I’m currently thinking about personal responsibility and want to see if I can elaborate on a thought about why we don’t exhibit it.
There appears to be a greater difference between seeing ourselves do or say something than what happens when we abstain. That alone isn’t particularly new and the, “First they came for the [enemy] and I said nothing” line rings over and over in my head.
There’s a phrase that comes up often in relationships, and noteably from the Norwegian teen drama “Skam” I’m watching as well as “Girlboss.” They combined with some thoughts I was having about my last relationship. The line goes, “You hurt me so bad.” Concordant to thinking about my past and watching these shows, I’ve got a friend battling through some abusive games and mental ties to which there’s a whole catalog of phrases and feelings that can slosh between the mediums.
Often enough, the response comes from a lie. The person who was hurt was betrayed. Betrayal is something I’ve incidentally read about, and it’s as real a physiological impact as you could ask for. A broken heart isn’t solely a metaphor. Overwhelmingly that lie is centered around sex or the thinly veiled “hook up” seemingly designed to torture the person who desperately needs to hear every needling detail.
So what if you break something that doesn’t tend to heal correctly? Your nose always points a little crooked. Your knee acts up in cold weather. You’ve got a bit of a hunch from a slipped disk. You’ll never really “get over it” and no one’s going to point fingers and laugh that you walk funny.
At the same time, say you’re physically broken and it causes you a ton of anxiety or stress. Are there ways to approach the pain that doesn’t indict the errant snicker or comment? When might an extreme measure like plastic surgery or joint replacement take effect? Internally it’s a different story. How do you describe the emotional work to better appreciate the look you want and feeling on the inside?
This topic is important to me because I think it’s one more road that brings me to advocating for the “cold, dark truth.” In my estimation, well independent of your love and hopes and dreams about who you and who you care about are supposed to be to each other, there’s an endless sea of tales that describe why you’re doomed. If that’s something of an inevitability, the only proper way to go about that is as honestly as possible.
What a depressing and hopeless sentiment! Except, if you’re doing it right, it’s the exact opposite of that. What makes me forever sad when I think about relationships that failed isn’t that my life was so intertwined I didn’t have some sense of identity. It’s not that I was so overwhelmed with positive emotion that attempting to supplement that would reduce me to a junky. What breaks my heart over and over again is the idea that it wasn’t honest. Because I was.
Here, of course, is the time to defensively dig in. Here’s where both of you must have been honest at some point or you never would have lasted as long or never would have gotten married or had such and such great time when those times were to be had. Emotionality is fickle that way. The realest you’ve ever felt can betray months of little lies that became too heavy.
You can also be confused and blinded by your ideals. This is why I’m so ardent about talking out every minute detail about why I approach friendships, relationships, or whatever else. I remember being the suffering (moreso) idealist and the pure exhilarating torture of trying to force something that didn’t fit. I don’t know precisely when it clicked that I needed a better story, a more comprehensive and appreciable take on my own irrational feelings, that I could acknowledge before placing on the “for consideration” shelf away from the machinery that would drive my decisions.
So, if only to not be like whiny cliched TV, I’m not going to let your sexuality be what triggers me. And that took work. I can call myself slutty until the cows come home, but it will be as weak a qualifier as to how I approach sex as when it’s slung between teenagers. You certainly have the capacity to hurt me, and the only way that goes away is with a proactive approach to honesty.
An important distinction should be made here as well. There’s honesty at the end of your rope and there’s honesty in pursuit of the heart of the truth. “Did you cheat on me!?” The character cries into the face of the boy who lies to her. The next episode it all unravels that she’s left to pick up the pieces. Friends and parents offer hugs and shrugs and tell her she deserves better. Are either of them better off for the discovery having come to light? Did they learn anything, or just do the dance?
I recently said that perspective needs to be forced, and it was a wholly non-elaborted sentiment. Because the shit hitting the fan is certainly a forced perspective. Perhaps forced is the wrong word. You need to build within you a compulsion. You need to feel the head of what you want and who you are pull an Alien and try to burst from your chest. Blogs are provoked by headaches or imitation novelty. But what I’m trying to say rests in my chest. At any point I can throw up my hands and offer a slew of taken-for-granted bullshit about pain or struggle that might be true. If it’s just lips flapping in the wind because I’m feeling selfish and bored, well, you’ve seen that episode before.
The main reason we don’t look or recognize that Alien truth is because IT’S A FUCKING ALIEN! You don’t know if it will burst out and kill you and everything around it. You don’t know what it eats. No one you grew up with and barely any of your friends have experience dealing with aliens. So while it lays not-quite dormant inside of you all the time listening and learning why it’s so dangerous, a feedback loop ensues and you figure out it’s best just not to deal with it at all.
I take a certain and specific amount of pride in when and why I may hurt someone. It wasn’t an accident then. I don’t look at you dumbfounded that you “just don’t get” what you did to deserve it. But what TV portrays, and yes, what I mostly get from the people around me, is this kind of childish blank yet afraid stare. A complete non-registering of any agency or responsibility. A reflexively tit-for-tat or leverage brokering. A rousing skip through a garden as every flower is crushed and giggling can be heard farther and farther into the trees.
So fail. Be dumb. Get hurt and confused and walk funny. But try to do it deliberately. Realize that you can go your entire life never really engaging the honestly horrifying monster in your chest that can certainly reorient your world. It can happen in stages and with proper tools, or it can happen all at once and totally corrupt not just the landscape that was, but anything you try to build in the future.
It’s the consequences from inaction or inattention that really do the damage. Whether you’re leaving the bathroom dirty, scared shitless about about mass scientific illiteracy and lack of representation, or just smiling and nodding when you feel you’ve been punched, it’s the same fear and ego driven narrative you have about yourself to hide behind to blame. That’s how you hurt you and the only time I’ll feel comfortable claiming you hurt me.
Thursday, April 27, 2017
[591] Appliance
Nearly every day I read about how bad things are. I read about “my place” in the social hierarchy and all the things afflicting me and people my age. I read about our addictions and anxiety. I read about how we can’t afford nights out or to have less than multiple jobs. I read about how disorganized and selfish our culture has made us. I get the analogies to third world or developing nations. I’m told to imagine what happens when we bumble our way into trade and actual wars with Russia or North Korea. People are fat, lonely, scared, and have absolutely zero prospects for the future despite their newly launched “personal brand” and Youtube channel combined with extra “grit” and “hustle” to make renting out rooms and driving for Uber sound chic.
I know full well how our expectations have been molded by greedy corporate interests and racist governmental bodies. I know that “at the top” of the cultural narrative regarding white men I’m not supposed to be allowed sympathy despite holding none of the views of the people who’ve caused the problems. I know that when I get all filled with excitement at the prospect of experimenting on some entrepreneurial goal, that alone is a privilege most can’t find the time or money for. I can point to a dozen instances of sheer luck that have allowed me to flirt with attaining the kind of future I see for myself.
I suppose I just find it incredibly intriguing and complex how far and fast my life has diverged with me still finding a way to cling to some version of my initial goals. I always knew there was something about me that could speak to success and excelling. It’s hard to take the behavior from the adults around me growing up as anything less than indicative of what they knew they could expect of me. Whether you’re the fastest, the only one acing the test, or the one gaining the most in-class currency and spending most of your day learning your own thing, certain ideas about yourself get cemented.
