The Fifth Pillar: Be Nice

There once was a very wise man who said this:

"Be Nice.

If someone gets up in your face and calls you a cock-sucker, I want you…to be nice.

If he won't walk, walk him. But be nice.

If you can't walk him, one of the others will help you, and you'll both…be nice.

I want you to be nice, until it's time to not be nice anymore."

"Well, uh…How we supposed to know when that is?"

"You won't. I'll tell you when."

There is no percentage to be gained by being a raving douche-nozzle. 

There is no percentage to be gained by making enemies that you don't have to make.  

There is no point in going to formal court with the idea in mind of acting up, Hogging the spotlight, and then taking a huge dump on the rug. 

Carthians who do this sort of thing give us all a bad name, and while they are inevitably a self-correcting problem…they can do a great deal of damage before they are…Corrected.

The machinery of social interaction requires grease to function properly. Politeness IS the grease, and in NO society is it more necessary than in a society of predators, liars, murderers, and monsters. Politeness allows us the ability to interact safely. and is one of the reasons why Elysium is such an important tradition to our kind.

Elysium is SO important that it creates an office. Elysium is SO important that when some prince attacks his enemies in an elysium, it usually mean that Prince, or that city's domain is not long for this world. You cannot wipe your ass with the tradition of Elysium without dire consequences.  And if you cannot be trusted to follow the tradition of Elysium. You can't be trusted for much of anything else.  Many kindred will assume you're feebleminded or two steps off from wassail. 

Being Nice is simple. It's not necessarily always EASY, but it IS simple. 

Call people what they want to be called. Use a person's titles without rolling your fucking eyes.  Unless a state of war exists between your covenant and another covenant, don't go cruising for a bruising. Keep it in your pants. If you want to argue, save it for the Carthian hangout.  If someone says something to you that's liable to get you riled up, excuse yourself and go talk to other kindred until you cool off.  If that Asshole won't leave you alone. Speak to the keeper. If the keeper does nothing. Leave the Elysium. If the asshole follows you, make him wish he hadn't.  If you want to leave, and you're fairly sure you can't take that guy, gather your fellow Carthians and leave en-masse.  Once you've left elysium, speak to the Harpy and inform him that you and your fellow carthians will no longer be attending Elysium until the asshole is publicly censured.  

Live by the dictum:  Don't start none. Won't be none.

You may find, that there are political compensations to be had for this effort. That you can become known as a "reasonable" carthian. A possible "back-channel" into other covenants.

And if you're whole covenant hews to this idea then YOU become known as a covenant of vampires that is easy to work with and respectable.

How many times have YOU personally, been saddled with an unfair characterization because of the public relations problem of our covenant. 

Who needs that shit? Nobody.

Am I saying that it's important to roll over and show your belly. No. Far from it.

But seeing as how we are passionate and excitable creatures, we don't always have a good yardstick for knowing when a fight is called for.  I say to you:

If you would be a moral and ethical vampire in this modern day and age, That you should start no fight, but always be ready to finish one.

“There is nothing in our book, the Qur'an, that teaches us to suffer peacefully. Our religion teaches us to be intelligent. Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone lays a hand on you, send him to the cemetery.” 

- Malcolm X

In fact, as a Carthian we should want to adopt the basic premise of the Hell's Angels. "Raise a hand to one of us? You raise a hand to all of us." 

This of course requires a caveat for any Carthian with poor impulse control.  If YOU started the fight, and there didn't NEED to be a fight, then you're going to get the shit kicked out of you by all of us, twice as hard afterwards.

This will occasionally mean that you'll end up fighting with someone who you consider a friend/ally simply because SOMEONE decided to be ignorant. All you can really do is say, "Hey. Sorry about this…" and maybe send them a nice gift afterwards.

Hey. Who knows. Maybe if we adopt the basic idea that fighting with us isn't consequence free FOR ANYBODY. Then maybe other covenants will do the same.

But, i'm not going to hold my nonexistent breath.

Look. there are entirely too many motherfuckers walking around with the attitude that you only give respect to those who respect you in return. This is, at its basis, the philosophy of the self-justified asshole.  You give respect to all beings until they stop being worthy of it.  And if you do so, you in turn, earn the respect that you are given.  and Hey, if YOU are respected, and someone loses YOUR respect, they are likely to lose the respect of all who respect you.  Win/Win.

