[545] 3 Strikes You're Out

With the election drawing near, I’ve been thinking a lot about my immune system. Its contradicting name notwithstanding, the perpetual battles it engages to keep me alive is a marvel to behold. Whether processing the air filled with cancerous particles, navigating what accompanies my food, or keeping my spots clotted from picking and popping, it never gets a day off.

It also needs help. I had my shots as a kid so I wouldn’t develop old world diseases. When I shock the shit out of it by drinking too much or otherwise injuring myself, I’m desperate for a pill. My self-imposed guilt of eating poorly has me trying to boost my insides by massive increases in salad and exercising and dialing it back on the crap. 

This wondrous tool which has overcome countless illnesses and trained our human selves in the art of survival will still get overwhelmed. It’ll take on too much crap it can’t get rid of. It’ll miss connections or suffer catastrophic damage or some other competing cell system will find a way to corrupt it. As of yet, we’ve no way to escape this despite the futurists professing otherwise.

Scale it up, and I think of herd immunity. This is my concern for map making. I don’t know if the United States is a breed of animal that knows how to catch fascism and then find the proper medication. I then have to make the global herd appeal. Hitler didn’t take down the world. I wouldn’t expect Hitler 2 to be able to either. But would that kind of presidency act as a booster shot or form of cancer? Both can get you sick, but one in service to training you how to do better. The other taking over and corrupting until nothing we’ve devised can help.

My attitude towards my immune system is a lot like my political perspective. I do things to undermine it. I trust that the general system is still in fair working order. Sometimes I have to remind myself I’m still in my 20s because a minor ache or lesser ability to deal with hangovers can make you think you’re nearing the end by comparison. When I’m sick, I’m not the sickest. But I still have to take care of myself. I have to be mindful of what I allow into my body and into my head which translates into what comes out of my mouth and into my behaviors. You can drink too much, plenty of times. You can’t catch just a little bit of cancer.

I don’t know that we respect the difference. When you truly negotiate it has to do with taking manageable blows. When you’re fueled by ignorance and anger, you delight in destruction. You no longer get to borrow from the well of civilized words to discuss your grievances. People should treat you like dangerous children first, “politically opposed” far away in second, often if at all. Unfortunately and of course, they don’t. It’s because they’re “tolerant” and “polite” and “mature” etcetera. The effect on their health is too slow. Give them a pounding headache and they’ll rush for the pills. Couch an opposing grievance in rhetoric, showmanship, group identity politics, and genuine sympathy for relationships in their own life, they let the headache pound until they can’t see or think straight.

This is pretty old political and psychological news, by the way. A confused and angry population is easy to control. The myriad ways in which the mind is befuddled and tricked is literally built into our tools for survival and representations of the world. Our senses certainly don’t tell the whole story, nor are you capable of being aware of the millions of things that have to continue going right for you to keep acting in the world.

I suppose what bugs me so much is our lack of discernment. Destruction and death and sickness will happen. But why do we choose them so often? And I do mean to distinguish “often” from “at all.” Any glimpse into my inane fights online puts me in the same realms of “idiotic” things to do.

If you want to learn about the world, why pick the name-calling blowhard racist? Why do you trust his opinion more than the people out trying to do the work? Why pick your feelings instead of what actually helps? Anymore, I genuinely don’t understand it. I know we’re moving fast through history. I know we’ve resources our evolutionary history is ill-equipped to deal with. But the hallmark of our place in existence is our ability to adapt. It’s to learn and morph and change our DNA to tackle problems. How long should it really take the herd to learn from 2 different wars that we consider involving the entire world? Even if they didn’t we still figured that’s what was at stake. Just existing at all.

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The Cubs won the World Series yesterday. They did it after doing everything in their power to try and lose it. After the game, people said what an amazing series it was, how it’s one for history, and how people will be talking about it forever. They didn’t talk about whether it was nerves that made the Cubs forget how to infield. They didn’t talk about being down 3-1 and having smaller odds of winning than Hitler 2 becoming President. They emotioned all over the place. They celebrated in the streets. After 108 years, the out-pour, the release and celebration is all that was being offered. Sure, I’m a Cubs fan, and good for them.

I still find sports one of the loudest examples of our terrible discernment. We put so much effort into, even now inventing arbitrary stats and comparisons so long as we can follow them with “and that’s a new world record.” It’s an open secret that the “best” teams are often the ones who fronted the most money to buy up all the best players. It forces us to combine completely unrelated things into a shortcut identity that absolves us of any greater responsibility than to buy a ticket or jersey. I think when it comes to things to think about or spend time on, we genuinely would pick sports over functioning democracy. I find this unacceptable.

And perhaps as an aside, in some utopian vision of the future, I’d love for the worst thing we ever do to each other to be shitting all over a different areas’ team. If we had a hundred thousand more games a year and no war, consider me working to become the best sports fan ever. I’ve watched 3 Cubs games this year and still want to clap at strikeouts and yell at the TV per my culturally ingrained conditioning. It feels good. I get it.

We can’t keep picking sports. We can’t flirt so hard with getting cancer. We can’t keep “respecting” feelings. We can’t play pretend and with false equivalences that think like a child where evil is evil and that’s that so Hilary sucks and Hitler 2 is icky, but I like the slogan! Instead, understand what’s happening for what it is. Don’t be shy. Don’t be polite. You don’t have to be a rabid dog like the examples they are setting, but you are allowed to bite when someone literally threatens your survival. We toy around with the idea of who has the nuclear codes or whether it’s wise to refer to climate change in terms of “beliefs.” It means world war. This shit will kill you. It will kill your kids. It’s already killing others and their kids.

And let me clear, I’m only talking to the regular actual nice liberal intelligent people. This blog isn’t for the person who breaks their TV when their team loses. These words aren’t for people who talk to newscasters in clichés and through their incendiary signs and clothing. It’s for the adults in the room who, even if they’ve been waiting 108 years for their team to win, they still wouldn’t poison the other teams to get there.

I’m not trying to scare you or working to be convincing about the world. I’m relaying and reporting the unyieldingly obvious set of circumstances like a headache you’d take a pill for. And it really does give me a headache! It’s not pain I looked for. It’s not a choice I made like going out to drink. It’s the first stage of someone trying to kill me. Hitler 2 tried to take my thoughts by endlessly reciting his name, so I made sure he’d always be Hitler 2 to me. Greedy children poison water and mono-crop food, so I plan to learn how to garden and filter. We’ve been handed a very complicated and fast-moving economic and social system bolstered by infantile historical perspectives. So I try to share the absolute best materials I’ve read or watched to help cut through the noise and adopt goals that reshape our social and monetary responsibilities to each other.

You need a better grasp on who you really are as a part of the system. I’m a Cubs fan who feels compelled to find out how many of the players are even from Chicago and how much winning really costs. In an ideal world I could find deep connection and respect for my noises and gestures heaved at my symbolic brethren. Maybe the future will allow me to drink every day and remain in peak health! In the meantime, these mean times, I have to moderate. I have to be humble about my limitations. I have to take on even more responsibility for the example I’m setting, because unlike any other point in our history, I can go viral like cancer.

Are we only going to allow ourselves to see the celebration and feel the relief as we bask in the beauty of our collective achievement and identity!?  Or can we point out some peoples’ idea of winning is to scream while they destroy things and set cars on fire. Don’t let them get away with it just because you’re wearing the same human jersey. Your responsibility to the tribe needs to be more than you’ve given them to dictate your emotions and behavior. The stakes are the same every day and every year no matter what story someone tells you about some cursed goat they believe in.