megoist.

Megoist.

If you ever wanted to know what the meaning of life is or why we are here, I’ll tell you: Every one of us is an egoist.

Not many are willing to accept this, but the biggest (or Best) of us egoists have already and fully embrace it.

Joyce understood remembrance, his transfiguration of the phrase “remember me” into “mememoreme!” perhaps best synthesizes this entire philosophy into one final yawping death rattle.

Ovid rather blatantly exposed his own drive for immortality when he stating
"And now my work is done: no wrath of Jove
nor fire nor sword nor time, which would erode
all things, has power to blot out this poem.
Now when it wills, the fatal day (which has
only the body in its grasp) can end
my years, however long or short their span.
But, with the better part of me, I'll gain
a place that's higher than the stars: my name,
indelible, eternal, will remain.
And everywhere that Roman power has sway,
in all domains the Latins gain, my lines
will be on people's lips; and through all time--
if poets' prophecies are ever right--
my name and fame are sure: I shall have life."

He knew. That’s why we remember him.

Let me recount this realization, my thoughts came to me somewhat erratically, but this is how it all materialized.


My roommates recently bought a Playstation 3, and have been playing it non-stop since it arrived. Being self absorbed, I often scoff at their wasting time. I sit and read and make undermining comments about their incessant virtual life.

Whenever they are playing hockey games, or skiing games I always say, “you know those things are really a lot more fun in real life.”
On the eve of this revelation my roommates were playing a game where you steal cars, run civilians over, and shoot people.
I felt my stock comment maybe inappropriate at this particular juncture.

So I turned my mind inward, and sought sanctum in my meditations.

I began to criticize video games, and virtual worlds. I wondered what is it in human nature that drives us to operate characters outside ourselves. To live vicariously through fictitious figures, fields of dreams. It was almost instantly apparent that video games are hardly the sole venue for this act, this puppet show. The curtain over the world lifted, and I knew: were all at the helm of a vast web of puppet strings, and in turn, we are all at the mercy of an unseen puppeteer.

To begin at our own birth, or better yet: conception lets just examine the beautiful art of utter selfishness.

I don’t think It’s necessary for me to go into detail, but lets just be honest about a few components:

Regardless of your parent’s intent, whether you were planned or not, bastard, or well begotten, there were two moments—well at least one—of your conception that really were solely an egotistical act.

Moving quickly past that, the idea of children is often evoked as the magnum opus of selfless scenarios, but children are possibly the simple most me-driven metamorphosis of all.

Whether we accept it or not, our motive for having children is really our only guaranteed act of prolonging immortality. We come to terms with death, its inevitability and yet we constantly ask our selves, “how can I beat this?”
Then we snap our fingers and say, “Oh! I know I’ll have a baby, and I’ll raise them to be just like me, but smarter, better, faster, and able to do all thing things I wish I could have done."
For proof, simply ask yourself: how much are you becoming your parents?
The answer is shocking.

we may attempt to distance ourselves as far from our family as possible, but we cannont deny we are a product of our parents, and theres before them, ad infintum.

As in Hamlet, mourning over his fathers death is dismissed by the usurping king,
"KING
 87   'Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet,
 88   To give these mourning duties to your father:
 89   But, you must know, your father lost a father;
 90   That father lost, lost his, and the survivor bound
 91   In filial obligation for some term
 92   To do obsequious sorrow: but to persever
 93   In obstinate condolement is a course "

Our being begotten, spins our thread of life into a tapestry whose vastness is incomprehensible. Our existance is a continuation of life dating back to the origin of all.
our lineage ferries us across all rivers of history, exploring each tributary of time to the darkest recsesses of that backward abysm. Cavernous libraries slumber under cobweb quilts, attainable only by that echo of an archaic heart. Bloodlines like rivers and deltas seem stagnat untill we here the gulls, re-calling us home.

