Photo Journal 5/23/2021 (Mostly Flowers)

  Shot with Canon 80D

Canon 100mm Macro

Blue Lake, Oregon

Follow me on Instagram @g_grins and @fractalfocus.nature

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Book Review: The Terminal List by Jack Carr

The Terminal List exemplifies the adage "write what you know" and the author Jack Carr apparently knows how to kill people. This becomes apparent as the protagonist, James Reece, goes on a rampage of revenge on the people that conspired to kill his platoon, his family, and his friends. James Reece employs a wide variety of military and insurgency tactics in order to surveil, trap, interrogate, and kill his enemies. These details are well developed and offer an insight into the world of modern combat, espionage, and terrorism. Whether he is using encrypted message systems, employing night vision optics, custom sniper rifles, or using disguises, James Reece is an unstoppable and ruthless operator. Also, he has a brain tumor, which doesn't help. 

The story here is not complicated or poetic. It reads like a typical action movie with straightforward good versus evil dichotomies. James has racked up a ton of favors from the perfect set of friends to help him exact his revenge. His life in the Navy Seal Teams has allowed him to meet just the right people to help him fund, plan, and execute his plans, including an insanely wealthy Mexican benefactor and a pilot that owes him her life. Without these people, he would not have gotten very far but thanks to them he can freely roam the USA and Mexico and make his enemies pay. 

The bad guys are equally stereotypical. They are politicians, lawyers, and corrupt leaders, and they all have personal vices that make them even worse. Womanizers, powerful sociopaths, master manipulators, and spineless lackeys make up the "bad guys" team and they have no redeemable qualities. They deserve to die so why not make it interesting? James Reece makes it interesting. 

 This is the first book Jack Carr has written and it suffers from another adage, "show don't tell". The author covers a ton of ground just saying what is happening and what has happened instead of allowing the reader to fill in the gaps by providing the subtle details that would lead the reader to realize a more vivid and deep world. I found the whole thing to be so typically action-oriented that from the very beginning I could predict what would happen, roughly speaking. This doesn't mean that I could predict the specifics but that the overall outcomes were unsurprising. The lack of character development and the excess of stereotypical personalities made it difficult to empathize and connect to the characters. It is just taken for granted that we should care about the good guys and hate the bad guys, which I found to be uninteresting. There were few points in which I was excited to get back to the book and went days without reading. 

That said, I really enjoyed the military details that added to the authenticity and helped create a realism that grounded the book. Specific details related to weapons, tools, strategies, and tactics are the reason to read this book. Like any good Bond movie or Jason Bourne movie, the act of putting yourself into the shoes of a highly trained, intelligent, and nearly unstoppable soldier is a lot of fun. I enjoyed the action of this book but didn't feel like it took sufficient advantage of the medium of literature. I think it is coming out as a movie and that will probably be a more satisfying way to enjoy this story. If you like military action thrillers and straightforward writing then you will like this book. Otherwise, wait for the movie or pick up something a little more literary, like Deadwood, which I just finished and found exceedingly compelling.

 

On Ego and Roles (Thoughts)

When I am working and ask if I can help and the customer responds automatically with "No, I'm fine." When really what they want is for someone to help them find the thing they are looking for but they don't want anyone to think that they are helpless, weak, or can't find it on their own. Inevitably, within a few seconds, they raise my attention with, "Actually, where is the so and so?" 

Sometimes I smile when I filled with a sense of ego. When I accomplish something difficult or figure something out that is meaningful, or when someone says that I did a good job. I am consumed by a sense of pride and confidence. I smile and look inward to congratulate myself. "What a good job I have done!" "They like me!" Then I am struck by another thought and I smile to myself and I accept my pride and release the feeling of ego and move on with life. If I allow myself to live in the past accomplishments I will have a harder time recognizing the current experience and become distracted from those around me who rely on my judgment and expertise. If I forget those around me in pursuit of prolonging my sense of self-worth then I forget to treat people as I would prefer to be treated. I prefer to those around me to acknowledge my existence and be present around me. I want to be a part of their world, not a ghost adjacent. 

