I must be weird.
In an interview to work for The Department of Child Services, the interviewer relayed to me a quote from a long-time judge. “A cop can be on the job for 31 years and then retire, and they'll see less trauma than your office will in 6 months.” I didn't blink.
Death, trauma, evil, pain, exploitation, lies, and otherwise wanton destruction or violence make sense to me. I thought I was mis-remembering a video I saw once of Mexican drug cartel members getting beheaded with a chainsaw, looked it up, and forgot it was only one who got the chainsaw, the other a knife. I couldn't recall if the chainsaw grazed the 2nd guy's arm, but I thought it did, and I didn't see him flinch. Odd as it may sound, I think those, former, Mexican gangsters and I had something in common. They'd clearly accepted something about their circumstances. While I'm still flinching in the face of chainsaws, so have I.
What's striking to me about this disposition is how often and vehemently it's labeled or discussed as “negative” or “nihilistic” or “dark” or “pessimistic” or “inappropriate” or whatever analogue that is the opposite of life, joy, or the pursuit of something affirmative and lasting. And for the thousandth time I've referenced the irony at the base of everything, I think we're striking a bedrock psychological example. Some might find it as easy as asking yourself, how better to stay alive than understand as many ways in which you could die?
There's dying in the fun ways, like as many times as it takes to watch your favorite violent movie. We reenact famous plays where the characters die for love or power. We play fight and die as children. We employ a vague notion of death at a level of embarrassment or shock and intrigue. We make a game out of killing bacteria or shedding old skin in personal hygiene. Video and carnival games pick off people and ducks. Death is playful, when we want it to be.
There's ideological death. “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.” In the face of technological and social upheaval, many a foundation are shaken. Who you were as a believer can be as dramatic a personality shift as the alcoholic turned stone sober from “giving it all up to God.” A part of you that was protecting something died, or a part of you that was never quenched decided to kill. Maybe you were viciously hurt in love and now live in the wake of the sewage of your emotions. Maybe you were neglected and couldn't spell the word “family” or “mom” if your life depended on it. Maybe you're just realizing that no matter what you do, you'll never be the child you remember, and it's time to sober up to the “real world.”
But here again, I think I must be weird. All of that seems very familiar. I didn't really have to explain how we play with death or understand the consequences of polluting someone's mind with abuse or their naive notions of love. I mean, we literally call them “plays.”
What kills me is how (successfully?) we're pretending we're not hyper-obsessed with death. Isn't all of existence speaking to it? Isn't it the root of self-sabotage? Isn't it our addictions? Isn't it our complacency? Isn't it our entertainment, or undue celebration for personal victories, and betraying our pithy grudges? Aren't we alive as a result of all the other things we're willing to kill around us? Personal preferences held up as badges of honor. Friendships unburdened by truth or struggle. Vicious internet opinions, like so many assholes, meant to defend and defame, who? For what? In the first calculations, save the final, where does it all go? It's what we feed off of. It's nourishment.
I think this speaks to the romance narrative of death. Something has to die so others can live. We need to be proper Donner party members. I feel I watch this play out everywhere, all the time. School ate us alive. The mall ate my coffee shop. My aunts and uncles ate my grandparents, dad, and stepmom. My brother wishes he could eat me. Our country was eaten by the rich and vitriolically opportunistic. And we cheered them on because we saw so much of ourselves in them. A concert of Little Deaths, in an endless blinding sequence of pleasure.
Think how closely this mirrors and pollutes the idea of sacrifice. The death of a sacrifice isn't superficial. It's payment. It's respect. All you have to do in order to hijack it is claim you've put up whatever your particular god thinks is due, and bask in the glory. “I worked for everything I have! Fuck the moochers!” You killed your time, after all, in presumably much harsher circumstances and with greater loss than those struggling to get by now. The truth of who you've eaten be damned.
