[1110] High On Believing

I've never felt so understood as when I watch Caveh Zahedi's "The Show About The Show." It mellows me out as a "simple" exploration and reporting on experience, and the emotional fallout from everyone around who does not like their behavior explored and reported on. It's as on-the-nose a piece of art as I've ever seen that matches my experience of the world.

I'm then drawn into this interview with someone who appears to be deeply aggrieved by the show, this character mrgirl, who interviews Caveh. It's like every conversational breakdown I've written about across 2.5 hours. mrgirl volleys some feeling-laden accusation, Caveh, extremely patiently, explains his perspective and relays why he doesn't agree or dismisses the assumptive premise the accusation builds in. I feel so deeply for Caveh trying to articulate something akin to, "Bro, you're making some harsh assumptions about me, moralizing what might otherwise be basic facts of existence I'm literally pointing my camera at, and if you had a better sense of honesty and decency you'd recognize the crippling projection exercise you're doing."

One of the best indicators someone is woefully dishonest is when they result in, "I know you are, but what am I." It's just the hallmark of a nonsense exchange when someone can't both qualify and explore to what degree they are something, but more in their immediate reactive "fuck you" that launches the comment after their behavior is pointed out.

One day I hope to be able to articulate this concisely or through a great story. It's a hard dynamic to talk about because I don't encounter very many honest people. More than that, I don't encounter honest people willing to put their sense of honesty into the world to be scrutinized. I can attempt to borrow from mythology or ear-wormy sentiments from pop culture, but building a comprehensive look that lands emotionally via scattered lines strewn about a thousand blogs is all I've got so far.

Sam Harris uses the term "moral confusion" to describe what's often people's loudest visceral reaction to something they poorly understand, but feel, beyond doubt, that they are on the "right side of history" about. How Israel is handling Hamas is the hot thing right now. Trump vs Biden for anyone confused about how fascism works. "Pro-lifers," always in quotes, think they're saving something that, allegedly, their savior already has. The hypocrisy and basic avoidance of defining words or evidence isn't even hard to do. There's aggressively motivated "reasoning" that tries to square truth and reality into your version of a moralized box.

But right there, the problem is much deeper than calling it "your version." Because, of course, it's not yours. It's "everyone's" to the degree you agree with and recognize how others are justifying in the same way. Any cultural movement grants you license to take liberties with the messy details or statistics that undermine a fundamental assumption that supercharges your righteously indignant feelings. Black Lives Matter kicked off that pendulum in some of the easiest ways to observe in either reflexively agreeing and enabling any version of a victimized black identity story, or being considered a complicit racist. Any individual that wrestled with evolving stories, details, or their own experience will all but certainly develop nuances and subtleties they'll feel "morally obliged" to stay silent about.

A big thing a dishonest person doesn't want to grapple with is how much "power" they're willing to cede to you in order to blame you. If you're the smart one, the rich one, the pretty one, or just the one with the idea and you bothered to say it out loud first, buckle up. If you're Louis C.K. you can mesmerize women who can't escape the force of your beaten dick energy radiating and hypnotizing. When I've tried to write about the worst accusations against me or my behavior, I was insisted upon, several times, to not even speak. Secrets were kept from me. It was if the "right" thing to do was to just shut up and take it. This, of course, because they already know how devious and articulate I am, therefore, when scrutinized I might not look so much like the demon they needed me to be. Can't have that.

Any given person's ability to see through you is bred from their practice of seeing through themselves. Whatever caricature you reflexively make about someone or something, there's at least 1,110 blogs of information about it, at least for me, you're not considering. You're not obligated to consider anything. I'm not obligated to respect or entertain you in turn. That's your power no matter how much you wish to give it away. That's an inescapable truth. I would also call it deeply unwise to teach yourself to avoid or attack conflicting variables. It's an uncomplicated point for people who can be honest with themselves about the power of, or holes in, their perspective. I know how much about you is unsaid, because I'm writing it. I'm speaking to it where you won't.

I appreciate how articulate Caveh is when he explores his own pathological behaviors and perspective of the people who feel "tricked" or "exploited" by him. In reality, they resent their own naivety, as though they are still children for whom it could be easier forgiven. We are infinitely naive and ignorant. That is the rule. There is an infinite amount of information we don't know, let's say for example, how we're going to feel after we try something or discover we're in over our heads. An honest person can say that and then hold themselves accountable to how they respond to or describe that discomfort.

If you pose nude for an artist and then recoil in disgust at their interpretation of your body, are you going to blame them? You thought it was going to be a flattering or emboldening and liberating thing, but it shocks you with a new reality to engage. You never imagined you "could be made to feel" like you did after seeing the work. So, what? The artist should apologize? They just manipulated you and you never wanted to pose in the first place? Of course not. Maybe they are a brilliant artist and nailed your form and expression perfectly. Now what? An honest emotionally accountable person simply states, "Oh, I didn't expect to feel this way. I should reconcile this feeling with my expectations or ideas about myself I took into this experience." 9 times out of 10, what do people do though?

In order to overcome or incorporate that discomfort, you have to be able to regard the artist as simultaneously fallible and harmless in the same ways you are. You have to make fundamental assumptions about intent or make peace with the degree to which everything is at least mildly mysterious and perfectly unknowable. "Why did he draw my eyes like that!?" You can drive yourself mad with endless "whys" to nowhere. And, what is "like that?" If it's a caricature artist, which you better not sit in front of if you aren't at peace with your own body, they did it because that's an exaggerated version of what we can all see. If you're asking from a desperate internalized sense of your own beauty and you think it's "ugly," maybe it's time to humble yourself or you've got a body dysmorphia thing going on like Megan from Megan & Jack.

