Sturgeon

It's becoming quite clear to me that I may be the Kilgore Trout of this generation. 

An author of a blog, among other things, that is so remarkably unsuccessful by its zany ideas, verifiable anecdotes, and longstanding single digit readership.

And yet here you are. 

You just keep coming back. 

So in light of keeping things nice and crazy over here, can I just postulate something that could get me fired from my job even if I had one?

Did history really happen, or are we all just kind of here...now?

Ok, now hang with me and don't get mad.

Or go ahead and get mad. I don't care.

But check yourself.

I've been thinking for some time that maybe history is just a story we all agree on.

They get us in elementary school. And I've thought back: what is the purpose of history class?

You have the philosophical reason posted up on a number of professor's doors of "those who don't know history are condemned to repeat it".

Which, by the way

I mean, pump the freakin' brakes.

If you know history (by the books), but aren't able to apply a new way of thinking in your own life or understand different perspectives, then on a macro and microcosmic scale, it is karmic pattern that does get repeated, but in a new way, in a different generation. 

Earth is school.

We're all just here, learning our lessons.

Don't get all moody trying to condemn high schoolers into studying for midterms.

And then what's with the whole pledge of allegiance?  I don't care if it's "under God" or omitted: pledging allegiance to something external to you when you are that young and impressionable is just plain creepy.

Goshhhhhhhhhh my fifth grade self was so cool. She saw so much. She knew so much. 

I think it's more of the system of the matrix shaping an identity for you and we just let it happen. 

Consider...

The Tree of Life, concealed in a handsome meatsuit

with a  malleable mind, a suggestible ego

and relying on animal survival tendencies 

To grow, it's gotta have roots. 

Real nice, plump, juicy, and often racist roots. 

[programming]

So if you think you know where you come from and identify with it, then, boom! 

Search is over!

You know who you are! 

Congratulations, you mortarboard-wearing stripling!  

You have now earned your face because you learned some stuff about it that we told you was true!

Continuing wearing your newly informed face as long as you like!

Oh, and here's...paper, to prove it, I guess.

But what if you learned about a different face? Would you then hold that identity?

Or what if you learned about a *gasp* different side to the *sharper gasp* SAME STORY?

Would you now be two faced?

Or just informed?

Experiencing cognitive dissonance?

What would you believe?

How do you know what is "true"?

Somewhere up the chain you are still believing on the authority of someone if you didn't personally experience it and believe it.

 All the "evidence" in the world still asks you to believe in its existence.

And even then you have the results from the Double-Slit Experiment to consider, but this post is about history and not science (or PSY-ience) so we're gonna go ahead and move along even though I think they have more overlap than what I'm letting on here.

I venture to say that learning about history shapes us only so far as we attach to it. 

How much history matters only to the extent we accept it into ourselves as relevant belief.

Because the truth is that you are brand new every moment.

Every present moment you are free to choose who you are being.

That's supposed to be America, by the way. 

"Freedom" etc etc 

But all your country's songs talk about how freedom ain't free because of the cawst, and so you just live in that reality of thinking that war is righteous and necessary instead of realizing that no, you are an eternal spirit cast in a physical body, and everyone is actually free to be who they are, and if you're not cool with that, you have attached to an identity rooted somewhere in some belief or history that may not actually reflect that truth.

The truth does set you free, after all.

 #truestory

Attaching to an identity robs you of the true freedom of experiencing things anew.

You can be defined by your past. Or any past. 

You can be identified with your roots so far back as you want to be. 

You can be patriotic as hell and the only person it will mean anything to is you.

You get to choose your identity. You're always doing it anyway. You just keep choosing the past because it's all you think you know.

But I want to live like the kid who just went to the best birthday party ever, like: 

...and then there was this WATER SLIDE and then we did MAKEUP and then we had CAKE and my best friend made me LAUGH and then we went in the POOL...

Just be so extra about living it up here and now. 

Because I don't live in history.

I live in a true story.

One that is true.

To me.

Gloryhog09,
TWS