"Despite all my rage I'm still just a rat in a cage."

There is a reason the background is black and the banner is a lamp.

Its for when I look at it. The black is the void for which I am left with myself, the lamp is shined towards me like an interrogation.

Here's the thing, I've been talking and thinking about hedonism lately, and my professor gave an interesting lecture in which a chart was presented to us (the class).

What is it that we think---> Is what we think useful, yes/no?---> No.---> Nothingness

To get to that point is to look into a void that which is not explored by culture and society. Not constructed or created a base for which those that think too hard is given support to which they can exist. You might feel this if you are a "weird" person, though you may or may not know exactly why. My girlfriend asks me interesting questions when she tries to figure me out. She said I've put a lot of thought into these kinds of things and yet I struggle with the urge to be "normal" despite the fact of knowing that they are illusionary, them being forms of pleasure, entertainment, and sedation; the alcohol, reality t.v., parties, friends, medication, etc. When you look, however, into that void, all concepts of perceived truth are stripped away. You are left with your-SELF, (whatever that may be) which is terrifying beyond anything else, and most turn away, which happened to me. I am so afraid of this veneer that I know is false to be sanded away that I could not take it. I didn't know what would be left, if anything. Two years into depression, self-examination and torture and I gave up. I failed as a philosopher so to say.

Standing before that void, you will see that the among other things, familial systems are flawed, not because parents are bad people, but because they themselves are messed up people raising kids in the only way they know. Its the system of raising a child so to say that is not designed to make "happy people". This is something I struggle consistently with, where I, as the first born son, is expected to lift the mantle of the family establishment in a rather archaic and feudalistic way within a post-modern society, an egalitarian/democratic/post-industrial society that is designed to offer a ladder up through the minutiae of lower-middle class into the ranks of the Forbes top 100. Which at its most fundamental level is false. That promise, as we know as the "American Dream", is not true, a notion of consolation. That was a hard slap in the face we all felt in 2008, was it not? That was a hard slap in the face for my own father, in which I am (or was) expected to dethrone him in a metaphysical sense (in which all "kings" are dethroned, to have passed the crown down or to lift the severed head with the crown still on it) and in that surpassing him and in old age to hold over his head my power. Thus the cycle, of me to grow up repressed and repress him, and I, as a father to repress my son would be perpetuated.

Its a patriarchal line that I have no interest in being a part of, and I have paid for that. In a sense, what I have found at that void was enough to severely strain certain relationships, and over time, I suspect within the very near future, I believe it will continue to corrode. Not because I hate anyone, but to have seen this, there is no turning back, you cannot avoid the truth. Even if I want to destroy myself within these illusions of "pleasure", I still know what I know, and its enough.

How this manifests I think to someone (such as myself) that holds down these feelings are anger, and I see a lot of anger with my peers, but the mechanisms of sedation have appeared to set in so deeply that we do not know what the fuck its supposed to mean. Deep down, probably, I think each of us know what is happening. Those that are aware of it are medicated, or have some kind of mental condition, those of us that are ignoring it are delving deeper into distraction. I don't want to be a preacher, this isn't a soapbox, but if you are angry at your parents for no reason, there is a reason.

Also I do not say this in anger, or to say that any lifestyle is wrong. Believe me, there are mechanisms that are so powerful that lets face it, it cannot be toppled. However its a choice. I guess what I am trying to do with this is help make sense of it to people that are in the same boat as me.

I cannot help but feel vulnerable writing this. Conversation is better.