Reflections of a Mad, Mad World: (Incriminating Commentary on the Insanity of Life on Earth)

Contents

WARNING-DISCLAIMER

1.   

Just for starters: Wild and whacky is our world

2.   

In the beginning…

3.   

Slippery slopes…

4.   

Suicide: When it all comes tumbling down…

5.   

Is it just me? Or is everyone on the take? (Part one)

6.   

Is it just me? Or is everyone on the take? (Part two)

7.   

Making logical sense of the madness

8.   

The twisted world of a young smart guy…

9.   

Here we go smashing our lives again…

10.   

Creating monsters (out of our friends)…

11.   

Head games…

12.   

What’s your sign? Who the hell cares!

13.   

Bits and pieces of a world…

14.   

Cows and bees…and people too

15.   

Waiting on a girl…

16.   

Fearful nights…

17.   

I am going to live some more…

18.   

I’m going to where? Hell? Oh no you didn’t say that!

19.   

A missing little car part…

20.   

We lose, we win, we lose again…

21.   

I know a special place…

22.   

Bogus organizations abound…just not this one…

23.   

My own, generic and personal, AA therapy…

24.   

The ethnocentricity of the human race…

25.   

Do you ever wonder why?

26.   

Break the mold that has your movements frozen…

27.   

Who can you really trust?

28.   

Crazy inequality…

29.   

What is a stubbed toe anyway?

30.   

A clear contradiction to chaos…

31.   

All my relatives and either dead or dying…

32.   

A life filled with love…

33.   

When will the chirping start?

34.   

Sworn documents do not make a marriage…

35.   

Putting health habits in their rightful place…

36.   

Great year…crappy year…

37.   

A flicker of hope…

38.   

Change is like a slow-moving freight train…

39.   

If I had but a week to live…how would I live it?

40.   

The mind and the brain, in dreaming form…

41.   

From where does this flow of thought emerge?

42.   

Looking out, looking in…

43.   

Relationships with women are like selecting bananas…

44.   

Where does our worldview come from?

45.   

The fear of God in me…

46.   

The insanities of war…

47.   

Back and forth I go…

48.   

More on my personally lamented Detroit Tigers…

49.   

In the sheltering land of delta down under…

50.   

The insatiable mind of Dante, tripping down to hell…

51.   

How fear operates in the human mind…

52.   

Here I go again…

53.   

Epicurus: Author of a positive way of life…

54.   

An Epicurean antidote to the madness surrounding us…

55.   

Sexual insanities…

56.   

What is going on down there?

57.   

I’m arriving all the time!

58.   

Reflections on a dreadfully lonely day and night…

59.   

Coming and going…all the time…

60.   

Who am I and how shall I live?

61.   

Be what you will be…

62.   

Mutt and the other mutt…

63.   

Happy endings only on occasion…

64.   

What’s a human body?

65.   

War and strife

66.   

Conclusion: Life’s a lot of stuff – who can argue that?

67.   

Final notes and postscript

Chapter One

My cells seem to remember way back when…

Chapter Two

The world got so much bigger!

Chapter Three

Re-thinking my informal education…

Chapter Four

This eccentric, eclectic man that I am…

Chapter Five

Think about it and you own it!

Chapter Six

Where is my happiness hiding?

Chapter Seven

Putting a frame around all of this!

Chapter Eight

I’m not such a sucker anymore…

Chapter Nine

Beware the professionals…

Chapter Ten

Friendships grow on friendship trees…

Chapter Eleven

Well what about sex?

Chapter Twelve

Beating back some personal demons…

Chapter Thirteen

Life in the slow lane…

Chapter Fourteen

Now I lay me, down to sleep…

Chapter Fifteen

The intricate reshaping of God…

Chapter Sixteen

I am not alone…

Chapter Seventeen

What should I do now?

Introduction:

The matter of getting up each morning…

Side 1a lyric – The Negative flip

Side 1b lyric – The Positive spin

Side 2a lyric – The Negative flip

Side 2b lyric – The Positive spin

Side 3a lyric – The Negative flip

Side 3b lyric – The Positive spin

Side 4a lyric – The Negative flip

Side 4b lyric – The Positive spin

Side 5a lyric – The Negative flip

Side 5b lyric – The Positive spin

Side 6a lyric – The Negative flip

Side 6b lyric – The Positive spin

Side 7a lyric – The Negative flip

Side 7b lyric – The Positive spin

Side 8a lyric – The Negative flip

Side 8b lyric – The Positive spin

Side 9a lyric – The Negative flip

Side 9b lyric – The Positive spin

Side 10a lyric – The Negative flip

Side 10b lyric – The Positive spin

…Some kind of Preliminary Conclusion?

