[1124] Anomaly

I'm "weird." I know I'm weird. It's been apparent my entire life. I do and say the things you won't. The fact that I'm writing is weird. The fact that I've been writing for nearly 20 years is weird. I live in a weird house. I approach normal things like TV in a weird way. I'm in a weird field and trying weird ways to attempt to do business. There's something(s) about what I was born with that differentiate me. It's more than something like brown eyes or curly hair, but it's also no more than "boring" attributes like that put to work over time.

I'm still in the woods of Peter Boghossian and his interviews with people who have been bitten by reactionary forces. He can get exhausting in how much he lets on, but I think his core perspective and points are sound. He wants evidence and reason. He wants conversation. He wants to figure out how we protect institutions from the human propensity to devolve into tribal incoherence. He's weird.

I'm increasingly aware of how weird it is to want to "do better." A growth, evidence, and accountable mindset are the exception, not the rule. I happened to have watched the first episode of The Imagineering Story. Walt Disney was a weird generator from which the whole of what we know as amusement parks has followed. It took dozens of imagineers and thousands of people to put it all together, but he pushed everyone over the cliffs. It makes me think about the first time I heard that it's something like 5% of overly-motivated and radicalized revolutionaries that overthrow something or kick off new eras. The vast majority of the population is living in the wake of a relatively small handful.

To be sure, I have serious doubts about the "great man of history" narratives. I do not think they take away from my own sense of weirdness nor the impact of small deliberate pushes where something hasn't been pushed before. I don't think the future is inevitable, and the choices and focus some maintain in their realms have an enormous spill-over effect. We see this in medicine, the leadership of certain countries and companies, and in the wake of the death of the stabilizing force in our own families.

What constitutes the difference? Why am I weird? Why, and this is from Boghossian, do pretty much all people fall for the latest trends, political waves, language hijacking, and others just seem constantly skeptical and impervious? Why am I willing to see the reason in J.K. Rowling, yet the people who know her will spend years voicing pain and concern? Why do I care about gun violence statistics, but most will belabor the worst anecdotes devoid of 95% of the context? Why can I understand why Kyle Rittenhouse was deemed not guilty, even if I think he has the most cunty punchable Ben Shapiro-esc face that I've seen in a while, and question the motives of anyone carrying around guns?

I want, genuinely, to not believe incorrect or dumb things. That's the weird difference. I want that more than fitting in. We're a tribal species who does not inherently see the dangers of the tribal wisdom that maintains a certain internal coherence. Whether or not that internal coherence comports with reality, evidence, or consistent accountability does not even enter the conversation sometimes until it's litigated or there's concentrated sustained outrage.

For the longest time, I did not understand why trans issues were even part of the political conversation. As I've listened to more and more of these interviews, it's becoming clearer the lanes of disingenuous outrage and language being used to hijack our understanding. I was perfectly unaware of how deep the corruption went or how it manifested. As a liberal, leftist, generally "live and let live" person who vehemently hates religion, barely tolerates guns, and wishes we had drive-through abortions, I'm going to instinctively say "Yeah, trans, whatever, let them do what they want."

Oops. Except, the science wasn't there. The journals purporting to have the science were publishing literal garbage invented by Boghossian himself to prove a point. The "it's not dangerous to block puberty" and "children know what they are" narratives are just lies. The stats on people who de-transition, who turn out just to be gay or have autism, or who have some often well-documented mental health struggles overwhelm the actual data and story of what it means to be pursuing "trans rights."

You say something like that, you get labeled. Not by the data or the scientists or the people with direct experience who might testify. You're a "terf" or "transphobe" or "hateful" or whatever damming epithet is trending that month. You're silenced, and depending on what place you occupy in society, punished. We've been doing this dance long enough that those punishments are getting reversed after lawsuits, and the adults in the room have woken up to the liability of riding trends instead of science.

The battle wasn't about whether or not we should accept trans people. The battle is about language and facts of biology. I don't think anyone sincerely gives a shit how you wish to dress, modify your body, or present in the world. I think everyone who is reasonable cares about male bodies beating the fuck out of a woman's in a physical competition. I think we need to protect the facts of sexual dimorphism, know the numbers behind exceptionally rare intersex conditions and what that constitutes, and be of the general constitution of taking claims seriously, investigating them with evidence, and opening debate in service to policy.

