So, I never really thought of myself as being into BDSM in any real way. If I was, I would totally be a dom. I always thought. Until I finally got dommed, and realized that I'm a true switch. I just took two tests, one determining submission and another determining dominance. I found both stimulating in different ways, and I scored pretty high (70%) on sub, and about medium (56%) on dominance. This is not the result I would have expected a few weeks ago. But now...wow, the difference it makes being able to give in to someone. The freedom, and yeah, power it gives you to be willing to give in. To let someone else take the weight away. And then to take the weight from someone else when you feel strong...to have that give and take in total. The only way, perhaps, that I can feel honestly on equal footing with someone is if we can share that. If he/she is strong enough to take me down, and if he's weak enough to let that vulnerability show, and to let me take him over.

I've always been stronger than my partners. I'm not being cocky or anything, I just never met someone who actually had the honest strength of being to be able to take on all my shit and still love me. Now I do. Even though I don't have the relationship yet, and maybe won't, depending on what all comes out in the wash, realizing that I want to be with someone as strong or stronger than me, and realizing that exists....oh, good lord, it's the freest feeling in the world.

No matter what, BDSM and the philosophy of acknowledging power roles has made me really healthy.

Now I just need to get on SL and practice being a slave. I don't think my love interest wants a slave for very long, and I don't intend to make him be a master to me, except in specific moments. But I do need the outlet. So I'm gonna go be a slave, now. :)

On my last post someone responded by saying he thinks that people are inherently self-centered. I agree, but I don't necessarily think that has to be a bad thing. I think there's a big difference between someone who is an egoist (meaning putting oneself first) than someone who is an egotist (meaning believing that oneself is the most important being in the universe as a whole).

When I was about nine years old I had an epiphany. I figured out that selflessness doesn't really exist, and I figured out that everything in life is a choice. These two ideas have ended up being vital in building my own life/moral framework and world-view. First off, if we are indeed the sum of our choices, than choices must be made to benefit ourselves. Now, what that means for each individual person changes depending on the person and his/her (last time I do that, I disapprove of political correctness fudging up flowing narrative, but that's another post) own personal moral/philosophical framework. I think I'm the most important being in my own life. That can't possibly be false, given that if I cease to exist then I'll have no more of my own life. Therefore any decisions I make have to be decisions that I believe will ultimately make me happier, healthier, and generally better.

Selflessness doesn't exist. Because, simply, we are all people that live within our own consciousnesses. Even those acts that we call selfless must have some element of good for the person that does them. Even if there's no recognition, the knowledge that you have done a good/right thing gives one the feeling of pleasure and accomplishment that feels, well, good. So to do good things makes us feel good, therefore it's not truly selfless. To do something selfless would mean that a person does something that makes him feel bad in every way. This doesn't seem to be very intelligent or reasonable to me. Especially since I don't, honestly, believe that anything someone would be willing to do wouldn't give them some sense of pleasure in some way. It might not be lasting pleasure, or it might be purely intellectual or moral pleasure, but it's still pleasure.

To throw yourself into oncoming traffic to save someone's life is not a selfless act. Because in doing so you are following a type of moral code, a need to do what is right, in order to save someone else, and therefore, even if you don't have time to feel pleasure at the aftermath because you're dead, you have a momentary feeling of doing something good. If you didn't have that, you wouldn't have stepped into traffic in the first place. Putting morality or species survival above the survival of the self is not a selfless act, it's merely an act that puts one element of the self above another. Therefore to be selfish (for lack of a better term) is the only way a human can be. Because we do all have free will.

I had an argument/discussion with a friend of mine the other day who was talking about how he felt he was mired down in life and couldn't find a way out. I pointed out that he's the sum of his own choices and can, then, change any choice he wishes to. He pointed out that he doesn't FEEL as though he truly has any choices, like whether or not to work in the dead-end job he's in. I said, "actually, you do. You have the choice to not work, to lose your house, to lose your money, but to have a greater element of freedom. You also have the choice to go back to school, to stick to it, to do something you WANT to do so that you aren't stuck in the dead-end job. You also have the choice to overcome your own personal drawbacks. None of these things are easy, but you are STILL the product of your choices, and you can change your life if you want to." This, I believe, is completely in keeping with the philosophy of the egoist. Of which I proudly count myself a member.

Now, I've been called a narcissist. I've been told that I'm overly selfish. I've been told that I'm condescending and put myself above others. And, sometimes, that's true. The fact is that that doesn't really bother me. I do consider myself the most important person in my life, not in the world, not in the country, not even in my town, but in my life. If I don't, then I get to blame any problems or pains I have on other people. See, the problem with deciding not to be selfish is that it's then someone else's responsibility to take care of you, and it's your responsibility to take care of others. Taking care of other people is fine, so long as they want your care, accept it, and are willing to return it in kind. If not, you end up in the trap of being a sacrificer. Someone who is willing to give everything for another person ends up having nothing to truly give because he is too busy 'caring' for others and has not time to focus on himself. I'd rather be focusing on and taking care of myself so that I have something to give back. If I don't take care of myself, if I don't put my own interests first, then I can't possibly have anything of worth to offer anyone else.

