Egoism and Arrogance

Hello, audience. It's been a while since I've written last. A lot has transpired; much more than I'm willing to post willy-nilly all over the internet. Let's just say that the entire structure of my world has been collapsing at a pretty rapid pace lately, and it has changed things a lot. There has been lots of confusion and hurt going around, and it seems that i'm to blame for a lot of it. But, despite all of that, I still found the time to sit down and read. And the book I read, ladies and gents, is one of my very favorite books.

Can you guess?

It's this one.

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. Close to 700 pages of amazing literature that draws a picture of Rand's philosophy, egoism. Now, before you all freak out and call me an egotist, let me explain what egoism is.

The philosophy revolves around placing the self as the highest thing of value in your life. All of your decisions and choices, everything you do, revolves around what you want for yourself. The idea is that you remain true to yourself and stay in control of your own life by refusing to submit pointlessly to others wants and needs. An egoist does not feel obligated to help someone less fortunate, does not feel obligated to give others things they want, does not feel obligated to give up anything. Unless they want to do so. Everything depends on their personal opinion. If they do not want to give a beggar change, then no one can make them do it. No amount of guilt or sense of duty can make them change their mind. They will not be swayed by the opinions of others, unless they decide for themselves that it is the course they wish to take. Egoism is about freeing your decision making process from other people and taking it upon yourself.

The idea is that people today sell themselves out and try to be who other people want them to be. They spend all their time trying to look fashionable and watch the right movies and say the right things to fit in with the people around them. It's all about being who people want you to be so that they will like you. Public opinion decides who you are and who you'll be in the future. And it makes me sick to think about.

I've have worked for several years now on developing myself as a person, and as an individual, set aside from the public opinion mindset. I am by no means a pariah in this, as plenty of other people strive to do the same. I don't think this makes me special. I just think it makes all of us who choose to live by our own rules much smarter than the rest. Because we don't live to please others. We don't live to make other people feel happy or comfortable or content. We live to make ourselves happy, to do things that please us, that make us feel comfortable or content. And that's all that matters.

The Fountainhead is about a man named Howard Roark, a modern architect in a world that doesn't want to move forward. He is an architect because he loves buildings and designing structures. He designs buildings based not on what will look pretty or please the public, but based on what is the most efficient design for the building. The shape is created by the rooms, and the rooms are created by their purpose. The entire building is shaped and designed to fit a specific purpose, and only to meet that purpose. No added ornamentation or additions that have no actual purpose. He dropped out of school after he failed most of his classes for not completing the requirements of the assignments. He designed the buildings he wanted to rather than the ones the professors wanted him to, simply because he saw no point in it if he hated how they would turn out. Roark is driven completely and totally by his passion for architecture, and nothing else matters to him but what he wants. This is the image of the egoist.

"Do you always have to have a purpose? Do you always have to be so damn serious? Can't you ever do things without reason, just like everybody else? You're so serious, so old. Everything's important with you, everything's great, significant in some way, every minute, even when you keep still. Can't you ever be comfortable--and unimportant?"

"No."

-Peter Keating asking Howard Roark

On the opposite side is Peter Keating, another architect who designs exactly what people want. In fact, his entire purpose in life is to please other people so that they will like him. He wanted to be a painter, but instead, he became an architect in order to please his mother. He sucked up to all of his professors so they would like him, graduated head of his class, and joined a big firm so that he could become famous. Everything he says or does is to please someone else. His entire self is empty, containing only a mirror, because that's what he wants to be. Exactly what you want him to be. He relies on Roark's ability on many occasions, because Peter isn't good enough on his own, and he needs help from someone who is.

Peter is what Rand calls a Second-hander, someone whose lot in life is to feed off of the ability of another. All he knows is how to be a parasite and devour the fruits of someone else's labors. He does everything and anything he can to be liked, because he has no self-esteem. He derives his esteem entirely from what others give him, because without them, he would be nothing.

Roark is the Prime Mover, or the force that creates the world. He is one of many over thousands of years whose sole purpose was to find what they loved in life and to do it to the best of his ability. They are scientists, architects, musicians, industrialists, tradesmen, poets, authors, engineers, people who create things for the sole purpose of having created something. They do it because it brings them pleasure, not because anyone told them to or requires them to.

"I often think that he's the only one of us who's achieved immortality. I don't mean in the sense of fame and I don't mean that he won't die some day. But he's living it. I think he is what the conception really means. You know how people long to be eternal. But they die with every day that passes. When you meet them, they're not what you met last. In any given hour, they kill some part of themselves. They change, they deny, they contradict--and they call it growth. At the end there's nothing left, nothing unreversed or unbetrayed; as if there had never been an entity, only a succession of adjectives fading in and out on an unformed mass. How do they expect a permanence which they have never held for a single moment? But Howard--one can imagine him lasting forever." 

