"By raising the level of empathy in me, you and anyone else, we administer a remarkable blow to the general suffering"

motivations...
....philosophical peripeties...
...and excerpts of seriously unserious nature...
...here

I’m a fucking daydreamer. But once you stop dreaming, feeling, creating, you’re dead inside.
I have been dead before. A dead man walking, awake again. I only have to remember that.
I should make it a rule for me.
I’m a fucking heretic. But you lose your face when you live according to someone else’s rules.
Cause we all are born free.
It's the money unfortunately which has become the thing which embodies freedom in this world. The Black Pearl doesn’t any more. It has sunk.
Time. Time sinks all the ships. But it’s the moment which lasts forever. The moment is what we have. The moment is what we are.
Carpe Diem, mateys.
//from Vidal's intro qx page//

It's simple to write about Vidal's philosophical background since he doesn't follow any established set of rules or beliefs, while his own beliefs can float according to the process of development, and only the kernel stays unchanging; the said kernel formed by the emphasis on empathy, by taking up the responsibility for his own actions, and by a principle similar to the one of the Wiccan rede: "If it harms none, do what you will".

Therefore it's more useful not to rap about the details, but to throw some of his thoughts and finds in, which might be an interesting read for those with minds not put to rest.

I don't care what movements and human rights' ideas are fashionable at the period of time. What I do care about is general humanity above labeled classification, freedom of self-expression above the standards of normality, empathy above greed and tribal sensory perception above consuming-marketing pattern of thinking.

When one gets to know international law and science of politics inside out, that's what it takes for the anarchy to start to look real friendly; and then it's time to stop and think, of alternative ways of political solutions, since the anarchy is not even a way if we use responsible terms. I have been down to tribal patterns, but those wouldn't work in modern society. Bits of democracy, working bits, is what remains, but it ain't easy to rely on those only. When greed ridicules greenpeace, it knows very well there is no more powerful weapon against your enemy than laughter. When democracy perverts itself in protection of guilty and dooming the innocent by word games within the law which would make any top-league-lawyer-gamers proud, the innocent are made to shut up. When personal freedom has been obtained, reactionaries hit with the strongest force, since there always have been people who need to impose nonsense rules in order to control the personal lives of others, and would readily put in prison those engaging in wrong sexual activites, using the wrong drugs, - especially if both at the same time -, and those daring to bare their souls - and especially their bodies.

Victimless Crime

In political philosophy and criminology, a victimless crime is behavior of an individual which is forbidden by law, but which does not violate nor significantly threaten the rights of other individuals. The most common argument for the existence of these laws is that they "harm society as a whole" or "harm public morality". All consensual crime is victimless since no rights are violated or threatened of someone who has consented to the behavior in question.

We all have the right to be different. The laws against consensual activities take away that right. If we let anyone lose his or her freedom without just cause, we have all lost our freedom.
With this thought in mind, here are the most popular consensual crimes: nudity, posession of drugs, violations of marriage (adultery, fornication, cohabitation, sodomy, bigamy, polygamy), prostitution, pornography, homosexuality, suicide and assisted suicide, transvestism.

In both my qualification and diploma works I have proven that victimless crimes lack a very important constituent of Actus Reus alias external elements of a crime, and the substitute posed to fill in for this constituent doesn't hold water neither logically nor legally. Outlawing and criminalising victimless crimes brings more ill than good; so, for instance, outlawing prostitution doesn't result in that it ceases to exist - it results in unprotected women on street, easy prey for far more dangerous outlaws. However, victimless crimes still continue to exist, if even only to please the people feeling like being in charge of public morality and other people's personal lives.

A little about Native American perception or The Human Way of Being (an expression borrowed from the title of a interestingly clever book by Calvin Luther Martin):

When clothes are clothes, and it doesn't matter if they are bought from Versace or second hand.
When animal is an alive being not means to obtain a trophee on the wall.
When terms like prestige or advertising completely lose their meaning.
When one can stop living life of waiting, stop living in the curse of time and history, to live instead in the still point of beauty.
When human body is a body, which can live, breathe, eat, shit, have sex, sneeze, and that is allright.

Quotes

Life goes by very quickly, and a wise soul does not sleep in itchy pajamas. /Michael Flocker/

The past is only the present become invisible and mute; and because it is invisible and mute its memories, glances and its murmurs are infinitely precious. We are tomorrow's past. /Mary Webb/

Normality highly values its normal man. It educates children to lose themselves and to become absurd, and thus to be normal. Normal men have killed perhaps 100 000 of their fellow normal men in the last fifty years.
/R. D. Laing/

We forget what a gift every single breath is that we're given. Every breath that we take is a great gift, and we never pay respect to that, you know. And those guys, my gypsy brethren, appreciate every single second of every day; every moment; every breath they take; every -- Well, you know the song. I learned a lot from them. /Johnny Depp/

If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thru' narrow chinks of his cavern. /William Blake/

So long as we have failed to eliminate any of the causes of human despair, we do not have the right to try to eliminate those means by which man tries to cleanse himself of despair. /Antonin Artaud/

The only difference between the Sane and the Insane, in this world, is the Sane have the power to have the Insane locked up. /Hunter S.Thompson/