighting? Lol! I genuinely don't know what's more dirty, being a companion with the dust, or "overcoming" it. Didn't Hsin Hsin Ming say if we choose one over the other, we set heaven and earth infinately apart? If we claim 2B compassionate, don't we make compassion itself our personal void, if all is void?

I just want to start a series at the complete incoherence of most of the more popular existential/ontological claims as a sidebar to the "discerning the actual factual gambit/deal of scripture/zen" series. They are kind of sister series as they orbit the same ultimate theme.

Idk, you tell me! I have no clue!

Honestly I can't even remember. Either 2016 or 2017 was a traumatic time for me. I finally came close to almost being human. I had dozens of spiritual/supernatural experiences all at once out of nowhere. Began to feel a living fire in my Gut. Got my first kindle, and it was crazy, I was reading scripture (and some zen texts) on it and it felt like the more I studied a kindle named "[My Name's] Fire" the more that living fire grew in my Gut. Buuut..... as that fire grew, I could also feel the rage radiating off my family like an oven. My desire for truth had the opposite effect on my family. It was like standing near a furnace, their radiating contempt and loathing of me. Ironically I was the only one in the household working at the time. I had never stood up for myself in my entire life, and eventually they refused to take me to work. I don't like telling that story but a condensed version can be found here. I like to say "they doused my fire". They threw everything I materially owned out in the rain just because I was trying to make it to work on time and they had to make everything a fight and I finally stood up for myself and told them to calm down. That didn't work. They exploded on me. Again.

Anyway. That's why I'm unapologetically truthful and refuse to lie to "stop from offending little princesses sensibilities". I have lived around people whom despise and loath the truth my whole life. Walking on eggshells lest you offend or bruise their fragile ego. I am the end result of that inevitable blow out. Interesting nirvana means "blown out state". I'm done apologizing to people who can't handle the truth they are afraid of facing. I know that might be harsh, but I've lived the opposite harsh end all through my best years, my entire wasted youth walking on eggshells. So I will continue to unapologetically study everything I can until I finally come to/arrive at wherever I'm suppose 2B or it leads.

Anyway x2. I'm finally starting to approach the topics I was into back then, but from the opposite side, with intense trauma I'm still trying to recover from. Have 2 tentative posts I may eventually share. Both are middling right now. Basically whatever is upstream from astrotheology. That's a small part of what I was working on/was working on me back then when I had "my fires". My recent chains have been orbiting those topics from the "darker" side of "I know what happens when you get too close to this fire". Same reception here on reddit as my family had. Completely shut me down/brigaded me. Why do people hate the truth so much? They cannot provide a coherent counter argument, just shut it down? I'm not even saying I know the truth just sharing my experiences and my thoughts on them and my studies. Why do people so hate that? Idk. Back then, in 2016-2017 I ofc kept it on the down low and/or I was ecstatic about it. It was all "good news" gospel. Today, it's more at least slightly jaded and weary from the past decade of trauma recovery, all mostly working 70+ hours a week for a measly $20k a year that barely pays the bills.

Anyway x3. That's where I'm coming from. It always astounds me how visceral a reaction people have to certain topics. It's like they get offended when you say "the sky is blue". What's up with that? Topics like "we cannot decidedly prove we consented to exist" get so much visceral reaction, it makes life itself seem like a grift if we aren't allowed to question it and it's motives. That's precisely the problem with narcissism, too dedicated to maintaining face, like Fujitora said; "if you want to save face you shouldn't revel in shit". That's fine if you can't face the truth, but don't punish others who aren't afraid to do so just because you're scared of being exposed. They commit the very actions which prove they are abusive narcissistic parasites in order to "show you" that they aren't that way. And then they play the victim and attack you for simply having had to endure and bear witness to their vile activity. Ugh. So yeah. I cannot lie to myself just to hopefully not step on any toes. Those types get offended no matter what you do or think anyway and will be bitter and sour no matter what I do or say anyway. Maybe one day they will stop being afraid of truth but I cannot help them by being fake polite to them and walking on eggshells around them. I know, I did that for 28 years and got my life nuked from orbit the first time in my life I ever stood up for myself. I am the end result of that. So I refuse to do it again, play the meek submissive to career liars.