"But I'm loothing them that's here and all I lothe. Loonely in me loneness. For all their faults. I am passing out. O bitter ending! I'll slip away before they're up. They'll never see. Nor know. Nor miss me. And it's old and old it's sad and old it's sad and weary I go back to you, my cold father, my cold mad father, my cold mad feary father, till the near sight of the mere size of him, the moyles and moyles of it, moananoaning, makes me seasilt saltsick and I rush, my only, into your arms. I see them rising! Save me from those therrble prongs! Two more. Onetwo moremens more. So. Avelaval. My leaves have drifted from me. All. But one clings still. I'll bear it on me. To remind me of. Lff! So soft this morning, ours. Yes. Carry me along, taddy, like you done through the toy fair! If I seen him bearing down on me now under whitespread wings like he'd come from Arkangels, I sink I'd die down over his feet, humbly dumbly, only to washup. Yes, tid. There's where. First. We pass through grass behush the bush to. Whish! A gull. Gulls. Far calls. Coming, far! End here. Us then. Finn, again! Take. Bussoftlhee, mememormee! Till thousendsthee. Lps. The keys to. Given! A way a lone a last a loved a long the
riverrun"


Thus ends and begins again the bit of recirculation. Life coming out of death, out of birth.
We come and go. (there is no end to inquiry and pursuit these words, their endless meanings-- all the world is contained between.)

 the motives for this perpetuation  are indeed selfish, yet it is the way of the world. It is the world itself.


I fear I am veering slightly off course here, but I trust my audience is adept.

Despite the inherent selfishness of the act itself and of Paroles, his speech is poignant in the manner that to deny this act (albeit self fulfilling) is to deny nature, to damn the meaning of life.
‘It is not politic in the commonwealth of nature to preserve virginity. Loss of virginity is rational increase, and there was never virgin got till virginity was first lost. That you were made of is metal to make virgins. Virginity by being once lost may be ten times found; by being ever kept is ever lost. 'Tis too cold a companion. Away with't! 'Tis against the rule of nature. To speak on the part of virginity is to accuse your mothers, which is most infallible disobedience. He that hangs himself is a virgin; virginity murders itself, and should be buried in highways out of all sanctified limit, as a desperate offendress against nature. Virginity breeds mites, much like a cheese, consumes itself to the very paring, and so dies with feeding his own stomach. Besides, virginity is peevish, proud, idle, made of self-love, which is the most inhibited sin in the canon. Keep it not; you cannot choose but lose by't. Out with't! Within ten year it will make itself ten, which is a goodly increase, and the principal itself not much the worse. Away with't! 'Tis a commodity will lose the gloss with lying: the longer kept, the less worth. Off with't while 'tis vendible; answer the time of request. Virginity, like an old courtier, wears her cap out of fashion, richly suited, but unsuitable, just like the brooch and the toothpick, which wear not now. Your date is better in your pie and your porridge than in your cheek; and your virginity, your old virginity, is like one of our French withered pears: it looks ill, it eats drily. Marry, 'tis a withered pear; it was formerly better; marry, yet 'tis a withered pear! Will you anything with it?"

We also must abstain from mental virginity. If we so foolishly belive our minds pure within their own isolated stagnation, we shall never live on, never remembered.
And those whose minds, seeded by all the world will forever flower, they will eternally emerge by virtue of invention, and creation.

Shakespeare is widely criticized as being "un-educated" (swan of Avon) but it is clear his mind mated quite frequently with mythology. Virtually none of Shakespeare's plays would be possible without the sweet caress of Ovid.

Thus begins the exploration of Shakespeare:

Virtually all of Shakespeare's mind babies center around family, real babies. I can see nothing altruistic about any of his plays, nor any of his characters. Tragedy arises from jealousy and greed. Romance is simply the essence wafting off personal desire, it is joyace true, but it is a product of individual need.
And what becomes of a romance other than a family? The family becomes the structure for control. Thus recapitulating the egoism of self duplication. Family throughout Shakespeare represents that dictorial control, and it is re-presented throughout many frames.

When we look at Lear, it is plain to see the self induced wrath of destruction. Lear, unwanting to fully relinquish the throne, establishes a vice-roy kingdom delegated out to assuaging daughters. Whose two-fold tongues praise the bland old Isaac, to horde and inheritance...Tragedy ensues.

Yet what has become of this great egoism?
- a beauty shared amongst all the world.

The Tempest too, falls into this label. Miranda's marriage, the islands sweet song, the storm, the play itself all an orchestration--devised by the Magus Prospero to regain himself.


This thought extrapolated, is easily applied to the cumulative magus himself: Shakespeare. Who like Bottom, requires every role. Though the ends justify the means, his operations were as Ovid's, as Cleopatra's .
To be revered.
To "live on, on fly on, in reflected sky,"
To have immortality.


What's this?
I hear
Shakespeare,
calling on...
pages and stages
"Remember me."