mike damage(d)

I remember why I did this blog in the first place, finally.  I can't express myself in a socially inappropriate way anywhere else.  I have to water down my ideas when expressing them verbally (or, even, nonverbally) to someone directly.  It's not a judgment of the people I am speaking to, I know a lot of people could handle the full brunt of my untamed thoughts.  I mostly just hate to see the look on someone's face when something I've said made them uncomfortable.  Sometimes, though, I love that look.  Usually this is with strangers, when someone has done something impolite for public standards and I make a really strange remark either loudly to myself or to them directly.

Allow me to give an example.

I was in line waiting for a movie with Megan and these people behind us (mostly just one woman) were talking loudly about their financial concerns and the things that bug them about their daily life and giving all kinds of details that I just didn't need to know, personal stuff.  So, I started talking loudly - "Yeah, man.  I LOVE talking about all of my personal problems in public so everyone can hear them.  I mean, who needs a psychiatrist when there are people all around that you can force to listen to your bullshit??" or something to that effect.  I remember a specific too.... she was talking (bitching) about giving her kids money.  Like, a kid asked for 10 bucks, and she says "10 bucks?  I don't even spend that in a day!" and I said loudly and clearly, "bullshit".  Like, how about today?  Just one ticket to the movies is more than 10$.  So, you've already spent your money for today, I guess.

Let me just lay it on the line.

I have nice clothes, and a nice mac computer, a cell phone, a car, I take expensive medication, I went to an expensive college, these are all things that a lot of people would not be able to afford.  but around here, the way I dress and groom myself, people think I'm some rich kid who's loaded with money.  I can't find a fucking job and I've been trying for a long time.  I live on something like 14$ a day, which I get for performing maintenance on my house/yard/etc.  I live with my parents.  My sister has been making our lives very difficult for the last 6 years.  On a cursory inspection, I'm kinda pathetic.  I've got my own problems, not the least of which is my own brain constantly betraying me.  I am sick and fucking tired of people making me feel like my life is easy and theirs is so hard.  FUCK YOU!  One of my personal goals is to make as few assumptions as possible, so, when people make gross assumptions about me it just makes me want to scream.

Breathe.

I don't expect the world to cut me any slack, and I fully expect that all facets of my life will become more difficult and complicated as time goes by, because they have up to this point.  I don't want or deserve special attention or sympathy.  I know that I have to work my ass off for every little thing I get, and that I will never get any recognition for any of it.  That is fine.  I would just appreciate it if the people I run into on a daily basis didn't treat me like I'm a fucking jerk.  Maybe this is part of the place where I live... people always say that folks around here are mean or at least callous to each other.  But fuck, I mean, how hard is it to do something small and nice for someone?

Yesterday, I was putting gas into my car (4$, all I had) but I just got into my car and drove out of the parking lot without even filling up.  I don't know, maybe I was distracted by one of the million thoughts that passes through my head in a given second.  Anyway, I quickly realized what i'd done and headed back, just in time for a person to pull into the pump I was at before me.  I went up to her car and explained the situation, asked if she could use another pump please.  she just mumbled something like "they can switch it to another pump".  I went inside and the guy said "ask the person if they'll move" and I said "I tried to."  She was standing behind me at this point and said "switch it, I'm in a hurry."  Like it'd take more than 15 seconds to move the car to another pump.  So anyway, I go to another pump, there are computer problems switching the money, short and long, I am standing there for like 5 minutes.  The woman who was in too much of a hurry to switch pumps so we could avoid all this shit was over putting air into her tires leisurely and smoking a cigarette and talking on her cell phone.  Yeah, real big hurry.  I wanted to make a comment to her - but she just looked so pathetic.  Wrong side of thirty at least, skinny like a drug user, short short skirt over her gaunt, bony legs.  Teeth all fucked up.

I thought to myself, it might make me feel slightly better for a very short period of time to yell and be an asshole, the way I would have 4 or 5 years ago.  My anger quickly melted into pity.  My guess was this woman was not used to being shown kindness by strangers, and thus had no inspiration to do me a favor.  I got into my car and drove off, shaking my head.

