[873] Atomic Puzzle

Let’s see what’s going on up there.

I called dispatch on a truck that was driving wrong. He was idling next to another truck in the fast line for what felt like an incredibly long time. We passed emergency vehicles and other hazards on the road for which the truck next to him flipped on his turn signal in trying to get farther away from. He didn’t budge. I told dispatch he was swerving, maybe on his phone.

I open with this story because I feel it is indicative of many things about me. One, I’m prepared to be that kind of a dick pretty much at all times. Two, I can confidently say I don’t drive like that, and get the fuck over or let people over. Three, I’ve both let things like that go, and elevated significantly less egregious behavior in the past.

I’ve called the police on people weaving like assholes through traffic, people clearly drunk at the gas station, and people who’ve otherwise demonstrated what I considered to be an elevated level of unsafe and ridiculous driving. Have I driven while on my phone, eating dinner, or otherwise gotten a little more swerve-y than is appropriate? Of course.

What made this make me feel justified more than hypocritical? Why did I think an intervention was required? He sat in the lane long enough for me to not just notice his truck number but memorize it. There happened to be several things the truck next to him passed, and indicated he wanted to avoid better, that he should have been able to. I was on my way to a scrap run, and the drive was feeling longer than yesterday.

This got me thinking that in general, I’m not calling people out for things like this. If anything, I lend myself to setting uncontrollable fires to your disposition independent of if it then spirals into hell or helps you. I feel this lends itself to my having “low” standards for what it takes for me to consider you or your behavior acceptable. Saying it like that makes me think things are incredibly more complicated, but maybe we’ll get there. For now, I’m merely reminded that I wore a yin yang symbol at all times for many years because I deeply vibed with the image of balance. Over time I came to understand balance as individual to each person and an inevitable fate of every particle in the universe.

I got to thinking, every puzzle is as big and small as the number of pieces it is cut into. You’re as much entire chunks of your body parts and organs as you are atoms, bacteria, or hair and dandruff. On balance, you can get many conscious beings describing their state of affairs in as many or few words as they are lent or discover. The impartial universe says you are equal enough to a thing that can reproduce for its own sake.

As a state of being, balance is by definition without judgement. All things weigh the same, until they don’t, and you either discover what brings the balance back, or you don’t. “The universe” may not care if you’re feeling anxious or depressed, but your behavior can lend itself to bringing balance back or anchoring one side.

Balance is constantly negotiated. As such, it’s easy to take it for granted as an unnecessary or thankless chore instead of a responsibility. Once you set a course of action into motion, it keeps moving unless acted upon. You need money? Get a job! Over time you find yourself hating your job, yourself, and those around you. But don’t you need money? Don’t you want to eat? How much hate is equal to new job? How much does food weigh on what you’re willing to put up with?

I think this is part of my struggle to understand the misnamed “other side” when it comes to things like Trump and fascism. I know there’s a host of underlying psychological forces. I know you can’t expect a dog to do your math homework or someone from southern Indiana to do much beyond fuck their cousin. If this is a “balance” to anything, it has to be the indifference, laziness, and hubris of people when confronted with all of the ignorant destruction that ilk represents. The universe has a dirty naked ass, wipe it, or be consumed.

I still don’t see us wiping though. We’re throwing up old mop bucket Joe next to an overflow of shit and hoping beyond hope it’ll catch just enough to keep us from drowning. We’re already drowning. We’re drowning in fear, excuses, and memes. We’re drowning in service to self-immolating capitalistic ethics. We’re drowning in ideas of our own saintliness and direction. We pretended “progress” was inevitable and not the violent ripping and defending of a standard from the abyss.

I sincerely need to get better at making escape plans. We require a revolution at a level unseen in human history. We can melt the entire planet via climate change or nuclear weapons in an instant. We will never wise up to the impossibility of negotiating with ideological and pathological terrorism, spearheaded and endorsed by fluid capital forces. What do you do besides retreat below ground until the fog clears?

I assert often that “we” don’t learn. We go to school. We pick-up various job skills and can generally meet a range of rules of survival. On the whole, I do not think the lessons earned through generations of death find their way into our being in a way that provokes constant proactive action. My immigrant grandparents birthed three out of four children willing to steal their resources and disparage their legacy after their death. Their lessons either translated to my dad and down to my brother and I, or we narrowly escaped the worse impacts and behavior related to trauma?

I return to the idea that World War II wasn’t that long ago. The idea that we would already have millions of people echoing Nazi sentiments or be ambivalent at racist flags at their rallies means an array of systems and their lesson plans failed miserably. While children are not born “blank slates,” they are malleable. If modernity has taught us anything, it’s to treat that malleability as fragile, volatile, and in need of a long-term planning and accountability.

Sometimes a small injustice is small. Sometimes larger systems subject small injustices to undue punishment. As a product of groupthink, we use conversational and psychological shortcuts to kneecap topics or people and then many years later those topics or people might embark on their comeback tour. When you’re out of balance, every injustice feels like the worst one. Every demand unmet makes you think the system can’t be persuaded. Every comparison you make involves an automatic assumption of your lack of power and constructs a narrow path to walk the story of your circumstances.

If nothing else, you can begin to bring balance back by entertaining broader and conflicting stories. You can read that as being generally “skeptical.” You can balance pessimistic sentiments with optimistic actions. You can voice your displeasure with detailed analysis and historical context while refraining from boiling everything down to how depressed or anxious you are. You can introduce oppositional voices into your safe spaces and study how they communicate or why others find them so compelling.

Out of context? My mind just said, “Relapse is part of recovery.” It’s a cliché that happens to be true. How often and severely you’re relapsing is an amplified drama when you’re accounting for the impact on children. The story of addiction is as much your personal experience and exposure as it is nefarious profit motives and crisis exploitation. For me, it’s also on the very large list of things I’ve never felt remotely compelled by. I can’t imagine my life as a methamphetamine addict or drinking myself to death. I can’t even register being a consistent smoker. Those are weights that don’t even exist on my scale. I think people get addicted to bullshit as much as anything else.

Through writing, I’ve been able to construct weights. I know how compelling my “psychopathy” feels at times verses my otherwise general indifference. I try to pay attention to when things I’m reading start to railroad thoughts of my growth or escape from a present form of consternation. I don’t “believe” I’m a good or bad person without lending snapshots of my life to scrutiny and conversation. I don’t pretend to understand myself outside of a context. Sometimes, perhaps my jaw is clenched because I’m hungry, and not because I feel the world is crumbling down around me.

I actively contend with dread. I didn’t use my time “off” between DCS and my new job to sit and spin. I got up and hunted appliances. I started forming a website. I made at least one relationship that has netted enough cash to pay the monthly bills, if nothing else, barring indulgences like room building. I seek new experiences and connections reflexively. I hauled the bricks and tore down a barn. I look for the work-around or negotiated reality.

What’s key is to remain in “reality.” You can talk yourself around reality, away from it, or never begin dealing with it. That’s what I see. That’s what I see a culture arrested by. That’s what I need to escape and feel a constant source of dread regarding. “Getting by” and “making money,” regardless of social work’s connotation is not “helping.” I’m not “growing” unless I’m refining my ability to fake enthusiasm or civility. It can all still collapse in a bigger and more dramatic way if record unemployment, 225,000 dead, the word quaking after the next thing Trump deigns to destroy, and environmental catastrophe aren’t enough for you.

You don’t want to pull together and get a little better organized? You want to scream in the street instead of takeover the castle? You want to, after about 14 years, finally be proud and share your “I voted” sticker and think that’s enough?