How do we “get better?” Think about it. How will the economy improve? Once we get people to eat more! Eat more Iphones, cars, and prepared meals. Eat your heart out at a generic “job.” How do we fix loneliness and boredom? Eat more Netflix and video games! Eat this new hobby and finely tuned pill. How do we celebrate in spite of every-day personal folly and failure? Eat this World Series win! Eat this master of his craft! Eat this pre-approved algorithm of characters in this most popular genre! As long as something is lined up to fill our bellies, we presume “everything” should otherwise fall in to place.
I'm in a struggle for my life right now. That's what this blog is. I'm 6 months into the throes of “comfort” of a regular paycheck, menial task, and handful of things I'd like to get done each weekend or after work. I've been describing myself as Hank Hill. I've been saying, “We can spring for the extra to get that VIP, we're old!” Am I a function of my age? I have severe doubts about the nature of time for sure, and I suppose in small ways my body feels older, but I'd argue I'm significantly more all of the mess that spews out of me in disorganized angst-ridden energy. So how does that guy put on business clothes and sit in a cubicle? I suppose I'm starting with acknowledging all the different kinds of death, and seeing if I'm buying into them.
I can 8-4 it and still build. I can sit in a cubicle and call it analogous to the living room or basement I'd otherwise be sitting in. I gave myself all the free time in the world, no one wanted to play with me, I already know without a certain amount of money or vastly different group of friends, there's nothing outside and no greener grass. There's ideological death if I've ever seen it.
In an interview to work for The Department of Child Services, the interviewer relayed to me a quote from a long-time judge. “A cop can be on the job for 31 years and then retire, and they'll see less trauma than your office will in 6 months.” I didn't blink.
Death, trauma, evil, pain, exploitation, lies, and otherwise wanton destruction or violence make sense to me. I thought I was mis-remembering a video I saw once of Mexican drug cartel members getting beheaded with a chainsaw, looked it up, and forgot it was only one who got the chainsaw, the other a knife. I couldn't recall if the chainsaw grazed the 2nd guy's arm, but I thought it did, and I didn't see him flinch. Odd as it may sound, I think those, former, Mexican gangsters and I had something in common. They'd clearly accepted something about their circumstances. While I'm still flinching in the face of chainsaws, so have I.
What's striking to me about this disposition is how often and vehemently it's labeled or discussed as “negative” or “nihilistic” or “dark” or “pessimistic” or “inappropriate” or whatever analogue that is the opposite of life, joy, or the pursuit of something affirmative and lasting. And for the thousandth time I've referenced the irony at the base of everything, I think we're striking a bedrock psychological example. Some might find it as easy as asking yourself, how better to stay alive than understand as many ways in which you could die?
There's dying in the fun ways, like as many times as it takes to watch your favorite violent movie. We reenact famous plays where the characters die for love or power. We play fight and die as children. We employ a vague notion of death at a level of embarrassment or shock and intrigue. We make a game out of killing bacteria or shedding old skin in personal hygiene. Video and carnival games pick off people and ducks. Death is playful, when we want it to be.
There's ideological death. “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.” In the face of technological and social upheaval, many a foundation are shaken. Who you were as a believer can be as dramatic a personality shift as the alcoholic turned stone sober from “giving it all up to God.” A part of you that was protecting something died, or a part of you that was never quenched decided to kill. Maybe you were viciously hurt in love and now live in the wake of the sewage of your emotions. Maybe you were neglected and couldn't spell the word “family” or “mom” if your life depended on it. Maybe you're just realizing that no matter what you do, you'll never be the child you remember, and it's time to sober up to the “real world.”
But here again, I think I must be weird. All of that seems very familiar. I didn't really have to explain how we play with death or understand the consequences of polluting someone's mind with abuse or their naive notions of love. I mean, we literally call them “plays.”
What kills me is how (successfully?) we're pretending we're not hyper-obsessed with death. Isn't all of existence speaking to it? Isn't it the root of self-sabotage? Isn't it our addictions? Isn't it our complacency? Isn't it our entertainment, or undue celebration for personal victories, and betraying our pithy grudges? Aren't we alive as a result of all the other things we're willing to kill around us? Personal preferences held up as badges of honor. Friendships unburdened by truth or struggle. Vicious internet opinions, like so many assholes, meant to defend and defame, who? For what? In the first calculations, save the final, where does it all go? It's what we feed off of. It's nourishment.
