[222] Fix It Bitch

How do I propose to fix things? To me, this kind of comes across as asking the Ethiopian kid why he doesn’t just start a farm if he’s so hungry, or maybe the Canadian to read a book if they feel so stupid. It seems to miss the real issues. You’re still Canadian.

So Nick, you like to bitch. Always on facebook with your views and rants and yada yada. Do something about it bitch! Sure, I can agree with you from time to time, even give you a little shit just to see how well you can defend, but I clearly have much less invested in whatever the topic at hand is than you do. Why aren’t you spending every waking minute fighting this monstrous pile of problems you have with the world? Remember you’re an American! Your will and your will alone is going to save you.

This just in, we hardly ever create our circumstances. A whole ton of shit happened before I popped onto the scene in 1988, and I venture to guess people back then had about as much a clue as we do now. Why didn’t the 1988 bitchers just do something!? It seems so easy. What do you even want to do in the first place?

I want to change thoughts.

No, not just change them for the sake of changing them. I could whip my dick out and piss down your leg and I’m positive it will distract you from the Vivaldi symphony you were humming inside. I can’t really think of what that helps besides my smile at the thought. Let me illustrate via example of how I want thoughts to be conducted via mock conversations.

“Hey dude, this invisible man told me something about who you should have sex with.”

“Really? Was he cloaked with that new invisible technology I heard about on the military channel?”

“Ya, what else could it be, magic?”

“Hey dudette, did you know John McCain owns 6 houses?”

“Really? Does he have a lot of kids or family, because 1 doesn’t go into 6 without some crazy quantum stuff going on.”

“No, luckily when our government found out they told him the same thing. The waste, greed, and self-entitlement don’t outweigh the social cost and messages we send to our society about well-being”

“Hi, this is Article 10 section b. of the treaty you signed not to conduct war for insufficient reason.”

“I see your document and counter that I don’t care.”

“Go directly to jail.”

“You mean that this is the only planet we know humans to be currently living on and need water and an atmosphere?”

“I don’t find these compelling enough reason to all but cease and desist pursuing resources that can make it explode.”

“That’s why you’re seated next to that crazy politician while regulatory commissions and scientists break up and repurpose your equipment.”

We allow ourselves to be sold on this bullshit, become complacent with the results, and lose all will even to meagerly bitch on facebook about it.

When. You. Become. Specific. Objective. Reality. Exists.

Is cutting bad? It’s the wrong question. Should a girl with low self-esteem and the excuse, “this is the only way to make me feel” cut. Probably not. Should the masochist cut in an expression of sexual release? Could be dangerous, but certainly a different circumstance. It becomes a question about personal responsibility and societal impact over “moral truth.”

We need to allow questions to become as complicated as what they are trying to hide. This is what happens to my brain when I hear certain questions. For example, is sex before marriage bad? Ridiculously involved question! Unprotected sex? Sex with who? What state of mind would you venture a guess they were in? What pros or cons does marriage bring to sex? Bad for her or him or him or all three? Bad as in disease, emotions, location? Oral? Why are we supposing marriage and sex have anything to do with each other in the first place? It turns into an endless ball of philosophical speculation about the subjective experiences with sex and beliefs about marriage.

Is it not more coherent to tell someone the story and purpose of marriage given different time periods and across various belief systems and let them decide if they agree or disagree with a particular method? Is it not more responsible to teach people all the pros and cons of having the various kinds of sex and allowing them to figure out what’s best for their health and well-being? Is it not reasonable to assume that regardless of who’s fucking who under what conditions, if you find or pick people who are proven to be safe and mature, it’s really none of your fucking business or concern what’s going on elsewhere?

The financial crisis surely had thousands of people with little to large hands at play. Blame them all. More importantly, get them all to blame themselves. Is it not the whistleblower that can expel a wave of shit that indicts a mass of people? What if you can convince that mass of people to account for their own fuck ups, and then figure a way to fix them instead? What if a hundred accountable people worked at Lehman Brothers? Maybe only a few would need to be punished. Maybe it wouldn’t have gone bankrupt. Maybe bonuses and salaries would better reflect achievement and contributions instead of cronyism. And whatever could be said about the ones that went under, it goes double for Goldman Sachs.