I wanted to be “retired” by 30, for example. I thought with my work ethic and budgeting skills, regardless of the job I got out of college, I would live like my uncle (same car for 20 years, small apartment, good job), and stash if not invest most of it. I’d either excel and work within the company, or I’d at least have plenty of money to do all the experiments I thought about without too much fuss. It wasn’t very complicated. It was take my over-achieving attitude and willingness to work longer and harder and just get shit done.
Weather providing, I can build a small house and be “technically” retired by 28. It would look nothing like I planned, but it would count. I’d only have the bills old people pay, save health costs. I’d engage with things at my leisure as a full time job. I’d be as generally isolated or lonely as I took for granted I’d be in the past. It would be a “success” story in spite of all the pitfalls and setbacks reality has laid out.
I don’t know how to feel about it. I can’t sustain “positive” energy for long periods of time, so I feel like I’m looking at my life as if it’s a complicated math equation I have no idea how to approach. Sure, I could parse out each symbol and spend my time rooting the fundamentals, but I don’t really know what it means. It’s not something I could apply to anyone else’s situation in a meaningful way. I’m still just sort of selfishly covering my ass as I’ve always known how and then...what? A certain level of security is appreciated, but my life is still much of a gamble. At least the bet rides mostly on me.
Thursday, April 20, 2017
[590] Ordinary World
This is one where I start with my experiences and hopefully stumble into the words behind the feeling. You shouldn’t have to think too hard.
I understand that we’re products of our environment. I understand that each of us makes choices that we perceive as at least quasi-in line with our understanding of ourselves and place in the world. I find it hard to even simply “like” being around the people I come into contact with in these studies. It’s an extension of my general disregard for the world at large, but here is a special kind of microcosm given the set of health and perspective circumstances it takes to not only have the time but inclination to capitalize for so little effort. But I already feel I’m drifting off track from the feeling.
I sit across the room from a mid to late 40s gentleman who’s called a dozen different casinos about their various poker games and discounts for being a continuous player. The guy in the bed next to him is arguably one of the rudest roommates I’ve encountered if by his every other word “mother fucker” that permeates his phone conversations or his oddly aggressive insistence on slamming the handle to open the door. In our group is a solitary woman who clearly grew up much different than me and sought out sitting next to me during meals to engage in small talk. In these meals I learned her brother is smug and rich and thinks he’s done everything himself, she’s Republican but, “not trying to talk politics so don’t worry” and is studying engineering while having a good job at the adjoining hospital in something to do with grants.
The pleasant southern bell, obnoxiously aggressive East St. Louis-ite, and unapologetic aging gambler pick up a phone and look for a way to make some extra cash…
I understand that we’re products of our environment. I understand that each of us makes choices that we perceive as at least quasi-in line with our understanding of ourselves and place in the world. I find it hard to even simply “like” being around the people I come into contact with in these studies. It’s an extension of my general disregard for the world at large, but here is a special kind of microcosm given the set of health and perspective circumstances it takes to not only have the time but inclination to capitalize for so little effort. But I already feel I’m drifting off track from the feeling.
The title of this blog is “Ordinary World.” Each piece of the study-life puzzle, each player in your night out, and every article or news piece you encounter throughout your day are to some degree “normal” or “ordinary” in the general context of human existence. You’re not going to see the cutest cat video anymore than you’re going to hear secret Holocaust level gas chambers (yet). You can look just about anywhere to justify any kind of behavior and wrap yourself in a feedback loop.
I persistently struggle with trying to invent larger stories about people that makes me feel capable of relating to them. My “best guess” is that the guy across from me mostly gambles and jumps from study to study. He’s single, has a few odd quirks, and is perfectly comfortable scrolling his phone in perpetuity between blood draws and meals. He’s the epitome of a side character in my story. And yet I need to reconcile that with the idea that he’s as full of potential and insight and yada yada manifest destined statement about humanity? I’m to lay at his feet “our collective ignorance” that elected Hitler 2? I’m supposed to maintain an impassioned position about a forward-thinking proactive approach to his money than gambling?
I don’t understand my levels of obligation. Nothing in polite society suggests you should proselytize under the auspice of anything less than blindingly ignorant faith in something. So that’s out. I believe enough in what I’m saying to pursue goals and projects in service to it, but still understand the need for a larger structure in which to plug anyone else in. I feel the growing resolve to turn unbearably selfish and forgo any appreciable justification for anything I do or choose to adopt. It’s happening all at once. I don’t “hate” this guy who’s giggling away at his phone and seeking as earnestly for tables with bet limits as I am advice on leveling a foundation for a sustainable home. I just feel there’s an important and appreciable difference as to why I don’t want to be him than what he may offer as to why he doesn’t want to be me.
It’s the same for “mother-fucker mouth” next to him. I certainly can and do say fuck as appreciably often as the top earners in the swearing department. But I retain a measure of tact and class. Quiet medical establishments don’t need boastful pronouncements of mother-fucker literally every other word. It’s wasted aggression. It’s a lack of awareness. It’s signalling your feeble place in society and makes my mind reel with, “Well of course someone like you found these things.”
I’m always looking for examples of what I’d like to be more like. I want to be the kind of person that you’d never get a racing heart rate for no appreciable reason. I want to surprise myself with the amount of information I learned about something that caught me. I want to be a take on an encyclopedia of experiences that roll into every new creative or business expression. Maybe it’s just the settings I’m confined to or maybe I’ve exhausted the thinkers and professors I admire, but all I see are walking wastes and excuses. I see backstory of how you become confident in your pursuit of a discount hotel and casino, and it has little to do with plunging deep into the world and seeing your place as something of consequence in it.
I forget if it was a quote from a show or just a sentiment I come across often enough, but I believe there’s this sentiment regarding happiness that drives most people. If you look for validation from others you’ll never find it, if you pursue what it is you actually want it can be achieved. I’ve thought about similar sentiments regarding being the hero of your own story in the past. It still feels incomplete, because you’re nothing if not in the interplay. Or if you have an incapacity or unwillingness to understand the basest form of what constitutes your happiness, hand after hand isn’t going to bring it to you. New parts for mother-fucker mouth’s bike aren’t going to put a shine on his disposition.
There’s a lot of truth in the idea that you can’t serve others if you haven’t taken care of yourself. I feel me trying to get off grid or generally off bills and free up my time to explore and think serves both ends. I’m very desperate to surround myself with people I’d like to be more like. I’d love to wake up everyday and see the potential for real change or growth be it in my physical environment or shared mental infrastructure on how to approach life at large. I think maybe we’ve just been starved of our capacity to go about things in a holistic or comprehensive way. All we have is people acting like the relative bad actors bred from their particular circumstances. Perspective needs to be forced.
[589] Tragic Zeroes
In a perfect world this would be perfectly brief given that it's such a simple and explicit point. We'll see if I can contain myself.
I'm explicit. This isn't a secret, and it comes with consequences. I don't so much apologize for being explicit as I say something like, “I understand why so and so wouldn't like me given my explicit sentiment.” I don't feel bad about being explicit. I don't feel bad about alienating people who are put off by it.
You're not explicit. The problem there is that when you need to have the adult attitude that requires you to be, and forgo that responsibility, you without hesitation and with no shame persistently blame me for your failures of character.
What this does is create a whiny little bitch gossipy culture in which I'm the persistent enemy and a genuinely mythical lore about my impact or propensity to be a dragon arises.
Easily understood and anticipated, but given the clumsy sloshing about that this culture endures by your behavior, you leave out all the extra consequences of not thinking things through.
