This is Not Robert Longshore - The Memoirs of the Fulcrum of Fate

  Value judgment is defined as: an assessment of something as good or bad in terms of one's standards or priorities. I read the things I say. I am aware that I come off as judgmental – believe me, countless are the people who have told me as much. I can firmly say that I'm not, because I don't make value judgments. Yesterday I wrote a lot of things which seem scathing. I know the danger I place myself in to be misunderstood. I managed to survive the anxiety of having said them, waiting for the inevitable emotional backlash, but no. Nothing is sometimes better than something. All of my heroes are misunderstood. If you've been with me since the beginning, you know my heroes were all suicides until I got into my thirties – as a matter of coincidence, I've always thought. But I think (and write) a lot about Confirmation Bias, quietly assuming you know what I'm talking about. And that's why I want to talk about Value Judgment today. Valuation is something wh...

  Self love is a lie. It's one of the greatest lies of our time. Self love is masturbation. And what is masturbation if not the lie of lovemaking? But, see, in order to really talk about this, we have to have the same definition of love. Love is a word in the English language with many meanings – and many degrees of meaning. Other languages - like Spanish, for instance – have different words for love depending on the various types and degrees. I'm not a Spanish linguist, but I speak enough to have a little understanding of what I'm talking about. But what is love ? As best as I can make out, love is a sensation in the brain, a particular cocktail of emotional chemicals. Loving someone or something over time seems to be the ritual observance of stimulating those chemicals during and without the lovemaking act. There is no lovemaking act in a friendship. So what is the love of a friend as oneself, as Aristotle talked about? By his own definition, friendship is view...