It takes so little time and effort to simply be polite, I recognize that many Kindred are emotional cripples or burn victims. But I still don't see how kindred go from social engagement to social engagement and are unwilling, or unable, to extend basic courtesy to one another.

I recognize that following this pillar is a bit like walking a tightrope. But within all philosophies are dichotomies. All of existence is walking one tightrope or another. 

Now it can be told.

So. People have been wondering about me. Whatever happened to Pinky? What kind of secrets did he have?  How'd he end up?

As far as secrets go, I don't have any. Never did. I might have pretended I did a time or two, but that's easy. If you act like you have an ace up your sleeve, people will assume you do.

When you're a vampire, you don't exactly get to ride off into the sunset. It makes for stinging that Bactine won't help, and an extremely poor attitude. But as far as it goes, I did at least end up in a place of peace.

When last seen, I had left Lexington. Janosh had decided to go home to the Ukraine, and still being relatively new to this century, asked if i'd accompany him. The idea of international travel was frankly a daunting one to someone who was still getting used to this modern world. Fortunately, I was used to traveling in a way that most kindred aren't.

So we did some plane-hopping. I called a guy i knew in NYC and got us some traveling documents and then threw some baksheesh at the Kindred who have their hooks into TSA at JFK. Had to do some favor trading.  Also stopped in and saw my literary agent.  And then we were on the red-eye overseas.

Had to stop in France. Janosh had this bee in his bonnet about making a full report to the Ordo Chapter house that had sent him to the states in the first place. It took some looking, the old chapterhouse had been burned down and had eventually relocated underground in the parisian catacombs.  His "full report" took 3 full weeks of non-stop talking in a symposium. The French Ordo seemed largely bemused by it all. None of the kindred that had known about Janosh's original mission were alive or out of torpor. Literally, no one knew who Janosh was, and in addition, while Janosh's French was way better than mine, it was characterized by the kindred in that Chapterhouse as "Somewhat rustic".  

At least, I think that's what they were saying. In the end, most of the Kindred that turned up left after about an hour, except for the contingent of Ventrue Architects. Those guys ate it up with a spoon. By the end of 3 weeks, they were treating Janosh like a bona-fide rock star. The old Russian bore it with humility and good grace.  But I think he was tiny bit embarrassed.  After promises to visit again, we set off across europe.

If Janosh's French was "Rustic". His Russian was turning out to be incredibly archaic. It was like someone who had learned to speak Elizabethan English turning up in London today and trying to get around.  Granted, the old man is eideticker and learns fast, but for the first couple of week back in the old country, i had to do a bit of translating for the old man.

Russian Kindred fall into 3 major categories. Political, Aristocratic, and Proles.  So, Janosh's return upset the applecart somewhat. He is VERY old. When he wants to, you can feel the power in his blood from across a ballroom. But in his breathing life, he was, to put it mildly, a farmer.  He has no patience for political rhetoric, and he's not an aristo.  Most of the Aristos are kind of old and used to ordering people like Janosh around. Janosh has even less patience for that.  Some Romanov-blooded piece of work said something stupid to Janosh, and he, showing remarkable restraint, picked him up off his feet and threw him across the room and into a Hepplewhite sideboard.

He literally stood and waited for the keeper of Elysium to turn up while the aristo worked himself into a paroxysm of hysterics. (I pegged him for old Ventrue) The Aristo demanded that Janosh be taken for judgement to the Prince. Janosh calmly explained, that the aristo had offered him insult and being hucked across the room was his way of challenging the "young fledge" to a duel. After all, he'd not been seriously harmed. And if he wanted to satisfy his honor, Janosh was more than willing to meet him, and any seconds, friends, allies and blood relations who were willing to cast their lives away, directly outside.  "If I had wanted to kill him," he continued, "I'd have done this…"  and then he did his trick.

Now, I've SEEN him do it, and i still think it's pretty startling, knowing he can do it, so I can only imagine what THEY thought. I've seen the aftermath of him depopulating crack houses in the sketchier parts of Lexington and it's frankly terrifying. He is able to turn to mist form subliminally fast, and reform even faster. I have Quicken Sight, and it still looks like he's almost teleporting. Also, he's got the longest claws I've ever seen on a Gangrel.  The ventrue had only the mildest knick on his cheek, but everyone in the room got the message. His more level headed kin moved in immediately, and with some "lordly words", forced him to pipe the fuck down. For his part, Janosh's apology to the Keeper and the prince was long and properly flowery.

