the real problem

first a little politics, before i get to the main post. there is a bout of verbal diarrhea going around washington, d.c. first president bush says that our troops are going to stay in iraq until after he leaves office and complete withdrawal will be up to future presidents. this would mean the earliest troops can withdraw from iraq is january 2009! what a stupid thing to say! but he isn’t the only one saying stupid things. hillary clinton, of all people, said something quite stupid, regarding a bill that would make illegal immigration a felony:

"it is certainly not in keeping with my understanding of the scriptures," clinton said, "because this bill would literally criminalize the good samaritan and probably even jesus himself."

what the fuck was she talking about?!? jesus was an illegal immigrant? look, we all know jesus was a member of the popular front for the liberation of judea, not the judean people's liberation front! but he was a native of that land! born in bethlehem, in the occupied west bank. it was illegally occupied by the roman empire, imperialist crusader army. we all know that the roman empire was in violation of several u.n. security council resolutions but did not care. emperor caesar augustus ordered an illegal invasion of germany, the worst strategic blunder in military history, with the exception of bush’s current war in iraq. the roman empire refused to acknowledge that the league of nations gave the united kingdom a mandate to rule over palestine and transjordan! arrogant fools! but jesus was an israeli citizen; he carried his israeli passport for years when he was in exile in egypt from israeli king herod’s murderous goons at the mossad, who killed all the firstborn sons in bethlehem as collective punishment for the terrorist activities of the popular front for the liberation of judea. he was lucky menachem begin and anwar sadat opened up diplomatic relations between israel and egypt, because otherwise his israeli passport would have been invalid in egypt and he would have been an illegal immigrant. but what hillary clinton just doesn’t get is, joseph and the virgin mary had filled out all the requisite paperwork for travel visas for themselves and jesus to go to egypt, and had it notorized in triplicate by a roman proconsul and faxed to the head office in rome. and since jesus was just a baby at that time and had not yet joined the popular front for the liberation of judea, he didn’t show up on caesar augustus’s state-of-the-art new terrorist watch list, which had originally been proposed as a security measure by julius caesar but not enacted for years because a brilliant orator of a senator named cicero filibustered the bill, claiming it infringed upon the civil liberties of law-abiding roman citizens and that it would change it from a republic into an empire. anyway, when joseph, mary, and jesus were in egypt, it was lawful because the pharaoh (acting with the advice and consent of queen nefertiti) had enacted a temporary guest worker program for jews, which some outspoken critics such as moses derided as “slavery”. moses actually led a delegation of jews from egypt on a 40-year fact-finding mission in the desert, funded by taxpayer dollars, the result of which moses died before he could reach israel. anyway, joseph, mary, and jesus were all beneficiaries of this plan, and all got excellent unpaid work experience while in egypt helping to build pyramids, to pad their résumés. their presense in egypt was lawful as long as they did not neglect their pyramid-building duties and showed up for work on time every day and didn’t take unnecessarily long breaks. they were fortunate not to be severely injured or killed, because at the time egypt had no worker safety or child labor laws, ever since the last pharaoh broke up the pyramid builders labor unions. anyway, my point is, the stuff hillary clinton said is just as ridiculous as everything in this paragraph.

and there is a christian man in afghanistan facing the death penalty for his religious beliefs! i thought we defeated the taliban! if we can’t defeat the islamofascists by conventional means, we will be forced to use unconventional means instead. if they don’t free that man and repeal sharia law, i say we ought to invade afghanistan and overthrow its government, a second time, just to show those bastards whose side god is really on. hamid karzai had better shape up and reform his damn country, and stop letting activist judges legislate the death penalty for apostasy. the real problem is the educational system in the madrassas over there. they need “no child left behind”. they need to become a pluralistic open society with freedom of religion and a secret police that “disappears” people with no accountability. the real problem is all the lobbyists in kabul using money to buy the politicians. the only reason they have sharia law in the afghan constitution is osama bin laden arranged for some taliban lobbyists working for him to pay off general rashid dostum to use his influence to have it put in there. ok, so maybe i made some of that up. but we shouldn’t let them execute a man just for being christian! that’s almost as bad as the spanish inquisition! and nobody expects the spanish inquisition!

