The first thing I do when I wake up is check my phone. No, it’s not filled with invites to lunch or that “things” started to make sense. I scroll through my dozens of news sites to see how the world is falling apart. Millions of refugees struggling to find a home, basic services or health care, and then the story of a teenager killed for being Muslim tops that particular bad news cake. Apparently it’s only the news organizations I follow that track every day, literally, every single day, something you care about getting attacked or protections for it repealed. Arizona was hot enough today to prevent planes from landing.
My first question is, where should our focus be? If you’re living at least as broke as I am, is it correct to keep our heads down, share a handful of articles, and keep trying to pay the bills? I want to know. Is that the appropriate moral and responsible adult thing to do? Is our best effort little pains in our hearts and “outrage” when we find the time to read? Are we making the appropriate sacrifices in service to our very humanity?
My second question, should we be giving a shit? Are the refugees your problem? Is climate change your responsibility? Is our completely fucked political climate something you need to be changing? If the answer is no, tell me. I’m not kidding. I need to figure out who you people are and where you exist in this world.
To both of my questions, I contend our focus should be on systemic change that attempts to account for everyone. Accounting for everyone doesn’t mean you need to train to become a shoulder to cry on for billions of people. It doesn’t mean you need to sacrifice every penny and live as destitute as the worst off and therefore unable to help. It doesn’t even mean you have to feel one way or another about someone “other.” But if you’re going to act like for a second you’re not one amongst the whole, I need to understand why your privileged existence is to be preferred.
Increasingly I think it’s a story of sacrifice. The amount of forgone indulgences I’ve set aside in service to building a place that allows me to contribute at a larger scale. If I can live out of a barn, maybe I can create 30 similar barns for people fleeing war. If every unwanted baby in the state of Missouri is destined to be an inbred meth head in and out of prison because mom couldn’t make it to the only abortion clinic, I should be able to organize some of my time around figuring out how to dismantle or subvert the links in the chain that reinforce the perpetually oppressive story. The world’s too hot? I want to know how many carbon capture factories it takes to stop things in their tracks even if it’s impractical just to say we’ve ruled it out.
The tipping point for writing this was Jon Ossoff losing. In typical lazy idiot liberal fashion, they funneled money from all over the country, created a ridiculous dialogue about how close things were, and then they go down in glorious flames by 5 points. You can’t just throw money at shit, leaving aside the times I’ve showed what a waste it is to give to unaccountable charities absent mindedly. Millions of dollars and expectant naivety thought we’d “get a real gauge” on how people were reacting to Hitler 2. NO! IDIOTS! People are reacting the exact same way they have been for the entire years long campaigning. Doubling down, avoiding, or drowning in existential dread. What a coincidence! The Monied Liberal thought he could fix things...with money!
I don’t think we have a clue, a direction, or a purpose. I think fundamentally, baseline humanity, whatever happy story of puppies helping people play golf or deaf girl can sing on America’s Got Talent videos or unbearably dumb and fuck you meme you create, I feel the ship not just sinking, but getting pulled by Cthulhu.
What do you want to be doing when it gets real bad? How can you look at what’s going on in almost every other country and think we’re immune to the wide-scale accelerated demise of “normal?” How can you look at how actively our country is being attacked and think it’s going to just get better somehow? Do you really? Do you think “the smart people” are really out there prepared and wise enough to steer our irrational collective self-destructive conscience back?
I hate it. I hate facebook celebrating all the time. I hate happy pictures and hobbies. I hate shitty life-affirmations and “funny” “ironic” bullshit masquerading as more intelligent or above it all. What were you trying to do to save the world? What happens when the mountains you want to climb are closed off because a new federal law prioritizes some oil or other natural resource business interest? What happens if you need an abortion and end up dying because you didn’t realize how the rot affected the hospital in your “good” neighborhood? What happens when you wake up and can’t eat your favorite food or drink your coffee because the plants that are needed just can’t grow anymore?
How the fuck are you optimistic? How are you so violently against looking forward at the sheer wall of shit that’s in store for us? For your kids you don’t even have yet who won’t hear the dire warnings from the billionaires and scientists cautioning recent grads. If you have the money and feel comfortable, how superficial are your friendships that you’ll want to watch them die in some horrific fashion? You gonna take care of everyone? Or is it just gonna be unfortunate and ho-hum death comes for us all when they can’t afford the pills?
I just don’t get it. You know I’m helpless alone. You know you’re helpless in your stressed out middle management or hourly wage. You know your fucking vacations and toothy smiles don’t matter. You know the million and a half ways you’re implicated in perpetuating the terrible system. So where are you? What are you thinking? Am I the only one not resolved to die with what I have now and less than I could achieve in the future? Did I somehow infect myself with the capacity to give a shit about kids drowning off a coast in a way that wants to help through more than my tears and prayers?
Things are bad. Things are really, excessively fucking bad and we don’t have leaders or help. We have impassioned speeches filtered through naive mediums. We have crossed fingers and some of us have cash we think we can rain down to put out the raging forest fire. Am I really the only fucking one freaking out and trying to approach the world ending pragmatically? Well, not the world. My world. Our world. The one where you get a peaceful death bed scene pumped full of drugs so your hopefully loving family look like angels or snowmen or something before you go. The one where you can even entertain the idea of a family let alone one that will be able to see half the animals that won’t exist anymore or places that used to be covered in snow.
Am I fucking crazy? Should I have taken my money and stayed in a modest apartment always roommate hunting, but always able to pay the bills with ease, kicked back in a mess of books and TV shows, cigar in hand, proclaiming to anyone that will listen, “Ah, yeah it’s crazy, life comes at you fast, we’ll figure it out though, can’t be helped, c’est la vie, to alcohol! Have I showed you my hobby? People are generally good so that’s good. What can I do? I’m only one man!”
Why wait for it to get worse? Why 5 years from now will you be ready? Why 10 years from now might it be enviable to live in a tick-ridden field out of a converted garage because things are so expensive or exclusive it’s even more than it’s currently not possible to afford. Right now it’s already too much. You’ll never work enough. You’ll never save enough. You have no salvation. Why am I fucking wrong for wanting some audience participation? Why shirk the mutual goal? What am I missing about your joyous love affairs with your jobs or pastimes that’s going to make anything better? Why do you make me think you’re capable and care about so much more? You need to tell me what I’m doing wrong.