Is it actually a good thing to build into a curriculum for kindergarteners to entertain the idea that they're trans? It seems not. It doesn't "feel" wrong or right to me, the evidence suggests children are dumb and confused. That's what it is to be a child before we even introduce longitudinal studies, which exist, and we could talk about, if we actually gave a fuck about raising healthy children. Is it actually a good thing to erase the differences between the sexes? The evidence suggests there's a catastrophic impact socially, psychologically, and disproportionately bad compared to any given individual who wishes to insist they are different than how they were born.

Doubt shouldn't be a death sentence. Questions are not harm. Doubt and questions are not hatred, erasure, denial, or evidence of some immutable destructive power complex.

I was absolutely fascinated the day I got railroaded by 15 people on facebook under a former friend's post. She talked about binding her chest and I think was entertaining non-binary? I was already sympathetic and on the crowd's side, but all that was on offer was incoherent hatred. The attempt at a conversation wasn't about her as it was some spin-off related to hormone blockers or something. I was a transphobe, ignorant, impatient, unwilling; anything but a sentiment that was trying, engaging, or sharing the evidence of what was forming my view. I literally hooked up with the friend in question, but somehow I'm "afraid," but my dick wasn't? I "hate" her for being uncomfortable with her femininity or sexuality? I'm antagonistic or evil by referring to her as "her" when I have no clue what she may or may not wish to be called today having not interacted for pushing a decade?

I fought pretty much everyone I could find about religion versus science for 4 years of my life. I read every book. I watched hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of debates, lectures, and panels. I was as detailed and evidence-based as you could get about the 30-odd things tangential to "the debate" the New Atheists kicked off. That shit was my world. I persuaded no one. Evidence mattered to me, not to the faithful. "Evidence" was merely a fungible concept to them, not the preponderance of probable reality. They were not foundationally situated to hear me, nor was I aware of the nature of the game I was really trying to play.

The same rules apply in counseling. I persuade no one. I'm speaking a different language. I'm trying to get them to turn the insights of evidence into their own working practice. You don't know the same things I do because you're not practicing the same things I am. I say sometimes there's a difference between knowing something "intellectually" and knowing it "in your bones." It's the difference between physically working to create something, and telling yourself "Oh yeah, I could do that." You almost certainly can't, not as you are now, but the hours, weeks, or years it takes to get there, what you could do starts to manifest in reality. What "I can really play" manifests frustratingly as a direct proportion to how often I'm practicing my guitar.

You can get to a place where you're not as emotionally reactive and self-justifying. You can read that and profess to be a certain way, but I guarantee there's a large majority of people who read the names Kyle Rittenhouse or J.K. Rowling and have been running their prepared-for-them speech the entire time they've not-read everything else here. The reaction is dictating, not reason, not curiosity. You know how I know? Because I still feel a certain kind of way talking about Rittenhouse. I've never held animosity towards Rowling, as I found it self-evident that women need their own space free from dicks.

I've got some broad rules. The name-callers are wrong. I say this as an incredibly inventive shit-talker. If your "side" is stuck on labeling someone, and cannot be moved to offer data, reason, patience, or listen to a divergent point of view, you're just wrong. I'm someone who calls his state senator a Nazi every few days. My state senator wrote a letter saying he wouldn't certify the election. If tomorrow he sponsors a bill that raises the minimum wage to $30 an hour, I'll tell you my nazi senator has a great grasp of faux predatory inflation and the needs of his broke-ass constituents. I'd call him a Nazi to his face, and give him credit where it's due.

The silencers are wrong. There is no "platform." You have a voice. "Crazy" people have a voice. You're crazy about something. If you're uninterested in learning how to identify and incorporate what makes you or them crazy, you're wrong. If you can't talk and articulate, or more likely just refuse to be bothered, you are wrong. You hurt the project of long-term societal sustainability and undermine whatever underlying liberal ideals that keep you comfortable.

Boghossian does a series where he breaks down NPR segments. It's been widely acclaimed by people, also weird, but like me, who genuinely want to learn and do better. If you don't have it in you to be perpetually swayed by what's popular or normal, when you hear endless reams of propaganda or unscientific superficial takes, it frustrates and bores you. I think we're so unsophisticated and dishonest, we think the Candace Owens' and Ann Coulters' of the world are fundamentally different in their instantiated absurd propensities to dodge and obscure a subject while professing their independent or critical thinking capacity. Crazy fucks make shit up and don't hear words for what they actually mean. Why would you ever want to emulate them?

