[401] Confidential Crisis

People don't want to hear you complain.

Because I'm always re-reading what I write and happened to be watching Jimmy Carter's “Crisis of Confidence” speech, the difference between a “woe is me/I don't care” blog and a “reference all the 'smart shit' I've read recently and graft it onto some personal growth or insight” piece is more striking when it comes to likes or feedback.

I think there's something to be said about “the honesty of experience.” The days where I can sound conceited and angry with the exercised vocabulary and references to things you're never going to look up are just as real as flippant drunk diatribes to seemingly nowhere. What's important to me is that if I'm feeling great writing it in the moment, embarrassed the next day, but then nodding along a week later because I was actually speaking to something I thought was important, then my purpose was served in taking to the page.

To me, “bitching” and “ignorant ranting” or “childish posturing” can still serve a purpose. I think we try to drive a wedge between these behaviors and what it means to be an adult. The problem being, after enough Daily Show episodes or Youtube clips of world leaders at the U.N., you really get the sense of how inherently persistent this unproductive behavior really is. I think as a result, the “most mature” among us try to deny or bury when and why they would act a fool.

I think owning these behaviors helps to build empathy. I think part of our persistent isolation and depression stems from having no grasp or evidence that anyone could be as “weird” as you. I still allow thinking like that to get to me despite calling it out frequently as something I lament about how we conduct ourselves. Very often I don't give my friends the benefit of the doubt. My sense of risk aversion apparently outweighs how unfair that may be.

But what sparks up quicker than a gossip session? Isn't our first and easiest response to complain about something? One would think if you could get enough people bitching about the same things you'd start to flush out solutions, no? Of course I'm perpetually at square one in my inability to get even my friends to add a thumbs up about whatever the topic at hand may be.

I'm concerned there's a more fucked up thing going on in our heads than maybe I've even spoken to yet. My stomach drops for hours when I hear ideas expressed over 30 years ago, by our freaking President no less, that we've only gotten worse at. I said in my last blog that we were a top down society looking for leadership, often regardless of where they were leading us. That idea felt incomplete as I typed it. We're more scapegoaters than looking for leaders. The leaders are symbolic of our personal and collective failings.

So if you're a “real” leader and explicitly state those failings, now you've truly lost them. You couldn't just be a symbol could you? You had to open your stupid mouth and attempt to hold us accountable. As a result a massive rush to the popular and profane. How else do you get Reagan? How much more “real” does it have to get regarding climate change, income inequality, or lingering war and genocide? Is it a coincidence we're in a golden age of TV shows?

Maybe the “real” response to changing things will come when there's a push, or inevitable crash, of peoples' distractions. No President is going to carry us there. No business is going to single-handedly shift how we interact with markets. No research institution or brilliant scientist is going to calculate us away from catastrophic collapse. It won't be until we're forced to complain or have no choice but to react. This idea makes it hard for me to carry some kind of motivated or well-wishing flag.