It's hard not to feel trapped by this defensive, judgmental conversational environment. It's bolstered by everything from religion to TV. Most TV wouldn't exist were the entire plot not driven by a "secret" that doesn't need to be secret. It's "fun" and "funny" to artfully lie and parade yourself into ever-fantastical scenarios. It's a "compelling drama" to root for the consequences of doubling-down on the disingenuous dishonesties driving narrative arcs. Tony Soprano is a murderous family man, and so are you. The entertainment comes from asking if he's either/or indefinitely, and debating what side we're on, as if it's not both. In fact, it wouldn't be compelling television if it's not both combined with acting otherwise, because then we'd just accept and move to the next thing that sets us aflame or stop watching altogether.

The consequences of the superficial debate as it pertains to art feel safer. It's lazy and easy to project onto things that can't fight back. The imagination is being worked for you. Would you kill like they kill? Even the question might make you recoil. Would you fuck like they fuck? You don't want to entertain the thought. Would you risk the lives of the people you say you love and care about? Newsflash, you probably are already in myriad negligent ways, but you'll never entertain the thought looking for the next compelling narrative to glom onto. You won't figure it out while you're looking for the next person to blame. You won't arrive at some grand epiphany as you celebrate forgoing your agency.

There's nothing I've come to realize about myself that isn't available to you. That is, you can find the same things, or you can contrast the degree of difference. The patterns I point out I'm not generating, just accounting for. The language traps, and guilt traps, and blame cliches, and gut reflexes, and caricatured straw-men are waiting to be pointed out and felt and deliberately responded to. You can accept the responsibility and do the work in between dramatic scenarios or before you implicate others in your destruction and cover up. You absolutely can. That's going to depend heavily on whether you're reading this as some absolutely powerful mind-controlling attempt to get you to "believe" something nefarious about my intentions. Do I want you to have sympathy for my pathological compulsions? Am I unironically trying to escape the responsibility I insist upon others?

Sure, sometimes. But I bet you have a significantly harder time explaining when, where, and why than I do. And, I'm literally betting on the difference in our perspectives. That bet looks like every blog I write and word I define. It looks like the work behind getting the land developed. It looks like the effort and money I've put into the people I profess to care about. It looks like the emails I've written expressing the contradictions and moral confusions I could no longer entertain. It looks like the power I'm trying to harness with the company I started. And it looks like my continued ability to recognize and state my sense of obligation as I build more pieces into my awareness and practice.

[982] That Was Easy

Something’s missing.

This is probably one of the most consistent thoughts I have even if it never sounds so precise. I’ll eat something, but it won’t quite hit the spot. I’ll discover a new and useful tool, but it just doesn’t meet what I’d ideally like it to do. An endless blur of TV drones on with dialogue that doesn’t get there and plot points playing out an existential crisis one cliché and predictable episode at a time. I write, and am lucky to find maybe half of what I wished to say because I’m trying to capture what’s missing; the empty or wanting feeling more often persists than gets alleviated.

I’ve named consistently what’s been missing from my experience. From getting into this habit, I’ve been able to zero in more on both the nature of my desires, and what does or does not change upon acquiring them. I know how to match my words to the process of altering my feelings. It never has been, nor will ever be, that I “just don’t feel” or “don’t care.” I’m doing work. I recognize the language, tone, body language, and series of spontaneous utterances that tell me when you’re doing the work too.

What is “the work?”

I’ve spoken about “the machine” I put together that tried to colloquially break down for my clients at the methadone clinic a means for processing their thoughts and actions. I took from what helped or inspired me, and walked people through headings that started with “responsibility.” For as increasingly controversial and perhaps pettiness and anger that I have begun to observe from Jordan Peterson, I think he was spot on when he stressed personal responsibility.

I think many get confused when you talk about personal responsibility. They believe they’re supposed to “feel” some kind of way about “everything.” It comes across like an obligation, most often unwanted, and unfair. It is all of those things. Literally no one chooses to exist. By default, you aren’t asked to cope with what you look like, sound like, how much brain power you don’t have, or the series of horrendous circumstances you might find yourself in. To even suggest you have a responsibility is the most unfair thing possible. You caused none of it, and now you have to clean up? Now you have to fight? Now you have to sacrifice and risk whatever otherwise happiness or stability you’ve achieved? Who in their right fucking mind would bother?

So let’s be the rational actor, disappearing into their little world. They work hard, they send their kids to school, they recycle, and hell, they even donate to charity and vote. This plays out with regularity, tinged with righteous indignation, most often unvoiced, for those who can’t be bothered to leave you alone to “do you.” You’ll just move to a “blue state” or you’ll hole up with a gun cache and wait for the threat or until the leadership unleashes you. It’s pretty much chaos at all times, as far as you can tell from the headlines…just keep swimming.

I’ve felt like I’m surrounded by fish with so many missing memories. Whether it was about things we were supposed to have meant to each other, or the reasons we drunkenly blathered for why we were going to create something. When I talk about the superficial nature of my relationships, it has a lot to do with shaking off the responsibility to understand or engage. I know it’s often dangerous and disingenuous to take your personal experience and try to map things writ large, but I’ve been deeply examining the minutia of my experience for so long, I’m hardly, if ever, surprised or confused by “everything” being shit or things breaking down.

I’m not so naïve as to think it’s just not “my friends” who don’t wish to have an ongoing dialogue that tackles difficult subjects. That’s people. I’m fascinated with Sam Jay who seems to have built a brand around having dialogues. Will “the culture” be better for it? Or is it treated like a niche window into how a handful of people discuss their lives in something of a Taxi Cab Confessions manner with a comedic twist?