Now, there's a danger here. The danger is that you forget that other people, their feelings, desires, needs, matter. Just as much, often, as yours, in the grand scheme of world/society/universe. If that's forgotten you end up being an egotist, you end up being the 'bad' kind of selfish, where you don't care what happens to anyone else. See, I have a child, she's three, and she depends on me for everything. It's my responsibility to teach her how to care for herself, while caring for her at the same time. I care deeply for the people in my life, and I want them all to be happy, well-rounded, and healthy. On the other hand, it's not my responsibility to make sure they end up that way, it's theirs. If I can help, and they want my help, I gladly give it. For my daughter, for children in general, those rules are a little fuzzier. But the basics still apply. I'm a single mom. I work 28 hours a week, I'm in class 12 hours a week, and I do homework and housework and cook and all that in the 'downtime.' But my daughter still needs quality time with me. I need quality time with myself. So, I have to find a balance there. And there's a lot of what I call "momma guilt" (all moms understand this, I truly believe, even the moms we call 'bad mothers' who abandon, abuse or neglect their kids. We all share the same guilt, some fairly, some not...) that I have to get through all the time. For example, my daughter, I'm sure, would love me to go in and play with her right now instead of writing this post. Except that I need some time to do this, to think about this, to explore this facet of humanity because it's important to me. So, she's going to have to wait. I will give her the attention she wants, but on my terms, later on. This teaches her a couple of things: 1) that her desire to be with me isn't something she can just claim at all times and 2) that she needs to take responsibility for her own entertainment. It's a hard lesson to learn, but if my parents hadn't taught me that, I'd be bored all the time. Instead I'm inquisitive, curious, and always ready to learn something new and exciting about the world.

I believe that being an egoist actually makes me a better person, because I DO take responsibility not just for my actions, but for all of my choices, and so my life is, for lack of a better phrase, all my fault. If it's good, it's because I made it good, if it's bad, it's because I made it bad. I am the only person who can effect my ultimate destiny, and because I'm aware of that, I never blame others for my lot in life.

Not that there aren't occasionally times when I wonder "wtf, mate, why me?"

I'm polyamorous, and I was engaged recently, for a year, to a man I've known for eight years, who is also polyamorous. He lives far away, and he and I had a long distance relationship. Therefore we took a lot of time to determine what was going to be problematic in our relationship, what we wanted from the future, how we wanted to raise our kids, all that stuff. We took the time, the energy and the honest talk to figure that stuff out. And it was working, not always perfectly, but whenever a problem arose we dealt with it fairly and intelligently. It was/is the best relationship I've ever been in. It also included the two people I'm proud to call my lifemates, who loved him and me in the same vein, and although there were problems there too, we all handle things in a straight-forward, honest way. We are all egoists, and so we were able to come to many conclusions together that benefited all of us.

Meanwhile there was a girl he was seeing where he lives. I knew this, I was supportive of it, and I even encouraged it from the start. There were issues there I wasn't really comfortable with, and told him so. Like the fact that I didn't think she really wanted to be in a poly relationship with him, that she didn't want to share him. He said that I was probably right, but that she, somewhere inside of her, did want this. He was sure of it. And I still believe that he was wrong. She wanted/wants HIM, not the life, and was willing, temporarily, to put up with the life in order to keep him. Until recently, when she unexpectedly became pregnant. She didn't ask him to choose between his life with us and his child with her, but it was implied. It's a choice that isn't really fair, but he had to choose his child. I get that, on the other hand, I had done everything the right way. I had been a supportive fiance, I had been a loving girlfriend, I had been honest, and open, and allowed him into all spheres of my life. I had understood that to be with him meant I had to WANT a poly life, not just be willing to let him sleep with other girls. I had committed once I knew I COULD, honestly, commit. I did it right, for once in my life, and still, now at the end of the day, he's with her, far away, and is supposedly monogamous with her.

I didn't tell this story for you to go, "aw, poor her," but to prove a point. That even though I'm now not with the man I love dearly, and I'm often depressed, through no fault or mistake of my own, I'm still the sum of my own choices. I wanted a poly life. To want a poly life is to take the risk of this happening. I chose it, not necessarily with the knowledge that this could happen, but I still chose it, and I can't blame him or her, or anyone else, for my own unhappiness now. I can only blame myself, because I am, after all, an egoist.

I'm not at all religious, but I respect the beliefs of others, and am always willing to have an open and honest discussion. But, I'm really tired of the "we didn't come from monkeys!" argument, because, well, it's not an accurate representation of evolution, and I dislike having to re-educate people on the basics before engaging in an actual discussion. So, I'll get it out of the way: The definition of evolution is the change in a species over time. That means that you can't observe it in species that have individuals that live for a long time. It's something that can only be measured over generations. So, you can observe it in, say, fruit flies, but not in people. On the other hand, you can follow the clues that the make-up of a human being gives you. Like the tailbone. Or the fact that we have gills in the womb. These are all indications that our species has changed, evolved, over the course of time based on our living spaces, our food availability, and Darwin's theory of natural selection. All of these things I hold to be factually provable. The existence or non-existence of god is unprovable, therefore it's merely a discussion of belief, hopefully based on experience.