I think this speaks to the romance narrative of death. Something has to die so others can live. We need to be proper Donner party members. I feel I watch this play out everywhere, all the time. School ate us alive. The mall ate my coffee shop. My aunts and uncles ate my grandparents, dad, and stepmom. My brother wishes he could eat me. Our country was eaten by the rich and vitriolically opportunistic. And we cheered them on because we saw so much of ourselves in them. A concert of Little Deaths, in an endless blinding sequence of pleasure.
Think how closely this mirrors and pollutes the idea of sacrifice. The death of a sacrifice isn't superficial. It's payment. It's respect. All you have to do in order to hijack it is claim you've put up whatever your particular god thinks is due, and bask in the glory. “I worked for everything I have! Fuck the moochers!” You killed your time, after all, in presumably much harsher circumstances and with greater loss than those struggling to get by now. The truth of who you've eaten be damned.
How do we “get better?” Think about it. How will the economy improve? Once we get people to eat more! Eat more Iphones, cars, and prepared meals. Eat your heart out at a generic “job.” How do we fix loneliness and boredom? Eat more Netflix and video games! Eat this new hobby and finely tuned pill. How do we celebrate in spite of every-day personal folly and failure? Eat this World Series win! Eat this master of his craft! Eat this pre-approved algorithm of characters in this most popular genre! As long as something is lined up to fill our bellies, we presume “everything” should otherwise fall in to place.
I'm in a struggle for my life right now. That's what this blog is. I'm 6 months into the throes of “comfort” of a regular paycheck, menial task, and handful of things I'd like to get done each weekend or after work. I've been describing myself as Hank Hill. I've been saying, “We can spring for the extra to get that VIP, we're old!” Am I a function of my age? I have severe doubts about the nature of time for sure, and I suppose in small ways my body feels older, but I'd argue I'm significantly more all of the mess that spews out of me in disorganized angst-ridden energy. So how does that guy put on business clothes and sit in a cubicle? I suppose I'm starting with acknowledging all the different kinds of death, and seeing if I'm buying into them.
I can 8-4 it and still build. I can sit in a cubicle and call it analogous to the living room or basement I'd otherwise be sitting in. I gave myself all the free time in the world, no one wanted to play with me, I already know without a certain amount of money or vastly different group of friends, there's nothing outside and no greener grass. There's ideological death if I've ever seen it.
I've
also been working on the narrative that might make me finally bored
of TV. I'd like a proper “obsession” to be sure, but any type of
work and otherwise worthwhile task makes something as stupid as
finishing Arrow out of spite feel more than pointless. I probably
still would anyway, as I feel my TV habit has morphed into a bigger
point about how many hours are really in a day, but a budding desire
for a dispositional death is still there. I don't really get lost in
TV or movies like I used to, but then again, that's not really why
I'm watching anymore.
I don't know where to introduce it, so it's now. All the death-talk and everything that comes with it being easy makes the appeal of what seems to be so hard inevitably compelling.
How often do you find the people going out of their way to bring about goodness? This is a question that's going to need a few different phrasings. Who goes out of their way to help people succeed? Who sacrifices themselves, in a healthy way, for the benefit of others? Who gets immense joy and pride out of helping? I mean actually helping, not lip service and “good intentions,” like picking the biggest and hardest things they think they can fix, and diving in? Would you even feel comfortable saying something like that about yourself? Or would it be in the form of something personal, like child-rearing? Perfectly noble to want to rear a healthy and happy kid in spite of the broken home they were born into.
“Nice” is something of an all-consuming novelty to me. I let my ideas of nice bite me with regard to friendship. We let it perpetuate myths of people like Mother Teresa or in Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize. Nice is there for the exploitation. At least, that's my instinct that I'm trying to correct. I have and have had actually nice, sacrificial, genuinely good and helpful examples in my life. I've been “saved,” not by God, but by my grandma and my dad. I know there are at least 2 people in life who never have and never will try to fuck me over with their “niceness.” That's fucking important.
