[414] You First

I spend a lot of time watching. It's to the point of being aware of being several kinds of cliché. If you look at enough personality surveys about introverts and extroverts, inevitably you'll find, not unlike with horoscopes, some condition, title, or description to identify with. Some researcher who's nailed down how “out of place” you may feel in different social situations, or your ability to be a solemn genius leering from the corner. It is at once interesting and a chance to gain insight about yourself, but also a chance to conceive of yourself very impersonally.

I'm hoping to describe the apex of being that infinitely-reducible cliché with individual choice and personality. It seems like with vigorous academic study of systems, it becomes really hard to blame any one person, even if upon being in a room with them, you might be roused to punch them for their culpability. Hating the sinner rather than sin if you will.

I'm going to deliberately refrain from paraphrasing Democracy Incorporated by Sheldon Wolin as I'll sound stupid, but reading it and combining the amount of time I've devoted to movies and TV shows is sitting oddly in my head.

It seems like a common idea to blame “the media” for something. The polarizing or surface scraping stories. The lack of accountability. Sourcing things like Buzzfeed or Twitter to bolster an argument or flame war. Even before the 24 hour sounding chambers of bad ideas, it seems to me people were still comfortable pulling things out of their ass. Right and wrong were no more garnered by the evidence and history “back then” as they are today. If you were a real news person, you had a reputation to protect, there were less sources of information, but it's significantly easier and in greater number the amount of sources studying or reporting on all walks of life. Today it's different means of taking in information, same (but more) metrics to evaluate.

With that in mind, how is it not your fault for being misinformed? Yes, there is a ton of information. But, if you can afford nothing else in modern society, is the internet not it? And, I mean, libraries.

When you read political theorists and teachers one disappears from the land of individual choices. It's really hard to reconcile ideas about how power moves or consolidates when you can't point to the roles of the staggering number of active and passive players. Paradoxically, we don't conceive of ourselves as nodes in an “inverted totalitarian regime” even if our behavior would suggest that's what we are. More to the point, we don't know what an “inverted totalitarian regime” really is, including me, and I'm in the middle of a book about it.

We try. The Daily Show and Colbert consistently attempt to mock and undermine the ridiculous dialogue of fear and self-justification. You can collect your corner of “real media” with “actual truth” and “on the ground” reporting. They're still trapped within a culture that's all but obliterated what words are supposed to mean. The idea of connotation going the way of Michael Bay. All the sordid details of environmental tragedy or criminal acts are broadcast daily, to what end?

Because what does your responsibility look like? I think one of the reasons I watch so much is because I don't know what else I can really do. I've given myself the burden of at least talking and reading about it, but I don't really believe freezing my ass off in the street with a witty sign is going to achieve something better. I've written to enough Congressmen and gotten their bullshit responses. Do I own my current society by being “passive-ish” in the same way that the money and policy makers do? My gut says, not really.

Ideology becomes the air we breathe. If you have the privilege of free time and the capacity to learn, then you get to fulfill that cliché of “angry academic type” who dreams of a world where we drop books instead of bombs. I can be as self-righteous in my knowledge to think “above it all” as a piddling religious type can condescend, and what do we each get for our effort? A chance to die with different fingers pointed?

While words attempt to nail down flowing ideas, before you've found new ones you'll reside under familiar umbrellas. Outside of your deliberate consciousness to act in any one moment, you'll float seamlessly into a category. “Poor 20-something male who loves Dave Ramsey and Tim Ferris.” “Inappropriate comment maker who's too smart for his own good who called school 'easy.'” “Tall 'alpha male' who's fought significantly more battles in his mind and with his fingers than he ever has in the street.” Sometimes it's a wonder what can be said about you that spans beyond The Simpsons, South Park, and The Onion.

For my part, it almost seems “more appropriate” or “more responsible” to just watch. The longer I go without a job, the more I start to think about the staggering amount of pointless and useless jobs. I would genuinely rather watch hours of TV and movies than doing anything “labor wage-esc” simply for a paycheck. I've never been part owner of any company I worked for. I was never paid more for extra time or extra effort. I want to own my effort, even if it's directed towards categorically easy things. I don't blame me.

That's another symptom of making things impersonal though. Your effort doesn't quite register as yours, or as strongly as it might have in the past. Am I being molded by my system? The complaints I had about school, the problems I encountered in opening my business, the dwindling or unstable opportunities for my working friends, all foretold as consequences of political forces. One more echoed refrain to the sobering reminder of how much your life has been dictated by that which came before.

And it's a fine line between understanding that and excuse making. I'd rather own up to saying “my heart's not in it” than to describe in too many details the world that compels me to my basement. At the same time, I still recognize what my effort is likely to amount to. I know that it's not just an uphill battle, but someone's also greasing the hill. To get back into the game or attempt to persuade other people to do so involves a lot of canvassing the shifting field, at least for me. Running on sheer enthusiasm and will is not sustainable.

I don't know if I'm any closer to connecting my effort on the page to a kind of justified political will and organization that creates nice changes, but I do know I'm the only one at the plebeian level among my friends and cohorts who frequently bothers to publicly share his impersonal complicity. That's something right?