I always have to hear things through the grapevine. Well, it's more of a specific thing, “This person actually hates you.” Now, they probably don't really think or care about me at all, but what are high school behaviors without high school nomenclature? What the character who everyone hates is supposed to do is take a long hard look at themselves and reflect on why the consistent theme is that they're the problem. Unfortunately for them, maybe you, I'm the only one who writes and writes publicly explaining in painstaking detail why you're the real piece of shit.
And it looks like this. I was recently told that a couple of Byron's charges didn't feel like they were part of “our circle,” so to speak. They're his friends, and he and I are friends, and incidentally we know each other, and they can't figure out just what it is me and him are doing together or how they fit. For them, given our relative distance in time spent relating, these sentiments make much more sense to me. These are people that Byron has had to coach and prop up and teach. I'm a brazen dick. I'm not even the dad to Byron's mom, I'm more like the drunk uncle in that scenario. To the degree any of these people can just function as “dudes” and keep Byron happy, in my world, we've got no problems.
But when it comes from this, always under threat, list and conception of “friends” that I've opened up and attempted to relate to here, I start to get a little testy. It was relayed to me that people don't feel like I care about them. This has echoed sentiments I've gotten from friends of friends who say something like, “They don't believe you!” about, I don't know, my level of commitment or something? I truly don't know how to handle the person who doesn't recognize invitations out or free drinks or invitations to live for free on a piece of land because they're likely going to be too broke to ever get a real leg up in the world. If you're confused about whether or not I care about you, I don't. I don't care about the person who would treat me like I've seen my grandma get treated, and my dad get treated, and every tragic hero who tries earnestly and often to do nice things and only builds resentment and scorn.
I don't know how else to conceive of these people as anything but cowardly little bitches. We're talking mostly grown men here as well. My best theory is sincere jealousy. I'm as broke as you, yet every single thing I say I want to be in the future, I'm in the middle of right now. You think sustainability is cool and Hitler 2 is gonna fuck the planet? I'm never going to see you out on my land. You've always wanted to learn the trumpet? I'm never going to see you playing one in the parking lot before work. You're genuinely concerned about fake news or politics? Where's your thousands spent in service to making your ideas about how do it better? Where's your support for genuine effort towards something you thought was “really cool” and “wished someone the best” with? You're the whiners and criers and bullshitters who don't do shit, can only talk shit, and hate the smell of my real shit.
I've picked a slew of fake ass mother fuckers that have been grandfathered in as far as “friends” are concerned. I remember and recognize those who give freely and refrain from ignorantly judging. I know who accepts me for me and who I don't have to persuade to be someone worthy of respect. It's not all of you. Hell, it's probably not even most of you. You think you have shit to say to me that will waft over after months of inside jokes and comments? Fine, have fun in your lives, and when I move far enough along in my big real shit, I'll make sure to forget about you too. If I give off some aura or make some comment that makes you feel like a bitch, it's not because I'm necessarily right or too mean, you're probably just a bitch. Try your whole lives, I'm never going to adopt your pathetic self as my own.
I'm explicit. This isn't a secret, and it comes with consequences. I don't so much apologize for being explicit as I say something like, “I understand why so and so wouldn't like me given my explicit sentiment.” I don't feel bad about being explicit. I don't feel bad about alienating people who are put off by it.
You're not explicit. The problem there is that when you need to have the adult attitude that requires you to be, and forgo that responsibility, you without hesitation and with no shame persistently blame me for your failures of character.
What this does is create a whiny little bitch gossipy culture in which I'm the persistent enemy and a genuinely mythical lore about my impact or propensity to be a dragon arises.
Easily understood and anticipated, but given the clumsy sloshing about that this culture endures by your behavior, you leave out all the extra consequences of not thinking things through.
I always have to hear things through the grapevine. Well, it's more of a specific thing, “This person actually hates you.” Now, they probably don't really think or care about me at all, but what are high school behaviors without high school nomenclature? What the character who everyone hates is supposed to do is take a long hard look at themselves and reflect on why the consistent theme is that they're the problem. Unfortunately for them, maybe you, I'm the only one who writes and writes publicly explaining in painstaking detail why you're the real piece of shit.
And it looks like this. I was recently told that a couple of Byron's charges didn't feel like they were part of “our circle,” so to speak. They're his friends, and he and I are friends, and incidentally we know each other, and they can't figure out just what it is me and him are doing together or how they fit. For them, given our relative distance in time spent relating, these sentiments make much more sense to me. These are people that Byron has had to coach and prop up and teach. I'm a brazen dick. I'm not even the dad to Byron's mom, I'm more like the drunk uncle in that scenario. To the degree any of these people can just function as “dudes” and keep Byron happy, in my world, we've got no problems.
But when it comes from this, always under threat, list and conception of “friends” that I've opened up and attempted to relate to here, I start to get a little testy. It was relayed to me that people don't feel like I care about them. This has echoed sentiments I've gotten from friends of friends who say something like, “They don't believe you!” about, I don't know, my level of commitment or something? I truly don't know how to handle the person who doesn't recognize invitations out or free drinks or invitations to live for free on a piece of land because they're likely going to be too broke to ever get a real leg up in the world. If you're confused about whether or not I care about you, I don't. I don't care about the person who would treat me like I've seen my grandma get treated, and my dad get treated, and every tragic hero who tries earnestly and often to do nice things and only builds resentment and scorn.
I don't know how else to conceive of these people as anything but cowardly little bitches. We're talking mostly grown men here as well. My best theory is sincere jealousy. I'm as broke as you, yet every single thing I say I want to be in the future, I'm in the middle of right now. You think sustainability is cool and Hitler 2 is gonna fuck the planet? I'm never going to see you out on my land. You've always wanted to learn the trumpet? I'm never going to see you playing one in the parking lot before work. You're genuinely concerned about fake news or politics? Where's your thousands spent in service to making your ideas about how do it better? Where's your support for genuine effort towards something you thought was “really cool” and “wished someone the best” with? You're the whiners and criers and bullshitters who don't do shit, can only talk shit, and hate the smell of my real shit.
I've picked a slew of fake ass mother fuckers that have been grandfathered in as far as “friends” are concerned. I remember and recognize those who give freely and refrain from ignorantly judging. I know who accepts me for me and who I don't have to persuade to be someone worthy of respect. It's not all of you. Hell, it's probably not even most of you. You think you have shit to say to me that will waft over after months of inside jokes and comments? Fine, have fun in your lives, and when I move far enough along in my big real shit, I'll make sure to forget about you too. If I give off some aura or make some comment that makes you feel like a bitch, it's not because I'm necessarily right or too mean, you're probably just a bitch. Try your whole lives, I'm never going to adopt your pathetic self as my own.
Tuesday, April 4, 2017
[588] Cloudy With A Chance
Something that remains a source of
perpetual unease or perhaps just confusion for me is the affinity I
have for bombastic depressed hilarious characters who've either
committed suicide or were driven to some level of social isolation or
insanity. Any time I start to think of myself as “smart,” I have
to remind myself I've never been so smart as to have driven myself
properly insane to a level that I admire so dearly or get so much
entertainment from. For all of my bluster and emotional
roller-coasting in blogs, I never demonstrate some genius level
aptitude that has netted me giant sums of secret cash or access
(although, often neither did some of my despotic heroes) and I'm
constantly trying to reevaluate my circumstances in ways that can
possibly speak to perspective more than any appreciable measure of
intelligence.