You can't use the kindness of others to fuel your own kindness, otherwise your fuel will be dried up really fucking fast.  It needs to be an internal commitment, to be nice even when people are mean to you.  Just because it's the right thing to do and maybe it'll change someone's day or make them do something nice for someone else.  Every time I want to scream expletives or really insult someone for paying me no mind, I need to remember this.  It's much more satisfying to live your own values than it is to play eye for an eye with people who don't give a shit about you.  Even when you win, you lose.

unread, unseen

Well, I'm back for another round.  I can be pretty sure no one will read this but I have to do it anyway.  I have some ideas bouncing around that will probably only make sense once I'm forced to write them out and synthesize them.  It would be cool if someone reads this, but it's not necessary.  I'll probably get hung up on terminology, but hopefully, I will be able to communicate something worth receiving.

The mind allows for the possibility of perception.  From the mind arises perceptions of form and emptiness.  The idea that I am hung up on is that there is no difference between form and emptiness - they are equivalent.  The fact that we are able to perceive them makes them exist in a certain sense, but not a real sense, since we ourselves are not self-existent and impermanent.  The assertion that keeps being made by Buddhist scripture, if I'm understanding it right, is that everything is empty and that the nature of the universe is true emptiness.  Everything that exists, however temporarily, exists due to a cause.  My mind is somehow affected by something which appears external, and then becomes internal because of my perception of it.  By perceiving it, I objectify it and internalize it.  An object I perceive may appear separate from my physical body, but this clearly does not mean that it, or my body, exists independently.

In a sense, my mind is a mirror, and I only have access to the images that appear in it.  The source of these images is the mystery.  However, because I only have said access, I cannot be convinced of the reality of anything.  I have only my mind's interpretation of what it perceives.  So, to comprehend, or maybe, apprehend, the true nature of things, I cannot rely merely on my mind.  This is sort of what I've been hammering at in the past... the communication between one being capable of perception and another.  I think at one point I assumed that the true nature of reality was an unknowable summation of the perceptions of all individuals, but this assigns value, however minute, to each individual perception.  These perceptions truly do not represent reality.  The mind is able to synthesize them to reflect reality.  Seeing things from every living being's point of view at once, if possible, would bring one no closer to the apprehension of what is real than one's own mind already does.

I wonder whether all things that exist only exist temporarily.  This is the impression that I am getting but it is really hard to accept.  If so, it certainly doesn't make sense to get too attached, or even attached at all, to anything.  Yet, we are all already attached to everything else, as we are all part of the one "fabric" of which everything consists.  I exist, but I do not self-exist.  My existence is not at all apart from your existence, from the existence of my ideas or your ideas or from any other thing that can be said to exist.  We "see" differences between our bodies, our forms, and those of others, so we discriminate.  We discriminate to very minute details and make very wide-affecting decisions based on these tiny discriminations which are, really, delusions.

Somebody told me once that Buddhism is about what's in your mind, not about what you, as a person, do.  That is nihilism.  The mind produces karma.  Karma leads to the creation of our bodies.  Depending on what type of karma your mind creates, your next body, or form, may be one thing or another.  Hating the world and escaping into emptiness is not practicing.  Since we are all the same, in order for one of us to escape suffering, we must all escape.  We must help one another in whatever ways we can, without being discouraged from doing so by knowledge of our delusions.  We must help ourselves.  To use the fantastic human mind only for one's own benefit is actually self-destructive, because the idea of self-existence is a delusion.

Thanks for reading, if you did.  I feel better now.

just the sort of nonsense of which i am capable an experiment.

I tried to put on aftershave today but the bottle was empty.  I tried to smoke a cigarette but all i had left was an old half-finished one in my ashtray.  I kept waking up from the cold all night because i promised a display at the aquarium that I would use a blanket instead of turning the heat on.  I took an hour nap before leaving my friend's house last night because i wanted to go to sleep right away.  I tried to plug in my dead ipod just to see if maybe it would work today.  Yesterday I wore slippers to the convenience store and i might do it again.  i need to take my medication before bed instead of in the morning - this is critical.  Animals are unfortunate because they can't hear the teachings of the buddha but the pet ones have as many pleasures available to them as the gods do.  staring at a television screen until my vision is blurry.  i don't want to be dishonest.

i thought of a commercial that could be used as an anti-marijuana ad: here's how it breaks down.  a kid takes a hit of a joint and then all of a sudden BOOOM!  thundering drums and screaming guitars as he has a moment of realization into the camera and starts to dress up in military gear.  He storms onto an air force base, then steals a jet fighter and takes off towards the nearest city, which he lets loose on with missiles and machine guns.  By now he is laughing hysterically and screaming, he "does a barrel roll" then spins into the ground and explodes....then the text appears on the screeen, green, saying harmless....it then fades into gradually invisible smoke particles.