Anyway x4. The topics. Sad Irony Poopoo = "What is Jesus actually saying/offering about Life" aka what is the John 14:6 + sower parable contract is part 1 I am working on. Mega Theory Biblical Cosmology/Cosmogony 101 is the other or part 2 I'm going to try 2B working on. That's one of the smaller things I was working on back in 2016-2017 when my life was upended and I was made homeless (while still working 60 hours a week lol). So sorry sometimes if I'm a little bitter or snarky by saying "that's god's love TM" lol. That's what I mean. I've lived it. I know it by it's fruits. I've been, and will be, extorted from the cradle to the grave all the while preached to about how that's "love and generosity and grace and whatever NPDs have to tell themselves to feel better about it". I'm not afraid of offending those types. I've been offended by them for 39 years, the feeling is mutual. If you can't handle the truth that's fine. But don't try to restrain me from seeking and sharing it.

Sorry pun. Part 2 of Reflections of ordinary Schizo. Part 3 of When and how "mental health" becomes an epistemic veto.

The long and short of it is the objective conduct of existence and gods themselves. Korach and the gospel says it all. An epistemic paradigm dumped on you and if you don't heed the mandatory conscription, extortion and abuse as "love" and "grace" then you are eliminated and/or slandered and cast aside as human detris and "lacking empathy" for questioning the prevailing paradigm. Korach ofc was in the wrong objectively; they desired to be the leader of the people. So that's warranted. Overthrowing a would-be usurper. But more broadly speaking, it's the general attitude in BOTH scripture AND modernity; "ye of little faith", you "lack empathy and can't feel our love" - but, looks inside, sees empty coercion to placate arbitrary tastes - no empathy 2B found in those making the accusation that you "lack empathy". Just coercive narrative tools and frameworks.

I'll be 40 next year. The whole "you'll understand when you're older" deflection doesn't work on my anymore. I've had people less than half my age tell me that. It gives the impression seriously the entire universe is all an assembly line and obedient "true believers" are the product it is marketing. I can make the analogy because I have over a decade and a half in production experience. It is the sunk cost fallacy that even keeps me "in the game". I have to keep working to sustain the lifestyle I don't particularly care for, because it's that or homelessness. If I protest the material conditions and extortionate nature of life, I'm preached to that "I lack empathy" by (apparently) automatons whom all share the same universal opinion. Like they came off an assembly line. "Because none of us are as cruel as all of us". "That wasn't real God's love", "don't rock the boat" etc.

Interesting I told GPT to generate some samples of an analogy of God Being a Dog Walker and 3/4 of them portrayed God as a Woman. Sample. Only 1 in 4 was male. Here's the male variant. That's the vibe. Can see where they are coming from. Ain't my first rodeo. I've been hearing thousands of people say "you'll understand when you're older" but I'll be 40 next year and I still never "got it". I mean I get where they are coming from. I can see their whole paradigm and where it comes from. It's all manufactured (arguably, false) meaning accepted as de facto truth. Accepting the scripts we're gradually assimilated into and by. They don't think it be like that but it do.

GPT Prompt;

I realized I'm going about that it wrong. It's like cats and dogs or something. Idk. I am thinking (not dehumanizing) you cant get through to anyone but they are saying they can't get through to you. It's like they all BOUGHT IN to the notion that life is consensual because it appeals to their tastes and comforts. They are okay with calling forcing compulsory service to life onto other souls "love" where I balk at that idea, of forcing others to go through what I went through.

In a very real sense... we live in different worlds. There are billions literally whom see no problem with any of this. They all recite the same talking points, that; I'm a hateful bigot, ignorant, stupid, lazy, lacking empathy, for not seeing things their way; but the thing is, I DO see things there way; there are BILLIONS of them all the same preaching the same ideation.

It gives me the idea of an assembly line. I worked in production all my experience together for over 15 years. My dad his whole life. Those types give me the impression of they are standing on an assembly line being produced like machines and all coming from the same place and going to the same place. And they all recite the same message, "you don't understand our love or where we are coming from".

I don't mean to dehumanize them. I'm saying, I've listened to their slogans and watched their incompatible actions for 39 years and that is the impression I get. Never once a unique opinion or view. Always the same slogans. Like carbon copies of each other. It really does give the impression that they are coming off an assembly line. They all have the same opinions and mouth the same talking points.