I don’t know that we’re built for “democracy.” I don’t think people are really thinking. I think they follow scripts, occasionally they get backed into corners or alter their mind chemically, and then what might be considered an actual thought or several start to come out. Because our brains are always doing “something,” we conceive of this as “thinking.” You think you thought about what you wanted to eat. You think you have an opinion on an inflammatory headline. You think you don’t like how something feels, so it’s bad, should be cancelled, or isn’t worth your time and attention.

I don’t respect liars. Part of my ongoing disconnect with people is their willingness to lie. It’s almost always lies of omission, but those omissions add up to a lot of work not being done. It’s lies dictated by fear for real repercussions that preclude even entertaining ways of changing or fixing something.

You know who doesn’t lie like that? Crazy people. They lie loud and proud and with their entire being. They lie for generations and build it into institutions. They lie through things literally understood throughout time as “deadly sins” and are proud, greedy, and grow fat off your silence, fear, or indifference. You know why history is wrought with war and martyrs? It’s not that ancient civilizations didn’t have rational people. They weren’t full of those incapable of empathically understanding their neighbor. The crazy, ever waiting, got louder and louder until they ate themselves alive. We’re just playing out our modern version of the script.

I’ve definitely chilled in my enthusiasm for people the more I…tried. The more I worked. The more I invited. The more I carried the enthusiasm. The more I rooted for and believed in. The more I sacrificed, the less pull people had on me. I’m dispositionally pretty distant, but also, when I tried not to be, I tried not to be like how I do things. I went all-in. I’m not going to truly challenge my worst ideas about who and how to manipulate unless I give myself over to the idea that there are people it’s worth it not to behave like that towards. Did I pick the wrong batch of people? Almost certainly, but I can’t deny what it taught me.

Today we have “ghosting,” because so many of our bonds are so fragile and arbitrary. My “style” or manner of communication set myself up to be “ghosted” by dozens of people in short succession. Whether it be gossipy rumor mills or the facebook chat that doesn’t get responded to for months, the message is clear. I don’t matter, at least to them. How much suffering might it cause a person who locates their “missing” piece in the interactions with people who want nothing to do with them? I wouldn’t wish that on most. At least with someone like me, it’s not a secret that I didn’t generally make you “feel good” nor do any better of a job of that today than I did then.

I’m always struck by the contrast in assessments of my behavior, words, or choice interactions with what I consider actually bad if not considerably worse things. I don’t mean to suggest that because big bad things happen in the world that you should ignore critical feedback or not take responsibility for your actions, but I’ve never found people more thoughtful, more vocal, or more willing to share than when they were angry with me. Not the world, not themselves, but what’s fucked up about me was ever so clear and particularly worth singular condemnation. It’s a point of ongoing fascination, not because I’m regularly eliciting negative feedback, but because the reasons why I see infused all over.

I say the quiet part out loud. I say anything at all, but I most often choose to say the prickly things. Moreover, I disagree the prickly things can be dealt with when we carry ourselves like so many balloons. You can’t “cancel” fascism. You can’t “persuade” me that fat is beautiful, on myself or otherwise. When conservatives bemoan a “woke agenda,” it’s scenes in Star Trek that go on way too long with the awkward non-binary kid staring at her(oops) gay dad in all of his glorious understanding. And I don’t even mean to suggest that these are particularly relevant or strong points and topics to get all fussy about. It’s just what’s on offer today. The march - the practical, detailed, and deliberate crazy is working to erode rights because it’s working. It’s working on the means by which things exist or don’t.

The crazy march voices its lies. It’s proud in its opposition. It’s not been a secret that Roe v Wade was a target. It’s not been a secret the billions of opinions offered as to what Jesus meant. It’s not a secret that the country is failing. It’s not a secret that homemade signs and megaphones mean precisely dick to those with money, influence, and organized decades-long systems for instantiating power.

What’s the work? Did I ever get around to answering the question? First, acknowledge how complicated “everything” is. You don’t get to silence people; I don’t care how hot your topic is or righteous your cause. You don’t have to invite David Duke to speak at your graduation ceremony or entertain him on your platform, but he gets to speak. But that’s easy to understand if you’re remotely thoughtful. Really, what is the work?

You have to stop lying. You have to speak up, but you have to do so in a way that isn’t furious concurrence with the status quo of your social circle. You have to own that the moment you choose to take anything from the shelf of life, you have to follow or establish the rules of the store. Right now we’re letting the crazy lock us inside and poison the food because they “believe” a whole series of incoherent self-gratifying catch-phrases. Like that bitch in “The Mist,” they need to be shot in the head, and preferably before they literally need to be shot in the head.

What is the work? You have to keep asking. The work is to build bravery, coalitions, and organize around deep understandings of the history and context in which decisions get made and power flows. I don’t have half a dozen friends who’ve been on this journey since college on this land with a series of practical responses to the things we worried and complained about graduating high school the year before the financial crash. We heard about climate change back then. We saw Sarah Palin. We fucked off, moved to different corners, got all in our feelings and suffered in adult silence in our jobs and relative first-world poverty. Brilliant set of go-getters we were.

All of this rests on what you think your responsibility is though. Is it to yourself? Certainly, in some important sense. You have to be in a good spot if you want to help others. Is it to “the world?” Now you’re just kind of being naively vague. You certainly don’t feel like you have a responsibility to talk to me lol. We get older and decide it’s just about our sliver of the world. We forget, very actively, that there is no “personal” world. Just the one we’re all plugged into for better or mostly worse. When “our” world is characterized by silence, and pithy rallies in lieu of seized power, “my” sliver gets sharper, cutting away at my dreamiest conception of where I am financially, psychologically, or socially.

