Bout that time again. Weird feeling, not quite but mostly the same words. It would be so cool to be able to nail this down. There's like a pressure from my temporal lobes that the perfect words would release.
I can't count the amount of times that it happens. Every single conversation can or at some point seems to go the same way. Perhaps you start from somewhere that makes sense. Inevitably the “wrong” thing gets said, and a whole new reality is spun from the divergence.
And it's not like “we” don't know or see when it happens. You're in a pissy mood and run amok with something innocuous your spouse says. You flatly condemn words or opinions you've defaulted as unacceptable. You take things out of context. A quote showed up on reddit about how specialized knowledge and vastly different uses of words ensures that people will default to their feelings when their minds prove unable to cope with it all. It's an exceedingly predictable, common, and destructive phenomenon.
I recall some of my conversations, or sigh “debates,” with religious apologists. How many times can one hear them say, “You haven't even looked at my evidence!” that doesn't understand the science, or the history, or the logical fallacy, on and on before you go mad? Evidence for them isn't something independently verifiable across ages and cultures that speaks to a common story. Evidence is the very fact something exists! An apologist they like writes a book, they aren't concerned with his incorrect premise, and frankly don't even care if you've read the book. The fact that the book exists as “contrary” means listen up you smug atheist, you haven't figured it all out!
We substitute the latest findings and new lingual gymnastics, but the same conversation has been going on since, one imagines, we've had the words to attempt to conceive of something like gods. I think it was in reading The Portable Atheist where I really started to feel exceedingly stupid trying to rehash arguments written on parchment thousands of years ago by some wily scribe or thinker that, no shit, didn't end the debate.
So then I ask why? Why the same thing endlessly? Why the same feelings even in different circumstances? Why the same excuses? We're supposed to be adaptable. Our environments aren't nearly as likely to kill us as in the past. We have genes that can turn on and off after a number of years experiencing different environments. We have ancient structures in our brain that are going to bias us with millions of years of evolutionary baggage, but we have plenty of examples of people who, in one form or another, attempt to combat their lowly monkey status.
Take science. You literally cannot conduct it by infusing any level of the math or biology with your shitty opinion. You can interpret results any which way you like, but the chemistry isn't concerned with your opinion. The math doesn't need a soul. Millions of people pursue this with primarily the same brain as the violent racist, and terribly afraid, chest beating Republican ideologue. What have they figured out that these people can't? Why have they figured it out?
You may react reflexively that this is something of an incongruous comparison. I don't think it is. An open and honest pursuit of truth, in any field, is preferable to an emotional reaction stemming from any number of irrational fears and brain stirrings. We've crystallized our cultural decay by attempting to crown anti-science as the rule of law in a shrieking revolt against shadows in the dark. We deny the threat of white terrorists and institutional racism. We pretend guns keep us safe. In the highest offices in the land, and with the entire world agreeing, you still can't get the head of environmental departments to acknowledge climate change as human caused. When I say things like, “It can't get worse,” I mean the next step is uncontrollable accelerated death, because things are already dying, drowning, and burning, just not as fast as they could.
I claim often enough I'm concerned about communication. I pick words that I think lead us astray and tear them apart into all of the pointless ways we employ them. No, you're not “helping.” Sorry, I doubt the depths of your “love.” Funny, a dozen of invites to shared Google docs folders and terrible communication reminds me of every “start up” project I've ever been in. Every time a loaded word imbued with cultural privilege is employed, someone's looking for their back to be patted. I can't stress it enough, whether they actually accomplish anything or not, often while they're actively harming something, to the degree of pride they claim the extravagant implications of their descriptors, they don't just get a pass, but are celebrated and promoted in a kind of hysteria.
I reflexively want to say it's more often about protection. People want to protect their conceptions of themselves because it's uncomfortable to be forced into a realm of experience you didn't choose. Except, that's letting them off the hook. Rape comes to mind. You're not going to get a more unasked for situation dropped into the middle of your life. People are then called survivors. All of the emotional turmoil that comes after such an affair is one of the only times it's appropriate to say there’s something that needs protecting. A violent reshuffling of someone's sense of self is not a battle of egos or words. I simply don't have sympathy if my ideas suggest to you it's time to cry rape.