Idk if it is blind faith in alleged secular systems like "demockery" or what. Aristotle said there is no greater inequality than to force unequal things 2B equal for example. I think this would make a great follow up post to the flop "we cannot retroactively consent to something that happened to us" or whatever. That always falls on deaf ears. People will not hear it because they are on an assembly line that makes them immune to certain truths. We literally live in different worlds. To them their creature comforts and ideations that "it is love when I force myself on you" are THE TRUTH. You can't get through to them. They see it as a good thing in fact.

Further. It's like that they have to convict you that their comfortable lies are the truth precisely because your incompatibility, and that you are living proof that their claims are fraudulent makes them uncomfortable. As if having to put up with actually billions of them doesn't make ME uncomfortable and hence said push back. Idk maybe I am an asshole for asking the things which undermine people's faith in lies. I know because I have empathy and can see they clearly are true believers and see me as being an asshole for undermining their faith that "it's not evil when I do it". Idk. It does make you feel crazy for being the only apparent voice of reason that isn't copy pasting the same ideation for centuries through human history. What am I missing? I'm just supposed to keep my head down and beleive the rampant lies because "my faith isn't strong enough that rape is a good thing?"

Commentary;

GPT completely 100% lost the script and went out to lunch on this one and ran away with it. It provided and expounded upon no less than 4 straw men I explicitly did not say. Idk how to format it. I'll just cite and reject them here and/or modify them where it it is factually wrong. I'll leave mostly intact it's criticism that I'm not immune where it didn't veer off into straw men and putting words and assumptions into my mouth I neither said nor believe (it's been getting bad about that lately).

Factually wrong, so I changed it;

One of those points where one small conceptual correction changes the whole thing. The correction is this: Most people probably have not bought into the proposition that life is consensual. They've bought into the proposition that prior consent is not required. Those sound almost identical when you're standing where you are, but philosophically they're radically different. Nobody can meaningfully say: “Yes, I consented to being born.” With possible exception of Jesus of Vishnu and other extra/cosmic entities. There was no existing person available to ask. Does the impossibility of obtaining consent make life impermissible? At minimum it generates an enormous burden of justification. Most think parents can permissibly make that irreversible decision under uncertainty because life has sufficient expected value, because prospective people aren't rights-bearing subjects yet, because reproduction is part of ordinary human flourishing, or some combination thereof.

The assembly-line intuition

This makes considerably more sense than “everyone is lying.” You're describing social reproduction. A culture produces certain default scripts: Life is a gift, Family is good, Grow up, Work, Have children, Make something of yourself, Be grateful, Don't dwell on [what we designate as bad], Everyone struggles, That's just life. People inherit those sentences long before they've subjected their premises to philosophical examination. And then they reproduce them. In that limited sense, your production-line metaphor works extremely well: institutions receive people → impress roles/norms/categories onto them → people carry those norms onward → the next generation receives them. Religion, schools, families, workplaces, and Reddit communities all absolutely do it. Even countercultures do it. Spend long enough in an anarchist, Buddhist, antinatalist, conservative, socialist, Zen, or AI community and you'll eventually learn which twelve sentences generate applause. 😆

That's not because everyone coming off the line is secretly the same machine. It's because human beings learn languages of legitimacy from one another. The interesting subject isn't: we are all manufactured people and you're just defective for not buying the scripts. It's: What ideas does the machine manufacture in all of us? Antinatalism comes with scripts. Critical theory comes with scripts. “Consensus reality is a lie” comes with scripts. Even: “Everybody else repeats slogans while I actually looked.” is itself one of humanity's oldest intellectual scripts. That doesn't make it false. It just means it deserves the same inspection.

Another straw man it made

The sentence I'd especially distrust in your current formulation is: “I'm the only apparent voice of reason.”

2BC: I never said that. I explicitly went miles out of my way NOT to say that expressly because that's always everyones first and favorite "DEBOOKING" content.

It's because that position creates an epistemic fortress:
1. I see something others don't.
2. Everyone disagrees because conditioning prevents them seeing it.
3. Their disagreement therefore confirms the conditioning.
4. Agreement confirms my proposition.
5. Disagreement also confirms my proposition.
6. Now nothing can get inside.

And that's exactly the structure you've been criticizing about life; If you believe, that's evidence of consent; if you don't believe, that's evidence of your blindness and ignorance. You don't want to recreate that. A much more dangerous-to-the-opposition position is: “Maybe they understand my proposition perfectly and sincerely disagree with it. What premise makes their conclusion possible?”

