[444] A Man's Man

On occasion, I get to speak with someone who epitomizes the “a man's man” archetype. And after almost every instance I'm left uncomfortable.

Let me get the good stuff out of the way. This gentleman is extremely hospitable. He will give up his comfy chair, he will offer you the finest high end alcohol from the places he has traveled. He will perpetuate any and all degrees of small talk that you could ask for. As a person, you'd think to yourself “he was raised right.” As I'm concerned this will devolve into a kind of “shit-all-over-him” fest, I want to at least make room for the idea that I don't mean to attack this person or that they're somehow the worst.

It's just that there's character traits that you have to spend a lot of time adjusting yourself to better get along with. Sure, this could be said about anybody, especially me, but then you're talking a difference of awareness and roots. Let's just sure this up with examples.

If you're his guest, you will be offered shots or tastings of the finest whiskey your heart could desire. But, accompanying every tasting is the price of every bottle and the lengths in which the brewers went to extract this particular gem. If you felt even the slightest urge to say it's not for you, that feeling would only be expressed at your peril. Who would turn their nose up at a $100 bottle of hand-picked named top 5 in the world this year by Cigar Aficionado whiskey? An asshole, that's who. So you of course remain polite, sip slowly, and describe it as “exquisite.” Not that it wasn't, but if it tasted like donkey ass, your behavior would still be the same.

I want to stress, from his point of view, he's being a superb host. He really wants you to enjoy yourself and have a good time. And there is absolutely no knocking him for this. It's just, he really wants that awe or appreciation from you.

“A man's man” takes what I would consider an inflated pride in things like exclusiveness or price tags. It's not the errant flippant nature of someone with too much money who casually suggests you get drunk, busts out a bottle where there's 5 in the world left of it, and mixes it with knock-off Coke because “he just never liked the taste of Coke” oblivious to the apparent faux pas. You must know how much it cost, where it came from, and the gold he's bestowed upon you.

But sure, that's a little uncomfortable, but you're getting nice ass liquor out of the deal, so shut up and drink, right?

Yet it goes farther. The issue is pride. Where and how you take pride seeps out. He's a man's man, so he works with his hands. He's got 12 years experience working on houses or different projects. His new job sends him all over the country, maybe eventually the world to consult. He'll make sure to point out he's getting paid for his knowledge (ehem, unlike those of us who get paid for our looks) and his important stature.

So when I casually state that I think I'd like to build my own house, he feels he's got a stake in the game. When I try to downplay where I'm at in my, very humble, very meager, very “still googling” stage of an idea, it will be met with a sort of condescending dismissive “it sounds like you're trying to undersell how big a deal this is” attitude. That is, that's exactly what he said to me, along with, “I'd like to see the kind of house you build with your 'tv knowledge.'”

I claim no expertise or experience. I also tried to speak to the idea of calling people, and learning, and planning. But, that doesn't matter. This is his thing. Don't pretend you're able or even flirt around the edges unless you can spike the conversation with technical terms and time served. My idea, in his view, “sounds like a pipe dream.” No matter people have been building sustainable houses for longer than either of us have been alive and the technology is constantly improving. That's not what's at issue. I fucked up and dared tread into his realm.

Now, I can understand having pride in what you do. But, I've been in positions of personal experience in the company of someone who thought of doing something similar to me, and didn't reflexively try to make them feel small. Say you talk to me about opening a business. I'll ask you questions about property taxes, insurance payments, and marketing. I won't say, “whoa there buddy! This is a BIG DEAL, you haven't really thought this through, let me take this opportunity to shuffle you back to your place.” I got a mini exploration of what banks will and won't lend for, a nice aside for someone who wouldn't take on the project if I had to get a loan; this a point summarily ignored several times.

But the man's man is modeled after guys of old. Their identity is their job. Their value and worth is in understanding something “your pretty little head” doesn't need to be worried about. It's uncomfortable. It's built-in rudeness and condescension.

Do I have the first hand appreciation of 12 years of being involved in some trade or another? Of course not. Can I approach this problem like you approach absolutely anything you haven't done yet? Duh. You plan, you ask questions, you budget, and you learn. What response do I get when I say “hey, maybe if you ever get free I'll hire you to help consult.” “Weeelllll, my times getting pretty valuable now...” Like, even the offer to “bow to the king” is poo pooed away because he's well beyond my price tag...in his mind. Lest we bring up that what I want to do isn't even remotely related to ways in which he's familiar with building.