Truly, listen to the language though. Start counting the instances of people popping off like you’re plugging a dick into people's mouths, ears, and asses, and then triumphantly racing to the top of a mountain to claim your dominance. Talk about oppression by bringing up someone who's got it worse off than your opponent. Nope, you've just downplayed and dismissed their being, fool. What do shell shocked Syrian children know about my great-great-granddaddy's experiences as a slave? And we're off the races for who can spiral away from any supposed point the quickest.
Keep in mind, we're talking well before we even breach what happens when people just choose to outright lie and repeat it so often it takes on a life of its own. We're still in the realm of people presuming to have a “civil” conversation with each other. The do-gooder with the best intentions who walks up to an atheist and asks, “Please, sir, tell me honestly, what are your problems with God?” Incidentally, the same person opining on abortion, “Well, I don't believe in murdering babies.” Right out of the gate, the horses legs are broken. God's a forgone conclusion. No matter what you think, you have to start as a murderer or at least accomplice.
I've been more conflicted about my insistence that people talk back. When they do, I appreciate it, but even from the one's I know who have the best intentions or are “trying to help” they focus on the wrong things or don't follow up when clarification is added, or in the event it's a stranger, mostly ignore what's actually been said to criticize a single word or sentence in a paragraph they misquote, somehow. Like, the words really are here and copy and paste is a thing. If I said each of us was a drop in an ocean, but thought our actions were poisoning the ocean, am I saying “society can't change” or that we're poisoning ourselves? That's up for debate with your average “I don't really care what you actually said” pretend reader, who also thinks analogies and metaphors are bulletproof pieces of evidence for adopting a cheery disposition. If the single word “poison” can't be carried though, a generalized discussion about the state of society becomes next level abstract and ridiculous.
Lately I've been using what I used to consider fairly ignorant words like “every” and “always.” It's just that this is what's increasingly the case. Every conversation I get into devolves the same way. Always I can find the emotional floor that has lost all capacity for malleability or reason. Every topic is in some way off limits. I'm always met with a lazy cliché or terrible metaphor. Every single word in something I write will be ignored so the person on the other end can hone their internet doctor diagnosing skills. The best thing I've come up with to combat this is more silence. Part of the reason I struggle with shutting up though is that I work really hard to manifest what I think in the real world. I'm a person of consequence because I refrain from exhibiting the violent hatred and threat I absolutely feel from the world around me. I listen closer to you than you listen to you, literally. You'll contradict yourself line to line or paragraph to paragraph. And then every time I point something like that out you never admit or own it, and always use it as an excuse to blame or label me.
How does one not shit the bed nightly with a brain contemplating ignorant emotional vitriol at the helm of the levers concerning our survival? It's only the intimate knowledge I came up with regarding myself that gave me the super power to see through you. Jordan Peterson talks about the difference between tragedy and evil. One can site any number of tragedies that we're subjected to by simply being alive. But evil is a choice. Evil is the disregard you have for who you are and your capacity to sow the seeds of our collective demise. I can't choose my racing heart or defeated nihilistic gut grumbling. But I choose to throw a leash on it by writing. I choose projects and pursue a lifestyle that speaks to my place in the whole and desire for a community that operates better than what we're currently doing. I could ignore and make excuses for everything in my head that wold love to just sit and eat and watch and hate and scream and give up. But I'm not a tragedy and don't take pride in choosing evil.
I've avoided it until now, but I must say it's the ironic heartbeat of all existence. I think this often illustrates itself most prominently in my relationships. I'll have “friends” who talk to me when they're having doubts or feeling shitty, but will actively pursue time spent with the people or situations that create their anxiety. They cozy up to mutual friends who, let's put it as, regard them with less than the respect I would say a friendship needs. Me, one form of monster or another for a social faux pas or comment that one time way back when that ensures I won't get a text back or reply in a message without a week of hounding. We can move away from this sounding like a personal pity party.