I want to eat a handful of ham.

some bullshit

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/sobriety_checkpoint

I heard about this shit on the radio yesterday.  This is what I would call an unreasonable search/seizure.  Drunk driving is a danger, yes, but... safety at the cost of all other things?  You can't just randomly stop cars on the highway and test the operators' bodies for certain chemicals.  Or, actually, you can.  While this can, by some argument, be justified as a reasonable policy, what is next?  Cars drawing and testing people's blood before they can start a car?  FUCK this.  I may just be in a bad mood but I've pretty much had it with the attitudes that allow this type of policy to be legal.

Responsibility cannot be forced upon people.  No matter how hard the government tries to force people into making "good" decisions it will never succeed.  There are ways around any human-imposed law or rule.

I mean, if they need someone to clean all the shit off of the Constitution, I will be happy to do so.  They should just ask.

a legitimate concern

Mostly, in this blog, I've tried to be impersonal and only let things about me come through by conjecture and inference.  Today I'm going to throw that aside and talk about something that I think about and that has been an impediment to me in, well, following my dreams I suppose.  Some of my best friends know about this concern but I want to share it more generally.

There's this song.  It's called "Baby Please Don't Go".  It's a blues tune that was written and recorded in 1935 (by Big Joe Williams) but has been done again by literally dozens of notable artists.  The first version I heard of it, and the one that was stuck in my mind, was done by Van Morrison.  It's a groovy song.  Download it.

Anyway, the reason I bring up the song is that many white bands/recording artists, namely in rock, have made lots of money ripping off songs by unrecognized blues musicians from the depression.  These songs were an expression of the misery that accompanied living in such a hard time, and specifically, living in that time as a black man in the south.  This is a feeling that no white person, then or now, could really understand or relate to.  While it's American music, distinctly American, it seems (to me) quite presumptuous and egotistical for privileged white men living in the 1960s (a time of significant gains in social freedom and an economically successful time) to use these songs for their own profit and pleasure.  There seems something terribly false about singing such a song in front of a crowd of screaming fans, having an uproariously good time, and making no mention of where the song came from.

Of course, covering songs is a ubiquitous practice.  And there's nothing wrong with it, I suppose.  Well, maybe there is, but that's not what I'm talking about here.  It only seems unjust that legitimate artists, expressing the deepest and most painful of emotions, should live and die in poverty while years later others live on the high hog by riding their creativity.

Now, as a fan of rock and roll, I must here recognize that if this practice never happened, there would probably be no rock and roll.  That would be a shame.  I guess what's really sticking in my craw is the fact that people (myself included) know the much later covers of these classic, standard songs, and don't know where or who they actually came from.  I remember hearing Rolling Stones Let it Bleed for the first time and being really into the song "Love in Vain", thinking Jagger and Richards were brilliant, and so on - it was some time before I discovered the song was actually written by Robert Johnson.  As I mentioned earlier, it seems to me that it should be the current artists' responsibility, having the people's ear, to educate as to the roots of their craft.  Of course, these artists pay lip service to the pioneers when asked their opinion, but they don't make it their business to give credit where it is due.

One thing I love most about hip-hop is the fact that in a given song, you can and will hear pieces literally taken right out of other songs.  This seems to be a very self-conscious recognition that hip-hop is a building process and every new composition relies on and is influenced by everything prior.  However, the same sort of thing tends to happen where stuff is taken without really any credit being given, so that new fans don't know where they beats they like so much actually come from.  This is not the fans' fault, of course, but it still seems wrong somehow, in a way that is deeply unsettling to me.  [Particularly heinous examples of this can be found, where a large piece of an old 70s groove or something young people don't know is taken and is pretty much used straight up as the beat for a song.  I have a certain person in mind but I will continue to suppress my anger on this subject.]