I disagree with absent-mindedly or matter-of-factly dismissing people. Whether you're the prideful man's man who thinks I'm naturally the asshole for having an idea to work on a massive undertaking, or just the general mindless chatter you hear about “well he can't win” from know-nothings about Bernie Sanders, it's so fluid it's practically nauseating. No one stops to think they're wrong. They never wonder why they're so comfortable shitting on things they know nothing about. They're deaf and blind to every concession because the point or idea raised doesn't register as having any merit to begin with.

And so I leave feeling spiteful. Like I want to put together an immensely comprehensive plan and slap him across the face with my money and just really hope we get our dicks out to fight to the death because that's surely where this has to go.

It's just a simple massive insecurity. And it manifests in an aggressive passive aggression. It tends to overshadow the fine whiskey and comfortable rocking chair. It's the same gentleman who felt compelled to put my lumberjack-esc friend in a headlock to the point of nearly choking him out to prove something about the insignificance of their size difference upon our first ever meeting.

I want more out of someone who, by all accounts, works hard and strives to be something. Maybe to have a little more respect for the world outside of his braggadocio. I shouldn't have to milk out words of encouragement after you've had the chance to learn me good. Of course I have much to learn. Of course I'm bound to fuck things up. But talking with people like him is where some people find every excuse for their dreams to die. I hope we can do better in seeing the difference between wise words of encouragement and caution, and brazen borderline mockery. And I hope I can stop holding it against people, when I know they're only expressing symptoms of much larger issues that maybe have little to do with them personally.

[443] Player 1: Fight!

I struggle with the idea that I should be provoked to write more “academically.” This is silly because I want you to actually attempt to understand where I’m coming from. If you read me, presumably you’re not trying to read a bastardized reinterpretation of some technical article about U.S. relations with Iran I posted this morning.

At the same time, I allot a certain weight to detailed looks into the particulars that I can rarely feel about something I write. I’m intrigued by this inadequate feeling because I feel that most people adopt it when they refuse to write (or share) their “equally worthless” thoughts on some topic. I find this idea considerably troubling. See past desperate pleas for your views as evidence.

As much as it makes me want to break something, I’m provoked by Donald Trump. I think he is a perfect case study in the power of “lazy impressions.” When you distill the man down to his smallest parts, the problem gets easy. Trump is a racist. Trump is an egoist. Trump is immeasurably ignorant. But with all the fire and pretense of a traveling preacher, he gathers a disconcerting number of eyes and ears.

And then what happens? We make it trend. The media goes apeshit. We reinforce the hatred and ignorance of the message with polls and discussion forums. What we so despotically remain devoid of is the capacity to recognize what this does to our brains. We make it normal, the “usual.” We make it okay.

We do it because it’s easy. We do it because we’ve been conditioned to approach every shiny phenomenon as if it’s the first of its kind. We do it because we’re tired. We do it because we’re busy. We adopt every bad habit of the lazy ignorant American way of life because it was/is/and will continue to be prescribed to us as long as we keep swallowing.

So then discussions about “revolution” come up. Then I ferret out articles and videos about changing the environment we’re operating within. I make urgent calls I hear echoed by vastly better researchers about “slowing down,” remembering past eras and examples, or our mental prisons with the finest velvet bars to endlessly stroke.

Further, I’ll get into a few hour long back and forths about how messages do or don’t come across. Me and Jake will break down ideas about “when people are ready” or what constitutes an “attack on their being” when challenged with some world-shattering trigger-warning-esc idea meant to, like, blow their mind, man… And lo all the fear and physically different brain structures that plague the authoritarian conservative mind! A problem so insurmountable; if only we could have gotten to them as children.

Here I think about loneliness of spirit. You forget who you’re playing for. I’ve been more frequently thinking about why or why not I’d bother bringing a kid to the planet as I conceive of it now. Fuck no. I’d tell them what? “Buy extra sunscreen?”

I still can’t persuade my players, you, to talk. Culture is a feedback loop. Passive acceptance begets passive acceptance. In a small way, I sort of expect revolt. If you’re suffering. If you’re tired. If you’re always busy. If I won’t see you for years at a time and you actually think I’d be cool to have around more frequently than that. I want little acts of rebellion. I want you to brag about them. I want you to give your struggling circles license. I want like a paragraph that suggests you think crazy shit is crazy too. I want you to do it for me, but I hope you’d appreciate that it can be good for you too.

