This may be a particularly scatter-brained and random digression. I just had a sorely disheartening experience in downtown Indianapolis, but it’s at the same time left me with a weird positivity carrying me through this hungover morning.
It’s very easy to shoot yourself in your own foot when you go into a conversation or new interaction with someone and carry a ton of preconceived notions. Filled to the brim with judgmental and angry thoughts is no way to approach getting to know someone and is certainly not friendly. I want it stated explicitly that I know the difference. That is, when I’m “just being a dick” and everyone comes across as “the worst,” it stands in contrast to genuinely openly approaching people with the hopes of becoming informal friends.
The part that is so disheartening is when you try and end up getting the kind of responses that I seem to come across. I want it to be broken down into its smallest parts. You can go from buying a beer for someone to polite conversation about their relationship or job. Things move so seamlessly until they violently derail, but you don’t get the visual carnage to accompany the failure.
I invited a couple older, mid forties, gentlemen to dine with me at Steak N Shake. They had been drinking. I had been drinking. It was one of those “hey, I’m alone and feeling talkative, let’s hang out” moments. I’ve done things like this a few times now because I’m wildly intrigued by the perspectives of “the older crowd.” Unfortunately, no matter how much try, the conversation always seems to break down in the same kind of ways.
First, I know I “fuck up” in genuinely asking people about things. It becomes increasingly apparent that many people simply aren’t thinking about shit. I don’t mean to be rude, but I end up looking that way because I’ll ask their perspective, and they’re left holding their hat with a dumbfounded or depressed look.
Second, without fail the conversation comes back around to a discussion about how old I am. No matter how many examples I may offer as to what has shaped my perspective, I’m still “just 27.” It’s not to say I’m not sympathetic to age-ist sentiments, but at the same time, I don’t actively try to make someone with more life experience seem marginal.
What’s screwed up about that though is that they aren’t being malicious. They’re simply...simple. The only way they can understand me is through “millennial” connotation and judgment. It doesn’t matter if I’ve more drug, sex, business, or strife experience. I’m still just a kid, “a few years older than my own!”
Third, there’s a point where the conversation shifts from having a discussion, to judging and assessing the conversation. Instead of answering a question that goes, “what is your opinion about such and such issue,” I’m instead deflected with commentary. “Oh, that’s too vague, I could never.” “You’re approaching this from such an inadequately broad perspective, nothing I say is gonna make sense.” “Ummm, you’re young. I don’t think you’re doing anything wrong, but I will state over and over again that you are young as if to suggest there’s a problem while I insist otherwise.”
It kills me to see people give up the conversation. We were going for over an hour until it apparently shifted towards questions that required more meat than they were willing or capable of cutting. Then, it’s almost without fail the switch to comments like, “I’m gonna remember this conversation forever! You are soooo insightful and doing sooooo may things right and I believe in you! Man, that was exhilarating and fun and I hope to see you again sometime! Geez, you sure have given me a ton to think about, but damned if I don’t need to shuffle my way out the door.”
It’s again, I feel like it’s coming from a positive and endearing place, but it feels so...ick. I didn’t open a conversation with you and pay for your meal to have endless deference paid to my ability to ask questions. I’m sad they were dodged. I’m scared about the implications of lobbing low-ball “so what do you think in general” questions and they’re treated like an infectious disease. I’m disappointed that people rush to defend this inability or unwillingness to think and offer that it’s a kind of run-off of me being too forward or intimidating. I’m not body language and polite conversation illiterate. I usually have a solid hour of conversation before the moment things change as evidence things were capable of being something more.
I’m tired of perpetually learning the same lesson that people aren’t worth it. They’ve nothing to offer. They’re good in small doses. It’s an endless burden and responsibility on your part to carry a positive and accepting disposition because you won’t be offered it in kind. I hate that I have to look forward to being disappointed by going out and trying to connect with people. I hate that what I want is regarded as something special or hard. It’s talking. It’s thinking. These things aren’t magic. They shouldn’t be scary.
Wednesday, December 30, 2015
Saturday, December 26, 2015
[473] Hear And Know
Whether it’s a clip offering an explanation of a philosopher or a 3 hour movie, I think the power of any piece of work is its ability to bring you into the moment. I think this ability is often mocked or hijacked by ideas regarding celebrity or magnanimity. For any celebrated or generous act is immediately washed into the past. Every letter or line I create is poised to disappear as insistently as I felt they needed to exist. They’re of value when you’re caught. When the words seep into your veins like a drug dictating your emotional or mental state.
It speaks to my struggle with notions of “progress.” Our cultural dialogue ascribes it to an endless assortment of contradictory examples. It’s progress to bomb poor ignorant people, even moreso, to deny them help until we stretch our morally progressive legs for those in closer proximity. It’s progress to churn through year after year of our relationships so long as we progress our memory loss as to what constitutes “friendly” or “love.” We romanticize technology as it progresses to the point of, often literal, phantom limbs meant to prop up our spirits and financial perspectives.
To speak of the here and now or bring someone into a moment is to threaten. Fear can be ignored. Pain can be numbed. To suggest you should carry it alongside the beauty and joy of the celebration is thought to be rude and uncaring. To burden one who is struggling with a few more shovel fulls suggests malicious and naive intentions. We don’t let the “crazy” walk alongside us. We don’t invite the enemy to offer reasons for their humanity. Why spoil the party by pulling out a chair for gravely suggestive matters?
An “enduring moment” is something of a contradiction until you consider suffering. Maybe it’s the grief of losing a child. Maybe it’s the abuse of an alcoholic parent. Maybe it’s the shadow of guilt cast by sin. In contrast, we don’t seem to regard the positive in the same manner. That is, when we manage to, we rush to words about “innocence,” “childishness,” “naivety,” or even perhaps “manic.” Say you’re enthralled by the new Star Wars movie. How quickly might you dissolve your friend’s patience if you only carried on about it for several weeks? How immature and petty would you be considered? You’d transcend impolite nerd into garnering genuine concern for your well being.
Now consider enrapture. It’s the zenith of the religious experience or goal. One is obliged to endear themselves to not only The Creator Himself, but to His Word and what that means for existences beyond your own. They’re to do this for a lifetime. They’re to proselytize. We consider this a celebration and triumphant point of pride about the nature of faith! We build linguistic skyscrapers to house all our excuses for when it goes astray. We ignore the contradiction of claiming truth while waiting for it to be revealed. We bound joylessly exuberant into the unknown despite what’s there begging to be acknowledged.
I’m still enthralled by the idea of finding so much in allowing yourself to be lost. Lose yourself to the pain and learn how much you can endure. Give yourself over to insatiable doubt to gain foundations that are rarely shaken. Sacrifice yourself on the altar of public opinion to reduce both “public” and “opinion” to greater drudgery than they’ll ever manage for you. At my most “boring” I find some of my most compelling suggestions about how to “direct” my life. Perhaps in a Woody Allen sense of “yeah, yeah, that’s good enough let’s move on I have less than a year to produce something new.”
Maybe I can unpack the idea of “perpetual self-justification.” Literally all of existence could be the Example. Every book, every movie, every blog, quote, or relationship to anything simply a reflection. To take a book and slowly remove one line at a time. Is it still a book? Does this force us to ask questions about the message and meaning of a book? Does it press further to explore why we’re willing to read an “incomplete” book or if we’re still capable, if ever were, able to digest and transfer the message?
I can simply reflect on my collection of blogs. There’s drunk rambling, seemingly incoherent digressions. There’s things that have deeply touched people. There’s the heights of egotistical thinking. There’s enduring sadness, confusion, and jealousy. I can hold up the mirror to any point, but they all came from the same brain. They all exist and disappear as insistently as I choose to open or create them. “I” will manifest for as long as you remember a single line, or title, or feeling I aroused in you. It’s as much or as little as anything else.
There’s a line in Waking Life, for example, that has always stuck with me. “I’m sort of reading it, and then writing it.” I’ve watched that movie pushing 20 times and over the years different scenes or lines have been lodged in my head. They would dance about as I wrote different blogs until I was done with them. They burrowed into my heart and pumped through the veins in my hands. It helps me in thinking about being in accordance with something larger. A willingness to search allowed my perspective to create, not “independent” of myself, but as an extension, a reflection. What do we say of our reflections? Are they “over there?” Or are they simple mind games to give us a broader view to cheat how our eyes are situated?
I, at least, try to read my circumstances. I try to read the culture. I read faces and voices and bodies. I read numbers and waterfalls of personal truths. I think I often feel like I come across “angry” or “depressed” or “pessimistic” or “sociopathic” or “judgmental” because more often than not, those are what’s reflected back. It’s anger life didn’t pan out like you planned. It’s depressed about feeling stuck and abused. It’s pessimistic pride for having figured it all out. It’s sociopathic disregard for consequences. It’s ceaseless purposeful judgment in order to stand in contrast to.
I don’t think it can end, but it can be understood as a reflection. It can be understood as parts of the same. It doesn’t have to be called “necessary.” It doesn’t have to strike a “balance.” It’s a choice of what to look at. It’s to choose the size of your mirror. It’s how long you’ll let it sit with you until it can be accepted and extended.
It speaks to my struggle with notions of “progress.” Our cultural dialogue ascribes it to an endless assortment of contradictory examples. It’s progress to bomb poor ignorant people, even moreso, to deny them help until we stretch our morally progressive legs for those in closer proximity. It’s progress to churn through year after year of our relationships so long as we progress our memory loss as to what constitutes “friendly” or “love.” We romanticize technology as it progresses to the point of, often literal, phantom limbs meant to prop up our spirits and financial perspectives.
To speak of the here and now or bring someone into a moment is to threaten. Fear can be ignored. Pain can be numbed. To suggest you should carry it alongside the beauty and joy of the celebration is thought to be rude and uncaring. To burden one who is struggling with a few more shovel fulls suggests malicious and naive intentions. We don’t let the “crazy” walk alongside us. We don’t invite the enemy to offer reasons for their humanity. Why spoil the party by pulling out a chair for gravely suggestive matters?
An “enduring moment” is something of a contradiction until you consider suffering. Maybe it’s the grief of losing a child. Maybe it’s the abuse of an alcoholic parent. Maybe it’s the shadow of guilt cast by sin. In contrast, we don’t seem to regard the positive in the same manner. That is, when we manage to, we rush to words about “innocence,” “childishness,” “naivety,” or even perhaps “manic.” Say you’re enthralled by the new Star Wars movie. How quickly might you dissolve your friend’s patience if you only carried on about it for several weeks? How immature and petty would you be considered? You’d transcend impolite nerd into garnering genuine concern for your well being.
Now consider enrapture. It’s the zenith of the religious experience or goal. One is obliged to endear themselves to not only The Creator Himself, but to His Word and what that means for existences beyond your own. They’re to do this for a lifetime. They’re to proselytize. We consider this a celebration and triumphant point of pride about the nature of faith! We build linguistic skyscrapers to house all our excuses for when it goes astray. We ignore the contradiction of claiming truth while waiting for it to be revealed. We bound joylessly exuberant into the unknown despite what’s there begging to be acknowledged.
Maybe I can unpack the idea of “perpetual self-justification.” Literally all of existence could be the Example. Every book, every movie, every blog, quote, or relationship to anything simply a reflection. To take a book and slowly remove one line at a time. Is it still a book? Does this force us to ask questions about the message and meaning of a book? Does it press further to explore why we’re willing to read an “incomplete” book or if we’re still capable, if ever were, able to digest and transfer the message?
I can simply reflect on my collection of blogs. There’s drunk rambling, seemingly incoherent digressions. There’s things that have deeply touched people. There’s the heights of egotistical thinking. There’s enduring sadness, confusion, and jealousy. I can hold up the mirror to any point, but they all came from the same brain. They all exist and disappear as insistently as I choose to open or create them. “I” will manifest for as long as you remember a single line, or title, or feeling I aroused in you. It’s as much or as little as anything else.
There’s a line in Waking Life, for example, that has always stuck with me. “I’m sort of reading it, and then writing it.” I’ve watched that movie pushing 20 times and over the years different scenes or lines have been lodged in my head. They would dance about as I wrote different blogs until I was done with them. They burrowed into my heart and pumped through the veins in my hands. It helps me in thinking about being in accordance with something larger. A willingness to search allowed my perspective to create, not “independent” of myself, but as an extension, a reflection. What do we say of our reflections? Are they “over there?” Or are they simple mind games to give us a broader view to cheat how our eyes are situated?
I, at least, try to read my circumstances. I try to read the culture. I read faces and voices and bodies. I read numbers and waterfalls of personal truths. I think I often feel like I come across “angry” or “depressed” or “pessimistic” or “sociopathic” or “judgmental” because more often than not, those are what’s reflected back. It’s anger life didn’t pan out like you planned. It’s depressed about feeling stuck and abused. It’s pessimistic pride for having figured it all out. It’s sociopathic disregard for consequences. It’s ceaseless purposeful judgment in order to stand in contrast to.
I don’t think it can end, but it can be understood as a reflection. It can be understood as parts of the same. It doesn’t have to be called “necessary.” It doesn’t have to strike a “balance.” It’s a choice of what to look at. It’s to choose the size of your mirror. It’s how long you’ll let it sit with you until it can be accepted and extended.
Monday, December 21, 2015
[472] Ain't Worth A Damn
I think one of the reasons I'm not
really worth much anymore is a kind of denial about what I've been
bred for.
Quickly, school teaches you to be “trainable” for a job. My household growing up, while we would get kicked outside sometimes, my mom was happy if we were pacified by TV and video games. When I lived with my dad and we were broke, more of the same. Even leaving school I followed in the vein of “entrepreneurship manuals” trying to deny the larger social contexts. I've literally only spent 5 years, maybe, without any expectations but to pay the rent. A cost I've reduced to being manageable part-time at minimum wage, if/when my circumstances press me to find a job like that.
I'm a little like a returning soldier without the PTSD. You had a duty every day. You had orders and you respected authority. I managed to turn a habit of reading into opportunities to shit on things. That's barely fun or worthwhile. No one that I would spend time with has escaped the rat-race. Not that they'd get by mentally as easy as I've managed without something more concrete to look forward to.
That's another aspect too. My dreams are much more abstract. Learning about the roads to potential solutions forces you to broaden your approach. You can't just ace a test or get promoted. You have to endear yourself, have more money than you planned for, and squeak out a little luck. You either have to prepare for failure after failure, or have the patience to roll out what you want to do with the appropriate bases covered. But will it happen in 10 months or 10 years, if at all?
It's great if you read all the time and then get to bring it to a classroom. It's awesome to watch a ton of shows if anyone around you had the time to catch them as well. It's also great if you're pursuing a specific kind of job. I've been told a few times that I should write. But, once it becomes an obligation, the writing will suffer. I don't think I've had 10 papers in my entirety of school that were praised for their clarity or depth. Someone said, “this needs x amount of words” and I begrudgingly said “fine.” More than I want to report, I want to fix that reporting is reduced to attention grabbing and regarded as “unhelpfully biased.”
My mind wanders to thoughts about volunteering. Is my hand the one that is necessary on a soup line? Am I the compassionate soul willing to listen in on a crisis line? Will I be humbled after 100 hours picking up garbage or being a Big Brother to little Timmy, lying to him about how likely his mom might kick her addiction? I've helped old people with odd landscaping and shoveling jobs. The thought “I went to college for this?” drowning out the noise from the leaf blower. Injecting my capacity for cynicism into sensitive areas like that seems a little play-with-fire-y.
Then I read about neurotic famous inventors or philosophers. They didn't have 50 shows a season to distract themselves and 24 hour gym memberships. And the things they were inventing or postulating stemmed from practically zero experimentation or previous knowledge. You could be an amateur everything and write for days, then hope future historians leave out the volumes of bullshit conclusions you came to before your noteworthy contributions.
I lean so heavily on experiences with the party house, coffee shop, or relationship things because they're the only things that are mine. Everything else is me in school or me broke or me “bored.” I'm as much a social butterfly as angry quiet nerd isolated in his man-cave. I'm as hard a worker as I am advocate for pulling you from the hamster wheel. But I'm more useful to someone in a context that I generally disagree with than I'm able to discern or create by myself.
I just don't know what it's going to mean. I'd get it if Kristen was like “peace!” because she liked uber-motivated passionate knows-his-shit me, but I melted into “the guy who's known for hanging out.” I don't really expect to maintain friendships where I resonate as some kind of sad memory. And it's not like I don't think there's room for genuine expression or value, but it's as hazy and abstract as my goals have become. I want to “create.” Saying that having just watched “True Life: I'm starting a religion” with two very mentally unsure people who certainly created to their heart's content and me having zero compassion or ability to respect and empathize.
Leaving a context throws your whole existence into question. Do I need to be more than blogs? Does it matter to have my own certificate or credentials tacked on the wall? You're certainly never “smart enough.” I'm not seeking “happiness.” I just generally want enough money to fail over and over again. And it turns out I have to do next to nothing in order to achieve that. Oops.