As I think about why I admire these types, it's often because I hear myself in them. Easy enough assumption, but sometimes when the words aren't just taken from your mouth, but dictated as if someone was reading the book of your life, you're more drawn to something deeper than that particular individual. You've accessed a perspective that is often and persistently lonely or exhausting to most people. The idea that there's another rambling deeply interested and dare I say respectable soul you discover in the hoards who are not of your daily life feels immensely gratifying. Luckily, at least so far, the significant point of diversion I take with these people is the part of any genuine plan or constant desire to kill myself.
Suicide of course is one of those all-encompassing topics. This may go on for 3 or 4 more pages, and at some level you're going to have a brain that zeroes in on that vague discomfort that the word conjures up in you and the rest will get obscured. Often my allusions to suicide are in the abstract; you've killed your fun-loving childish soul from school or your optimistic view of the world, or you've slit your throat and bled out over a meager pile of money and on the directive of someone barely worth looking at let alone listening to. There's an extremely frequent theme from the people I admire who off themselves that has to do with the fall of man or degradation of society. And for all of their bluster, I can't find myself moved to agree that we're any better or worse than we've always been and constantly lie on that razor's edge of civility and society, literally praying, hoping there won't be a disaster.
For me, it doesn't take a particularly agile mind to see, claim, or accept this. Whether you look at instances in your own behavior that have made you scared or ashamed of yourself or you're more a fan of pointing at your favorite atrocity from history, we're not even days let alone generations away from unimaginable horrors committed on people, willingly, for often the most irrational and outright malicious reasons. The daily delusion that it doesn't affect us is what we, rightly depressingly so, qualify as “life.” The further you are from either the head or heart to take it all in, the sharper that edge we're laying on feels. The harder comments from me register. The more likely you'll be to snap or fall, perhaps for the rest of your life, into a kind of forgone depression and conclusion about your fate. The more your decisions will register as “fuck it” and “that's life.”
And you wouldn't be wrong. That's the scariest part I imagine from most people who hate talking to me. It is that bad. Your depression or anxiety are totally justified. We're horrible to each other, to ourselves, and it's absolutely the moment you need someone to step up and be there for you that they'll pull the shittiest move of their entire life and place it at your feet. The irony of the lonely jovial and powerful soul to string together a barrel of assholes only teaching them how to be even bigger assholes when they die was certainly a large enough wrench in my system watching the fallout after my grandma's death. The daily mini-rallies and blinders I have to put on to not verbally berate everyone who not only talks dumb, if at all, but fails to even bother borrowing from my example to contribute anything but the bare minimum. You need what, at times, feels like a perfectly magical disposition to deal with it.
And yet, writing isn't magic. Organizing a cloud of thoughts into 1's and 0's that you can pick to acknowledge or dismiss is a practice well before you might claim any skill. Picking goals that are hard and abstract are decisions, even if compelled by circumstances, decisions nonetheless, that you can pursue earnestly. I legitimately dislike, if not outright hate, “just paying the bills.” It's empty and cold and inhuman. To the degree that you've organized your life like this, I feel sorry for you, as much as I feel the pain of being straddled to the sentiment well beyond my will. It's a powerful ache and an endless sorrow.
Long pause as despite my mind being a flurry of thoughts for the last 5 hours, I hit empty.
I got off my last shift at Kroger. I survived about 2 months maybe 20 or so hours a week (while working 2 other jobs). I listened to I think 7 or 8 books, including 45 hours of It, and the Maps of Meaning Jordan Peterson lectures. I was determined to stock the bottom shelves from a crouched position so as to improve my balance and flexibility. I stole my fair share of drinks and candy. I only fleetingly “wasted” time spending an extra few minutes in the bathroom or walking the aisles instead of putting products on the shelves and pulling them forward. I never complained but to state once how unjust the expectations were when we were understaffed and severely underpaid on maybe my second day after someone opened the conversation first.
What I haven't decided is whether or not I picked up anything “new” besides a greater distaste for fiction. It's a huge point of desperate sadness to think about how sincere and hardworking everyone around me was. For one reason or another (contented?) to do this repetitive job quickly, nightly, and in the case of the night manager, for 31 years. This woman who told me in those 31 years these last 6 months have never been worse or harder on her. When I sit and ruminate about how slow-going my life feels, it's going to be the thought that she's worked this job, that might actually bring me to consider suicide in a real way if I persisted too long, for 3 years longer than I've even been alive that, not so much tempers, but chokes me.
To the degree that you would point to any one thing I might say and call it whiny, entitled, or judgmental, I feel very much driven to the descriptors I employ for an important reason. Merely referring to job situations like Kroger where “hard-workers” “achieve company goals” at the behest of “managers” and within the “constraints” of the budget, bound together by a “union” is to so underplay the reality that you're all but murdering the idea of any possible help they may need or you could offer. These people are exploited, as I was exploited. These people are lied to, as I was lied to. These people are handled by the lazy and inept, blind to their own hate-ridden judgments. Their union is all but a joke, and their State actively attacks their capacity to organize or improve their circumstances. And they have bills and responsibilities and are trapped. They don't need my indignation or scholarly condescension, nor do they deserve it, anymore than the extra dollar an hour for a quarter without incident lazily offered by some brain-trust at the top too inspired by a carrot and mule.
But to attempt to help them is to attempt a system level change. And we feel ill-equipped to attack the system because the system is dying. If you are an even remotely intelligent individual (which, I assume you are, but it has to remain an assumption so far) you can't look at the election and subsequent firestorm of destruction and think we're on a path to anywhere...maybe even survivable. I would have a hard time arguing against you if you took up that suicidal posture and made a thousand page exhaustive list of every dying species, failing piece of infrastructure, decay of culture, and everyday instance of your own life that spoke to a measured and calculated pull of the trigger. I get it. Bon voyage and I'm only a bit jelly.
In my view, it's also the only respectable way to approach the game once you've adopted the perspective. It's not that I don't see any value in “the small things” like taking pride in your, in my words “shitty” job, or in being generally nice and agreeable and knowing that smiles are infectious so you employ them as often as you can. They just have nothing to do with me or my picture of my place in relation to the larger game. You can hate me. You can judge me. You can avoid talking to me and see the scowl and hunched shoulders. You can read the crazy blogs. You can be hurt by my dismissive tone or attitude. You can find me immature and repulsive. You can slowly jog beside me from time to time when your mind reaches that dark place, and this is often the only time you want to talk to me, and you just know I'm the perfect one to talk to about this. Ultimately, my task is to literally create from nothing an approach to information and society that I can plug people into that subverts or renders useless the slavery and inhumanity that characterizes our existence. To the degree you understand or agree with my goals and perspective is going to heavily influence whether or not you think I'm insane or something nicer.
Were my goal less concrete, were I merely trying to show off how much thought I can pack into a paragraph that I hope trumps what you may have hoped to put in a book, I feel I would go properly mad. Were I to couch my disposition unbearably in my need to be positively judged or have someone to invest my emotional baggage into in order to keep it together, I'd never be able to measure in any quantifiable way progress to my goal. If in between illusive bursts of inspiration to talk for as long as it takes to be done writing I was hiding myself away, drinking too much, cutting, or otherwise resolving myself to objectively objectionable behaviors, I'd have a reasonably hard time listening to anything I say.
