And other times I find that the exploration of a topic reveals that it says something different about me altogether.

After I finished watching another punk rock documentary tonight, I walked away feeling disillusioned by parts of what the interviewed artists said and connected with others. I connected with the feeling of helplessness and rage in the face of the established order that many punk rockers feel and was shocked by the violent response that many had as a result of these feelings. I felt a little scared because in the past I sometimes felt like taking the violent, self destructive route that many punk rockers do. I started to realize that the only punk rock band that I really identify with is Bad Religion, where the rest of them seem to take a much more self destructive path that I do not want to be a part of. I realized too that calling myself a punk rocker isn’t really accurate for me any longer. I identified with a key punk rock band and came to appreciate much of the genre as a result, but that doesn’t make me part of the concept of “a punk rocker”.

Then suddenly I saw another pattern. I saw my exploration of my artistic tastes as a metaphor for how I explore philosophy. I become enthralled with a certain branch of philosophy because of an idea that I connect with in it and dive in head first. I become that philosophy for a time until I find parts that don’t fit me. That’s how I’ve evolved from a Republican, to a libertarian, to a liberal, to a moral relativist, to an Objectivist, to a market anarchist and now to a “I am having trouble stuffing myself into a label anymore.” For now I’m calling myself a philosopher. I still occasionally refer to myself as an atheist anarchist, but really that’s just to help people understand my basic footing onto where I’ve arrived. Even the concepts of atheist and anarchist come with a whole slurry of prejudices that I like to distance myself from.

What’s changed? I used to look at all ideas as their own independent reflections of who I am. Now, I think I am starting to look at ideas compared to reality, whether that jives with who I am or not. That’s the reason I am giving up the concept of punk rocker. I’m Rich. I really like one band in the genre of punk rock. Bad Religion. An even then, I don’t connect with every lyric and every note. I like a lot of other bands in the genre as well, but mostly because they sound like Bad Religion and remind me of the connection I felt with that band when I was younger. That does not necessarily make me a punk rocker or less of a person because I no longer identify as that. What this does make me is a human who figured out a piece of myself through the music I like. And identified the ways that I am unlike this music as well.

I like music. I like philosophy. I like being conscious. I like finding others who are trying to become more conscious as well. Because of that I like figuring out what is true and what is not. Like isn’t quite accurate. I love it.

I have been interested in evolution ever since I got into philosophy. To me the two go hand in hand. In order to understand the complexities of human ideas I think it’s  also extremely important understand how our species came to be. I knew that Greg Graffin has his Ph.D. in evolutionary biology and is also an atheist (he prefers naturalist, which I totally understand), so it excited me even more to see a book by him that also included the word anarchy in it. As a philosopher who has so far come to the conclusion of anarchy, I was weary of what to expect since many who use the word anarchy use it incorrectly.  I was also afraid that my impression of Greg Graffin would change if he wrote a book with anarchy in the title and then wrote about government intervention.

What made this book such an interesting read is that he was able to intertwine a lesson on evolution with the story of his life. The main appeal to punk rock to me has been the angry response to authority. I also enjoyed the spontaneous order and surprising politeness (with the exception of one concert) that would emerge from mosh pits at Bad Religion concerts. Punk rock spoke to the side of me that rabidly pursues truth. Greg also seems to have this same view about science and punk rock, which was exactly what I was hoping for in this book. Although he does not go into his personal politics in any part of the book, he does explain the beauty behind the anarchy of evolution. The natural order in evolution that arises out of seeming chaos, free of rules and only regulated by reality speaks deeply to a philosopher like me.

Greg Graffin also writes about his adventures into the Colorado mountains and rain forests of South America to do field work.  The interconnectedness with the universe that he feels when he is alone in the wilderness, studying a tree or a rock formation is exactly the way I feel when I step onto the trail.  I have never been a conservationist because I abhor the government intervention that it usually implies, so I was surprised to find myself intrigued by some of the ideas that were presented in this book about leaving nature better than you found it.  It doesn’t require a gun to make our environment a better place and I think I would find pleasure in voluntarily helping to preserve natural environments.  I’m not sure how yet, but this book did get my mind going on this subject.

There were also some great psychological insights throughout the book about human empathy and the importance of relationships.  I didn’t expect that from a book about punk rock and evolution so it was a pleasant surprise.

He also goes into how even scientists and atheists are prone to rigidity and dogma.  He cites a few challenges he had in academia when presenting an alternate theory on a specific branch of evolution.  I love that kind of constant challenge of authority, because I know from personal experience that even atheist anarchist philosophers can get locked into a cycle of dogma.

The last few lines of the book evoked a strong emotional response in me.  I don’t know what the rules are on citing books, but fuck it, I’m an anarchist.

When I create, I feel that I am a participant in the grand pageant of life, a part of the ongoing creative engine of the universe.  I don’t know if that feeling is enough to replace the solace of religion in the lives of most people, but it is for me.

I think this book will speak to more than just punk rockers.  If you are into evolution and are up for a good story, I highly recommend this book.

