SO NOW THAT YOU'RE HERE

For thousands of years people have worked to improve their world, 
to provide, and then to entertain. The world is developed to serve 
ourselves, by each and every self, striving to stumble their way 
towards a better future. Every person seeks the power to serve 
their own needs, and then some find greater power in helping the 
rest. That's the aim presented to us, to serve the needs of others, 
to serve ourselves, so that others can serve us.

What are your true needs? Everybody's true needs? How did they lead 
us here? How did they lead you here? To this file on Gopher, 
relayed to you through signals bounced across the globe, through 
machines and systems which are the fulfillment of such dreams and 
ambitions of generations of engineers, businessmen, and consumers? 
With millions working across the globe to serve your wants and 
desires, churning out endless entertainment at great expense just 
to help you pass the time, here you are reading my words.

But anyway, now that you're here...

I want to talk about obsession. I love obsession. Obsession is the 
drive for a need, but run away to become a need in itself. Be it 
desire, or hate, it's to follow it independently without care for 
your other needs. Give up serving others, so that they can serve 
you, so that you can serve them, and never really know who has 
power over you in the end. Find one need and pursue it as far as it 
can go, further, break with the mould of reason and of instinct, 
and just seek.

I only do it from time to time. Photography brings it out well when 
I'm in the mood. Trying to capture that sense, that emotion I feel, 
on film, and at the same time not knowing whether or not I've 
succeeded, just seeking it with the assumption that I could always 
do better. I love to loose myself in that.

One of my favourite movies is about obsession. "Eye of the 
Beholder" (1999) starring Ewan McGregor. I drink that movie up, 
making sure to leave plenty of time between viewings so as to keep 
it fresh for as long as I can (luckily my memory is pretty good at 
forgetting movie plots and endings, one perk amongst the sea of 
frustration from not being able to remember things from real life). 
It's just _right_ to me. It was also a commercial flop, and few 
people online seem to have a good word to say about it. I want to 
blame this on people seeing it in theatres expecting a standard 
action/thriller sort of thing, but at least you'd hope for some 
sort of cult following. Perhaps most people don't feel this way 
about obsession. Or maybe they're afraid to let that feeling out.

I guess it's madness really, because you need to ignore your own 
restraints. I like to do that, to enter that state of mind, I just 
need to think in a certain way - I'm not sure if everyone knows how 
to do that. But it's true that when I do that, I don't want to come 
back to reason and restraint, I want to stay out there, and with a 
strong enough obsession then maybe I would, and then maybe I'd 
forget the way back.

I figure that religion is some sort of popular obsession, maybe 
serving that need among the public while still keeping it in check 
by directing it in specific ways towards a central organisation. 
The military too - the soldier so obsessed with duty that he'll 
take orders without question. I certainly get that latter one. I 
actually love the opportunity to just take orders and focus on some 
task without concern for anything else. It's why I worked so hard 
at school actually, even though I don't think I really got much 
return for most of that work, certainly a lot of the teachers 
didn't give it much notice - a few were too lazy to even read much 
of it beyond observing a quantity of text on a page.

That's the problem of course. Eventually you look back, having run 
out of orders, of obsession, and you've got nowhere. Although maybe 
I've already got as far as I need to be now anyway. Perhaps 
obsession is the biggest need still left.

- The Free Thinker