I'm lucky to be anchored. “I'm not making any progr...well, I haven't even developed the land yet or advertised it fully.” “I'm getting old as fuck still living with roomm...well, I could afford something else, but not if I want to keep progressing with my experiments which mean more to me than clean dishes or a conventional living room.” “How can I find myself working delivery jobs or at Krog...well, I left after 2 months, immediately jumped to a gig that not only pays me double for less than half the work, but allows me to dip my toes back into doing studies.” “All my friends are fucki....they've stuck with you this long and are significantly more dominated by the system you want to destroy than you are. Hatsam showed up every day and night. Schroeder played many free shows. Corbin gave you his car. Mike babysat Dave. Wendy bought you baller hair product. Amber and Brandy check up on you when you sound particularly bad...and the rest of your friends are all shit.” In a very real way I am certainly still alone. I'm always angry and anxious. I'm always more prepared for the things you're going to do and say to fuck me than I'm ever going to find the ability to genuinely trust or rely on you, but I'm not the habitual inmate. I'm not the victim to any degree in which I didn't bend over and spread wide. Inordinately, I feel I'm the one making choices to spite my circumstances, not to perpetuate them.
It's clear to me what a proper and healthy environment and relationship we should have with each other should feel and look like. It's not small talk. It's not penciling in years from now. It's not likes. It's not bullshit congratulations for meager existence masquerading as anything but time spent in service to half measures and making-the-best-ofs. Many times I rail about what I expect out of you or at least what I expect you to be thinking about if you're going to bother to pretend to be friendly with or to me. Maybe you can make demands too. Maybe the initiative shouldn't always come from the infinite well of motivated mood-swung vitriol pocked with furiously flapping points. Maybe I can't achieve my goal without you and you're just watching me slowly burn out as I hop from excuse to excuse bending every pointed finger back until they're all broken mistakenly relying on you to tell me to stop.
I don't know that you'll ever describe the world or feel as bleakly as I do about the future. I also don't believe you even remotely see yourself reveling in the spoils of the success of creating something that violently and swiftly alters your current status. Treading water isn't decision making. Silence isn't safety. Blindness is a choice. Short-term politicking is a hacksaw to your knees. One-off cliches will do nothing to author the kind of book that each of our existences should sound like. Be anchored in something larger that let's you take it all in. Do more math behind the bigger risk. Help me stop writing because I've gotten too busy engaging with a life worth living. Save my suicidal heroes.
As I think about why I admire these types, it's often because I hear myself in them. Easy enough assumption, but sometimes when the words aren't just taken from your mouth, but dictated as if someone was reading the book of your life, you're more drawn to something deeper than that particular individual. You've accessed a perspective that is often and persistently lonely or exhausting to most people. The idea that there's another rambling deeply interested and dare I say respectable soul you discover in the hoards who are not of your daily life feels immensely gratifying. Luckily, at least so far, the significant point of diversion I take with these people is the part of any genuine plan or constant desire to kill myself.
Suicide of course is one of those all-encompassing topics. This may go on for 3 or 4 more pages, and at some level you're going to have a brain that zeroes in on that vague discomfort that the word conjures up in you and the rest will get obscured. Often my allusions to suicide are in the abstract; you've killed your fun-loving childish soul from school or your optimistic view of the world, or you've slit your throat and bled out over a meager pile of money and on the directive of someone barely worth looking at let alone listening to. There's an extremely frequent theme from the people I admire who off themselves that has to do with the fall of man or degradation of society. And for all of their bluster, I can't find myself moved to agree that we're any better or worse than we've always been and constantly lie on that razor's edge of civility and society, literally praying, hoping there won't be a disaster.
For me, it doesn't take a particularly agile mind to see, claim, or accept this. Whether you look at instances in your own behavior that have made you scared or ashamed of yourself or you're more a fan of pointing at your favorite atrocity from history, we're not even days let alone generations away from unimaginable horrors committed on people, willingly, for often the most irrational and outright malicious reasons. The daily delusion that it doesn't affect us is what we, rightly depressingly so, qualify as “life.” The further you are from either the head or heart to take it all in, the sharper that edge we're laying on feels. The harder comments from me register. The more likely you'll be to snap or fall, perhaps for the rest of your life, into a kind of forgone depression and conclusion about your fate. The more your decisions will register as “fuck it” and “that's life.”
And you wouldn't be wrong. That's the scariest part I imagine from most people who hate talking to me. It is that bad. Your depression or anxiety are totally justified. We're horrible to each other, to ourselves, and it's absolutely the moment you need someone to step up and be there for you that they'll pull the shittiest move of their entire life and place it at your feet. The irony of the lonely jovial and powerful soul to string together a barrel of assholes only teaching them how to be even bigger assholes when they die was certainly a large enough wrench in my system watching the fallout after my grandma's death. The daily mini-rallies and blinders I have to put on to not verbally berate everyone who not only talks dumb, if at all, but fails to even bother borrowing from my example to contribute anything but the bare minimum. You need what, at times, feels like a perfectly magical disposition to deal with it.
And yet, writing isn't magic. Organizing a cloud of thoughts into 1's and 0's that you can pick to acknowledge or dismiss is a practice well before you might claim any skill. Picking goals that are hard and abstract are decisions, even if compelled by circumstances, decisions nonetheless, that you can pursue earnestly. I legitimately dislike, if not outright hate, “just paying the bills.” It's empty and cold and inhuman. To the degree that you've organized your life like this, I feel sorry for you, as much as I feel the pain of being straddled to the sentiment well beyond my will. It's a powerful ache and an endless sorrow.
Long pause as despite my mind being a flurry of thoughts for the last 5 hours, I hit empty.
I got off my last shift at Kroger. I survived about 2 months maybe 20 or so hours a week (while working 2 other jobs). I listened to I think 7 or 8 books, including 45 hours of It, and the Maps of Meaning Jordan Peterson lectures. I was determined to stock the bottom shelves from a crouched position so as to improve my balance and flexibility. I stole my fair share of drinks and candy. I only fleetingly “wasted” time spending an extra few minutes in the bathroom or walking the aisles instead of putting products on the shelves and pulling them forward. I never complained but to state once how unjust the expectations were when we were understaffed and severely underpaid on maybe my second day after someone opened the conversation first.
What I haven't decided is whether or not I picked up anything “new” besides a greater distaste for fiction. It's a huge point of desperate sadness to think about how sincere and hardworking everyone around me was. For one reason or another (contented?) to do this repetitive job quickly, nightly, and in the case of the night manager, for 31 years. This woman who told me in those 31 years these last 6 months have never been worse or harder on her. When I sit and ruminate about how slow-going my life feels, it's going to be the thought that she's worked this job, that might actually bring me to consider suicide in a real way if I persisted too long, for 3 years longer than I've even been alive that, not so much tempers, but chokes me.
To the degree that you would point to any one thing I might say and call it whiny, entitled, or judgmental, I feel very much driven to the descriptors I employ for an important reason. Merely referring to job situations like Kroger where “hard-workers” “achieve company goals” at the behest of “managers” and within the “constraints” of the budget, bound together by a “union” is to so underplay the reality that you're all but murdering the idea of any possible help they may need or you could offer. These people are exploited, as I was exploited. These people are lied to, as I was lied to. These people are handled by the lazy and inept, blind to their own hate-ridden judgments. Their union is all but a joke, and their State actively attacks their capacity to organize or improve their circumstances. And they have bills and responsibilities and are trapped. They don't need my indignation or scholarly condescension, nor do they deserve it, anymore than the extra dollar an hour for a quarter without incident lazily offered by some brain-trust at the top too inspired by a carrot and mule.