Janosh would introduce me as his "Childe". Which brought me some unwelcome scrutiny, even though I thought it an honor. The old man is a good mentor.  In fact, when we made contact with the Russian OD, his name was legend and carried an interesting amount of weight.

The Moscow Chapterhouse is one of most impressive libraries I have ever been in. We made a point to travel there after Janosh had established some territory in the Ukraine and felt he could safely leave for a week. The library had taken over three blocks within walking distance of Dzhershinski Square and was originally a firm that exclusively handled accountancy for the KGB back in the old days. The upstairs was all still regular buildings and seemingly unconnected, but the underground areas extended down at least 4 stories by my count,  Built and maintained by Gangrel and Nosferatus.  Floor to ceiling with books for 4 stories and 3 whole blocks. Most of them old and crumbling before the rise of the Tsars.  The largest collection was the Stalin's Black Library, which was rumored to hold such occult works as would take a belt sander to the sanity of most researchers.

Now how can I resist that sort of challenge?

After 2 weeks it became apparent to me that I was only scratching the surface. Janosh understood. I'd found a thread in some very old works that would have led to something I've been working on in the Great Work. So he bid me stay and look as long as I'd like while he returned to his home.

We'd been traveling together for months. and in about an hour of his leaving, I missed him terribly. It made we want to turn aside from the work. And perhaps the only reason I did not, is that if I chased after the old monster like some frightened child, I'd never earn his respect again…

So I stayed. and I read.

I made diagrams. Talked to the librarians. 

I did math that made my head hurt.

I called up spirits using age old and very reliable protocols.

I asked questions. Found fellow travelers on the same road as myself.

I spent 4 months there.

I followed the thread of my research.

See. We have this ability to manipulate the monster within us. It occurred to me at some point that it may be that we can enhance and manipulate that which is in us, that enables us to still be human.  I've crudely referred to it as a form of "Weaponized Humanitas"  But that's a limited way of putting it.  It's more like having Humanity that shareable.  Possibly even by force.

It led me to a certain dragon's nest in the heart of the slums of new delhi. To drop acid, and throw myself bodily into the deepest hole in hell, just to see if I could claw my way out.

It led me to Tibet. I spent three weeks there with no blood and no sleep. and when I did taste blood again, it was only a drop, but that drop of blood was as sweet as a promised kiss in the springtime.

It led me to Honshu where I studied with a noted blood alchemist. I lived in the form of a junkyard dog or as an Owl, and became the unofficial protector of our neighborhood against the Akuma that lived there. I still have the sword, which is a true thing of beauty.

All that left me changed.

Golconda?  Nah. Golconda is a tiny flyspeck town in Western Kentucky. I went there once as a lark. They have 3 streets and one stop sign. You actually have to leave town to pick up your mail.  No. I was looking for a soul-deep change and half measures weren't going to do.

Finally, I went wandering. I found myself heading north and remembered some unfinished business in Iceland. 

I was negotiating with the local prince for permission to stay there. It wasn't going well.

The last time I'd been there it had been because one of my ex-wives had tracked me down and demanded some answers and I had to go into hock with some of the local Ventrue to get the situation handled. and as it happened, those kindred weren't exactly friendly with the prince. Lovely.

Fortunately for me, an incursion of Brood swept into Reykjavik in numbers so large that it was truly daunting. See. Iceland is far enough north that there are periods of months at a time when you have no sun. At times, Brood come out of the woodwork. The locals hate it of course.

The unfortunate thing is when kindred attack something in THOSE sorts of numbers, it doesn't really matter what the security arrangements are, they tend to fail and then it's pretty much every man for himself.  These guys were fast, tactically savvy, and well armed.

I waded in. Sword and claws. Moving fast, like I can. Taking the occasional hit, in order to gain position and leverage, for a strike of my own, like i've learned. But something was different about this fight. I could feel it in the air, the sharp tang of blood already on the breeze.

I could feel it in their moves. In their eyes. A distinct lack, like a hunger, not for blood, but for something more nourishing. I could feel it in the monster charging me, most keenly, as if he somehow sensed that I had what he sought.

But he didn't have to take it from me. I would give it to him willingly. 

We locked eyes. 

He ground to a halt. 

He dropped his weapon.

He shed one tear, and then another.

He fell to his knees and sobbed. He never took his eyes off me.

The sounds of combat had ceased all around us. The brood had remembered their humanity. and even the kindred on my side were finding it hard to raise a weapon and punish those crying monsters.

