I’m a media junkie, if you haven’t heard. The news didn’t help my mental disposition during my whole “down week.” I don’t actively go out and look for shitty things to read about to reinforce my concerns about the world, I merely try to accept the implications of an article. 16 people gunned down by a trooper? Here’s my line. We’re at war, and the rest of the world doesn’t want us in to control resources that will make rich people richer and destroy the planet. We have a corrupt government that allows politicians to be bought and lie their way into staying in power so they can vote for such a path. Our behavior has, by the numbers, reduced what used to be the “greatest country in the world,” so to speak, to a declining and naïve military empire. The people who died will be remembered as a “tragic circumstance” if remembered at all. We'll ignore all discussion of human rights. I haven’t checked a Kardashians’ twitter feed in a while…
That’s just the pattern. That’s what we are as a species and I can stomach that. The long term implications of remaining that way are what concern me. The not really seeing a “majority” of people who recognize what we are and maybe how to change it concerns me. If you can hold one contradictory or nonsensical idea, you’ve the capacity to hold every one. That’s why “how you think” is always on my mind. It’s why I get people whose thoughts I can rely on to talk me down when shit gets out of hand. It’s why no matter how polite I may want to be when talking about a “sensitive” issue, I’m certainly not feeling pleasant when I hear something absurd.
There’s a huge duality to everything. You get the burden of which side is supposed to “win” with any problem. You get the ideas about family against how your family may actually treat you and make you feel. If you needed another reason to despise the world love it’s for that conflict alone. You get the arguments or a feeling of needing to protect yourself verses the moral implications of killing. Huh, even typing “moral implications” right then felt absurd to me. We don’t even consider moral implications! It’s not even a thing! As long as it feels good in the moment, that’s what you’re going to do. It’s not an excuse if you genuinely believe you’re into it. You don’t excuse a god’s lack of intervening or providing evidence, you genuinely think he doesn’t need to operate that way, AND HOW DARE YOU FOR THINKING OTHERWISE…wag of the finger.
It’s fun to think of Type 1 or 2 civilizations, but I think a grounding component of something like that is massive cooperation and obligation to “what is” and not your “opinion of what is.” It’s not that we’re incapable of realizing or behaving a certain way. We just don’t want to. It feels too good right now to squeeze life into whatever conception is burdening us this moment. I mean look, I’m writing a blog. A key difference in when I write verses when I tend to hear people’s excuses is that I want to change. I want to be wrong. I’m prepared to argue my points only as far as they go and then flip on a dime when I’m wrong. I can maintain and claim my sovereign mind and be prepared to wildly change my conception of what that statement even means any day. The harder it is to change my mind should find evidence in the effectiveness of my ideas, not because I’m being a stubborn asshole.
Even a commitment to phrasing and acknowledging before we move past a topic would speak towards a grasp of the conflict or nuance in a situation. “I’m against war, but I can’t pretend to know the agenda of the military or what may be putting us in danger, so my criticism I hope you take with a grain of salt.” “I believe life starts at conception, but I also understand I’ve literally never been in a situation that people say I need to empathize with when they chose or needed one.” “Guns are bad and only meant to kill people! But I remember shooting once as a kid and it was kind of fun…” I know I go on and on about the “stupid people” and that’s every bit the mantra of someone in the service or HR industries, but I know there are bastions of support if I ever get around to working harder at the positive ideas I hold as well.
Here’s a secret, I don’t completely know what I’m to do. I have friends who would sooner drop and hate me instead of even bring up a topic they don’t think I’d either understand or be able to handle with kid gloves. I don’t know how you go to the Deep South and “persuade” a 50 year old racist biker who even having felt the burden of taking care of family members not covered by insurance that Obama passing the health care bill is not a sign of the apocalypse or America’s decline. This is how they feel. That being the only thing I’m equating by juxtaposing those examples. #safe. Given that constraint, all I can do is make them feel, which I explained in my last blog. Is it the “best” way? Will it teach anything? Is there a better way? Will it allow for long standing results? I have no clue.
Currently we engage in beating a dead horse. We simply haven’t had enough people claiming “Islam is a religion of peace” for people to buy it in the same way they do from the Christians happy to wage war. How long did it even take to get some states, not even all, to accept gay people getting married? It’s not about marriage being sacred, it’s that gay is still “icky.” Is there a method, process, pattern, you can put people into where things like human rights and peace are streamlined? Is there a model for psychological development and financial distribution that keeps ideas both sacred and in check? That’s what I’m after. That’s why I’ll always have something more to say and another question to ask. What’s the formula for “saving yourself?”