I want to even start a fake conversation pretending there’s more to be done in service to things that matter. Just fake it with me. Play along. Stop taking all the articles I’m sharing and you’re not reading so seriously. What concerns you and what would you maybe do to address it if you pretended you had power? I’m asking so little.

[442] Just A Moment

I think it’s all that we’re really after.

I think it’s all that we really have.

I think it’s why we take pictures. I think it’s why we relish what makes us sad.

I just read an amazing article by David Graeber on play and having fun. Jon Stewart signed off from The Daily Show. I’ve been constantly trying to reconstitute “just what it is I do all day” in terms that don’t make me feel lazy, depressed, or genuinely proud of achieving critical levels of “boredom.”

No more do we want to be remembered for a violent outburst or social faux paus than we want to forget what it is that makes us great. You share wedding photos, outdoor excursions, nights out (up to a point), or graduations and new babies. I would argue you’re no more or less those things than the time you threw something through the window while arguing with your spouse, but footage of the latter you don’t voluntarily share to Youtube. I think we rarely discuss if not barely understand these “moments.” In the age of instant outrage and viral videos, we actively work to drown out subtlety. It’s very noisey. It partially speaks to how I became relatively comfortable with doing little else besides watching movies and reading. I’m living in one long and perpetual moment that suggests we should slow down, think a little longer, and find our inner boring.

It still constitutes a fairly bad way of describing my situation though. I don’t consider gaining perspective on topics I find interesting boring. I don’t consider having my time to do with as I please even remotely negatively. It just gets boring not having anyone around willing or capable of discussing or working with things. Literally everyone I know has a job. When they’re done with their job they rarely have the time or inclination to do anything else. A fairly tired and predictable pattern that my generation seems fated to adopt indefinitely.

Continuing to work backward, consider Jon Stewart or comedy in general. What is laughter in terms of timing or tearing up? A momentary reaction. It’s in a moment you find offense, wisdom, surprise, camaraderie, and empathy. People will remember Jon (like he’s dead or something) in his impressions of Bush or most shared videos where he can’t be funny because he’s feeling too angry. What deeper yearning (besides the one to actually fix something) can you have in years of ridiculous policies and people that lead to death and destruction than to try and laugh at it?

I think this is why he insisted on his title being “comedian.” His second to last show describing how things have gotten worse instead of better regardless of his mockery and pointing out of hypocrisy speaks to it best. When all you can really do is laugh, it seems stupid to ask that person to shoulder the responsibility for actually fixing something. That’s not his job. But then, how do we really make sense of his job? How do we make sense of our own?

I certainly don’t have an answer. When I stopped working to do drug studies I managed to get my rent paid almost 5 years in advance a few weeks at a time. Was my spinal headache worth it? Now that it’s on it’s way out, I can say I’ll relate to the stress of being taken advantage of for months at different jobs or years in general in a worse way than I’ll remember the headache. What did I feel was being asked of me before I started this method of obtaining the almighty dollar? To live up to my potential? To garner respect? To be an “adult?” To make enough money to take care of my old and feeble parents in the future?...chuckle chuckle...no...really…

I once praised my overbearing ability to disrespect. I prefer to think in terms of affirmation though. I don’t want to think “my friends do all sorts of stupid shit I don’t like or agree with, why bother trying to impress them?” My version would be closer to “I hope my friends realize the problems of having too much time on your hands pale in comparison to the kinds of stress they relate to me about their lives in general.” It’s not about pissing matches and arbitrary judgments. It’s a genuine desire to hear your voice honestly relating how and why you’re doing something. You can gauge who I am and what I do just scrolling through my facebook page, and definitely through blogs. I can barely see you.

More specifically, I can only see the small tailoring of your existence to facebook pictures or likes to statuses. If 95% of your online existence depicts .05% of how you spend your time, or what’s on your mind, I scream foul. It’s not that I think we should just wallow in some kind of hidden perpetual misery, specifically, but I think we refuse to engage with it in order to protect the status quo. We can’t find the fun anymore because “life.” Or the fun is handed out like doses of cough syrup attempting to deny a bigger cancer.

I would constitute that “cancer” as potentially suffocating because we’ve boiled all the plankton out of the ocean. I would call it the faux outrage we express about quasi-racists, assault, (sexual or otherwise) and dead lions. A “heavy” topic is what you make of it. I’d prefer a light-hearted Daily Show take and proactive sentiment as opposed to “this isn’t the right time,” “I’m just trying to unwind,” “It’s not that serious,” “I’m too busy,” “It’s really not my responsibility or fault,” “I don’t know! What do you expect from me?”