The flip side of that is that for every dad I have and dead grandma I have memories of, I have half a dozen other family members not like that at all and significantly more acquaintances and former “friends” who are nothing like that. This is the battle. This is the burden of the genuinely good. The person who lives and creates life because of the celebration of what it can be, not for the exploitation of what it can give them. If anyone less “blunt” or “jaded” or “cold” or “intellectual” or “funny” or “persistently indignant in his railroading and intransigence” is dealing with the same numbers of shit verses nice as I am? Get right out of town. I don't employ my “I don't have hope” mantra on a whim.
Now, for the friends reading this who've bailed me out of something or stood by through a measure of bullshit, chillax, you're deeply rooted in my mind, you just weren't first. And the larger point remains, for every one of you, there's a dozen who've shit the bed in important and consequential ways.
I want to be the genuine article of things that surprise the every-loving fuck out of me if I ever see them in other people. That's in jokes. That's in endless exploration and nit-picking until something is understood and internalized. That's in 7 months of 13 hour days to get off and load up your ill-equipped car with wood to drag out to your pitch black field in the middle of the cold night so you can inch along progress on the thing you actually care about. That's letting go without forgetting. That's recognizing and holding your precious sacrifice out in front of you before you kill it, instead of taking for granted your mere discomfort is enough to supplement the dirty work you've yet to do.
That's where we're at right now culturally. “I'm uncomfortable.” The room gasps and those weak of stomach and will run for the doors. Someone is out to eat us. Batten down the hatches and prepare to be bombarded with waves of insincere pomp and incredulity. Birds chirp, “butwhatabout butwhatabout.” Prepare a victim, anyone, and feast on what falls out. Definitions are for the power mongers! We're hungry, dammit, and if I can't get that house, or car, or job, or the girl, or the right pills, or even just my way, then I'll take every ounce of you.
What's hard to cope with is the idea of being an NPC or non-playable character. In a virtual environment, you sort of reflexively believe they don't hurt anything, even if that's absolutely not the truth. They perpetuate the story. They steal your dragon egg. They present challenges and side-quests. You're the passive agent at the will of what these pre-programmed problems drop in your lap. You're of every consequence. You're not the hero. The hero is the myth. The hero is one who has to literally die and be reborn, which, I'll remind you, isn't fucking possible. You need missions that otherwise random idiots would be wandering around in the dark killing things if they weren't a part of. When you figure out what it is you can provide, you'll stop endlessly feeding.
This is at the heart of what I don't like about “normal” jobs. I don't want to feed off the teat of established norms. I don't provide “easy.” There are millions of people paycheck to paycheck with familiar narratives about what their responsibilities are and how to “fix” or meet them. I have work-arounds. There are endless creative paths to addressing problems across societal and psychological layers. I can do none of them in the environment presently offered. I find people who like to feed off of my honesty or “taboo,” because to embody where it comes from takes work they're not interested in. I give thousands of miles for every inch I try to take back. I'm on a mission to not lose myself across the many worlds I may inhabit. But I'm not in a video game, and I doubt someone's going to walk up to me to try and join my quest.
“A working-class hero is something to be.”
I don't know where to introduce it, so it's now. All the death-talk and everything that comes with it being easy makes the appeal of what seems to be so hard inevitably compelling.
How often do you find the people going out of their way to bring about goodness? This is a question that's going to need a few different phrasings. Who goes out of their way to help people succeed? Who sacrifices themselves, in a healthy way, for the benefit of others? Who gets immense joy and pride out of helping? I mean actually helping, not lip service and “good intentions,” like picking the biggest and hardest things they think they can fix, and diving in? Would you even feel comfortable saying something like that about yourself? Or would it be in the form of something personal, like child-rearing? Perfectly noble to want to rear a healthy and happy kid in spite of the broken home they were born into.