Quickly, school teaches you to be “trainable” for a job. My household growing up, while we would get kicked outside sometimes, my mom was happy if we were pacified by TV and video games. When I lived with my dad and we were broke, more of the same. Even leaving school I followed in the vein of “entrepreneurship manuals” trying to deny the larger social contexts. I've literally only spent 5 years, maybe, without any expectations but to pay the rent. A cost I've reduced to being manageable part-time at minimum wage, if/when my circumstances press me to find a job like that.
I'm a little like a returning soldier without the PTSD. You had a duty every day. You had orders and you respected authority. I managed to turn a habit of reading into opportunities to shit on things. That's barely fun or worthwhile. No one that I would spend time with has escaped the rat-race. Not that they'd get by mentally as easy as I've managed without something more concrete to look forward to.
That's another aspect too. My dreams are much more abstract. Learning about the roads to potential solutions forces you to broaden your approach. You can't just ace a test or get promoted. You have to endear yourself, have more money than you planned for, and squeak out a little luck. You either have to prepare for failure after failure, or have the patience to roll out what you want to do with the appropriate bases covered. But will it happen in 10 months or 10 years, if at all?
It's great if you read all the time and then get to bring it to a classroom. It's awesome to watch a ton of shows if anyone around you had the time to catch them as well. It's also great if you're pursuing a specific kind of job. I've been told a few times that I should write. But, once it becomes an obligation, the writing will suffer. I don't think I've had 10 papers in my entirety of school that were praised for their clarity or depth. Someone said, “this needs x amount of words” and I begrudgingly said “fine.” More than I want to report, I want to fix that reporting is reduced to attention grabbing and regarded as “unhelpfully biased.”
My mind wanders to thoughts about volunteering. Is my hand the one that is necessary on a soup line? Am I the compassionate soul willing to listen in on a crisis line? Will I be humbled after 100 hours picking up garbage or being a Big Brother to little Timmy, lying to him about how likely his mom might kick her addiction? I've helped old people with odd landscaping and shoveling jobs. The thought “I went to college for this?” drowning out the noise from the leaf blower. Injecting my capacity for cynicism into sensitive areas like that seems a little play-with-fire-y.
Then I read about neurotic famous inventors or philosophers. They didn't have 50 shows a season to distract themselves and 24 hour gym memberships. And the things they were inventing or postulating stemmed from practically zero experimentation or previous knowledge. You could be an amateur everything and write for days, then hope future historians leave out the volumes of bullshit conclusions you came to before your noteworthy contributions.
I lean so heavily on experiences with the party house, coffee shop, or relationship things because they're the only things that are mine. Everything else is me in school or me broke or me “bored.” I'm as much a social butterfly as angry quiet nerd isolated in his man-cave. I'm as hard a worker as I am advocate for pulling you from the hamster wheel. But I'm more useful to someone in a context that I generally disagree with than I'm able to discern or create by myself.
I just don't know what it's going to mean. I'd get it if Kristen was like “peace!” because she liked uber-motivated passionate knows-his-shit me, but I melted into “the guy who's known for hanging out.” I don't really expect to maintain friendships where I resonate as some kind of sad memory. And it's not like I don't think there's room for genuine expression or value, but it's as hazy and abstract as my goals have become. I want to “create.” Saying that having just watched “True Life: I'm starting a religion” with two very mentally unsure people who certainly created to their heart's content and me having zero compassion or ability to respect and empathize.
Leaving a context throws your whole existence into question. Do I need to be more than blogs? Does it matter to have my own certificate or credentials tacked on the wall? You're certainly never “smart enough.” I'm not seeking “happiness.” I just generally want enough money to fail over and over again. And it turns out I have to do next to nothing in order to achieve that. Oops.
Saturday, December 19, 2015
[471] Class Warfare
I want to explore what my reality is when I consider it in terms that are anti-utilitarian.
In truth, I don’t know of a single point of my life that I’ve considered myself “of the masses.” This isn’t to disavow logic or pretend I’m not some meager point in history. I’ve simply been treated “differently.” I aspire to “more.” I’m the only person with pushing 500 blogs of crawling through every depth of their own asshole that I know. Let’s just make it hard and potentially abstract from the get-go.
I think it speaks to why it’s so hard to talk to new people. LIke, say you made it through elementary school math. Then you get older. You go to parties and you meet people. Without fail, everyone is willing to offer up their excited and informed opinion that 2+2 does in fact equal 4! Holy shit! Isn’t your drunk mind blown as well! Fuck no it isn’t! But if you don’t pretend, you’re never going to make new friends.
In truth, I don’t know of a single point of my life that I’ve considered myself “of the masses.” This isn’t to disavow logic or pretend I’m not some meager point in history. I’ve simply been treated “differently.” I aspire to “more.” I’m the only person with pushing 500 blogs of crawling through every depth of their own asshole that I know. Let’s just make it hard and potentially abstract from the get-go.
Let’s let it sink in what we’re really trying to talk about. What is a democracy? Has there ever been a period in time in which we’ve ever really had one? Mind you, if you’re an idiot, you’ll explain proudly and immediately that we currently live in one. Please, go fuck yourself and refrain from continuing to read. More honestly. More realistically, we have those who broker and work with power, and those who don’t. Idealism never factors into the equation until you invoke “arc of history” arguments.
What if “the game” is really about “my game?” When we’re pulling from an abstract existential unsubstantiated landscape, who’s to say that for all my words and potential stress, that there isn’t a kind of solipsistic understanding that could take root. I won’t claim it goes so far as to pretend you don’t exist, but maybe, you’re literally an unyieldingly unable to reach my plain. Maybe my fight in life is to fundamentally transcend the naive allegiances and parallels. Maybe I’m only happy when I stop pretending we’re the same because of “star stuff” and “cold biology” rationality.
What if “the game” is really about “my game?” When we’re pulling from an abstract existential unsubstantiated landscape, who’s to say that for all my words and potential stress, that there isn’t a kind of solipsistic understanding that could take root. I won’t claim it goes so far as to pretend you don’t exist, but maybe, you’re literally an unyieldingly unable to reach my plain. Maybe my fight in life is to fundamentally transcend the naive allegiances and parallels. Maybe I’m only happy when I stop pretending we’re the same because of “star stuff” and “cold biology” rationality.
Let me say, I like this idea. This allows me to remove certain empathetic shackles. It doesn’t let me disavow the idea that we all feel things and that there will be a fallout. But it puts you “down there” to be “dealt with” in a way that the language of making humanity “rise up” doesn’t have to play with. Think about your day to day. How many of your friends or acquaintances do you really want in charge? How stupid are your fucking parents? How racist are your grandparents? I feel like this is the point in which I’m speaking to an impossibly small crowd of people. Even your “smart” friends, how many of them have much a grasp of anything beond their profession or major? There’s something to consider in this moment. If you don’t know, you’re part of the ignorant masses. If you have a worry otherwise, you might literally have a handle on the course of human existence lol. Fuck me this touches on so much.
There’s a discussion of pride. There’s a discussion of “the level” as I’ve already written about it. “Perspective” can be thrown around like like a battered wife in a windstorm. Naivety and chance are poised to cum all over your face. Freud’s ego would flex until its muscles pop. Like, what’s more interesting than considering yourself “special?” Seriously run with me with this for a second. Say we’re in an infinite moment. Say the universe is everything that will ever be and more. What more could you ask of eternity then to see out the consequences of being the most important being in this “inch” of all existence? How aren’t you “the greatest?” Egos aren’t evil by default. It’s when you employ them to distance yourself from a more informed perspective that they grow pervasive. Just don’t do that shit and rock on with your bad self.
I think it speaks to why it’s so hard to talk to new people. LIke, say you made it through elementary school math. Then you get older. You go to parties and you meet people. Without fail, everyone is willing to offer up their excited and informed opinion that 2+2 does in fact equal 4! Holy shit! Isn’t your drunk mind blown as well! Fuck no it isn’t! But if you don’t pretend, you’re never going to make new friends.
This is how I feel when I talk about relationships. This is how I feel when I talk about how people spend their time. This is how I feel when you discuss your alleged mental impairment, your “difficult” relationship with school or a spouse, or perspective on “the world in general.” If you don’t consider yourself a practical god, we’re not playing the same game. I get to act well within my rights to treat you like a random character I walk up to during a Final Fantasy game who tells me how much their health items cost. Thanks! And now disappear into the ether while I complete my quest.
I really like the idea of being the hero. I like the idea of being better than everyone. It gives you something to aspire to but contextualize. Like, if i was a Martin Skrelli type, just weird as fuck looking jerking myself over the amount of money I had and acting like the embodiment of a prick’s prick, I’d know something was wrong. I’d know i was fronting. I don’t believe I”m more than I’m worth, yet I’ve proven myself worth more than I ever believe I’ll get out of other people. Who empathizes with that?
Instead we shorthand it. We get degrees. We get titles. We trick people into getting certifications and accreditation and then try to beat away the pleb assholes with our knowledge dick. Like Google doesn’t exist. Like quantum computing won’t shuffle us into the waste bin shortly. You know what computers can’t do? They can’t be the hero. They can’t have justified pride. They can’t work in service to an ideal in a world marred by practical lamentation.
If I had 50 friends or 5, I don’t think it would sink in that all I care about in anybody is their ability to be the hero. I don’t think the exploration of what makes one would be talked about. I get to end every digression with a smug kicked up dirt cloud in my wake. Your story matters or it’s a footnote in mine. Own it you pussy.
Thursday, December 17, 2015
[470] Internal Combustion
I think the goal of attempting to learn things is to “internalize” the information. I think there are sort of classical depictions and statements we make about people who are “really smart” that often send a kind of unhelpful and unrealistic example in how their knowledge may be used.
Take an obvious example of hearing someone got a perfect score on their SAT. There's a few things we can say about this immediately. This person could have studied SAT books for years. You could question the reliability and purpose of standardized tests in general. This score says nothing of their interpersonal skills nor does it predict success. But, say in advertising a new season of Survivor, you bet that one of the contestants will be smiling as they relate how smart they are in achieving “perfection,” prompting you to wonder how far it will take them in the game.
Another example may be someone telling you their IQ. I've never scored more than a few points above average on every test I've taken in school or online. It's part of the reason I get so frustrated when I don't see people understanding something and call them lazy. I don't have special powers, you're probably just being a lazy asshole. The one or two people I've ever engaged with who leaned rather heavily on explaining how high their IQs were, destroyed nearly every one of their relationships and made the kind of mistakes of overly-enthusiastic or sympathetic teenagers.
It's the kind of “internalized wisdom” that old people like to claim. It often goes unchecked. They've been married and re-married and have the kind of sage advice that, unfortunately, mirrors a Buzzfeed listicle. They've worked themselves into an early grave and get to be cited in books talking about the top things they regret as they're dying. They've experienced every boy band, pyramid scheme, sense of fashion, and global catastrophe. And it's not to say that this experience can't prove to be invaluable.
Further, I think this experience kind of has natural plateaus. You start college and begin to look down on the youthful aloof experience of the kids you want to forget you were recently sharing hallways with. You go to grad school or graduate and shift your priorities to maybe starting a marriage or career and then proudly dismiss the drunken debauchery you're still shaking puke off your shoe from. You hit 30 and get to don the cultural sensibilities of a “mature adult” who didn't yet see the forest for the trees as some new work project or life struggle “really teaches you” what it is to “be an adult.” Before long you're feeling too old and trapping yourself in a handful of anecdotes and references that glorify and obscure. You make a little nest of your experiences that will cradle you unto death.
The problem, because there's always a problem, is that it is very hard to keep things under a microscope. It's why we give that work to grad students. It's why the particular people with particular bugs up their ass to learn something or fix something get 10 page spreads as we marvel at their “genius” ideas to simply keep working after everyone goes to bed and expand on work done over the last 30 years in their field. We don't want to believe we're capable of the same thing because then we're just inviting guilt, pressure, and responsibility. It is at this point where I wish most people would pause.
Knowing your potential, and speaking like you're an authority because you have reassuring beliefs about your potential, are two dramatically different things. Take “the good guy with the gun” who will talk for days about how reasonable and obvious it is that we put guns everywhere for a threat that's never put into context. He knows he'd stop a killer and could never be the first one shot unexpectedly. He also won't shoot an innocent person, the cops who arrive will know he's not the shooter, and has the wherewithal to power through peak adrenaline.
But war-like chest-beating rhetoric is the kind of “internalized knowledge” one gets from the sounding chamber of gun culture. It's a hodgepodge of misrepresented statistics from conservative blogs and you hop from anecdotal lilypad to anecdotal lilypad. Hell, it's the sounding chamber of American foreign policy. There's nothing like being part of a genocidal culture to dull you to the language and justifications of what we do to “lesser” nations. Or take the religious position. How fluidly do people speak for God? How much authority do they wield in service to gaining sympathy or money? How much easier does the medicine of war and self-righteous indignation go down when He's on your side?
I think about this when I consider why I bother reading or trying to learn. As I said, I'm what I'd consider “exceedingly average” as far as brain capacity. I just give myself time. I try to learn from those Buzzfeed-esc lists and “profoundly depressing” admissions from old people. What I internalize isn't a bunch of direct quotes and endless citations. I try to pick up on habits. I try to recognize explanatory style. I try to identify hiccups in translating what's been said and put a voice to the folly of talking “at” people who've maybe never been in a position to call themselves wrong.
It speaks to why I write and encourage others to do so. My last blog is me talking about being sad. I get a link to “Let Me Google That For You,” I guess suggesting that I wouldn't have considered that I'm depressed. I think it's important to share things like that if you honestly believe that, but a more explicit reading would show that I called my sadness enviable. I said you can only achieve it when you already have it all.
But say I wasn't a writer. Say I was afraid of defending my disposition or of your judgments. What if something was creeping in and I never got a chance to explore it? This is the kind of circus ride I imagine a lot of people go through. I've certainly watched in play out in former friends' lives as they transition from college to adulthood. This is why when I read blogs or search “rants” it's like high school rough drafts of something really profound...one day. At the same time I'm getting derided as “sophomoric” by such high-society mucking about in the same online forum waters.
For me to write, literally anything can be regarded as “necessary and useful.” It's when 3 or 4 different subjects or hardly-overlapping books prompt a weird thought or opening line that I can digress. I'm not curing cancer. The words will always mean more to me than to you. At the same time, I don't try to let my words carry anymore water than they're worth. When I spent 8 hours a day reading or writing or arguing about religion and science, yeah, I'd get a particularly shitty bite to what I was saying because I really knew my shit. Today, it's to hard to say what the bullshit arguments have evolved into and I don't have the patience or naivety to believe screaming at ideologues does any good.
You have to know where your usefulness stops. You have to practice humility. I can get away with writing a drunk and disconnected thing here in a way I wouldn't try to sell or pass off as worthy of a book. The Zen of an Angry White Male, riveting. You should derive pride from grasping your context, not just abusing it for sermons. You should be able to relate how or why your perspective has changed, and ask if when it's done so, was it worth it. Did you mine something to teach? Did you arouse or cost yourself an opportunity? And are you brave enough to allow things to be tentative?
I feel like I run out of things to say because I'm only frequently reminded. I don't operate like a 24 hour news cycle that needs to be “outraged” and constantly “slamming” my opinionated fist. Think about that when you're reading articles about Trump or Cruz. How much time are you spending giving their lies, hatred, and despicable characters' attention? What is that doing to you? What more do you think you need to learn from their perspectives but a habit of looking for better ones? But we don't ask it of ourselves. We don't even try. No one's even telling us we don't try! And we wouldn't believe them if they did.
Take an obvious example of hearing someone got a perfect score on their SAT. There's a few things we can say about this immediately. This person could have studied SAT books for years. You could question the reliability and purpose of standardized tests in general. This score says nothing of their interpersonal skills nor does it predict success. But, say in advertising a new season of Survivor, you bet that one of the contestants will be smiling as they relate how smart they are in achieving “perfection,” prompting you to wonder how far it will take them in the game.
Another example may be someone telling you their IQ. I've never scored more than a few points above average on every test I've taken in school or online. It's part of the reason I get so frustrated when I don't see people understanding something and call them lazy. I don't have special powers, you're probably just being a lazy asshole. The one or two people I've ever engaged with who leaned rather heavily on explaining how high their IQs were, destroyed nearly every one of their relationships and made the kind of mistakes of overly-enthusiastic or sympathetic teenagers.
It's the kind of “internalized wisdom” that old people like to claim. It often goes unchecked. They've been married and re-married and have the kind of sage advice that, unfortunately, mirrors a Buzzfeed listicle. They've worked themselves into an early grave and get to be cited in books talking about the top things they regret as they're dying. They've experienced every boy band, pyramid scheme, sense of fashion, and global catastrophe. And it's not to say that this experience can't prove to be invaluable.
Further, I think this experience kind of has natural plateaus. You start college and begin to look down on the youthful aloof experience of the kids you want to forget you were recently sharing hallways with. You go to grad school or graduate and shift your priorities to maybe starting a marriage or career and then proudly dismiss the drunken debauchery you're still shaking puke off your shoe from. You hit 30 and get to don the cultural sensibilities of a “mature adult” who didn't yet see the forest for the trees as some new work project or life struggle “really teaches you” what it is to “be an adult.” Before long you're feeling too old and trapping yourself in a handful of anecdotes and references that glorify and obscure. You make a little nest of your experiences that will cradle you unto death.