My longing to be perfect is a reflection of my dysfunctional ego. An ego that will not be satisfied with anything less than perfection creates an endless cycle of failure. Instead of being satisfied with improvement with an upward trajectory, an inflated ego demands a level of expertise that is only afforded to those that are practiced, educated, and experienced, and only to varying degrees regardless of said experience. 

I get nervous before I stream myself live, offer my opinions to superiors, or try to impress loved ones. I want to control the perception of others in a way that makes me think that they think that I am awesome. That I am wise, courageous, strong, funny, healthy, sexy, and all other archetypes of awesomeness. When I am nervous I forget to be in the moment and I forget to focus on the task at hand. In the back of my mind, I am imagining those that are watching me and attempting to will them into seeing me in a positive light. 

This is illogical for many reasons. Firstly, I am incapable of accurately predicting the thoughts of others. Secondly, I have no control over and shouldn't require control over the thoughts of others. Thirdly, I have to accept that not all people will like me, hate me, love me, think about me, forget me, know me and in fact, most people will never think about me at all. Even those who have met me will rarely think of me twice. And my best friends, family members, and lovers will only think of me occasionally and with only a small fragment of an accurate impression of myself. 

My ego allows me to spite others for not caring enough about me. When I choose not to call a friend and use the excuse that they haven't called me in "who knows how long" or when I say to myself, "if they wanted to talk to me they would call me." My ego tells me that in order to be my friend you have to put in the same amount of effort I put in so when my friends don't put in the effort it is simply a reflection of my effort. My ego tells me that if I text them first then I am the weak one. 

My ego makes me want to show how amazing I am by working harder than anyone else, even though I am lazier than I could be, waste plenty of time, and only marginally work toward bettering myself. When I judge others as being lazy because they don't answer a phone I don't want to answer. When I look around at everyone and think "these lazy fucks!".    

I am full of shit. 

Any desire that is born simply for the need to impress others is shallow and elusive. To understand what others want one would have to constantly be probing and questioning those around them to gain insight into what might impress others. To make your parents proud you have to constantly be assessing their pride in your deeds, or lack of deeds. Maybe your parents are elusive as well. They disguise their pride and your ego becomes lost and confused. 

Roles: 

The ego is an expression of the collective idealism you create around the perception of yourself. The ideal self is postulated within the mind and over time it evolves. Whenever you contemplate yourself as being in alignment with your perceived ideal self your ego is satisfied. 

Be wary of the ideal self as this is generated with others in mind. We generate and develop our conception of ourselves by comparing ourselves to those around us. We impersonate, mimic, and react to the world and we are shaped by its actions. We are told who we are by witnessing the world. We know we are human because other humans look the same and identify as humans. Are parents and siblings become role models and we become like them. Adapting and surviving. But we are not them and so we take different paths and soon we learn of the paths of many others. Through stories, we learn about the lives of others and we incorporate those archetypes into our bank of lives to emulate. "I like that person. I don't like that person." We identify allies and enemies by taking sides in stories and justifying actions. We place ourselves into the story and take on the roles of its characters. We imagine living the lives of these characters and 

These stories are ancient but in the age of information, the stories are overwhelming. From before we are alive we are inflicted with stories. Many of them that are purposely unrealistic in a way that clouds the mind with counterfactuals and contrivances. (This has been an attempt to get the word contrivances into a sentence.)

We can't trust the news to tell us what is really going on. 

Politicians attempt to convince others that they are the hero in a virtue story. A story about how people should act. A story about how people should try to help others. A story about service and chastity. A story about trust and courage. These are just stories. They are not real. Politicians are professional administrators with jobs related to spending the public's money. They determine their own salaries, bonuses, and benefits. 

There are no roles. Your life is not a story. You are an ape on Earth, on your way to death while witnessing the deaths of those around you. You didn't choose to be born and you will most likely remain ignorant to anything deeply true in the universe. You will only tenuously grasp reality and mostly fumble along getting by on sheer momentum, determination, and luck.  

Luck is another word for ignorance. Luck is not knowing the causal link from an outcome to its salient cause. Luck is seeing a result without seeing the effort put into it. It is assigning positive or negative value based on its relative benefit to the individual. 

Photo Journal 5/10/2021 (Blue Lake)

 Shot with Canon 80D

Tamron 70-300mm

Blue Lake, Oregon

Follow me on Instagram @g_grins and @fractalfocus.nature

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