To the pure, everything is pure; to the base, everything is base.

and this still applies here. There is a light side and a dark side of sexual expression.

People whose sexuality is on the light side are simply very sexual beings naturally and wish to express it without stigmas or taboos as a normal, natural, sacred and good part of being human.

People whose sexuality is on the dark side are emotionally sick and inverted creatures who, in their quest for self-destruction, latch onto sexual behaviors simply as something their mind puts in the category of sick, twisted, bad, or disgusting.

In many cases, these people may even incidentally agree about one or two things, or behaviors, but everything behind it is a polar inverse of the other.

I think this mechanism also contributes to the observable phenomenon that individuals brought up in high-control, puritanical cultures tend to exhibit darker sexualities than those who are brought up in low-control, more sex-positive cultures. (please see frequently cited examples of Victorian England and Japan). Not only do these high-control environments steep people in a culture of guilt and self-deprecation like a tea bag, thus incentivizing the impulse to self-destruct, they give people a whole category of behaviors already pre-coded as inherently self-destructive, which nonetheless they also hunger for since it at least stems from normal human behaviors in some way.

It's a vicious cycle for these sick people, and it is exhausting for people in the first category to be associated with those in the second.

To the pure, everything is pure; to the base, everything is base.

At a closer look, this seems to be a paraphrasing of Titus 1:15:

Unto the pure all things are pure: but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled.

I have been doing a lot of thinking on this since. It seems to be true on many levels but also be somewhat paradoxical in a way that may be fruitful to meditate upon.

One place I think it can be seen: among people who seem completely inverted in their priorities and values. To them, the best parts of life, like having children or being part of a tight-knit community, seem like horrible evils to them.

Another level on which it is true is that everything done in light consists of only light. Done with a pure heart and clean conscience, very few things can truly be dark.

Many of the same actions can be good or bad depending on this. This is, on the small scale, the difference between a white and a black lie, or on a larger scale, white and black magic.

Obviously there are some things that definitionally cannot be done in the light (rape, murder) but if we ignore these types of definitionally evil acts, this becomes basically true of almost all actions.

This applies more to those who are somewhat spiritually conscious, but I think it remains true largely across the board.

When-e'er I find a moment here of clarity of mind I throw myself upon the ground and thus my hands re-bind.

For every step I carry on, I step then backwards thrice; Undoing progress most hard-earned to wallow 'midst the mice

I seem unable then to rise above my lowly base and then in cognizant despair I fear to show my face

For though I know how I should be and sometimes give a try I fear I'll never quite improve and then in squalor die.

I am aware how I should be I know what should be done but then through some base revelry I turn then from the Sun

I know the answer then is this: to keep me trudging on for though the arrows rain from the sky I must still face the Dawn.

What once was the realm of learnèd wizards is now in front of all of us at all times.

Most of us lack the arcane and esoteric knowledge to properly navigate all the world's wisdom. I myself only know enough to know I should be cautious and possibly afraid of it.

And, like a poor Hobbit exposed to the Viewer, we feverishly sneak off at night to look at it just one more time.

Even those who think themselves prepared cannot use it without being affected.

All instruments of evil are this way. The Orb and the Ring both.

Perhaps it's best to cast it all into the Fire?

I'm still nervous about opening up any of my machines to web traffic, but I am hoping to get this set up so I can access my server from outside my home network. Jellyfin in particular will be interesting, but there are many services I'm hoping to set up.

This may be overly ambitious, but I want to have Jellyfin, Nextcloud, Pleroma, Matrix, and possibly Kavita set up to manage many parts of my life.

This will either be fantastic, or it will be a disaster.

I have grown to truly loathe the modern and especially post-modern distinctions of “right” and “left,” which seem to mean less the further into them you actually look.

In modern parlance, the “right” wing represents the ideology of “power in the hands of the few,” that is to say, in a small, privileged class of some sort. Monarchs, oligarchs, elite, etc., that ruling society is a job for those of either certain birth or achievements exclusively. Generally this is also paired with rather restrictive social ideas, often enforced with disproportional violence. The “left,” by contrast, in Modernist thought, is the ideology of “power in the hands of the many.” That is to say, that political and social decisions are made by consensus, often as close to as directly by the citizenry as possible. Generally this is also paired with a rather permissive idea of social obligation, enforced as non-violently as possible.

