[1227] Catch

I gotta get little free-wheeling. The last 2 days my energy levels have been off or confusing, but now I’m on the brink of sliding back into a more productive and active place. This is causing some messy thoughts to coalesce marginally more coherently.

I was trying to land on a word to describe what I “fear.” Fear isn’t the right word though. It’s the vague approximate way to couch what I feel, but I’m not actually afraid. There’s a lot of words that fit under the vague fear umbrella that, when combined, would start to get at what I feel.

I’m “exhausted,” in a way that’s akin to the Nietzschean use of the term. I’m “confused,” less about the mechanics of why or how things play out, but that they should do so in a demanding and persistent way. I’m “curious” for an unknown-unknown black-swan kind of surprise or solution to what feel like intractable problems.

I wouldn’t have to search for a list of 100 things that are “wrong” or “unjust” or “unfair” or “ridiculous” or “backwards” or “horrifying” regarding our political environment, “leaders,” and the consequences of their behavior. It seems like every waking moment of my life is an invitation to suffer and react with as base a hatred and dread for what’s happening as exists. Every single moment of every single day I’m reminded of something that’s trying to kill me or something I care about. Every single day I’m clued into a threat to my future, what I care about, and the world I’d wish to leave.

What prevents real “fear” from kicking in is thinking at scale. I know we’re infinitely small. I know time rages on. I know, fundamentally, all feeling and indulgent selfish complaints are choices. I can make that same choice as any given fascist, or I can do this. I can continue to advocate for my values, patience, and imagined future no matter how hot the fire they’re burning me with gets. It’s taken years to recognize that in order for that to qualify as a decision, it can’t be made in spite. The fascists are spiteful. They are at the mercy of that spite.

I think in probabilities. My feelings tend to align with how more or less probable I think something is. I think we are a fantastic force for creative good. I think we’re considerably more likely to let the insatiable bad overwhelm until we hit a kind of default restart state. I think apocalyptic narratives are popular for this reason. We all kind of assume that we’ll get tribal. We all bet that the richest will continue to get rich and exploit and there will be a permanent underclass. The best we get to do is imagine ourselves in the boardroom or bunker contemplating what’s happening “out there.”

When I think about things long-term or at scale, it prompts me to consider myself in a hyper-local way. I’m not making the decisions to starve children across the globe or knee-cap mRNA vaccines. I’m not setting arbitrary tariffs or dumping forever chemicals into water supplies. I’m not trying to incorporate the evil, waste, and stupidity of anything I’m a part of to justify the consequences. I mean, sure, as a normal human I exist in a state that has to do that in an existentially default sort of way, but it’s not my compulsion. It’s not my cope. I make reference to what I build, and why I built it, regularly for this reason. I need a standing refutation to the arbitrary, greedy, vindictive death that surrounds me.

I do think those of us on more or less the same reasonable page do ourselves a huge disservice by the language we use. I’m angry when someone says “misinformation” instead of “lies.” People are just lying, and have been, for decades. It’s not abstract. It’s not polite. There will never be enough people who die in service to it to trigger some kind of moral awakening. You have to call it a lie and you have to speak the truth, every single time, every single day. If you can’t tell it’s a lie or if you can’t make yourself face and identify it, the game is over.

I’m sympathetic to the idea that it’s incredibly hard to articulate. This is the 1,227^th time I’ve tried to find the words for what I’m feeling. This is the forever-process I’ve identified that seeks to land on one most-true statement after the next, sentence by sentence, eagerly searching for the novelty or insight that makes the next moment go down smoother. I’m a solutions-oriented thinker. You want to vent? You better make that clear, or I’m going to reflexively start offering “fixes” like this.

In a hyper-local way, I can and do continue to build my own little environments. I get presented with the exact same kinds of choices as those shaking up the world, and I can choose to hold myself accountable to the standards they forgo. I can also see where the conflicts and contradictions can turn into excuses. I’m using recycled materials for a fence I’m building. I also burn trash. I’m concerned about the environment, but obviously more concerned about the cost and inconvenience of disposing of waste in other ways. I also don’t know that it’s not going to get burned anyway given what I’ve read about global waste systems. I’m likely just saving time.

