Tis the season once again. Snow crunches underfoot, slippery sidewalks promise back trouble, holes in shoes are just now realized. How can I forget? Marking the one year anniversary (I think, maybe two actually) of beating Metal Gear Solid Two, I find myself still hesitantly misanthropic. Maybe slightly less hesitant than last year. Alas, any change must be embraced. However, I’d like to take this year’s Christmas reflection out of the realm of Arterial Spray volume one (which I may post later simply for the sake of a point of reference) and into the plane of the metaphysical. About a fifteen minutes ago I finished a nice lengthy entry concerning my thoughts on behaviorism, purpose, and motivation. It’s been a few years since I first left sitidiary and it’s evident that I forgot how fucking god damned buggy this site is (in all fairness it’s probably my campus network). Anyway, as soon as submitted it, a new page loaded to inform me that I had no entries. Out of frustration I grabbed a travel log from a few weeks ago and threw it on there to make it look like I hadn’t been entirely unproductive. Now I type this in MS Word before I copy and paste. But I digress. My contention is simply that it should not be a source of shame and subsequent awkwardness to lack motivation or awareness of one’s purpose in life. Furthermore I believe that nobody is motivated to do anything beyond societal pressures. This of course, does not have to be conventional society, but moreover, one’s environment, physical, social, spiritual, emotional, scatological, the works. This notion comes from the school of thought based in behavioralism that tells us that we are not snowflakes. People are not unique and special; people are products of their environment. It is true that if one can control the environment of another person, one controls what the other perceives and in turn controls the other person. This is not to argue the case of a conspiracy that uses mass media and the selective electronic trafficking of information to keep you in a sustained state of scared apathy, no, that’s another meeting. I am merely suggesting that not one person belongs to himself. We do not make ourselves and therefore cannot possibly understand ourselves without first entirely understanding our environment. It can be reasonably asserted that the most one can hope for is a simple or partial understanding of his own nature. This is why, as Dr. Johnson predicts, that the only works that endure are those that make general statements about human nature. This gives us a common point of departure that adds clarity to the whole mess. Getting back to the point I can only assume that human doubt and uncertainty are perfectly natural and anyone who claims to know unequivocally what his purpose is must be either lying to me or to himself. Nobody can know these things. As I explored in my first draft of this entry that is now lost in RAM somewhere, there are many unanswerable abstract questions behind this discourse that are simply fruitless to pursue. What I do know is that nobody can entirely know one’s self so at best one can only have a good idea of one’s purpose and at best an honest man is only partially motivated. Honest as I am with myself I find that my life lacks direction. I feel I have a reasonable understanding of what makes me me and rather unsettlingly conclude that I am without purpose. Yet if such a thing as providence exists then it is without question that no one can know their karma. Without getting into the idea of God and a divine plan I accept that I am ignorant of any over-arching structure and my place in it (if I have one) and therefore remain ignorant of what I’m “supposed to be doing” provided that there is anyone who indeed supposes. So who does the supposing? Who sets the precedent? Do I have the right to govern myself or should I consider everything that’s made me? Who has the right to expect anything of me? I certainly have expectation of myself in place to promote self preservation and growth to stave off boredom when merely maintaining stasis becomes dull. Yet as for my future, the horizon is cloudy.