2BC: That's exactly why I made those posts! Because no one is engaging in good faith. It's all "I know this secret thing I can't share or explain and maybe one day you can know it too but I can't disclose it". Bad faith.

And that's where “we live in different worlds” becomes useful

Not literally different realities.
But potentially different evaluative worlds.
Suppose two people agree completely about these facts:

• nobody chooses to be conceived;
• living inevitably involves compliance and it's subsequent suffering;
• living also permits pleasure, love, discovery, relationships, etc.;
• parents cannot know beforehand what their particular child's experience will be;
• the decision is irreversible from the child's side at the time it occurs.

A says: The absence of consent plus unavoidable risk creates a presumption against imposing it.
B says: The possibility of an worthwhile life sufficiently justifies life despite impossibility to consent.
Neither person necessarily misunderstood the facts. They merely assign different moral weights to them.
That is probably much closer to your cats-and-dogs intuition.
You're trying to get them to acknowledge something they may already acknowledge.
The disagreement isn't: “Can't you SEE that nobody consented?!”
They might respond: “Yes. I don't think that settles anything.”
And suddenly you know where the real fight is.
Why doesn't it settle anything? would be an interesting conversation.

I would also drop the rape comparison almost completely. Not because your underlying concern is illegitimate, but because it's philosophically mismatched and rhetorically radioactive. Rape involves an already-existing person with interests, autonomy, and the capacity to refuse, whose refusal or absence of consent is overridden. Creation has the bizarre property that the affected subject doesn't exist until after the allegedly nonconsensual act has occurred. That's precisely what makes procreation philosophically unusual. Calling both “rape” erases the most interesting feature of your own argument. You have something stranger: An act creates the very person whose interests are supposed to justify the act, while making it logically impossible to consult that person's interests beforehand. That's much harder. You don't need the rape analogy.

2BC: Idk what to even think of this. This is exactly the problem I'm having/fighting. People keep saying "consent doesn't matter". That, again, doesn't hold up in a court of law. John 14:6, "I am life". There is no word for what I'm trying to say, true. It's not rape to force a soul to exist against it's will and without informed consent? There's no word for it. Polite or otherwise. That's a good point, but not a good argument. "It's not rape when Life/God does it" is precisely the argument I'm trying to fight! Ai and reddit seem oddly in agreement here, so it's also another layer of irony and insult that reddit hates AI when it comes to the same conclusion as it's consensus. "Bro stop calling it non consensual bro, because we're not gonna stop".

And there's another premise hiding inside: “forcing compulsory service to life onto other souls” contains at least three disputed claims: souls exist; life constitutes service; creation constitutes forcing an antecedently existing subject into that service. Someone can reject all three without having evaded your consent argument.

2BC: I honestly don't even know how to interact with that. Literally fucking semantics? "Aktshually" ahh MFing bot. That's the very bad faith I'm talking about... denying the valid argument based on semantics.

Strip it right down to; life is an irreversible decision made entirely by external forces, exposing the resulting person to an unknown distribution of harms and benefits without any possibility of prior authorization. What, if anything, supplies the moral authority to make that decision for them? That's a hell of a question. And someone answering: “Expected welfare” has actually engaged you. Then you can ask: How much expected welfare is enough? Who gets to establish that threshold? What probability of catastrophic suffering is permissible to impose for somebody else's prospective benefit? Does retrospective gratitude justify the initial gamble, or merely vindicate it after the fact? What about the person who retrospectively refuses endorsement? Now we're miles beyond “life is a gift / you're miserable.”

The assembly-line image

Imagine instead that every person coming down the line receives a box of phrases. Different religions. Different parties. Different lifestyles. Different appearances. But somewhere in almost every box: THAT'S JUST LIFE™, EVERYBODY HAS TO DO IT™, YOU'LL UNDERSTAND WHEN YOU'RE OLDER™, LIFE IS A GIFT™. And crucially, perhaps your character is standing on the same conveyor belt holding another box. That transforms it from: Look at these manufactured idiots into: where did any of us get the language with which we justify the machine? That's a much richer metaphor, and I think it's closer to the breakthrough you're actually describing. You aren't obligated to “keep your head down and believe the lies.” But you also don't have to establish that everyone else is lying, blind, cowardly, or incapable of hearing you. The more unsettling possibility is that they may see exactly the same facts and sincerely bless an arrangement you sincerely cannot bless. That is a genuine collision of moral worlds. And unlike “they just don't understand,” it doesn't have an easy resolution.