But to attempt to help them is to attempt a system level change. And we feel ill-equipped to attack the system because the system is dying. If you are an even remotely intelligent individual (which, I assume you are, but it has to remain an assumption so far) you can't look at the election and subsequent firestorm of destruction and think we're on a path to anywhere...maybe even survivable. I would have a hard time arguing against you if you took up that suicidal posture and made a thousand page exhaustive list of every dying species, failing piece of infrastructure, decay of culture, and everyday instance of your own life that spoke to a measured and calculated pull of the trigger. I get it. Bon voyage and I'm only a bit jelly.
In my view, it's also the only respectable way to approach the game once you've adopted the perspective. It's not that I don't see any value in “the small things” like taking pride in your, in my words “shitty” job, or in being generally nice and agreeable and knowing that smiles are infectious so you employ them as often as you can. They just have nothing to do with me or my picture of my place in relation to the larger game. You can hate me. You can judge me. You can avoid talking to me and see the scowl and hunched shoulders. You can read the crazy blogs. You can be hurt by my dismissive tone or attitude. You can find me immature and repulsive. You can slowly jog beside me from time to time when your mind reaches that dark place, and this is often the only time you want to talk to me, and you just know I'm the perfect one to talk to about this. Ultimately, my task is to literally create from nothing an approach to information and society that I can plug people into that subverts or renders useless the slavery and inhumanity that characterizes our existence. To the degree you understand or agree with my goals and perspective is going to heavily influence whether or not you think I'm insane or something nicer.
Were my goal less concrete, were I merely trying to show off how much thought I can pack into a paragraph that I hope trumps what you may have hoped to put in a book, I feel I would go properly mad. Were I to couch my disposition unbearably in my need to be positively judged or have someone to invest my emotional baggage into in order to keep it together, I'd never be able to measure in any quantifiable way progress to my goal. If in between illusive bursts of inspiration to talk for as long as it takes to be done writing I was hiding myself away, drinking too much, cutting, or otherwise resolving myself to objectively objectionable behaviors, I'd have a reasonably hard time listening to anything I say.
I'm lucky to be anchored. “I'm not making any progr...well, I haven't even developed the land yet or advertised it fully.” “I'm getting old as fuck still living with roomm...well, I could afford something else, but not if I want to keep progressing with my experiments which mean more to me than clean dishes or a conventional living room.” “How can I find myself working delivery jobs or at Krog...well, I left after 2 months, immediately jumped to a gig that not only pays me double for less than half the work, but allows me to dip my toes back into doing studies.” “All my friends are fucki....they've stuck with you this long and are significantly more dominated by the system you want to destroy than you are. Hatsam showed up every day and night. Schroeder played many free shows. Corbin gave you his car. Mike babysat Dave. Wendy bought you baller hair product. Amber and Brandy check up on you when you sound particularly bad...and the rest of your friends are all shit.” In a very real way I am certainly still alone. I'm always angry and anxious. I'm always more prepared for the things you're going to do and say to fuck me than I'm ever going to find the ability to genuinely trust or rely on you, but I'm not the habitual inmate. I'm not the victim to any degree in which I didn't bend over and spread wide. Inordinately, I feel I'm the one making choices to spite my circumstances, not to perpetuate them.
It's clear to me what a proper and healthy environment and relationship we should have with each other should feel and look like. It's not small talk. It's not penciling in years from now. It's not likes. It's not bullshit congratulations for meager existence masquerading as anything but time spent in service to half measures and making-the-best-ofs. Many times I rail about what I expect out of you or at least what I expect you to be thinking about if you're going to bother to pretend to be friendly with or to me. Maybe you can make demands too. Maybe the initiative shouldn't always come from the infinite well of motivated mood-swung vitriol pocked with furiously flapping points. Maybe I can't achieve my goal without you and you're just watching me slowly burn out as I hop from excuse to excuse bending every pointed finger back until they're all broken mistakenly relying on you to tell me to stop.
I don't know that you'll ever describe the world or feel as bleakly as I do about the future. I also don't believe you even remotely see yourself reveling in the spoils of the success of creating something that violently and swiftly alters your current status. Treading water isn't decision making. Silence isn't safety. Blindness is a choice. Short-term politicking is a hacksaw to your knees. One-off cliches will do nothing to author the kind of book that each of our existences should sound like. Be anchored in something larger that let's you take it all in. Do more math behind the bigger risk. Help me stop writing because I've gotten too busy engaging with a life worth living. Save my suicidal heroes.
[587] For The Rolodex
Sometimes I sincerely wonder if I committed some terrible sin that defined my past life and now I'm in the throes of needing to work through it all coming back around. I must have been a maliciously deceptive and callous person who didn't simply disregard where you were coming from, but actively preyed upon you. I must have sabotaged your plans and lied through my teeth about who I would be to you. I must have made sure you feel hollow and alone and encouraged the most naive and exuberant over cliffs.
The thought makes me want to temper my inclination to make things personal. I haven't spent 2 years back to back since I was 17 knowing where I was going to live or who with. I can resolve to dip my explanation into the various roommate debacles everyone has had throughout time. I can also get extremely frustrated when, in the middle of lease signing/negotiations I'm told in the middle of the night 20 minutes in between jobs that neither of those signers is totally sure they were going to. Not only this, I'm told “the plan” was always some other living arrangement, figured out years previously that I'm not convinced I was made privy to.
Again, I see any semblance of a foundation rattled. I've been actively trying to record when my disposition wants to sway towards positive and then anticipate when something stupid comes in to take it out. “Yay my computer isn't totally fucked!” Funds to pay for it siphoned from IRS. “Yay find job that is flexible and pays wildly more than others!” Fuck your breaks and tire! “Yay, freedom to explore studies again and in conversations to get paid for simply owning the land!” Look, you thought you might be able to live comfortably, cheaply, and save enough to invest, but maaaaaybe you'll have to find random people to live with or store all of your stuff when people abandon you. I won't see 2 days back to back where something doesn't come in to threaten my plans.
I have to keep self-deluding? myself into thinking my long game is smarter. I guess the world is under the impression I'm crazy about always having roommates or juggling my living situation every year. I love homeowners associations and real estate management people finding ways to bilk and control. My sacrifices play very little for the antsy idealist who sees greener pastures 5 minutes away in a slightly larger bedroom.
I'm going to make a pact with you guys. I'm over it. If, and I guess it's an increasingly big if, we ever hang out or see each other again, I'm just not going to expect anything. Not a couch to sleep on or even covering the next round. I can't seem to negotiate the social world anymore and to be honest don't really want to. Consider me like the Iceman in The Iceman Cometh. Mythologize me, build me up in your heads, and when I do arrive, I'll try to spread money around and keep away from sensitive topics and disappear like a dream. Whatever my presence currently is in the world seems to either attract situations and people who are not conducive to what I want to accomplish, or exacerbates some kind of flaw or blindness on my part I'm having a hell of a time trying to figure out or put words to.
Because I can't understand it, I don't want you to feel like there's some kind of drama or blame to be spread around. And I'm genuinely worried that if I keep holding ideas about what to expect from people, other than their ability to make me want to employ language regarding betrayal and cowardice, I'm going to morph into some kind of petty super villain who keeps repeating the mistakes of his past life. We don't have to text or call. I don't care if you talk anymore. Don't find yourself tired of your normal life and move out to a farm in the middle of nowhere with me to collect yourselves. I'm moving too ignorantly with no grasp on your reasons or plans and should stop pretending I'm good for much of anything but obnoxious commentary or a better than average beer pong partner. I'm here if you need me, and you probably don't, but I think the universe is really trying to reinforce that in the most most real way I'm not only alone, but need to revel and flourish in it. Just refer back to here if you're wondering why we haven't talked in, what might amount to “forever.” It's not you, it's me.
