What is it called when perhaps the
worst things about you become what differentiates and makes you
popular or successful? Because you remain steadfast in your beliefs
you become a darling of some political or identity movement. Because
you're fairly ruthless and dead inside you rise to the top of your
company. Because you've no capacity for introspection you bring the
same scorn and enthusiasm to your 365 hour length videos ready to
tell us all how it really is.
I think about the characters in life that have stayed with me for how annoyed I've been with their being. Dinesh D'Souza kicked in off in offering the same tired, refuted and deliberately misunderstood and mischaracterized arguments against atheism. There's a ton of political talking heads from Ann Coulter to Bill O'Reilly and Glen Beck. My own mother managed to increase her crazy as time went on if you'll recall her accusing me of studying witchcraft in college.
In their own ways, they thrive. They make money and publish books. They get protected bubbles that reinforce their ideas nonstop. I want to say that they inhabit an entire world that I'm not privy too. I don't get the privilege of that degree of self-delusion and self-confidence to put forth impossibly easy to dismiss ideas with such vigor that I make a million dollars or always find someone else to blame. They're always going to have a village, and even the one's who don't subscribe to their lines of bullshit will succumb in some form of self-sabotaging guilt that protects them from deeper consequences.
My hang up about this “bubble world” built on undue confidence stems from a pattern I see in conversations online. There's a million and a half reasons to never bother commenting on something you read, but if you're as dumb as me, you might notice that, without fail, there will be a move to put you in your own little bubble. If you open with a comment about how you think it's lazy and dishonest to write a character assassination piece instead of sticking to a deeper history and facts, particularly from a publication that seemed to pride itself on doing so, the people responding will move to speculate on your tone and disposition. They'll conjure the idea that your words are coming from your cult-like worship of the magazine's target. They'll tell you “DUH, it's a socialist publication!” But they won't agree or disagree with your words. They'll create a you in their image and then proceed to barrage it with decreasingly sophisticated obfuscations.
I worry about this. It happens often enough that it seems to suggest some pretty damming things. Either I'm perpetually that confusing, incoherent, “too angry,” or just beyond redemption when it comes to getting a point across, or, we're literally so blind and broken in our capacity as a society to talk about things that the idea and suggestion to focus and retain the point of what's been said is simply gone. You can have your trolls and your earnest stupid people. But what do you have when either “side” is trying to diagnose the other or armchair life coach on communication skills in between called names and condescension? It's every single thread. The smarter each person thinks they are, the dumber the conversation gets.
I retreat to the relationships and conversations I've been in where there's never been that degree of, “YOU'RE JUST A BULLSHITTING TIRADE OF INCOHERENCE!” levied at me. It's not all people all the time in my life, in fact, it's practically never in person or with some serious adult aimed at conveying something. There are no arbitrary interjections of demeaning and irrelevant pontifications. That doesn't mean conversations can't get a little random or work sideways, but it does mean there's a common thread. What that thread is supposed to look like or why it never seems to manifest online, I have no clue. I don't know if it's the lack of noise and facial signals. I don't know if it's that the internet is like a dog whistle of mere reactions competing for space. I don't know that there's a way to combat the problem short of significantly more people shutting up who are the most prone to talking.
As it pertains to me though, when I'm presented with the idea that my ideas are just too disjointed or arbitrary, I'm never asked a question about one of those confusing lines nor do people even pretend I had something to say at the onset from which further ideas came forth. They seem to be turning me into my own conservative talking head. I have this idea, according to the “win or lose” camps and barking dogs there's one way to explain myself and one way only, no one will tell me what it is, and unless I've gotten more likes than them on the comment train down, we'll all know who lost.
I still retain a fuck ton of doubt. I ask questions. I very much do lead with an explicit stating of what I see as a problem, or a fix, or my feelings in relation to something. Did I miss the year we decided that the words we use don't actually mean anything and it's up to us to figure out how to relate to an infinite number of interpretations all at once? If you call someone a moron, and they ask you what you mean by that...don't you have a responsibility to put that person out of their misery before you attempt to answer the question and thicken the conversational fog? I recently said that people become micro-Nazi's about all sorts of things. You lose the battle before you begin if you attempt to discuss something with ideological possession predicated on magical books or racial bigotry. If talking is fundamental to survival and human flourishing, and now you fail before you ever begin, doesn't that only leave us with war?
I think about the characters in life that have stayed with me for how annoyed I've been with their being. Dinesh D'Souza kicked in off in offering the same tired, refuted and deliberately misunderstood and mischaracterized arguments against atheism. There's a ton of political talking heads from Ann Coulter to Bill O'Reilly and Glen Beck. My own mother managed to increase her crazy as time went on if you'll recall her accusing me of studying witchcraft in college.
In their own ways, they thrive. They make money and publish books. They get protected bubbles that reinforce their ideas nonstop. I want to say that they inhabit an entire world that I'm not privy too. I don't get the privilege of that degree of self-delusion and self-confidence to put forth impossibly easy to dismiss ideas with such vigor that I make a million dollars or always find someone else to blame. They're always going to have a village, and even the one's who don't subscribe to their lines of bullshit will succumb in some form of self-sabotaging guilt that protects them from deeper consequences.