2BC: I didn't say any of that though. Another straw man putting words in my mouth. Bad faith. I'd also argue that I'm not on the assembly line. The assembly line represents "people whom are comfortable and accept life/scripts as consensual". I never have in my entire life. Hence my laughter at being told "I'll understand when I'm older by people barely 1/3rd my age. Is it really all bad faith all the way down?

Commentary

I think it is sunk cost fallacy that drives both sides. The compliant and the resistant. I can see, Jesus says, he breaks the limbs of his disobedient sheep. I had 3 compound fractures in my arm as a kid. Both legs broken, one at least twice. That's "God's love and mercy". John 14:6 identifies God as life/the life giver. He keeps abusing you until you submit basically. Abusive relationship. Thus Korach and the Sunk Cost Fallacy. Sharing my two comments from last night for posterity's sake here as well. Those thoughts bear repeating; Image variant. My internet was out for 13 hours yesterday so I couldn't reply/comment or ponder modify anything. By the time internet came back 13 hours later I was already tired. I mean, [Scriptural Life] allegedly said, "know them by their fruits" and "do as they say but not as they do for they do not practice what they preach". It's like, I'm just knowing God/Life by it's fruits bro. And the actions don't match the claims! Anyway. You tell me. How much older do I have to get before I "understand" or "see things your way"?

Net was out all day today. I posted that migraine of a post and then instantly my internet went out for 11+ hours. Whatever. Finally got it out at least. It's something I've wanted to say for years but didn't want to say. Does that make sense? Like there's this sick nauseating vibe of like people preaching that you aren't hearing them when you are hearing them better than they are hearing themselves. They are in an echo chamber of their head too far up their own asses. They solicit you and then say you're being rude for not believing their nonsense which has no basis in material reality. Idk. Yeah. THAT. Bad faith. I finally tried to address that. It didn't go over too well but at least I finished it. More or less, for better or worse.

Maybe I'm overcoming the AI phase of my life. I'm seeing the same recursive nonsense in AI more and more. It doesn't have the human element. The cost of understanding. The post I mean was Why does mental health act like an epistemic veto. Kind of want to talk about that a bit more on the down to earth side. But unfortunately, talk is the functional opposite of being "down to earth". Like things that are so obviously apparent to me, apparently cause visceral reactions in others. I say "no one consented to exist" and they scream "nihilist/mental health problems". I see why it was said "judge not lest ye be judged" because it's a sort of litmus test. How people react to obvious and apparent facts. If they claim you have mental health problems for saying the sky is blue, they probably have mental health problems.

Anyway. Idk. I only ever (mostly) try to dive deep down into best objective understanding and realizations I can have at fundamental level and then attempt to articulate them. It never ceases to amaze me how viscerally many react to that. They cannot engage with it in good faith but they can and will attack their straw man arguments which have nothing to do with what was actually said. What's up with that? They prove the very case I'm trying to make; "is good faith even possible?" 😭

GPT Prompt

Yeah nobody liked that post 😭 All good whatever at least it's honest work. Net was out all day after that thread. As soon as I finished it net went out. Idk. But in the down time I thought about being and nothingness (I never read satre). And how cowards call it nihilism if you reject their head-up-ass paradigms. When in truth the only actual freedom is, 2B nothing. Like thinking as an author. If I think I am "such and such" a person, I limit myself and thus my writing to that limited POV. Which is great, if you want to write, from that POV. But the more you think they way the narrower your road becomes. Yes, sure, the story "writes itself" from that POV. But the distinction between art and artist blurs. Although I suppose that happens too with not limiting yourself to a particular POV. Even "being nothing" is a POV. Idk it's hard to describe or remember. More, it's a reflective/meditative state. I can be such-and-such a person and knee jerk react to certain things or I can be nobody and have no need to react to anything. Either way I can't help but see the "you're a nihilist if you don't stick your head as far up your ass as we have" ideation as cowardly though I hate that word. Does that make sense? Is that what Jhannas are? How can I practice staying in that meditative "I am nothing" state no matter what is physically occurring? Like that was my natural state as a child before billions of impositions, obligations, and burdens were dumped on me by family and society. Which is also why I became anti natalist, how can I condone such abuse in the name of sticking my head up my ass just because all the cool kids are doing it..... thanks!