If I felt guilt or less comprehensive in my reading and behavior, ignoring that guilt would be the dangerous sin and precarious place that allows for unending excuse-ridden catastrophe. If you can show me we have a real recycling process or show me we’re holding the corporations accountable for implementing production processes, I’ll go out of my way to ask for paper instead of plastic to bag my groceries. Most days, it’s one of a million things that’s going to give me a micro-dose of stress I can’t really do anything about.

I don’t think it’s hard to figure out what you can do locally. I think it’s hard to stay mindful about the nature of your locality. We’re, seemingly, infinitely distracted, not just by the horrors, but by the placations. We’ve got hundreds and thousands of hours invested in our entertainment. We’ve got incredibly stressful and often-meaningless jobs. We’ve got our health issues. We’ve got our kids and pets. We’ve got the dictums and pain points and policy of even the most well-meaning and fulfilling spaces we may have found. The accumulation of small pleasantries, acts of defiance, or utilitious indulgence can often feel futile or resonate as a form of mockery.

I arrange my space to be useful to me. I don’t have to knock down historic monuments in raging metaphorical ways in order to feel at home. I try to eat and drink that which fills me with joy or comfort. I try to allow myself outlets for when inspiration hits. I don’t use my tools and instruments every day. Every single moment I do speaks overwhelmingly to a need that can’t be met another way. I need to create. I need to build. I need to see manifest in the world what I’m feeling in a way the last thing I wrote doesn’t meet.

The things that have chronically plagued me become merely useful foundational information for the next choices I wish to make. My personality isn’t one for addiction, but I empathize with being chronically unable to resolve problems that feel infinite. I can’t “fix fascism,” right? I can’t convince the brain worms to protect our collective health. I can’t talk a billionaire off the anti-Christ cliffs. I can’t line up the pedophiles and let the victims take their revenge.

I can talk about them. I can tell the truth. I can go back outside and keep building my fence. I can ensure the 8 people living in my first sober-living house feel like their needs are being met in a timely way. I can enjoy my coffee. I’m going to keep going to my concerts, comedy shows, theater productions, beer fest, and honking enthusiastically at anyone on a corner holding a sign protesting the unnecessary death of us all.

I think the practical, tangible work of survival is a messy congregation of all the memes, protests, “EVISCERATION” moments in punditry and debate, but needs to be undergirded by the same kind of persistent survival network at exists in fascist forms. I’m encouraged by all of the extremely-local efforts to get school-board people elected. I’m encouraged by the run-for-something crowds building infrastructure in areas long abandoned. I like the hard numbers showing what you can do for 1 million dollars when we’re seeing how to routinely waste billions. Someday, in a bigger way than merely alluding to those efforts at the end of a personal coping strategy, I hope to be part of telling those stories and connecting as many people as possible to the large plurality that already *gets it.* I’ve heard the term “reality-based community” a few times recently, already poised to get pitted against The Truest Truth-Tellers or Perfect-Faithers, I’m sure.

I say often enough how easy things are to understand when you consider children. You don’t debate a child about how much sugar they get to eat, bed time, bathing, or school. You do if you’re a moron or liberal caricature, but not if you, even only intuitively, understand what a child is. Not if you grasp that the infinite ignorance and precarity of youth can get you killed instantly. Not if you feel curious and excited about what that child can be with the right kind of direction and vision. We are forever children. We betray that child by pretending we’re equally as helpless to fix or change something as they are. We’ve been riding excuses for decades. We’ve been pretending there aren’t concerted efforts designed to kill and control us by weaponizing and systematizing our vulnerabilities.

Choose, right now, and then 1000 more times today, to do even 1% better than what’s contributing to the chaos. Why die any sooner than you already have to?