I try to conduct myself in a manner I think serves “the” world, subjectively processed, but not persuaded by. I’m comfortable asserting how much I don’t know. I’m able to label when and why and how I have patience to entertain difficult subjects or judgments. I try incredibly hard to give as honest an appraisal as I can of what I see, hear, and experience in those pre-verbal parts of my brain that tell me time and again how much I’m missing. The thing about what’s missing is that it’s not just lost to time or impossible to find. It’s just what people refuse to do until they’re forced. Be honest. Fight. Talk about what “no one” wants to talk about.

I’m weirdly ambivalent about Roe getting overturned. I wish I could believe that maybe we’ll get some real anger this time. But what has history taught me? Do Black lives still matter? I could have swore with George Floyd’s blessing we’d be seeing some real change in society this time. Can you remember the last person to get #metoo-ed? Weren’t there so many feelings and testimonies and major revelations associated? Like the Panama Papers or those Occupy Wall Street guys! It’s almost like there’s this pattern of “outrage” that begets increasingly horrible circumstances as all of the ignorantly incensed retreat after failing to identify and address which mechanisms and holders of power don’t give a fuck about them.

It's going to be really hard to abandon the land. I’ve put in a lot of work. It’s a huge indication of what I “believe” in. It testifies to what I think the proper response to the chaos around us is. Salvage, conserve, diversify, learn new shit, give yourself more time, money, and space to create, reconceive of your space and how it can be used, and build into your bones how long it takes to achieve something meaningful. I’d bet $1000 that the videogame junkies are still videogaming and the middle-management jobs are just barely paying the bills, and the reality of so many lives hastily pursued in service of placating “discomfort” is crystalizing in joints, arteries, and daily happy-pills. But what do I know? No one’s going to talk about that unless it’s on-brand or a trending meme or can be summarized by a change in profile picture.

If I wanted to pretend I wasn’t living in a fascist country, I could continue to laud my efforts and chop, grind, and stack away without a care in the world. If I wanted to pretend like I didn’t expect myself to have a “house house” and a considerably higher bank account by 34, I could ride this train into oblivion. My country failed me. My peers failed themselves. I won’t let myself get sucked into my own narrative. I will keep talking about what’s missing. I will continue to feel bad because I allow myself the obligation and dignity of a responsibility to change my circumstances. I can plan and invest and demonstrate that I believe in more than either my most fanciful or damming conceptions.

It's always going to suck. I’m always going to feel alone. And I get to die either way, I’m just trying to avoid it happening via stray bullet or my neighbor making me a bogey-man. It’d be illegal to abort me at least.

I’m missing my match. It’s not that there aren’t plenty of educated people saying considerably more articulate and cited versions of my sentiments. It’s not that I don’t have people in my life who work as hard as I do, especially when it’s work none of us care to be doing for the money offered. It’s certainly not that there aren’t people who are angry and exhausted and trying in some manner or another. But if I met me? If I had another person who could do what I do like I do it, be loud about it, encourage and be open to exploring and trying and investing. Who did things “now” because time is precious, showed up because to be invited is an honor, and could pair incisive yet hilarious observation with the spirit of inherent knowledge that there’s a way through provided we do the work ourselves? Jesus wouldn’t have a prayer. I’ve been lucky enough to have 4 people who flicker on and off in riding with me at that level. But I’m a junkie. I want it all the time. And if we weren’t running out of time when I started, we sure as fuck don’t have any now.

I just have my back, the integrity of my tools, the patience extended for jobs and tasks that don’t recognize me, my debt, and my will or motivation to turn any nice day into something “more productive” than my mere enjoyment of it. That humbles you and chills you out. I learned how to watch “all TV,” and how to allow myself to read nonfiction, or enjoy a beer or hobby. I can do all that alone or surrounded by people. I can speak to when I’m not feeling like I’m fighting the good fight as well as I’d like. I may only be able to take so much responsibility for the mismatch between what I feel is my responsibility and how I’m able to respond to it, but at least I fucking claim the responsibility, talk about its nature, and try to own what is or isn’t working. Here’s another 4 and a half pages none of us have the time or energy for sorting out. I’ll be sure to reread it several times so I can still allow myself to sleep.

[847] Chains

I am not free. It's an excruciatingly obvious thing to state. I am bound by some mess of internal moralism, physical limitations, and every practical reality of my setting known and unknown.

Freedom, for as often as it is invoked, is extremely complicated. The naive wish to “be free” summarily dismisses the negative consequences. If you want the freedom to be an asshole, you are free to take a punch. Interpersonally it's easier to understand, adding to the irony when you hear a young person on the beach during a pandemic say “fuck em.”

I'm thinking about freedom right now because I don't feel free to enjoy my last night of vacation. Tomorrow, I'm back to using the vast majority of my time and brain space mitigating poor, ignorant, and stressed out people's problems with the handful of meager tools allotted to me. I get to dream about figuring out a way to automate Word forms to exponentially increase my time doing even more sideways and fundamentally inadequate ways to be a part of the system. I get to wake up earlier than my body positively responds to to field questions like, “Are you happy to be back?” yuck yuck.

While I was “free” this last two weeks, I read exactly 0 books after ordering 10 from Amazon. I got my concrete pillars installed this evening, finding one reason or other besides the weather to prevent me from doing so sooner. I played no video games if you consider Rockband actual guitar practice, and while I'm not filled with absolute dread at the idea of returning, I know I'm going to be working very hard to play into my “take over this organization” vibe so I stay out of the realm screaming “none of this matters and isn't helping.”