Side 11a lyric – The Negative flip

Side 11b lyric – The Positive spin

Side 12a lyric – The Negative flip

Side 12b lyric – The Positive spin

Side 13a lyric – The Negative flip

Side 13b lyric – The Positive spin

Side 14a lyric – The Negative flip

Side 14b lyric – The Positive spin

Side 15a lyric – The Negative flip

Side 15b lyric – The Positive spin

Side 16a lyric – The Negative flip

Side 16b lyric – The Positive spin

Side 17a lyric – The Negative flip

Side 17b lyric – The Positive spin

Side 18a lyric – The Negative flip

Side 18b lyric – The Positive spin

Side 19a lyric – The Negative flip

Side 19b lyric – The Positive spin

Side 20a lyric – The Negative flip

Side 20b lyric – The Positive spin

Conclusion and summary:

Postscript:

IPI

Intermixt Press International

San Jose – Indianapolis

Books (to date) by Michael Jean Nystrom-Schut

Life Notes

Summer Letters

Earth Dwelling

Survival Thoughts for the Continually Depressed

A Quiet Stream

I Was Thinking

How Long Have You Been Standing Here, God?

Living the Waking Dream

Loving Sensual Exchange

My World: The First 50 Years

San Juan: Glimpses in Time

The Inquisition

Forty Songs

Bricks in the Wall

Keeping it Real in an Unreal World

Amistad

Mountain Peaks: Elevated Glimpses into the High Life

Evolution: Facts and Fairy Tales

Worldview 101

Remaking Michael

Reflections of a Mad, Mad World

What do you think?

Dedicated to mi novia, Alia

WARNING-DISCLAIMER

This book is designed to provide basic information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher and author are not engaged in rendering legal, consultative or other professional services. If such expert assistance is required, the services of competent professionals should be sought.

It is not the purpose of this book to reprint information that is otherwise available to the author/publisher or reader, but rather to compliment, amplify and supplement other texts. The reader is urged to read all the available material, and learn as much as is possible about life, tailoring the information to the individual path.

Every effort has been made to make this book as accurate as possible. However, there may be mistakes both typographical and in content. Therefore, the text should be used only as a general guide, and not as the ultimate source of information related to these topics. Furthermore, this book contains information that may no longer be either relevant or accurate, as much as we all would like to think our words and thoughts are timeless.

The primary purpose of this book is to educate and entertain. The author and publisher shall have neither liability nor responsibility to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused, or alleged to be caused, directly or indirectly by the information contained here.

1.   

Just for starters: Wild and whacky is our world

The world we live in is a totally crazy one. Imagine that we decided to put this place (earth) on trial. If earth were to take the witness stand – sort of like, in its own defense – I think that any prosecuting attorney would have little trouble making a case for life on earth as being…well, just that: crazy.

Put it this way: I would not wish to be on the debate team that had to defend this place as being altogether ordered and non-chaotic.

In a nutshell, so to speak, this is what life is – crazy, and mad…maddeningly crazy, yes! – it’s all of that, and more. All around you, it’s just such a thing as that. We had best know this starting out; it’s better to learn the truth, up front.

Earth in fact has always been this kind of a place. It always will be. And we actually have to live in it, too; there’s no going to another planet, just yet anyway! Anyone who’s spent some time here already knows that life has to be lived as best it can be – here on earth, and on no other planet, although we all know people who seem to be living on other planets!

I don’t want to be smug, about this being an easy thing to prove and all, so maybe I’ll just go about amply demonstrating the facts of personal world chaos in this book. Sorry to say, it won’t be the most difficult thing I have ever had to do.

And no, it doesn’t necessarily make me a doomsayer or a conspiracy theorist either. The truth is, it’s a place that is simply nuts. The reason I say that will become more and more obvious to you (and as to why I wrote the book about this madness) when you begin to read further.

…Now, in one sense of the word, it is sad to have to make the case that this is so much the nature of real life. On the other hand, let me be informed and knowledgeable about the life I am leading; I figure it’s my best chance at adjusting towards a potentially happy existence – if there can be such a thing as that.

But, you might ask, what purpose will be served in doing so? You might rightly lodge that question. Why write a book, after all, about the general madness of life? What will this prove? What good would it do? Won’t it just serve to reinforce a bad thing?

I choose to do it because it is a primary characteristic of life, and understanding and accepting it as that can simply make our lives a somewhat easier passage to endure.

Conversely, our failure to see this as our reality means that much of what we see and experience on earth is not going to make sense. Only God knows where this notion can take us, or lead to. It would be, to say the very least, a frustrating journey to endure.