So yeah, stealing other people's songs, blah blah blah.  This certainly is not the legitimate concern I am talking about, I am just building a case.  I am getting to my actual concern now.

I am a young white man.  I have lived a life of privilege, and, if I'm truly honest with myself, luxury.  I have worked to earn some of these benefits, but mostly, they were bestowed upon me by fact of my birth.  I am very lucky.  Extremely lucky, to have grown up and lived in the place time and skin that I have lived.  While people who know me know that I am truly troubled and have seen legitimate depths of depression and mental sickness, I have been given everything a person could reasonably ask for.  I am Ivy League educated.  I am from an extremely safe and clean suburb in New England.  My parents have been extremely kind and supportive to me my entire life.  I have never known abuse or exploitation.  I have (very) rarely been looked down upon and treated as an inferior person, and I have only because I have rubbed elbows with the absolute elite of this country and of the world, really.

I love hip-hop, and when I say that I mean that the music moves me in a way that no other music ever has and I have love for all the people who have worked so hard to build it into what it is today.  I have used the music so many times to cheer me up when I felt bad, to make me think when I was uninspired, to make me feel strong and tough when I felt weak and vulnerable.  Ever since I started to really listen to it, to shake off rock and roll to a certain degree and start to pursue it as, truly, an obsession, I have wanted to be a part of the music and the community.  Guys like KRS-One, MF Doom, Big L, Ice Cube, Del, B.I.G., Mos Def to name a few, they are my heroes.  I idolize them.  But, one of the things I enjoy so much about them is not just, or not so much, their technical and vocal abilities but their ability to speak darkly and sincerely about their own experience and be striking at society from an oppressed position.  Coming from difficult circumstances and emerging successful, intelligent, insightful, and eloquent, it's awe-inspiring.  I will NEVER EVER be able to accomplish what they have.  

That said, I want to be an MC.  I have a knack for language, some affinity for music, and can hold down a stage.  I am already in a hole in the sense that I've only really been into the music for less than 5 years and have been trying to write raps for even less than that.  The giants, the guys who are really good, have been knee deep in it, or neck deep, since they were kids.  I think that I have meaningful things to express, but meaningful to whom?  When you MC, you're not part of a band.  You are literally putting yourself, or your character I guess, out there for everyone to see and judge and being judged is one of the scariest things in the world to me - BECAUSE AS A WHITE MAN I HAVE NOT EXPERIENCED THE CONSEQUENCES OF BEING JUDGED.  

Whoo.  Sorry.

So anyway, if you're going to MC, you'd better have something to say.  Every time I write something, I second-guess myself.  I can't tell you how much material I've thrown away because I decided either right away or later that it was self-indulgent or ignorant.  I have always been my own harshest critic but I feel like when it comes to something this important, grown man business, it is necessary.  Do I deserve to even hold the microphone?  I don't know.  

One thing that people I've spoken to about this have told me is that as long as you're honest and love the music it's hard for people to hate you.  I'm not sure, but that's fine.  I most especially don't want to end up hating myself for my expression or what it could become.

OK.  That's it for now.

1st step, get on the horse. Next step, stay on the horse.

Now that I'm not working at my job anymore, let me talk about my job without breaching my confidentiality agreement.  I am specifically not going into the detail I could, as most or all of my readers are looking for an introduction into the subject, and the less I say the less chance there is that I will incur legal penalties for my writing.

DCF (department of children and families), formerly known as DSS (department of social services), provides custodial care for children from abusive or otherwise dangerous families.  I will hereon refer to DCF as "the agency".

The above mentioned custodial placements are, to provide an incomplete summary: foster homes, group homes, and residential treatment programs.  The agency also solicits adoption for their advocated children.

Residential treatment programs, used for the children with mental health problems and behavioral concerns can be either for those who are repeatedly unable to socialize in a foster/group home environment or who have specifically been brought up on some criminal charges.  Those convicted of crimes are sometimes sent to DYS, the "juvenile justice agency of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts" (prison), in other cases they are sent to secured residential treatment facilities.  Those awaiting trail on a crime for which they have been indicted are most often placed in these secured treatment centers as they cannot (really) yet be committed to DYS and the agency, while retaining custody of them, will not newly submit them for foster care.

