[364] Crusading For Crust

This may go a little bit of everywhere, but there's a lot on my mind.

Working backwards. Kristen and I were reflecting on the last episode of Vice. It makes me think a lot about the conversations I don't have but with a few specific people, at least semi-consistently. What bugs me about this is that I know other people are thinking, or trying to think, about the massive world of issues, but they don't speak up. I know that even if I have some voice or corner of media I basically respect, they're not saying things like I think they need to be said. Not completely. They're not having the conversations I feel are needed within my crowd.

Things that wish to be taken seriously are often presented “flatly.” It's a line, and the author or reporter, I suppose, crosses their fingers that what was just depicted speaks for itself. It's a general habit of good reporting to try and not be biased. You want to reflect what it is that's actually happening, not necessarily the sheer amount of emotion you feel towards the subject matter. I think by and large this is helpful when you have an underlying presumption of credibility and truth in reporting. I think the world is currently polluted the idea of how and when to rely on something as credible. Moreover, I'm not really hearing how they reflect on the information presented.

It then becomes really hard to digest the fuck ton of information. What if I told you I cared about failing schools, gun violence, a fundamental right towards health care, financial regulation, space exploration, healthy and accessible food, addressing an outdated prejudicial justice system, corruption and oversight, and most importantly environmental degradation? You'd probably simply say, “okay.”

Where would we start? What impact could I really have on any one of those things? To me, this is why I want to be in the data business. There's a million things to be said about all of these issues. The picture I want to paint first is the one that ties them all together. The one that defines and promotes the language underpinning when they go right, but understands the amount of hands involved in how they go wrong. There's a psychology, a humanity, the underwrites them all. It's why I say I'm after culture. My “worldly” culture is failing me. It's failing you.

The things I feel myself thinking time and again are how astonishingly simple problems are. It often becomes hard for me to respect or label them problems. Once you identify what's wrong, and the causes and effects that perpetuate the wrong, you address them in a line. You make a list and check off the things that need to happen for it to look differently. The thing is, you have to make people feel like they have a place at the table. I think if you are really concerned about reforming the financial sector, and you've read a million books and joined every local facebook page, you're doing just as little to actually do something about the problem with a megaphone outside of a building as the “angry hippie” who's standing next to you out of solidarity. After all, where did Occupy go?

But why does that happen? The dialogue for how to fix these things puts the idea that civil protest like that works. The dialogue is about how personally pissed off you are or how self-aggrandizing you can look in all the information you've become a basement expert on. The people in power have cultivated an environment that made sure when you got pissed off, you'd do it with a megaphone and not from the board room or shop floor. Not in your understanding or arguing of law, but with your shaking fist. And it's not like you had much of an opportunity to reflect on just how much you were or weren't doing. School certainly didn't teach you any differently. Ever wonder why?

I'm frequently astounded by testaments from service members. Ones who did exceedingly well or were promoted to some level of “we kill things” standard. In my mind, I wonder why it took personally killing whatever number of people before it “clicked” that if it were your family, or you were written off as collateral damage, you'd probably want revenge too. I wonder how many people had friends or heard reports of PTSD or losing more soldiers to suicide than war engagements before they thought “maybe I don't want that for myself.”

But this frames the issue wrong. Why do people join the military in general? As far as I can tell, they tend to have nothing else. It's a cost-benefit analysis. The psychological toll not yet realized is not the benefits of having school paid for, a reason to get up in the morning, or a structure in which to feel like you're accomplishing something. People who claim they're "defending freedom" or some offshoot, I'd ask to reflect a little deeper on what that really means. The military is a compelling culture, and that's what people are arguing on behalf when they advocate for it. It's not a bunch of roided up blood-lust killers who believe in wanton destruction of different nations. This isn't to absolve the military of indoctrination or lying about what they do or what real damage they cause. It's to distinguish the individual head space from the fall out of joining a specific kind of culture.

And that isn't a conversation we have. We don't talk about what's happening in our minds. We complain. We sensationalize. We add drama and make a scene. This to only speak to the dramatic underlying irony of what damage is caused. Damage from juggling the various problems in life, and the consequences of discussing them poorly or never becoming aware of them altogether. We also double down into one of our “passions” or interests. The deeper we can steep ourselves in a microcosm of our choosing, the less we need to concern ourselves with the big bad world out there, right? So damned if this isn't the coolest video game I've ever played or you wouldn't believe how much I love my "whatever" more than anyone else.

