lately i don't feel a passion for the things i used to feel a passion for. this could be a side effect of my effort to care less about material objects so that i may sell them and condense my life because you know that japanese like everything compact. ;)

i don't want to be one of the self-centered elderly. i fear i am on that path. i fear becoming a material object horde, which is one of the reasons for my condensing effort. the love for my objects has decreased, however the decrease in passion has spilled into the non-tangible. it's a sense of loss that i haven't sorted out yet. i'm not sure if how i feel is a good thing or a bad thing. i rarely feel empathy for anymore for anyone, including people that i care about, people who i should empathize with. i guess that is the very heart of the problem: i feel like i don't care anymore about anything but myself.

as one grows older one becomes more self-centered? i used to be such the altruist. ayn rand opened my eyes and now i'm fucked. i used to idealize communism, probably because the individuals in the top of the capitalist pyramid are no better than those at the top of any pyramid: power hungry self-serving fucks. i'm sick of injustice and always cheer for more socialist programs to help equalize matters. anyway, rand said something like communist leaders want you to have the ultimate sense of altruism so that you do not serve your own needs, only their needs. this is how they maintain their power. capitalism serves the need of the individual, the ego. the ego being the most important thing in the world.

i always disagreed with ayn's basic thoughts of communism bad, capitalism good because i thought she was probably one of the rich bitches who lost out in the revolution--who wouldn't be pissed in such a situation? anyone who feels victimized is angry at the victimizer. the main religion i was taught growing up, christianity, was very altruistic, which is why i never understood why the idea of someone being both a christian and a communist is scoffed at; i could always see the two meshing quite well together. even if i don't continue to follow the religious teachings, in part or in whole, it was taught to me so young in life and/or so deeply that it is a key building block of my thinking. last year i watched "ayn rand: a sense of life", which helped me to finally understand the philosophical reasoning of why rand disliked communism so much, instead of just seeing it from the victim angle.