As we moved into the post-modern era, these terms, like many others, lost their meaning as well and became simple cultural signifiers. People were “right wing” based on pop culture allegiances, media consumption, and aesthetics, and the same has become true of those on the “left.”

Even in the Modern era, when right and left-wing extremists held power in many parts of the world, these systems began to resemble each other more than either camp would like you to believe. The authoritarian right-wing systems needed strong popular support, creating in many ways left-wing policies for the “right people,” and left-wing governments resulted in a privileged class of intellectuals with the correct ideas and goals of the revolution in mind, and the policies necessary to keep these societies put together often mirrored the violence seen in right-wing regimes.

That being said, the “middle ground” of unfettered capitalism and consumerism certainly hasn't done us many favors, especially in the last two decades.

Especially within the globalist, capitalist society most of the world belongs to today, the relatively smaller distinctions between right and left are often adopted in a corporate-approved way, only based on aesthetic or pop-culture preferences rather than any real convictions or principles.

That being said, many of my ideas tend to line up with the “left-wing” paradigms, though not always. In addition, I think political ideology needs to be separated between utopian and utilitarian ideas. Many of my utopian ideas, were I able to design society anew from the ground up, would be quite different from the ideas I would implement in our current society if I had the ability to do so.

My utopian ideas are a topic for another article, so I'll take the utilitarian standpoint for this one. These prescriptions are for a world where societies have already broken down into liberal democracies for the most part. Frankly, I think most developments of the past several centuries were a mistake, but there's no undoing them now, is there?

So then, what are my ideas for our current society?

1. Free speech needs to be protected at all costs.

   • We really do need a libertarian protection of free speech. No matter what your goals are as a society, you cannot infringe upon this if you want free debate to occur. You cannot fall into the trap of any type of speech (with the exception of clear, direct threats) being violence or unacceptable. Even if you hate a certain idea and want it done away with, you don't do that by forcing it into the dark to fester. Let the sunlight clean it up. Suppressing an idea, as well, is conceding to your opponent that they are so correct that simply hearing the idea will convert people to that side.

2. The right to bear arms must be protected.

   • Not for hunting, not for home defense (though the right to do these things must be protected as well) but to make the governments of the world think twice about how they treat their populace. Even without any sort of organized action (though I do think militias should be formed to protect the people's interests) this type of thing makes governments at least think twice about busting down your door.

3. The right of consenting adults to arrange their interpersonal relationships any way they want must be maintained.

   • The government should have no say in how any people arrange their interpersonal relationships, friendships, or living situations. At all. Really, the government shouldn't have anything to do with marriage or anything of the sort. That is between people, their families, and possibly their religious institution.

4. The government must be explicitly Deist but without issuing preference to any particular religious group, and without discriminating against people without any religious affiliations or beliefs.

   • Government needs to be set up as if it is fulfilling a sacred duty to protect a nation and its interests, but the government should have no say in how people arrange their spiritual lives at all (unless some crime is being committed otherwise)
   • This Deism must however be of a perennialist and upward-oriented character which recognizes the Divine inspiration behind most world religions.

5. Political donations of any kind must be criminalized. Each candidate for a certain election should receive the same State funds as the others and only these funds. All political action groups and lobbying activity must be criminalized.

6. Political parties shouldn't exist. Over time these eventually diverge into diametrically opposed interests which no longer serve their constituents. This is an instrument for societal bifurcation and polarization which simply should not exist.

7. Corporations should not exist in any supra-national form. Corporations should exist in one nation and one nation only and corporations should not own other corporations or dominate a disproportional share of any market sector.

8. International organizations should exist only to facilitate agreements and peace among nations, and not act as governments above the nation-state. State sovereignty must be maintained for all nations.

9. The most stringent and strict requirements must be put in place for graduation from educational institutions. The fact that many students graduate from high school and college while being functionally illiterate is unacceptable.