The problem, because there's always a problem, is that it is very hard to keep things under a microscope. It's why we give that work to grad students. It's why the particular people with particular bugs up their ass to learn something or fix something get 10 page spreads as we marvel at their “genius” ideas to simply keep working after everyone goes to bed and expand on work done over the last 30 years in their field. We don't want to believe we're capable of the same thing because then we're just inviting guilt, pressure, and responsibility. It is at this point where I wish most people would pause.
Knowing your potential, and speaking like you're an authority because you have reassuring beliefs about your potential, are two dramatically different things. Take “the good guy with the gun” who will talk for days about how reasonable and obvious it is that we put guns everywhere for a threat that's never put into context. He knows he'd stop a killer and could never be the first one shot unexpectedly. He also won't shoot an innocent person, the cops who arrive will know he's not the shooter, and has the wherewithal to power through peak adrenaline.
But war-like chest-beating rhetoric is the kind of “internalized knowledge” one gets from the sounding chamber of gun culture. It's a hodgepodge of misrepresented statistics from conservative blogs and you hop from anecdotal lilypad to anecdotal lilypad. Hell, it's the sounding chamber of American foreign policy. There's nothing like being part of a genocidal culture to dull you to the language and justifications of what we do to “lesser” nations. Or take the religious position. How fluidly do people speak for God? How much authority do they wield in service to gaining sympathy or money? How much easier does the medicine of war and self-righteous indignation go down when He's on your side?
I think about this when I consider why I bother reading or trying to learn. As I said, I'm what I'd consider “exceedingly average” as far as brain capacity. I just give myself time. I try to learn from those Buzzfeed-esc lists and “profoundly depressing” admissions from old people. What I internalize isn't a bunch of direct quotes and endless citations. I try to pick up on habits. I try to recognize explanatory style. I try to identify hiccups in translating what's been said and put a voice to the folly of talking “at” people who've maybe never been in a position to call themselves wrong.
It speaks to why I write and encourage others to do so. My last blog is me talking about being sad. I get a link to “Let Me Google That For You,” I guess suggesting that I wouldn't have considered that I'm depressed. I think it's important to share things like that if you honestly believe that, but a more explicit reading would show that I called my sadness enviable. I said you can only achieve it when you already have it all.
But say I wasn't a writer. Say I was afraid of defending my disposition or of your judgments. What if something was creeping in and I never got a chance to explore it? This is the kind of circus ride I imagine a lot of people go through. I've certainly watched in play out in former friends' lives as they transition from college to adulthood. This is why when I read blogs or search “rants” it's like high school rough drafts of something really profound...one day. At the same time I'm getting derided as “sophomoric” by such high-society mucking about in the same online forum waters.
For me to write, literally anything can be regarded as “necessary and useful.” It's when 3 or 4 different subjects or hardly-overlapping books prompt a weird thought or opening line that I can digress. I'm not curing cancer. The words will always mean more to me than to you. At the same time, I don't try to let my words carry anymore water than they're worth. When I spent 8 hours a day reading or writing or arguing about religion and science, yeah, I'd get a particularly shitty bite to what I was saying because I really knew my shit. Today, it's to hard to say what the bullshit arguments have evolved into and I don't have the patience or naivety to believe screaming at ideologues does any good.
You have to know where your usefulness stops. You have to practice humility. I can get away with writing a drunk and disconnected thing here in a way I wouldn't try to sell or pass off as worthy of a book. The Zen of an Angry White Male, riveting. You should derive pride from grasping your context, not just abusing it for sermons. You should be able to relate how or why your perspective has changed, and ask if when it's done so, was it worth it. Did you mine something to teach? Did you arouse or cost yourself an opportunity? And are you brave enough to allow things to be tentative?
I feel like I run out of things to say because I'm only frequently reminded. I don't operate like a 24 hour news cycle that needs to be “outraged” and constantly “slamming” my opinionated fist. Think about that when you're reading articles about Trump or Cruz. How much time are you spending giving their lies, hatred, and despicable characters' attention? What is that doing to you? What more do you think you need to learn from their perspectives but a habit of looking for better ones? But we don't ask it of ourselves. We don't even try. No one's even telling us we don't try! And we wouldn't believe them if they did.
Wednesday, December 16, 2015
[469] Kaput
I sometimes wonder if I’m sadder than I let on.
I don’t really understand emotions. It’s like, I know what they feel like, but I’ve never been persuaded about what they are supposed to constitute. The easiest example is jealousy. I’ve been as bent out of shape and perturbed by my girl being with someone else in an open relationship as I imagine anyone would be. But, my “better” “more logical” self is more compelling. I don’t really care if you want to get off or find someone attractive. I’m not with someone because I trap or hoard their sexuality. That’s the conclusion I come to 364 out of 365 days in which it’s ever presented to me.
And what a volatile situation people treat their sexuality. I’m currently watching The Affair. A compelling, surely award winning in an era of non-oversaturation drama, based around two married people drifting off still sells. It’s no less real the drama of infidelity and the intrigue bread on whether they will stay together or why.
But take something a little more abstract. Maybe it’s your impression of the news. Every day you take in information that glorifies or horrifies the worst examples we as a species can represent. Perhaps you carry on each day, healthy, working on something. Your life could constitute a simple chug on a train making its way to a destination. No gained mile fundamentally different than the last. You simply role with the environment. You internalize and normalize what it expects.
I never want to qualify my sadness. I feel like, you should be sad about things you can fix. I can’t make people talk back. I can’t make people regard what I say as “insightful” or “worthy.” It’d be pretty dumb if 10 years down the line I was going to make up my mind to beat myself up about feedback or lack thereof. Further, I’m not positive I’ve nailed down my “in general” conception of life explanation, so drawing or following some kind of conclusion would be ridiculously stupid.
In common conception, I’m healthy. Even if I’m getting fat, I’m not too fat and not ugly. I have so much shit. I barely know what to do with the thousands of dollars I can get from drug studies, let alone if/when I create something that will net significantly more. I’m not alone. I’m not cold or wanting. Where would I get off being sad?
Maybe it’s a discussion of different kinds of sadness. It’s where you squeeze in the word “existential.” Of course, only to betray and mock those who exist at a “substandard” level. I’m not hungry, but I crave discussions I don’t get. I’m not cold, but I feel my demeanor among a majority of new people. I don’t seek shelter, yet need a canopy of common sense and scholarship that keeps me from putting holes in the walls. I have an enviable sadness. You should dare to dream to be sad like me. I have a privileged angst and desire born from too much free time and opportunity.
It’s a loneliness of spirit. Even phrasing it like that makes me think I’m insulting friends. Even my best friend we’ve never worked together like I’ve worked at my peak. I’m an amalgam of superficial gains. I called the coffee kiosk a glorified lemonade stand. I ridiculed school as I got A’s and B’s. Learning body language makes you a whore (a word I don’t regard pejoratively), not a stud. I read books I recite back to myself or hint at in blogs. I watch shows not even to “nerd out” but so I can be familiar with “media in general” which translates into shitting on something you like for reasons tangentially related to respecting better efforts.
I spend so much time waiting to matter. I think about my grandma so often. Always cooking or cleaning. Always trying to make her home feel like yours. I only know how to buy things. I know how to get the drinks or pay for the tickets. I don’t know how to make you feel at home. I threw parties. Sure, I wanted them to mean something and be memories. But what I got was a lot of resentment. I got fights. I got the kind of lesson that turns so many people against a participatory or empathetic existence.
I guess I have the kind of sadness that only comes from having it all. I miss the friends that were there every day. I miss working on things that probably didn’t matter, but at least had other people there with you. I miss the kind of naïve fervor I had to entertain and get to know people before they were all reduced to boring clichés. I miss feeling like I knew what “genuine” meant when it gummed up the works in my exploration of trying to have friends verses flat manipulation of their sentimentality.
Every time I write I feel like I’m out of things to say.
I don’t really understand emotions. It’s like, I know what they feel like, but I’ve never been persuaded about what they are supposed to constitute. The easiest example is jealousy. I’ve been as bent out of shape and perturbed by my girl being with someone else in an open relationship as I imagine anyone would be. But, my “better” “more logical” self is more compelling. I don’t really care if you want to get off or find someone attractive. I’m not with someone because I trap or hoard their sexuality. That’s the conclusion I come to 364 out of 365 days in which it’s ever presented to me.
And what a volatile situation people treat their sexuality. I’m currently watching The Affair. A compelling, surely award winning in an era of non-oversaturation drama, based around two married people drifting off still sells. It’s no less real the drama of infidelity and the intrigue bread on whether they will stay together or why.
But take something a little more abstract. Maybe it’s your impression of the news. Every day you take in information that glorifies or horrifies the worst examples we as a species can represent. Perhaps you carry on each day, healthy, working on something. Your life could constitute a simple chug on a train making its way to a destination. No gained mile fundamentally different than the last. You simply role with the environment. You internalize and normalize what it expects.
I never want to qualify my sadness. I feel like, you should be sad about things you can fix. I can’t make people talk back. I can’t make people regard what I say as “insightful” or “worthy.” It’d be pretty dumb if 10 years down the line I was going to make up my mind to beat myself up about feedback or lack thereof. Further, I’m not positive I’ve nailed down my “in general” conception of life explanation, so drawing or following some kind of conclusion would be ridiculously stupid.
In common conception, I’m healthy. Even if I’m getting fat, I’m not too fat and not ugly. I have so much shit. I barely know what to do with the thousands of dollars I can get from drug studies, let alone if/when I create something that will net significantly more. I’m not alone. I’m not cold or wanting. Where would I get off being sad?
Maybe it’s a discussion of different kinds of sadness. It’s where you squeeze in the word “existential.” Of course, only to betray and mock those who exist at a “substandard” level. I’m not hungry, but I crave discussions I don’t get. I’m not cold, but I feel my demeanor among a majority of new people. I don’t seek shelter, yet need a canopy of common sense and scholarship that keeps me from putting holes in the walls. I have an enviable sadness. You should dare to dream to be sad like me. I have a privileged angst and desire born from too much free time and opportunity.
It’s a loneliness of spirit. Even phrasing it like that makes me think I’m insulting friends. Even my best friend we’ve never worked together like I’ve worked at my peak. I’m an amalgam of superficial gains. I called the coffee kiosk a glorified lemonade stand. I ridiculed school as I got A’s and B’s. Learning body language makes you a whore (a word I don’t regard pejoratively), not a stud. I read books I recite back to myself or hint at in blogs. I watch shows not even to “nerd out” but so I can be familiar with “media in general” which translates into shitting on something you like for reasons tangentially related to respecting better efforts.
I spend so much time waiting to matter. I think about my grandma so often. Always cooking or cleaning. Always trying to make her home feel like yours. I only know how to buy things. I know how to get the drinks or pay for the tickets. I don’t know how to make you feel at home. I threw parties. Sure, I wanted them to mean something and be memories. But what I got was a lot of resentment. I got fights. I got the kind of lesson that turns so many people against a participatory or empathetic existence.
I guess I have the kind of sadness that only comes from having it all. I miss the friends that were there every day. I miss working on things that probably didn’t matter, but at least had other people there with you. I miss the kind of naïve fervor I had to entertain and get to know people before they were all reduced to boring clichés. I miss feeling like I knew what “genuine” meant when it gummed up the works in my exploration of trying to have friends verses flat manipulation of their sentimentality.
Every time I write I feel like I’m out of things to say.
Saturday, December 12, 2015
[468] Market Die-namics
I want to cut out a definition and rationale for an “all and everything” perspective, and then discuss the problems of doing so. I think the best thing to consider in attempting to do so is a short video on the history of Youtube. It came from a teacher getting his class together to divide up and read every article about Youtube posted over ten years. The relevant and interesting facts were put together into a more digestible and relatable form.
This video was achievable for a few reasons. Youtube isn’t that old. Most, if not literally all of its history is readily available from primary sources or authors. It had an entire class working together and collaborating as to what was going to count as “interesting” and “relevant.” They had tools to share the same kind of mindspace online along the way. And as a subject matter, it’s a pretty straight forward task.
In my view, what this teacher and class did is the kind of spot on collaborative effort that needs to be made about and across subjects. This is, of course, the scientific endeavor, but finding the people capable of understanding and relating the information from ever-specific disciplines proves elusive. To then make them cross over and be properly weighted is another task entirely.
It’s a little like trying to predict the weather. With things becoming more and more connected, or, with us better able to see the connections that have always been there, we understand that we can’t apply bandages to deeper institutional illnesses. Or, we should hopefully begin to understand. It’s small steps from environmental or economic policy to the realm of foreign policy, for example. Saying something like “let them fight it out” if they’re fighting because your hand is in their jar, makes the alleged solutions, and lazy stating of the problems, problems in their own right.
In theory, we could be the kind “history of Youtube” efficient and “accurate enough” with a dedicated collaborative effort. We certainly apply the rationale to large governmental institutions who commission studies and put together reports about which way our dick should swing into the future. It seems simply and stupidly that it’s general politicking that prevents action on those reports. Think tanks are constantly putting out statistics on income inequality or the economy. I want a research team that helps remove or circumvent the idiot roadblocks.
I just read about the the man responsible for putting together our entire defense strategy, stringing psychological profiles of world leaders among troves of other data to accurately predict the Soviet Union collapse and China emerging as our greatest competitor/threat. In fairness, this is merely brushing over what he likely got wrong in his lengthy career, but the implication is that even the head of the world’s most dominant military apparatus is trying to put a million piece puzzle together for the rest of the world to marvel and follow.
I think our biggest clue is the mad dash internet companies and governments engage in to get ALL THE DATA and then comb through and sort it to make sure we’re directly marketed to or spied on right up to the point of almost entering our bodies; I suppose if you forgo thinking about medical records.
But it goes wrong and gets complicated. As the days following a mass shooting seem to confirm, you can have ties to shady organizations, raise all kinds of red flags that put you on lists, and even boast on facebook months and days before what you’re about to do, and nothing’s stopping you. We still don’t have the technology to filter out all the noise of trillions of data points into something coherent, let alone predictive. And it’s not like our “journalistic” apparatus is helping while they report on a killer’s blank calendar during an awkward apartment raid.
Yet we pretend we’re coherent or are able to predict. I’m endlessly frustrated when I attempt to read about the stock market, for example. I’d put money on the idea that I could hand over ten web pages of the most popular and most touted authors writing about the market and couldn’t find 2 traders to agree or make sense of what’s been said. Every doomsdayer has their own personal “oh shit” chart. Every brand with something to sell tells you to invest in gold. Even in my insanely basic understanding of the issues surrounding the market, I can pick up on lines of total bullshit mixed in with genuine worries or sense. “We should go back to the gold standard!” seated comfortably against “we’ve inflated the derivatives market to even higher levels than before the crash and gains we see are from quantitative easing and stock buyback strategies, not from more production.”
You can’t tell if the people writing it really don’t know any better, or if the whole thing is so wildly irrational, everything passes because everyone is afraid of admitting how full of shit they are. You’re left walking away with sort of folk knowledge like “all bubbles burst” or “the bailout worked and needed to be bigger.” Then you get to watch Adam McKay on Colbert explain that even the people who bet against the country during the crash, and made out like bandits, get a thousand yard stare when they consider “everything they knew was a lie,” and those lies have only gotten bigger and more complicated today. I find the fear and confusion from even the winners more compelling than your chart you can’t relate in English.
I suppose I just feel so inefficient and insincere. If I forced myself to read a book a day about the financial crisis, it would be less helpful than 5 people compiling the last 100 articles referencing “collapse” or compiling authors and their predictions to pick out who tends to be full of shit the least. That seems like the honest way to feel “smart” about talking about the market or whom we can look to when discussing how it behaves. There’s nothing like a 15 page in-depth analysis depicting how terrible 2015 is gonna be, posted on January 2, that you read and just poke holes through today on December 12. The guy worked at some high end firm, sure sounded professional and full of himself, and was wildly off the mark despite being linked to by higher trafficked sites. The author who did so saying “while I don’t agree with all (some 50+) points, but if what he says is true, we’re in for some trouble.”
Yeah, if, not “hey this helps my narrative to scare you, meager qualifier, hazah! Take that to bed!”
This video was achievable for a few reasons. Youtube isn’t that old. Most, if not literally all of its history is readily available from primary sources or authors. It had an entire class working together and collaborating as to what was going to count as “interesting” and “relevant.” They had tools to share the same kind of mindspace online along the way. And as a subject matter, it’s a pretty straight forward task.
In my view, what this teacher and class did is the kind of spot on collaborative effort that needs to be made about and across subjects. This is, of course, the scientific endeavor, but finding the people capable of understanding and relating the information from ever-specific disciplines proves elusive. To then make them cross over and be properly weighted is another task entirely.
It’s a little like trying to predict the weather. With things becoming more and more connected, or, with us better able to see the connections that have always been there, we understand that we can’t apply bandages to deeper institutional illnesses. Or, we should hopefully begin to understand. It’s small steps from environmental or economic policy to the realm of foreign policy, for example. Saying something like “let them fight it out” if they’re fighting because your hand is in their jar, makes the alleged solutions, and lazy stating of the problems, problems in their own right.
