If you're willing to pay attention, you
can catch your own attention. It's also hard to imagine if you're
habitually taking your awareness and perspective for granted. One
method that I seem to have recently discovered is to just shut up.
When you shut up, and focus on shutting up, then you can retreat and
wait for what provokes you to want to speak. At that point, you may
get more “heartfelt” professions from your inner core than
mindless ramblings.
Pulling away from too much political dialogue has certainly helped me. Every headlines, every interview, every “debate” is reinforcement. You are forced, your perspective locked in, to how those people frame the issue. I wouldn't be able to justify my vote for Jill Stein listening to the mainstream media. It's essentially a vote for Hitler 2! They don't recognize what I'm trying to affirm. They don't see it as the cart being put before the horse. I'm lumped in with indignant “Bernie or bust” types who don't understand math and should be as afraid.
Here we can perform the layers and splitting game. Of course I'm afraid. I was afraid of the millions of people who showed up to vote for Sarah Palin in any capacity. Now that they're back out and stirred up more, I'm even more afraid of their new glorified posturing ignorance. A vote for Hilary Clinton denies those people exist. It's to shove them under the rug. I want to channel their fear and make it fight against what I actually believe. Hell, not even “believe.” What I've gone to great lengths to write about, read about, and argue for that is actually rooted in history or science. I don't “believe” we should care about each other or that there are ways to afford what we want. I didn't pray about it.
I'm generally looking for the surprise outside. I like to think I'm a redundant open book. It's why it's kind of relief to feel motivated to write. There's potential for new analogies or discoveries. I can piece together the handful of lines I thought might have kicked off a new blog a few days or weeks ago that couldn't hold up. It was my birthday 2 days ago, and I had about half the desire to be a selfish rod of destruction as I normally do. It clicked, I don't want anything for my birthday that I didn't want the day before or will want the day after. I don't need distractions or even strictly money. I need a place in society lol. I need to feel invested in more than my future.
To me, at least, “things” just feel like they're going to get worse. Hitler 2 is the new normal. Jobs being consumed by technology will leave people who've wrapped their whole identities into catch-phrases surrounding the nuclear family adrift. We'll keep being angry at each other. We'll still be isolated. Our conversations stunted and afraid. Our prospects appearing at random and still draped by a cloak of exploitation...Uber. But, I'm not sitting here shivering. I don't even have a pain in my stomach. I just look at it and go, “duh.”
I can't stress it enough, I can't repeat it enough. I don't know if you should take anything away from this more than the following idea. I almost never, in fact practically never, hear people express how wrong they are. We are culturally isolated from our capacity to be wrong. Line after line flows in service to arguments and rebuttals and never not once does someone go “you know, I may be wrong.” When it does happen, it's half-assed like, “Oh, I agree Hilary isn't literally the devil” and still not even phrased with the operative word “wrong.” If you've no capacity to respect how wrong you are, let alone how compoundingly wrong those wrongs pile up, the potential truth of your words can't begin.
If you sat in a room next to someone with completely “opposite” views and neither of you said a word, how would you feel? Murderous intent? Suspicious of their motives? Terrified of their color? The words fuck everything up. Blame them first. Blame yourself for using them irresponsibly. Blame a system that teaches you that yelling is better than reading. Figure out who you're mad at, learn that it's yourself and often forces you've yet to properly identify and then stop being mad and start trying.
Pulling away from too much political dialogue has certainly helped me. Every headlines, every interview, every “debate” is reinforcement. You are forced, your perspective locked in, to how those people frame the issue. I wouldn't be able to justify my vote for Jill Stein listening to the mainstream media. It's essentially a vote for Hitler 2! They don't recognize what I'm trying to affirm. They don't see it as the cart being put before the horse. I'm lumped in with indignant “Bernie or bust” types who don't understand math and should be as afraid.
Here we can perform the layers and splitting game. Of course I'm afraid. I was afraid of the millions of people who showed up to vote for Sarah Palin in any capacity. Now that they're back out and stirred up more, I'm even more afraid of their new glorified posturing ignorance. A vote for Hilary Clinton denies those people exist. It's to shove them under the rug. I want to channel their fear and make it fight against what I actually believe. Hell, not even “believe.” What I've gone to great lengths to write about, read about, and argue for that is actually rooted in history or science. I don't “believe” we should care about each other or that there are ways to afford what we want. I didn't pray about it.
I'm generally looking for the surprise outside. I like to think I'm a redundant open book. It's why it's kind of relief to feel motivated to write. There's potential for new analogies or discoveries. I can piece together the handful of lines I thought might have kicked off a new blog a few days or weeks ago that couldn't hold up. It was my birthday 2 days ago, and I had about half the desire to be a selfish rod of destruction as I normally do. It clicked, I don't want anything for my birthday that I didn't want the day before or will want the day after. I don't need distractions or even strictly money. I need a place in society lol. I need to feel invested in more than my future.
To me, at least, “things” just feel like they're going to get worse. Hitler 2 is the new normal. Jobs being consumed by technology will leave people who've wrapped their whole identities into catch-phrases surrounding the nuclear family adrift. We'll keep being angry at each other. We'll still be isolated. Our conversations stunted and afraid. Our prospects appearing at random and still draped by a cloak of exploitation...Uber. But, I'm not sitting here shivering. I don't even have a pain in my stomach. I just look at it and go, “duh.”
I can't stress it enough, I can't repeat it enough. I don't know if you should take anything away from this more than the following idea. I almost never, in fact practically never, hear people express how wrong they are. We are culturally isolated from our capacity to be wrong. Line after line flows in service to arguments and rebuttals and never not once does someone go “you know, I may be wrong.” When it does happen, it's half-assed like, “Oh, I agree Hilary isn't literally the devil” and still not even phrased with the operative word “wrong.” If you've no capacity to respect how wrong you are, let alone how compoundingly wrong those wrongs pile up, the potential truth of your words can't begin.
If you sat in a room next to someone with completely “opposite” views and neither of you said a word, how would you feel? Murderous intent? Suspicious of their motives? Terrified of their color? The words fuck everything up. Blame them first. Blame yourself for using them irresponsibly. Blame a system that teaches you that yelling is better than reading. Figure out who you're mad at, learn that it's yourself and often forces you've yet to properly identify and then stop being mad and start trying.
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