The thought makes me want to temper my inclination to make things personal. I haven't spent 2 years back to back since I was 17 knowing where I was going to live or who with. I can resolve to dip my explanation into the various roommate debacles everyone has had throughout time. I can also get extremely frustrated when, in the middle of lease signing/negotiations I'm told in the middle of the night 20 minutes in between jobs that neither of those signers is totally sure they were going to. Not only this, I'm told “the plan” was always some other living arrangement, figured out years previously that I'm not convinced I was made privy to.
Again, I see any semblance of a foundation rattled. I've been actively trying to record when my disposition wants to sway towards positive and then anticipate when something stupid comes in to take it out. “Yay my computer isn't totally fucked!” Funds to pay for it siphoned from IRS. “Yay find job that is flexible and pays wildly more than others!” Fuck your breaks and tire! “Yay, freedom to explore studies again and in conversations to get paid for simply owning the land!” Look, you thought you might be able to live comfortably, cheaply, and save enough to invest, but maaaaaybe you'll have to find random people to live with or store all of your stuff when people abandon you. I won't see 2 days back to back where something doesn't come in to threaten my plans.
I have to keep self-deluding? myself into thinking my long game is smarter. I guess the world is under the impression I'm crazy about always having roommates or juggling my living situation every year. I love homeowners associations and real estate management people finding ways to bilk and control. My sacrifices play very little for the antsy idealist who sees greener pastures 5 minutes away in a slightly larger bedroom.
I'm going to make a pact with you guys. I'm over it. If, and I guess it's an increasingly big if, we ever hang out or see each other again, I'm just not going to expect anything. Not a couch to sleep on or even covering the next round. I can't seem to negotiate the social world anymore and to be honest don't really want to. Consider me like the Iceman in The Iceman Cometh. Mythologize me, build me up in your heads, and when I do arrive, I'll try to spread money around and keep away from sensitive topics and disappear like a dream. Whatever my presence currently is in the world seems to either attract situations and people who are not conducive to what I want to accomplish, or exacerbates some kind of flaw or blindness on my part I'm having a hell of a time trying to figure out or put words to.
Because I can't understand it, I don't want you to feel like there's some kind of drama or blame to be spread around. And I'm genuinely worried that if I keep holding ideas about what to expect from people, other than their ability to make me want to employ language regarding betrayal and cowardice, I'm going to morph into some kind of petty super villain who keeps repeating the mistakes of his past life. We don't have to text or call. I don't care if you talk anymore. Don't find yourself tired of your normal life and move out to a farm in the middle of nowhere with me to collect yourselves. I'm moving too ignorantly with no grasp on your reasons or plans and should stop pretending I'm good for much of anything but obnoxious commentary or a better than average beer pong partner. I'm here if you need me, and you probably don't, but I think the universe is really trying to reinforce that in the most most real way I'm not only alone, but need to revel and flourish in it. Just refer back to here if you're wondering why we haven't talked in, what might amount to “forever.” It's not you, it's me.
Sunday, April 2, 2017
[586] Cooking With Gas
Every time I kind of dismiss or
downplay my capacity for coherence before I start a blog it feels in
bad taste, but I'm particularly tired and sore and was only
quasi-paying attention to the book I was listening to at work because
the information felt old. It has no less got me thinking and I'd like
to figure what about.
The book was The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt. What it appears to be boiling down to for me is an argument in favor of a kind of moral relativism without using the words and arguments moral relativists would employ. Haidt discusses the details and often lectures groups about the differences in conservative and liberal minds. He builds models for the different “types” of morality each hold and how many “pillars” one must adopt in their messaging if they're going to breakthrough. He tries to be pragmatic and descriptive of the evolutionary history that would shape our cultural attitudes to attune to different group aesthetics and ethics.
For my part, whenever I hear someone attempt to explain the differences between groups, at one level I appreciate looking for hard repeatable tests and proofs to describe their behavior. From how the brain responds to specific trigger words, to the excuses and types of rationalizations people employ to justify their behavior, I like seeing people turn into repeatable cliches if only because it assures me there's a pattern, and that pattern can be turned into something else once you employ different conditions. At the same time, and I feel this is often the tendency when there's a relatively strict adherence to an “objective” measure of human behavior specifically, it seems to compoundingly erode any one individual's responsibility to choose to defy their tendencies.
For Haidt, conservatives respond to 6 different indicators for morality that signify to them that you “get it” and are part of their group. They respond to all the chest beating protectionism of strong-men and vote against their interests because they're trying to protect a kind of “cultural spirit,” be it Evangelical notions of purity or the “sanctity” of life independent of what any one individual might choose to do to celebrate or protect theirs. Americans or indeed Western culture in general are the “w.e.i.r.d.” outliers in having an individualistic ethos while the rest of the world, and indeed our ancestors, seem to recall the relational existence they occupy to their family, community, or the rest of the world.
Liberals by contrast only really jive with 3 of the 6 pillars of morality, so when they give wimpy speeches trying to account for their status as a “worldly” citizen or the “fairness” of access to resources, they're jogging right past the other side who wants people to be held accountable, practically worship the in-group, and to respect the safe and accurate structure of “how things are.”
I simply cannot endorse explanations of humanity that divorce us from our ever-present now. It doesn't matter how reflexively you are disgusted by something you don't understand or a moral premise you'd never engage in. You have absolutely no reason to maintain your levels of disdain to vote in self-destructive ways beyond pure infantile ignorance and selfishness. I think to call these people, as Haidt does, “exhibiting a different kind of morality” is to absolve them of the objective reality of the destructive and harmful nature of their decision mechanism. All sorts of oppressive cultures can exist and carry-on, as Haidt points out, but why should we corrupt information as it is so as to make it palatable for people who fundamentally refuse to think through their feelings?
This seems to be the general pursuit of these descriptions, though I may be getting it wrong. Other ways to state my contention would be that it doesn't matter your opinion of gay people, absolutely nothing about how you feel or your conservative triggers justifies denying them equal rights. If your institution is so feeble that it dies the more accurate and accepting information comes into it, then it needs to die, not be given a defense of “well they're just different from you!”
From a political standpoint, of course you want to know what words resonate and where so you can emotionally provoke people to electing something as dramatically crass and destructive as Hitler 2. Which, at the end of the day, seems to be the point. To the degree that you understand these differences, all you're gaining the knowledge for is to manipulate, and for overwhelmingly malicious ends. I liken it to why I got so bored playing games with people. Other than the general amoral nature of it, the goals were selfish and empty and took way more effort than was ever worth the payout.
From that manipulation angle, explanations like Haidt's seem in opposition to why I even behave or speak the way I do. I don't want to hold the hand of the conservatives. I want to force compliance and get relatively short-term new gene expressions for them to cope, as they've conditioned us to generally behave as ignorant cattle. I think it's considerably harder to train a herd of individualistic liberal cats to fight a battle on a million fronts with the language and perspective Haidt argues for. The concern is for the pragmatic implications, right? Why learn these things if not to help us better relate and heal divides? Except it's a war with our implicit selves. Liberals, to my mind, have overcome conservative tendencies, for good reason, and to drag your own mind back to the swamp of gut-feelings and ignorant judgment seems counter-productive.
