Heart and Steel
- Thread starter MangaDex
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- Jan 25, 2019
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I read someone state, in relation to this manga, that though the artist says he does not take drugs, that such should be doubted, that drugs are shortcuts to altered states of consciousness. Yet, I see the machinery in the robot's first dream and I remember the effort it took me 14 years ago to restructure part of how I thought to visualize gears to exacting precision, that precision where I simply think and connect little pieces into bigger pieces into running assemblies into plants, from start to finish, all in an instant, all perfectly represented, rather than numerically, purely by metaphor, or rather an exact analogy, and then in another instant, a flash of insight arrives and the metaphor becomes a computer program becomes a machine or a complicated phenomenon spontaneously seemingly absent intermediate steps - but it took me concerted effort to push my consciousness to that point, and a I mean a true concert, all in harmony, where many different harmonies exist but just in the way a pine tree is mindless to mill but an oak tree takes some preparation, some harmonies are easier and some are more difficult and not all are the same but even the simplest takes concentration and effort. Ah, there is reward at the end, and over time the experiences sublimate into my consciousness, but that is the effect consequent years of work.
To then read someone say drugs are shortcuts to altered states of consciousness is mad - literal madness, because this manga sometimes feels like it makes no effort to blur undrawn detail but rather allows too much detail to start to blur in the distance, and only in a state of madness could I interpret crazy scribbles and genuinely expect anything coherent or whole to come out of them, but this artist has real perception, starting not from scribbles but from something much more substantial yet as amorphous to him as the beginnings of our dreams are to us. But the reward you feel with drugs might be a substitute for the reward of hard work, leading only to an unwarranted elevation of one's ego. Drugs short-circuit a complicated feedback loop we use to improve ourselves and leave us in a state of learned enfeeblement. I feel distressed that I learned about this manga from such a source. I also feel distressed that anyone who bothers to read this will probably laugh and mindlessly quote an internet meme before their pop-shaman feeds them another ego-death mushroom, have fun dying, you'll lose your interest in living while feeling convinced you could never have truly lived otherwise. Why bother living at all? You've already felt it all; no reward carved from earth by your hands in a year could ever match a daily dose of surrogate for the same satisfaction, for you have rewired your whole brain and pushed your mind to its limits, randomly, of course - ah, what a sickeningly sweet sensation it must be to hit the reset button on demand again and again and again and..., never feeling uneasy, always feeling certain, and at the end of the day, left with an empty mind, a void of experience, but a certainty of sage-like wisdom.
I'd get tired of lively engaging with other people only to suddenly hit a brick wall with their glazed eyes staring past me, and then on my inquiry I learn they've always taken the same cocktail of drugs - even I can't easily think of another word than one derived from alcohol use, "cocktail," the madness is embedded in this language itself! This manga made me feel things. Go read it now.
The only thing I can comment on besides the wonderful imagery would be to just drop a quote from the first buddha, "Creativity flows when the mind is peaceful and joyful." Of course, you can fake it - nearly everyone you know takes caffeine whether or not they realize it - but faking it puts a hard ceiling on your limits. Your mind is not really peaceful because it is anxious and stress is imposed upon it from a sinful source (unless you are taking coffee to bodybuild... you are probably not a body-builder!). Are you joyful? If you see bacon and an orange in front of you, sometimes you want one and sometimes the other... because your gut tells you so. Does it tell you this with a British accent? Probably not... you're probably full but undernourished. It's the sort of thing you were born with that you are conditioned to unlearn - you want sugar! not orange. You want processed bacon! not real bacon. You reject your own instincts and develop cognitive dissonance, or you fight to re-tame your body and return it to health and happiness. You need to be creative to do this. You need to be able to chill to be creative! It is a catch-22.
Actually, every page in this manga makes me think of so many things, this is a wonderful short!
To then read someone say drugs are shortcuts to altered states of consciousness is mad - literal madness, because this manga sometimes feels like it makes no effort to blur undrawn detail but rather allows too much detail to start to blur in the distance, and only in a state of madness could I interpret crazy scribbles and genuinely expect anything coherent or whole to come out of them, but this artist has real perception, starting not from scribbles but from something much more substantial yet as amorphous to him as the beginnings of our dreams are to us. But the reward you feel with drugs might be a substitute for the reward of hard work, leading only to an unwarranted elevation of one's ego. Drugs short-circuit a complicated feedback loop we use to improve ourselves and leave us in a state of learned enfeeblement. I feel distressed that I learned about this manga from such a source. I also feel distressed that anyone who bothers to read this will probably laugh and mindlessly quote an internet meme before their pop-shaman feeds them another ego-death mushroom, have fun dying, you'll lose your interest in living while feeling convinced you could never have truly lived otherwise. Why bother living at all? You've already felt it all; no reward carved from earth by your hands in a year could ever match a daily dose of surrogate for the same satisfaction, for you have rewired your whole brain and pushed your mind to its limits, randomly, of course - ah, what a sickeningly sweet sensation it must be to hit the reset button on demand again and again and again and..., never feeling uneasy, always feeling certain, and at the end of the day, left with an empty mind, a void of experience, but a certainty of sage-like wisdom.
I'd get tired of lively engaging with other people only to suddenly hit a brick wall with their glazed eyes staring past me, and then on my inquiry I learn they've always taken the same cocktail of drugs - even I can't easily think of another word than one derived from alcohol use, "cocktail," the madness is embedded in this language itself! This manga made me feel things. Go read it now.
The only thing I can comment on besides the wonderful imagery would be to just drop a quote from the first buddha, "Creativity flows when the mind is peaceful and joyful." Of course, you can fake it - nearly everyone you know takes caffeine whether or not they realize it - but faking it puts a hard ceiling on your limits. Your mind is not really peaceful because it is anxious and stress is imposed upon it from a sinful source (unless you are taking coffee to bodybuild... you are probably not a body-builder!). Are you joyful? If you see bacon and an orange in front of you, sometimes you want one and sometimes the other... because your gut tells you so. Does it tell you this with a British accent? Probably not... you're probably full but undernourished. It's the sort of thing you were born with that you are conditioned to unlearn - you want sugar! not orange. You want processed bacon! not real bacon. You reject your own instincts and develop cognitive dissonance, or you fight to re-tame your body and return it to health and happiness. You need to be creative to do this. You need to be able to chill to be creative! It is a catch-22.
Actually, every page in this manga makes me think of so many things, this is a wonderful short!
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