It’s hard to say if a lot has been on my mind, or if I’ve just had too much time to myself, but here we are again. The last thing I wrote was my 1000th post to blogger. Every time I hit a “milestone” like that, I look for some kind of “extraness” in the air. I also beat my 8000th level of Candy Crush today. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they both feel the same “meh.”
I think I just want to drill old themes. I’m feeling self-satisfied, or like I earned
a kind of pretension about “things” or “the state of the world.” Does anyone
remember when the “new atheists” first hit the scene? The God Delusion was all the rage and there were a series of debates and documentaries over the
next few years that I couldn’t get enough of. At the heart of the fervor was a question
on the method and discernability of truth. Do you adopt faith, or reason?
In the giant pile of books I read during that period, The Portable Atheist I remember leaving an impression because it provided historical accounts.
The same fights I had been having online were recorded in ancient times. Word
for word arguments and reasoning. It signaled the beginning of the end of my infatuation
with the subject matter. The past reached out and told me, explicitly, I was never
going to “win” the “argument.” In fact, it never was, nor ever will be, about
an argument or “different views.” Something deeper, simpler, or just else was
going on.
That we live in a world with seemingly unfettered access to all information,
and yet are still compelled by fascism, propaganda, and try desperately to justify
moves that control speech I think underscores the insight from above. “Everything”
exists, or has existed, forever, and your agency, or lack thereof, is resulting
in competing environments. You might think of those who say democracy has to be
continually fought for. You might study various revolutions and discover they
all rhyme. Your better angel is nestled inextricably against every evil thing
you’re capable of. To the extent you deny or shy away from considering that
idea, you rob yourself of your agency, and those with the most intention lead
you around by the nose.
I think this is how I get the great distinction as the one to blame. I think a
lot about the incidents I believe have lent themselves to the “ghosting” by my
former college group. “We” didn’t party together. “I” threw the party, created
an atmosphere where people just happened to find themselves hooking up and
doing drugs. Something bad happens at the party? There’s a clear ringleader. No
one else could have stepped in, banded together, or used their voice because,
well, I was just so compelling, overwhelming, and every other slew of judgments
volleyed over the years. So, of course if someone alleges rape, I
probably did it. Of course, I knew that providing access to acid would result
in a shitty afternoon for anyone who had to engage with Dave. A man can choose
to go to war, but he can’t choose me shoving drugs down his throat.
To be sure, I’m not denying my capacity of my own agency. That’s, incidentally,
the precise thing people utilize. I know how people tick. I own my power. Naturally,
that’s not to be trusted, because when you’re surrounded by people who don’t
recognize their agency, there’s literally nothing and no one else to blame if
you won’t just pawn things off to your god. This works insidiously in the other
direction when you consider “strong men” like Trump. Malignant narcissism is a
manipulating force. You’re not going to describe yourself as victimized by the
fascist. You’re going to revel in the symbolic embodiment of all it claims to
be!
We do this, in our respective camps, until we die or the cows come home. We
have little snippets of art or religious lore to suggest to us how to behave
better, but they fall prey to that deeper, simpler, other thing. We don’t
really know a great many things, in fact, an infinite number of things.
Whatever can be said of our consciousness, it was much simpler in baser-animal
form for most of conscious existence. All we had were “beliefs.” My cat “believes”
it’s going to starve if I don’t feed it when it’s hungry. My cat “believes” it “deserves”
to eat from the trash, sleep on me, bug me for affection, or to play with
things that are not toys.
I think the internet allowed us to accelerate the march to the cliché of, “You
believe what you believe, I’ll believe what I believe.” When the god verses
science talk was kicking off, I didn’t just get to “debate” with other
interested intellectuals who had studied the same material, it was a free-for-all
of every opinion and potentially patently crazy view vying to snuff out facts
and figures. You can’t tolerate the intolerable. It didn’t occur to me that
those people weren’t after the same thing and weren’t governed by the same
rules. After all, to them, it looks and feels like they’re doing “god’s work”
and are the correct and righteous camp. Even those not on their side adopt that
rationale to “respect other’s beliefs” routinely.
