[1090] Chain Chain Chain

I'm in something of a somber mood. I want to expand on some ideas I've alluded to on a few posts or blogs over the last few weeks.

It happens often enough when I've too much time, but a pissing match online will ensue. This latest one over the immensely tired "controversy" of Dave Chappelle. Comedians serve as kind of a canary in a coal mine for me. You literally don't get a more immediate piece of feedback on where we are culturally than when someone, lauded for crafting humor, observes and reports the landscape, then everyone piles in afterwards. Sometimes they do so in a way that makes you think they believe the stage was really theirs and it's a sham that anyone would be allowed to take it and say what's been said, let alone laugh.

The person I reacted to, proudly, said they didn't even even watch the special. They called Dave a bigot who spreads hate and misinformation. They epitomized what I suspect a conservative thinker would describe as an angry "woke" cliche with arguments centered around ideas of "punching down," who does or does not have a voice, what even constitutes "comedy," and above all else how deeply they feel regarding, and this is key, the intent to harm. Words are still violence for these types of people. And any word they feel violently assaulted by, well, what kind of civilized society would allow that?

So much enters my mind at this juncture. The overwhelming ego and narcissism of modernity creeps in. The perfect ambivalence to using, about as simple of words as we get, like "violence" incorrectly. The absolutely exhausting compulsion to exude a flood of feelings to circumvent even the concept of a coherent discussion. It's the lack of irony or self-awareness. It's the energy spent functionally barking as though you're unwilling, incapable, and indignant about the prospect of being responsible and accountable to context. It's a perfect engine for feelings of hopelessness.

That posture. The confidence those who are "right" have is shaping up to be my capacity for emotional well-being's nemesis. I can't wrap my head around it. It manifests in so many ways. My trial-by-fire introduction was arguing religion. As I've gotten older and spent time in places I hardly imagined I ever would, I've seen it manifest constantly.

You don't lie to a judge about the health of someone else's family unless you are "religiously convinced" of your own righteousness. 

You don't get intractably indignant at your caseworker for your failure to protect a foster child from your son molesting her unless you were under a powerful delusion about what the picture of Jesus on your wall really meant about the likelihood of said molestation.

You don't sacrifice every waking minute of your life to work unless you've adopted unshakeable notions of nobility that comes with being exhausted, away from family, devoid of hobbies, friends, or a perspective on anything that doesn't pertain to that work.

You don't blithely accuse strangers of every terrible sin or behavior imaginable, without evidence, in precisely the opposite forum, like a comedy show, for your perspective to make sense.

You don't do things like "I know you are, but what am I" when someone challenges you with your own quoted words in disbelief that you seem unable to see what you've said.

You don't stay in abusive dynamics unless you are absolutely convinced there's something "greater" or "nobler" in trudging through a practically miserable existence whitewashed by the words "family," or "love."

You don't ignore and bankrupt efficient accountable means to fix problems to preserve your power or sense of control.

You don't cheer fascists and vote down measures to help the poor unless fundamentally, you and yours, by whatever means necessary, are correct.

It's not a "want" or "need." It just "is." Jesus is. Muhamed is. The power of crystals is. The inevitability of markets and capitalism is. The power of the state is. You being powerless is. Over and over and over and over and over and over and over and fucking over is there someone there telling you how it is. This show is good. You want to buy this. You have to work. People are this or that. Your attention belongs here. My side is obviously right. It all has to be and is always about sides. You are the extent of my judgement, and my judgment is based on my judgment, so let's spin-round, vomit, and repeat forever.

A couple weeks ago, I wrote a blog titled "Dead Kids." The main idea, if these ever have one, is that you don't care about dead kids. I don't consider that speculation or a moral judgment upon you. I consider it a practical fact. I don't care about dead kids either. Intellectually, of course I do. Emotionally and practically? They're not dying at my front door. I'm not dropping the bombs. I don't exert an immediate control over the circumstances under which children are dying. They are less important to me than my next meal. There are billions of people, living and dying constantly, and none of us really care about that until it's personal.

We ignore this at a our perpetual peril. As we ignore it, we allow ourselves to believe a story about our inherent righteousness. We start to think we're the good ones. As anyone who has genuinely attempted to do something good can attest, your intent, when it doesn't align with practical reality, doesn't matter. You get ignored. People don't care. Neither you nor I am a good person. We're just people. And people are animals. And animals don't give a fuck.

"Human" is a scientific intellectual construction. You don't get to be human by default. You have to learn and adopt rules. You have to sacrifice "merely animal" instincts and habits. To the extent any one of us is pulling off "human" versus "ape" can be fairly well assessed. We build what we seemingly aspire to in our mythologies. We carry on like a "godly" standard is flashing its naked ass in front of us at all times. We've built incredibly complicated systems of laws and bureaucracy to deliberately slow down our impulsivity and propensity for violence. The less you concern yourself with the hows and whys those systems operate, the less we should be obligated to consider you as anything but a noisy animal.

How we decide to treat that animal says a lot about us, but to treat it as an equal to those who work to actually practice the values of being human? Our cultural psychosis is so entrenched, we literally mythologize sacrificing those people and crown their martyrdom as a peak achievement.

While writing this, I got a response from the person in my latest pissing match.

"Touché. You have my respect. Please appreciate that my assertion that you were trolling was based on my perspective that a nameless, faceless, and apparently 98 year old man was, unprompted, attacking my expression of my views on somebody else, because I am assuming that you aren't Dave Chappelle himself, and I felt it necessary to defend my position because historically I have had to justify my very existence to what at times feels like everybody when the media and politicians are pushing a transphobic agenda on the initially largely-apathetic public, and as such I am naturally incredibly defensive.

