I don’t particularly believe in karma. While it’s perfectly reasonable to assume that if you create a shitty environment or continually make bad decisions things will have a way of catching up to you, karma to me has come across as a kind of equation. To the degree you engender value and truth or “good works,” you’re setting yourself up to get as much in kind, and the same goes for acting like an asshole. If that’s the technical definition or not, I’m less concerned with given that’s how it’s used colloquially and what I’m most speaking to. I bother to bring up karma because I feel I must have something terrible I have yet to account for that is working its hardest to convince me karma is real and my circumstances are overwhelmingly my fault.
I have a superpower. I have a number of superpowers, but the one that’s most prevalent is the ability to say something true, in that no one disagrees with it, it’s bolstered by independent minds across different levels of experience, it’s perfectly capable of being contradicted and updated, but for all pragmatic intents and purposes, it remains true; upon saying something true, I transform into my supervillain alter-ego “The Enemy” and I force you to do everything in your power to mischaracterize and poorly judge not only what’s been said, but me as a person saying it. The special caveat for this power is that it goes into overdrive when I’m attempting to doing something “good.”
It plays out like this. I offer someone who lives out of their van or camper a practically free spot to park indefinitely if they’re willing to help me mow some grass or start some project. In response I’m mocked for being naive by “not saving enough and wanting someone to pay for your goals.” Did you feel the childish malice burning at the heart of my offer? I’m open to being wrong, but I’m not wrong, and it wasn’t malicious nor particularly naive. I wanted to do something nice, create, and attract someone who might be able to help.
It also plays out like this. A conversation is difficult and I ask earnest questions hoping to understand someone. They tell me I’m not willing to talk, don’t care how they feel, and have, no exaggeration, a dozen character flaws as to why I’ll never be worth talking to. Now, I thought when you’re trying to understand someone you ask them questions. We constantly talk over each other and use our ignorant judgments and poor perceptions. But again, in asking how to better relate or better understand, you know, do “good” by the conversation, we hear the engines rev on my corrupted mortal soul that would dare commit such treachery.
It plays out like this as well. I work extremely hard. I work hard enough that I throb, that I pass out, that I drench myself in sweat, and smell, and hurt things that I never want to risk hurting any more severely than they have been in the past. I’ve turned “bullshit” teenager jobs into opportunities to shine. I’ve risen in ranks. I’ve gotten the good grades. I’ve always kept the rent paid. I’ve cleaned up after other people’s messes. I’ve given freely of my time and offered money I kinda-sorta but not really have. In my gigantic life of setting these kinds of examples I’m met with silence and disdain. No matter what I’m willing to sacrifice or bring to the table, it’s never good, certainly never good enough.
Now, I don’t pretend I don’t know why this is. What scares me is that I don’t know why I continue to advocate or try, in a sense, in service to people. As long as he remains relevant I’ll keep bringing him up, but if I understand how to “walk with the Lord” like Noah, as Jordan Peterson explains, as god washes away the infinitely corrupted soul of man that has killed off it’s ideal, and build the fucking arc, how should I understand you not wanting to be on it? I want to know how anything less than striving to be the most consequential being possible is preferred? Aren’t you guilty? Don’t you feel helpless and full of the kind of questions that can’t really be answered? Don’t you feel lazy? You’re not annoyed with yourself with your pats on the back and fake ass associates?
It will always bug me to know how, again explicitly, but truthfully, I can be wrong or the bad guy, and the only thing people are concerned with doing is tearing down, ignoring, or reformulating my best efforts into something patently stupid or malicious. Recall, me and Hatsam made around 3K a month in something I started in 4 months under horrible exploitative conditions. If even 1 or 2 people in key positions had my back in a real way, that money would have been what fueled a land buy or the coffee van or that fund that makes sure every friend can fly out to every wedding or vacation spot. If I were to tell that story to the infinite well of shit that is reddit though? “Well, sounds like you didn’t think about x, y, and z, idiot. Personally, I never would have done like you!”