-Steven Mallory, about Howard Roark


The Second-handers feed off of the Prime Movers, taking their creations and using them for their own purposes. They can not create anything of their own, so they must take from those who can to survive. Otherwise, they are lost, and their world would end quickly. The Prime Movers are the reason they exist, because without someone to create or produce, the Second-handers wuold starve and die out.

Egoism is about doing what makes you happy, about finding something you really love and sticking to it, no matter what. Throughout the book, Roark faces hardships and trials that test his resolve, but through it all, he never wavers, never falters, and never gives a single inch in the face of adversity. He is solid all the way through to his core, and it is beyond anyone's ability to break him, or to even know where to start trying. And it's not that Roark finds it difficult to stick to what he believes and do what makes him happy. It's just his nature. He can't conceive of a person doing anything but exactly what makes them happy. He doesn't concern himself with impressing people who don't matter or changing himself to make others comfortable. He's completely arrogant, but is completely innocent about it, because he doesn't do it on purpose. It's just the way he is.

Needless to say, I admire the hell out of Howard Roark, and I want to be like him. I want to be so dedicated to what I want from life that no other person on the planet can ever drive me from my course. I want to live for me, to do the things that make me happy, to reach my highest potential in life, and do if for no other reason but that I wanted it. I don't want to live to please others or to meet their expectations. Damn their expectations. If I meet them, then it was by coincidence while on my way to please myself. That kind of passion and dedication would make me unbelievably happy.

Now the downside to all of this is that it's incredibly hard to do in real life. Roark, as a fictional character, was written to be hard and cold all the way through. But in most real people, being hard and cold isn't something that comes naturally, nor is it something most desire. Arrogance and egoism are considered undesirable traits. I'm still confounded as to why wanting to make yourself happy is a bad thing, though the decision to consider everyone else as less important unless determined otherwise by one's own mind is less mysteriously undesirable. It makes some small sense that people are offended when their opinion is not taken into consideration. 

Here's the deal, though: Nine times out of ten, I genuinely do not give a crap what anyone else has to say about what I think or say or do. Those things are my own personal business, and outside opinions have little to nothing to do with it. So I don't apologize for doing things my way or for thinking or saying what I want. It's my right as a human being. I won't tread lightly in order to keep from hurting someone's feelings, and I won't refrain from saying what I think when I deem it appropriate. Within reasonable bounds of common respect, I will hold my tongue. But not every minute of every day. As an INTP, my personality type makes up a very small portion of the population, and I am therefore outnumbered greatly in everyday life. This means that in all but a very select few social situations, I am expected to submit to the way other people would prefer things be done. I have to do things the way others want in order to keep them happy and pleasant. But that's just not how things are going to go.

I'm not going to submit every single time I am faced with another human being so that they can be comfortable. I'm going to continue being who I am and doing exactly whatever I want, and everyone else can get out of the way or get stepped on. It's not exactly a nice or polite way of doing things, but I never said I was either, and I never intended to be.

"Every form has its own meaning. Every man creates his meaning and form and goal. Why is it so important--what others have done? Why does it become sacred by the mere fact of not being your own? Why is anyone and everyone right--so long as it's not yourself? Why does the number of those others take the place of truth? Why is truth made a mere matter of arithmetic--and only of addition at that? Why is everything twisted out of all sense to fit everything else? There must be some reason. I don't know. I've never known it. I'd like to understand." 

-Howard Roark
That's about all I have to say for now, audience. The Being Angry portion came without notice at the end of my discussing Ayn Rand's wonderful book because I'm sick of always having to submit and it was time for me to yell about it. If you haven't read The Fountainhead, I recommend it, though only to those mature and understanding of you readers. It tends to be dense at points, and there are some controversial and complex themes running through the whole book that must be read with an open mind in order to be understood fully.

So, until next time, be whoever it is you want to be without question. Good day, audience.

Polyphasic Sleep: The End and The Why

Hello, audience. Last time we spoke, I was feeling pretty enthusiastic about this whole experiment and its potential for success. And a few days ago, that was the case. But in the last two days, a few things have come up that have changed my decision to remain on polyphasic sleep.


Thursday went pretty well, and Friday was okay too, until I left my phone at my Raven's house. She lost her keys a few weeks ago, and she didn't have the house key that day because her roommate was coming home late, while Raven was going to be at work the whole night and therefore didn't need the keys. This meant that my phone was going to be stuck at her house till at least the next day and maybe longer. I can live without my phone, something I've done for months at a time before. I'm not addicted to the social interaction. The problem was, without my phone, I had no alarm system to make sure I woke up on time, in case my brain failed to wake me before the alarm like it has been doing of late.


I ended up staying over at Poncho's boyfriend's house so that I could have someone around to wake me up if I accidentally overslept. The midnight nap was perfect, and I actually woke up exactly 25 minutes after I laid down to sleep, no alarm needed. For the 6am nap, I set an alarm on the computer that would ring loudly to wake me up if I overslept. Unfortunately, it didn't repeat, and I didn't hear it when it did go off, and my brain didn't wake me up either. So I ended up sleeping for about an hour before waking. It continued downhill from there, as I overslept at noon and 6 as well. After the 6 nap, I had become incredibly drowsy, completely unable to keep my eyes open for most of an hour, and then lacking the energy to want to move for the time after that.


