All My Sins

[Alex Libman]

This is going to take a while...

First thing's first - I've told a lie.

It's the only significant lie I've ever told as an adult, IIRC, and it's something I could get away with completely - the lie is overwhelmingly plausible and utterly impossible to disprove.  But, well, it's haunting me, if you know what I mean...

It started very small - some lulz in a lulzy chat-room, if I'm recalling correctly.  A naming coincidence.  Then it became sort of like a fantasy of mine, an alternate interpretation of reality, a state of mind that "transcends trivialities of space"...

I've told people that I've spent some time in New Hampshire.  How the hell could I not have by now, having been obsessed with FSP since 2006...  People who know me in real life could tell you that New Hampshire was all I talked about.  My mind and my heart were in New Hampshire - but that's only a poetic metaphor.

The fact is...

In all this time...

I've never actually set foot in New Hampshire!

Epic fail.

The lie seemed harmless at the time...  I never claimed to be "a mover", just NOT a socially-retarded idiot devoured by phobias and incapable of taking a few trips to the North Country!

"OK, so I'm an Internet shut-in", I'd tell myself; "it doesn't matter where I am until I actually start meeting people and doing FSP stuff in real life...  And when I'm ready for that - what difference does it make if it takes a 4-to-5-hour drive from NJ or an up-to-3-hour drive from Middle Of Nowhere, Coös County?"

But it does make a difference.

The shame of this lie has been festering in my subconscious mind, probably contributing to the psychological problems I've experienced later.  No matter how much I tried to be honest with every other aspect of my life, this lie remained.  There was no taking it back, at least not without something as painful and shameful as this thread...

This fantasy took on a life of its own - my mind edited the experiences I've had in NJ and pretended that I was in NH...  I wasn't LifeOfPi-crazy or anything like that, I just thought I could permit myself just one little freebie, one little Photoshop tweak to the story of my life...  It wasn't really even premeditated - I never even tried to hide my NJ IP, which is obviously very easy to do, but provided a perfectly plausible technological explanation.  Maybe it became a game in my mind.  Maybe I just wanted there to be ambiguity about where I actually was, and how much time I've spent where...  I guess I was just unable to confront the degree of my cowardice and folly.

Everything that I've said about tax avoidance and cheap living was true -- I've never filled out an income tax return in my life, etc -- but it was in New-fucking-Jersey!

I didn't bring up my location often, but still...  I've re-enforced that lie in a handful of forum conversations, with all sorts of defense-lawyer tricks so that what I was saying technically wasn't false.  For example, I've said that I've moved back to Lakewood, NJ after that painful incident in Sep 2010, but I've merely moved from a less reclusive location in NJ that had been associated with fantasies about being in NH.

I am terrified that my mind had been capable of doing this...

The most painful thing is that this lie started to get mixed in with truth, soiling what would have otherwise been a righteous position.  No matter what I have been right about in these instances, I am still wrong, because I've mixed some of this existentialist interpretative fantasy bullshit into an otherwise 100% factual arguments.

I never falsified my location with the FSP site - I've only lied in vague abstractions, while every other detail of my life is documented in detail.  Deep down I was very unhappy with the lie, but I've found myself rationalizing it in all sorts of ways...  "I'm already far more honest and transparent than most people - I write about very personal things publicly on the Internet.  Why is it so terrible to pretend that I've spent at least some time in NH by now, still keeping to myself, like a non-coward would certainly have done in my place?  Who cares whether I hike through the woods of NJ or NH?!  I'm not falsely attributing any merit to myself, just hiding the bizarre shut-in attributes of my life.  Other people lie all the time.  How is what I'm doing worse than a flat-chested girl wearing a padded bra?"

Nevertheless, this lie prevented me from publicly confronting the fact that I've reneged on my First 1000 Pledge, "to move to New Hampshire by the end of 2008".  Obviously I wasn't the only one, since the total of 1000 movers was only reached in 2012, but that excuse does not invalidate this personal failure.  I signed a pledge!  I am responsible!

I've always believed that a person's integrity should be his/her highest value.  It seems that I didn't believe it hard enough - my cowardice (and the desire to hide it) have slipped one past the goalie...   

I have committed other acts of hypocrisy and dishonor, but I never hid them.  I will review them again in my subsequent posts to this thread.  But this lie, because it is a lie, definitely feels like the worst thing that I have ever done.