In theory, we could be the kind “history of Youtube” efficient and “accurate enough” with a dedicated collaborative effort. We certainly apply the rationale to large governmental institutions who commission studies and put together reports about which way our dick should swing into the future. It seems simply and stupidly that it’s general politicking that prevents action on those reports. Think tanks are constantly putting out statistics on income inequality or the economy. I want a research team that helps remove or circumvent the idiot roadblocks.
I just read about the the man responsible for putting together our entire defense strategy, stringing psychological profiles of world leaders among troves of other data to accurately predict the Soviet Union collapse and China emerging as our greatest competitor/threat. In fairness, this is merely brushing over what he likely got wrong in his lengthy career, but the implication is that even the head of the world’s most dominant military apparatus is trying to put a million piece puzzle together for the rest of the world to marvel and follow.
I think our biggest clue is the mad dash internet companies and governments engage in to get ALL THE DATA and then comb through and sort it to make sure we’re directly marketed to or spied on right up to the point of almost entering our bodies; I suppose if you forgo thinking about medical records.
But it goes wrong and gets complicated. As the days following a mass shooting seem to confirm, you can have ties to shady organizations, raise all kinds of red flags that put you on lists, and even boast on facebook months and days before what you’re about to do, and nothing’s stopping you. We still don’t have the technology to filter out all the noise of trillions of data points into something coherent, let alone predictive. And it’s not like our “journalistic” apparatus is helping while they report on a killer’s blank calendar during an awkward apartment raid.
Yet we pretend we’re coherent or are able to predict. I’m endlessly frustrated when I attempt to read about the stock market, for example. I’d put money on the idea that I could hand over ten web pages of the most popular and most touted authors writing about the market and couldn’t find 2 traders to agree or make sense of what’s been said. Every doomsdayer has their own personal “oh shit” chart. Every brand with something to sell tells you to invest in gold. Even in my insanely basic understanding of the issues surrounding the market, I can pick up on lines of total bullshit mixed in with genuine worries or sense. “We should go back to the gold standard!” seated comfortably against “we’ve inflated the derivatives market to even higher levels than before the crash and gains we see are from quantitative easing and stock buyback strategies, not from more production.”
You can’t tell if the people writing it really don’t know any better, or if the whole thing is so wildly irrational, everything passes because everyone is afraid of admitting how full of shit they are. You’re left walking away with sort of folk knowledge like “all bubbles burst” or “the bailout worked and needed to be bigger.” Then you get to watch Adam McKay on Colbert explain that even the people who bet against the country during the crash, and made out like bandits, get a thousand yard stare when they consider “everything they knew was a lie,” and those lies have only gotten bigger and more complicated today. I find the fear and confusion from even the winners more compelling than your chart you can’t relate in English.
I suppose I just feel so inefficient and insincere. If I forced myself to read a book a day about the financial crisis, it would be less helpful than 5 people compiling the last 100 articles referencing “collapse” or compiling authors and their predictions to pick out who tends to be full of shit the least. That seems like the honest way to feel “smart” about talking about the market or whom we can look to when discussing how it behaves. There’s nothing like a 15 page in-depth analysis depicting how terrible 2015 is gonna be, posted on January 2, that you read and just poke holes through today on December 12. The guy worked at some high end firm, sure sounded professional and full of himself, and was wildly off the mark despite being linked to by higher trafficked sites. The author who did so saying “while I don’t agree with all (some 50+) points, but if what he says is true, we’re in for some trouble.”
Yeah, if, not “hey this helps my narrative to scare you, meager qualifier, hazah! Take that to bed!”
Friday, December 11, 2015
[467] Forward March
“Initially, Nazi political strategy focused on anti-big business, anti-bourgeois, and anti-capitalist rhetoric, although such aspects were later downplayed in order to gain the support of industrial entities, and in the 1930s the party's focus shifted to anti-Semitic and anti-Marxist themes.”
I think political ideology and religious affiliation draw many parallels. None moreso than in their illustration of the problems with language. Consider the opening line. Now pretend you were a Nazi who got in on the ground floor. Are we not angry at big business, calling for the rich to pay their fare share, and learning more about socialist systems today? Say we didn’t know Hitler and Trump played to our hearts in the same way. Saved the move to anti semitism until after he was elected. What position would the OG socialists be in then?
I think this is much of the conversation when it comes to extremism. Hashtags about who is or isn’t a “real” Muslim. Are white guys “Christian terrorists” or “lone gunmen?” More importantly, I think it speaks to the kind of childish high school nature of the conversation. It’s like asking “who’s cooler? The Fonz or One Direction?” The pretentious know-it-all brings up points about history and context, the superfan points to number of views and followers, and perhaps a teacher quietly weeps to themselves in the corner trying to ignore how impressed he is these kids know who The Fonz is.
You’ll never reach an answer that can be regarded as “objective,” and your metric of judgment, your opinion, will never be the same. For something like music or television, we’re safe. No one has to base policy on such stupid questions. No one is motivated to shoot people because “you have to like this album, or else.”
I like to go with a strategy of “at once the same.” For those who, perhaps too closely, identify with their title of their faith, they run into problems doing this. In general, holy books call for violence, and it’s rather disingenuous to listen to someone openly and proudly state their inspiration for a terrorist act and then say “nah, what do they know?” Of course bombers and shooters are “real Muslims and Christians.” Trying to deny their identity is a failing attempt to absolve your own.
At once the same, there are the vast majority of so-named “moderates.” I find it generally hilarious that by simply not shooting or blowing something up, you’re considered “moderate” in your temperament or ideas. Is it not the most ardently faithful that show up to abortion clinics? Is it not the ideologically radicalized that formed the Tea-baggers? (I refuse to consider them a party) Here, though, is an opportunity to slip into the role of scientist. You can look for root causes. You can describe the nature. You can test the consequences.
This is what I try to do when I say things about “eliminating religious thinking.” I think what underlies violence is a cultural habit of protecting ignorance. We draw lines between us and them habitually, pretending, denying we couldn’t be them or our ideas could never reach that point. No, you’ll probably not turn into a terrorist, but less dramatically, consider how many people are shocked they turned into their parents.
I say, challenge people to define their terms. Ignore the stupid media getting into high school hallway pissing matches, which by design, are never meant to resolve or progress. When you do this, you’ll find everything doesn’t feel stuck and hopeless, that’s merely what your apparatus is teaching us to be. From disparaging comments online to the Fox and Friends, our Screen Teachers are damming and ignorant. We don’t have to play along.
Friday, December 4, 2015
[466] Unquestionably Intelligent
I’m incensed by a relationship that has finally broken down. The nature of it speaks well to our current “debate” about gun violence, religious extremism, and income inequality...I promise.
An idea that comes to mind is “the narcissism of minor differences.” You can think of small town rivalries or sports perhaps. There are people who boil over with hatred or break down in tears at neighboring regions for winning a game. They all enjoy the big hits and impressive catches, but they’ll be damned if their symbol is as depraved as their rival’s. These kind of people are removed from the ones who can enjoy a game for its capacity to bring people together or for the athleticism. Maybe they genuinely do feel a sense of comradery because they went to school with someone who got drafted to the big leagues, or can get drunk and boisterous, but the the elevated “life or death” identity investment isn’t there.
This second, more mature and grounded group, is, unfortunately, where I see a problem. These are the people who are given a kind of “otherwise reasonable” distinction in everyday discourse. Sports is where I see the easy way to analogize because it is a contrast between almost childlike emotion and clearly more conducive to rationality sentiments around “it’s a game.” Other realms, like your profession or your political persuasion, the emotion and “logic” sit atop one another, hopelessly intertwined for those who attempt to discuss them intelligently.
I brought up the two different types of sports fan first because I want to make room for a third type of person. It’s the one who wants to enjoy the sports like a child, understands they’re closer to the adults regarding it as a simple and fun game, but is trapped recalling everything they’ve ever read about head-injuries, image exploitation, extravagance and waste, and the psychology of fame or popularity. It’s a person, through no fault of their own, who seeks perspective and genuine understanding about “everything” and, unfortunately, your pet project or interest can be subjected to the same scrutiny.
We’re not getting too complicated in distinguishing these people are we? If so, please stop me, because I want to make a distinction in types of this third person. One is the /r/iamverysmart[1] type who, in actuality, probably isn’t that smart and uses a lot of large terms indiscriminately and inappropriately or brings up quantum mechanics in a way you know they’re currently masterbating to as they type a status. The other type is the one with questions. Questions betray intelligence in that they are an implicit challenge even when someone explicitly says they’re not trying to challenge. “I don’t mean to offend, by why would anyone do something like that?” “Not saying you’re wrong, but did you know this, that, or the other thing?”
I consider myself the person burdened by what I read with a lot of questions. Some people refer to this as “intelligent.” I find myself afraid, probably unreasonably, of calling myself intelligent because I know a vast array of friends who consider themselves intelligent and source my information from people whom I consider vastly more intelligent than I’ll ever be. But it is important to remember that whether me and my crowd are “a little,” or “a lot” (I’m going to simply dismiss the idea that we’re straight up morons), intelligence isn’t the norm.
Survival isn’t synonymous with intelligence. This is a terrifying thing to consider when, now that we’re living the consequences of climate change and waiting for ISIS to get nukes, you really want to believe the people in charge of fixing those things are wildly intelligent.
But there’s several layers to the problem there. First, you’re talking about emotionally charged and fear inducing things. For even the most stoic and reasonable person, you’re bound to make emotional mistakes or let it unduly influence the conversation. Second, you’re contending practically with public perception when it comes to what’s left of our democracy. It’s been shown that oil companies explicitly fed misleading information about climate change, and the consequences birthed all sorts of lobbying “think tanks” and campaigns to infect public opinion. The duped and the moronic get to vote. Third, we talk about intelligence or a capacity to understand as lazily and disingenuously as we talk about most things, so the ones who deserve the credit or the ideas that should be most popular disappear behind faux-humility, faux-compromise, and semantics.
I read a lot. Even accepting that idea that this is true, I still can feel like I don’t read nearly enough and I know it’s vastly more than the majority of people I talk to. If that statement makes you feel threatened, I feel like you’re in the majority. I’m afraid that what I can bring to the table or the questions I may ask will be immediately dismissed because you reactively feel under threat or that it’s a humble-brag to speak to the amount of information I like to pursue. Reading a lot isn’t the same as having all the answers. It doesn’t mean I don’t want to hear where you’re coming from. It doesn’t even mean the answers I may provide are as correct or complete as they need to be.
What it does do for me though is help me acquire tools for engaging with topics in ways I consider proactive and intelligent in a way that’s starkly contrasted with nearly anything you’ll read in any comment section anywhere. One thing I do is give you examples of how I can come to what I believe to be your “side.”
Let’s take football, and you’ve taken the position it’s “just a sport and I should lighten up and enjoy.” I would say that you should target my insistence on keeping “bigger problems” on my mind as far as keeping perspective about what is happening on the field. If you introduced hundreds of videos of testimony or quotes from players who say things like “I totally don’t care about brain damage” I’ll shuffle my regard for them right out the window. If you point to the “simple” things I like that you think analogize well to football, I’ll be immediately bound to trying to better understand you. Is that ever how it goes? Absolutely not.
Another thing I’ll do is ask if you even believe you can be wrong. I do this because I don’t think people ask it of themselves before they write their incensed dialogue (masquerading as an argument) meant to “school me” on the “reality” of the situation. You’ll save yourself loads of time when the person responds “well I don’t see how this could be wrong” before proceeding into another all-over-the-place digression.
As well, I’ll ask you to clarify or restate questions you have of me. A lot of times even in the pursuit of genuine understanding, we form questions very stupidly. It’s not necessarily malicious or meant to obscure things like a Reza Aslan or Dinesh D’Souza would, it’s just in our confusion we didn’t solidify what was wrong before we started asking about how to fix it.
I have a friend who we consistently seem to go round and round about just how bad the atmosphere for women really is. We seem to agree in general on the problem, but much of the articles and sources she’ll share with me I see as filled with assumptive thinking and emotional appeals from an editorialized feminist-slanted blog. The handful of statistics that may get cited play second fiddle to “but no, ALL OF US are REALLY THIS AFRAID and it’s DEFINITELY ALL THE TIME!” by a range of male behavior that rarely gets empathized with in return.
I’m lucky that our conversations are examples of not having to automatically demonize each other and we can go back and forth until we get to the root of the disagreement. Even still, there’s no guarantee the other side is going to accept what you have to say, but the exercise of unpacking how you want to initially react to a dissenting comment needs to play out.
That exercise can be applied to things that are more concrete. We can count the homeless, for example. We have polls (as I hesitate to look like I’m advocating for them to look more powerful than they’re due) that shed light on religious opinions or knowledge about politics. When you can see people, in the same survey, say confidently they’re voting Republican when every question about their wellbeing lines up with the Democrats, that’s jaw-droppingly informative as to the nature of propaganda. I can know that I have more in my investment account, via practical luck, at 27 than 70% of seniors have tucked away for retirement, and call that a problem. You responding with some catch-phrase about socialism or meme meant to defame Sanders and glorify Trump is not you showing you know how to use numbers.
Employing tools to inform and direct a conversation are literally the only way to have one. Everything else is, hopefully only metaphorical, screaming matches and manipulation. I’m not trying to make you cry if I relay how many kids get shot each year, but I am wondering why it wouldn’t or doesn’t make you pause about your alleged selective reading of the 2nd Amendment. I’m asking you to count the number of home invaders you’ve had to shoot, or anyone else in your neighborhood has had to shoot, before you profess the need to protect your family as a reasonable argument.
As well, digging up the “subconscious root” of where your feelings or questions are coming from is the only way you get to grow and progress. My lost friend has been living under so many layers of denial and delusion for so long, the things I talk about or post she wondered how she didn’t notice the lack of “bullshit” in her feed in a text to my girlfriend after I defriended. It’s like she knows she needs someone to help her speak the truth, but can only go about it in as passive aggressively a manner as she’s adopted into her own life. Call out the bullshit, if it truly is so, when your contacts post it. If you’re forced to remain a coward or are unable to explain why you think so, the problem lies in you.
Who she is and how she behaves is a microcosm of what I worry about being the standard for existence in general. She's the unreasonably emotional sports fan. There's never a "right moment" to introduce doubt or a new idea. She's unquestioningly righteous and correct in how she thinks and in her judgments, and the depth of her emotional appeal must dictate her perception of her relationships. It was out of sympathy and cordiality I’ve remained friendly for so long. Another way to view it is me being explicitly disrespectful and advocating as hatefully against honest questions and genuine relationships as she’s allowed doing so to play out in her life. It’s how I watched my mom’s friends drop out of her life over time. It’s why I feel compelled to drop every “friend” incapable of self-evaluation or reflection. I speculate it’s why the myth of Cassandra even exists. As long as one elects to remain “in the masses,” I want nothing to do with them, but I want those capable to stop protecting them. I keep learning the hard way. Do better than me.
------------------------------------------------------------
What happened here is I felt the need to defend my "bullshit" and capacity for understanding why I post it. When me and what I share is denounced by a person who's so "happily" blind to the consequences of lying to herself for years about her relationship or faith, I did a poor and rambling job of explaining her mind space. A place where only and of course can my caring about things and pursuit of honest conversation resonate as bullshit. It's a place so rehearsed in denial or self-justification that it is its own type tantamount to the most emotionally belligerent and exceedingly ignorant society has to offer. If you were lucky enough to think "tl/dr," this was the point.
An idea that comes to mind is “the narcissism of minor differences.” You can think of small town rivalries or sports perhaps. There are people who boil over with hatred or break down in tears at neighboring regions for winning a game. They all enjoy the big hits and impressive catches, but they’ll be damned if their symbol is as depraved as their rival’s. These kind of people are removed from the ones who can enjoy a game for its capacity to bring people together or for the athleticism. Maybe they genuinely do feel a sense of comradery because they went to school with someone who got drafted to the big leagues, or can get drunk and boisterous, but the the elevated “life or death” identity investment isn’t there.
This second, more mature and grounded group, is, unfortunately, where I see a problem. These are the people who are given a kind of “otherwise reasonable” distinction in everyday discourse. Sports is where I see the easy way to analogize because it is a contrast between almost childlike emotion and clearly more conducive to rationality sentiments around “it’s a game.” Other realms, like your profession or your political persuasion, the emotion and “logic” sit atop one another, hopelessly intertwined for those who attempt to discuss them intelligently.
I brought up the two different types of sports fan first because I want to make room for a third type of person. It’s the one who wants to enjoy the sports like a child, understands they’re closer to the adults regarding it as a simple and fun game, but is trapped recalling everything they’ve ever read about head-injuries, image exploitation, extravagance and waste, and the psychology of fame or popularity. It’s a person, through no fault of their own, who seeks perspective and genuine understanding about “everything” and, unfortunately, your pet project or interest can be subjected to the same scrutiny.