My Devotion only works for a single night. Most of the Brood begged us to kill them or leave them for the sun, but we ended up staking them until we could sort out a means to rehabilitate them. It's slow going, but it's still going on tonight. I don't know exactly what I did, but it seemed to have a longer term effect on the Brood.

Of course, NOW, i'm the princes best friend. I don't know if I can even teach this gift to another kindred or whether it's something unique to me, but I'll see what I can do.  

I call my Devotion, "Here. Have some of Mine."

Ilse and I live together now. She won't re-marry me, but she's still fond of me, and we still have earth-shatteringly great sex.  And, bonus, I speak more Icelandic now, and she speaks more English, and I'm finding I can occasionally bridge the gap with Russian. So we understand one another much better now.  

I don't exactly know how I got here. But here is a good place to be. If you're receiving this email, You're one of the people I trust and I don't mind visitors, even if trouble is dogging your heels.

Come see me sometime.

P. Berkowitz.

The Fourth Pillar: With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility.

There was a nice jewish boy who once wrote, “With Great Power comes Great Responsibility.”  All the rest of what he has given to the world, pale in comparison to the basic premise of this simple aphorism.

It’s core is simple.  If you have power, you have a moral and ethical responsibility not only to yourself, but to the rest of the world around you.  The only way that you can consider yourself a moral and ethical person is take up your responsibilities and fulfill them to the best of your ability.

Now, you could go the other way and do like rich and powerful people down through the ages have done. Rather than live up to your responsibility, you can use the bulk of your effort to demonize the poor and powerless, so that you can feel good about shirking your responsibilities.

Doesn’t mean you aren’t shirking them.

And make no mistake. It doesn’t matter if you are the puniest of your sire’s get and you were embraced two nights ago, you are yet, able to do things that a mortal man cannot do. 

THAT IS POWER.

I am continually amazed by the number of Invictus who are shocked and surprised at how hard some Carthians work on behalf of their domains.  I think most of them tell one another stories about how all we do is stumble around in a haze of bong smoke, muttering socialist platitudes, with our hands out for something.  But some of us understand our responsibilities and lean into them.  Additionally some of us understand the concept of enlightened self interest.  Why do we work so hard on behalf of our Domain?  BECAUSE WE FUCKING LIVE HERE!

But the crux of the biscuit is this: This basic idea cuts both ways. With Less Power comes Less Responsibility.

With NO power, comes NO responsibility.

If you marginalize us and take away our power, then we are not responsible for propping up the society that robs us of our agency.

And THEN it’s all Fight the Power/Kill Whitey time.

We work hard at achieving our personal goals.

We work hard at achieving our shared goals.

We work hard at trying to keep our cities safe out of enlightened self interest.

We do this because we know that no one is going to do it for us.

It’s like being in a relationship. If I’m in a relationship with someone and the sex is great, well...there is a certain amount of shit i’m willing to put up with. I think most men and women know what I’m talking about. But say my partner decides, for whatever reason, to stop having sex with me. Well that means that the amount of shit I’m willing to put with goes WAY the fuck down. 

Some vampires get this. Others do not. And the sad fact is, Those of us who get this are constantly cleaning up the messes of the vampires who feel they have power, and "responsibility" is just something that happens to other people.

And when I say responsibility I mean it not just in the small sense of honoring your debts and helping out your brothers and sisters in the Movement.  I don’t just mean it in the middling-sized sense of trying to keep your nose clean with our laws and keeping your domain safe for kindred and mortals alike.  I mean it in the enormously huge sense of thinking about the future. Because the price of standing against a sick and rotting society is that you must have a ready alternative.  Be ready when some somebody says to you in open court, “Ok mister smart-ass Carthian. What would YOU do?”

Hit them with it right between their beady little pig-eyes.

YOU SHOULD BE SCARED by the amount of responsibility that comes with the power of undeath.

Because power doesn’t really corrupt. It merely magnifies what is already there. Your virtues and vices will be writ large on the pages of history, and incidentally on the backs of the proles.

It’s absolutely true that if you want to see the measure of a person’s character, give them a taste of real power. It’s the same reason why the revolution tends to eat its own children. 

Would that other kindred understood this as keenly as we do.

The Third Pillar: Do NOT cast away your humanity.

I’ve written about this before, so this will be treading old ground for those of you who have read my works.  This is a refinement of that basic idea. 

