[1213] Stupid Monkey

Part of me feels like what I want to say could fit on an index card. It’s a part that doesn’t need articulation. It’s the face a monkey makes when he sees he’s being paid unfairly for the same task as another monkey.

There’s a “common sense,” I find is rarely lost on anyone at the level of “feelings.” This isn’t to say that the feelings, in and of themselves, are “reasonable” or “justified.” But they bind what is an otherwise vast array of different cultural expressions or norms. It’s so common, even when a monkey does it, we get it immediately. No doubt you’ve seen videos of other animals who can also, not-so-miraculously, clock when they’re not treated fairly.

I think this is no small point to linger on. As we’ve psychologically fractured into individualized scrolling-hellscapes of errant opinion and trolling hatred, it’s the hate that binds. It’s the confident ignorance that universalizes. It’s the fear, insecurity, and desire to control that gets fed.

Today’s reddit scrolling felt acutely dismal. I’m on team, “we’re literally trotting down the road to fascism.” I don’t read headlines about “jokes” about cancelling elections or redistricting as “just politics.” I see and listen to the death by a 1000 cuts nature of decline every day. I’ve made comments for years that I always hoped to be “the first Jew out of Poland” when the next global war takes place. History rhymes, and there’s echoes all over the place if you’re one of the handful of people still reading books and studying reality.

I’m like most people my age, first-world broke, but incredibly rich relative to the rest of the world. There’s a version of my life that ducks and covers as more and more suffer, and I, probably, remain one of the ones who talks about the camp they set up just down the road in Shoah 2. I’m not pretending they won’t or can’t come after me, but I’m decently far down the list if I don’t pop my head out.

I think a lot of people in similar circumstances are making that same calculation. The problem, of course, is that is precisely how we all end up dead. I’m also very loud, angry, and want to fight wherever a I can. Practically, this often translates into exactly this. I’m using my voice where I see relatively few others doing so. I’m trying to capture the contradictions in my behavior, goals, and perspective so I don’t sit paralyzed and making excuses.

While “the world” feels like it’s burning down, I’m sitting on the edge of an opportunity to distance myself from it even further, potentially making a lot of money starting a sober-living house. I’ve never needed that much money to conduct my life in the first place, and this opens me up (at least my thoughts) to levels of luxury, security, and indulgence I dreamed about as a greedy kid. It’s hard to square that with my deeper desire to just exist in a state and country that even pretended to have “common sense.”

Instead, I feel baked into a cake of helpless ignorant hatred and excuses. It feels like “natural license” to exploit and extract as much as I can before I run away to somewhere “safer” or “better.” To me, the “homeland” is wherever the ideals are being expressed and defended. “America’s,” alleged, ideals are often in considerably better shape and display elsewhere. I’ve never felt like the kind of person who would just go along with being drafted into a war I didn’t choose.

At the same time, again practically, I’ve felt for years the disconnect between what I might be able to do on any given day that meaningfully accounts, combats, or changes the overall circumstances I’m embedded in. I vote in every election, and it’s meant what? I get the consequences of ideological capture of institutions and redneck pride indefinitely. I listen to dozens of podcasts and used to read a minimum of 30 articles a day, for years, about the world. What did it get me? Low-grade depressed and ever isolated as I struggled to clock why no one wanted to talk to me.

I think my confusion, outrage, and sense of helplessness in spite of the growing localized evidence of my capacity and nature is something that can be universalized. I think if I, of all people, am calculating I need to extract and run, your “average” person with myriad more obligations, mental health struggles, and financial woes…I mean, they’re so tortured and lost they’re cheering on a fascist takeover, environmental destruction, and every attack on science and history they can muster. In addiction-speak, millions of people have caught the “fuck its,” and are burning everything down around them.

The ”non-voters” win every election. The people who are looking to be led around by the nose. Most days it feels like the best I can do is ensure I don’t get trampled and try to pass along more than an enfeebled joke to the next leading farm hand. I don’t actually think, my pretentions as they are, I’m actually licensed or called to exploit people. I don’t feel good about the prospect of abandoning ship, but I’m not going to pretend I don’t know how to swim. Millions and millions of people until the end of time are going to deny we’re in the same boat as we all slowly drown.

The monkey will scream and fight and struggle against someone trying to drown it. You’ll tell me the researcher was joking. You’ll tell me it’s normal to drown a monkey from time to time. A majority of onlookers will then say something like, “I don’t get political about monkeys or water.” I feel like it doesn’t take a big brain or moral courage to figure the absurdity out and why you don’t want to be a monkey-drowning cunt or lazy apologist for the ones that do.