I don't really want to write right now, but hopefully that means I can make this quick. After listening to the latest Joe Rogan podcast with Jordan Peterson's 3rd or 4th appearance, I find myself moved again towards a kind of epiphany regarding my own motivations and where they came from.
I think I've been viewing my problem with other people incorrectly. I've also stated my place in more explicit and less forgiving terms. If we're on our own individuated trails, and those fall along quasi-predictable patterns, it appears like in my tendency to accelerate processes, I've gone and begrudged people too quickly. I liken it to blaming a child for not knowing how to do calculus in 3rd grade. At a grander scale, if humanity in general is still in preschool, what a stupid thing to do in approaching them academically.
I'm not so much forgiving as I am understanding Peterson's point about you always have little tribes you're apart of, from your family, to your school, and then you venture out on your own, until finally you figure out how to bring back something important to hopefully improve the groups you choose. People my age barely figure out where they fit, and I've given most of my shit to people younger than me. When I point out how weird it is to get married, my ex points out I met her when she was 20. I've adopted the posture of a whorish 70 year old contending with variations on the person I wrote myself away from for years.
As such, while I don't think it's particularly acceptable to be merely “entertained” or “achieving goals” based on your budget or ability to isolate yourself, I've decided to give people more time. My concerns heightened when I thought they were part of my tribe. They're not. I think I have goals that could matter to humanity. That doesn't make their tribe bad. It just means they aren't in mine.
As well, while I'm driving through traffic and trying to put myself in the seat of random people's cars, pretending to empathize like that not-good show, I'm reminded that they're part of the millions who are feeling the effects of the ripple when the right words catch an accelerant. We're all subject to larger waves. It's part of the reason I'm such a stickler for how I speak and my attitude towards people who try to bullshit me. The wave stops here. But it also starts here. It's why I've tried to direct most of my words over the last few years to a smaller and smaller crowd. You can still have an important voice in all the noise, and it's important to find it at the end of the day when you're tired and sore and just failed to cook chicken long enough to prepare meals in advance.
Maybe the beginnings of a better and positive cultural wave are starting to come around again. Maybe now that society has been reminded of the naked face of evil and destruction, you'll feel it as earnestly as the earliest warnings tried to express. Maybe a sense of urgency will put us on the same time frame and give us an appreciation for how quickly it's burning up.