If there is one thing that is the cause of the bulk of our problems as a species and as a society it is the fact that we have a beast inside each of us.  I’m certain that without the quintessential “asshole room-mate” tromping around in our skulls, we could live in relative peace with each other and with the humans too.

It is the beast that prods and pokes us. It never leaves us alone. It’s constantly there to ask you, “Are you going to take that from him?”  It makes first impressions among our kind a ticklish business. It makes us passionate and excitable. It makes us get our noses out of joint over things that probably wouldn’t have bothered us when we were alive.  It makes kindred gatherings a bit like walking around in a minefield with clown shoes on. Normally come 10 o'clock, if kindred are raising their voices,  I just tap my watch and say, "Hmm. Time to bounce."  Am I wrong?  Don't think i'd care to find out really.

But this isn't even the main reason that Kindred gatherings ought to make you nervous and have your antennae up. We are a large extended family of liars, thieves and murderers. That's bad enough. But along the course of your Requiem, you may do things. Awful things, terrible things, Things you cannot justify to yourself or forgive yourself for. And many people crack under those

sorts of stresses. And each time you do those sorts of things, you find yourself giving in to those urges more and more.

Insanity is a low-grade fever that runs through the body politic of kindred society. In any given group of more than ten kindred there is likely to be at least one person who is coocoo for coco-puffs. 

I’ve been to a gathering of at least 200 Kindred. DO the Math.

And to make it even worse, the tendency is for the elders, the most powerful of our kind to step off the curb, usually in some dramatic sturm-und-drang fashion.

And let me assure you my friends, for every single kindred who is flatly, obviously, full goose bozo, gone up over the high side, CRAZY with a capital "CRA", there are at least six kindred of your immediate acquaintance who have gone mad in some quiet way that you may not notice until it's far too late. He may be lucid for long periods of time. May even be a strong political ally of yours. And you may not even know that he's wearing underwear made from the skin of Argentinean babies.

I feel very sad for you if you don't care about that sort of thing.

Some recover. Most don't. Most get sicker and sicker with each passing night, until sooner or later joining the Brood seems pretty fucking tame compared to your night-to-night itinerary of calumny. Sadly there is a great tendency to turn a blind eye to these activities. Some people in other covenants indulge in practices that erode their basic humanity. Even the Ordo Dracul has a particular blind spot about this, eschewing traditional human morality in the name of scientific inquiry. Not all go down this road, but enough do, that it frankly scares the shit out of me.

This will come off as serious blasphemy to some, and naiveté to others, but it is my considered opinion that to reject human morality is to become alien. To reject human emotion, as the basis of one's emotional apparatus is to invite the hunger to rule your heart...Or what's left of it. And that way lies madness.

And you know the ones always excusing the loss of humanity or segregating ourselves off from the mortal world, always say that we ought to do these things in order to be better predators.  Well by that fucking logic, I should chop off my legs and jam some wheels into the stumps so I can be a better bobsled racer. Seriously?

We all make mistakes. This much is assured. Hell, a number of us wouldn't be like this, if it weren't for the mistakes we made, or the mistakes made by our sires. We are going to do things in the midst of frenzy. We are going to do really unpleasant things in the name of political expediency or some idealistic intent. We might even trade away pieces of our basic humanity in exchange for mystic power or occult understanding.

And I, personally, am going on record as saying, "THIS IS A BAD PLAN".

Let me put it to you like this: Your sanity and its maintenance is one of your most primary responsibilities. It is your responsibility to yourself, and to your covenant to retain your sanity. And it's my opinion that you cannot abdicate your responsibility on pain of death or torpor.

And this, from a man who has explored a goodly chunk of his own brainpan with a saucy mélange of chemical entertainments.

Guess what, I live alone for a reason. I try to stay sober for kindred gatherings. And even if I do some crazy thing, odds are good that I'll be sober tomorrow night, crazy people will still be crazy.

Look, the fact is that if you don't keep your humanity and sanity together you are essentially asking, nay demanding, that other members of your covenant deal with the messes you make. Some covenants are by their nature more forgiving of this sort of thing than others, but all of them will have a breaking point. No one wants to deal with a vampire who flips out over nothing or who curls up into a fetal ball and starts mewling when things get

tough. NO ONE. Nobody else wants to carry your fucking baggage.

Truthfully, I don't see how kindred politics function in face of this unpleasant tendency to madness. The fact that we still often run under political systems that Caligula would feel right at home in, might have something to do with it. But that's a screed for another time.

