by John Grauerholz
There are some scientists that scrutinize the behavior of animals in a zoo – I stalk complete strangers in order to understand human interaction. One of those research subjects is you, my dear reader. Consider this surveillance to be a sort of study project.
I sit outside your house and keep watch. I observe who you might let into your home. I follow you just beyond your peripheral vision. I keep a record of where you’ve been and what you’ve done.
Consider stalking to be a kind of guerrilla ethnography. I scrutinize everything. I record your every lapse and your every longing with a pinhole camera. I photograph your daily routine; I capture every facial expression; I video exactly what it is that you do in your bedroom.
Consider stalking to be a type of research project. Sometimes I plant hidden microphones – but I won’t tell you exactly where. I possess a recording of every telephone conversation that you have ever made. When you accidentally reveal your deepest secret, I listen in. Stalking gives me an opportunity to monitor human beings in the wild, as it were.
Sometimes, though, I place obstacles in your environment – just to evaluate how you might react. If you have recently experienced some unfortunate events, if you have recently undergone some unpleasant episodes in your life, perhaps these impediments are part of my ethnographic experiment. Sometimes I make a few alterations in your text messages before they are released to the recipient – just slight improvements, mind you. Sometimes I withdraw a little bit of money from your bank account – just enough to see how you might respond.
The act of surveillance transforms the observer: watching my human experiments invariably makes me feel isolated from the rest of society. The act of stalking creates a boundary between the viewer and the subject. The process of keeping targets under surveillance transmutes the personality of the stalker. Covert observation gives the watcher the impression that he is of a completely different species than that of his subjects. Conducting surveillance is a means of my own exaltation.
Taking a surreptitious photo gives me an intuition that I “own” you. When I shadow your movements through the city, I have this idea that I am, somehow, controlling your travel direction. I stalk you for this particular rush of “deification” and “superiority” into my psyche. An individual becomes one of the elite not by treating other humans kindly, but by reducing other people to the objects that they truly are. Watching you gives me the sensation that I am a god.
Don’t mistake me – you are of no particular importance to me. You are just a target for me to calibrate my awareness. You are a subject precisely because you are so worthless – after all, an ethologist does not select one specific animal because it is unique, but because the creature is completely representative of the entire herd.
You are of such insignificance that I know you better than you know yourself. You only exist because you are in my files. You are only alive only because I opened a dossier on you. If something were to happen to my data, your life would vanish. If I were to close my eyes, you would disappear.
by John Grauerholz
Feeding the homeless is like feeding pigeons. If you start giving food to one hungry creature, you’ll quickly be sieged and surrounded by the whole flock. If you offer a single slice of bread, pretty soon these critters will have shamed you into handing away the entire loaf – and you will have nothing left for yourself. The more you donate, the more these ravenous animals are going to want. Better to contribute nothing – and keep on walking. Just be careful of all their shit on the sidewalk.
Scavengers care nothing about you. An opportunistic bum doesn’t care if he takes so much of your own resources that you are unable to assist him ever again. A rabid animal does not care if he bites off the fingers that feed him. You are just a single serving for a zombie.
Helping the unfortunate will always result in the total opposite of your intentions. Saving a life might ultimately cause a population explosion that imperils the entire species. The more you help these beasts, the more they are going to breed. Once the animal’s stomach is full, his instinct spread his bodily fluids as widely and as wildly as possible.
Kindness is always counterproductive. A little callousness is often best for the earth. The cascading effect of a single act of compassion can well be complete environmental devastation. Caring for no one but yourself is always best for the world.
Just as wild animals will sometimes over-reproduce and consume all the resources in a given environment, so the human populace will expand until they devour all the charity handouts in an urban geography. We need some serial killers to thin out the herd. Ted Bundy was just doing some environmentally friendly things. A little slaughter is always good for the ecosystem.
If you really cared about their environment, then you would become a spree killer. But since we both know that you don’t have the guts – then at least have the good grace to shut the fuck up about protecting the planet. If you don’t have your finger on the trigger, then you aren’t saving shit.
by John Grauerholz
I make no apologies – I am an egoist.
I am an egoist – so I am unique. I object to any comparison with any other human; I take second place to no other being. All that I want out of this life is to remain distinctive. I join nothing; I am part of no group. I am alone.
I am an egoist – so I refuse. No matter what you might suggest, I am going to repudiate it. No matter what you might want of me, I am going to reject it. If you reach out a hand to me, I am going to rebuff you.
I am an egoist – so I am disgusted by other people. Merely being in the vicinity of another person leaves contaminated. The very sight of other human beings only fills me with revulsion. When I look at my neighbor, all that I feel is nausea. When I hear you talk, all that I get out of it is a headache. If I were to you embrace me, I will only end-up diseased.
I am an egoist – so I hate. I am an individualist, so I loathe the herd. The collective would say that I am full of malevolence; the communitarians would claim that I am full of malice. And for good reason: my personality is complete; my self-worth is crammed to bursting; my self-esteem is to the brim. There is no room for compassion for the likes of you. If I am forced to be around other people, everything I do will be an act of spite. I am an egoist – so I don’t need your help. If I fall down, I can fight my way back up all on my own; if I am unable to rise, then I’ll rest where I am. Either way, I don’t want your assistance. I keep to myself; the only thing I ask of others is to have the good manners to mind their own business.
I am an egoist – so I am selfish. I accumulate resources for my own benefit, not to waste money on worthless parasites like you. I am greedy because I need to protect myself against someone else’s needs. I owe nothing to other people.
I am an egoist – so I do not serve. I don’t want to make this world a better place; I just want to become more of a self-sufficient person. I only make an effort when it might benefit me. I would be less of a person if I were to help another human being.
I am an egoist – so I keep my emotions to myself. It would only sully and stain my feelings if I were to expose the sentiments to other people. I keep things secret because no one else is worthy of sharing my passions. The less others know of me, the stronger I am. The more I keep hidden, the more powerful my ego.
I am an egoist – so I cherish my solitude. Being alone is how I commune with myself. The more that others come near me, the more I retreat into myself. My privacy is worth more than your happiness. If I turn my back to the world, it is only because I can better retreat into my Self.
I am an egoist – so I know myself. I am not concerned about investigating the world as much as my own self-exploration. The opinions of other people do not matter to me in the least; all that I desire is to explore my own personality. The only cosmos that might interest me are within my own psyche.
I am an egoist – so I worship myself. I need none of your gods. I spit on your savior. I do my own redemption. I do not transcend my ego; I am transcendent Ego.
I am an egoist – so I have just one thing to say to you. GET OUT OF MY WAY.