Your god forbid you ever read a blog of mine echoing fear for fear's sake. Pretending there aren't people doing the work compiling the data on whatever the subject might be. I entertain the idea indefinitely that I'm wrong. I want to be less wrong. Why don't you? I want to be articulate. I want to have a real shot at accomplishing the things I profess to care about. I want us all to feel more understood, capable, and alive in what connects us. That cannot happen if you "disagree with biology" or "those aren't MY numbers," or you "don't feel that comports with your experience." Ok. Well. Your experience, like my experience, is infinitely small, corrupt, and comprised of seemingly contradictory forces. I'm willing to ask if my feelings make sense. Why aren't you?

I used to believe in the Southern Poverty Law Center statistics. I would previously have said of course you can trust The American Academy of Pediatrics. I would say listen to NPR or VICE. It's not "merely inconvenient" about who does crimes, in what neighborhoods, and why people die. You're allowed to worry about wildly divergent cultures poorly integrating into yours. You're allowed to believe you're the superhero of your own life with your weapons and grudge against authority and state influence. You're obligated to suspend every reactionary posture in service to another question. You're obligated to maintain a certain level of integrity in the face of any claim. Go on, simply disagree with that and scream at me. Let's keep getting exactly what we deserve.

[1074] None Of Your Business

For as much as I feel like I'm writing a lot lately, I'm still not hitting it.

Let me tell you about a weird feeling I get. I started using this app, Habits. It, very simply, let's you create a habit you wish to practice each day, record how or whether you did it, and that's it. I've set it up to track doing 5 squats, reading 1 chapter, 1 article, and practicing music for 30 minutes a day. I have not been able to pull off those 4 things each day. More to the point, I haven't because of this sinking panicking feeling that just hit me, and does at different points in the day when I'm asked by the app if I've done one of the things.

Why would I have a flash of panic? Why would my stomach drop at the prospect of building on and forming new or better habits? Why do I feel as though I've sacrificed a sense of autonomy or ownership by…capitulating…instead of feeling empowered and in control by working my professed goals? I think there's something at the root of all misery and hell in the world related to the answers to these questions.

I don't think, deep down, we want a choice. I think we're instinctually anti-choice beings. I think that's why we attribute a certain dignity to notions of "conservatism" that practically and persistently just destroy or seek to control in the face of someone else's freedom. I think religious myths are so powerful because you are, by default, at the mercy or lack thereof in a cosmic game. When you do wrong, seek forgiveness. After all, it's sin's fault, not yours.

Rich or poor, you can subscribe to an environmental and cultural narrative that absolves you. You're the victim or the oppressed, demonize the other, justify your course, full stop every day all day. There's no obligation to really feel whatever someone else might be going through. You're not expected to learn or cross pollinate with ideas that challenge you. Even the pseudo-fight for the cultural landscape serves the same purpose for dipshit kids who think dirty looks or naughty words are "violence." You don't have to use words right when you're following the script.

I listened, very painfully, to Bill Maher talk with Candace Owens. I hate her. She's as dumb as a Dinesh D'Souza, Ann Coulter (who Bill also likes), or pick your favorite shit-smearing moron in any realm that draws press, like our newest House speaker. He challenged her to say, quite simply, that the moon landing was real. After some back and forth and chiding and pish-poshing, at bottom she said, "That doesn't even interest me." She didn't say it was real. She said he was asking her about something she's not concerned with, so it's functionally unfair or just rude to ask her for a head nod to what one might consider old-world "common sense."

She's not real, and people like Bill aren't wise to how someone like a Candance Owens thrives and navigates the world. It's not through deep intellectual analysis and differing opinion. It's through cultivating complicated-sounding bubbles of self-serving ignorance. You dress it up by being polite to people who tolerate you and then if you carry on long enough you start to get a veneer of legitimacy. Put out 10,000 podcasts, it doesn't really matter what each one says. There's 10,000 of them, so that counts for something, right? There must be a deep point to a personal truth in there somewhere?

I don't just want to practice, or read, or do a paltry amount of exercise. I want to live as though I have a real sense of freedom to engage in fun activities not at the end of a desperation gun. I think about school. School was fucking annoying. There are a million fun things to learn and do in school that don't feel fun or like you're learning shit. Why? Your teenage brain doesn't turn on until noon. Your teacher is an asshole. You're surrounded by other idiot kids. It's presented at a pace and in a way that may or may not jive with how you best learn. The background condition is a set of societal expectations that have nothing to do with how fun or cool science might be, or useful math might be, or how you could have better gotten into a gym routine before your bloodwork read "pre-diabetes."