Did we evolve from monkeys? No. That's silly. Monkeys exist now, and so do we. We don't belong to the same species. That said, we do share most of our genetic make-up with Chimps and Bonobos. Which leads me to my next point that fascinates me. Bonobo apes are amazing, they have a female centered culture and they solve disagreements by having sex. They are also our closest relatives in the animal kingdom. They are part of the Chimpanzee genus, but unlike the common chimpanzee they are far less aggressive. Chimps are one of the few animals that engage in war-like behavior with their own kind. Sex with common Chimps is a dominance or procreative activity, and it's usually used as a tool for the head male to express his power and dominance over the tribe. Bonobos, on the other hand, use sex as a peacemaking tool. If a male bonobo gets a little out of hand, and appears to be about to be violent, the females in the tribe surround him, just circle around him and stare. The male calms down relatively quickly, as I think anyone surrounded by a group of silent women would, and goes about his business. Also, Bonobos have no taboos about homosexuality, bisexuality, or even incest (not that I'm necessarily saying this is a good idea, bonobos are very rare, so it's probably more to do with the necessity to further their species than it is some sort of social lesson, at least with incest). Most interestingly, though, is a story about a female bonobo in a zoo.

This bonobo was sitting and eating something one day, when a starling or a sparrow (one of those, I can't remember, unimportant) flew into the wall in front of her, and fell to the ground, stunned. She meandered over to inspect this thing that had just fallen in front of her. She gently picked up the bird, examined it, and then quickly turned, rushed to a tree, climbed to the top, all the while holding the bird in her hand. When she got to the top, she held on with her feet and took the bird in both hands, gently pulled its wings out to the sides and tossed it, lightly, into the air. It flew away without a scratch. She had saved it. What's so fascinating here is that, first off, she seemed to show compassion. Compassion that has NOTHING to do with preservation of her own species. Compassion that has nothing to do with personal interest, compassion that only seems to have a correlation to her thinking the bird should be helped. The next thing that's so fascinating is that she was able to figure out how to help the bird. A bonobo would NEVER take another Bonobo to a tree, hold its arms out, and throw it. That would result in the ape falling to the ground, possibly getting injured or even die. So, there is an element of learning in this as well, not to mention an ability to discern a difference in species and needs based on species. This is a damn smart ape, don't you think? Not only smart, but kind, and interested in helping others just for the sake of helping.

Here's the funny part. Bonobos and the common Chimp have one major difference in their genetic make-up. There's a gene the Chimp has that the Bonobo doesn't, and a gene the Bonobo has that the chimp doesn't. Humans have both these genes. The major difference between humans and Bonobos is that we have that gene that the chimp has and they don't. So, scientists have been thinking that perhaps the gene the chimps have that we share with them that bonobos don't have, is, in fact, the gene that encourages aggressive, war-like behavior. And the gene we share with Bonobos is the gene that dictates a compassionate, peaceful nature. So, we have both, genetically. And therefore, we have a choice that Bonobos and Chimps may not have. To be kind, or to be cruel. To use sex as a power/domination tool, or to use it as a peacemaking, joyful tool.

Personally, I vote that we all become more like Bonobos, and when we feel all agro, go have some good, happy-shiny sex.

Anyone with me on this?

So, I was thinking about how I've never posted in this thing, and yet my blog on myspace is full of ramblings, thoughts, poems, arguments etcetera. Therefore I thought I'd waste a little time and make my thoughts and feelings a little more transparent.

I'm interested in life. Genuinely interested, my poetry professor said the other day, and I wholeheartedly agree, that poets have got to be the smartest people on the planet. I would adjust that slightly to include really all creative writers and philosophers. Maybe musicians and visual artists -- depending on the way in which they go about creating their art. Art is, I believe, the ultimate exploration of life. Not society, or ethics, or morals, or politics or a number of other things, but life itself. Art is what delves into the psyche, exploring without drawing conclusions. Art is what we are passionate about, to unrealistic proportions. Because when we find a piece of art (poem, play, film, song, picture etc.) that speaks to that which we know to be true, and someone deigns to criticize its worth we are furious. Until we calm down and realize that the worth is, in many ways, subjective. Then we have to evaluate based on general quality. But that initial visceral response, that says "YES, THIS IS THE WORLD I KNOW" that's what art is meant to do. To wake people up, to keep us guessing, to keep us involved with humanity in a more direct way. To experience art is to see the world through someone else's perspective, and to be willing to accept that perspective.

Therefore, I am a poet. It is my job to explore the world, watch it, and record it in language that evokes that initial visceral response from my readers. So, I think everyone should read a poem a month. Doesn't matter who wrote it, doesn't matter what it's about, it'll make you a better person. At least, that's my hope, otherwise I'm just wasting my time....