[Silent_Bob]

The wage of your sin is that you are to be consigned to the deepest, darkest, most unbearable pit of hell,,, NJ.

[Pat K]

Geez Bob has no mercy.

[KBCraig]

Perhaps he can work his way up to the upper regions of Hell, like Long Island.

[Alex Libman]

I hereby nominate Silent_Bob for The Funniest Punchline Of The Month Award! 

---

Yes, the only reason I am still in NJ is cowardice.  I do have many excuses, but they are "mitigating circumstances" at best...  They include:

• "I am a skeptic; rushing into FSP would have been a contradiction of my values."  I wanted to spend a couple of years developing and challenging my philosophy, for which the Internet was necessary but the physical presence of my butt in NH was not.  (I did "put my money where my mouth is" when, in Oct 2006, I started AMP'ing FTL at $100/month.  In the autumn of 2007, in part due to disagreement over the virtues of not voting, I've directed those funds to Ron Paul instead.)

• In 2008, I've moved out of my apartment (Hamilton Square, NJ) and into a Studio-6 (near my old college stomping grounds, in East Brunswick, NJ), condensed my lifestyle, wound down relationships with all my local clients, and started to make myself ready for the move...  But chickened out!  Some people on the FTL BBS seemed to dislike me, and I wanted to delay my move until I could overcome that - either by proving myself right, or by recognizing my mistakes and improving myself.  I started to think of a move to NH as something of a rebirth, something that I can only accomplish when I am intellectually and "spiritually" worthy of it...

• There is a small Jewish cemetery in NJ; a stone's throw away from Freehold Raceway Mall.  In it there is a headstone: Yuriy Libman, died 2007-04-21; Adel Libman, died 2011-07-27.  I've committed many sins against my parents, but I didn't want to abandon them completely when they were disabled and near death...

• After the events of Sep 2010, I've had a lot more reasons to be afraid of coming to NH.  A lot of people seemed to genuinely hate me.  I've been called a "troll", a "stalker", a "pedophile", a "retard", etc, etc, etc...  Being scorned by all the people I've respected was a hundred times more painful than the deaths of my parents, or any misadventures of my slow-onset tax avoidance / tax resistance.  For a while I've completely lost the will to live...  Couldn't come to NH, couldn't go to a job interview, couldn't talk to people, couldn't write, couldn't code, couldn't sleep, started smoking regularly for the first time in my life, etc.  I've also been having problems with my eyes: seeing flashes of light, more and more floaters, unable to read from a screen very well, etc - thought I was going blind...  My savings finally ran out.  Relationships I've been using to hide income came to an end.  I started doing physical work, lifting boxes and grinding my teeth in anger all day.  Started having heart trouble, perhaps from too many energy drinks.  Then I couldn't compete even for the physical work.  Couldn't even pay $400/month for a rented room...

• In Nov 2011, in an act of Dostoyevskian self-destruction, for the first time in my life...  I've applied for government benefits!  This is my second-biggest sin, and I'll expand more on that in subsequent posts.  I've rationalized this in the past (in part thinking of Ayn Rand's alleged "hypocrisy" in receiving some Social Security), but I don't actually agree with that thought experiment.  This was completely different - this was a direct and deliberate contradiction of what I've stood for in the past, a suicide of what remained of my self-esteem...  It was an admission that I will never be good enough to be a Free Stater.  It was the demolition of a major pillar of Alex Libman.  It was the burning of my integrity, along with my writings and my health and everything else; phasing out my life in the agony of total defeat.

• The reason why I'm "homeless" in Lakewood, NJ instead of NH is that I'm now involved in a "Tent City" here [YT] [FB] [G+] [WP] - a shantytown that is, in my terminology, "homesteading government land".  I'm doing a bit of peanut-gallery "activism" to keep the township government, which has been a source of endless harassment, from bulldozing the place to the ground...  (See my Facebook timeline for more info on that.)

[Alex Libman]

The clumsy idiot that I am, I almost started a fire twice since I started living off the grid!

I'm sure that all Free Staters, age 3 and up, are just too smart to make these kinds of mistakes.  The constructive value in telling these stories is to remind y'all that some people aren't as smart as you are, and, if you have one at your off-the-grid campsite, they may need some additional forewarnings...