If liberals moved from the hubs on the coasts and started overwhelming the scattered thousands here and there that add up more electorally, you'd “bridge the divide” in slowly breeding the isolationist cousin-fuckery out of the species. Why in the name of everything reasonable would you want to edge in a lesser cultural morality or norm just because it functions or uses words like “spiritual” to describe it's dimensions? Account for differences, but don't dance around the edges of arguing for the caste system because you had an enlightening and enjoyable few months in India.
Changing behavior can be immensely hard, particularly with yourself. The knowledge on which you rest your actions can be waded into like a cultural pool everyone is pissing in, or fiercely attacked by your inquisitive and honest mind attempting to hold yourself accountable. The moment you accept that you have a choice and that your feelings alone should not dictate your moral attitude or impression of the world is the moment you have to drop the excuses about how you were raised or born as. That's all things being equal barring some brain issue, provided you don't regard conservatives as having one.
If there's any takeaway you don't need prolonged defenses or explorations of about humanity, it's that we are habitually and perpetually wrong. To think our nascent assent of scientific exploration, let alone almost pop-psychology of most social psychology, can more accurately account for the differences in people isn't necessarily unwise as much as it is distracting and naive. If we got to a point where we did pathologize conservatives and gave them an entire chapter in the DSM, it will say nothing about the burden of personal responsibility or the capacity for a reasonably unmotivated Google search. We should be exhibiting legislative power and shame on these people, not pretending they occupy a “different side” alien from what we can understand or perceive. Understand them, then work them into your better informed pattern and habit formation. Don't desperately and brazenly appeal to their vanity in some faux show of “respect” for their “differences.” Have the intelligence and balls to call them wrong. They're certainly not doing that for you lazy entitled fag enabling baby-killers.
The book was The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt. What it appears to be boiling down to for me is an argument in favor of a kind of moral relativism without using the words and arguments moral relativists would employ. Haidt discusses the details and often lectures groups about the differences in conservative and liberal minds. He builds models for the different “types” of morality each hold and how many “pillars” one must adopt in their messaging if they're going to breakthrough. He tries to be pragmatic and descriptive of the evolutionary history that would shape our cultural attitudes to attune to different group aesthetics and ethics.
For my part, whenever I hear someone attempt to explain the differences between groups, at one level I appreciate looking for hard repeatable tests and proofs to describe their behavior. From how the brain responds to specific trigger words, to the excuses and types of rationalizations people employ to justify their behavior, I like seeing people turn into repeatable cliches if only because it assures me there's a pattern, and that pattern can be turned into something else once you employ different conditions. At the same time, and I feel this is often the tendency when there's a relatively strict adherence to an “objective” measure of human behavior specifically, it seems to compoundingly erode any one individual's responsibility to choose to defy their tendencies.
For Haidt, conservatives respond to 6 different indicators for morality that signify to them that you “get it” and are part of their group. They respond to all the chest beating protectionism of strong-men and vote against their interests because they're trying to protect a kind of “cultural spirit,” be it Evangelical notions of purity or the “sanctity” of life independent of what any one individual might choose to do to celebrate or protect theirs. Americans or indeed Western culture in general are the “w.e.i.r.d.” outliers in having an individualistic ethos while the rest of the world, and indeed our ancestors, seem to recall the relational existence they occupy to their family, community, or the rest of the world.
Liberals by contrast only really jive with 3 of the 6 pillars of morality, so when they give wimpy speeches trying to account for their status as a “worldly” citizen or the “fairness” of access to resources, they're jogging right past the other side who wants people to be held accountable, practically worship the in-group, and to respect the safe and accurate structure of “how things are.”
I simply cannot endorse explanations of humanity that divorce us from our ever-present now. It doesn't matter how reflexively you are disgusted by something you don't understand or a moral premise you'd never engage in. You have absolutely no reason to maintain your levels of disdain to vote in self-destructive ways beyond pure infantile ignorance and selfishness. I think to call these people, as Haidt does, “exhibiting a different kind of morality” is to absolve them of the objective reality of the destructive and harmful nature of their decision mechanism. All sorts of oppressive cultures can exist and carry-on, as Haidt points out, but why should we corrupt information as it is so as to make it palatable for people who fundamentally refuse to think through their feelings?
This seems to be the general pursuit of these descriptions, though I may be getting it wrong. Other ways to state my contention would be that it doesn't matter your opinion of gay people, absolutely nothing about how you feel or your conservative triggers justifies denying them equal rights. If your institution is so feeble that it dies the more accurate and accepting information comes into it, then it needs to die, not be given a defense of “well they're just different from you!”
From a political standpoint, of course you want to know what words resonate and where so you can emotionally provoke people to electing something as dramatically crass and destructive as Hitler 2. Which, at the end of the day, seems to be the point. To the degree that you understand these differences, all you're gaining the knowledge for is to manipulate, and for overwhelmingly malicious ends. I liken it to why I got so bored playing games with people. Other than the general amoral nature of it, the goals were selfish and empty and took way more effort than was ever worth the payout.
From that manipulation angle, explanations like Haidt's seem in opposition to why I even behave or speak the way I do. I don't want to hold the hand of the conservatives. I want to force compliance and get relatively short-term new gene expressions for them to cope, as they've conditioned us to generally behave as ignorant cattle. I think it's considerably harder to train a herd of individualistic liberal cats to fight a battle on a million fronts with the language and perspective Haidt argues for. The concern is for the pragmatic implications, right? Why learn these things if not to help us better relate and heal divides? Except it's a war with our implicit selves. Liberals, to my mind, have overcome conservative tendencies, for good reason, and to drag your own mind back to the swamp of gut-feelings and ignorant judgment seems counter-productive.
If liberals moved from the hubs on the coasts and started overwhelming the scattered thousands here and there that add up more electorally, you'd “bridge the divide” in slowly breeding the isolationist cousin-fuckery out of the species. Why in the name of everything reasonable would you want to edge in a lesser cultural morality or norm just because it functions or uses words like “spiritual” to describe it's dimensions? Account for differences, but don't dance around the edges of arguing for the caste system because you had an enlightening and enjoyable few months in India.
Changing behavior can be immensely hard, particularly with yourself. The knowledge on which you rest your actions can be waded into like a cultural pool everyone is pissing in, or fiercely attacked by your inquisitive and honest mind attempting to hold yourself accountable. The moment you accept that you have a choice and that your feelings alone should not dictate your moral attitude or impression of the world is the moment you have to drop the excuses about how you were raised or born as. That's all things being equal barring some brain issue, provided you don't regard conservatives as having one.
If there's any takeaway you don't need prolonged defenses or explorations of about humanity, it's that we are habitually and perpetually wrong. To think our nascent assent of scientific exploration, let alone almost pop-psychology of most social psychology, can more accurately account for the differences in people isn't necessarily unwise as much as it is distracting and naive. If we got to a point where we did pathologize conservatives and gave them an entire chapter in the DSM, it will say nothing about the burden of personal responsibility or the capacity for a reasonably unmotivated Google search. We should be exhibiting legislative power and shame on these people, not pretending they occupy a “different side” alien from what we can understand or perceive. Understand them, then work them into your better informed pattern and habit formation. Don't desperately and brazenly appeal to their vanity in some faux show of “respect” for their “differences.” Have the intelligence and balls to call them wrong. They're certainly not doing that for you lazy entitled fag enabling baby-killers.
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