Check yourself. Get someone you trust to check you too. Keep an eye on your friends and speak the fuck up if you

feel you need to. Avoid, or if necessary, put down any kindred who have left their humanity and their sanity behind. And if you have to put them down, do so without hatred. Maybe after they've had a long rest they'll be more amenable to treatment.

Look. The world is a harsh place already. You shouldn’t be harsher than it.  And you shouldn’t strive to be harsher than you have to be.  

You should cry.

You should feel like a complete fucking heel at times.

You should find things to laugh at and occasions to smile and not mean any of that in a nasty predative way.

You should try to love, even if you’re not sure you remember how.

You should hurt.

There’s a good reason why you should.

Because if you cast it all away.

If you forget who you are or where you came from.

If you simply can’t handle the shocks and hurts of this existence and lock it all away so you can simply survive...

Then it were better for you to walk into the sunrise. Because you’re no different from those goons in the Brood. It doesn’t matter whose colors you’re wearing.

I hear they’re always hiring.

I think that it’s the great failing of Kindred society that they always can.

The Second Pillar: Mental Passivity is Death

If history has shown us nothing else, it has definitely shown us, that all of the myriad forms of mental passivity, lead directly to death.

Fighting the last war instead of the war you’re fighting now is death.

Classism, Racism,Sexism, Creedism, Cynicism, Cronyism, Optimism, Pessimism, are all death.  Cynicism is especially bad and epidemic in this modern age. It is essentially a pre-judging of all people.  You think to yourself, as Henry Rollins puts it so eloquently, that All People Suck.  And you go about living your life based on that mental laziness.  But it's bullshit.  How the fuck do YOU know that all people suck?  Have you met ALL people?   It's fair to say that a statistically significant sampling of people that you have personally met suck, but just because it's 95% doesn't make it a 100%  If you make it a 100%, YOU'RE the problem. YOU'RE the one who sucks.

Dogma, whether it’s political or religious. is death.  Notice how the more dogmatic a person is in their covenant how they slide towards social death...and possibly actual death.

Getting fed up with the pace of the modern world and slipping into the patterns of a simpler age IS DEATH!

Slavish devotion to tradition long past it’s sell-by date is death.

Not even knowing what a sell-by date is, because you haven’t been in a grocery in 20 years is death.

Not keeping a weather-eye on popular culture is death. I’m not saying you have to give a fuck about Nicki Minaj, but you ought not  come off like a foreign person in your own home town.

Thinking with your heart instead of your head? Death. full-on, lacing up his shoes, coming to get you.

Been living somewhere for a century and still sound like you’re fresh off the boat? DEATH!

Assuming that once you’ve become powerful that you no longer have to be polite, especially to people you don’t know. Death. Heck it’ll probably be me who kills you, because people are all the time rude to me, because they assume i’m just some schmuck.

Some of those people are dead now.

Oh sure. We’ve all got our blind spots and our prejudices.  We’ve all got things that we’ve let get away from us over time. But I say to you that part of your ethic should always be, that when you notice a spot of mental passivity within you, that you root it out with fire and tongs as fast as you can.

Some of these deaths are slow like crabgrass. Other’s will be fast and agonizing and you’ll wish to ash as fast as possible but death will be long in coming and even the most hardened hearts watching will flinch and shy away.

Am I being poetic to make a metaphoric point? Maybe.

Do you really want to take that chance?

I’m not saying that you have to reinvent the wheel every time out.  I’m not saying that you can’t do things that have worked before. But I am saying, learn to adapt when that thing stops working instead of standing there dumbly or curling up into a fetal ball.

Death. You’ve tasted it before.

If you don’t use your brain, you’ll get a belly-full.

The First Pillar: No One lives Forever

The First Pillar:

No one lives forever.

One of the fundamental problems of being a vampire is that people keep telling you that you’re going to live forever.

It’s not true.

In fact, it’s overwhelmingly and demonstrably untrue.

Oh sure, get some time under your belt, learn a few tricks, and your life expectancy goes WAY WAY up. You might even out-last your sire or your siblings, or even your childer.

But no one lives forever.

No one.

In fact, most of us will die, likely by violence or by our own hand.

You can’t even say that you’ll live forever with a straight face, knowing that a sun-tan will definitely destroy you completely.