There is a problem that comes with knowing how simple things can be. It's simple to understand why someone would train to blow themselves up and think “death to America.” I get revenge. I get indoctrination. Think about growing up poor. If you don't know, poor people can be persuaded to think they're only as good as what's available. To me, our culture indoctrinates us with this idea. They didn't work enough, they're not smart enough, they don't deserve what the rich folk have. If every day your environment reinforces specific ideas about yourself or place in the world, it's unbearably obvious that you're going to hear the same things from people in the same kinds of situations. How they attribute their losses or gains. How they do or don't fit.

We're “lucky” we get to demonize the culture we cultivate around the world because of how “different” it is. We get to umbrella all kinds of people under a nice target for a drone. We get to obscure a real conversation about religious ideas and principals by demonizing a monolithic idea of Islam. It makes it really easy to buy a lot of bullshit. It's like riders to a bill. You have to take all the small points of corruption to make sure the overall bigger issue gets handled. Instead of asking why or micromanaging the details, we're complacent about "how things work." We don't insist on a culture that doesn't employ back doors infinitely accessible to corruption.

I see perhaps the biggest problem in the selling of this complicated message. To some degree, I'm not humble in my capacity to read and reflect on information. It's partly how I conceive of my identity. I like to be good at it. I want to know that if and when I'm saying something, people feel obligated to listen. So what and how am I selling? What does it look like when I try?

I'm selling a conversation. I'm selling a new, but really old, oral tradition. Before you get bogged down in insisting on labels to make sweeping generalizations and monsters out of some opposing force, bother with the details. Take as much time as it takes. Go to bed worried about the things you haven't fixed and role you might play in helping yourself sleep. I'm selling this by talking. I'm selling this by trying to set an example of what I want talked about by, no way, talking about it. It's not about looking dumb or waiting to find the right words. It's, at this point, just opening your damn mouth.

But the feedback is less than reassuring. I don't want to see a spark of a conversation. I want the conversation. I'm glad you know about the topic or read something on it too. Now follow that up with how or why it hit you. I understand that trying to talk about “everything” seems like a great way to be actually talking about “nothing” so start with just what's on your mind right now. Because that's all I'm doing, and it inevitably puts me in a place where I think I know how to better manage how and why I do and think about things. Things get simple when you recognize the degree of cause and effect upon doing them.

I suppose the worst thought I have is thinking that even with my best effort, it could still all be for nothing. The best and brightest are where I think I get my information from. When they say the planet is fucked in x,y, and z ways, for the next 500-1000 years no less, how do I translate the idea that “I heard you, now what can we do about it.” People reeeeallllly seem to not give a fuck at that point. And this is assuming that they're willing to take on “whatever cause you're into” (their perception) on top of what feels like is their dramatic life. How could I want you to reevaluate or engage with your ideas regarding the military industrial complex and what it does to fuel religious zealotry when you've got depression, are finishing school, have an alcoholic parent, and can barely pay for food and rent each month?

It's more than a tall order. Add the idea that people already feel like they're contributing from their corner of the world. If you join the Peace Corps, surely it means you give a damn, right!? Right?! I mean that's a name and cause with a positive connotation and I read the hell out of their Wikipedia page. What else would you have me do, Nick? And then I see the dialogue confused. The message encumbered by what I never intended. You now have to walk the sensitive line regarding peoples' feelings in relation to their perceptions of their contributions. How many people privately donate to charity with zero idea how the money gets used, not how it's advertised to be used, actually used, and how many don't even need to know to still feel good about it?

We promote ourselves as personally satisfied or living this kind of idealized self that can be framed in every Instagram picture or witty facebook comment or tweet. What we cultivate is a mirage. We promote our insecurities and uncertainty right along with our dinner, we just do it to the full extent you could possibly appreciate the word “indirectly.” And because there are so many of us saying so many things we think we're saying, we'd like to be saying, and we hope others are understanding, as one really pissed off German eventually responded to a joke I made he considered in poor taste, “sometimes it can be hard to tell the bad guys.” The back and forth, unkind, messy, frustrating, “pointless,” disjointed pissing match that took thousands of words and a few days, that ultimately resulted in his apology and some common ground, is the kind of example I want people to set. I don't want another metaphor for 20-something cultural malaise.

Talk about what's helping or hurting. Talk about your role in it. Identify when you're complicit to every degree. I've said plenty of times. At least I'm talking. At least I'm reading. At least I'm recognizing when I get it wrong or when there is more work to be done. At least I know why I can persuade myself to keep up the fight even if it certainly feels like I just jump from one losing battle to the next. There's still an endless amount of opportunities to fill the uncertainty. There will always be time to exploit the lengths of your potential; it's in every idea and every step into the unknown. But are you exploiting it, or being exploited? Are you standing up, or quietly consoling yourself? How well do you own that the problems exist just as much “out there” as they do with you, with us. Take the reigns of your culture.