My mind shoots reflexively through all of this. I don't necessarily have particularly bad habits. I don't tend to make excuses verses push myself to do the harder things. But I feel desperate. I feel like I'm mocking myself and the life I'm desiring. It also feels like I'm ceding something regarding my autonomy. I really want to just sit here, watch my shows, and go to bed. I want it more, in this moment, than to practice rudiments on the drums or Sum 41 songs on my guitar. I want it more because of that hopelessness and exhaustion that kicks in, because the more I talk about it, the more I want to practice. The more I unpack the feeling, the real sense of identity, motivation, and satisfaction starts to creep in. There's no dread or hesitation, but I have to dig.

I can't help but to tie this to thinking about addiction. You're not addicted to the drug. You're just not. I know your body has sometimes life-threatening physical attachments to it, particularly with alcohol, but you, as a person, as an individual, have an instinctive conservative reflexive narrative that keeps you locked on what is familiar, comfortable, and naively self-affirming. It's only validating that single sliver of your desires or potential. The sliver that wants to maintain a sense of control. So you feel "no" regarding any change, not just the kind that might make you better or push you towards a professed desire.

I've been thinking a lot about how to approach the next few weeks. The shows are winding down. I don't have a job. I still need to make about $12K. I have business goals and expenses looming. The weather is probably going to get shittier. I can feel a certain kind of lifestyle speaking louder to me. It's working considerably less. It's working from different areas of the country or world. It's making something more akin to the bare minimum than it is stressing on how to maximize profit. In the rush of all I feel I need to do, I'm consciously trying to be slow and deliberate so I don't desperately say yes to any new obligation that seems like it will satiate the familiar momentary panic.

I need to get out of social work completely, I know this. I need to stop juggling hundreds of pieces of disparate drama and repeating myself with regard to better practices. It doesn't matter if I'm good at it. I, personally, have nothing to back up how good I am other than the "fluffy" comments I get from people. I have had ZERO come to me after groups beyond a couple texts that have not been followed up. I knew that would happen. People don't want to get "better," they just want to find a new "familiar" or sense of "safety" with whatever it is they're presented with. The Suboxone or the routine and dance of "harm-reduction" does the heavy lifting. I plugged into the Groups routine and toyed with people's levels of comfortable. They didn't plug into me seeking the discomfort of what it takes to change and own and account for the things I'm attempting to.

You hear people profess to "thrive in chaos." That's shorthand for, "I've figured out who and how to exploit in my circumstances to feel stable again." Someone, or several someones, perhaps needy co-dependents, "love" to "help" and account for your chaos. Mutually assured stagnation, self-justification, and personally riotous [hear: "righteous"] truth.

So often my thoughts turn towards how I'm getting fucked, or how something could be a little bit better, or what it would take to convince a "reasonable" person to shut the fuck up during a movie or concert. It's a trap. We're not on the same planet. We don't have the same words. My priorities or goals or questions or jokes do not make sense in the context of the vast majority of people's worlds. They have their personal newsfeed now. They have their information silo. They have the culture of whatever excruciatingly small pocket of their world to draw from. Superficially, you can entertain them or sell them things, but they aren't there. Whatever you're practicing or attempting to show off or relate to can't be done in return. It's just not there.

I think about how the dynamic between me and Byron broke down. I used to be able to rely on what he said. Then, he started drifting into how "normal" people talk. "Hey! I've got this opportunity!" In reality, he's got this liability he wishes to foist the responsibility of onto everyone but himself. He doesn't want to man the food kitchen? Hire Nick under the guise of creating an on-site services coordinator. "You're my best friend, I'm looking out for you." He adopted the language of "best friend" to obscure the series of selfish acts and slights. Every single thing or connection or chance for growth or betterment presented by Byron turned into something that cost me money, a lot of time, or energy spent spinning my wheels and planning or learning for nothing. I occupied this "chess piece" thing in his head that he could wind up and move around, but never be viewed as a king in his own right with his own board. So goes everyone that heedlessly takes advantage and makes excuses and loses sight.