Sometimes after school my friend and I would hang out at the mall hoping to “accidentally” bump into one of the many different girls that we had crushes on.  We also spent a ton of time in the CD store looking for new music to sample.  I had been wanting to buy a Bad Religion CD but knew that the parental censor board would strike it down for the name alone.  I also knew if they ever saw anything with the Crossbuster (->) logo on it, I would not be able to listen to music at all.  I decided to go ahead and risk it and buy the album with the least offensive cover on it.  I settled on Stranger than Fiction because it basically looked like any other cover in the CD store.  I also recorded it onto a blank tape and played it at night on my Walkman when I could have privacy to listen to it.

I still considered myself a Christian when I first started listening to Bad Religion.  I started to slowly pull away from religion and listening to songs like “American Jesus” helped me to solidify my growing distrust in what I was raised to believe.  The more I asked why we had rules in my house and the more I only received the answer “because I say so”, the more I realized that I was being lied to.  The anger behind punk music and lyrics in Bad Religion songs helped me to keep some of my sanity through my teenage years.  I knew there were others out there like me and I appreciated the poetry that Greg Graffin and Brett Gurewitz were putting out there.

When I turned 18 I started buying whatever music I wanted to and my parents seemed to finally back off (unfortunately I lived at home until I was 22, so there were still “rules”).  Nearly all of my collection had become Bad Religion and various other punk and hard rock bands.  Bad Religion continued to produce ever evolving records that spoke to me scientifically, philosophically, politically and religiously.  By the time I was 19 I was no longer a Christian, although I told no one.  I considered myself agnostic for some time before I was open about it.  I was still pretty scared about coming out about my waning faith, especially to my family.  So I held Bad Religion close and continued to explore my life and try to figure out what was true.  It took 22 years to figure out faith, but finally I gave up the false concept of god.

When I was 19 or 20 my first girlfriend bought me tickets to a Bad Religion concert.  I’m not even sure if she realized how much it meant to me, but it was one of the best gifts I had ever received.  I was extremely excited and nervous to go to my first punk concert.  I’d heard they could be pretty rough.  We had seats that were outside of the pit so I was a little more comfortable watching from afar.  Another favorite band of mine, Less Than Jake, was opening for Bad Religion.  This was the first time I was witness to the chaos that is the punk rock scene.  One of the opening bands told the crowd to “fuck the pit wristbands” and storm the stage.  Almost everyone in their seats fell like waterfalls into the pit and packed it so tight that the security guards could do nothing to stop it.  I started laughing hysterically at the sight.  I loved it.  No authority could stop these punk rockers.  I wanted to join in but was still weary of the potential violence involved with a mob of that size.  So I stood in my seat like the remaining people in the stands and jumped up and down to the beat of the music.  It was one of the most freeing and exciting moments of my life.  Watching my favorite bands perform and the chaotic excitement all around me was a sensory overload.

Unfortunately I didn’t catch another show until after my first breakup.  After that though I unleashed myself onto punk concerts.  Anytime Bad Religion would come to town I would be the first to buy tickets.  The first concert I went to was in a small venue near the Sports Arena in San Diego.  There were no seats.  It was just an open floor.  I realized that I was going to be part of the mosh pit whether I wanted to or not so I decided to throw myself into it and see why so many punk rockers lived for it.  I was sucked into a human whirlpool and flailed my legs and arms like I had seen my ska friends do at previous concerts.  I was thrown back and forth by the wall surrounding the pit.  I fell a couple of times but found myself lifted quickly up by the other people around me.  I lost my shoe at one point and someone held it up at the edge of the pit and I grabbed it as I passed.  It wasn’t the violence I expected.  It was just a fun, rapid swirl of humans all enjoying the heavy guitars and beat of the drums.  I did get hit in the ribs a few times by elbows, but other than that it was an experience that I lived for.  My body was free to express itself as chaotically as I wanted to, without any judgement from my fellow punkers.  I am very self conscious when I attempt to dance, but I never feel that way in a pit.  I threw myself into the pit of every punk concert from then on.

At a Bad Religion concert at the House of Blues in San Diego I found myself in a skinhead pit.  I had heard about skinheads and their tendency to be violent at punk concerts.  I noticed the pit was moving the opposite direction than I was used to and there were many more studded leather punkers all around.  I’d never been hurt in a pit before that night but found myself being violently thrown around and also saw that most of the punkers were actually punching one another.  I panicked and literally threw myself on top of the wall of the pit and found myself unable to escape.  Soon I found that the only escape was under so I went under the people on the edge of the pit and escaped to the edges.  One of my friends emerged as well with blood dripping down his face.  We bought some beers and laughed it off, but that night I realized that I didn’t want to be part of a group that was violent.  It was fun to swirl around in a mosh pit, but getting punched and bruised wasn’t fun.  I hit one more punk concert (not Bad Religion) before I quit going to punk shows where I had a similar incident happen.  A young woman was looking desperate to escape the pit so I tried to help her out of it by clearing a hole in the wall of humans with my body and pushing her through.  Unfortunately I realized in horror that I had pushed her into a bigger pit that had emerged spontaneously next to us.  I desperately tried to find her and help her, but apparently she had found her way out or been lost in the chaos.  I was then pushed over and lost my cell phone and a shoe and spent the rest of the night trying to find both.  I found my cell phone a few weeks later in a lost and found but my shoe was gone for good.