My hang up about this “bubble world” built on undue confidence stems from a pattern I see in conversations online. There's a million and a half reasons to never bother commenting on something you read, but if you're as dumb as me, you might notice that, without fail, there will be a move to put you in your own little bubble. If you open with a comment about how you think it's lazy and dishonest to write a character assassination piece instead of sticking to a deeper history and facts, particularly from a publication that seemed to pride itself on doing so, the people responding will move to speculate on your tone and disposition. They'll conjure the idea that your words are coming from your cult-like worship of the magazine's target. They'll tell you “DUH, it's a socialist publication!” But they won't agree or disagree with your words. They'll create a you in their image and then proceed to barrage it with decreasingly sophisticated obfuscations.
I worry about this. It happens often enough that it seems to suggest some pretty damming things. Either I'm perpetually that confusing, incoherent, “too angry,” or just beyond redemption when it comes to getting a point across, or, we're literally so blind and broken in our capacity as a society to talk about things that the idea and suggestion to focus and retain the point of what's been said is simply gone. You can have your trolls and your earnest stupid people. But what do you have when either “side” is trying to diagnose the other or armchair life coach on communication skills in between called names and condescension? It's every single thread. The smarter each person thinks they are, the dumber the conversation gets.
I retreat to the relationships and conversations I've been in where there's never been that degree of, “YOU'RE JUST A BULLSHITTING TIRADE OF INCOHERENCE!” levied at me. It's not all people all the time in my life, in fact, it's practically never in person or with some serious adult aimed at conveying something. There are no arbitrary interjections of demeaning and irrelevant pontifications. That doesn't mean conversations can't get a little random or work sideways, but it does mean there's a common thread. What that thread is supposed to look like or why it never seems to manifest online, I have no clue. I don't know if it's the lack of noise and facial signals. I don't know if it's that the internet is like a dog whistle of mere reactions competing for space. I don't know that there's a way to combat the problem short of significantly more people shutting up who are the most prone to talking.
As it pertains to me though, when I'm presented with the idea that my ideas are just too disjointed or arbitrary, I'm never asked a question about one of those confusing lines nor do people even pretend I had something to say at the onset from which further ideas came forth. They seem to be turning me into my own conservative talking head. I have this idea, according to the “win or lose” camps and barking dogs there's one way to explain myself and one way only, no one will tell me what it is, and unless I've gotten more likes than them on the comment train down, we'll all know who lost.
I still retain a fuck ton of doubt. I ask questions. I very much do lead with an explicit stating of what I see as a problem, or a fix, or my feelings in relation to something. Did I miss the year we decided that the words we use don't actually mean anything and it's up to us to figure out how to relate to an infinite number of interpretations all at once? If you call someone a moron, and they ask you what you mean by that...don't you have a responsibility to put that person out of their misery before you attempt to answer the question and thicken the conversational fog? I recently said that people become micro-Nazi's about all sorts of things. You lose the battle before you begin if you attempt to discuss something with ideological possession predicated on magical books or racial bigotry. If talking is fundamental to survival and human flourishing, and now you fail before you ever begin, doesn't that only leave us with war?
For my part, I'm running with my anti-matter theory with how to relate to the rest of the world. If you're regular matter and collide with me, we'll both annihilate. I've had this idea growing with me for maybe a year. I'm the person to blow things up. I'll immediately list the reasons it sucks, it will fail, and you're impossibly lost and stupid. We'll both glean everything we need to know about each other with what comes next. You can blow me off and earnestly attempt to pursue or defend yourself. You can hate the shit out of me and proclaim to all your friends you get why you were warned in advance about talking to me. You can consider what I said and incorporate what I've pointed out in an effort to improve your current model. What you will not do is affect me in any sort of manner that turns my anti-matter nature into matter.
I think this is a more forgiving and accurate representation of what people have deemed as “negative” about my personality. This negative guy is fat and happy well on his way towards a life with no bills and all the time in the world to create. Something about it is working, just not for you. I've said a number of times how much “communication” is a concern of mine. I've been thinking too small and linear. I can communicate a thousand things talking or otherwise. I'm fated to be misunderstood. The people who I admire the most for communicating the best get thrown under more buses than I've tempted to run me over, and what do they do? They keep talking anyway. They keep showing. They keep selling. They can blow up your mind and ignore or refute the endless stream of lazy stupid reactionary bullshit, and so can I.
I'm mostly looking forward to having a flash of an inspiring person hit me as I phrase something in an “angry” or “bizarre” way. I look forward to “trying” to explain myself or my position on something and it only amounting to me saying fuck too often and showing what my words look like as consequences in the real world. For someone who has to write, I really am sick of talking. The reasonable people already agree, the crazies will never get it, I'm not patient or forgiving enough to translate or dumb down, and frankly, I don't think we're going to make it, nor deserve to, anyway. And if I feel that as earnestly as I do and ever have, and still figure out some way to help people in the world who actually need and appreciate it, it'll be one more “fuck you” for every character assassination piece you write about me and my motives and my incoherent struggle to figure something out or propose a fix.
I choose to engage with myself in a way that makes sense to me and seems to suggest I've got more of life figured out with regard to my happiness and ability to contribute. You choose to resent that. I actually want to understand the Coulters, Becks, and even Arrow fans in the world, even if they make my skin crawl. You don't want to understand me, and I'm nowhere near the level of bullshit and abstraction that would start chucking aliens or conspiracies at you as an explanation behind my reasoning. But that's not where the vast majority of people are. They don't practice being open, pausing and asking, or having any doubt. Therefore, I hope every time we meet, things blow up.
