I was thinking, maybe earlier this week, about how I had seemed to find a form of flow to my work life. I had come to “accept” my daily grind and routine, for as little as there has been to do for me lately, as I looked at the massive chunks I'd taken out of my debt I thought, “Huh, already?”
This is my mind's ability to condense and block out. This is a kind of survival denial to keep from blowing up after ruminating too long. But it got me thinking about all of the little pieces that can or need to be in place in order for that flow state to be achieved. The forms of human experience are going to stop at the limits of the brain, but the combinations are endless. Was it 30% denial, 30% acceptance, and 40% actual contentedness for what I was doing? Toggle up and down and add different spices and you can play the game indefinitely.
This is how you get piddling sentiments about everyone having opinions and various ways in which they cope with the world. Who cares about the percentage!? The idea goes. As long as it results in another day to play with the dials, you're always a very specific kind of “right,” insofar as you haven't died. The artifice that is you is a perfect stunt double for what it might actually take to objectively regard your environment and your place in it as healthy. You've got the catch phrases, the low expectations, and many many things to distract yourself with. Who can say otherwise?
The doppelganger verses the real thing becomes important the more serious a situation you are in. “Patriotism” via car sticker likely crumbles when there's a knock at your door to answer the call of duty. In my work world “I care about the children!” is a nice substitute for too explicit a description of your bitchy tone, disorganization, and persistently missed deadlines. Does the stagnant institution challenge you? Of course not, and you're not going to do the work to either. In my world, you dropping the ball can literally result in children getting fucked.
I'd guess people my age pretty well understand the facade behind many claims to power (perhaps those younger even better). You don't get a fascist puppet for a president unless basically every possible institution meant to inform and protect against such a thing has broken down. So what then to make of all the little pieces that people are made up of? What's the percentages carrying them into the next day? 80% denial 10% irony and 10% thoughts about who they'd make sad if they committed suicide?
This is my mind's ability to condense and block out. This is a kind of survival denial to keep from blowing up after ruminating too long. But it got me thinking about all of the little pieces that can or need to be in place in order for that flow state to be achieved. The forms of human experience are going to stop at the limits of the brain, but the combinations are endless. Was it 30% denial, 30% acceptance, and 40% actual contentedness for what I was doing? Toggle up and down and add different spices and you can play the game indefinitely.
This is how you get piddling sentiments about everyone having opinions and various ways in which they cope with the world. Who cares about the percentage!? The idea goes. As long as it results in another day to play with the dials, you're always a very specific kind of “right,” insofar as you haven't died. The artifice that is you is a perfect stunt double for what it might actually take to objectively regard your environment and your place in it as healthy. You've got the catch phrases, the low expectations, and many many things to distract yourself with. Who can say otherwise?
The doppelganger verses the real thing becomes important the more serious a situation you are in. “Patriotism” via car sticker likely crumbles when there's a knock at your door to answer the call of duty. In my work world “I care about the children!” is a nice substitute for too explicit a description of your bitchy tone, disorganization, and persistently missed deadlines. Does the stagnant institution challenge you? Of course not, and you're not going to do the work to either. In my world, you dropping the ball can literally result in children getting fucked.
I'd guess people my age pretty well understand the facade behind many claims to power (perhaps those younger even better). You don't get a fascist puppet for a president unless basically every possible institution meant to inform and protect against such a thing has broken down. So what then to make of all the little pieces that people are made up of? What's the percentages carrying them into the next day? 80% denial 10% irony and 10% thoughts about who they'd make sad if they committed suicide?
I think there's something vital to having intention and being what you do. I think you are absolutely you're work. But how do you go about recognizing that shoveling shit, for the muscled arms and shoulders it might produce, is not what we should be doing to get fit? I discuss the changes I want frequently. I see one barrier after another, and know more than I get credit for, people will need to be burned down in order to plant what's necessary. There's no polite conversation towards getting what you want in the world. It's out to kill you, so kill first.
Kill your imperfect language. Kill your doubt. Kill your fear. Kill the nonsense idea that things can't change and that you're not the adult in the room so you make the fucking rules. Kill the despair masquerading as humor and charm. Kill the silence. Kill the feeling of dying inside while you want to scream and scream little screams a million times a day until you ignite what those around you thought was killed in them. For you to live, that which is killing you must die. It is that serious. The ideas, the people, the institutions. You don't have to literally stab them, but you need to know the seriousness of the fight, and you need to live as loud and explicitly as you can.
It's incredibly hard to get where you need to be. Kill everything in your way, or die.
Kill your imperfect language. Kill your doubt. Kill your fear. Kill the nonsense idea that things can't change and that you're not the adult in the room so you make the fucking rules. Kill the despair masquerading as humor and charm. Kill the silence. Kill the feeling of dying inside while you want to scream and scream little screams a million times a day until you ignite what those around you thought was killed in them. For you to live, that which is killing you must die. It is that serious. The ideas, the people, the institutions. You don't have to literally stab them, but you need to know the seriousness of the fight, and you need to live as loud and explicitly as you can.
It's incredibly hard to get where you need to be. Kill everything in your way, or die.
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