After getting on for sixty years of life I have come to realise something.
Some people (me for example) aren’t really driven to any great extent by anything internal (for which I am grateful) there is some stuff there but it is all fairly low level.
Some people are, and it varies from person to person what that thing is, it could be sex, it could be booze, it could be drugs, it could be body modification, it could be making money, it could be being famous, it could be a cause, it could be risky behaviour, it could be almost anything.
There is enough evidence of behaviour modifiers, TG in cat piss for example, whether they be parasitic or chemical or physical or other, that it isn’t a big leap to stand me next to Bill Gates and say that an important difference isn’t the billions in the bank, it’s how they came to be, Bill was obsessive and driven from puberty onwards, I wasn’t.
Thankfully for Bill and many others his obsession was fairly benign, he wasn’t driven to be a Madoff for example.
Of course being driven to do a thing doesn’t mean you are any fucking good at it, it just means you can’t leave it alone… I know someone who has spent the last thirty years (we’ll call him Joe Smith) throwing all his spare time and money at Joe Smith Racing, and the truth is he is as fucking useless today as he was when he started 30 years ago, he came 4th, once, years ago when the rest of the field has a massive pile up and there were only 5 finishers, #5 has a broken track rod and finished on a rim and sparks.
Yes, Joe is driven to compete and to try to win, and 30 years of abject failure hasn’t dampened that one bit, none of it holds a candle to the prospect of not racing any more while he is still physically able to, that’s what scares the crap out of Joe.
I know other people who were driven the same way to the poker table, others who were driven the same way to fucking, others to owning clothes, and to be fair to Joe 30 years of winning wouldn’t have helped him any, he can’t resist the game, the winning or losing isn’t the issue, the being a player or a spectator is.
The Joe’s of this world, and there are a fuckton of them out there, are automatons, the only darwinian aspect to them is there is such variety in the demons that drive them, all the racing drivers will get killed by the tsunami, all the microlight pilots will survive it, but individually they are incapable of adapting and learning and overcoming.
Genetically speaking it is the males of the species, XY, that are responsible for genetic evolution, the wimminz, XX, not so much, so it’s no wonder we can easily identify the driven in the wimminz so much easier.
The males like Paul stand out because being males they will channel Spinal Tap and turn that amp up to 11, because they can, so it’s the males that have the vinyl LP and 70’s stereo equipment emporiums, the comic emporiums, the workshop full of obscure machinery, the collections of every game cartridge ever made for the 2600, the model railways, and so on.
Guy I know, just a working stiff, he’s into RC planes, but his RC planes run jet turbines, each one costs more than his old car, and each one needs a major and expensive rebuild every 3-500 hours, he laughs, he knows it’s insane, but he doesn’t care.
Then there’s me and machinery and tools, they are all toys to me, I’m still 7 years old really, it’s fucking great…lol
But me and many others, it’s not an obsession on the side that dominates our lives, I play with my toys enough to earn enough money so I don’t have to get a proper bring job.
Joe has a proper boring job he works all hours at so he can afford his obsession.
Bill Gates had a job that was his obsession, and against all the odds he didn’t burn himself out and die of a heart attack at 30, so even if he hadn’t founded Microsoft, BG would have been a very rich man, because his obsession was really business and making deals… he just happened to be a fairly talented hacker too.
I was fortunate in many ways that sex was never an obsession for me, I could want it as much as the next guy, but I could be distracted from that want by something interesting, and I could ignore that want and push it into the background if it just wasn’t possible (sailing oceans on small boats on your lonesome or with one other guy who wasn’t a fag either..)
I was unfortunate in many ways because riding motorcycles was an obsession for me, caused me a lot of trouble, and took 20 years for it to work its way through my system, I’ve got a mint harley outside I haven’t swung a leg over in 4 weeks, it calls to me every day, but other shit takes precedence, which would never have happened 20 years ago.
I could say the same about drinking or doing drugs, at one point I was a fucking demon for it, but I got it out of my system, so I don’t think I can class myself along side the like of Joe, who it just never gets old for.
2017 I learned something new about myself, I accidentally dosed myself up with a drug that had side effects I wasn’t aware of.
http://www.ehealthme.com/ds/acyclovir/libido-decreased/
Bottom line I used to wake up with a partial stiffy every day, but I haven’t had a “hammer a nail into a board” stiffy for six months since I started taking it… I stopped taking it a month ago, and there are gradual signs of a return to normality so I guess that shit is fat soluble too.
Here’s the funny thing, I’m not sure I actually miss it that much, the closest example I can give is something else I have mentioned here before, years ago, pissed off with dentists ass raping my wallet, I elected to have a full dental clearance, it took years for my brain to adapt, I knew where they all used to be and it felt odd they were no longer there, and that’s about as close as I can explain the loss of libido.
I met another guy who had the same symptoms, it was incredible, he’s popping Viagra like M&M’s and is on testosterone patches too, the loss of his throbbing erect manhood is a direct affront to his whole idea of self.
Of course in my own case, I have a scientific mind, sure, the meds were a contributing factor, but the fact is there are a bunch of other environmental things (got a new air filter coming for some of the machinery, up till now been breathing that shit in.. plus COFFEE!!!) , and there are a bunch of mental social things (bitchez be getting unfuckable) so it’s hard to find a smoking gun, and I’m always a bit leery of side effects, testosterone patches can promote asshole cancer in men etc etc.
Taken as a part of the whole scheme of things and general health and wellbeing, I can’t say the loss of libido troubles me much, gawd knows my cock has gotten me in enough trouble fucking psycho skanks I’d have been better off avoiding, so to sum up this is why I say I was never driven by demons
I’m not the Led Zep tribute band that can only play stairway and black dog.
But I do see around me so many automatons driven by demons, and not a single one of em has a fucking brain in their head, which makes sense, no point having a functioning brain if you are just gonna do the same shit all your life no matter what.
And of course when we talk about society and culture and civilisation and technology and war and collapse, we have to remember that we are talking about collections of individuals, most of whom are driven by some demon or another.
I actually know someone who when being presented with the possibility of the USA basically being wiped out by Yellowstone is looking at his collection of certified genuine touched / worn / used by the king himself elvis stuff as something that will vastly increase in significance, since by his reckoning 83% of that “important genuine artifact” stuff is in the USA, and it will all be destroyed, and yes, he is driven by the elvis demon.
I think, with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, that some of the scrapes and some of the skanks I did get involved with, I would have avoided, had I considered the whole thing about being possessed from the perspective I currently hold.
An impossibility I know, but an interesting technical mental exercise.