THE STOVE

The first time was when I first came to Tent City (Lakewood, NJ).  This was before I got my own tent, so me and another tentless guy were sleeping in sleeping bags on the floor of the chapel.  (The chapel consists of an elevated plywood floor on logs, metal pipes for walls / A-frame, and tarp cover).

It was early March, and we used a wood-burning stove for heat.  I never used a wood-burning stove before, but I learned to use it quickly, and I was getting up every few hours during the night to keep the fire going.  Except I didn't realize just how hot it gets on top of the stove...

I left some wet (or lightly wet) logs on top of the stove to dry, figuring they'd be OK for a while, and snuggled back into my sleeping bag (with another blanket over my head) to listen to my MP3 player.  (I thought sleeping in a chapel was a good occasion to revisit The Selfish Gene, tee-hee.)

Not 20 minutes later, I was waking up the other guy and we had to run out because the chapel was filled with smoke from those logs on top of the stove catching fire!

Write your own joke about the Good Lord smoking out an atheist...


THE BATTERY

Another incident happened just a few days ago.

There's a little shared trailer here that I use as an "office", near the electric generator by the Tent City Central Square.  It was around 10PM, by which time it gets nearly pitch black out here in the woods, so the only light was coming from the screen of my laptop.  (The idiot that I am, I forgot my flashlight in my tent, when I was leaving it in the morning.  And I don't use candles, because they make me wanna cigarette...)

As always, I was doing a zillion things at once - talking to people IRL and helping them with their laptops, writing some code on my laptop, chatting online, etc.  Interestingly enough, I happened to be chatting on Facebook with a girl who just recently left Tent City, and I was saying that I'm not leaving until the cops Taser me and drag me out - and when they release me, I'm coming right back.

The generator ran out of gas some time ago, and my laptop battery was running low.  Fortunately, we have an extra car battery in the "office" that gets charged from the generator - I just needed to unplug the battery charger jumper cables and plug in the inverter cables (and a couple of more steps that are even more trivial).  I've done this many times before, even in the dark (when you obviously can't read the '+' and '-' signs on the battery).  But this time I was distracted, and maybe someone flipped the battery to face a different way and I didn't notice, but, well, I... c-c-c-c-

I've crossed the cables!

Positive went on the negative.

Negative went on the positive.

My mind was somewhere else.  When it became obvious that I screwed up, I wasted a few precious seconds thinking "WTF".  I wasn't sure what to do.  Then I screamed "electrical fire" and got outta there.  There was a fire extinguisher in the trailer, but it was stuck in its mount.

Fortunately for all of us, our Minister Steve, the Atlas upon whose shoulders Tent City rests, was nearby with his own fire extinguisher - he charged in faster than Superman, expertly handled the burning wires that I thought might turn me into a smoldering skeleton, and saved the day!!!  (Nothing but the jumper cable was lost.)

Write your own joke about the Good Lord sending a bold of lightning to humble my bravado about taking a Taser shot...

[Tom Sawyer]

 

Glad you survived the educational process.

Porc Fest awaits you... the Great Northern Woods.

[Alex Libman]

Glad you survived the educational process.

Porc Fest awaits you... the Great Northern Woods.

I'll be there someday, if I live long enough, but for now my place is in the Tent City of Lakewood NJ, as it is fighting for its life...


---


It's funny how the human memory works...  In discussing my "Of Course I've Been To The Shire" lie, I completely forgot how it actually started, and what my main excuse / rationalization actually had been!

It actually started on forums where I've been representing libertarian ideas, like ImmInst / Gentoo / JREF / CityData / etc.  There I was, Libman, the ceaseless salesman of libertarian ideas, with an AnCap avatar that said "LIVE FREE OR DIE", and below the avatar...  WTF?!  "Location: Commieville*, NJ"?!  That's like trying to sell soap door-to-door with your face covered in mud!  Putting "New Hampshire" there seemed absolutely obvious, just to promote the idea that the Shire is the logical place for a libertarian to be...  (I've later changed most of those forum profiles back to my truthful location in NJ, or used "Leaving New Hampshire" as sorta a poetic expression of my feelings in the fall of 2010...)

(* The NJ towns I've lived in included: Freehold (1992-2001), North Brunswick (2001-2003), Hamilton Square (2003-2008), East Brunswick (2008), Jackson (2008-2010), Manchester (briefly, ~2010), and finally Lakewood / Tent City.)