We’re not getting too complicated in distinguishing these people are we? If so, please stop me, because I want to make a distinction in types of this third person. One is the /r/iamverysmart[1] type who, in actuality, probably isn’t that smart and uses a lot of large terms indiscriminately and inappropriately or brings up quantum mechanics in a way you know they’re currently masterbating to as they type a status. The other type is the one with questions. Questions betray intelligence in that they are an implicit challenge even when someone explicitly says they’re not trying to challenge. “I don’t mean to offend, by why would anyone do something like that?” “Not saying you’re wrong, but did you know this, that, or the other thing?”
I consider myself the person burdened by what I read with a lot of questions. Some people refer to this as “intelligent.” I find myself afraid, probably unreasonably, of calling myself intelligent because I know a vast array of friends who consider themselves intelligent and source my information from people whom I consider vastly more intelligent than I’ll ever be. But it is important to remember that whether me and my crowd are “a little,” or “a lot” (I’m going to simply dismiss the idea that we’re straight up morons), intelligence isn’t the norm.
Survival isn’t synonymous with intelligence. This is a terrifying thing to consider when, now that we’re living the consequences of climate change and waiting for ISIS to get nukes, you really want to believe the people in charge of fixing those things are wildly intelligent.
But there’s several layers to the problem there. First, you’re talking about emotionally charged and fear inducing things. For even the most stoic and reasonable person, you’re bound to make emotional mistakes or let it unduly influence the conversation. Second, you’re contending practically with public perception when it comes to what’s left of our democracy. It’s been shown that oil companies explicitly fed misleading information about climate change, and the consequences birthed all sorts of lobbying “think tanks” and campaigns to infect public opinion. The duped and the moronic get to vote. Third, we talk about intelligence or a capacity to understand as lazily and disingenuously as we talk about most things, so the ones who deserve the credit or the ideas that should be most popular disappear behind faux-humility, faux-compromise, and semantics.
I read a lot. Even accepting that idea that this is true, I still can feel like I don’t read nearly enough and I know it’s vastly more than the majority of people I talk to. If that statement makes you feel threatened, I feel like you’re in the majority. I’m afraid that what I can bring to the table or the questions I may ask will be immediately dismissed because you reactively feel under threat or that it’s a humble-brag to speak to the amount of information I like to pursue. Reading a lot isn’t the same as having all the answers. It doesn’t mean I don’t want to hear where you’re coming from. It doesn’t even mean the answers I may provide are as correct or complete as they need to be.
What it does do for me though is help me acquire tools for engaging with topics in ways I consider proactive and intelligent in a way that’s starkly contrasted with nearly anything you’ll read in any comment section anywhere. One thing I do is give you examples of how I can come to what I believe to be your “side.”
Let’s take football, and you’ve taken the position it’s “just a sport and I should lighten up and enjoy.” I would say that you should target my insistence on keeping “bigger problems” on my mind as far as keeping perspective about what is happening on the field. If you introduced hundreds of videos of testimony or quotes from players who say things like “I totally don’t care about brain damage” I’ll shuffle my regard for them right out the window. If you point to the “simple” things I like that you think analogize well to football, I’ll be immediately bound to trying to better understand you. Is that ever how it goes? Absolutely not.
Another thing I’ll do is ask if you even believe you can be wrong. I do this because I don’t think people ask it of themselves before they write their incensed dialogue (masquerading as an argument) meant to “school me” on the “reality” of the situation. You’ll save yourself loads of time when the person responds “well I don’t see how this could be wrong” before proceeding into another all-over-the-place digression.
As well, I’ll ask you to clarify or restate questions you have of me. A lot of times even in the pursuit of genuine understanding, we form questions very stupidly. It’s not necessarily malicious or meant to obscure things like a Reza Aslan or Dinesh D’Souza would, it’s just in our confusion we didn’t solidify what was wrong before we started asking about how to fix it.
I have a friend who we consistently seem to go round and round about just how bad the atmosphere for women really is. We seem to agree in general on the problem, but much of the articles and sources she’ll share with me I see as filled with assumptive thinking and emotional appeals from an editorialized feminist-slanted blog. The handful of statistics that may get cited play second fiddle to “but no, ALL OF US are REALLY THIS AFRAID and it’s DEFINITELY ALL THE TIME!” by a range of male behavior that rarely gets empathized with in return.
I’m lucky that our conversations are examples of not having to automatically demonize each other and we can go back and forth until we get to the root of the disagreement. Even still, there’s no guarantee the other side is going to accept what you have to say, but the exercise of unpacking how you want to initially react to a dissenting comment needs to play out.
That exercise can be applied to things that are more concrete. We can count the homeless, for example. We have polls (as I hesitate to look like I’m advocating for them to look more powerful than they’re due) that shed light on religious opinions or knowledge about politics. When you can see people, in the same survey, say confidently they’re voting Republican when every question about their wellbeing lines up with the Democrats, that’s jaw-droppingly informative as to the nature of propaganda. I can know that I have more in my investment account, via practical luck, at 27 than 70% of seniors have tucked away for retirement, and call that a problem. You responding with some catch-phrase about socialism or meme meant to defame Sanders and glorify Trump is not you showing you know how to use numbers.
Employing tools to inform and direct a conversation are literally the only way to have one. Everything else is, hopefully only metaphorical, screaming matches and manipulation. I’m not trying to make you cry if I relay how many kids get shot each year, but I am wondering why it wouldn’t or doesn’t make you pause about your alleged selective reading of the 2nd Amendment. I’m asking you to count the number of home invaders you’ve had to shoot, or anyone else in your neighborhood has had to shoot, before you profess the need to protect your family as a reasonable argument.
As well, digging up the “subconscious root” of where your feelings or questions are coming from is the only way you get to grow and progress. My lost friend has been living under so many layers of denial and delusion for so long, the things I talk about or post she wondered how she didn’t notice the lack of “bullshit” in her feed in a text to my girlfriend after I defriended. It’s like she knows she needs someone to help her speak the truth, but can only go about it in as passive aggressively a manner as she’s adopted into her own life. Call out the bullshit, if it truly is so, when your contacts post it. If you’re forced to remain a coward or are unable to explain why you think so, the problem lies in you.
Who she is and how she behaves is a microcosm of what I worry about being the standard for existence in general. She's the unreasonably emotional sports fan. There's never a "right moment" to introduce doubt or a new idea. She's unquestioningly righteous and correct in how she thinks and in her judgments, and the depth of her emotional appeal must dictate her perception of her relationships. It was out of sympathy and cordiality I’ve remained friendly for so long. Another way to view it is me being explicitly disrespectful and advocating as hatefully against honest questions and genuine relationships as she’s allowed doing so to play out in her life. It’s how I watched my mom’s friends drop out of her life over time. It’s why I feel compelled to drop every “friend” incapable of self-evaluation or reflection. I speculate it’s why the myth of Cassandra even exists. As long as one elects to remain “in the masses,” I want nothing to do with them, but I want those capable to stop protecting them. I keep learning the hard way. Do better than me.
------------------------------------------------------------
What happened here is I felt the need to defend my "bullshit" and capacity for understanding why I post it. When me and what I share is denounced by a person who's so "happily" blind to the consequences of lying to herself for years about her relationship or faith, I did a poor and rambling job of explaining her mind space. A place where only and of course can my caring about things and pursuit of honest conversation resonate as bullshit. It's a place so rehearsed in denial or self-justification that it is its own type tantamount to the most emotionally belligerent and exceedingly ignorant society has to offer. If you were lucky enough to think "tl/dr," this was the point.
Monday, November 30, 2015
[465] New Balance: Just Do It
There's an intractable virus wriggling around in my mind.
I suppose I don't like the language I've been reading as to how we're supposed to cope. Whether it's coping with different egos or evil, invariably, and it's primarily Alan Watts who's been stuck in my head, him or some other guru type will pull from Eastern mysticism to find the wisdom of balance or being one with everything. Perhaps it's a consequence of not reading close enough, or perhaps there's too many airily employed metaphors, but there's something that's sort of pissing me off in these explanations.
I don't even think the logic is terribly off. The more we persist in quantum mechanical experiments and try to discern the “stuff” we're made out of, it looks more weird and perhaps impossible to nail down because it's changing depending on how we look at it. If you take that everything we conceive of as existing in the universe coming from an infinitely dense point accelerating until all energy has petered out, there's plenty to lie back in awe and think about concerning how weird it is to exist in the first place, let alone find yourself writing a blog about it.
I think maybe I just don't buy the “evil verses good” kind of dialogue. It does not click with me that I'm supposed to “just accept” or smile and move on from those with batshit views. I can understand myself to be capable of ignorance or horrible behavior. The pressing question, “Could any country act like Germany during WWII?” leaves you with years of behavioral and psychological exploration suggesting “of course.” I think it not only impractical, but downright deadly and in defiance of existing in the first place to think of myself in some kind of infinite balancing act with racists, jihadis, or war criminals.
If there's a balance, why can't it be with what we could know and learn as healthy, happy, and informed with the vast nothingness of near immediate death that's accelerating all around us? Why press upon a language of awkward swallowing harmony that feels significantly, more honestly, like worthwhile conflict on the road of progress? Discerning what's “really good” verses what's “good for a capitalist” or “good for a demagogue” could be the cultural endeavor and dialogue. Not this “well they have egos too!” garbage as if I should respect in myself the parts I consider worst about me or my potential.
I think what pisses me off about hippies is that they act like lawyers. They take from, arguably, “high-minded society” to weave together arguments that they'll even call out as failing as they make them, but still it comes across like they're selling you on how to think. Like it's an act of wisdom or meditation to walk some superficial line just because you overburden the implications of your underlying quasi-knowledge about the nature of existence. I don't need to know shit about shit to understand why bombing poor people is dumb. I don't need lessons in existentialism to want my friends to be not threatened by racists. And I don't need a single proclamation about the will of god to know yours is fucked up when it calls me evil and wants to kill me.
Watts' kind of understanding seems to breed complacency. In one hand he'll say something like “we should support welfare systems” but then explain that what people desire after they get the basics can't be filled by consumption, so we should instead focus our efforts on a kind of spiritual or perspective-broadening awakening. Practically, can we at least ensure everyone gets a chance to contemplate how TV doesn't make them feel at one with the universe before we believe care packages of food need to include Watts' book?
Or there was a section about “spiritual one-upmanship” in which people so humbly try to distance themselves from their accomplishments or capacity to understand because of some deeper truth they get about their relational existence. So it goes, you'd be unwise to consider yourself better or worse, nay, those distinctions only arise from a comparison, so then what? You shouldn't take pride? You shouldn't call what you do better? Your “problematic ego” will only be bolstered by it's own ignorance? FUCK YEAH, why not? I think people who try to organize their thoughts are better than those who spout off and follow ignorant bullshit indiscriminately. I think people who take the time to think, even if it's to come to “gooey” conclusions like Watts, occupy a place of genuine “higher” value and order than those who are going along for the ride.
The fact is, we don't get to play with all the facts of our existence. We get what our senses and our brains can cobble together. Those are the rules. The underlying reality is practically (until we can use the math to build something cool) irrelevant. Maybe to state that more explicitly, by way of conversation, it's important to understand ISIS are people in contemplating conflict resolution. It's important to understand the consequences of ignorance in demonizing terms. Maybe, right now, asking what the double-slit experiment means for our foreign policy hurts more than helps. This isn't to denounce philosophy or avoid avenues to be inspired, but “in reality,” the underlying fact is still “we don't know.” Drawing up a book attempting to guide practical or “more rational” behavior and how to properly pursue “enlightenment” when you fundamentally don't know something is a properly ignorant religious exercise.
I'm never going to smile and clasp my hands around my Yin-Yang necklace when there's a gun to my head secure in the knowledge that it's my ego's time to balance out the scale and be re-born as another “I” in a baby somewhere. When you bring his examples and state them like that, the whole exercise of being “merely contemplative” feels a lot more like “struggling to justify shitty religious thinking.” I can know I'm not apart from the whole as far as my particles, (oops, calling them “mine”) but that in no way makes me okay with strangling the word “objective” out of my lexicon. As far as anyone who's suffering is concerned, life isn't art for art's sake.
I suppose I don't like the language I've been reading as to how we're supposed to cope. Whether it's coping with different egos or evil, invariably, and it's primarily Alan Watts who's been stuck in my head, him or some other guru type will pull from Eastern mysticism to find the wisdom of balance or being one with everything. Perhaps it's a consequence of not reading close enough, or perhaps there's too many airily employed metaphors, but there's something that's sort of pissing me off in these explanations.
I don't even think the logic is terribly off. The more we persist in quantum mechanical experiments and try to discern the “stuff” we're made out of, it looks more weird and perhaps impossible to nail down because it's changing depending on how we look at it. If you take that everything we conceive of as existing in the universe coming from an infinitely dense point accelerating until all energy has petered out, there's plenty to lie back in awe and think about concerning how weird it is to exist in the first place, let alone find yourself writing a blog about it.
I think maybe I just don't buy the “evil verses good” kind of dialogue. It does not click with me that I'm supposed to “just accept” or smile and move on from those with batshit views. I can understand myself to be capable of ignorance or horrible behavior. The pressing question, “Could any country act like Germany during WWII?” leaves you with years of behavioral and psychological exploration suggesting “of course.” I think it not only impractical, but downright deadly and in defiance of existing in the first place to think of myself in some kind of infinite balancing act with racists, jihadis, or war criminals.
If there's a balance, why can't it be with what we could know and learn as healthy, happy, and informed with the vast nothingness of near immediate death that's accelerating all around us? Why press upon a language of awkward swallowing harmony that feels significantly, more honestly, like worthwhile conflict on the road of progress? Discerning what's “really good” verses what's “good for a capitalist” or “good for a demagogue” could be the cultural endeavor and dialogue. Not this “well they have egos too!” garbage as if I should respect in myself the parts I consider worst about me or my potential.
I think what pisses me off about hippies is that they act like lawyers. They take from, arguably, “high-minded society” to weave together arguments that they'll even call out as failing as they make them, but still it comes across like they're selling you on how to think. Like it's an act of wisdom or meditation to walk some superficial line just because you overburden the implications of your underlying quasi-knowledge about the nature of existence. I don't need to know shit about shit to understand why bombing poor people is dumb. I don't need lessons in existentialism to want my friends to be not threatened by racists. And I don't need a single proclamation about the will of god to know yours is fucked up when it calls me evil and wants to kill me.
Watts' kind of understanding seems to breed complacency. In one hand he'll say something like “we should support welfare systems” but then explain that what people desire after they get the basics can't be filled by consumption, so we should instead focus our efforts on a kind of spiritual or perspective-broadening awakening. Practically, can we at least ensure everyone gets a chance to contemplate how TV doesn't make them feel at one with the universe before we believe care packages of food need to include Watts' book?
Or there was a section about “spiritual one-upmanship” in which people so humbly try to distance themselves from their accomplishments or capacity to understand because of some deeper truth they get about their relational existence. So it goes, you'd be unwise to consider yourself better or worse, nay, those distinctions only arise from a comparison, so then what? You shouldn't take pride? You shouldn't call what you do better? Your “problematic ego” will only be bolstered by it's own ignorance? FUCK YEAH, why not? I think people who try to organize their thoughts are better than those who spout off and follow ignorant bullshit indiscriminately. I think people who take the time to think, even if it's to come to “gooey” conclusions like Watts, occupy a place of genuine “higher” value and order than those who are going along for the ride.
The fact is, we don't get to play with all the facts of our existence. We get what our senses and our brains can cobble together. Those are the rules. The underlying reality is practically (until we can use the math to build something cool) irrelevant. Maybe to state that more explicitly, by way of conversation, it's important to understand ISIS are people in contemplating conflict resolution. It's important to understand the consequences of ignorance in demonizing terms. Maybe, right now, asking what the double-slit experiment means for our foreign policy hurts more than helps. This isn't to denounce philosophy or avoid avenues to be inspired, but “in reality,” the underlying fact is still “we don't know.” Drawing up a book attempting to guide practical or “more rational” behavior and how to properly pursue “enlightenment” when you fundamentally don't know something is a properly ignorant religious exercise.
I'm never going to smile and clasp my hands around my Yin-Yang necklace when there's a gun to my head secure in the knowledge that it's my ego's time to balance out the scale and be re-born as another “I” in a baby somewhere. When you bring his examples and state them like that, the whole exercise of being “merely contemplative” feels a lot more like “struggling to justify shitty religious thinking.” I can know I'm not apart from the whole as far as my particles, (oops, calling them “mine”) but that in no way makes me okay with strangling the word “objective” out of my lexicon. As far as anyone who's suffering is concerned, life isn't art for art's sake.
Wednesday, November 25, 2015
[464] Fetch Me A Switch
You’re going to be punished.
When you opt to express an ideal, generally, all that will be available to you is a kind of painful fallout.
Let’s consider race relations. It’s hard enough for a comfy white person to really think or attempt to embody what it means to live under stop and frisk. It’s damn near impossible to think about doing things 3 times as good to register as ½ as good in the mind of the person you’re working for. All you’re looking at is an opportunity to look like you’re mocking perpetual pain and indentured servitude.
