I just got out of a conversation with two good-ole-boys otherwise understood as my neighbors. One, a former trucker, another, some kind of job that requires neon clothing. One, agnostic, man-of-all things with a lot of hillbilly knowledge, and is perfectly okay with treating people as they treat you, but damned if he'll tolerate a trans man going into the same bathroom as his daughter. The other, a Christian, was raised to believe if you're choosing to be gay, he views it like all sins including stealing or murder. He's suspicious of unions and doesn't believe his friend is genuine in his recent talk regarding a union he joined, but is trying to fit in. He does not believe in “white privilege” and knows plenty of poor white people, and disputes systemic racism. We all agreed that there's a lot of divisive talk in the media and that people need to get to know each other.
It's a kind of conversation that only takes place when people feel “comfortable” honestly relating their various strains of extremely problematic views immediately tagged with a held-harmless “reasonable” thing to reassure you. It's variations on, “but I have a black friend.” It's familiar, I find it boring, and it's the kind of thing you do just to kind of reassure your neighbors that you don't hate them when you'll need their heavy equipment.
To me, it highlights how, almost functionally useless talking can really be. I'm, in theory, diametrically opposed to, at least the Christian, neighbor, and for as cliché or stunted as the other's view on trans issues may be, he's never going to have the opportunity to confront a trans person who may be in the same bathroom as his, adult, daughter. The power, to not lose the theme, comes from listening, sharing honestly, and allowing for the discomfort of ambiguity chase them home to reflect on how you may (I did) pock the conversation deliberately with guilt or introspection-inducing ideas. Don't you know how uncommon it is for the “average” person to really sit down and figure out how to live with each other? Takes a special kind of person, perhaps the numskull Christian across the way, to really wrestle with practicing what he may preach.
The Christian neighbor made a point about how people want to belong. This was servicing his argument that democrats were being divisive and wanting to lean on anything, like race, to build a camp to belong to. I think his point is important in understanding how most people feel power. They belabor their family values, their traditions, or their creature comforts. For as much as you might profess to have your “faith,” it comes with a tangible community that is bringing you food when Jesus can't be bothered. I think there's a move to defer to the ambiguous values of the community as a kind a faux humility. In pawning off your good deeds, you're able to eschew the responsibility for your bad ones too.
I think a new kind of community can be forced. I think I can build a coalition around, “I'm tired of being poor.” Am I going to moderate the humble-ignant-religious nut as they hopefully discover their gay neighbor isn't choosing to, functionally murder, their soul? No. I'm past that. Don't need the seminar. Deeply and dismissively appreciate how long it will take you to find the truth. In an important sense, attempting to meet you where you are would absolutely destroy where I can and want to go. You don't get your PH.D. teaching kindergarten, but no doctor would dismiss the idea of educating children.
Do I consider not needing a god, my basic understanding of people as people worth a degree of understanding it might take work to achieve, and significant amount of reading I've done to conceptualize myself as a small piece of the whole powerful? Well, how am I using it? Neither of my neighbors walked away from that conversation pissed at me, if they even understood 90% of what I said in analogizing or drawing from historical examples. If I can no longer access their tools or a phone call when a new car comes to the area, what would “I and all my book-learnin'” get me? What did I want from that interaction? Simply, to honestly represent myself. I do know a lot, use big words in between saying fuck a lot, and am extremely sympathetic to black people and liberal views. What that looks like in that kind of exchange is almost like practicing an art.
They know I don't hate them, nor do I believe they hate me, and I think I could throw a party with as many different kinds of people as I wanted and they'd be safe out here. Does that mean the Christian neighbor would stay for the whole party? Probably not. Does that mean I want to attempt to mediate a bathroom argument while intoxicated between my other neighbor and the trans friend who defriended me for persistently disagreeing with a meme about thought and word policing? Fuuuuck no. Everyone is toothless, dumb, and extremely insecure. I wish you would bear that in mind about most people you talk to. Not me, but like, people. If you're going to be like them, respect what they actually consist of, and don't make a boogy-man and lazy conception that pretends they're dumber and lazier than where you're coming from.