The drowsiness was rooted in sleep inertia, which is the feeling of wanting to go back to sleep if woken mid-cycle. You feel tired and grumpy and generally irritable about everything, something scientists have actually proven during lab testing. Subjects woken during REM felt refreshed and optimistic, while subjects woken during other phases woke feeling irritable, and reflected that with generally negative responses when faced with a fill-in-the-blank word exercise immediately after waking. The only way to avoid this is to wake up during the REM cycle itself or the natural waking state at the end of an REM cycle.

Me, perpetually, when I don't have enough sleep.

First in my decision to end the experiment here was the fact that I would have to be slave to some safety net, else I oversleep and set myself into a self-destructive pattern thereafter because of drowsiness and irritability. I was without my phone for 24 hours and the entire set of progress I made thus far fell apart in no time. But, as I said, this was not the only deciding factor.


My appetite has continued to be completely insatiable, and I am never in a place where I can eat to fullness at every meal. This results in either constant or near constant hunger, and then feelings of being light-headed and weak due to lack of nutrition and proper sustenance. A major problem, because it means that I must always have a full, healthy meal at hand, which is not always going to be possible. And, in the future, it would mean my budget for food would have to be massive in order to accommodate my food intake, which is a very undesirable end.


Third, and the most selfish of the reasons to call this experiment done, was the major changes to diet I've been having to make. Not only do I have to eat more food at strictly regular intervals, I had to eat healthier at every meal to maintain good nutrition. Lots of fruits and veggies constantly, less greasy or fatty foods, and more fresh prepared meals. All of which are not easy to keep at hand all the time unless you have a majorly inflated food budget, mentioned before. Alongside that is the necessity to drop caffeine or high sugar intake in all forms. No soda, no energy drinks, no coffee, not even most teas. I was limited to water, juice, and milk, or nothing at all. This limitation was the one that really caught me, as I really enjoy drinking coffee, teas, energy drinks, and sodas, and I was not about to convert to diet soda to compromise.


I will die before I drink diet soda instead of regular soda or coffee. 


I want you to hear that sentence in your head in the most serious tone of voice you can imagine coming from my mouth. Or, those of you who haven't met me in person, them most serious tone of voice you can attribute to the voice you have given me in your imaginations. I love coffee more than almost anything else I ingest. I love Mountain Dew in all of its flavors, and as proof, I actually co-founded a cult formed around the worship of its holy citrus-based deliciousness. And Red Bull flows in my veins, not blood.


So, at the end of everything, I really did enjoy the extra hours I gained during polyphasic sleep. I was achieving success in the adaptation, and at the end of only five days I was starting to wake naturally at the end of my cycles. I was not drowsy except for the occasions on which I slept too long or had to push a nap back so I could fall asleep properly. Polyphasic sleep worked for me, and my experiment was successful overall. But at a high cost to my personal choices. One of the blogs I read, and probably the greatest source of hope for polyphasic sleepers, was actually written by a person who had been a practicing vegan for many years before he began the Uberman sleep cycle, so his diet was already perfect for the kind of restrictions polyphasic sleep demands. I, however, am not a vegan and wouldn't ever consider the change.


I'm an egoist at heart, and my decisions are always dictated by what I want in the end. In this case, I want to drink soda, coffee, and energy drinks, and want to keep my diet the way it is, more than I want to pursue the extra hours of sleep everyday. And that's all that really matters. As happy as I was with all that time on my hands, I wouldn't really be happy if I had to give up some of the things I enjoy most in life. Call me hedonistic, but  I have chosen personal pleasures over discipline and a more effective method of time management. I could swear by Ayn Rand's Anthem, The Fountainhead, and Atlas Shrugged, and I've just decided that I'm going to blog about how much I love those works and her egoist philosophy very soon, as they form a large portion of my own core philosophy and worldview.

Somewhere deep down inside, I am Hedonism Bot.

There you have it, audience. Polyphasic sleep does indeed have its benefits, but only if you are willing to discipline yourself so far as to make it work. And I know that there are many out there dedicated enough to make it work. As disciplined as I would like to live, I really enjoy being chaotic neutral more. I could never be a lawful alignment, as all of the restrictions and guidelines I would be submitting myself to would kill the essence of what I really was. At the end of the day, I'm a lazy, selfish, egotistic, and arrogant soul, and you can be damn sure I'm happy that way. I wasn't going to be myself if I sacrificed my favorite things to get some extra time to do things I wanted, and therefore, I chose to stop trying.


So, till next time my dear audience, don't settle for what you've got if you think there's something better waiting for you, and don't compromise what makes you truly happy for something you think will make your life better. Stay true to yourself and who it is you really want to be, not who you think you should be. End of story.

"...What else am I supposed to stand on?"