Residential treatment programs or, to the kids and direct care workers, simply "programs" provide a structured, scheduled daily lifestyle with therapy services and incentives for good behavior/investment in treatment.  Long term placements also contain schools, where the teachers cater to the various levels of education the residents have achieved.  While the classrooms are small, the teachers are run ragged attempting to address all the different academic issues of the residents.

Being in a residential treatment program means, for the adolescent, twenty-four hour supervision by direct care workers.  These individuals maintain the daily schedule, correct problem behaviors with specific program instituted consequences, assist with the day to day needs of residents, provide feedback, and ensure the safety of residents through searches and sometimes, physical management.

I was fortunate to work in a setting, which I will obviously not name here, that had a long-standing and comprehensively structured discipline system.  All communication was very clear, professional, and when necessary conforming to a powerful and directive language.  Residents that have been moved through multiple programs are usually experienced with physical management, either in observation or through personal experience.  

Every attempt is made to convince residents, and literally put them in a good place, to make good, healthy decisions that will foster their progress through the program and not compromise the safety of themselves, other residents, or staff.  However, for kids who have never known a disciplined, structured environment and who have often been brought up on charges involving the harm of others they sometimes see no other option than to physically act out.  

While physical management is by no means the main job of direct care workers at a program, it is the job on the minds of all staff at all times.  In these settings, the safety of clients is the number one priority, and when a resident becomes a danger to himself or others, it becomes necessary to physically restrain him.

I would like to speak about the tactics and practices involved in management but I believe that doing so would violate my agreement.  I am fairly sure that I can say it is done in such a way as to cause as little harm as humanly possible to the client.  

Moving on.

Treatment programs often have specialties, working with clients who fall into a certain category of mental health issue or criminal offense.  For example, there are programs who will specifically deal with psychotic patients, others who will specialize in dealing with, say, sex offenders.

Working with criminal populations, generally, a main goal is to help the clients/residents develop empathy.  This is an ability that is generally developed during childhood, but, for children who have had to literally fend for themselves, in terms of getting the necessities of survival, other concerns overwhelm this socially necessary development.  Of course, the development of empathy does not prevent criminal behavior, as empathy is just a recognition of the feelings/perceptions of others.  Allowing this recognition to affect one's decisions and actions is what prevents criminality.  So, a final step would be helping the kids become less ego-centric.

With juveniles, especially juvenile delinquents, especially male juvenile delinquents, often anger is the only emotion individuals are comfortable expressing.  Obviously, this is a huge impediment to therapy, and understanding that anger is only a surface sort of symptom of other emotions is crucial to self-awareness, something that many residents almost completely lack.

In my time at work I interacted with individuals who committed some horrendous crimes.  The thing that always struck me about my work was how easy it is to relate to these people even if you are somewhat disgusted by their actions.  It is a reminder of one's humanity and of the instincts that ultimately drive all of us.  I found myself asking at times, was I really that different from this when I was 14?  Different enough to justify these people living in custody and me wandering free?  What more experienced professionals have reminded me is while the feelings and motivations are sometimes the same, the difference is that socialized people have the coping skills and the "conscience", to use a non-industry term, to not act on the occasional destructive urges all people have.

OK.  I'll be back to this.  I've just lost my train of thought is all.

Filing (here goes)

"Times getting tough, gotta sign for unemployment"

-Hieroglyphics

Brackets for pure meta-commentary.  Parenthesis for examples or diversions within the subject.

I tried to file using the teleclaim center last week, but the wait on the phone was more than a half hour and they directed me to call again. The center opens at 8:30 AM, I am attempting to be one of the first who calls.  I figure while I'm waiting on the line I'll put something here.  You know I'm unemployed for real when I'm coming back to writing in this internet journal thing.  Plus I had a request to write more and my weakness to flattery is obscene.

I intend to write about love; its targeting, its application.

When you tell someone you love them, what exactly is it you are saying you love? [I just tried calling again, still not open]

When you tell someone you love them, do you mean that you love every part of them?  Do you mean you love their mind as a whole?  Their body as a whole?  What is it that is the most essential part of an individual that draws feelings (and other things I will attempt to explore) from others?