What I appreciate about Bad Religion is that they never became the punk rock group that you see today with the spikes, tats and piercings.  All of the members of BR wear jeans and t-shirts and don’t spike their hair.  Their concerts (with exception of the one with the skinheads) are also more fun than violent.  I think their more intelligent lyrics attract a different kind of punker.  They’ve also been around for 30 years now, so the crowd also tends to be a little older.  I’ve had my fair exposure to the harder side of punk and it just doesn’t measure up to the shows that Bad Religion puts on.

I think that my taste in music isn’t as sophisticated as most of my friends and this is mainly because I was not exposed to a wide range of music growing up.  That said, I think I do have a different appreciation for punk rock because of this.  It may be simple musically, but it strikes at the root of all of the emotions and thoughts I had as a teenager.  It’s angry, hard, fast, and free. In Bad Religion’s case, it’s intelligent too.  It helped me to open my mind up to new ideas and embrace philosophy whole heartedly.  When I was a teenager I was able to hold onto a hope that there were other people out there that felt and thought like I did and will always be thankful to Bad Religion for that.  The band has also evolved musically over time as well, so their newer albums feature much more rich, clear and complex tunes.  It’s nice when a band evolves along side with you.

I just finished up Greg Graffin’s book Anarchy Evolution and I absolutely recommend it to anyone who wants to learn more about evolution (yes, a punk rocker is also a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology) and more about the band’s history from Greg Graffin’s point of view.  I’ll write another detailed post about the book either tonight or very soon.

I leave you with one of my favorite Bad Religion songs, A Walk.  The music video is great too, because Greg Graffin expresses himself physically in such a humorously awkward way that I identify with.  I am also putting together a Youtube playlist of all of my favorites, if you are interested in hearing more of Bad Religion’s great songs.

It’s a beautiful reminder of why our existence is so amazing.

I call people like this scrambled egg brains. They took their active minds and stimulated them in such a way that made them more connected with their thoughts and emotions than connected with reality. Philosophers like Nietzsche and Krishnamurti come to mind when I think of great people who have been inflicted with this condition. It is this condition, this kind of uncontrolled stream of data, with nuggets of genius, that lights me up.

I don’t show this part of me openly in my day-to-day, or at least I don’t think I do, but I consider myself as a carrier of this condition. I think this is where my fascination and fear of these people comes into play. I love to tap my own creativity and let myself spill out onto paper (or pixels) and get a tea leaf reading of who I really am as a person. That coupled with disconnection with reality, however, is what I have observed leading into self destruction with myself and others. I don’t think it’s a conscious self destruction by any means. I think it is in our programming from our childhoods. It is the illogic that was inflicted on us as children. Being told stories about hell and sin and then given no answer to a simple question, “Why?”

Many of us grew up with parents who were completely mind fucked from the hippy movement (aka Vietnam War), coupled with the superstitions and bigotries of the past. Even if our own parents didn’t do drugs themselves, they were still inflicted by the type of thinking.

Everytime I see someone else with scrambled egg brains, I feel deeply sad that they were unable to connect their beautiful creativity to reality. I feel joy in their self-expression through their art, but I also feel the pain in their utter confusion with the world.

Part of my personality wants to take me down to the end of that road. Down the road of letting down all barriers and letting my mind explode open into whatever form feels most natural. I fear that form will take on a self destructive quality because of the twisted thoughts that were inflicted upon me by my parents, teachers and other hurt people when I was a child.

I have been trying most of my life to develop a methodology to combat this unconscious desire to live in my own head and escape from reality through subjectivism. So far what has kept me grounded is the scientific method. I know that as humans we are pattern recognizing machines. That unfettered can lead to making connections that don’t really exist in reality. That in itself is not really a problem. That is what helps us to abstract and understand the world and our interaction with it. However, patterns can be created in our own minds that do not correspond with reality in any way. That is what leads to false-concepts such as god, the state and other self destructive thought processes. We can trust our senses, but only to the point that they are actually able to interpret reality. The rest we need to leave up to trial and error and leave conclusions aside until we can be sure enough to function in reality.

It’s a fine line I walk because I love deep thinking philosophy as I love deep feeling psychology. However, both left without a methodology will leave you disoriented, confused and ultimately destroyed. Worse than that, it’s a disease that can be passed onto your children. There’s nothing more self destructive than participating in the destruction of a young mind.

Here’s a video that helped me to understand the brain better:

And here are some videos from artists that I appreciate but also think have the momentum towards scrambled egg brains.

I’d love to hear others thoughts on this because I think it’s a topic that is close to the surface for most people but one that is hard to admit because letting people know you have that potential often makes them treat you like a time bomb. (I think because they feel that own potential in themselves and have that fear about themselves)