I keep asking, “What am I doing wrong?” It could be the wrong question. It could be worded incorrectly. It could have an easy answer I don’t know how to understand or accept. But I only know how to approach my place in the world by asking questions about it and situating myself in the process of addressing my answers.
“Do you ever want to end up stuck by a dead-end job or poverty?”
No.
“What have you done to avoid your fate?”
Opened businesses, kept my expenses low. Worked nonstops or learned new skills.
“Is that enough?”
No, business takes more capital and time than is allowed for when you’re obligated to other means of getting money. Life requires breaks.
“What is your response?”
I took my savings and moved towards a less than ideal living situation, but it makes my expenses dirt cheap and allows me to take practically any job and still have the time and money to move forward.
“Move forward on what?”
I care about, arguably, too many things. I want to contribute to a smarter political system. I care about the environment and sustainability. I care about healthcare. I want to feel safer from unnecessary war. I want to learn a ton of skills and instruments.
“Do you think you can really do all that?”
Yes. I see problems as interrelated, and I have a method for combining root causes that could create a general wave of necessary fixing consequences in better accounting for how things go wrong.
“What’s stopping you?”
I don’t have anyone to help me. I can only make so much money on my own time. I’m getting older and can feel it. And apparently, no matter what problems I can state in my life regarding achieving my goals, every single person around me is dramatically more hard up and busy.
“Can you fix that another way?”
All I can do is keep asking, and be met with the vitriol, or have the patience to do it all by myself and then offer it to people I anticipate will only resent and ignore me further.
“Why bother?”
If I go bad, I go really bad.
“This seems like the part where I tell you either ‘good luck!’ or ‘you’re fucked!’ whatever goes down easier.”
Definitely the being fucked option. I’m going to choke the next person who thinks what I’m doing is primarily about luck, passion, or enthusiasm.
I think I figured out that catch-22 when something I'm doing is called "naive" or "idealistic." First, what are we to make of a "naive" person? They have hopes and dreams that outpace their perspective right? They want to run a business but don't know if they're capable of the hours it takes. They want to rent a building, but didn't know real estate taxes and liquor licenses can be a bitch. They want to fall in love! But didn't realize bitches be crazy and the deluge of modern conditioning that directly contradicts the biology and history. To call someone else naive is to at once claim your own brand of wisdom and dismiss what they desire as unrealistic.
So when someone wants to call me naive, I have to wonder what they pretended to read with regard to what I want. Surely, it's not naive to want to live in a sustainable way. It's not naive to think I can count and quote and arrange the information I read in mapable and argumentative ways. It's not impossible to relate to someone open and honestly and work together in mutual sacrifice for more than you can achieve alone. What part of my being is particularly naive?
My revulsion to this caricature is to reference the waterfall of reasons things go to shit. Well, this costs money and that costs more money, and when you even try to account for this, that guy is going to fuck you, that girl is going to lie to you, you're going to be picking ticks out of your hair for hours, you'll get sick or hurt, and did you see all of that bullshit looming over there? THEN I'M CALLED NEGATIVE! MAKE UP YOUR FUCKING MINDS PEOPLE! Am I too inexperienced, too stupid, or just too down on myself that's at the heart of all my problems? Is my ability to do math that severely under question? "No one wants to work with a negative person, gasp! No one wants to work with pie-in-the-sky dreamers not grounded in reality, bleh!"
And news flash, YOU'RE NOT FUCKING SAYING ANYTHING HELPFUL. You don't fill in the blank with the gaping hole in my perspective. You don't offer anything enlightening or uplifting. You just label. You just judge. You just haw and caw and gab like you're capable of doing shit but barely keeping your head above water. You "like" and say "congratulations!" at every fragile inch that took an unnecessarily long amount of time.
I wish I ever heard of you having goals. I wish I could put on my balance sheet $50 or $100 a month to send your way so that it could be thrown in my face while everyone else on board with you deserves thanks for their contributions. It's because it's me right? Something about me is what makes it dirty or wrong or resentful. Or worse, you don’t even have goals. You don’t actually care about anything but yourself. And instead of saying so it’s my job to slowly morph into the same spiteful resentful animal as you. No doubt, you’re winning.
