For as long as I can remember I have been trying to figure myself out. Usually I find it easy to figure other people out. Most people are very much the same and they all have similar motives, needs and desires. Sometimes however I do run across that person that is a little more complex and mysterious. Generally though, its an easy task for me to get a pretty good estimation of whether I can trust someone or not, or if they have good or evil designs. Yet try as hard as I can, when I look deep into myself, I find many more questions than answers and I am lead to think that there is nothing about me that I can put any trust in. Everything must be thrown into the pool of doubt.

I think I have a pretty solid and rational basis for my beliefes--or lack thereof. I am of the thinking that every human action is driven by selfishness. All deeds we do, whether they be perceived as good or bad, are selfishly motivated. Just as the serial rapist feels a selfishly motivated sense of empowerment when he preforms his evil act, the chaste and generous nun feels a sense of good and fulfillment when she preforms her good acts. I think that the nun, even if she protests, must eventually cave in to the realization that all her motives are driven by selfish desire. Hell, her religion itself is based on the selfish desire for eternal life and eternal joy. If it weren't for those rewards the nun would not have gotten involved in her faith in the first place.

There are numerous other examples I could cite just of the top of my head, but that is not my interest. I think I have made my position clear on human motivation. Humans are essentially narcissistic creatures who interact on the premise of an all-pervasive selfishness. Humility is a topical guise most often attributed to the perceptions of others; not the humble themselves.

Now I am then forced to examine the nature of the selfishness of my own actions. Just as the nun's selfishness manifests itself as a good, does my selfishness manifest itself as a good? Furthermore, examining the nature of selfishness itself, is it inherently bad, good or can it be both? When held up to the bright light of ideals, such as the prototype of the selfless god, is selfishness a treait of evil or is the prototype itself a mistake?

Then I come to the notion that all these questions are a result of the influence of others, and as such are based in another selfishness. But that also means that they are the product of concepts, and that everything around us is actually not real. Everything we build our lives around and for are things that do not exist. They are impossibilities. These impossibilities include the American Dream, the concept of Beauty, Democracy, God, Heaven, Hell, Happiness, Griefe, and many others.

Is it possible then that nothing at all is real? Certainly one could not live his life convinced that getting dressed in the morning was taking part in a fantasy. Yet the act of getting dressed in the morning is rooted in an unreal and impossible concept. No longer is it an act of self-preservation. In earlier times men had to dress to protect themselves from the environment. Now men dress to further perpetuate the unreal and impossible mandates of a Judeo-Christian/Islamic concept that tells us that nakedness is wrong. So then perhaps it is possible that although the clothes themselves are very real, the selfish motivation behind it is the direct result of an impossible and unreal ideal.

I wish I had the time and eduacation to elaborate more on all of these questions and thoughts. Even as I write them down they are stewing and shaping and hopefully gaining more focus. But what could be the point of this exercise in the first place? My quest to understand myself may itself be the pursuit of an impossible ideal and should suffer the same fate I relegated religion to: fuck it.