So the best thing that you can do is stop acting like you’re going to live forever. YOU more than any mortal know EXACTLY how fragile life is.  You are living on borrowed time, No...I correct myself. You are living on STOLEN time. and frankly you had better make the most of it. it is a moral imperative that you do so.

LEARN everything you can manage to learn and as fast as you can learn it.

EXPERIENCE as much as you can fit into your mind and heart.

DO as much as you can to leave the world a better place than you found it.

USE the powers that you’ve been given to accomplish the things you want to accomplish.

Because, sooner or later Insanity or fear or torpor will catch up to you and try to slow you down. 

Don’t you let it. 

Don’t kid yourself like the humans do that you’ve got all the time in the world. Life moves pretty fast, and as the man said. If you don’t stop and look around a bit, you might miss it.  

You don’t have time for fear.

You don’t have time for Insanity. In fact, if you used as much energy battling your demons, as you do excusing your behavior simply because you have them...You’d beat them every time.

Torpor...well. There may not be a way around that...yet. Check in with the Ordo from time to time and see if we’ve licked the problem.

But stop acting like you’ve won the fucking time lottery. 

Get to work. Tonight.

And as a corrollary to this idea. Learn to HATE wasted time.  I’m not saying don’t learn how to be patient. Learn to be patient. But if you’re sitting at court waiting on the Prince and his retinue to arrive, take the opportunity to introduce yourself around to the newbies and visitors. See what you can do network-wise. Catch up on news and gossip. Hell, knit a sweater if you think it will keep you from losing your cool. But learn to hate a waste of time.  Learn to avoid anyone who seems like they want to waste yours. Learn to hate any other vampire who wants you to just keep spinning your wheels.  Every moment is a weapon. 

Learn to wield it.

The Better Idea: An introduction to The Pillars

“The only way to fight bad ideas is with better ideas.”

I get mail.

No, it’s true. Occasionally, people send me little messages to let me know that they’ve read my book.  Most of them are death threats.  Frankly. I don’t feel like I’ve been doing my job unless I get at least one death threat a month.  And you know what I normally grade them and send them back...Because I’m helpful like that, and people ought to know how to spell “Defenestrate”.

But as per usual, I’ve already gone off my track. A young vampire, who I won’t cause problems for by mentioning his name, writes Your Arrogant Correspondent and asks the following:

“Lately, I’ve been explaining to my fellow Carthians that the main problem we have as a movement is that we are a reaction to the politics of the past.  We know exactly what we’re against, but we don’t exactly know what we’re for. So I guess the thing that I’ve got to ask is this: How can we turn the Carthian Movement into a proactive forward looking philosophy all its own?  How can we go from being against things to being FOR things?”

An interesting question. and one that made for fitful day-sleep.

The answer is pretty simple actually. You can’t make the movement go from this to that.  But you can make yourself go from this to that. and when people see you leading by example. They will adopt what you do.

So the question is not, how do I make the Movement go from being against to being FOR?  It’s how do I go from being against to being FOR?  And do so in such a way as to inspire others and not get horribly horribly killed.

Now. If you want my two cents...Shit, I might as well be honest and say $37.50, I think that the best way to jumpstart this change you want to cause, is to adopt a moral and ethical philosophy that can stand apart from the other philosophies of the other covenants. Not only that, but adopt a philosophy that is in keeping with Carthian ideals and ideology.

As it happens I’ve been thinking some things along these lines. So. If it’s a moral and ethical philosophy for the Carthian Movement, still near and dear to my cold dead black heart, that you want...I can help. I can show you the way.

But like all shaman. I can ONLY show you the way. You’ll have to walk the path yourself.

Philosophy is necessary. it shapes movements. It builds bridges and cities. It creates art. It illuminates lives. So writing about philosophy is a thing that has to happen. but that it is an exercise in masochism for anyone sensitive enough to hate seeing someone apply your ideas and cause themselves, or others, undue and unnecessary pain so here goes:
*This is an evolving document.
*Not all truths are for all men nor for all time.
* The Map is not the territory.
*Your Mileage may vary.
*You are responsible for the content of your own Mind.
*You are responsible for the content of your own Heart.

*You decide your own level of involvement.
*My values and experience are not going to be the same as yours and mine don't necessarily trump yours either.
* The best rule when reading philosophy is the central tenet of Jeet Kune Do. "Absorb what is useful."

But I will say this, If you do something dumb or desperate, you can always fall back on, "Pinky said so." My shoulders are pretty broad.

-P Berkowitz

2015 Reykjavik, Iceland