You make excuses when you don’t accept objective reality. I would equate the same fallacy and damaging habit of keeping an abusive boyfriend with how we conduct ourselves in government or religious institutions. Of course, why be so eager to flock to such structures unless you’re predisposed against personal responsibility in the first place? I shouldn’t have to convince my friends that they’re boyfriend beats them or is scarily controlling any more than I should have to convince someone that if they don’t like the two party system, stop voting into it. Is the fear of being ostracized or judged really greater than whether or not you’ll have a job next week? Is the objective case for something better a change so uncertain and dangerous you’re willing to perpetuate your circumstances? Well, obviously at this point.

This is why I’m at my core opposed to magic thinking. I don’t see what it does but allow you to be selfish in a destructive manner. It persuades you that you have more control than you do. It allows you to literally outright deny evidence in front of your face. It distracts you from the very obvious things you could be doing to get a more humble and honest kind of satisfaction. And this assumes I would dignify what you get from many of those beliefs as satisfaction. So what am I doing about it?

I’m at least bitching enough to try and garner the questions and conversations in a direction that will bring the specific problems to light and hopefully answers to address them. I’m at least trying ever so fucking hard to be an example of feeling utterly alone in my head while still espousing ideas and ideals that I’ve yet to have a single fucking person tell me I’m so ridiculously destructive or outlandish to hold. I’m asking if it can be done with a “bitchy” solo blog, what can be done with two, or three, a campus or country?

It’s easy to be another protester, whistle blower, hot head, egomaniac, “intellectual,” and servant. History has told our story hundreds of thousands of times and we refuse to change this instant. We are not prepared to be accountable today. Even allowing for how little control I actually have in a parent system, I still manage to maintain too high a sense of responsibility for shit people couldn’t imagine.

I should’ve seen Javon was a psychopath and worked harder to find a better roommate. When her shit gets stolen or spilled on, all that matters is that it was my party. Never mind the months she had to buy a lockable doorknob that was left up to me too. I invited Chris to live there as well despite the anger I saw in him. Whether I bought the alcohol or not I’m still responsible for the drunken rabble in my house. If Rin’s pole gets broken, I have to pay for it. If Hatsam puts in ten applications, I have to find the eleventh that gets him hired. If the world goes to shit, I have to devise some master strategy or feel guilty and responsible for not fixing it all instead of merely bitching on facebook.

If I’m going to continue feeling this way, I’m at least going to keep bitching until I’m ignored or collaborated with. I’m much happier taking responsibility than pretending I don’t want any. Most people I encounter are happy to give it to me. I don’t know if this is extremely endearing and a sign of my potential or me just the proud scapegoat for people’s emotional instability. Forgive me for leaning towards the latter.  

[219] Veiled

As it goes with most major holidays, birthdays, or general classically exciting human social events, I tend to be awake long into the morning and try to tap into the “buzz” in the air and maintain a coherent digression of thoughts.

What’s the “true” nature of things? From a context of asking about the entire universe, we may never know. When you look at a relationship, you can usually tell a story about how the people have either fucked over or helped each other, and given some time reference, you try to gauge just how close or “in love” they may be. When you look at yourself the picture can seemingly change day to day, especially if you end up experiencing something traumatic or deeply meaningful. The easiest cop out answer is to say the “true” nature of things is whatever you choose to believe. Your perspective and your understanding being all that matter. I am of the idea that in order to tell a worthwhile story about what’s true, you have to remove yourself from the story as best you can.

Now on its face, this seems disingenuous. Surely, we are all a part of the collective story. Our perspective should matter. In fact, where do I get off writing if I didn’t see some merit or value in “my” ideas and manner of speaking them? It’s at this point that we need to get around a semantic problem. I, me, and my I think are our best attempt so far at describing what a collection of synapses makes us feel. My head tends to predispose me to thinking that we are observers; manifestations of the “collective everything” that organizes and seeks to understand through observation. This isn’t really a point I plan to get into in a blog for it’s really a sort of out there philosophical notion I play with based from a bastardized understanding of talks on quantum mechanics, but there it is nonetheless.

