1-28-08 A thought before the State of the Union address

There is an idea of a Sean Daily, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory, and though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense that our lifestyles are comparable, I simply am not there.

I recently took a survey of what I know and what I believe and found that everything I believe in – with a passion, with even the fanatical devotion of a suicide bomber – are things that people have told me to believe in. All I know, all I believe… what of it is truly mine, and what isn’t? How much of me isn’t just conditioning and Pavlovian reflexes? And I have to answer: not much. Maybe zero. I have this chilling feeling that, behind these black iron bars that’re shaped like Sean Daily, there’s nothing. The situation’s so bad, in fact, that I can’t express it in my own words, but only in the words of a Hollywood screenwriter.

This post may seem goth and emo, maybe even a little disturbed, but it has relevance. We’re coming up on the State of the Union address, and then Super Tuesday, which will probably determine, once and for all, who’s going to make the run for the White House. And after that is the 2008 election – very important, possibly the most important in recent history.

This question of what you and I believe, and whether you and I truly believe it, or whether we believe it only because some ad agency or pundit told us to believe it, is going to be of critical importance to our nation and our species in the coming months.

America, and by extension the world, is sitting on multiple ticking time bombs: Social Security, the federal debt, billions of dollars in defaulting loans, global warming, a military demolished and exhausted by nation building and guerilla warfare, etc., etc., etc. The only way we as a species can defuse these time bombs is if we see them with eyes clear and unfettered. If we let others guide our responses to them the way a teamster guides a mule team – with blinders and muzzles – we’re screwed.

Your neat thing for today are these questions: What do you truly believe in? Why do you believe it? Who told you to believe it: yourself, or someone else, someone who may not have your best interests at heart?

Who are you?