"Tonight you are all going to be part of a social experiment"

Insight into one of my social experiments:

• "I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me."
• "I'm leading a normal life and right along side me there is this myth"
• "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro"
• "Too weird to live, too rare to die"

Eerily similar are my thoughts, views and beliefs to those of Hunter S. Thompson. I feel a strange connection with/understanding of him without (obviously) ever meeting him. Believing that we may be the same 'type' of person, I may be unknowingly evolving his 'Gonzo journalism' concept to applications of research. The concept of reporting on an event by immersing yourself within it to gain a more full understanding of said event is the premise of Gonzo journalism. For future reference to myself, I will use the phrase 'extreme perspective' to describe this sort of situation . This 'Gonzo research' would offer a potential for better understanding the human psyche and what motivates us as a species by becoming enthralled in as many drives, thoughts, emotions, or anything else that makes up the functioning of the human mind that I can immerse myself within. I need to allow myself testing and exploration of many different mindsets and mental situations to try figuring out the limits of each theory and any possibly common threads from there. I realize polling would be easier if I could find volunteers, however, in my opinion this offers the most control over the experiment. To me that makes my data more valuable.

• Man is the only creature that refuses to be what he is."- Albert Camus

We are the rare breed that is able to move beyond our instinctual drives, but to what extent? Our instincts and drives still exist and dictate our actions to a great degree. I believe I must fully understand what I am trying to move beyond before attempting to do so. In answering the 'what' I find the answer to the 'why' and from there should be able to figure out the 'how' with relative ease. "One often learns more from ten days of agony than from ten years of contentment.”- Merle Shain

• "Fear is a habit; so is self-pity, defeat, anxiety, despair, hopelessness and resignation. You can eliminate all of these negative habits with two simple resolves: 'I can' and 'I will'.”
• “There are four ways you can handle fear. You can go over it, under it, or around it. But if you are ever to put fear behind you, you must walk straight through it. Once you put fear behind you, leave it there.”

The point of all this research is to learn from it to help myself and others in the future. To create within my mind a reference for how to deal with certain aspects of life and how it relates to different perspectives. The only people that can't be helped are those who believe that nobody can understand them. I want to be able to help people and if the limiting factor is being able to relate then this should bridge the gap.

Here we go courtesy of M358, LoS, and caf: my day begins anew.