Let me first explore the idea that when you love someone you love every part of them.  I have an immediate problem with this idea.  If you love every bit of a person, from their eyelashes to their fingers to their toes, does this love become fractured if a part of them changes or disappears?  In the most benign example, say you fall in love with someone and shortly thereafter they cut their hair.  Do you love them less?  Is your love compromised because part of the person you fell in love with is now (albeit temporarily) gone?  What if they had a facial piercing and they took it out?  To cite a more serious example, what if a loved one is in a traumatic accident and loses, say, their legs?  Is a fraction of your love, that was your love for their legs, now gone?

I will allude to a future issue by asking what if they merely lose the use of their legs?  Do you love their legs less because they no longer respond to the person's mental commands?

Anyway.  Due to the questions noted above, I find this way of looking at love to be problematic.  [I am making a lot of typos along the way that I am missing.  I am out of practice.] I am willing to believe that some people view love this way, and it is certainly a recognized phenomenon that relationships sometimes break up because of, say, the loss of a limb in one of the partners.  However, I doubt it is true that these breakups occur because the relevant person loved the leg and their love is diminished, rather, the implications of living with a missing leg on day to day routines and concerns makes the relationship difficult and less desirable.  [No dice, by 8:33 AM, the wait to talk to a representative is over 1/2 hour.  Like calling a radio show when they're conducting a giveaway.]  This is interesting.  Perhaps when you say you love someone, you mean you love them for what they bring to the relationship.  First, let me dispose with this first idea completely.

If you love every bit of someone, you are not going to love them less if they, say, clip their toenails or lose a single hair off of their head.  At least, I think enough of us would not that it is fair to dismiss that extreme view.  However, I don't think it's so far from the way that a good chunk of people deal with love (or at least view it in an idealistic sort of way) that it is a ridiculous proposition.  To be more general, if you make a commitment of any kind to a person, I don't think it is fair to suggest that part of your vow or commitment is directed towards all of their fingers and toes, their hair and their skin.  Skin cells are coming off of us constantly.  Anyway.  Moving on.

I'm going to work on a more cynical and scientific idea.  Say you are willing to grant and cope with changes in the individual's body, but, what you love about them is still purely physical and mechanical.  You love their "body" in the sense that you love their physical appearance (the way light bounces off their form to create an image), the way their brain produces neurotransmitters in order to produce what you experience as their personality, the way their voice sounds (or the way their larynx is constructed to produce a sound), the way they smell, the way their skin feels, the way they taste.  This is a bit complex, but, the idea is that you love how their physical body works with the world to produce all the sensory manifestations you can experience by interacting with them.  I suppose, well, I know, that this view could extend to loving the way they make decisions, their motivation, the way they emotionally respond to events.  As a (mostly) scientifically minded individual, I have difficulty poking holes in this idea.  Let me start by saying that perhaps if you love a person in this way, you are neglecting the fact that what you love is the way that you perceive all the sensory information you are receiving from their body.  In other words, you don't love their smell, you "love" the way their smell affects your sensory organs and changes your affective state.  You don't love them at all, nor do you love the physical methods of communication that allow you to experience them.  If you take this view you must grant that what you are enjoying is the experience, not the other person at all.  Perhaps only the object of love can produce the combination of stimuli that you believe produces "love" in you, and perhaps you are willing to sacrifice yourself to preserve them so that this combination is not compromised.  This is becoming difficult so let me use an example in an attempt to deal a death-blow to this idea.

Say your loved one wants to go to an italian restaurant for dinner, and you want to go to a japanese restaurant.  If you insist on going to the japanese restaurant, the consequence may be that you perceive "dissatisfaction" or "anger" from them over the course of the night, that they may restrict your access to their sensory information.  This is displeasing because you enjoy the sensory experience they give you more than you enjoy the sensory experience your sushi produces.  You may even regret not going to the italian restaurant so as to have avoided these consequences.  In this case, though, does the other person's experience of the event affect you at all?  Does it matter to you that they are emotionally affected (negatively) by the facts: 1) they aren't eating something they like or 2) you were not willing to compromise your own desire to please them?  Since you love only the productions of their body, it is unlikely that their experience of these feelings would bother you.  

An alternate view of this would be that you "love" their emotional state because it is generated by their body and you want that state to be positive and pleasing to them rather than negative and displeasing.  But - what are you (am I) referring to with the word "them"?  Their consciousness (which is arguably an entirely biological production)?  