“Nice” is something of an all-consuming novelty to me. I let my ideas of nice bite me with regard to friendship. We let it perpetuate myths of people like Mother Teresa or in Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize. Nice is there for the exploitation. At least, that's my instinct that I'm trying to correct. I have and have had actually nice, sacrificial, genuinely good and helpful examples in my life. I've been “saved,” not by God, but by my grandma and my dad. I know there are at least 2 people in life who never have and never will try to fuck me over with their “niceness.” That's fucking important.
The flip side of that is that for every dad I have and dead grandma I have memories of, I have half a dozen other family members not like that at all and significantly more acquaintances and former “friends” who are nothing like that. This is the battle. This is the burden of the genuinely good. The person who lives and creates life because of the celebration of what it can be, not for the exploitation of what it can give them. If anyone less “blunt” or “jaded” or “cold” or “intellectual” or “funny” or “persistently indignant in his railroading and intransigence” is dealing with the same numbers of shit verses nice as I am? Get right out of town. I don't employ my “I don't have hope” mantra on a whim.
Now, for the friends reading this who've bailed me out of something or stood by through a measure of bullshit, chillax, you're deeply rooted in my mind, you just weren't first. And the larger point remains, for every one of you, there's a dozen who've shit the bed in important and consequential ways.
I want to be the genuine article of things that surprise the every-loving fuck out of me if I ever see them in other people. That's in jokes. That's in endless exploration and nit-picking until something is understood and internalized. That's in 7 months of 13 hour days to get off and load up your ill-equipped car with wood to drag out to your pitch black field in the middle of the cold night so you can inch along progress on the thing you actually care about. That's letting go without forgetting. That's recognizing and holding your precious sacrifice out in front of you before you kill it, instead of taking for granted your mere discomfort is enough to supplement the dirty work you've yet to do.
That's where we're at right now culturally. “I'm uncomfortable.” The room gasps and those weak of stomach and will run for the doors. Someone is out to eat us. Batten down the hatches and prepare to be bombarded with waves of insincere pomp and incredulity. Birds chirp, “butwhatabout butwhatabout.” Prepare a victim, anyone, and feast on what falls out. Definitions are for the power mongers! We're hungry, dammit, and if I can't get that house, or car, or job, or the girl, or the right pills, or even just my way, then I'll take every ounce of you.
What's hard to cope with is the idea of being an NPC or non-playable character. In a virtual environment, you sort of reflexively believe they don't hurt anything, even if that's absolutely not the truth. They perpetuate the story. They steal your dragon egg. They present challenges and side-quests. You're the passive agent at the will of what these pre-programmed problems drop in your lap. You're of every consequence. You're not the hero. The hero is the myth. The hero is one who has to literally die and be reborn, which, I'll remind you, isn't fucking possible. You need missions that otherwise random idiots would be wandering around in the dark killing things if they weren't a part of. When you figure out what it is you can provide, you'll stop endlessly feeding.
This is at the heart of what I don't like about “normal” jobs. I don't want to feed off the teat of established norms. I don't provide “easy.” There are millions of people paycheck to paycheck with familiar narratives about what their responsibilities are and how to “fix” or meet them. I have work-arounds. There are endless creative paths to addressing problems across societal and psychological layers. I can do none of them in the environment presently offered. I find people who like to feed off of my honesty or “taboo,” because to embody where it comes from takes work they're not interested in. I give thousands of miles for every inch I try to take back. I'm on a mission to not lose myself across the many worlds I may inhabit. But I'm not in a video game, and I doubt someone's going to walk up to me to try and join my quest.
“A working-class hero is something to be.”
I look for the people who challenge me. I look for the orators I want to be like. I look for the papers I dream of writing and shows I wish I developed. I look for lines in songs that come up time and again. I force myself to think through the words that aren't there yet, and beyond the feelings that make me want to feast on everyone around me. I pursue what I actually picture in my mind's eye. If you're anything less, then you're less. I won't let you eat me.
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