Hussain bemoans all of the "promises" he gets when he applies for a job, and every single one falls through. His clients blow the same bullshit smoke up his ass that mine do, and when he goes to follow up, gets frustrated when they don't answer or follow through. It's the ubiquity of the human condition. I don't know what percentage of "things I say" you'd need to match to "things I do" for it to be at a level that feels individually responsible or trustworthy, but my gut tells me most people are at less than 10%. Why? There's no expectation to be consistent. Your job is a psychological place-filler for that much less personal responsibility. You just have to follow orders. Be they to pollute, take-advantage, lie, stay silent, or kill. You play a certain role in your family. You structured the expectations of yourself around various perceived authorities or professed wisdom.

What are you to do, as an individual with a claim of awareness or meager attempt at diagnosing layers of our innate condition and ongoing conditioning? What am I supposed to listen to when it's not your god, your thought leaders, your pop culture icons, your politicians, educators, or pretty much anyone in too much authority acting in their capacity as an expert at maintaining their power and their narrative relative to all others? I certainly can't always trust myself. Myself wants to panic-pause me away from drum practice.

I have to listen to the flourishes and fleeting moments where someone seems to sound like me and explore why. I have to listen to the violent grading of gears operating against each other when your actions betray your words as they pertain to our friendship, your perception of my work, or professions of our allegedly shared values. I have to listen to the random lines I might hear from a TV show, song, performer, or overheard-at-lunch that give me pause and make for some bizarre inspired connection or insight. If I can't get that to congeal into practicing the goddamn drums, reading the book, or making the next miserable phone call to find an angle on the business I want to start, you shouldn't trust me. You have to be able to recognize and find the willingness to do the same work, or you'll never see mine.

I'm skeptical without getting conspiratorial. I try to use reason without pretending it has every answer to every question. I prefer to say "I don't know" instead of fill in the blank with magic answers. I demonstrate respect, often, through silence. I'm direct, and rude if necessary. I'm willing to entertain counter-narratives to my worst ideas about you if we spend too much time together and you talk too much. I'm open to being wrong, but I don't meet people willing to speak the language of humility and doubt. They'll perform it, but they don't work and feel it. I'm not wrong because you say so, or feel so, or are "just not interested in that" like a Candice Owens struggling to acknowledge the moon landing. I'm wrong when you can state my position, develop your own, and contextualize us both.

If I'm tempted to make sweeping declarations about "culture" or "humanity" it's after taking in the examples people set under many different and seemingly disparate conditions. Every single job I've worked has betrayed it's "mission statement." Almost every single "friend" I've had has needed to be reduced to superficial acquaintance or straight hateful bad influence. I watch people constantly torture themselves with their "dream self" and no, literally none, means of achieving it. Whether they're comfortable with the familiarity of their misery or luxury, I think it's the same mechanism. The Offspring line, "That's okay because I like the abuse," just came to mind. That song goes on to celebrate eventually getting to take advantage of the girl who was doing it first. Low self-esteem serving it's function on both ends.

I have so little power and am constantly getting taken advantage of. I get fucked financially. I get fucked professionally. I feel like I've pissed off the exact wrong people in the past and that's found a way to follow me for years. I can step into environments or conversations perfectly neutral and in good spirits, and in 2 minutes find myself getting yelled at over someone's perspective of my behavior or commentary. It will absolutely never matter who or what is "right" in those scenarios, just that I triggered someone to emote and my unwillingness to reflexively capitulate and share their pain will register as me doubling-down. Again, I'm the other, the monster in their narrative, the thing they can be justified in feeling anything about.

Now say you're a normal person who hasn't articulated all this out so far. You have the same sense about you. "The world" is out to get you. You're incensed and averse to their "judging." How do you cope? You actually double-down. You actually get more selfish. You look to control and constrain your perspective in a desperate race to the bottom. I am and do get routinely taken advantage of, so do you. How bad do you need to make yourself feel about that to justify maybe controlling your partner or child or lashing out at your parent or friend? I've gotten accused of heinous shit and looked at like I'm masterminding manipulative games. How about you? What assumptions do people build into your character that fuels the ways you rebel or bite back? Literally every word, body movement, or detail of your misery-inducing environment becomes a piece of the personal apologetics handbook if you want it to.