For what might be innocently lazy reasons, this all feels acceptable until you’re
at the end of the judgement stick. All of a sudden, you and your reasons wish
to be understood. You’re magically cured of the de facto group reasoning, and
it becomes important both you and them agree on why you shouldn’t be burned at
the stake. If you’ve spent all your time thus far swimming in familiar pools
and schools, you probably don’t realize in the same way there is no argument,
you can’t win, and fire awaits provided you keep making appeals to the crucifiers.
What do you do? Do I obsess every day that I’ve been accused of rape? No, but I
evaluate drunken circumstances and the hook-up culture I helped cultivate and
don’t try to recreate the circumstances. Has my behavior been questionable?
Absolutely. Have I ever forced someone to fuck? Fuck no. I’m not scared to talk
about it or say it either lol. It’s not controversial to me to not rape someone
and then talk about how you didn’t do so even if you can empathize with drunk
regret. I don’t need to attack someone’s feelings or credibility to understand
the perspective that localizes me as the one responsible. Could I have guessed
Dave’s time on acid wasn’t going to go great? It was better than even odds. You
know what neither I, nor any of his “friends” did, tell him not to. He was adamant
he was going to do more. Personally, I kind of prefer that he at least did it
around people and not by himself given the state of his mental health at the
time.
The begrudging truth, independent of our subjective opinions, is we cultivate
the landscape together, or it cultivates us. We take responsibility for choices
we acknowledge and we can examine the routes we took to get there. Is it littered
with finger-pointing? It’s why I’ve trained myself to blame “you,” the
voiceless, formless, ironic void that I speak into when I find the urge to
reiterate the infinite moment we’re either suffering or utilizing.
How do you arrive at truth? Is it even possible? This is the garbage being used
politically to obfuscate important lines in how we identify ourselves. Those
fed up with the game follow the leader to whatever claims they make. Those
maybe angry enough at the deterioration get loud and occupy space. Those with
the resources, perspective, or otherwise manifest as personally gratifying
consequences and efforts to preserve environments, mental and physical, that
instantiate their power. The fundamental irony being that we can’t really know
our power, because we don’t know the contributions and deficits offered in
every moment of our attempted exercise of it. Moreover, we don’t want to know.
It would interrupt our personal narrative. It would make us feel insignificant
and uncomfortable. It might disrupt our ideas of who and what we’re responsible
to.
Personally, I feel on the border of “too powerful.” I say this only because of
my attitude to that $42 bottle of wine, if you’ve been paying attention to me.
I do slip, in that, I’m human, and forgo the amount of agency or power I might
otherwise exert. I can’t control my heart rate and blood pressure. I can’t reflexively think “positive” or “forgiving”
thoughts when people do things I feel license to get pissed off about. I feel
like the world is closing in on me. The more I pay attention to those incidents,
the less I feel I know what my responses are supposed to represent if they’re merely
reactive. I stop existing in those moments.
To that end, to the extent I want to just “feel good” in my loathing or sense
of injustice, I can adopt a reactionary and judgmental posture that refuses to
engage with the infinite question and situation at hand. I can judge myself as
lazy or unworthy of the brain and body I’ve been given. I can call my exercise
of time “wasteful.” I can set
psychological barriers to my enjoyment or prejudge the consequences of my
actions as though I don’t have meaningful reasons for why I do anything.
I don’t want people needlessly harmed by who I am or how I behave. I won’t deny
seeing how their behavior doesn’t return the favor. Whether it’s the “harm” of
being a dumb loud cunt in an environment where you should be quieter, or the physical
and psychological harm of playing with human vulnerability. I’ve generally
chosen the pursuit of incorporating the negative feedback, exploring where it
came from, and identifying the circumstances under which I might act or believe
the same. It’s been a lot of work. It’s been over 1000 dives into how I’m using
my words and orienting myself, and I’m still working stories from college, if
not my childhood, into the dough.
What are you doing? I’m kidding lol. I know you’re not gonna tell me. You won’t
even tell yourself.
No comments:
Post a Comment