When I can gather the emotional energy to do so, I will sit down and watch The Dreamer, make notes, and pass them on to you, it's only right for me to do so." Exactly. Green Day's, "Know Your Enemy" plays in my head. I'm not their enemy, and neither is Dave.

Wherever you find yourself on any position, when you occupy "have to justify" space, you're doing it wrong, noble intentions or otherwise. The less you concern yourself with the motivated reasoning of justification, the better the chance you have for understanding the multi-faceted, indeed infinite, nature of everything. You can take the fire out of your belly by honestly observing and evaluating. It's not actually a fight with anything, ever, but yourself. And, barring consistently demonstrated evidence to the contrary, you probably have a miserable idea of what you even are.

I can describe myself in less than admirable terms because I'm looking for who I am. I'm not convinced. I am every single example, good and bad, rolled into this ongoing moment. That can operate as the power of perspective, or it can be an infinite sea of obscurity to hide behind and justify whatever comes next. Who I am has been on my mind as I continue slogging through trying to be my own boss. I'm not the same person that started the coffee shop. I'm not the teenager who was readily primed to fixate on a singular agenda or idea until I got my way. I'm not that old, but I can certainly distinguish myself from younger people. My motivations have changed. My priorities have shifted. It's impossible to say to what degree any of it is good or bad. It obligates me to explore and reassert what needs it and let die what doesn't.

I remark on my relative wealth a lot. I don't know if I've heard half a coherent conversation about "priviledge," but I do know pretty much everyone I've ever met has had access to nearly everything we could ever need to live a decent life together. My cohort is educated. They were born in a, barely, still free country. They're fed. They have, most often divorced, but homes nonetheless. They are their own worst enemy. They are up against competing narratives or individual pathological behavior or particular illness.

I'm gathering that it's dangerous to acknowledge this. You don't just do so and then die having completed the game. You have to carry on the rest of the day doing whatever it is you do. Maybe that's a job you hate for not enough money. Maybe it's spending time with family who don't recognize you or you can't trust. My ego likes to believe it's getting antagonized by me and what I suggest we do with all of our time left and debt. We have an incredible amount of time to suffer or celebrate our circumstances.

The suffering is familiar. We've learned how to glorify it. We are slaves to the imposed narratives trying to stuff a bored, confused, angry ape into a human construct. This builds that inherent tension and "contradiction" into what it means to exist or why you should even bother. You're not actually a contradiction. You're an ongoing sum total and set of probabilities. We may never understand the mechanism that predicts this word or that word comes next, but I acknowledge that I'm doing something peculiar, specific, and different in relationship to my experience by writing and slowing down than in the moment I scream at someone who pulls a dangerous driving maneuver.

That's the terror of staying alive. Every moment there's someone poised to run you off the road. If they were exhausted having worked themselves to death for years in an exploitative and unforgiving environment or if they were distracted texting, the result and dramatic consequence for you remains the same. Either of the causes, or any imagined one that doesn't involve wildlife or the environment crashing in, requires the same obligation towards taking responsibility and exploration on comprehensively accounting for how to lower the probability of it happening again. You can have that discussion upside down in a ditch, or somewhere in the years before a predictable seemingly inevitable tragedy takes place.

This is often my counsel with my clients. You don't practice crisis management in the throes of a crisis. No professional waits until they meet someone choking to see if their understanding of the Heimlich maneuver works. If you're not practicing in the meantime, when the crisis hits, you'll default to whatever coping mechanism you discovered along the way, if that involves a deadly drug or other form of self-harm, that's what you'll do. Agency has left the equation. Choice is an ideal. The situation actually "is." To the extent you suffer your experience of it is what you can learn to navigate.

Humans can see things coming, prepare, project a series of consequences into the future, and do better exactly right now. Animals project their incomplete and irrational feelings onto every possible future in every single moment, pretending to have done the same work, finding conviction to double down and destroy whatever potential exists right now. They conserve their opinion into a dense weapon used to knock you out.

A lot of my behavior, and for the matter what I can gather from Hussain's, is driven by a sense of helplessness and anticipation of suffering. That's what was physically beaten into me. My baseline disposition is disproportionately informed by my abusive upbringing. I can't completely erase, reconfigure, or deny how stomach-dropping, shivering, flinching child is the foundation. I didn't have a choice in that. I suspect no matter how old I get I will resonate at an "irrational panic" level as though I've actually done something terrible or that the principal is going to expel me. It's a simple choice to acknowledge that, joke about that, write about it, or talk about it in a way that doesn't leave me perpetually victimized. That doesn't mean we're not victims or that we can't victimize. That doesn't mean we're not still at the mercy of forces that bring us to our knees. As intimately as you might eventually understand yourself, it doesn't mean you have someone else perfectly nailed in turn.

I find my life fascinating how much I've achieved in a relatively short amount of time. When I really sit in how much I've invested in learning to play instruments, how many books and shows I've consumed, how many projects i've completed, how much crap I own, and how much I'm looking forward to, it's impossible to take that exercise seriously and claim anything but the most naive sense of despair or hopelessness. What is debt when you have the capacity to pay it off? What is "stuck" when your fingers, feet, and voice aren't broken?

Every year you're alive is a smaller and smaller percentage of your existence. But every year your potential grows if you're acknowledging, incorporating, and moving with the changes. Staying defensive, quiet, and reactionary is shameful if you profess to be human. Burrowing into self-imposed guilt predicated on someone else's dogshit narrative is shameful too. You may not have all the words or even close to the best ones. You either own the life you're leading or we stay trapped in this place that pretends tomorrow will get better in spite of ourselves instead of because of it.