I'm going to continue to fumble forward and fuck up every possible angle there is to fuck up. I'm going to look over the sea of cars and lights and millions of narratives I can imagine from my plane seat and try to continue to identify the ones that don't get us all killed or leading hateful and spiteful lives regardless of how "real" their capacity to stoke our sense of dignity or pride in their expression. There's literally an infinite amount of ways to organize these words, let alone the hundreds of thousands that have came before just from me. Are you reading and hearing what you already know? Is that why you skipped this one?

[788] Information Age of Hysteria

Another day, another round of opinions on Jordan Peterson. I also read a killer piece by Matt Taibbi about the “Russia scandal.” I think maybe the easiest way to start is just to talk about labels.

Briefly, if you don't already know my reticence for the connotation and presumption that goes along with “trigger” words, nothing I write, nor will ever write, is going to register with you. The amount of times I put “truth” in quotes, attempting to discover the process of churning through my thoughts more than proclaiming the surety of my views, is instructive. I pick words that feel hot, and build a narrative around them. This is how we attempt to grasp the world around us. Is a tree a tree? Or is it bark, roots, leaves, etc. How you understand “tree” is going to determine many more things about how you use it or the place it occupies in your life.

How many words do you think we use that are much broader and more confusing than “tree” routinely? I've gone after “feminism” and “privilege.” I don't like when words that used to be pretty deliberate, like rape, become generalized indictments for miscommunication or unwanted and inappropriate attention i.e. “rape culture.” How many things in the news start with “the war on,” as if war is an easily accessible and sustained violent attack you can invoke with impunity about any imperiled topic? “Anti-Leftist,” “alt-right hero/darling,” “pseudo-intellectual,” the “ists” and “isms” of political shades, and general besmirching of character via scorn for alleged followers and “enabling” or “giving a platform.”

You can write, endlessly, using a combination of the same techniques to “critique” literally anyone or anything. Absolutely none of it does you any favors merely because you are able to deliver your “evisceration” with the pompous indignity that could only rise today to parody. There are many things that have contributed to what I'll posit as the “cultural decline in our capacity to speak and think clearly,” but a daily helping of unsubstantiated nonsense from our most popular news and info-tainment options doesn't help.

Even recognizing that we're playing into an ignorant hand becomes impossible, as “fact-checking” becomes a lurid task of retractions and nose-thumping a barrage of insinuations and accusations while the work to suss out truth goes ignored. “Whistle-blowers” and “alt-media” attempt to hijack the ceded space to tout their perspectives (more true because they're tinted with oh-so-justified doses of emotion and “outrage”), virtue signaling and dog-whistling Dixie.

There's such a stark contrast between the “hit piece,” and the methodical breakdown and cited explanation of a topic. There is no opinion piece you will find that casually refers to Jordan Peterson as “alt-right” that will have the examples demonstrating the label. They'll skim a phrase out of context. They'll poo-poo away hours of video expanding on where his grievances lie. They'll latch on to something misspoken or perhaps genuinely worth apology, and then proceed to ignore the apology.

This is the criticism popular thinkers are making of the Left. You can't continue to play judge, jury, and executioner who presides over the entirety of someone's life, and put them into a box of perpetual scorn and dismissal. This generalized habit reflexively dismisses not just what the other person you despise is thinking, but how they got there. If you refuse to attempt to understand how someone thinks, it suggests to me you're unwilling or unable to think for yourself. That's the impetus for free speech. That's surviving the cringe of listening to Ann Coulter or Alex Jones speak.

There are consequences to inciting anger and violence from positions of power. That is different from hearing the attempt to incite, and having a plan or disposition to put it aside. Censorship doesn't protect you from the obligation to learn why you're thinking is incomplete. The broader culture will always figure out a way to spite you, dig up the taboo, or act like it's the protector and purveyor of “unseemly truths,” while the snowflakes melt. This is the heart of my contrarian personality, and a psychological place I think we occupy at large (Trump is fucking president) when we've been fucked with and ignored for too long. The “right” is trending around the world. The self-righteous of every ilk zero in on “guns” or “transgender bathrooms/pronouns” as if those are the real topic.

It's your fundamental insecurity and lack of personal responsibility. That's the story of humanity. Justify for yourself, and pillory what you don't like or understand. We've psychologically distanced ourselves from accountability writ-large. Anonymous facebook hatred. “Self-taught entrepreneurs” and “influencers” serve to legitimize attention for its own sake. The only thing to learn anymore is how to exploit and brand. You label something “bad” with words that “trend,” or you capitalize on fantasy courting Pyrrhic victory. Who cares if the leaps and inferences you made didn't pan out? Who cares if you say it's “cute” an over-worked waitress needs 3 days on the job to afford your jeans? What's really lost if it gave me more followers, likes, clicks, and traffic?