10. All people should be entitled to a truly human standard of living, as well as equality of opportunity, regardless of race, ethnicity, sex, or association with any other person.

11. However, equality of outcome should not be guaranteed, and those who truly excel should be allowed to rise through society.

12. While government policy itself should be blind to ethnicity, race, sex, etc., it should promote a cultural image celebrating the differences among these categories of human instead of attempting to level them out and stifle the true diversity among humans.

13. The health of the social organism and the environment must be prioritized above all else.

14. Insurance (and possibly all money-lending) of all types must be criminalized. It exists only as a scheme of usury and should not be tolerated in a civilized society.

15. Community cohesion should be a priority of policy. It is a great tragedy of our time that people are alienated from their communities. Membership in youth organizations, religious institutions and fraternal organizations and orders should be encouraged. State-sponsored neighborhood activities (like block parties for holidays, etc.) should be implemented.

16. Societal values must be upheld (not like you think.)

    • I don't mean moralizing laws, I mean that society should be built to recognize strength is better than weakness, health is better than sickness, beauty is better than ugliness, regardless of how we define these terms more specifically. There should be no pity-party “races to the bottom” in which people compete for social clout by being the most wretched and pitiable. We can have differing definitions of these things, and they will vary spatially and temporally, but people should be attempting to be the strongest, healthiest and most beautiful they can be.
    • In addition, we cannot infantilize our culture to the ridiculous degree it has been. Children should be children, yes, but we shouldn't extend childhood into one's twenties or thirties.

17. An environment must be cultivated of accountability for one's decisions.

    • Circumstances obviously exist and can be extenuating. However, the accountability of the individual for their decisions is never absent.

18. Only those well-versed in civics and the law should serve on juries and yes, the default assumption should be innocence until guilt is proven.

19. For only the most heinous of crimes, capital punishment must be maintained.

    • This should be limited to the most disgusting of serial killers, the most brutal of rapists, etc. The overwhelming majority of crimes should never result in this.
    • However, it is a crime that we often house and feed the worst examples of humanity for decades after conviction.
    • In addition, the only capital punishments acceptable for a civilized society are hanging, firing squad, and possibly the guillotine. There is no place in a civilized society whatsoever for woodchipper fantasies.
    • As a provision: the judge who sentenced the criminal to death must carry the sentence out or at least be present.

20. Global hegemonies must be entirely eschewed.

21. Complete and total nuclear disarmament must occur immediately. Or, perhaps, total nuclear armament, to ensure complete mutually-assured-destruction and basically ensure nukes are never used.

22. Acts of great environmental destruction should be considered acts of aggression and constitute casus belli on the part of other nations.

Obviously actually implementing these changes would be an entirely different article, and how they would look exactly on paper and in policy is subject to change. There is no place you can draw a policy line without disenfranchising someone. Perfect laws and policies do not exist.

I'm sure I'm forgetting many changes I would make to democratic societies, but these are what came to mind as I was writing this over the course of several days.

Therein, however, lay hope: if it is all my own fault and my own doing, then it lies within my own power to rectify virtually all of it. I have never acted in malice or true evil – at worst, my most deplorable actions were simply functions of selfishness, laziness, or some combination thereof. Indeed, this means I can fix all of it with moral discipline and spiritual fortitude.

I have so many ideas, just as everyone does, but I'm bad at actually implementing them.

Should I start a vlog? Should I finish writing any of the novels I have begun writing? Should I just get a second job? Should I finally try to break into voice acting?

Sometimes these choices can be paralyzing.

I guess I need to just sort of pick something and run with it.

The highest of them: a high-minded Knight of Light: a man of ideals.

The lowest of them: A rutting beast of the wood; he's an animal.

The center of this is the well-grounded person: balanced and tempered.

At death's insistence The link of highest and low is completely cut.

The lower, of course is of the body itself it does not survive.

The middle, in turn is just the link between them. Its purpose is done.

Only the highest Transcends the moment of death, returning to Source.

You don't have to be a weird reclusive internet goblin who wants all your political opponents thrown in the woodchipper.

You could just..... not.