I am paranoid to a fault. Paranoia has and continues so much to permeate my subjectivity that really I am unable to see it or to see around it sufficient to characterize it. I can say what it is not. I don’t believe that aliens control my brain or things come out of the TV tube and infiltrate my brain. I don’t even believe in conspiracy theories out of principle; conspiracy theories are just ways 
of protecting one’s self from what I am paranoid about: the general malignance of both the human and the natural universe.
To think that a cabal did this or that malignant thing is to protect one’s self from the awareness that no cabal did it. Rather if it appears that a cabal did it, one should understand this appearance as suggesting the operation of either social or natural laws that cause certain persons or entities to act so much like synchronized swimmers that they appear a cabal. Human beings might protect themselves at least partly against these synchronized swimmers by making basic changes to the social structures and the fact that we do not or are incapable of doing so is that malignancy to which I previously referred as the source of my paranoia.
Once for example, I bought a car from my brother. It was a Volkswagen and he had managed to put a significant dent in three of the four fenders. We joked about ramming the untouched fender into a tree so that I might have a complete set of dinted fenders. I paid about 500 dollars for it as I recollect as it had just received a new engine and I was getting my gear together for departure from Casa de Oro. As I was going into register the car, somebody mentioned that I would have to pay 10% of the purchase amount to register the car.
That comes out to 50 bucks. I couldn’t believe it and was fucking outraged. I suppose I had the 50 bucks but I surely couldn’t spare it. So I got my brother to sign a bill of sale that said I had paid a buck for the car meaning I would have to pay a dime at worst to register the car. I stood there casually with my fake bill of sale and walked out with my car registered, and this horrible feeling in the back of my head that some people at the statewide level were going to seek me out, take me to trail, and send me to jail to make a point about such casual grifting of the government. I imagined the trial and my poor brother trapped between having to perjure himself or say, yes, yes, in fact he paid me 500 dollars, the bill of sale was a scam.
I do not exaggerate when I say this feeling severly trouble me at odd moments out of nowhere. I was not ready like Raskolnikov to go to the authorities and confess my crime so that I might relieve myself of my guilt. But I thought about such things. In this fog, I tried to reason with myself and eventually came to a thought: Now, why the fuck would they come after me for 50 dollars when it would cost them far more than 50 dollars to come after me. This supplied me some relief of a rational order though it did not dispell the deeper fear since governments daily do completely irrational things like paying 200 dollars for a hammer or attempting to gain peace by waging all out war.
But to pit the value of my 50 dollars against the value of their efforts was a step in the right direction. It allowed me to see I was chump change, gum on the bottom of a shoe, shit on the stick and so on. In short I was worth nothing, a zero in short, invisible and non-existent. Thus the paranoid seeks to get out of his paranoia by feeling people can see right through him…And thus are very well positioned to gain control over him by whatever manipulative means.
Yes, it’s true. People are out to get me.