The ones who want to “help” people stop getting abortions create a not-adopted child crisis, mental health crisis, state budget crisis, demonize condoms and sex, stigmatize the wrong groups, and hinder the adoption and understanding of the scientific fields that help better manage pregnancy. Some of the most dramatic professions of “love” that have been sold to me were the most abusive relationships you could ask for and came with more restrictions and covenants than a strip club trying to open up next to The Vatican. No quicker path to finding a complete and utter moron than the amount of memes proclaiming how smart they are. And never will you find the most unstable crazy fucks than to the degree their “empowered” “healing” “courageous” mantras stream their different feeds. We can't tell the difference between insecure uninspired attention whores and genuine talent with a message, but they'll get at least equal airtime or “thought” pieces clawing at the desert sands for a drop of meaning.
It's just such a stupid way to die. Every day? Every minute? Every moment you know the truth and instead play the game. For what? What kind of life is that? People call it easy. It's easy to lie. It's easy to offer pleasantries and wink and nod your way through what you really know about how politics or interpersonal squabbles or institutional powers operate. Come on! Don't you know pizza is code in the pedophile world! Bilderberg! Without a ring it doesn't count! Fertilized means soul! My struggle is the greatest most dogged struggle of anyone who's dared to struggle! Death panels! Science isn't perfect! You get to be an abomination and YOU get to be an abomination! Sugar by any other name is healthy and natural! [I was misunderstood in the science of some sugar alternatives] Cows don't get autism, so fuck herd immunity!
Okay, that's getting ridiculous, yet, in a string of ridicule and parody, someone would reference the 2 words “death panels” and give me a 3 paragraph lecture on how I shouldn't be so convinced or enraged at the lame-stream-media and maybe I'd be happier if I shut off the news. You know, the point. The point of this paragraph, nay the entire piece and I've just refrained from saying it out loud until now. Thank god someone had the insight and initiative to rip the beating heart of what I'm saying out and present it in such a way that's so much easier to swallow and understand. But I've got my prescription in hand ready to start my new life as a deliberately uninformed bag of joy. The right and proper fix to all of my problems that's eluded me for so long. If I had a medal, I'd beat them to death with it.
I don't even think I'm done. Because there's always the idea of “it's been done before.” I've said all or most of these sentiments a dozen and a half times before. I've used similar analogies. I've been equally frustrated at almost the exact same words about the exact same issues that someone knows exactly nothing about. And yet I have to keep writing. I have to keep pressing on the pressure in my head until all the words that comprise it manifest as something “better” than every fucking thing I actively fucking hate. Every word stands in defiance of every example I see as contributing to our demise. We need better tools for combating our stupid speech. Be free to say it, but understand it for what it is; it's getting us all killed.
Every time someone betrays me, I try to speak to the truth. Every time I'm anxious out of my mind sitting and listening to celebrities talk about their shitty movies instead of working on something I care about, I try to relate to the contradiction truthfully. Every terrible demon in my head that's learned how to be cruel and take advantage and manipulate, I try to count one by one until I can build a big boring reference book in service to a perspective that doesn't leave me crying like I've been irreparably violated by them and so it's your fault. I count every resentful comment and tantrum and judgment and odd look and condescending comment or flippant dismissal of what I've actually worked to say or do as a new coat of polish on the prized gem of truth. We'll engage with gibberish more intensely than a single line from someone like me, covfefe. (If you misspell that, Google will “correct” you.)
And it's never enough. It's one unnecessary death after another until it gets to you, and if you're a Republican congressman, you'll criticize the shooter's lack of training and aim to be such a bitch he couldn't even kill you! before you call your shitty positions or guns a problem. If the world were literally flooded by your poisonous decisions, you'd sit back, resolved, knowing that you deserved what's coming and if every moment before your last wasn't spent considering how you've drowned everyone else, why bother starting now?
