Heath - USA
16 as of 2006

Dec 28, 2006

Hello Steve,

I'll make this as brief as possible. I am a 16 year old male in America 

(not proud of it, this postmodern version of Rome and Nazi Germany wearing a 
mask and pretending it's for love and peace and anything else to make it look good,

 and by mask I mean superficial charm that, as I've found over 
time, is not exclusive to sociopathy). But anyway, I wanted to respond to your 
recent "Emotionally Intelligent Soldier" posting, especially with the 
comparison of 
sports and competition as being not only a precursor, but also bridge 
to competitive mentality in wars. I wanted to tell you that I know of a 
singer who knows of this as well, and in case you haven't heard of him, his 
name is Roger Waters. If you'd like to know more about the futility of war, you 
can find it in many of his songs, in his work with Pink Floyd as well as 
his solo albums. The one I reccommend is "Amused to Death", in which it is 
revealed how television perpetuates this "competitive mentality" as 
well as its power of emotional manipulation. If you're not able to attain a 
copy of album, then I'd advise this site: 
http://www.rogerwaters.org/atd_about.html

One of the main influences to Waters' songwriting was the death of his father, Eric Fletcher Waters, who, despite being both a communist and 
pacifist, joined England in World War II, where he was killed defending the 
Anzio bridgehead (also known as Operation Shingle). Two songs under Pink 
Floyd detail this account, "Us and Them" (on Dark Side of the Moon) and 
"When the Tigers Broke Free" (currently, the latest reissue of The 
Final Cut). One thing I must note, though, in case you're not a fan of Waters 
or Pink Floyd, is that the style of singing and lyrics in many cases is 
that of sarcasm (e.g. the chorus to What God Wants, Pt.1, "What God wants, God 
gets/God help us all").

Within Amused to Death, he explores the desensitizing nature of 
television, and for me, created an epiphany that makes the cliche of watching too 
much television rotting one's brains eat its heart out. For What God Wants 
was the first song I ever heard from Roger Waters, and I listened to his 
music before I listened to Pink Floyd. I'd detail it for you myself but I'm 
afraid I'd ruin the album for you.

Sincerely,

Heath P.

P.S. I encountered your site, I first came to the invalidation page. I 
was aware of emotional abuse/psychological harassment before this but I 
thank you very much for putting it into precise and clear detail. I know now 
the effects and tactics of my own indoctrination center (school would be 
too clean of word). Thank you very much.

June 13, 2007

Hello Steve,

I read your journal entry. I read about how many people are programmed at
youth to think and feel about themselves in a self-destructive manner. I've
been there plenty of times, I fear I may be slipping back into it. To me,
it's not a matter of programmed thought, but rather old impulses.

A good example of this is Paul Schrader's character Travis Bickle (Robert
DeNiro) from Taxi Driver (1976). He's a 26-year old Vietnam veteran who, due
to his insomnia, drives a taxi at night in order to pass his time
"drifting". He proclaims himself as "god's lonely man", and indeed is a
lonely person. However, he does many things that keep him in this state, as
Schrader describes:

On the character of Travis Bickle: "When I set out to write the script I
thought it was about loneliness. As I wrote it I realized it was about
something a little different and more interesting: self-imposed loneliness;
a syndrome of behavior that reinforces itself. And the touchstones of that
kind of behavior are all kinds of contradictory impulses. Puristanism &
pornography at the same time...'I've got to get healthy' while popping pills
at the same time...That dreadful diet...It's full of these things that he
does to make sure he'll never get to where he's going...so he can reinforce
his own doomed condition."

That's what I could think of as a form of response. He sets himself up to
remain in the state he's already stuck in, sometimes knowningly but on a
subconscious level. Many people do that, I know, I have before many times.

By the way, do know you anyone who's ever been to Tranquility Bay? You know,
that island prison run by the WWASPS. Either way, extra W or not, it is (like
every other molested thing on this dying earth) run by the Wasps. Caucasian:
the real white plague. If you do though, let me know.

Heath

June 14, 2007

I'm tired of it. Too many pressures, too many people trying to take advantage
of me. That's how a lot of people try to control you when you're young, they take
advantage of things, the slightest gestures of kindness, and try to use them
against you. Taking you to eat dinner somewhere, or doing anything else for
you, as a gesture of kindness on their part without you asking them to, then
countering at some point as though you forced them to do it.

I get this from my father a lot. Other family members of mine don't help either.
My mother divorced the prick and left him because he was abusive but
turns around and expects me to go out and have dinner with him. I reply that
I don't want to, and she lays a mindfuck on me, "Well, I'd like to see you be happy sometimein your life."

This is invalidating of not only my experience with my father, but also her own.
She feels that if she dumps me on him that he will leave her alone. Come to think
of it now, I think my mother must have learned false sincerity from him during their twenty years of marriage. In a world this shitty, it's become harder and harder for me to even comprehend the possibility of children at all feeling truly happy. Then again, I guess
I'm just delving too much into the negativity again. Being trapped around a
lot of unnecessarily resentful jagoffs will do that to a person! Again I'm
sorry.

I'm beginning to not like myself very much again. I'm sorry if I've brought
you the same affect. I feel lonely, I feel weary, and I try to people around
me but either I'm not explaining it correctly or they just don't want to
help. Just an idea, but perhaps my mother is trying to shed me off, along
with her old husband, because every time I try to bargain for more time
before moving out to this fine place (where I find myself just stuck in this
room, feeling like a stranger to myself and to my own mother, and also to
"our" new family), she gets immediately annoyed and tries to guilt me by
muttering things like, "I'd just like to be happy for once in my life!" I
understand she's a hurt person, and personally, I think people like her
would be better off without me, or more succintly, vice versa. Again I
apologize for passing my pain on to you. I just wish this would
fucking stop, so I could find myself again. But nobody here wants to help
me, they're too busy fulfilling their own wants and needs. I'm tired of
spinning. 16 years of age and already weary, but I bet there's younger
people who're in worst shape than I am. I've feared of becoming just an
empty husk, without any hope, any dreams, any desire. Just like other
people, only worse. Nothing within, no thoughts, no feelings. Just a shell.
I hear a lot of people talk about the death or the destruction of a soul or
the murder of a soul, in which the amount of abuse a person endures manages
to crack their sense of self into complete disarray, to the point of being
beyond recovery. I'm afraid I may have reached that, again. But I know I can
change it, if I'm under the right conditions.

Again, I apologize if I've given you any pain in reading my shit.
That's what I feel like I've been writing. Shit. Just shit. Shit here, shit
in school, mainly because I wrote the way I usually wrote at home in school.
You see, I kept it to myself, but as some secret expression of
individuality, I exposed it at school. I did not like having to waste my
efforts on their shallow ponderings. It wasted my energy. The bastards.

Heath