This is Part 2.
Part 1 is
here
Since I've written the first installation in the Book of Halism series (now available in paperback from Bantam) a few of you have likened the guide structure as a sort of religion. Well, I'm here to tell you that it's far from being a religion, because no matter what you may believe in, Halism has a calling for you. Atheists and agnostics pay special heed, for life could take on new meaning if you hear me out. I myself am an atheist. I do not believe in God, or any higher power, or any supernatural force. I won't be asking you to change anything about your beliefs; all I ask is that you hear what I have to say and perhaps incorporate just the more cerebral elements into your daily life. Yes. That's it. Now tune your mental receiver to the "Hal" frequency.
I am in control.
You are in control.
The most common question I receive from those who believe in a form of afterlife when I tell them that I don't believe anything happens to me when I die besides blink out of consciousness and start to rot is, more or less, "How do you get up in the morning and live your life when you have nothing to look forward to when it's over?"
My answer for them may make you pause and think a little. Given that the only plane of existence is the 'Now' and that all we have is the moment and the memory of moments past, there can only be two goals one could hope to acheive. The first goal is simply pleasure in the moment. If you do not feel pleasure, then you are wasting your vastly limited engagement with your beating heart. The second goal is to exist beyond your own demise, in the only place you can; the memory of others. This is done by influencing your fellow people enough to where they will, at the very least, miss you when you're gone.
Exactly how you influence people to get them to remember you is entirely up to your imagination. I will let you in on how I figure it to go, though. You didn't think I would keep silent when I could easily banter on for another paragraph or two, did you? No, you didn't. As well, I will tell you that the only two forces that will affect your memory as it is mapped across the hippocampi of others are those of "hurt" and "help." As a bonus, if you do enough of either, you can possibly live forever.
To be dealt the greatest honor; to be inscribed into the world's history books, one has to do enough hurt or help to affect the lives of enough people to get mention. When they refer to the act of sculpting someone as a statue as immortalization, THIS is what they meant. Granted, I'm not quite sure they were talking about this exactly, but it sure works in my book. You don't all have to grasp for immortalization; after all, there are only a select few from each generation that the historians deem worthy enough to torment middle school kids in social studies class with for centuries to come. It is quite acceptable to remain a legend to your family and friends. One who is never forgotten, though they have been gone for quite a while. That is my "afterlife."
Note: Here come the more cerebral parts for you to digest.
Pleasure is not always what you'd expect. If it were what you are thinking right now, I probably would have ended my misery years ago. No, to truely enjoy life, in my opinion, you have to find more ways to enjoy yourself than the ol' nudge nudge wink wink. I find my pleasure through observation. I believe how I approach it can possibly help others to, at the very least, oil the teeth of their cogs. Pragmatics are the most powerful tool in communication I know. With a firm grasp on how they work, one hardly needs to speak a word or make a gesture in order to be understood. Going through the steps of developing first your observational tactics, then your pragmatic skills will (and you can quote me) make you a better person. (By the way, if you're too lazy to look it up, a really easy way to refer to pragmatics is "reading between the lines.")
I'll say this in layman's terms: the human brain is designed to cut corners through the use of what we refer to as "instincts" and "human nature" along with a lot of more subtle cheats in order to limit brain usage when processing common daily sensations. The reason for this is, if you were to process through your conscious every single bit of data that your sensory receptors receive, you would overload. Good things, these little shortcuts, eh? Well, the flipside to it all is that if you rely too much on what all these filters tell you to process and mentally take note of, you become nothing more than just a human animal - also known as "AOL subscriber," "Starbucks Customer," and "Cult Member." I'm aware that by simply being a member of this site, many of you are some degree above such ranks, but the true nature of where you stand in the mental heirarchy of your community has yet to become apparent to you. Why? Because you have to know what to observe.
Knowing that your mind conveniently limits the sensations that you perceive gives you the power to turn down this very mechanism; sort of like by knowing that someone is going to pick your pocket, you can cover your pocket up to prevent the filthy bastard from stealing anything. You just have to make a point to observe things that you normally would not. In hippy terms, it is expanding your mind. The difference is: you're not stoned out, sitting in your basement with the sound of Jerry Garcia echoing through your ears - you're fully integrated into active society, viewing it and experiencing it as it happens. There are nuances to the whole thing... in fact, I really haven't told you what to look for. I suppose that will be the wildcard of my lesson. Can't give it all away, ya know?
This brings me to my final point in today's passage. I intend to hype the importance of pragmatics even more. I also wish to warn you that whatever sleep deprivation you may experience as a result of indulging yourself in the practice of Halism is... not my fault.
As with everything else on the Starbucks menu, pragmatics comes in all flavors and sizes and tastes really bad. I don't suggest ingesting such a concept. Instead, sniff it... smear it around on your face... yeah. It's simply the key to knowing what people mean when they communicate something. I'm not referring what your girlfriend means when she says, "We need to have a talk." What I mean is more to the tune of picking up a subtle, unspoken joke. Being able to jump to conclusions correctly based on the observable clues that are apparent. To the programmers in the audience; think of it as debugging a real life situation.
My intention is to shed light on the notion that if more people sought to truely understand everything that takes place before their eyes (on a secular level; don't get all "know the ESSENCE of the banana" on me.), then there will be more people in the world who are smarter and more accepting of others. Most importantly, there will be less irritated tech support representatives.
Later, tune in for Part 3: The Asshole's Guide to Contentment