Humpjones

Fake It Until You Make It: A Manual for Teens, Part 1

Posted Apr 24, 2007 10 comments

It’s not easy being too smart. You look around you and it’s a panoramic wasteland.  Your parents, like nearly every adult you’ve ever known, are living dead flesh robots who bitterly resent the fact you still have a soul and a mind.  Even your close friends act like drugged herd animals.  Your television proudly tells you there is no escape anywhere, that this simpleton culture virus has already conquered the planet before you were even born.

I am still more or less exactly the same panicked, overwhelmed and goofy 11-year old kid I always have been—yet somehow, people don’t see that when they look at me. Weirder still, if you got a group of five people to spend 20 minutes deciding what kind of person I am, you’d get 5 different answers.  Although, based on previous research, it’s safe to bet that all 5 of them will mention my lustrous mane of chest hair.

So how do I do it?  Is there even a central “me” doing it?  Well, friend, the answers will shock you. I have great news for the youth of today: the secret of success is so simple, you’re already doing it.

Think Cosmically, Act Globally

We all come across the One Book in our lifetimes, and it’s different for all of us, which is as it should be.  For instance, when I read The Monkey Wrench Gang, or Still Life with Woodpecker or Fight Club, as much as they gave me a rush and made me desperately thirst for a life that crazy and real, none of those books were written for me.  It wasn’t until I was researching Aikido that I found my One Book, which is called The Art of Peace.  It put a great deal of my daily stress into a cosmic perspective I never fully recovered from:

The Art of Peace is the principle of nonresistance. Because it is nonresistant, it is victorious from the beginning. Those with evil intentions or contentious thoughts are instantly vanquished. The Art of Peace is invincible because it contends with nothing.

Do not concern yourself with the right and wrong of others. Do not be calculating or act unnaturally. Keep your mind set on the Art of Peace, and do not criticize other teachers or traditions. The Art of Peace never restrains, restricts, or shackles anything. It embraces all and purifies everything.

One of my best friends in high school came across an old self-help manual called Mind Magic and he’s been kicking life’s ass ever since.  A buddy of mine in Brazil discovered something called The Dokkodo, which is only 21 sentences long. 

Listen to Uncle Tom

...most people start out by imitating. Slowly you develop your own voice. I like vocal word stuff. But I don’t always write with an instrument, I usually write a capella. It’s more like drawing in the air with your fingers.

Most of the things you absorb you will ultimately secrete. You know that.

You take something in and that’s just what happens, whether it’s Jack Teagarden or Bo Carter or Memphis Minnie or Barbecue Bob. It’s all out there and available for you to enjoy, absorb, and be nourished by.

Which is a pretty great thing-- somebody did something a hundred years ago and it lasted three minutes and now they’re gone and everyone who worked on it is gone, but it’s not gone. It’s still just as fresh as it was the day it was recorded. I always find that interesting.

Learn Thy Archetypes

Here’s a couple names I wish I’d caught up with sooner: Marshall McLuhan, James Joyce, Carl Jung, and William Irwin Thompson.  All of them are valuable reading material, because they all approach the core concept of archetypes from different angles—cultural, psychological, artistic and mystic.  It’s not like you don’t have time to study up on these guys, because if you’re actually in high school and you’re still reading this, you’ve probably been sleepwalking through classes for at least 5 years now. 

When I am cold reading you, and I make a prophecy about your future, I’m not actually looking ahead in time, I am only predicting how you will react to the kind of situations that inevitably come up in any given week on planet Earth.  Everyone everywhere deals with bullshit over the course of seven days, and if you’re visibly tense and agitated odds are you won’t cope with it well.

Get over your “rational” phobia of Astrology...it’ll happen eventually, just let it go now.  Astrology is exactly like rap or country music—98% of it is pure horseshit, but damn, that other 2% is pretty good. I believe I have never dated a woman who did not read Rob Brezny’s Free Will Astrology column, and over the years I have been consistently disturbed by the levels of casual accuracy with which he can nail the general themes of my Taurus-ass life.  Remember though, that’s not an endorsement of Astrology, or even evidence that Astrology is “real” or “true”.

It’s remarkable how many humans have achieved miraculous results with verifiably false belief systems.  It’s important to consider that the force behind human belief could be more important than the actual contents of those beliefs.  If the Universe will bend the rules to accomodate any focused human belief, no matter how absurd, you need to choose your role models very carefully indeed.

Bottom line: the biggest problem that humanity faces is humanity’s own power. The worst part is, this is not even a new situation.  This has been the same repeating drama that every civililzation has fought against, and so far they’ve all lost.  The work of the four authors I mentioned is valuable because they studied these larger cycles of human culture, and found patterns within them. 

So if it’s all been done before, over and over and over again, where does this leave you?  Is there even any reason to keep living when you realize there’s at least 20 people who are almost exactly like you in New York City alone?  I say HELL YES THERE IS.

Tomorrow we will take a look at how to achieve your life goals and use your sexuality as a precision tool and a blunt object.

Filed in: Zeitgeist

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