I grow less tempted to be obnoxious every day because I don't believe there aren't consequences. No matter how you started something, if it was “just for fun,” that fire can get out of control. Just because every one else was doing it, doesn't mean they deserved the reach they got. I'm thinking of tech companies. Just because you can, doesn't mean you should or should be allowed to, the tacit approval of waves of ignorant masses notwithstanding. Here I think of Gavin Newsom suspending the death penalty. I don't care what the majority thinks either if it was my innocent ass on the line about to be executed. I care about wasting money and the grander cultural narrative regarding vengeance and State power, but in the immediacy, fuck all that noise.

I don't see it getting better. I actually see violence and other life-threatening or dramatically altering consequences before we find a “collective” chance at survival. You can't attack the basis for grasping existence and think “everyone” is going to get “wise” about their failed “wokeness” and start to zero in on the words that never bother to give them pause in the first place. When a narrative style becomes embodied, that's colloquial reality. Trump repeats. That's the “magic” of his madness. That's the secret of people slowly growing more and more insane losing the ability to reflect. We retweet, and carry the sentiments onto our “news” and otherwise sources of information. We're suffering a mass psychosis of our own doing by not taking a thousand beats to breath, parse, and prove.

Even with the best information still available, I don't think we'll be saved. Noam Chomsky is still speaking. Matt Taibbi is still writing. Spatterings of comedic and reporter voices are “doing their best” to summarize and explain without stoking insanity flames. So what? Me and the old people with time enough to go to book store reads and lectures will know? Hippies and Bohemians will get to scoff until their safe-spaces are in the crosshairs? We're all breathing the same air. The whole system's immune system is implicated. I'll be doing my best from a field in the middle of nowhere.

[688] Part In Particle

What is it called when perhaps the worst things about you become what differentiates and makes you popular or successful? Because you remain steadfast in your beliefs you become a darling of some political or identity movement. Because you're fairly ruthless and dead inside you rise to the top of your company. Because you've no capacity for introspection you bring the same scorn and enthusiasm to your 365 hour length videos ready to tell us all how it really is.

I think about the characters in life that have stayed with me for how annoyed I've been with their being. Dinesh D'Souza kicked in off in offering the same tired, refuted and deliberately misunderstood and mischaracterized arguments against atheism. There's a ton of political talking heads from Ann Coulter to Bill O'Reilly and Glen Beck. My own mother managed to increase her crazy as time went on if you'll recall her accusing me of studying witchcraft in college.

In their own ways, they thrive. They make money and publish books. They get protected bubbles that reinforce their ideas nonstop. I want to say that they inhabit an entire world that I'm not privy too. I don't get the privilege of that degree of self-delusion and self-confidence to put forth impossibly easy to dismiss ideas with such vigor that I make a million dollars or always find someone else to blame. They're always going to have a village, and even the one's who don't subscribe to their lines of bullshit will succumb in some form of self-sabotaging guilt that protects them from deeper consequences.

My hang up about this “bubble world” built on undue confidence stems from a pattern I see in conversations online. There's a million and a half reasons to never bother commenting on something you read, but if you're as dumb as me, you might notice that, without fail, there will be a move to put you in your own little bubble. If you open with a comment about how you think it's lazy and dishonest to write a character assassination piece instead of sticking to a deeper history and facts, particularly from a publication that seemed to pride itself on doing so, the people responding will move to speculate on your tone and disposition. They'll conjure the idea that your words are coming from your cult-like worship of the magazine's target. They'll tell you “DUH, it's a socialist publication!” But they won't agree or disagree with your words. They'll create a you in their image and then proceed to barrage it with decreasingly sophisticated obfuscations.

I worry about this. It happens often enough that it seems to suggest some pretty damming things. Either I'm perpetually that confusing, incoherent, “too angry,” or just beyond redemption when it comes to getting a point across, or, we're literally so blind and broken in our capacity as a society to talk about things that the idea and suggestion to focus and retain the point of what's been said is simply gone. You can have your trolls and your earnest stupid people. But what do you have when either “side” is trying to diagnose the other or armchair life coach on communication skills in between called names and condescension? It's every single thread. The smarter each person thinks they are, the dumber the conversation gets.