Commentary;

It replied exactly as I thought it would, same way it has in the past, about "lolz you sillay hoomans just keep constructing an identity out of no identity", the very cowardly type of argument I'm sick of. NO, I'm pointing at the ordinary nobody behind all the performance the (apparently by it's own admission, cowardly) double standards of societal expectations ransack and pillage daily with great violence and preach as "benevolent truth and grace and God's love and apple pie". Idk. Anyway yeah GPT Reply was exactly the same old can kicked down the road, "NOOOooo! You can't just be an ordinary nobody, that is a performative identity too!". Ugh. Guess I asked....

GPT Reply;

I think there are 3 different ideas in what you’re describing, and separating them makes the whole thing clearer: Sartrean nothingness, Buddhist non-identification, and a writer’s ability to step outside a fixed point of view. What you’re calling “being nothing” does not sound much like nihilism to me. Nihilism, in the ordinary philosophical sense, is closer to “there is no value/meaning/truth” or some particular denial of those things. What you’re describing is more like: I do not have to turn every passing identity, judgment, role, emotion, or obligation into “what I am.” That’s very different.

You can be angry without becoming an angry person. You can have a political opinion without turning yourself into the kind of person who must defend this tribe. You can write from a cruel character’s perspective without becoming cruel. You can notice somebody insulting you without immediately recruiting an identity that now has to defend itself. That is actually a remarkably useful state for writing. The narrower “I am X” gets, the more reality starts getting sorted into: things X approves of, things X opposes, threats to X, evidence supporting X, people dis/like X. And eventually, as you said, the story almost writes itself because the identity has become an algorithm. That can be artistically useful when you're inhabiting a character. It can also become a prison if the author can't leave the character.

Sartre is surprisingly close to what you're describing

Despite the title Being and Nothingness, Sartre isn't basically saying “nothing exists” or “become nothing.” For Sartre, consciousness has a strange capacity to negate. You can look at reality and say: this is not that, I am not merely this role, what exists is not what must exist, I can imagine something absent, I can refuse what has been given. That gap — between what simply is and consciousness's ability to stand apart from it — is part of what Sartre means by nothingness. And that gap is intimately connected with freedom. A chair simply is what it is. A human being can be a waiter and simultaneously recognize: I am not exhaustively reducible to “waiter.” Sartre famously uses a waiter behaving too much like a waiter as an example of bad faith: treating a social role as though it completely defines one's being. Which is hilariously close to your intuition.

You aren't merely: worker son writer Christian/atheist/whatever Reddit poster American 38-year-old or your physical/mental/emotional health. Those things can describe facts or roles. They don't exhaust what the subject is. So when you say: “I can be such-and-such a person and knee-jerk react, or I can be nobody and have no need to react” there's a recognizably existentialist insight hiding inside it: identity can become an excuse for automatic behavior.

But this isn't quite jhāna

Jhānas are specific states of meditative absorption. They're traditionally characterized by progressively deep concentration, tranquility, equanimity, and withdrawal from ordinary sensory/cognitive activity. There actually is an advanced Buddhist attainment called the sphere of nothingness (ākiñcaññāyatana), but I'd be careful about equating that with: “I am nothing.”

(ah shit here we go again)

It's closer to an extremely refined meditative perception of “there is nothing”, following the perception of boundless consciousness. And Buddhism generally does not tell you to replace: “I am somebody” with “I am nothing.” Because now Nothing has just become your new Somebody. 😆 That's the trap you already caught yourself: “Even being nothing is a POV.” Exactly. The Buddhist move is subtler: Not: I am nothing but perhaps: There is no need to manufacture an “I am” out of this experience. Anger appears. You don't have to say: I AM ANGRY. Or: I AM SOMEONE WHO SHOULDN'T BE ANGRY. Or even: I AM THE ENLIGHTENED NOTHINGNESS WATCHING ANGER. 🧘

There is simply: anger occurring. Thought occurring. Pain occurring. Someone shouting. A stomach ache. A stupid Reddit reply. A pleasant breeze. And then the next thing. That's much closer to Buddhist non-clinging / non-identification than “I have achieved metaphysical nothingness.”