so anyway, i figured out the real problem i have, the reason i have panic attacks. i met with my psychologist today and got some real insight into this, along with thinking about it on my own a lot. my panic attacks are caused because my personality it split into two distinct, equally important halves. one half of my personality is logical and wants success and wants positive change and for things to improve, and it is very methodical in its thinking but it never accomplishes much because the other half constantly undermines it. the other half of my personality is emotional, very anti-change and pro-status quo, and very oppositional towards other people, and it always seeks short-term pleasure and avoids short-term pain, in very habitual and repetitive ways, and when things don’t go its way, its way of throwing tantrums is to actually make me have panic attacks. it is not very logical in deciding when to throw these panic attacks to undermine my logical side; it just does it whenever it feels threatened. and whenever i am making positive progress, another way the irrational anti-change side undermines me is by tempting me with habitual things i like to do for fun, to distract me from my progress, and ultimately to get me re-addicted to just doing things for short-term fun that i have done in the past. i am constantly having a great internal battle between these 2 sides of my personality, which have a lot of disagreement. this is basically the way the mind of everyone with asperger’s works. we all have a part of us that is constantly seeking to undermine any attempts at change, out of sheer emotional discomfort with the idea of the consequences. in the past, i have recognized this split personality of mine but not properly understood how to solve the problem, thinking that one side is clearly right and the other side is wrong, and that i could somehow destroy that part of me that irrationally opposes all change. but i have had a sort of epiphany about this. the real problem is not the existence of my emotional, pleasure-seeking, irrational, anti-change, habitual side. that is half of my personality, and it is the more interesting half! it has many good aspects to it besides the obvious bad ones. what i really need to do is find a way to reach some accomodation for both sides of my personality, so they can both get what they want and feel satisfied. i think i can strive for success in a way that does not cause undue change to occur without warning, and if i always keep in mind the concerns of my irrational side, and treat them seriously in my conscious mind rather than dismissing them with contempt, i ought to be able to find a way to function as a cohesive whole. what i really need is a common understanding between the 2 sides of my personality, and a unification of thought, purpose, and action, behind one shared vision for how i ought to live my life, rather than 2 competing opposite visions. my 2 sides have been at war for too long and i need to find a way to reach peace. i need to understand that the constant efforts to undermine positive change stem from a genuine concern i have about how change is unpredictable and dangerous and outside my comfort zone. there must be ways to undertake change thoughtfully and carefully, to make it very clear to myself that if i change my mind, i can perfectly well go back to the old way of doing things, no harm done. i need to take the risk out of the equation, and make it a win-win for both sides rather than a zero-sum game where panic attacks and temptation are used to prevent any progress. i can see the good in both sides of me, and i can see how they can work together on common objectives. and hopefully this will take me out of the infinite loop of being a night owl who plays video games all the time and never gets anything done and eats junk food and is unemployed. i must focus on reversible positive change rather than irreversible positive change, because anything irreversible would cause far too much anxiety for that part of me that hates change. i still remember how much i hated graduating high school and college, because those were both irreversible changes i had no control over. and there was no way i could stay young forever and stay in high school forever and never graduate, not that i would want that, just that i like keeping my options open. just being told that i have graduated and have my degree and shouldn’t come to class anymore, that is highly traumatic for a habitual person like me who hates change. that is probably why i hate death so much and have such a strong fear of it, because it is the biggest irreversible change of all, and i hate even the tiniest irreversible changes. i am a perfectionist and if something is done wrong i always want to go back and fix it until it is perfect, and what frustrates me more than anything are the things in life where that does not work because time is 1-way. that is why i hate time, too. i hate everything about time. the way it keeps going by, without consulting anyone. the way it never turns around or questions what it has done, and keeps going, without apologizing to anyone for all the problems it causes. i love games because in games you can start over and play again, as many times as you want, and time is totally reversible. that is how time should be in real life, but it is not, and somebody ought to fix it, but that would violate all the laws of physics. and that is what i hate. i hate that the universe does not bow to my will and change the laws of physics to accomodate my personal wishes. when you write a document with words in it, you can go back and change it, and edit it, to your heart’s content, until it is as flawless as a gem. that is how everything should be, according to my view. and my real frustration with life is, it just doesn’t obey the rules i would prefer for it to obey. i feel like an animal trapped in a zoo, with no freedom. the laws of physics and the fundamental nature of reality are so constricting, people naturally want to just escape. my favorite version of reality is the one hindus believe in, with an eternal cycle of reincarnation. i would love for that to be true! it would be ultimate perfection! far better than the depressing vision the monotheistic religions have, of just living one life full of irreversible change, and having an ultimate outcome that can never be corrected. imagine spending all eternity obsessing over everything you did wrong in the finite amount of time you were alive. that would be torture! but that is what someone like me would do, even if i ended up in heaven. that is why i cheat in almost every game i play. it is the only path to perfection, because i am too fallible to have the skill to easily win every time, and cheating in a video game makes you like a god, in total control of the virtual realm of the video game. if i give my soldiers stupid orders, it does not matter, because they are invincible. that is ultimate victory! when you do not even have to try, and you can just, on a whim, have a single soldier destroy an entire enemy base and not take any damage at all. or your character can know every spell that exists and have the best equipment that exists and be level 99. there are many games and in each one ultimate perfection is different, but i play every game the same way: maximize the chance of success so it is as close to 100% as possible, using any means at my disposal. that is how i wish i could live my life. but the real world does not have any cheat codes, or god mode. i am stuck in this frail organic husk, this human body, which is guaranteed to die no matter what, with a maximal lifespan of perhaps 120 years, but more realistically i could expect to live to maybe 80, if i am even lucky and healthy enough for that, which is doubtful. i feel like a passenger trapped onboard the titanic after all the lifeboats are gone. reality simply is not good enough for my ridiculously high demands. so, i must find a way to compromise, deal with things as they are, take chances, and end up losing in the end no matter how well i do in between now and then. i must find a way to be more realistic in my expectations, and unify my personality peacefully, so that i can become a success, in the short time i am granted the high privilege of existence in this fair and noble universe. the neurons in my brain are wired with a faulty circuit layout, and there is a critical system malfunction that i must fix.