I retreat to the relationships and conversations I've been in where there's never been that degree of, “YOU'RE JUST A BULLSHITTING TIRADE OF INCOHERENCE!” levied at me. It's not all people all the time in my life, in fact, it's practically never in person or with some serious adult aimed at conveying something. There are no arbitrary interjections of demeaning and irrelevant pontifications. That doesn't mean conversations can't get a little random or work sideways, but it does mean there's a common thread. What that thread is supposed to look like or why it never seems to manifest online, I have no clue. I don't know if it's the lack of noise and facial signals. I don't know if it's that the internet is like a dog whistle of mere reactions competing for space. I don't know that there's a way to combat the problem short of significantly more people shutting up who are the most prone to talking.

As it pertains to me though, when I'm presented with the idea that my ideas are just too disjointed or arbitrary, I'm never asked a question about one of those confusing lines nor do people even pretend I had something to say at the onset from which further ideas came forth. They seem to be turning me into my own conservative talking head. I have this idea, according to the “win or lose” camps and barking dogs there's one way to explain myself and one way only, no one will tell me what it is, and unless I've gotten more likes than them on the comment train down, we'll all know who lost.

I still retain a fuck ton of doubt. I ask questions. I very much do lead with an explicit stating of what I see as a problem, or a fix, or my feelings in relation to something. Did I miss the year we decided that the words we use don't actually mean anything and it's up to us to figure out how to relate to an infinite number of interpretations all at once? If you call someone a moron, and they ask you what you mean by that...don't you have a responsibility to put that person out of their misery before you attempt to answer the question and thicken the conversational fog? I recently said that people become micro-Nazi's about all sorts of things. You lose the battle before you begin if you attempt to discuss something with ideological possession predicated on magical books or racial bigotry. If talking is fundamental to survival and human flourishing, and now you fail before you ever begin, doesn't that only leave us with war?

For my part, I'm running with my anti-matter theory with how to relate to the rest of the world. If you're regular matter and collide with me, we'll both annihilate. I've had this idea growing with me for maybe a year. I'm the person to blow things up. I'll immediately list the reasons it sucks, it will fail, and you're impossibly lost and stupid. We'll both glean everything we need to know about each other with what comes next. You can blow me off and earnestly attempt to pursue or defend yourself. You can hate the shit out of me and proclaim to all your friends you get why you were warned in advance about talking to me. You can consider what I said and incorporate what I've pointed out in an effort to improve your current model. What you will not do is affect me in any sort of manner that turns my anti-matter nature into matter.

I think this is a more forgiving and accurate representation of what people have deemed as “negative” about my personality. This negative guy is fat and happy well on his way towards a life with no bills and all the time in the world to create. Something about it is working, just not for you. I've said a number of times how much “communication” is a concern of mine. I've been thinking too small and linear. I can communicate a thousand things talking or otherwise. I'm fated to be misunderstood. The people who I admire the most for communicating the best get thrown under more buses than I've tempted to run me over, and what do they do? They keep talking anyway. They keep showing. They keep selling. They can blow up your mind and ignore or refute the endless stream of lazy stupid reactionary bullshit, and so can I.

I'm mostly looking forward to having a flash of an inspiring person hit me as I phrase something in an “angry” or “bizarre” way. I look forward to “trying” to explain myself or my position on something and it only amounting to me saying fuck too often and showing what my words look like as consequences in the real world. For someone who has to write, I really am sick of talking. The reasonable people already agree, the crazies will never get it, I'm not patient or forgiving enough to translate or dumb down, and frankly, I don't think we're going to make it, nor deserve to, anyway. And if I feel that as earnestly as I do and ever have, and still figure out some way to help people in the world who actually need and appreciate it, it'll be one more “fuck you” for every character assassination piece you write about me and my motives and my incoherent struggle to figure something out or propose a fix.

I choose to engage with myself in a way that makes sense to me and seems to suggest I've got more of life figured out with regard to my happiness and ability to contribute. You choose to resent that. I actually want to understand the Coulters, Becks, and even Arrow fans in the world, even if they make my skin crawl. You don't want to understand me, and I'm nowhere near the level of bullshit and abstraction that would start chucking aliens or conspiracies at you as an explanation behind my reasoning. But that's not where the vast majority of people are. They don't practice being open, pausing and asking, or having any doubt. Therefore, I hope every time we meet, things blow up.