[Alex Libman]

Next sin...
I can't seem to quit smoking!  (tobacco) 

I've announced publicly that I'm quitting, given away my cig supply a number of times, etc.  But didn't quit.  That really bugs me...

I've never been a heavy smoker - like 12 cigarettes a day on average (Newport 100s menthol), now down to 2-4 a day, but I just can't make it 0 permanently...

This is weird, because I've always had willpower over such things.  I've quit smoking before, and didn't smoke for years afterwards.  I've quit drinking.  I've quit whoring (before I ran out of money).  I've quit meat for a long time and became a strict vegan (also no caffeine, etc), until I decided it was unhealthy.  In polar-opposite experiments, I've been on strict low-carb diets, etc for as long as I thought was reasonable.  Whenever I was serious about losing weight or gaining muscle, I was able to do so.  I guess, with my move to Tent City, I've quit central heating and air conditioning - don't even miss it.  Etc.

But somehow smoking is different.  It's not just that biochemical urge to smoke - it gives me facial twitches, but I can ignore it.  It's the sense that I just can't enjoy my life without smoking, nothing to look forward to...  I pretty much only smoke in my tent.  I have insomnia, so I'm up half the night (or more) listening to audio-books.  No electricity, not even a flashlight or candles - just my MP3 player.  Can't handle that without smoking...

I think it's all psychological.  IIRC, I've started smoking regularly in 2011, just after the FTL libricide...  I really fell apart for the next couple of years...  Did nothing but smoke, watch vids, listen to classical literature audio-books (not political podcasts as before), grind teeth at Ian, and load/unload trucks - until I've accumulated physical strain and even stopped doing even the latter...  Believe it or not, becoming "homeless" (that is, moving to Tent City) was actually a huge improvement for me psychologically...

But I really really need to quit smoking.

Like I've said on Facebook:

I stand at a crossroads between two irreconcilable visions of my life...

On one hand there is Alex Libman the programmer, the online entrepreneur, the perpetual student, the advocate of reason, the libertarian activist, the tax resister, who stands behind his philosophical conclusions with integrity.

On the other hand there is Alex Libman the coward, who broke his Free State Project "First 1000" pledge; the socially-retarded nuisance and alleged "troll", banned even from the Free Talk Live forum, whose writings are not worth the bits they occupy; the dirty mooching homeless bum, who turns down job offers and procrastinates for months, without the energy to even get up most mornings; the idiot, rationalizing his own folly, belching sound and fury signifying nothing; the hateful failure; the rejecter of life, winding down a worthless existence of gluttony and self-deceit, awaiting his oh-so-much-deserved heart attack in a cloud of smoke...

Oh, what great leaps of self-aggrandizing faith it took to still (STILL!) hold on to the vision of the former! But all forms of credit eventually reach a limit. My time is up. The Alex Libman who cannot even quit smoking anymore just simply cannot "fight city hall".

Smoking just cannot be rationalized away, especially in an aspiring tax resister and agorist practicing efficient off-the-grid living...  Plus all the regular reasons to quit smoking: costs, health, health costs, fitness, longevity, etc.  And, perhaps most importantly: smoking (or rather fear of not being able to smoke) could make me a coward and shy away from going to prison...

[Scott Roth]

Can someone Gordon Ramsay this guy and move on?

[Alex Libman]

Award me 15 Michelin stars?   

[John]

I TRIED quiting MANY MANY MANY times YEAR after YEAR after YEAR after YEAR...
I stopped when i finally quit fighting the urges, and started just finding the urges amusing/fasinating...

I still don't smoke, but (and perhaps because) I still "enjoy" the urges. I find that anger at various temptations weakens me, while "laughing" at temptations streanthens me.

Life is a very interesting "game."
You might also find that when you stop fighting you'll win.
Until then, have one (or more) for me. 


Let it Go 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXnZV1MEEaM&list=PL2175EE4D487333BF

[Alex Libman]

Heh.  I think I understand what you're saying about observing the urges with detachment.  I've done it while quitting before, but didn't stick to it...  Lots of stress here at the time being...  I'm taking a break from my quitting efforts, but always reminding myself that I need to quit.  I will definitely get it together and try to quit more seriously in the future.

Thank you very much, John.

[Silent_Bob]

Piss off. You donkey.

[Kat Kanning]

What a strange post.