The kind of freedom I desire I don't think I've ever had. When I had money in the bank, I didn't have land. I have land, but still bills. The projects I add to my plate are supposed to be in the name of fun and experimentation, and let me tell you, it takes doing it, stepping back, and reflecting on what you're desperate to forget how hard it was to learn, before that fun and experimentation feels like a wise decision. My time this last two weeks has been about finding a resting point and continued escape from thinking about work. It wasn't about enjoying what I had, it was about running from what's coming.

I don't feel bad insofar as I got caught up on a ton of shows and actually did accomplish a fair amount of pretty strenuous work. If anything, starting vacation having provoked myself into the takeover mindset probably set me up to “fail” at vacation regardless. I'm returning to a field that is still far and away the easiest thing I've ever done for money. I, occasionally, actually help people and provide a reasonable and calm tone with good information to a situation that, even after dealing with us, never managed to find its way. The work matters, but still not to me, or at least not yet.

I'm exhausted and invigorated by the work I did today. I look properly Peruvian with the amount of sun I've gotten. I go to Lowes almost every day. We actively discuss the dozen things we want to create every day. The reality of a consistent paycheck keeps sounding the alarm. The “practical” fact that insurance, and debt, and health matter bookend every consideration. My model is still built around money. I still have not separated my physical presence and engagement from my ability to collect. I don't want to lazily invite anyone to park and rent, but freedom to waste as much time on a video game or getting really good at clean picking technique does not happen until I don't have the harbinger of “labor for someone else” hanging over me. Not labor, just for someone who doesn't care, who will never care, how efficiently or smart I can be.

How do I get to prove it to myself? Taking over DCS would hint at it. These home improvements are reminiscent of the efforts it took to get the coffee shop going. Sooner than we both think I'll be making statements like, “Oh, you can't build a home extension in a week? All you have to do...” I spend a lot of time thinking about the under-considered expenses and investments of time before I run headlong into things, but there is something invigorating about making a snap decision and drilling down until it's done. For all of the effort it's taken to organize these free books for Amazon, I didn't spent my break listing them. I suspect it's an almost impossible to profit endeavor. I'll truly be “free” when I think it's a good idea to knock something like that out.

I really think I'm going to have to be obnoxious in my takeover. I need the thing above the thing to focus on, like an overwhelming desire to embarrass or shame and spite impulse. You think I'm trying to make things “better,” while I chuckle and go “No, I legit just hate you that much.”

I'd be remiss if I didn't at least nod my head to the idea of how haughty this whole sentiment and blog might come across in the midst of what will hopefully be a cultural shift in ensuring Black Lives Matter. I want to live freer of obligations and search for “fulfillment,” and black people would like to get around to being allowed to live at all. This isn't lost on me.

Maybe I need to explore why just saving enough to last a year or two wouldn't work either. I genuinely want to say my bills are paid for a year. There is little reason, it seems, to do so. They can get their money when they bill me. But, the act of billing me is nagging perhaps? Like, fuck your monopoly. Fuck it taking 5 days to process. Fuck me for not being off-grid yet. What would I do with a year of vacation that I didn't do in two weeks? Property taxes aren't exactly rent, but they are due just like any bill, and can't be paid in advance. Of course there are a dozen things I want right now that are also $1000+ and interrupt the thought, and I'm definitely paying off credit card purchases in service to all the new tools and toys instead of car payments. Why bother sending my internet company $1,287?

I think I still desire to be the kind of person who can, and say that he did, because I know people aren't. It's the pretension. Who pays their bills for a year? Hood-rich people? Mind you, I could throw it on the credit card too, and still use the cash from a paycheck to do whatever. I want more indications of my fought for status. I want people to appreciate the organization and time spent in service to statements like that. I want them to want that for themselves so maybe they'd free up their time and help me make even bigger statements.

We can circle right back around. Saving time to have it to do with what you please. Allowing your brain the time to think about anything besides the next obligation. I fill the void with at least consistent acknowledgment that I'm surrounded by books I haven't read and instruments I haven't learned. I still look forward to being a trumpet student and feeling comfortable spending the grand it would take to re-pad the tenor saxophone. I suppose I don't understand how that isn't your goal if you “want to live.”

If and when you actually have a goal, which I struggle to believe about most people, you don't get it usually without the focus and time and struggle for something just beyond your reach. If you've vocalized it at all, and it's something like “ I want to learn to dance!” and you're not taking dance classes, clearly it's speaking to something deeper. The collective goal-orientation of Black Lives Matter is encouraging, but does it have the habit of achievement or the incidental luck of the country being on lock down so the protests look super cool?

I've watched most people with stated-ish goals do exactly the things that would obligate them to their version of The State kind of environment. The paychecks allows for higher-end feasts to tear through more voraciously than any day-in-the-life otherwise, but was the goal fancy dinner? I think this shit is incredibly important to talk out too. I don't begrudge someone having less than the whole “take over the world” kind of language I employ, but is it unreasonable to point out that taking over the world involves the exact same skills and perspective required to even get a handle on your own life or social circle? How do you get the time without being more efficient? Where do you grow without connecting with those with knowledge that compliments yours? What heights can you climb without sacrificing a series of common comforts?

We all get to die and be free from daunting praise or harsh criticism. In the meantime, we're not even free to feel good about things that are good because a large enough portion of how our lives are organized is catastrophically bad. What do you think it really takes to address that situation without habitually taking on more and more responsibility and intending to dominate it?

