FACE TO FACT WITH REALITY

 A former student and friend asked me how I distract myself from the decline and fall of civilization. I replied:

I have never felt the need or sought in any way to distract myself from reality.  For as long as I have had any memory of anything, I have wanted to face that reality not distract myself from it.  I probably developed this perspective later than I imagine and it all has to come back to my dad.  The secret to not getting duped, surprised, conned etc. was a fearlessness in the face of the terror endemic to reality.  I later found what my dad understood in an untutored way expressed in Nietzsche's willingness to make himself a guinea pig in a life-time of ultra-awareness of one's self, one's consciousness, and one's environs.  As it turns out this orientation, perspective, temperament, or worldview is an armor that protects you from addictions designed to distract you from how the world really is.  I've never done drugs, never been drunk, never lost control (except when driven to the point of madness by my ex-wife's insane antics; and once when a much younger woman left me temporarily for a guy her own age – not my finest hour), never been anxious, or depressed (except for perhaps 2 weeks during the younger woman episode), etc.  One strategy here has been to style myself as a Martian, not a member of the human race.  Practically, this has involved avoiding common taken-for-granted behaviors like wearing suits and ties, following fads and fashions, etc., concerning one's self with other people thought or expected, and devoting one's life to professional goals, productivity, money and profits, and status climbing.  I did have to pass through a stage of vulgar materialistic scientism by way of the sociology of science to reach Nirvana.  If you distract yourself from reality you distract yourself from your self.  Humanity has not confronted the unbearable terror of being directly but only indirectly by way of the amount of energy and resources devoted to distractions.