I think empathy is so exceedingly hard because, at base, it involves not wearing someone’s shoes, but falling asleep with a kind of fear and despair that you’ve literally never hinted at knowing. I’m a 6’ 2” 220lb white male who’s never once thought a shot was going to enter my windshield upon being pulled over. Most of my life has seen argument and strife trickle out before it ever reaches my ears. Why? Because there’s an implied threat of violence that belays our interactions. Not only can I fuck you up, I can get away with it. Not like I plan to, but it’s a kind of implicit cultural sensibility.
How many men of my position and stature go to sleep with that thought in mind? Hazarding a guess, probably not enough. At the same time, I don’t think this lets other people off the hook for not attempting to empathize with me.
Consider the Mississippi racist. Born and raised a Confederate flag loving died in the wool Klansman who’s been fed every piece of propaganda that exists about the evil negro. What modern person wouldn’t feel absolutely sick in trying to empathize with such a person? Is the obligation to any less real? If anyone in this situation is expected to try and learn or make the best of it, is it not you? They’re the living embodiment of the consequences of arresting your perspective, so why pretend you can impose upon them an obligation to become more accepting or informed?
Empathy isn’t agreement. Understanding isn’t granting concession. I understand the position of a small girl who’s been assaulted who wants to carry a gun. I retain my general dissatisfaction with our levels of gun ownership and know the statistics for fucking yourself up with your own weapon. I’m not telling her she shouldn’t have one, I’m telling all of us to figure out why the fuck she needs to rely on one. The fruitless game of pitting her fear and experience against cold statistics betrays both sides.
I suppose you look terribly unsympathetic. That’s the point of emotional appeals, after all. The other side has to look emboldened and heartless. How could you want to live in fear and endanger your family? How could you not understand the plight that each of us is at the mercy of lunatics with weapons? Where is your basic human decency that doesn’t claim your right to defend yourself?
And of course, always and forever, in the moment it feels like wisdom from on high. Fear the outsider. Lock and load. Prepare for battle.
Still, there’s a large portion of us who are burdened by the lessons from history. Problems arise when you attempt to introduce this history to parties who are otherwise inflamed or “just trying to vent.” There is truly no good in an explanatory or exploratory mindset in this moment. Shut up and go along for the ride.
The war of ideas isn’t fought in terms of what is or isn’t correct. You’re forced to a perception of dispositions. To win hearts and minds is to swallow, not regurgitate, not blend to perfection, and not to shuffle under your plate until dessert. It’s a heart-puncturing admission. I feel nauseated in relaying the fact of the circumstance.
It’s soul-crushing to embody that intentions do not matter. We basically identify ourselves as a relation towards our intentioned “seemingly positive” selves as they play out in the world at large. But you’re rooted in absurdity. Your intention is a figment of the naive imagination. In exercises to “expand your consciousness” or “gain perspective,” what you’re fundamentally doing is growing comfortable with coping mechanisms.
Think about it. A guru wants you to slow down and ask questions. They ask you to recognize. Ultimately, you’re supposed to settle with a sentiment that relies on an idea that there’s always time, and it’s now, or that the best ideas reside at the end of your illusions about what’s currently happening. You’re to examine your relational existence, not defend character flaws and insecurities. As if living ever asked for a justification. As if you deserve to understand your existence in the first place, let alone care to explain why you die.
I feel my disposition growing complacent. Not in the way that I don’t seek to achieve things or build more representative environments of what I consider healthy, informed or fun, but even if I never manage to, I don’t think I’m going to give a shit. Perhaps it’s just the particular nature of the corner’s I’ve been poking around in from Alan Watts to Joseph Campbell, but lately, the constant take-away is to “just be.” It’s all good and bad. The past and future are now. Stop offering yourself up to be punished for your “best intentions,” and roll with all the people wildly swinging at you.
When you opt to express an ideal, generally, all that will be available to you is a kind of painful fallout.
Let’s consider race relations. It’s hard enough for a comfy white person to really think or attempt to embody what it means to live under stop and frisk. It’s damn near impossible to think about doing things 3 times as good to register as ½ as good in the mind of the person you’re working for. All you’re looking at is an opportunity to look like you’re mocking perpetual pain and indentured servitude.
I think empathy is so exceedingly hard because, at base, it involves not wearing someone’s shoes, but falling asleep with a kind of fear and despair that you’ve literally never hinted at knowing. I’m a 6’ 2” 220lb white male who’s never once thought a shot was going to enter my windshield upon being pulled over. Most of my life has seen argument and strife trickle out before it ever reaches my ears. Why? Because there’s an implied threat of violence that belays our interactions. Not only can I fuck you up, I can get away with it. Not like I plan to, but it’s a kind of implicit cultural sensibility.
How many men of my position and stature go to sleep with that thought in mind? Hazarding a guess, probably not enough. At the same time, I don’t think this lets other people off the hook for not attempting to empathize with me.
Consider the Mississippi racist. Born and raised a Confederate flag loving died in the wool Klansman who’s been fed every piece of propaganda that exists about the evil negro. What modern person wouldn’t feel absolutely sick in trying to empathize with such a person? Is the obligation to any less real? If anyone in this situation is expected to try and learn or make the best of it, is it not you? They’re the living embodiment of the consequences of arresting your perspective, so why pretend you can impose upon them an obligation to become more accepting or informed?
Empathy isn’t agreement. Understanding isn’t granting concession. I understand the position of a small girl who’s been assaulted who wants to carry a gun. I retain my general dissatisfaction with our levels of gun ownership and know the statistics for fucking yourself up with your own weapon. I’m not telling her she shouldn’t have one, I’m telling all of us to figure out why the fuck she needs to rely on one. The fruitless game of pitting her fear and experience against cold statistics betrays both sides.
I suppose you look terribly unsympathetic. That’s the point of emotional appeals, after all. The other side has to look emboldened and heartless. How could you want to live in fear and endanger your family? How could you not understand the plight that each of us is at the mercy of lunatics with weapons? Where is your basic human decency that doesn’t claim your right to defend yourself?
And of course, always and forever, in the moment it feels like wisdom from on high. Fear the outsider. Lock and load. Prepare for battle.
Still, there’s a large portion of us who are burdened by the lessons from history. Problems arise when you attempt to introduce this history to parties who are otherwise inflamed or “just trying to vent.” There is truly no good in an explanatory or exploratory mindset in this moment. Shut up and go along for the ride.
The war of ideas isn’t fought in terms of what is or isn’t correct. You’re forced to a perception of dispositions. To win hearts and minds is to swallow, not regurgitate, not blend to perfection, and not to shuffle under your plate until dessert. It’s a heart-puncturing admission. I feel nauseated in relaying the fact of the circumstance.
It’s soul-crushing to embody that intentions do not matter. We basically identify ourselves as a relation towards our intentioned “seemingly positive” selves as they play out in the world at large. But you’re rooted in absurdity. Your intention is a figment of the naive imagination. In exercises to “expand your consciousness” or “gain perspective,” what you’re fundamentally doing is growing comfortable with coping mechanisms.
Think about it. A guru wants you to slow down and ask questions. They ask you to recognize. Ultimately, you’re supposed to settle with a sentiment that relies on an idea that there’s always time, and it’s now, or that the best ideas reside at the end of your illusions about what’s currently happening. You’re to examine your relational existence, not defend character flaws and insecurities. As if living ever asked for a justification. As if you deserve to understand your existence in the first place, let alone care to explain why you die.
I feel my disposition growing complacent. Not in the way that I don’t seek to achieve things or build more representative environments of what I consider healthy, informed or fun, but even if I never manage to, I don’t think I’m going to give a shit. Perhaps it’s just the particular nature of the corner’s I’ve been poking around in from Alan Watts to Joseph Campbell, but lately, the constant take-away is to “just be.” It’s all good and bad. The past and future are now. Stop offering yourself up to be punished for your “best intentions,” and roll with all the people wildly swinging at you.
Sunday, November 22, 2015
[463] On The Level
This is an important blog. (HA!)
Since I was in my mid teens, me and Byron have talked about “the level.”
It’s an often referred to, perhaps hardly defined, but definite line that helps guide our discourse.
I’m going to take a go at it. My prevailing thought is that it’s about a level of awareness. You are explicitly barred from the level the more your opinion and perspective relies on the cliche and predictable. You can’t “default” to anything someone expects you to say.
The most intriguing thing about “the level” is other people who are probably supposed to be there, or are exceedingly close. It’s a dramatic cliche to be the loner “smart” asshole in the room; endlessly judging the people around you, completely convinced your perspective is both the saving grace and bane of all existence. But the level is not to be so easily surmised.
The level is humility and honesty. I put humility first because you can’t begin to be honest without knowing you’re fundamentally rooted in being full of shit.
The level embodies a kind of exploritative mindset. Take an informal conversation I can recall between me and Byron. He can explain that while he’s substitute teaching a group of kids who grew up in the Gary school system (a ghetto’s ghetto for those unfamiliar) the lessons he imparts are less about whatever subject he’s been assigned to, and more about life in general. My comment was “oh, you’re teaching them to be house niggas.” This an easily agreed upon comment from him and laughed at by the bartendender overhearing our conversation.
To be on the level is to understand I’m not being deliberately or otherwise racist. It’s a world apart from our current social justice warrior atmosphere. Surely it helps that he’s black teaching black students, but at the same time, there’s literally no more accurate assessment of what he’s trying to do for them than “train them to be house niggas” than how I spoke to it. There is no room for outrage and butt-hurt guilty white conscious.
This realm of accuracy and getting to the point I feel is struggling to exist. The tension people feel between “black” and “African American.” The pseudo-accepting conception of Islam that seeks to put a wedge between how people identify and what the fuck it is they identify with actually says. But as a a person on the level, you default to understanding the point first, mitigating the “touchy” language second.
A radical obligation to truth is something I don’t think exists anymore. I mean, it does because I’m still alive, but when you draw out situations, you can see why I think the way I do. For example, I use the term “faggot” routinely. I love the term. It’s striking. It’s descriptive. I’m well aware that it’s supposed to be derogatory towards gay people. I can honestly say I’ve never thought of sucking dick or fucking an asshole when I employ the word. (Because, let’s be real, you’re only upset about the guy on guy shit.)
I ask my gay friends what they think of the word. The best answer I’ve gotten is “you have to ask yourself what you want to be as far as a kind of ambassador in your use and conception.” Personally, I’m glad to drag you into a conversation about whether you think I should use it or not. I want you to be uncomfortable or doubtful. What I don’t want is for you to be desperately and needlessly grasping to the idea that I’m an ignorant bigot because I find utility in the word. I don’t want to be lectured by the illiberal matriarch who pretends to have a grasp of where I’m coming from.
Because isn’t that the heart of it? Every smart person. Every closet genius. Every little asshole who thinks they’re the only one who gets it. It’s the heart of all pretension. It’s where the willingness and pride to speak out comes from. It’s where I root my ideas regarding how I criticize your naivety. You have to pretend that you can surmise the position and nuance of every human brain. You have to read the controversy, write your own little diatribe (that’s woefully secret), and glance upon the world like you’ve something to teach.
I don’t care what the language is. You’re a faggot bitch. You’re a dumb bitch nigger. You’re literally worse than any word I could conjure that’s supposed to top nigger, cunt. How do you feel? How personally affronted do the words hit you? If it’s “any amount’ you’re not on the fucking level. You can’t deal. You’re not worth the time and conversation. You’re reacting to the connotation, not taking the message, not testing yourself, not worth a good goddamn.
And you’ll never believe it about yourself. You’ll think your opinion matters. You’ll think you’re going to express yourself in a way that wins hearts and minds. You’re above my pathetic drunk-ish rambling ready to write off the point for the sake of your closeted warm tummy feeling. And you’re wrong, and you’re nothing, and you’ll never reach the level.
I never know what to do when I meet the “other” thoughtful person at the bar. The one who’s there with their lackies or friends that they, more condescendingly than they realize, take for granted are along for the ride. I’m certainly under no illusions there’s plenty of thoughtful people. I found enough philosophers in my teens to find myself cliche and boring. My concern remains with trying to ally myself and create something beyond our loner conceptions. I’m already too bored. I’m already underwhelmed. We’re full of shit, and then what? Your friends are sheep...yawn...the fuck is the next step?
And it’s hard if you grew up with noone to talk to. How do you learn you’re full of shit in cousin-fuck Indiana around your muddin’ and hee-hawing friends? What if you’re the 1 in 10,000 person who moves to Oregon without the hippie plan to be relatively homeless in the mountains because bills and a job aren’t necessarily the devil? Where do you go with your dreams when what’s on offer is subreddits and if you’re lucky a shitty movie adaptation of your favorite author?
The level almost shouldn’t be talked about. It’s like recognizing like. It’s intuitive in a way that shits on the South Park interpretation of SJWs high fiving about their ability to be PC. You don’t learn it. You don’t try. You just are a person who gets it, feels alienated by it, and knows it’s the most vital and integral part of how you conceive of the world. It’s knowing that it’s only as dramatic a statement as the stupid bitch niggas around you make it.
My concern is thinking that if you ain’t there, you’re not getting there. For years we’ve wondered if you can be trained. If you can be enlightened. If you can embody the agency and the choice that takes you literally anywhere. And to this day, I don’t know. I don’t really believe it. The judgment always comes first. The feelings always bleed through. The coddled pedantic song and dance is needed to mitigate the raw emotion from the fucking point.
This is why I want to delete everyone and think I fucked up in trying to make friends. This is why I hold inherent dignity in even the stupidest of shit things I do. The agency, the choice, the ever-present inescapable moment to do anything else, to think anything else, to re-imagine and prompt dramatic and immediate change. That which overrides every opinion and challenges you to shit on everything you’ve ever known. Respecting, owning, challenging, wishing, and provoking that moment in everything you do and with everyone you’re with. Throwing yourself into the winds of potential or chance.
That’s what you don’t do. That’s what you’re afraid of. That’s the only way I can justify anything I do hoping, almost praying, that any fucking moment can prove a worthwhile diversion.
It’s all a joke. It’s all a game. It’s all going to disappear as quickly as it existed. Are you going to die pretending you never existed? Are you right here, or not? Are you waiting? Are you ready? I don’t think so, so keep doing as you do away from my fucking level.
Since I was in my mid teens, me and Byron have talked about “the level.”
It’s an often referred to, perhaps hardly defined, but definite line that helps guide our discourse.
I’m going to take a go at it. My prevailing thought is that it’s about a level of awareness. You are explicitly barred from the level the more your opinion and perspective relies on the cliche and predictable. You can’t “default” to anything someone expects you to say.
The most intriguing thing about “the level” is other people who are probably supposed to be there, or are exceedingly close. It’s a dramatic cliche to be the loner “smart” asshole in the room; endlessly judging the people around you, completely convinced your perspective is both the saving grace and bane of all existence. But the level is not to be so easily surmised.
The level is humility and honesty. I put humility first because you can’t begin to be honest without knowing you’re fundamentally rooted in being full of shit.
The level embodies a kind of exploritative mindset. Take an informal conversation I can recall between me and Byron. He can explain that while he’s substitute teaching a group of kids who grew up in the Gary school system (a ghetto’s ghetto for those unfamiliar) the lessons he imparts are less about whatever subject he’s been assigned to, and more about life in general. My comment was “oh, you’re teaching them to be house niggas.” This an easily agreed upon comment from him and laughed at by the bartendender overhearing our conversation.
To be on the level is to understand I’m not being deliberately or otherwise racist. It’s a world apart from our current social justice warrior atmosphere. Surely it helps that he’s black teaching black students, but at the same time, there’s literally no more accurate assessment of what he’s trying to do for them than “train them to be house niggas” than how I spoke to it. There is no room for outrage and butt-hurt guilty white conscious.
This realm of accuracy and getting to the point I feel is struggling to exist. The tension people feel between “black” and “African American.” The pseudo-accepting conception of Islam that seeks to put a wedge between how people identify and what the fuck it is they identify with actually says. But as a a person on the level, you default to understanding the point first, mitigating the “touchy” language second.
A radical obligation to truth is something I don’t think exists anymore. I mean, it does because I’m still alive, but when you draw out situations, you can see why I think the way I do. For example, I use the term “faggot” routinely. I love the term. It’s striking. It’s descriptive. I’m well aware that it’s supposed to be derogatory towards gay people. I can honestly say I’ve never thought of sucking dick or fucking an asshole when I employ the word. (Because, let’s be real, you’re only upset about the guy on guy shit.)
I ask my gay friends what they think of the word. The best answer I’ve gotten is “you have to ask yourself what you want to be as far as a kind of ambassador in your use and conception.” Personally, I’m glad to drag you into a conversation about whether you think I should use it or not. I want you to be uncomfortable or doubtful. What I don’t want is for you to be desperately and needlessly grasping to the idea that I’m an ignorant bigot because I find utility in the word. I don’t want to be lectured by the illiberal matriarch who pretends to have a grasp of where I’m coming from.
Because isn’t that the heart of it? Every smart person. Every closet genius. Every little asshole who thinks they’re the only one who gets it. It’s the heart of all pretension. It’s where the willingness and pride to speak out comes from. It’s where I root my ideas regarding how I criticize your naivety. You have to pretend that you can surmise the position and nuance of every human brain. You have to read the controversy, write your own little diatribe (that’s woefully secret), and glance upon the world like you’ve something to teach.