[785] The Good, The Bad, and The Pissy

I've got two wildly different things I want to talk about, but they occupy the same head, and I don't think there's any way to really combine them. I'm going to just start writing one of them and either break off and make a new blog, or somehow discover a way they might work together. We'll see.

I'm starting to simulate what I think will happen when I get back in “it.” It, in this explanation, is that mode of being that goes hard, obsesses, believes, and exhaustively explores some avenue that's taken interest. I felt myself so confused as to what to do with myself after work today, I ended up falling asleep. I can feel my psyche shifting into needing an overwhelming topic, or shutting down from the energy zapping the circuits. Nothing else seems “right” or “appropriate,” but to progress through the things I got a taste of the other day. Clean more, build more, work more.

I think a lot about having money. I already have money, not huge amounts, but a means of acquiring it where I'm no more than a month or 2 away from being “even” or generally better off than even most first-worlders. I think about all the money I watch on talk-shows. Rich people are just like us! After a while, they just want to have game nights, and raise kids, and while they'll talk more nonchalantly about the amount and types of vacations, deeper animal desires and instincts will start to reign. “Competitive” won't be an overbearing character flaw, or a niche interest can get to work masquerading as a humanitarian exercise.

When I have money, I'll want the laughs. I'll want to keep powering through movies and shows and being fairly culturally “plugged in.” I'll want to improve on my musical knowledge. I'll want to entertain. It occurred to me that when I actually believed I could “help” something, it seemed as good a reason as any to exhaust myself in service to the mere chance I could provide. I don't know how much of my languishing belief in that is due to this 2 or so year waiting period, but the “burden” feels less imperative. I want something profitable and successful drawing off the wisdom of a thousand failures tomorrow, but I've got more of a “pace of life” attitude about it. No matter what, I'm still going to work, and I still need to refine the home base. What sense would it make to start ignoring the foundation after you've been beaten into respecting what it takes to set it up?

It's interesting me to watch the priority shift. I'll proclaim how “anti-aesthetic” I am in service to getting the job done, but I'll take my naked insulation and barn over a trailer any day. The yellowing foam insulation is keeping the bugs out, and can be trimmed any time. The mud caked onto literally everything is an immensely satisfying power-wash away from clean. While I think it'd be dumb to go into debt for the things on my Amazon wishlist, they are there for various reasons. Few hundred dollars at a time? Spend the next two weeks playing with new toys until the coffers fill back up. Consistent ongoing tune-ups and oil changes? Why, it's the responsible thing to do! Ten dollar event insurance? No sense in risking losing out.

It's feeling more and more like a craving. I can feel my chest pulling me towards my spot. I can feel myself walking lighter and smiling quicker. I'm not a person who habitually looks for a problem, and when one of the biggest ones starts to lift, it's like, now what? What do I do with my improved mood? When did I start to bother mingling? Who am I going to risk sharing what I'm doing with? It's something I cherish about drive or compulsion. You know where it's pushing you if you're willing to pay attention. I can ask every question, but I'll know I'm where I need to be when I snap into the moment and just go, “yeah.” Enough of those bred the romance I had for college friendships, so I'll be better next time, but the feeling is no-less desirable.

Let's break off and flip the script entirely. The next blog is about pee tapes.

I watched the docu-series on R. Kelly. I notice a familiar pattern in documentaries. First, there's an obvious “bad guy.” R. Kelly the child rapist is about as dark as you can get without drifting into an exposé on murderers. What most people can comfortably and loudly proclaim is that R. Kelly has a problem, and it's wrong to take advantage of the naivety of youth. One profession after another testifies to his controlling nature, his charisma, and his undeniable music genius that millions find compelling. The regrets are for ever having introduced someone to him, being seduced by the money or perks, or knowing full well what was wrong and how they were complicit.

I was frustrated watching the show. I couldn't escape the nagging feeling that each person professing their pain was looking for their own kind of redemption. It's almost too easy to point to the Big Problem of R. Kelly's sexual exploits. It's going to a wake or funeral knowing it's not really about the dead person, but the living's ability to process or cope. It's a memorial to reflect on what the music means to you or what kind of spell he put you under, skipping right along past what your responsibility to it might actually be. At least with the actual dead, they won't be watching to keep you honest.

That's to say, no one was offering how their experience was going to make them better. No one recalled what they “might” have done to improve upon their concerns. No one offered a proactive sentiment or where they've taken their lessons after coming out the other side. There is no real understanding of the nature of that complicitness, and instead of parsing it, in an important sense, we pick the big easy and “powerful” targets to scapegoat. I think it's the normal generalized human tendency because complicated psychological trauma is just that.

Let me be clear as well, I don't excuse R. Kelly for “preferring younger women.” I don't deny the power and consequences of manipulation. I know teenager brains aren't developed. I know the fucked up situations I put myself in when I was younger that I would totally have appreciated more guidance through or received leeway on. Nothing I say in this blog is supposed to be the kind of devil's advocate for exploiting children, if you're so inclined to fuck about with deliberate mis-reading.

The task is to take from specific examples, and draw out the larger ethos or implication. Isn't it weird that pee fetishes or stories seem to come from the top? Why is Trump embroiled in his own? Where do you go when you have everything besides return to a kind of filth? You'd probably reflexively say you could just enjoy and vibe with the good you have and the opportunities presented, but then I think you're living in the kind of fantasy world where our minds don't attack us when we're happy, or pick our most secure periods to feel anxious.

