I think this question has become something I'm crushed by. I hope to accidentally stumble over a few lines or paragraphs when I write blogs. You'd be perfectly ridiculous in thinking that these lined up as some kind of measure of progress or will terminating at some bastardized conception of “enlightenment” or some such nonsense. But it's something I'm constantly wondering about my friends and speaks to why I say I hate you when you don't talk.
I've said a number of times that we already live in Utopia. All of the best ideas are here. The problems are the same, and we're mostly just playing a reorganization game. If that's true, and I think it is, what is our next move? For me, it's been to read what's sparked my interest. It's been to talk. It's been to find the humor in the darkest layers of our depravity. I've adopted something of a “reinforcing posture.” Perhaps that's why you might call me “negative.” In my mind, I'm negative like the Germans who engrave the dead family's names in plaques outside of your house and post signs on the street corner citing old anti-Jewish laws. Who wants to think of the Holocaust? The Germans do, every single day.
The problems don't go away. They don't disappear behind the facebook pictures. They aren't fixed by likes. This is why it causes me an undue amount of suffering to see no one I'm claiming to respect sound anything like me in public. You have hundreds, if not thousands of “friends.” I impress upon you, 68, to even give me a page that makes me feel like we have more in common than the worst imposed American selfish and solitary archetypes. My mouth is only good for making me noisy and getting me in trouble. You'll phrase it better. You'll interpret an angle I have no perspective on. Put it out there. Let me share it. Let me read it and incorporate it into my thoughts so they can be a little less like “me” and more like “us.”
That's what I feel like my next step is. To get 68 blogs to read out of my friends instead of 68 news articles about how the world is going to shit. The world's not really going to shit, but my head can only take in so much. How do you really feel about your job? What are you worried about? What do you think about our relationship being, apparently, an opportunity for me to find ways for you to lower your opinion of me once or twice every couple of years? What problems do your jobs face and what do your coworkers talk about? This is where we find life. This is the connection that feels broken in our society.
And I don't even know if anyone agrees with that. I know what I'd have to be doing as a college graduate if I didn't have drug studies. I know debt can't feel good. I know the little things or dreams that seem to be slipping away as I get older. I know whether I read ten books this week or watch 50 movies I'm not going to feel connected to you unless we spark up some semi-bullshit idle chit-chat on facebook. I recently railed about how I was sick of being lied to. I feel like the silence is the lie. When we talk in person, the gap closes, you come out. But here, in our new town square, we can’t find each other even when we're plugged in 24/7?
I've been romanticizing just disappearing. Just going to a country that would pay me to get my master's or doctorate. Just be a modest arbitrary specialist and go get “cultured.” Maybe find a way to relax and discover a way to write in a way that provokes action. Then I realized I'd be glorifying what I can't stand about us. Run away and be self-indulgent. Pretend the problem isn't there. Pretend I don't have something to say, even if it just needs to be reinforced. Act like what I want said exists and that's why I'm putting thousands into trying to better organize it. The world doesn't really need me with a psychology or sociology PH.D. Does it need you doing what you're doing? Are you practicing for the next smartest thing to do or say? Because at least for me, this morning, it was to open my mouth and ask the question.
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