[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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

[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?

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.

[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.

[457] How Now Brown Cow

The moment is now.

With full acceptance and pride, let’s introduce another sophomoric rant. As I honestly can’t tell you the difference between reading what hippies say and what academics postulate, as far as “profound consequences as they pertain to your life,” I want to carry on with the moment in tow. The idea seems so very loud; that you are arrested by the show or artifice of the moment. You’re a collection of moments. Struck by a movie or song. Maybe you’re reliving or reviling an awkward interaction from youth. One way or another, you’re caught.

There is no magic like what grabs your attention. Let’s take from my current moment. A sleepy girlfriend and guest who said they were about to leave, only to be wrapped up in the music and theatricality of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Something that can do that isn’t presented to be “rated.” It’s a particular awareness. It’s a song and dance that precludes an actual song or dance. Can you appreciate a work of art like this under a constant anxiety about the future? Or can it only surprise you in its capacity for arresting your attention?

::A long pause happened before I started again:: The measure of progress appears in the consequences of the moment. Bill Clinton kept a piece of the moon on his desk so when people were arguing he could say “Fellas, that piece of rock has been here for billions of years before us and will be here for plenty after we’re gone, we should be able to work out our differences.” Not a direct quote. Introducing perspective as a measurement of the moment as much as anything else. “I feel this” a step removed from an equally contrived number assigned to make sense of it all.

Measurement. “I estimate that.” “As far as I can tell.” “Something something complicated quantum mechanics when we’re looking at it.”

We’re measurements. We’re a certain weight and height. We’re approximations of amalgamated thought and intention. That is, I am what my parents taught me and what I thought I needed to become in order to get what I wanted. My friend left and my girl fell asleep. The moment is enduringly compelling and at once fleeting.

I think sometimes my whole fight in life is to bring people into the moment. Like, I don’t want to “bring people to local politics.” I want you to feel, right now, that you can do something that makes your vote or intention resonate as worthwhile. Bureaucracy doesn’t speak to that. Flat nonsense “official web pages” don't empower by design. Power has no interest in helping you form how it’s exercised.

The whole exercise of argument and interaction is a statement of the moment. Watch debates, especially the ones hosted by Oxford. So “persuasive” the rhetoric. So “convincing” the style. The moment isn’t even concerned with “truth” at that point. Dangerous, or fun? Is it a game of semantics and style, or pursuant to how genuine reality operates?

It seems we’re habitually removed from statements and exercises that would remind us of our place in the cosmos and amongst ourselves. Then we get to revel in the ideas of what’s “taboo.” We get to project ourselves onto other people and dreamlike scenarios that suggest “better aspirations.” We’re not reinforcing the language of enslavement or subjugation. We’re “well-intentioned individuals” who decide left or right. We’re not a continuum or up for debate. We reinforce a protective “self.”

There’s this sentence that bugs the shit out of me. “Live your truth.” It at once is the best advice you could ever espouse, and yet completely excuses and dismisses the reasons and history leading up to that truth. I can only write, for example. I can’t know if you have or force you to read my previous writing to give you context. I can’t even claim confidently it would be worth it. I write in the moment. I look for the feeling and arguments as they’re to be had when the information hit you as the information is always fleeting. You don’t need 400 previous blogs to get in the moment. I don’t need the selling of your presumed understanding to grasp whether you’re respecting the moment.

It seems to be the reductio ad absurdum of all “thoughtful,” “well-intentioned,” “philosophical,” “genius,” “interesting,” “machine-like” people to swallow you up into the consequences of their reasoning. You’re drowned in the consequences as they see them. You’re opinion on the value of living on Mars is mute. You’re not the asshole with the apparatus to put us there. You have a thousand and one “that’s life” sentiments about the nature of humanity? Here’s my engine for morphing your lazy childlike conceptions. At the end of the day, you’re living or carrying out the fall-out from someone who’s taken the time to learn more about the many variables underlying your life.

I think people try to push back with claims like, “it’s not perfect!” As if it needs to be. What did the eleven(?) people who met the night before Lehman Brothers collapsed have to account for when it came to the millions of opinions about “gangster banksters?” Absolutely nothing. They’re moment reduced you to a pithy hapless statistic. And they bet on you reducing yourselves to the same stature. They won and habitually win.

The idea that “the world is generally good” is something that needs to be fought. Practically. I don’t care if we’re an extension of the universe and good can’t exist without evil or whatever the fuck some hippie wants to claim about balance or waves. I think there’s a giant presumption “things will work themselves out.” It’s bullshit. Things will default to what’s easiest and what will probably fuck you. My evidence? Entropy. Let it play out in a naive and insecure human mind and follow the dominoes.

How can I resurrect “responsibility?” I can only thrust it into the moment. It’s only real “now.” As I type, as I think, and as I decide. The mechanistic view wants to pigeonhole my being as the “natural consequence” of all that came before. I decry “fuck you!” and type or don’t. Share or not. Weigh the potential of bolstering words of others’ encouragement against disappearing behind damning self-assessments of the somehow opaque yet redundant diatribes.

I don’t know how to cope with the idea that everyone is me. What if had 87 blogs to read every day from my friends working through the bullshit on their minds? What if I got a hundred comments under a reddit post of other people who said “I think like this every night!” and we’ve fueled a new engine of thought? What happens when I’m a million miles away from the best compliments I’ve ever received because we all reduce/elevate ourselves into saying what we think needs to be said as ignorantly and un-eloquently as possible?

It’s easy enough to die for nothing. I didn’t choose to be born, so why should it follow that my life should mean anything? It’s on me to recognize and respect the opportunity. It’s up to me to help provide the language for those as stuck as I am. Waiting it out. Pretending solipsistic laziness is isolated genius. Talk, write, and share! Pretend your life ends tomorrow. Not with the relief of your own death. Pretend your friends are gone. Pretend your parents are gone. Pretend parts of your body are amputated and the next step is the complete reimagining of your life as a person who eats with their toes. Life is rushing by. I can read this blog on my last day and it can find you on yours. Who’s here with me?