It’s about what you allow into your moments. It’s why I habitually look for the “bad” thing to say about some “perfect” picture. But we don’t think about our lives as simply playing with things. We need legacies and statements and purposes. Do we pursue them with deep appreciation for the words? Do we think anything is being sacrificed in how we pursue them? Is the picture really as simple as the language we’ve been given to describe our lives would suggest? Do our tools, which imply a purpose by design, build something better as opposed to merely more complex or time consuming?

I suppose I prefer to look lazy than be actively arbitrary. I beckon the robot revolution killing every unnecessary job. It was a doctor I reduced to a “fucking bastard” with my, presumably intimate, understanding of his culpability in creating my spinal headache. Reflexively throwing the peaks of human determination and knowledge under the bus for a fairly common outcome seems unfair. I’d rather blame a machine that didn’t sacrifice years of it’s life pursuing a doctorate, and will likely have a precision and technique no human could ever master anyway.

You’re lucky if you can consider it a game. Then the fun, knowledge, and experience of time is an end in and of itself. The more you examine our role-models and the language of “self-determination” and “goal-orientation” you can discover how we shackle our thinking about how it is we can achieve or pursue what we want. I don’t want money. I want to not have to live with my parents and to eat. I don’t even just want time. I want memories. I want a broader definition, but more specific goal, of our “work.” We’re predisposed to saviors, excuses, and rationalizations. We adapt instead of pursue. I don’t want to feel desperate for “someone” to “fix everything” while I ignore or deny why I’m the problem.

I figure, even if you refuse to believe we can play by the same rules, it’s still gonna end. As long as I keep death in my moment, it helps shape my attitude and approach to the game. Time always feels like it’s running out. Certain subjects feel worthy of more stress or worry than others. A deep seeded yearning for real connection and truth takes root. So be it if that truth is “reduced” to a set of probabilities, experimentation, and struggle-bus language, you can still make it fun. You can still try to work on it with people instead of next to them. It’s nothing personal, it’s just a game.

[441] Count Me In

So, lemme put it to you like this.

I think there’s a certain and special dignity to pretentiousness.

I get into moods. They allow me to “lighten up.” I’m not so cynical about talking to people. I make you like me. I beat into the ever-loving ground the idea that just because a book like “How To Make Friends and Influence People” has existed for 60 years, it doesn’t mean enough people have read it.

I was talking about drugs. I was talking about drugs with a person who was IMPOSSIBLY BORING AS FUCK!. But you know how you make a person like that like you? You adopt a dopey face. You allow them to fill in the blanks about why whatever drug you took and the circumstances under which you did so are suspect.

Dude’s got a hot girlfriend he doesn’t appreciate. Dude dressed nice enough. Dude is FUCKING NOTHING.

Guys, girls, if I do nothing else in my ass-spelunking escapades I hope beyond anything that you understand how FUCKING SUPERFICIAL and BULLSHIT AND BORING your “type” is. A runoff of watching every movie or tv show in existence is this capacity for imagining your “character” in the context of some scripted drama. The closer you adhere to the archetype, the more I wish you’d go fuck yourself.

What did I urge in my last blog? It was to slow down. Hatsam told me to not make this angry, so let me breathe and figure out what it is that’s really on my mind.

I think it speaks to fear. I’m legitimately afraid that I will know the people I do and live the life I have and get fucking nowhere. You know why people are cattle? Because nothing about what they desire, how they live, or how they phrase what’s happening in life excites or inspires you. They carry on matter-of-factly like shit is just set or understood and we’re not practically magical beings of inert bullshit capable of reflecting and reconstituting every second.

I hope you can never predict me. Even if I have rules or general “duh” things niggas should follow, I hope at a fundamental level you know I’m always trying to fuck with it.

I don’t really have much else, dude. I’m fucking lonely. I’m fucking bored. I can start a million fires. I can get bitch ass punk niggas endeared to me. But fuck dude. I really do expect more out of you. Adopt your predictable boring bullshit lives when you’re 40 or something. I’m uninspired. I’m unmotivated. And at least half of it has to do with reflecting on my company. Shit, yes, of course I’m just as much to blame, but come the fuck on dude, not like I read shit from you blaming yourselves about your comfort fuck nest you’ve created for your existence.