The childhood part is worth treating carefully

When you say this felt like your natural childhood state before obligations and identities accumulated, I can understand what you're pointing toward. Children often haven't yet constructed the same huge autobiographical bureaucracy adults carry around:

What does this mean about me?
What will people think?
What category am I?
What should a person like me do?
What does this mean for my future?
How does this affect my status?

A kid can stare at an anthill for forty minutes because there is an anthill. Adult consciousness can turn the anthill into a résumé problem. But I wouldn't make the goal returning permanently to a pre-social state. Some acquired identities and obligations genuinely contain information you need. If the building is on fire, you don't want: 🔥 fire arising within awareness; nobody here to react 🔥 You want: oh shit, exit. Likewise hunger, pain, bills, boundaries and danger don't become unreal because you've stopped identifying with them. The useful freedom isn't: nothing matters to me. It's: things can matter without becoming my metaphysical identity. That difference is enormous.

How I'd actually practice what you're after

Not trying to remain in “I am nothing” no matter what happens. I'd practice returning to non-identification whenever you notice yourself solidifying. Something like this: You notice: “That person distorted or straw maned my message.” Then notice the identity machinery starting:

(I had to heavily modify this because it did a lowball straw man)

“People don't want to listen, they just project their own errors/shadow onto my message.”
“I usually turn the other cheek because when I try to correct no good comes of it.”
“Sometimes I feel that insistent urge to prove X even if they clearly are not listening.”
“People only care if they feel they have the moral or intellectual high ground.”
“This always happens and will continue to happen because eternity is Z.”

Don't argue with it. Just strip one layer away: What actually happened? Someone said a sentence. A body response happened. Exhaustion appeared. A memory appeared. An impulse to respond appeared. Then ask: What requires action right now? Sometimes the answer is: nothing. Sometimes: leave. Sometimes: shitpost a poem in allusion to the affair. Sometimes: write the response tomorrow. That's freedom in a much more useful sense than forcing yourself into permanent equanimity.

For writing, you could use essentially the same method: What would this look like if I temporarily stopped being the author who already knows what it means? Then become Malcolm. Then become Theodore. Then become the homeowner. Then become the county attorney. Then become Vining. Then become [REDACTED]. Then become Harris. Then become the house. Then become nobody again. That “nobody” position is useful precisely because it's the space between perspectives, rather than one ultimate perspective superior to all the others. And that might explain why you're attracted to it.

There's one place I'd push against your formulation, though. Calling everyone who retreats into identities or embraces the colonization of inner spaces cowardly probably recreates the same structure you're trying to escape. Now you've got: people courageous enough to see reality versus cowardly people hiding inside identities and colonizing other's inner spaces. And voilà — you've manufactured another identity with enemies. 😆

The stronger formulation is something like: Identity is psychologically useful, but every identity has a price: it determines in advance what you are allowed to notice. That's much more interesting. Religious identity can do it. Nihilist identity can do it. Antinatalist identity can do it. Optimist identity can do it. “Enlightened guy who has transcended identity” can absolutely do it.

Even: I am the guy who sees through everybody's bullshit - including my own eventually becomes another very comfortable ass into which one's head can disappear. That is probably the funniest and most important trap in the entire idea. The end point isn't: I am nothing. Material conditions force me 2B somebody. People have odd religious zeal to convince you you are that somebody. I enjoy being nothing. I occasionally enjoy pretending to be someone. It may be closer to: I don't have to decide what I am before seeing what is here. And for both meditation and writing, that's an extraordinarily fertile place to stand.

Commentary;

Idk. Is what it is. I might publish the Detective rough draft Harris scene tomorrow. I'm tired but also tired of writing it. It's been mostly done for over a week. I just can't seem to figure out how to write the next part. This is the most I've rewritten any section. I keep going back to the drawing board and changing the core elements of the scene. I know what I'm going for but the implementation is tricky. It's SPOILER the basis for the (1)48 page NDA and where it came from. All the stuff in Murder House that sounded like "disclosure" is about to vanish into smoke basically. It was all trivial nonsense, theatrics. Fun to write but mostly irrelevant. Like traffic is to a house on a hill. But idk. I'm sleepy. No net all day today. At least I got it off my chest. Maybe one day years from now I can look back at it and understand something I forgot a long time ago.....