Let me tell you this, about me: I used to not know I was crazy. Now, I know I am crazy. Was I better off not knowing? Or now, that I know I am a bit nuts – am I better off knowing it? It’s one of the classic (revolving) questions of all time. And if you are asking me, I think I will respond by saying that I would like to know. Give me all the news – both good and bad – and always, by the way, give me the bad news first!

When I thought about it, asking myself, Why write about such a kind of book? I concluded several things. To know the truth; to be able to live more in a world of reality; to find and develop skills for surviving – albeit, to thrive! These are reason enough, are they not? Go ahead, I told myself. These are my primary reasons for going forward in life.

I suppose I could write this book about how marvelous and magnificent and wondrous is this world of ours. It is assuredly those things as well! Who can deny that? And I have in fact already written several previous books about that reality, and in the future, I will most likely write more books about it – life in general, and God in particular, permitting I get to do that. At this time, this subject just sort of, came up to bat.

I think that in the interest of filling in all the pieces to a complete world view and personal philosophy of life (which I am trying to do in the course of my many books and memoirs) I thought some general notions of the madness of it all would be both fitting and appropriate.

…I am going to attempt to be fair-handed as I treat the subject material. Or at least, I should say, I will be that way as I know how to be that way. You may see me as being someone completely different from that by the time you are though. You might not even make it past the first few pages – to come to that conclusion about my attitudes on the subject.

You know what? That’s what makes us beautiful – these countless differences of opinion we carry around with us. At any rate, let’s begin our winding journey through some of this madness I’m talking about…we’ve got a whole lot of material to cover!

2.   

In the beginning…

I happen to love beginnings. They are starts to who-knows-what can happen!

Beginnings are good for us. We ought to be on the lookout for a way to start something new each and every day-and-night transition we undergo during life.

In God’s Genesis and Big Bang beginnings, there was chaos – plenty of it, in fact. He (or no one, if you are a scientific materialist) stirred the pot and got things moving. It had to be earth shattering to move and shake things up like that. What a gas, huh? (Ha!)

Whether you buy into the Genesis account (theory), or the Big Bang (theory), both represent wildly outrageous inaugurations into the process we ultimately have come to call Our not-so-simple life, down here on planet earth.

If you are, by philosophical nature, a Big Banger, you probably buy into this instant explosion whim, whereby everything just dynamited itself – somehow, and through some means – into an ultimately blooming existence.

If you say, nope, God moved his Big Hand, and here we are, now, then you might be a Genesis guy or gal – no compromise, end of discussion.

Which are you? Do you even know? You should at least have an idea. Don’t let anyone damn you with their faint praise of they seem to be a searching, open person, generally receptive to life. Rather, at least take a stab at knowing a few things about the world you are living in.

All of that is really off the topic…

Of course there is a world of other possibilities that live somewhere in between these two ideas of our first origins. These seem to be the polar opposites, though they’re probably not. We could argue on end about them too. For my purposes here, it doesn’t really matter how it all got started. Somehow, it did. That we know.

I can see the possible etiologies of both notions – and also those that emerge from endless origin myths, throughout the colorful and cultural history of Mankind. My point here is that if we got our start in the midst of such calamity (and most of the origin myths were/are that) why is it that we have come to believe that life should be this tranquil, peaceful transition towards a stated future bliss?

It’s never going to be that for us. Let’s get over that together, shall we? Sure, we can (and should) make our personal peace with it. But in doing so, we’re stupid if we think for a minute that it’s the nature of life to always be so comfortable and agreeable. Some of us think that if we are not happy and comfortable most of the time, then something must be somehow wrong. Not really, I say.

No, my friends, I think the real nature of life is more bent on disorder, not order. While the stars seem all complacent and cozy up there, we know better, now, than to think things aren’t frantic and wild each and every instant of our rotating and spinning existence. Put it this way – it’s a good thing we’re not up there in the mix of some of that…talk about a chaotic place to be hanging out! Deep space is often violent, and forever living in a tentative state of flux. Can you imagine the sucking power of a typical black hole?

Should earth – on a micro scale – be anything much different?

It’s like this: We’re on this weird trip. The planet is a convertible – flying speedily through space – with us hanging on for dear life!

This being so, we had better equip ourselves to deal with the ebb and flow of life by having at least the right mindset about things. What I mean to say by that is that our beliefs about the way things are will go a long ways in determining the outcomes of our countless encounters with life.

Beliefs write the script of our lives. They really do. So then…what is it that YOU believe?

Okay. So, you say to me, "Then why don’t I choose to believe in a peaceful, loving world? Won’t I get just that, if, that is, I believe it into being? Why don’t I just proclaim a resounding ‘no’ to all the madness, the insanity, and opt to accept the conjoined state of Oneness with the Great Maker of all that is?"

…Not going to happen – that’s why. It’s not the true nature of things. It’s not real life – that would be an unreal, not a real, world. We don’t live in such a place.

