I try to emphasize in moments between frothing that I'm but one, infinitely small, window into the world, often befuddled, confused, and barely approximating the language that would “best” describe where I'm coming from. I approach sharing and vocal exercise with the idea that they are stomachs that need feeding or muscles that need stretching and conditioning. It's an analogy for everything worthwhile or terrible in life. You are what you do, or if you're stuck trying, what you're working on and shooting for.
As such, walking the line between “what I feel” and “how I think” can seem perfectly arbitrary or endlessly ambiguous to someone reading a blog in isolation or who is wholly unconcerned with giving me any credit. If I doubt that my tone or word choice was altogether awesome, I'm gonna bring it up. I'm gonna ask myself why and make another pass. A lot of that is just work I think you do as an individual to keep yourself honest. I want you to believe I'm doing my best, but I also need to be confident that it is, in fact, my best representation of the moment, if nothing else.
I want new ideas. It underlies why I bother to be an “everythingist” about life. I watch all the shows for a line or character I haven't met before or a point of connection with a stranger where something harder to recognize is never known. I want to have a perspective on different mediums of story-telling, like podcasts, and attempt to discern the “best” messages I've been missing or strategies for explaining something in a skillful way I lack.
In Know Your Enemy, the hosts are very giving of their praise and cutting in their criticism for different writers. I might choke at the idea of a “conservative intellectual,” but it means something that has practical and longstanding implications. They read the books. They describe the psychology, justifications, and emotional tenor of people compelled to functionally destroy what may otherwise be a salient opinion of fiscal responsibility or foreign policy but for all of the racism and ego. They point out how weird it is for a prominent public figure to brag about his A+ grades at 35 and to ignore his “self-made” conception of success started with a publishing company passed down from his father.
I really don't want to be that dumb. I try to incorporate the people that have shaped my perspective and drive. I try to shower praise and include your perspective into the larger project. It is very real for me how little I can do alone. That comes with it the burden of making sure people grasp and respect themselves and relative place in the picture so you can honestly discuss how to move forward. That comes with some actual vocalization and engagement with perspectives that are different from yours and approaching them with the patience and openness to ask more than tell.
For whatever I do in fact excel at, I have extreme deficits and perfectly visible blind-spots that almost everyone is keen to keep secret from me. Occasionally when they interject, I have a habit of pointing out a contradiction or confounding variable that becomes the pivot to a meta-discussion about the discussion and eventual derailing. One such instance is the offered argument that “I need to take responsibility for how I come across.” Superficially easy to say and agree with right? That alone is good advice when you're dealing with a world that is going to judge you and hold power over you. What happens when you breathlessly move on to your next argument that “you shouldn't care what people think?”
The details start to matter. Well, you should care about what the people close to you think, but not the ignorant masses lazily judging. You should at least vocalize you are taking responsibility for your “harsh” language, and then continue to do it anyway. When we feel personally attacked, we want the other person to take responsibility. When we feel we're “just being honest,” fuck the haters.
I don't believe you get anywhere if you don't start honest and believe the other person is too. Norman Podhoretz, the conservative on focus of this podcast episode, was friends with James Baldwin. He went on something of a racist tirade towards Baldwin who told him to write all of his grievances down and publish it, which he did, and it became a notable historical essay. I love this story, because I regard James Baldwin as an extreme truth teller first and foremost concerned with the truth. He didn't lash out and fight back, he said put that naked ass of your honest expression on paper to someone very comfortable displaying their naked ass, fast forward 50 years, we get a coherent throughline and useful perspective on how to discuss racist cultural issues.
I want a zeal for accountability. I'm fine with “crazy” people, so long as they are honest in their craziness, and we honestly account for their influence or what we're going to do about it. There are sincere racists that I want us all to be on the same page about how large we empower their influence. There are 74 million proud fascists which you shouldn't shy away from calling fascists. Your boss or owner is probably greedy and proud they sit above you, high on the perch of their small window. Lazy and loose talk will allow you to try and have it both ways, a false notion of your own righteousness married to perpetually justified ignorance of the many roles you're playing in destroying what we need to survive.
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From daily life to catastrophes, I can't shake the thought that it's a product of over-thinking. Over-thinking is not critical thinking. Over-thinking is coming to a relative or often obvious conclusion, and then doing nothing. Over-thinking is a coy held-harmless description about agency and taking responsibility for the moment.
I haven't been particularly anxious this week of snow days and very little money making. I'm not worried about the bills, the car or shed debt, or myself as an ardent TV watcher. This morning the sinking stomach started. I'm reminded how good I felt being able to pick up scrap again. I'm going to see how my play to leverage a new job works to let me make something worthwhile out of my current one.
It's obvious I should be paid enough to live and reward what I do. Every day I don't build how I'm going to live the obvious truth and consequences of that is on me. The "cling to practical" model of how to cope in two-week stints is obviously a path to hell. I'm not anxious about advocating for myself. I'm anxious about how hopeless it feels to do so. I'm hearing the "professional" excuses. I'm anticipating the open questions and work of mitigating an attitude that has crippled how we are to conceive of and relate to ourselves.
I want so little and increasingly obvious things. It makes for a stark contrast when I evaluate how little the systems I'm plugged into are designed to provide for those wants. If I want to grow, the system wants me in debt. If I want to show up and work every day, the system gives me an endless sea of entertainment. If I want more responsibility, the system says we should hold several meetings to dissect this curious notion of "responsibility," and maybe you should consider "doing your job."
I'm to believe that "fixes" or "hope" lies in some "generational struggle." These systems are failing me every day. They're freezing Texans to death. They're starving children. They're addicting you to opiates. The excuses for why the world feels like shit are happening right now. Can you hear them? Can you recognize the familiar patterns and design?
Why don't we, obviously, hold ourselves accountable? Why don't we force power to pay up? Why don't we strike? Do you want dramatically more than me at the expense of everyone else and the future? Why are you quiet? Why are you pretending you are a "good person" who can sit and wait until "the world" will bother? Are you a coward, or cunt?
Listen to the array of excuses and pleading for sympathy that washes over you from the last question. Feel the guilt. Watch how you ignore the real enemy and focus on my tone and word choice. Then forget this moment when someone pats you on the head and dismisses your needs in a "polite," professional, political manner. Come back to your easy target when you can't sort your feelings out, but you'll be damned if you're not going to continue thinking and praying about it. And you don't need my negativity trying to provoke you.
There is no hero if you're not one. It's obvious, at least to me, that I'm not the problem or enemy. I speak. I fight. I create. I state my goals and work on them. I pay attention. Do I want allies? If I could recognize any, sure. I'm not alone, but our club is too small for the size of the problem. It's got its own obligations and personal problems too. But it stays honest and fights back. It remains open and informed. It wants to isolate and judge and believe you can be left alone to suffer your decisions. But it knows the consequences of abandoning the project. The cancerous cultural mass is consuming us all.
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