I couldn't help but hear faint echoes of the dialogue surrounding me and the party dynamics in college. I've not been accused of pedophilia, but I have been of rape. How did that conversation go? Well, it mostly didn't, but my power was brought up. The implicit guilt I should feel because I knew what I was doing. What for years might've been written off as a kind of alcoholic and immature culture immediately became my problematic behavior. And certainly, let's not forget that we're supposed to, without examination or doubt, believe all women regardless, because it's time to wildly swing the culture war in the other direction, civilian casualties a mere rounding error.

I don't think I've ever denied my awareness of my power. I wouldn't be foolish enough to think the sway of fame and fortune wouldn't capture nearly everyone. But I always return to the moment. It's in the moment you discover what your responsibility is. It's in the moment you seize power. It doesn't help the conversation or the capacity to take on more responsibility when “problems” remain as distinctly abstract as a series of damnations all alluding to horrible feelings. It's not enough.

They say it starts small. First he made girls who were susceptible to him call him “daddy.” Then he'd control who they could talk to. Then he'd keep them in his house. He'd beat and degrade. Every day, every hour, and every minute of that process was a moment. Each of those moments absolved and absorbed by fear and every complicated psychological description of the consequences of fear. Here maybe we start to begin picking at what “our” cultural responsibility is to young girls, or young black girls, or youth. What we may or may not find entertaining I think is mute before you have that discussion.

What is R. Kelly afraid of? Consequences? Eh, maybe, but he pretty reflexively pisses in the face of the idea of those, and then proceeds to make a million dollars in doing so. What am I afraid of? It's certainly not bringing up rape accusations and comparing myself to R. Kelly. I want to have the conversation about what we're going to bring into the moment moving forward. I want to discuss the ardent feelings and insistence I believe is earnestly felt if misplaced. I could spend hours dancing around political ways to explain myself or write off the situation in a series of crass doubled-down horrible jokes (or do both), but neither would speak to the conversation I have with myself regarding my behavior. R. Kelly has fans who “believe” in him. How should we regard that belief? To the degree it's a blind fervent love, little to none. I can apparently party and have sex with a fair amount of people, be excessively open about it, and still have my motives regarded as predatory and forceful, to me, as ardently believed by any fan of popular hashtag-moments might. So then what's my responsibility?

Notably, when you do something criminal, the suggestion is that you go to jail. We, of course, don't live in a world where punishments ever remotely match crimes, and usually the accused's most ferocious defenders have more than one skeleton that resembles what's on trial. I don't think it wise to serve unjust sentences, nor do I think a lack of conviction erases implications. My method is to keep talking and keep asking. I likely won't be conducting myself with the same age-group of drunk crowds the rest of my life. Do you apologize? I was told it would be the height of a bad idea to reach out. And then I'm apologizing for hurting her, or for a rape I don't believe I committed? Moreover, I do believe, easily, that I tore her vagina and probably missed a cue to slow down or when to start back up. I've managed to accidentally make girls bleed with us perfectly sober, let alone drunk enough to think a quickie on the side of a house party was tactful.

That “compulsion” or “force” that points you at what needs to be dealt with is playing out with #metoo and Black Lives Matter, and the general consequences of concentrated wealth and power. That's the underlying conversation and psychological battlefield. Knowing what you know now, what happens if you have a daughter who'd ever be willing to call someone daddy? Knowing what you know now, how often should you use alcohol for anything beyond a polite buzz or to share in a sense of camaraderie? How easy is it to rail against the likes of R. Kelly or reel at the idea of getting pissed on, verses the Olympic task of addressing child brides more broadly, or our complicated biology and aberrant sexual preferences?

What if we took a step even further? What if we discovered in ourselves the filth and the worst thoughts? What if we couldn't pass the depravity onto someone else's example and had to take responsibility to act in spite of it? What if we had to remind ourselves every day, “But for the grace of God go I?” What if you're always going to love I Believe I Can Fly no matter how many 14 year olds you watch R. Kelly pee on or have sex with? What if you never allow yourself to forgive what your under-developed brain considered a good idea and “always/never” your understanding of yourself and past into a depression spiral? When do you recognize and take the moment for all that it is, and not just the single feeling or person you can point to and judge?

I'm in a job where, to be effective you're forced to, at the very least, pretend that everything is okay. Interestingly enough, for me, in an important sense, it is. I can calmly ask you about accusations that you sexually molested your child. I'm not there with an agenda to catch you. If I can I certainly will and will nail your ass to the wall, but it's a story first. There are significantly more examples of spiteful ex-spouses, resentful sister-in-laws, and crotchety grandma's calling us with crazy stories than there are violent drug-addled child molesters looking to hurt everyone around them and tear things down. There are a lot of problems out there, and there's an infinite sea of grey that no institution, nor really any individual than the person suffering, can do much about. The story of either of our responsibility to their situation is the eternal cultural question.

Are there easy takeaways? Don't be complicit might be one. I'm not going to ignore a hypodermic needle I see in your house or pretend it's cleaner than it is. I'm not going to attempt to unduly punish you or speak as harshly of you as you attempt to provoke me to. I know you're broken. I know you can't pronounce “denial” before you get around to discussing what it is you're denying. I know that method works insofar as you're not the one rehashing dramatic instances in your life from slightly modified angles over years. I know it's hard to accept that achieving a remote peace of mind is even possible. I know you'll feel guilty of something regardless.

That's how I read people. I get bored to tears hearing the same catch-phrases and cultural virtue signaling. You can state what you blame on someone and follow it up with your course of action or responsibility. You can build within yourself, and future relationships, the bullwork for combating what you see wrong with how power manifests or the indignity and intransigence of those you wish to see take more responsibility. But you can tell most of the story in how they respond. Do they want more or less? Do they entertain or dismiss? Do they cry and shut down, or spit and choke out as close to an approximation of what they're feeling and thinking in spite of themselves?