I don’t care what the language is. You’re a faggot bitch. You’re a dumb bitch nigger. You’re literally worse than any word I could conjure that’s supposed to top nigger, cunt. How do you feel? How personally affronted do the words hit you? If it’s “any amount’ you’re not on the fucking level. You can’t deal. You’re not worth the time and conversation. You’re reacting to the connotation, not taking the message, not testing yourself, not worth a good goddamn.
And you’ll never believe it about yourself. You’ll think your opinion matters. You’ll think you’re going to express yourself in a way that wins hearts and minds. You’re above my pathetic drunk-ish rambling ready to write off the point for the sake of your closeted warm tummy feeling. And you’re wrong, and you’re nothing, and you’ll never reach the level.
I never know what to do when I meet the “other” thoughtful person at the bar. The one who’s there with their lackies or friends that they, more condescendingly than they realize, take for granted are along for the ride. I’m certainly under no illusions there’s plenty of thoughtful people. I found enough philosophers in my teens to find myself cliche and boring. My concern remains with trying to ally myself and create something beyond our loner conceptions. I’m already too bored. I’m already underwhelmed. We’re full of shit, and then what? Your friends are sheep...yawn...the fuck is the next step?
And it’s hard if you grew up with noone to talk to. How do you learn you’re full of shit in cousin-fuck Indiana around your muddin’ and hee-hawing friends? What if you’re the 1 in 10,000 person who moves to Oregon without the hippie plan to be relatively homeless in the mountains because bills and a job aren’t necessarily the devil? Where do you go with your dreams when what’s on offer is subreddits and if you’re lucky a shitty movie adaptation of your favorite author?
The level almost shouldn’t be talked about. It’s like recognizing like. It’s intuitive in a way that shits on the South Park interpretation of SJWs high fiving about their ability to be PC. You don’t learn it. You don’t try. You just are a person who gets it, feels alienated by it, and knows it’s the most vital and integral part of how you conceive of the world. It’s knowing that it’s only as dramatic a statement as the stupid bitch niggas around you make it.
My concern is thinking that if you ain’t there, you’re not getting there. For years we’ve wondered if you can be trained. If you can be enlightened. If you can embody the agency and the choice that takes you literally anywhere. And to this day, I don’t know. I don’t really believe it. The judgment always comes first. The feelings always bleed through. The coddled pedantic song and dance is needed to mitigate the raw emotion from the fucking point.
This is why I want to delete everyone and think I fucked up in trying to make friends. This is why I hold inherent dignity in even the stupidest of shit things I do. The agency, the choice, the ever-present inescapable moment to do anything else, to think anything else, to re-imagine and prompt dramatic and immediate change. That which overrides every opinion and challenges you to shit on everything you’ve ever known. Respecting, owning, challenging, wishing, and provoking that moment in everything you do and with everyone you’re with. Throwing yourself into the winds of potential or chance.
That’s what you don’t do. That’s what you’re afraid of. That’s the only way I can justify anything I do hoping, almost praying, that any fucking moment can prove a worthwhile diversion.
It’s all a joke. It’s all a game. It’s all going to disappear as quickly as it existed. Are you going to die pretending you never existed? Are you right here, or not? Are you waiting? Are you ready? I don’t think so, so keep doing as you do away from my fucking level.
Wednesday, November 18, 2015
[462] Fake Ass Bitch
It almost goes without saying that someone will approach either me or Hatsam if we go out to the bars and start dancing. A lighthearted “OMG when I saw you guys, I just knew you had to be on something.” For those of you unaware, these young starlets think we have, are on, and can provide drugs. They'll dance and flirt, and after about 7 minutes it'll click that we're just marginally drunk and learned how to dance a little better than the rest of the room.
I don't like fake shit. I can see through your 21 year old ass for days, and not just because you adopted an eating disorder to fit into that top showing off your...I guess it's still technically cleavage? Like, I barely want to even write about it. I feel it's such a cliché to get a little older and comment about the “pretty bitches” and their superficial attitudes and lack of subtlety or tact in endearing themselves towards their first ecstasy experience.
I suppose what bugs me more is that 2 straight dudes can dance for a solid hour and just get weird fly bys and people filming from the upper floor. I think about the fear of “dancing bad” or the little tickle you give yourself in commenting about the “clearly high” guys dancing downstairs. I've watched the social dynamic videos that break down when a solo hippie dancer turns into a large crowd of finally uninhibited concert goers to get down. My concern, if that's even the right word, is why it breaks down the way it does.
I don't think it's a stretch to consider most people fundamentally insecure. Working on the outfit so they can reject the slew of guys who would look too long or hit on. Working on maintaining a group dynamic so they can endear themselves to one girl or guy over time. Fears of being alone, fears of being failures or insecurities about looks and interests abound. How many 20-anythings do you know act like a Chelsea Handler or Kathy Bates? I'm old, I'm getting fat, I'm gonna die, so fuck it! And is it a problem that they don't or can't?
To me it speaks to groupthink. It's not “cool” to be the couple dancers until a cute girl approaches, unbeknownst to the crowd, looking for drugs. They want to dance. They feel the beat. They don't adopt the agency. The join in the flood instead of lead the charge as an individual raindrop. It's the same story every night unless you encounter a particular crowd.
I find myself torn between “keep them idiots” and “everyone needs this basic capacity.” I see the logic of neoliberalism if you're in power. Of course I don't like it not being there in power, but I really don't believe in people. I don't believe the myriad interpretations we have of life coexist as “together” and “proliferating” into the future. This presupposes that as a worthwhile goal, but nonetheless. Like, I’m technically poor as fuck and a million times more wealthy and comfortable than every pre-modern king. I have more wealth than a solid 70 percent of the world. I have more saved for “retirement” than 50 percent of seniors (I'm positive it's close or around that but I don't care to look up the article again.)
I can watch “Master of None” and see Aziz joke about the life his parents had and their struggles compared to his quibbles about setting up an Ipad. I can read about history and tally the body counts for ridiculous wars. I can find any and all reasons to kill myself right now and comfortably state I went out on top of existence as anyone has known it. Extra bells and whistles that million or billionaires fuck with I shit on. Like, fuck your big boat if I'm perpetually sea sick. How do you beat the perspective into society at large that they should be the ones leading the dance floor? How do you decouple value and worth from your slutty outfit and desperately trying to hide his nerdiness behind his parents' money friend?
I'm tired of the endlessly superficial relationship period. I'm sick of the attitude. I'm tired of the looks and lack of expectations as far as what constitutes a friendship or relationship. I'm sick of the ignored texts, lies about meeting up, and general dance around an actual position or respectable thought. Yes, it's hopelessly cliché for the older to criticize the younger, but give me a fucking break, is there anyone with an ounce of honesty and perspective left that can't tell there's such a dramatic shift that's markedly different than in the past? I'm not talking R&B references and memories of phones with cords. It's a character deficiency. It's a kind of slime that oozes over and icks everything up before you even begin to talk about it. It's something loud and annoying to oh-so-old me, a mere 5 or 6 years away from “the youth” who bug the shit out of me.
I don't like fake shit. I can see through your 21 year old ass for days, and not just because you adopted an eating disorder to fit into that top showing off your...I guess it's still technically cleavage? Like, I barely want to even write about it. I feel it's such a cliché to get a little older and comment about the “pretty bitches” and their superficial attitudes and lack of subtlety or tact in endearing themselves towards their first ecstasy experience.
I suppose what bugs me more is that 2 straight dudes can dance for a solid hour and just get weird fly bys and people filming from the upper floor. I think about the fear of “dancing bad” or the little tickle you give yourself in commenting about the “clearly high” guys dancing downstairs. I've watched the social dynamic videos that break down when a solo hippie dancer turns into a large crowd of finally uninhibited concert goers to get down. My concern, if that's even the right word, is why it breaks down the way it does.
I don't think it's a stretch to consider most people fundamentally insecure. Working on the outfit so they can reject the slew of guys who would look too long or hit on. Working on maintaining a group dynamic so they can endear themselves to one girl or guy over time. Fears of being alone, fears of being failures or insecurities about looks and interests abound. How many 20-anythings do you know act like a Chelsea Handler or Kathy Bates? I'm old, I'm getting fat, I'm gonna die, so fuck it! And is it a problem that they don't or can't?
To me it speaks to groupthink. It's not “cool” to be the couple dancers until a cute girl approaches, unbeknownst to the crowd, looking for drugs. They want to dance. They feel the beat. They don't adopt the agency. The join in the flood instead of lead the charge as an individual raindrop. It's the same story every night unless you encounter a particular crowd.
I find myself torn between “keep them idiots” and “everyone needs this basic capacity.” I see the logic of neoliberalism if you're in power. Of course I don't like it not being there in power, but I really don't believe in people. I don't believe the myriad interpretations we have of life coexist as “together” and “proliferating” into the future. This presupposes that as a worthwhile goal, but nonetheless. Like, I’m technically poor as fuck and a million times more wealthy and comfortable than every pre-modern king. I have more wealth than a solid 70 percent of the world. I have more saved for “retirement” than 50 percent of seniors (I'm positive it's close or around that but I don't care to look up the article again.)
I can watch “Master of None” and see Aziz joke about the life his parents had and their struggles compared to his quibbles about setting up an Ipad. I can read about history and tally the body counts for ridiculous wars. I can find any and all reasons to kill myself right now and comfortably state I went out on top of existence as anyone has known it. Extra bells and whistles that million or billionaires fuck with I shit on. Like, fuck your big boat if I'm perpetually sea sick. How do you beat the perspective into society at large that they should be the ones leading the dance floor? How do you decouple value and worth from your slutty outfit and desperately trying to hide his nerdiness behind his parents' money friend?
I'm tired of the endlessly superficial relationship period. I'm sick of the attitude. I'm tired of the looks and lack of expectations as far as what constitutes a friendship or relationship. I'm sick of the ignored texts, lies about meeting up, and general dance around an actual position or respectable thought. Yes, it's hopelessly cliché for the older to criticize the younger, but give me a fucking break, is there anyone with an ounce of honesty and perspective left that can't tell there's such a dramatic shift that's markedly different than in the past? I'm not talking R&B references and memories of phones with cords. It's a character deficiency. It's a kind of slime that oozes over and icks everything up before you even begin to talk about it. It's something loud and annoying to oh-so-old me, a mere 5 or 6 years away from “the youth” who bug the shit out of me.
Wednesday, November 11, 2015
[461] Lessons In "Fuck It"
Every day I feel a little dumber. The sentiment usually goes the other way. “You learn something new everyday!” The idea is that someone should always be curious and striving to learn, even if it’s from something like a word-a-day calendar. The world, an endless mystery with evolving technologies, myriad cultures, and new opportunities every day imbues the power to motivate and help you self-determine. Or so the sentiment at least hints.
So why do I feel dumber? With every new piece of knowledge you have a responsibility to recognize its sides. That doesn’t mean there’s always good with bad or vice versa. It just means that nothing is self-contained and you can run yourself ragged in pursuing the implications and influences. An easy analogy is to think of comic book arcs. You can read a single series that alludes to 6 different series that in turn each point to 6 more, all leaving a small but particular mark for those in the know.
When I learn, I pick up on the thousand ways I’m going to fail. I probably overuse the word “naive.” I think it’s the quintessential attitude, a sort of dispositional lifeblood if you will, underpinning most peoples’ motivations. Because in order to be naive, you only have to feel as if you’ve acknowledged dissent and then carry on. It’s where you get terms like “haters” and “naysayers.” Haters tyin’ to keep you down because they can’t appreciate the higher plain your actions and perspective exists on. People who don’t believe in you because they don’t share, or more likely aren’t capable of, your capacity for a vision for the future.
Essentially, it points to a difference in “acknowledgment” verses “internalizing.” Say you lash out in anger over some political point during a debate. Your opponent can quietly nod and say “I understand” as they move right into their point of view. They don’t feel your anger. You want them to feel your anger, because presumably then they’ll understand just how you got there, but they don’t. Like a practically neglected child, a random pat on the head or reaction to crying doesn’t in turn automatically manifest loving feelings.
I can acknowledge, for example, the many barriers to success in the political realm. From gerrymandering, rampant corruption, general voter ignorance, too many moving parts, historical perspectives lost to time, the cost of “doing business,” the grand timescales movements and revolutions rest on, what’s happened to the “best attempts”...the list could go on for a while. But until recently, maybe the last couple weeks, it hasn’t struck me as a kind of “existential lost cause.” I didn’t really feel it.
Notably, I feel it when I listen to my political heroes. When my leaders paint the world as a dramatic borderline chaos factory with little to no advice on how we get better barring an unforeseen miracle or catastrophe, everything I think to do in spite or to help feels very dumb, small, and pointless. It’s not a nutjob Tea Party member that scares me when they bang the war pots and pans together. I lose hope when Chomsky details perspectives and decisions over years from the people closest to the flames. I’d love to believe in Bernie Sanders, until Nader and Hedges lay out his position in larger contexts that laugh off capacity stadium attendance.
And yet, I don’t necessarily feel the desire to turn into a straight cynic. My understanding of a cynic is someone like Ben Carson. A person who can fluidly and perpetually lie about literally everything defines the kind of absurdity of our times. The fact that he’s a brain surgeon again shows God to have a sense of humor. A cynic would seek the attention for the sake of it. The cynic would seek to capitalize on the bluster and ignorance. I, on the other hand, want to just be left alone.
Who wants to fight for a lost cause? When you can feel so profoundly how screwed up the world around you is, how do you go anywhere but away? “The World” isn’t ready for and doesn’t deserve the kind of luxury and opportunity that’s on offer. We take it for granted. We assume things will work themselves out. We’re too “smart” for our own good.
I throw out the idea of being a kind of “sociopath” so often it’s lost all its luster for me. Another way of relating to how I feel might be characterized as an “overflowing empath.” I started in life feeling too much and just got paired with a crazy person long enough to learn when to shut it off. If I feel too much, and I just feel dumber, maybe the direction “in general” has won out. Maybe in my heart of hearts I know that whatever experiments I run, whatever resources I create, and whomever I meet or work with, will only be drops unable to quell a spectacular sea of fire.
It’s that I don’t believe in us, even a little. I don’t know if that’s being dumb, or self-preservation. I believe in me. I believe I can survive and ride out the times, provided I generally stay away from large cities. But the world from my corner has been shrinking for so long, I think this is a point where I say it’s swallowed me up. Bernie isn’t my savior. My heroes are old and detailed. The momentum is such that fighting all but provokes martyrdom. Revolution? We’re not evolved.
So why do I feel dumber? With every new piece of knowledge you have a responsibility to recognize its sides. That doesn’t mean there’s always good with bad or vice versa. It just means that nothing is self-contained and you can run yourself ragged in pursuing the implications and influences. An easy analogy is to think of comic book arcs. You can read a single series that alludes to 6 different series that in turn each point to 6 more, all leaving a small but particular mark for those in the know.
When I learn, I pick up on the thousand ways I’m going to fail. I probably overuse the word “naive.” I think it’s the quintessential attitude, a sort of dispositional lifeblood if you will, underpinning most peoples’ motivations. Because in order to be naive, you only have to feel as if you’ve acknowledged dissent and then carry on. It’s where you get terms like “haters” and “naysayers.” Haters tyin’ to keep you down because they can’t appreciate the higher plain your actions and perspective exists on. People who don’t believe in you because they don’t share, or more likely aren’t capable of, your capacity for a vision for the future.
Essentially, it points to a difference in “acknowledgment” verses “internalizing.” Say you lash out in anger over some political point during a debate. Your opponent can quietly nod and say “I understand” as they move right into their point of view. They don’t feel your anger. You want them to feel your anger, because presumably then they’ll understand just how you got there, but they don’t. Like a practically neglected child, a random pat on the head or reaction to crying doesn’t in turn automatically manifest loving feelings.
I can acknowledge, for example, the many barriers to success in the political realm. From gerrymandering, rampant corruption, general voter ignorance, too many moving parts, historical perspectives lost to time, the cost of “doing business,” the grand timescales movements and revolutions rest on, what’s happened to the “best attempts”...the list could go on for a while. But until recently, maybe the last couple weeks, it hasn’t struck me as a kind of “existential lost cause.” I didn’t really feel it.
Notably, I feel it when I listen to my political heroes. When my leaders paint the world as a dramatic borderline chaos factory with little to no advice on how we get better barring an unforeseen miracle or catastrophe, everything I think to do in spite or to help feels very dumb, small, and pointless. It’s not a nutjob Tea Party member that scares me when they bang the war pots and pans together. I lose hope when Chomsky details perspectives and decisions over years from the people closest to the flames. I’d love to believe in Bernie Sanders, until Nader and Hedges lay out his position in larger contexts that laugh off capacity stadium attendance.
And yet, I don’t necessarily feel the desire to turn into a straight cynic. My understanding of a cynic is someone like Ben Carson. A person who can fluidly and perpetually lie about literally everything defines the kind of absurdity of our times. The fact that he’s a brain surgeon again shows God to have a sense of humor. A cynic would seek the attention for the sake of it. The cynic would seek to capitalize on the bluster and ignorance. I, on the other hand, want to just be left alone.