The real point is that when try to talk about something, I truly feel like an observer reporting what’s in front of me. It is in those reports that I hope people will tend to see the same things. For me, humans on the same page removed from their feelings generally leads to better decisions for the whole overall. So what is there to look at on Christmas? There’s thousands of kids returning home to families, stores littered with just, so much shit, it’s truly hard to wrap your head around where and why it all came from, and plenty of time to meditate on how quick this break from school will be over and how little most people know of what they’ll do after graduation.

Transparency is important for an accurate report. If you can’t see something, you can only assume that it's there. And while there’s a practical application of assuming, if you want something positive to come from your report, you need to be able to support it. I’d say most people refrain from complaining about parents during the holidays, after all cash and prizes are poised and ready to roll through, but from many of my friends the story of that relationship tends to come off as more bad than good, in general. If we take what people say about their parents or siblings as true, what can we then say about a society that forces itself “together” under the guise of cheer and love? Is it a helpful utility or a dramatic antithetical response used to mask deeper feelings?

It’s a pain to try and gather data on such a subject, and probably just has to be asked by people individually. Once you start to roll in the statistics it changes the behavior, so all you can do is once again try to observe and report.

So how many have you watched people spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars this season out of love and charity? More importantly, how many have you watched yourselves spend money out of these things? I would venture to guess that the concern wasn’t what company you were supporting or if the change you dropped into the Salvation Army box was actually going to a meal. It is most certainly at times like this, what convention does to our day to day reality that I love to report. I like learning of a company that supports a Christian group that prides itself on curing gays. Oh, the irony of your gay friends loving Gloria Jeans. I wish I didn’t find it delicious now, as if I get anything but the free samples anymore anyway…

I think the more crushing blows come from observing the planetary impact of consumption. I would just watch a TED talk on swapping and sharing resources two weeks before Christmas. Did dad get a new drill this season he might use a handful of times this year? How many tons of plastic are used in gift cards because somehow cash isn’t good enough anymore? Did that Friends box set really fill the emotional hole your older sister is feeling from not having a boyfriend or husband to share holidays with? I kind of see the human equivalent of a dog licking the wounds of a hurt companion. Clearly, Honda plus dog = vet, not box set. I wonder how many stories were told “so and so went through this or that and could really use a fill in the blank.” BUT NICK P. NORMAL PEOPLE REALLY DO LOVE EACH OTHER AND APPRECIATE THEIR GIFTS!

More power to them. I appreciate what I have and don’t expect anyone to be of lesser capacity. As with more observations and reports though, there’s always a deeper story. As much as I have moments where I like to get lost in dramatic displays and pageantry, I’m never happier than when I’ve bottomed out and become “enlightened” or educated about something transcendently personal and then share it. The only gift I feel helps validate why I’m here is knowledge and utility. If I can’t help you be a better you, then how can I gauge or appreciate what I’m doing or not with myself? Teaching my parents how to torrent for example instead of dropping 50 bucks on a season of some show. Applying thoughts on work or the meaning of friendship to help motivate previously tough decisions about who and where to associate with and why. If I throw a party, I want it not to be about that I could afford it, but that I provided an opportunity for people to connect, and the positive feelings or relationships from that should last more than any financial burden it may have felt like at the time.

I really hope people don’t get pissed off or afraid when they look for the more complicated story. The best way to do that seems to be observing from yourself the kinds of things that make your world conducive to fulfillment and happiness. If watching your credit card swipe is going to bring you more anxiety and worry than a friend or family members smile can absolve, maybe you shouldn’t swipe the card. It’s this sort of nitty gritty practical notion I’d like to see out of most people, and it’s obviously how I’m going to try and conduct myself regardless of the season.

HAPPY STOLEN BIRTHDAY BABY JESUS!

p.s. writing this has given me an awesome business idea.