OK, this is getting really hard, especially considering that there is really no satisfying definition of consciousness.  I am going to go to the dictionary, one of the few external sources I use in the blog, for this.

Of course there are several definitions.

1. awareness of one's own existence, sensations, thoughts, surroundings, etc.

2. the thoughts and feelings, collectively, of an individual or of an aggregate of people

3. full activity of the mind and senses, as in waking life

4. awareness of something for what it is; internal knowledge

5. concern, interest, or acute awareness

6. the mental activity of which a person is aware as contrasted with unconscious mental processes

7. the mind or the mental faculties as characterized by thought, feelings, and volition.

I've tied a fucking knot for myself here, but, I am an Eagle Scout, I am excellent at tying knots.

So.  The scientist espousing this view of love "loves" the other person's consciousness, their thoughts, emotions, and....ah, fuck.  Anyone who takes this view of interpersonal relations probably would never use the word love.  Empathy for another person involves having another person's emotions affect your emotions, your thoughts, your decision making.  I don't understand how, if you "love" the biochemical construction of a person's brain, you could even be conscious of the substance of their emotional state.  Someone espousing this view certainly couldn't claim to know what the other person's emotional experience might be like.  Maybe my limited understanding of science is impeding me here, but I'm tired of dealing with this ridiculous viewpoint.  Fuck.  I can't knock it down.  

Alright.  Struck out.  Trying again.

Say you understood neuroscience, biology, chemistry, physics, whatever, so completely that you could scientifically rationalize and explain the interactions between your consciousness and another's and think (or feel, or make decisions appropriate to the belief) that a specific interaction you undertake can be accurately labeled as love.  

I don't understand this point of view, especially considering that the definition of love is far more complex than that of consciousness.  What I want to know is, for a person who is in this position, who has scientifically proved their love for another to themselves, could they grant that a person with a less developed understanding can experience love?  If the person they "love" does not have such a developed understanding, could they grant that the other is capable of loving them?

[I am fucking sick of this, and it is the reason I stopped writing before.  I throw out all these ideas and they are so god damned complex that I can't come to a thesis or testable statement based on a synthesis of them.  I can't imagine that anyone will get anything out of this blog post other than a profound confusion, or at best fascination, with the operation of my psychology.  It must be clear that I have difficulty believing in anything.  And yet, I do have beliefs.  That is what this is about, challenging these beliefs and then seeing afterwards if I still hold them.  Let me just go ahead and say what I believe love is without having completely logically justified my belief.  I can't expect to dismiss science and postulate a rationally viable option in its place, at least not in the span of a single blog post.  Before I jump into this, let me say that while I didn't list the definitions of love, I did look it up and several of the definitions claim it is purely sexual interaction and that I cannot stand for this kind of definition.]

I believe that love is a desire beyond all other desires.  It is an exception to the term desire that proves the continuity of all other experiences called desire.  Whatever well-being means, it is a wish for the well-being of all conscious entities.  It is not entirely selfless, as it must include at least some desire for one's own well being as a conscious entity.  To have this desire, one must recognize and place a large value on the subjective experience of all others.  

I think this kind of "desire" is different enough from, say, the desire for a candy bar that it deserves a separate category in language.  

I suppose the question is, can one love and at the same time particularly wish for the well being of a specific individual or group of individuals?  If you love, does telling an individual person that you love them even mean anything?  This is what I struggle with and all the rational arguments are just ramblings that attempt to logically justify something that is unjustifiable for a human being.  Our genes are non-living compounds that hold the design for a living being whose "purpose" is to promote and ensure the continuance of the genes.  If such a being acts merely to promote the existence and prosperity of others while doing nothing to reproduce itself, is it a genetic failure?  It has to be.  And yet it is not a failure in the minds of all other beings.  Which is it more important to serve - our genes, or all conscious beings?  

Love is service.  Love is denial and acceptance.  Love is conflict.  Love is sacrifice.  Love only means something to others inasmuch as it promotes volitional practice.  Love must be chosen and it must be chosen over instinct.

If you can help me complete any of my ideas or add to this please do.  I need help.  I apologize for providing such a flawed account and for not tying up all the ends I left hanging.  I am exhausted, and I have only been awake for two and a half hours today.