I’d first like to give a round of
applause to PROCRASTINATION. Procrastination; does a body good.
Alas, I am inspired by the politics and
emotional drama of the day. I’ve been running under the premise
that people might not be as merely stupid as it would seem, so in
that vein I’m going to try and discuss the nature of overload.
We live in an era of information
overload. We’ve always been plagued by an inability to regulate
feelings, and now we get to couple that with streams of updates and
advice about how to think or spend our time. Watching Bill Maher who
equates the country to a dog, it understands tone and volume, but you
can’t explain to it the nuances of “sit,” I have to feel a
certain empathy. I can still look to someone like my dad who reads
and watches ridiculous amounts of political information, and knows
his history, to tie a coherent argument for or against some position.
I know there are plenty of dumb, lazy, and/or simply non-caring
people out there, but I don’t think as a whole we are impervious to
hearing and believing correct information from credible sources.
Well okay then, great, there are still
some people who have a clue and who are willing to stand up for and
explain why there are right. What kind of person is there message
hitting in the first place? One needs not look beyond their circle of
friends and acquaintances to glean a whole host of character
inadequacies that would plague an argument. In actuality, while I’ve
had to deal with a number of explicitly asshole people, their
specific bad actions or turns of behavior aren’t worse than the
passive acceptance of it all by our “friends.” I simply translate
this phenomenon to the larger political picture.
Immature children who get backed into a
corner and are made to accept responsibility for their actions are
willing to fight, particularly if they can’t run. I make a habit of
making people retain the brunt of their shitty decisions. As an
“enforcer” or “asshole” I get deliberately “isolated” or
marked as dangerous or selfish or any number of “he’s against us”
signifiers. In the political realm, this means you get voted out. At
least for me, I get to spend more time seeking out or spending time
with better people. When you don’t hold a seat of power in our
country, you’re almost forced to be a passive recipient of whatever
“they” decide in this faux democracy.
What kills me is that the “they” in
this scenario don’t have a clue about what it means to be
responsible any more than the emotional children who think I need to
hate the same people as they do. It seems even more fucked to me that
someone is willing to hate or hold a grudge and go down swinging dead
in the belief that they are right. Our Senators and Congressman don’t
text, understand email, or the importance of the internet. Our
corporations don’t care if you’re healthy, about the environment,
or if you’re making productive uses of your time. We exist on a
philosophy of passively accepting and dealing with whatever and
whoever is doing it.
I think the only way to cut through
bullshit and be productive, be it politically, emotionally, or
mentally is to respect responsibility. And if someone can’t be
responsible for themselves, you make them. Why are so many young
people non-caring about voting? It’s not that they are simply lazy
and dumb; it’s that they recognize our outlets for news are a
complete waste of fucking time. We recognize that regardless of the
amount of information out there, it will takes years for enough of
our “representatives” to even make an inch of progress on
something as obvious as global warming. Tell me what channel I should
watch to learn any detail of any bill. Tell me an advertised website
that does the same thing. Tell me how I’m to be persuaded once I
have this streamlined information to spend as much time as it
allegedly takes to make a “smart voting decision” that a
politician will say when they voted on it. The “nuances” of
government are deliberate stumbling blocks that lobbyists and lawyers
fought over to make corporations and politicians more money. We don’t
deal with explicit facts or figures, we play to interests.
This doesn’t mean I think we need to
be experts in everything that flows through government, but it does
mean that if we can’t explain it in simple language, we probably
don’t understand it. I’ve never watched a physics lecture I
didn’t like and I know nothing about the years of math you have to
study in order to fully comprehend the field.
So what about the emotional angle? You
have to get past the hopes and fears for your future and day to day
before you can diligently deal with anything “outside” yourself.
I think part of the reason it’s so easy to label young people as
lazy and stupid is because, as far as their emotions are concerned,
they’ve gotten lazier and stupider. Do I trust the opinion or
judgment on the health care bill from the same guy talking openly on
the bus about giving a roofy to a girl last weekend? In reality, he
could be extremely well versed in the details of the bill and just
have a sick sense of humor, but no, I’m still going to go with no.
Think about how emotionally unbalanced
or irresponsible you have to be to one, be the guy who’s willing to
do that, two, be the friend who lets it happen, or three, be the girl
who puts herself in situations that increase that risk. Do you
imagine something, dumber, going on upstairs than the future of our
country or the implications and severity of their actions? I feel
like this is a highly motivating reason for why I behave the way I
do. Maybe, just maybe, I can get you thinking properly before you
hold a seat in Congress or on the board of some company with any
influence.
I feel to a
greater extent, “laziness” is a systematic problem more than a
personal one. I think we label someone as lazy when they don’t take
care of themselves or choose to fight about something they clearly
know nothing about. It’s shocking how un-lazy people become when
the right motivation is in play. When someone feels like they
contribute or are learning or can use their effort and see how
explicitly it helps, things get done and get done well. At times,
hell primarily, it feels like nothing beyond my own will stands for
wanting to see a culture or mental acuity that holds those ideas
principal.
The paradox of utopia
