My Too Long and Not Interesting Return.

I return from my month of accidentally self-imposed exile. Let us never speak of this again.

I am mere moments away from attempting to hook up Verizon high-speed DSL onto the family computer, a task similar to stealing fire away from the Gods, or trying to walk on clouds, or something else that is very hard to do and technically impossible. I am honestly considering assembling a mighty crew of heroes, so that I at least have someone to feed to the cyclops, but I think that such a thing borders technically very close to a euphamism for gay seksing, which is something that is very far away indeed from hooking up internets, so I think I'll just give it a by.

In reflection, I don't even know why I want faster internets. All the online games I play anymore are either annoying flash games or nothing - even City of Villains lost it's allure to me. Perhaps because my connection to it was so slow. The important thing, I suppose, is that it presents me with a sort of precipice, that I am standing on a metaphorical edge of participating more fully with a world that I kind of hate. I realize that by being at least ostensibly Catholic (and more accurately, a kind of sarcastic nihilist) I should focus on removing myself from the world, and focusing more on the values that Are Very Important. So why is that so hard to do? It can't be that hard to live a celibate, drug-free life, wherein I am kind to others and lack the ambition to pollute myself with the ways of the world. I could give up eating meat today, get a haircut, join the Red Cross, and become a good person.

But therein lies the trouble. How good a person is that? Wouldn't it just be denying my personal impulses? The sermon at mass (TWO WEEKS AGO LOL) was detailing the importance of the sacrament of confession in the Catholic faith - how normal prayer and being a good person is enough to remove minor-league sin, but mortal sin can only be removed via confession. So honestly, Catholic Church, what is a mortal sin? Just about everything. Even thinking about committing a sin is apparently just as damning as actually committing one. Becoming Catholic can often seem like you're signing up for some kind of crooked deal, wherein there are a lot more restrictions than what you thought you'd be getting. And conveniently, the only way to remove these things is by going back to the very organization that is telling you that you're doing wrong.

I'd have a lot more blind faith if the Church hadn't been such an unholy terror in the past.

The point is, one must consider their interaction with the world, and how they're going to reconcile the crossovers between their public and private lives. I'm all for self-expression, but I acknowledge, very often, that there are some things which need to be withheld. Locke even stated something akin to this, that the rule of law must be paramount in a given society, so too must there be a kind of decorum for public interaction. I think that my two comrades at Elevennames can back me up when I say that the recent trend of the word "rape" being bandied about by videogame enthusiasts is, to say the least, distressing.

So here I am, left at the desk, staring at the DSL hookup box. Installing it (it's already paid for) will send me careening into a world that I'm not sure I want. Perhaps this is overmoralizing - to take the inevitable advancement of technology and assign to it moral undertones does seem a bit fallacious in the logic to me, a self-aggrandizing version of Gun Control. Guns don't kill people, after all, and computers don't create kiddie porn. In the end, one must participate in the world, and make ever escalating decisions that are inherent when the world is trusting you not to completely fuck something up because you're a perverted dumbass.

And really, shouldn't that be the Elevennames mission statement?

Participation in the world is obligatory anymore - to be seen as holding back is so baffling that it's almost uncategorized. Who doesn't have a cell phone in this day and age? In a few years, who won't have an iPhone, or it's cheaper equivalent? Personal accessories are a necessity to anyone who wants to communicate anymore. I'd worry more about corporatizing of personal communication if I wasn't certain that humanity is, if nothing else, too cheap to not pirate the things that it wants. It isn't a moral decision so much as it is a continuance of a series of moral trials, to remain a good person despite the temptation to be a bad one. I once heard from a very old Jesuit that the only real sin in this world is selfishness, and in the face of fast-as-DSL internets, the temptation to become a being concerned solely with his own entertainment is tempting indeed.