Get in the mud. Focus on what's true for you. Years ago, I don't know that I would have had the patience or maturity not to simply make some smart ass comment about “dumb religious fucks” and how little I cared what they thought of me or what they might offer. It's not even that hard or a secret to understand that's not the way to go, unless you're me. You might not be as dramatic, but the same forces are at play in our political discourse. The same fears and discomfort preclude talking at all, let alone about the hard things. Ambivalent power will fill the void and we'll keep eating ourselves out from the inside if you can't find your voice.
My voice is moving to a new job. My demonstrated capacity is again disregarded. One day I went to sleep, the next, 6 months later, I woke up and am pursuing a new job. It didn't take 2 years like the last one. I didn't allow myself to get worked up and excessively stressed out. I trusted my voice, honestly relayed where I was at, and can cut ties without resentment. I'm judging the shit out of people dumb enough to let me leave, but that's on them. I'm hoping the example I set and conversations I had are little seeds for other people to use to find a place more representative of what they are worth too. There are so few examples of those willing to remind us what we're worth or what we should be shooting for.
No transition, but I've been thinking of a way to talk about a Jordan Peterson video I struggled to watch. Peterson has been severely ill for the last few years. His wife beat cancer. His daughter has had extreme health issues throughout her life as well. Recently, he was in a conversation with Jonathan Pageau. I don't know Pageau, but Peterson enjoys him and considers him a deep thinker with regard to Orthodox Christianity. Peterson, broken, searching, is discussing the “inevitability” of Christ when you chase all the ideas of the greatest good and what it means to be conscious. Peterson is on the verge of tears several times throughout the discussion. Peterson posits, “Does the fact that that's how it should be mean that that's the way that it is? And that's trust, that's a question of trust.” in discussing aiming for the best, and embodying what you believe.
Pageau gets a smug look and says, “It's a question of truth with which ends up manifesting itself in love [] and I think that like the love that you have for the world which is [] clear...anyways, it shows me that you migtht be closer to that trust than you might want to admit to yourself maybe.” as his voice trails off.
THIS IS THAT INSIDIOUS POWER SHIT. Fuck that guy.
Peterson says he doesn't know what to do with his thoughts, is the most confused person he's ever met, and says he's working at about 5% of what he considers normal. Peterson is vulnerable, and here come the Christians coming to prey on him.
This kind of power I feel is precisely why most things are fucked beyond measure. If you want a convert, go at them at their best and win. Don't hijack their weakness and pair subversive language to their struggle. Are you a pathetic boss who doesn't want to be undermined? Drone about policy and abstract plans until someone like me quits. Are you ashamed or naive about your privilege? Tell all your white friends, where it's safe, and your ideas can congeal as a vote for fascism. Parasitic subversion is the preferred method of the worst ideas and behaviors into popular discourse precisely because when it's uncovered and felt for what it's doing, you might struggle against how it's killing you.
The comment section is littered with chirps and prayers and the typical, excruciatingly gross prostrations I can only depict in the image of those crowds falling over when the preacher pretends to be imbuing the congregation with heavenly manna. What's the power they seek? The power of the crowd, the familiar affirmations, and deeply personal shares of their own pain or epiphanous exhaustion that finally brought them to accepting the truth of the metaphysical. Since it's true you should be good, and Jesus is good, Jesus is the truth! – circular reasoning triumphs! Transitive property FTW! It's definitely not assumptions couched in word-salad and trust/love-laden language foisted upon the self-confessed exhausted and confused mind. GO TO HELL!
I'm not angry or suspicious when you say you care about someone or enjoy talking to them. I'm extremely skeptical and pessimistic about the move to divorce your agency from your actions towards them. I don't care how many thousands of words you use to “minister” to someone, you will inevitably find yourself drawn in a circle, justifying anything or everything and nothing but because you could and it makes you feel good. You'd rather hide from the ego that nakedly enjoys it. You'd rather shutter your window into yourself and the world and play on the merry-go-round of your reasoning to nowhere. You're not seriously engaged in the world when you can blame Jesus or when you're preying on the weak. You're letting the world burn in service to egos high on their own supply.
I seek to destroy with my power. I don't want explosions and death. I want to kill this fluid habit of acting like parasites looking for hosts and validation in everything besides our best ideas or capacity. You want to “intellectualize” religion and call that Christ? You take on all the baggage. The predators are on your team. Is your sacrifice of who you are for what they tell you you are worth it? Jordan Peterson has meant a considerable amount to me, and not for his ability to break and choke down bullshit because a pleasant goatee mirrored his pain and called it love.
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