Who wants to fight for a lost cause? When you can feel so profoundly how screwed up the world around you is, how do you go anywhere but away? “The World” isn’t ready for and doesn’t deserve the kind of luxury and opportunity that’s on offer. We take it for granted. We assume things will work themselves out. We’re too “smart” for our own good.
I throw out the idea of being a kind of “sociopath” so often it’s lost all its luster for me. Another way of relating to how I feel might be characterized as an “overflowing empath.” I started in life feeling too much and just got paired with a crazy person long enough to learn when to shut it off. If I feel too much, and I just feel dumber, maybe the direction “in general” has won out. Maybe in my heart of hearts I know that whatever experiments I run, whatever resources I create, and whomever I meet or work with, will only be drops unable to quell a spectacular sea of fire.
It’s that I don’t believe in us, even a little. I don’t know if that’s being dumb, or self-preservation. I believe in me. I believe I can survive and ride out the times, provided I generally stay away from large cities. But the world from my corner has been shrinking for so long, I think this is a point where I say it’s swallowed me up. Bernie isn’t my savior. My heroes are old and detailed. The momentum is such that fighting all but provokes martyrdom. Revolution? We’re not evolved.
Tuesday, November 10, 2015
[460] Farewell Fair-Weather
I offer no quarter
Nor spin you a tale
Face read, such a story
Lies pierce the veil.
At once is the moment
It beckons in earnest
Clawing up from dirt
Cooked black in the furnace.
We never could share
Heaping protests abound
Cease to exist
Less eyes are around.
Mannequin style
Tacked purse to your lips
Anomalous death
Faux life, it had slipped.
Sincerest of pleas
For polite conversation
Reckless abandoned
To trite obligation.
A scene too bloody
For my eyes cannot start
To flush out the pang
Of a gut-wrenched heart
Before waves of compassion
Reduce to a crash
Tip toe towards the door
Hinted fire only ash
Know peace, know truth
I ask it of thee
No truth, no peace
No me
Nor spin you a tale
Face read, such a story
Lies pierce the veil.
At once is the moment
It beckons in earnest
Clawing up from dirt
Cooked black in the furnace.
We never could share
Heaping protests abound
Cease to exist
Less eyes are around.
Mannequin style
Tacked purse to your lips
Anomalous death
Faux life, it had slipped.
Sincerest of pleas
For polite conversation
Reckless abandoned
To trite obligation.
A scene too bloody
For my eyes cannot start
To flush out the pang
Of a gut-wrenched heart
Before waves of compassion
Reduce to a crash
Tip toe towards the door
Hinted fire only ash
Know peace, know truth
I ask it of thee
No truth, no peace
No me
Friday, November 6, 2015
[459] Ctrl + X
All things being equal, what if you had
to reduce your friends to a single sentence? Maybe make it harder and
use a single word. Would this exercise help you better understand
them? Or perhaps, would it better clarify your feelings about
them?
The word “judgment” has been on my mind for several weeks. I'm finding myself unable to solidify it's meaning and consequences. It's a word that seems to extend the word “perspective.” People innocently share perspectives, but levy harsh judgments. We alter the connotation to suggest judgment is meant to perhaps shame or correct for something that sounds wrong.
A judge, in theory, is an impartial observer meant to toe a line determined by the collective wisdom of past judgments. They're supposed to follow the laws enacted in order to alleviate situations judged as harmful or unjust. They speak to a kind of idealism. That with enough trial and error, or moral gumption, we'll progress past our human failings and towards something more fair or equitable.
People as well think of judgment when it comes to “lifestyle choices.” Usually felt by the oppressed who yell “don't judge me!” for their actual style or very sense of being if they're in a racial or sexual minority. Even, if not especially, amongst believers who feel the implicit judgment at all times by their fellow churchgoers to live up to the, if not godly, churchly or familial expectations.
Invariably, given that our perspectives are limited and often flawed, our judgments remain fundamentally corrupted. This isn't the same thing as saying they are totally and absolutely wrong, but it does mean that if you don't adopt a kind of scientific manner in your opinion and exercise of judging, you're going to end up in a bad place.
Take the idea of assessing a room. I've been in instances where the person next to me will genuinely say something racist or sexist because “all of them act like that.” It's weird and uncomfortable, but they're none the wiser, to my discomfort, or especially about the target of their comment. So what do we have and what do we do? Reflexively, most want to call him ignorant, get angry, maybe escalate things to violence or throwing him out. Does that help? Maybe the vibe in the moment, but in general, is our understanding of that situation going to be understanding and preempt growth, or reactionary and stagnant?
Or maybe a less inflammatory example. Look at the biggest muscle bound guy in the room. Is he an insecure bro? Are you scared if he gets too drunk something bad is bound to happen? Do you feel insecure assuming he's bound to attract every girl in the room? If you can stop yourself from ceaselessly asking open-ended subjective experience questions, can you begin to speak to a kind of underlying truth of the situation? Are there better places to look than in your insecure mind?
The word “judgment” has been on my mind for several weeks. I'm finding myself unable to solidify it's meaning and consequences. It's a word that seems to extend the word “perspective.” People innocently share perspectives, but levy harsh judgments. We alter the connotation to suggest judgment is meant to perhaps shame or correct for something that sounds wrong.
A judge, in theory, is an impartial observer meant to toe a line determined by the collective wisdom of past judgments. They're supposed to follow the laws enacted in order to alleviate situations judged as harmful or unjust. They speak to a kind of idealism. That with enough trial and error, or moral gumption, we'll progress past our human failings and towards something more fair or equitable.
People as well think of judgment when it comes to “lifestyle choices.” Usually felt by the oppressed who yell “don't judge me!” for their actual style or very sense of being if they're in a racial or sexual minority. Even, if not especially, amongst believers who feel the implicit judgment at all times by their fellow churchgoers to live up to the, if not godly, churchly or familial expectations.
Invariably, given that our perspectives are limited and often flawed, our judgments remain fundamentally corrupted. This isn't the same thing as saying they are totally and absolutely wrong, but it does mean that if you don't adopt a kind of scientific manner in your opinion and exercise of judging, you're going to end up in a bad place.
Take the idea of assessing a room. I've been in instances where the person next to me will genuinely say something racist or sexist because “all of them act like that.” It's weird and uncomfortable, but they're none the wiser, to my discomfort, or especially about the target of their comment. So what do we have and what do we do? Reflexively, most want to call him ignorant, get angry, maybe escalate things to violence or throwing him out. Does that help? Maybe the vibe in the moment, but in general, is our understanding of that situation going to be understanding and preempt growth, or reactionary and stagnant?
Or maybe a less inflammatory example. Look at the biggest muscle bound guy in the room. Is he an insecure bro? Are you scared if he gets too drunk something bad is bound to happen? Do you feel insecure assuming he's bound to attract every girl in the room? If you can stop yourself from ceaselessly asking open-ended subjective experience questions, can you begin to speak to a kind of underlying truth of the situation? Are there better places to look than in your insecure mind?
I
think there are plenty of places to look. I think you can look at
history. I think body language is often forthcoming. I think you can
rely on rules and ideas you've personally cultivated for different
situations. And I think you can dip into the cultural tide to err on
the side of “more accurate assessment” instead of “frank
ignorant judgment.”Now, this can be extremely hard to do. It's almost impossible for a vast array of people I've met. It may sound extremely old hat for my facebook crowd, who will get yet another gold star suggesting more in common than our pretty faces, but it seems a general cultural failing I certainly don't hear discussed.
You have to think of all the things that can get in the way. One, you're own reflexively insecure mind starts the bad feelings and wrong-headed questions the moment you encounter someone new. Two, you may not acknowledge or be aware that there are cultural waves and imprints that suggest certain types and certain behaviors roll together. As Chris Rock puts it, your slutty dress doesn't make you a ho, but you are wearing a ho's uniform. I know my long hair and full beard has prompted plenty of folks to make assumptions and comments about my obvious levels of marijuana consumption, much to their dismay when I explain otherwise. Three, we have past evidence of gut-feelings proving correct and confident friends ready to reinforce our position, filtering out or diminishing conflicting evidence.
I hope it's becoming obvious that for a stranger, you're only going to be able to get so far. Far enough? If you're deciding who to offer a shot or strike up a conversation with, perhaps. In contrast, if you take your friendships, you can play the same kind of game, but take from so much more specific history. I'm fairly confident I call someone an asshole practically every day. I'm also fairly confident that when my friends refer to me as an asshole it's not the same superficial idea I'm expressing to whomever cut me off on the highway. I also don't think it's the singular word they'd settle on when assessing me.
In my own practice of the one sentence or one word exercise I notice something peculiar. The “problem children” reduce to a word or sentence of sympathy. The people on my mind when I raise concerns about the future or being immersed in a series of, hopefully not regretted later, decisions aren't “just an asshole” or “just being stupid.” But in our day to day, in our spatterings of communication or stories about each other, we're forced to shortcut. We innocently forget. We practice judgment, pretending to draw wisdom or value from our mere assessment.
I struggle with ideas about how impressively bad we are at speaking towards what it means to be human. It bugs me to hear “the first black/woman/muslim yada yada” like it's a celebration we've “fixed” something about race, sex, or religion. The fix is to stop referring to race like someone is an alien. To that end, I support and understand the logic and purpose of Black Lives Matter, and it's the blunt instrument for our blunt times, but attempting to pull back, I think they're marching with a nail in their toe. The idea that you would support neoliberal Hilary Clinton because she's a woman is both sexist and politically disingenuous when you compare her to an old-fashioned votes his conscious liberal like Bernie Sanders. Am I happy we tout someone's religious affiliation when I find it the height of an irresponsible and terrifying proposition that someone is speaking to an invisible infallible man in the sky to help them make decisions?
But in attempting to assess and not judge humans, you can nonetheless say there is some measure of progress in Barack Obama being elected, even if his blackness has nothing to do with his ability to govern. You can look at someone's actions and see to the degree in which they conform to sense or caring before you arbitrarily malign their faith. I'm not saying the scale isn't weighted against or my opinion is any less negatively shaped about religion, but an “incidental” faithful person speaks more to the human condition than the crazy ideologue.
As we get older and move farther apart, I think we lose the opportunities to practice how we can think about people in general. None of you who don't live around me are sharing your thoughts or blogs with me lol. But more to the point, I want there to be a bigger line between small and snappy and informed and comparative. I think practice becomes permanent and I don't know how we last into the future permanently ignoring or hiding behind a real conversation about what it is to be human.
Wednesday, November 4, 2015
[458] Get Under It
“Aren't people sick of this yet!?”
I want to make a distinction between “observing” and “self-righteously indignant.” To illustrate, let's take an issue like Black Lives Matter or police violence. You can watch a cop throw a girl around a classroom. You can read each day about someone dying unjustifiably. You can load one fallacious argument on top of another in support of your “side.” But why do we seem incapable of finding the distinction between talking about something honestly, and pinning it to the ground with the weight of our feelings and personal experience?
The observer counts. They count the number of lives lost. They count the years of oppression. They count the number of cops who aren't doing a poor job. The count their own tacit acceptance or points of resistance. They count the oppressive laws on the books. They count the number of friends with personal horror stories. They attempt to account for where people are coming from in a constantly swirling soup of experiences and statistics.
The self-righteously indignant person makes statements like the opening line. As if with enough huffing and puffing and throwing up of their arms we'll all coalesce to their perceived feelings about a ropes end. They aren't engaged. They aren't seeking to empathize. They're “above it all.” Instead of being an out-and-out racist or advocate of violence, these are the people who write articles that frame one-sided issues as two equally opposing and worthwhile stances worthy of debate. These are the people who get thousands of up votes on reddit for their cliches and paltry pandering to white elitism.
I think these people are the worst. A flat racist, for example, is usually fueled by what I'll call “simple” racism. In a sense, they don't know any better. A person who throws up their arms like they're above it all, in my estimation, is fueled by an active denial of things they refuse to speak honestly towards. These are people who invent all the excuses that attempt to equate levels of struggle and pain. These are people who blow the fog of confused and misused words over an issue that's been settled. These are the people who reflexively equate indifference to progress.
You can see it across topics. “Oh they're all corrupt!” when they refer to politicians. This, the person who's incapable of telling the difference between a Warren or Sanders and a Trump or Ryan. “Well I'm not a rapist!” when they downplay the perpetual pressure women feel around men. I heard a guy in the bar the other day say, “come on and smile!” like the bartender owed him one, as she quickly voiced the location of her boyfriend on the other side of the room. My favorite is the kind of bleeding ignorance from something like “teach the controversy!” when it comes to evolution in schools. Can you get a more direct piece of evidence about the tools that fog gives the know-nothings?
It's not enough to be sick. It's barely enough to be aware. You have to work as actively as the culture is working against. That's the black struggle. That's the woman’s struggle. That's, if you were honest and not a lazy fuck, your struggle if you cared to show any respect for your fellow man. And yet habitually we reduce all potential for understanding to these fly-bys of angry shouting matches that resolve to all-but “fuck yous” and silence by the end. We disappear behind empty euphemisms and wash our hands of any responsibility. As many problems as there are for translating language and experience, to go on a morning news show and signal that the conversation is stuck at that level is to work backwards.
You're never going to be as sick as the person who can't escape. You're indignant tone doesn't carry the weight of the person who lives it. You're not better than them because you lucked out and escaped a kind of shadow. Moreover, you're not better than them because you understand your own, maybe negative, experience as somehow “worse” or “equally worth attention” as if to diminish what it is someone else has to say. The best cop in the world is not an argument against historical racial oppression and fear resulting in unnecessary violence. The gentlest giant on the planet won't stop the hair on a girl's neck from rising when he shows up to buy something from her on Craigslist. The culture and the consequences don't disappear because you're either distracted or feel like it doesn't concern you.
I want to make a distinction between “observing” and “self-righteously indignant.” To illustrate, let's take an issue like Black Lives Matter or police violence. You can watch a cop throw a girl around a classroom. You can read each day about someone dying unjustifiably. You can load one fallacious argument on top of another in support of your “side.” But why do we seem incapable of finding the distinction between talking about something honestly, and pinning it to the ground with the weight of our feelings and personal experience?
The observer counts. They count the number of lives lost. They count the years of oppression. They count the number of cops who aren't doing a poor job. The count their own tacit acceptance or points of resistance. They count the oppressive laws on the books. They count the number of friends with personal horror stories. They attempt to account for where people are coming from in a constantly swirling soup of experiences and statistics.
The self-righteously indignant person makes statements like the opening line. As if with enough huffing and puffing and throwing up of their arms we'll all coalesce to their perceived feelings about a ropes end. They aren't engaged. They aren't seeking to empathize. They're “above it all.” Instead of being an out-and-out racist or advocate of violence, these are the people who write articles that frame one-sided issues as two equally opposing and worthwhile stances worthy of debate. These are the people who get thousands of up votes on reddit for their cliches and paltry pandering to white elitism.
I think these people are the worst. A flat racist, for example, is usually fueled by what I'll call “simple” racism. In a sense, they don't know any better. A person who throws up their arms like they're above it all, in my estimation, is fueled by an active denial of things they refuse to speak honestly towards. These are people who invent all the excuses that attempt to equate levels of struggle and pain. These are people who blow the fog of confused and misused words over an issue that's been settled. These are the people who reflexively equate indifference to progress.
You can see it across topics. “Oh they're all corrupt!” when they refer to politicians. This, the person who's incapable of telling the difference between a Warren or Sanders and a Trump or Ryan. “Well I'm not a rapist!” when they downplay the perpetual pressure women feel around men. I heard a guy in the bar the other day say, “come on and smile!” like the bartender owed him one, as she quickly voiced the location of her boyfriend on the other side of the room. My favorite is the kind of bleeding ignorance from something like “teach the controversy!” when it comes to evolution in schools. Can you get a more direct piece of evidence about the tools that fog gives the know-nothings?
It's not enough to be sick. It's barely enough to be aware. You have to work as actively as the culture is working against. That's the black struggle. That's the woman’s struggle. That's, if you were honest and not a lazy fuck, your struggle if you cared to show any respect for your fellow man. And yet habitually we reduce all potential for understanding to these fly-bys of angry shouting matches that resolve to all-but “fuck yous” and silence by the end. We disappear behind empty euphemisms and wash our hands of any responsibility. As many problems as there are for translating language and experience, to go on a morning news show and signal that the conversation is stuck at that level is to work backwards.
You're never going to be as sick as the person who can't escape. You're indignant tone doesn't carry the weight of the person who lives it. You're not better than them because you lucked out and escaped a kind of shadow. Moreover, you're not better than them because you understand your own, maybe negative, experience as somehow “worse” or “equally worth attention” as if to diminish what it is someone else has to say. The best cop in the world is not an argument against historical racial oppression and fear resulting in unnecessary violence. The gentlest giant on the planet won't stop the hair on a girl's neck from rising when he shows up to buy something from her on Craigslist. The culture and the consequences don't disappear because you're either distracted or feel like it doesn't concern you.
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