We can control some of our inner world. And we can even impact the outer world with our inner world. In reality, though, we’re never going to stop things from splitting apart at the seams, and crashing and burning to the ground as well. In sum, we’re never going to change the nature of life itself.

I want to live in as real a world as possible. Don’t you? This idea I am talking about here – it’s just a little baby step in that direction – to believe that it is nuts, – life here on earth…is crazy. This life is whacky. We’re tripping, straight up flipped out. It’s goofy what happens in our lives each day-night spin of the ball. And it’s equally cracked what is happening in the life of our great and wild Universe.

Go with the flow?

This is the flow.

It’s a mad, mad world.

And that’s what I want to obsess and reflect upon here with you, so hang on with me for some more of it. And let me also tell you that, along with the bad news, there’s good news that follows that. All is not exactly lost, in spite of the conditions that exist on this flipped-out space ball of ours…

3.   

Slippery slopes…

From the many mountain peaks of life, we can gain a completely reinvigorated view of the world any time we set our mind to just do that thing. In doing so, however, we must keep in mind the slippery slopes that are on all sides of the proverbial mountain.

Here we go with our first real metaphor…(if you read me much, you know I am a metaphor freak!)

But metaphor is metaphor because it works for us. I can suggest that I got up today, went about my business, won a few war games at work, enjoyed a good meal, loved on a loved one, watched a meaningful documentary that expanded my horizons and fell into a comfortable, silk-sheeted bed, only to lie there for the next five hours in the worry and wonderment of what I was going to do, and how I was going to do it, in order to make my life more meaningful and worthwhile.

Or I can say that I visited the mountaintop for the better part of the day, and then somehow managed to still find a way to trip and slip – slip all the way down, back into the wet, rancorous ravines – at the very place I remember starting the day out in the first place.

Life is a slippery slope. We are no doubt going to encounter plenty of resistance to life as we confront it head on. This calls for an all-out celebration of the happy, pleasurable things we can find in life. We flat-out need those things, in order to balance the other (crazy, mad, buggy) things that are here in tropical abundance.

If we have to drag that toboggan all the way to the top of the mountain, then that’s fine, but we’ll be damned if, when we get to the top, we aren’t going to have a very nice ride coming back down that mountain again! It’s the least we can do for ourselves! If life is indeed (the metaphor of) a slippery slope, then the least we can do is learn to enjoy the downhill fun of it all!

Mountaintop-valley encounters are par for the course in the big game of life. There’s no getting around them. It’s a yin-yang world, a two-dimensional thing in so many, many ways – and this simply means that we are going to be up one moment, and down the next.

Up and down we will go, and round and round as well. This is the true nature of life – like it, or not.

So, we accept life for what it is (and of course for what it is not). Acceptance is a key to it all. That’s fine. We’ll make the best of it. We won’t add to our troubles by compounding the odds – we’ll accept the hard reality that life is life.

If, for example, we live foolishly while we are in our twenties, do we have the common sense to know that our personalities will somehow remain intact when we get to our thirties, fifties, seventies and beyond?

There is a connection – and that’s what I am saying with this. Everything is interconnected, in fact. In a cause and effect world, and we are going to heap hell or heaven on ourselves, happiness or horror, and in the majority of the instances, it is we who do the choosing as to which it will be. The "bottom line is that cause and effect is no joke!

What is life? Life is both a beach, and a bitch. When we are going through the bitchy stuff, we need to deal with it as best we can. And when we are on the beach…damn it! Be on the beach! This hardly makes us hedonists! But so what if it does!

There’s plenty of bitch times – enjoy that bleeping beach, mate! Whether it is in Australia or in a mud puddle in your little back yard, become beach savvy while and when you can. And do it in the only time you have to do it – do it now!

…And oh yes, by the way – what gave hedonism such a bad name anyway? Do you know that many hedonistic philosophies suggest healthful, positive, ethical and prudent living in the interest of being happier more often? They’re not blatant pleasure seekers after all! I think hedonism gets a bad rap because we are so bent on whipping ourselves every time we think we are having a little too much fun. Me seems to think we have to find a way to subdue it all, you know, in the interest of God-knows-what… (I never did quite figure that last part out).

Why is it that we are supposed to be unhappy again?

We’ll talk a lot more about hedonism later. There are plenty of things we can say about it, and I think it will help us to do so. (That’s part of the good stuff that I talked about a few minutes ago).

At any rate, here we are – now – so what are we going to do about it? How are we going to live? How are we going to handle the many molehills that lie ahead of us? Shall we make mountains out of them? We’re used to doing that. Why not try something different – for a change.

…Yes. Let’s try something different – and different, for a change?