::breathe::

But let's bring it over to “forgiveness.” I feel like forgiveness is a pat-on-your-back sort of thing. They say you'll never really process or move on until you forgive. But if things are all coming from you. If it's about how you morph reality and how you understand it or can cope, then ultimately you're forgiving yourself. No matter what somebody has done, you have to forgive yourself your anger, forgive yourself your angst, forgive yourself the depression and the pain and the lashing out or whatever the fuck else.

And then that becomes a double-edge sword, because your capacity to forgive yourself can develop the kind of pathologies that protect a lot of shitty behavior, or give others the tools to understand you in a “forgiving framework,” even when some shit doesn't deserve to be forgiven. Remember, it's God that forgives all sins. So how convenient little god-complexes present a holier-than-thou posture about their hypocrisy and hatred. It becomes forgiven when they give up thinking about it or were too dumb or afraid to process the devil at the wheel.

I don't like a great deal of things that have been implicated about me and my life. I don't like that I had to pay a ticket for passing a school bus I did not intend, nor really believe, I actually passed turning. I don't feel like a proud “bad boy” for being overtly sexual and finding myself on some proverbial opposite side of the ring regarding the progression of women's rights or the severity of men's shitty behavior towards them. I don't beg for the pain and drama nor try to deny when it's a palpable force in how someone's life feels like it's being conducted. I don't want to be ignored for my railings against too-good “problems” and the weather to then dare believe we should be dismissing the complicated psychology or circumstances of teenagers who are stardom-adjacent or 20-somethings and party hook-ups. You have to be willing to accept it and work with it all. Not accept things as “perfectly right” or “correct” or “inevitable,” but accept there's layers that work to depersonalize and reassign the nature of how we're going to relate to each other.

You have to remain responsible to the moment, not what you presume to believe yourself capable of in the future. You have to examine the past, because it's manifest in what you're feeling and how you're behaving right now. I'm not begging to be around people who prefer to think of me as a rapist. I don't feel guilty when a catchy song comes on from someone we all know about. If you do, turn it off. And if you feel bad and don't, unpack what “complicity” means to you. Put little weights on the scales about how good, or nothing, you feel against the idea of kids getting peed on. Or don't, and keep skipping from monster to monster to blame. I think at some level we know we deserve what that strategy is giving us.

[605] Race To The Bottom

Dear fucking god is there no way to approach this in a good way.

I don't even want to be writing. In fact, I think I'm going to pause here, go to sleep, and see if I still give a shit tomorrow morning. (6:48 AM)

1:15 PM (morning)

I'm not racist. Or, of course I'm racist. According to different people, I'm too blind or entitled to even see how I embody their idea of racism. What's more important than anything is that I don't have the same struggle. In not having to deal with the same issues, daily, at random, I have absolutely nothing to contribute to a conversation about race. My perspective isn't simply not needed, it's disrespectful and disingenuous by default.

What I know regarding any oppressed minority population is that you don't need the language we have in the United States to feel and act in consequential ways. I doubt a single Hutu called a Tutsi a nigger before chopping them with a machete. The “inhuman other” circuity worked just fine without a meditation on the power dynamics that have shaped white and black relations. That situation took a Rush Limbaugh type radio program. In that regard, the language we employ absolutely matters and absolutely can contribute to horrible circumstances.

My problem with discussing race is the same problem I have in discussing nearly anything. People want to have it all ways. The more specific you attempt to be, the less visceral and human they feel and your attempt to find common ground becomes an attack on their identity. In the U.S., whether it's spoken to enough outside of black circles or not, that identity is that of a perpetual victim. It's a skin color that can get you shot for no reason. It's people taking the low hanging fruit in insulting you online. It's being denied equal access and opportunities because of your name.

As it is my habit, I start to lean into the wind of topics that become “hot.” I piss off a black guy, of course I want the next 10 black people's opinion the next day. I'm not particularly surprised by what I found. In fact, every time I seem to approach something I'm not qualified or allowed to discuss, I end up finding fairly quickly a slew of people who seem to understand me. Also, I find a ton of different ways to get told how wrong and backwards I am on something. They generally play out in familiar ways.

Bloomington is a fairly diverse setting. You can start shooting the shit with someone from Ghana or Brazil or Nigeria over a cigarette outside the bar. As such, you can find exceedingly different conceptions of race from black or mixed people who don't even quite understand “the black experience” to the emotional degree of someone who grew up in this country. It's not a secret that they are often the most sympathetic. At the same time, maybe I've just been spoiled by the circles I grew up in, I roll with black people who don't seem to conceive of their lives in flatly race based terms. It's not that they ignore or don't experience racism, it's that they're as happy to make their identity about their work, relationships, hobbies etc as I am.

It's not the hard irony of people who contradict themselves in the same sentence, but I suspect it's a point that is lost on many people when discussing race, everyone is different. Literally every single person is going to give you a different answer about their experience regarding some racist ass shit someone did, racist ass shit they grew up with, or racist ass comments and behaviors they have to navigate in their daily personal and professional lives. There isn't, nor will ever be, a single conception of “white” or “black” that unites everyone you presume to fall under that flag. Black Lives Matter in a relatively short time has managed to get involved in politics and force a conversation this country absolutely needs to have. They've also attracted total nut jobs who've been given oversight and quasi-legislative powers in Canada who make racist hippie claims regarding divinity and the amount of melanin you have.

It's only in specificity and definition do you get anything resembling sense. Bill Maher got into his trouble for calling himself a house nigga in response to a congressman suggesting he'd love to see Bill out in the fields with him. The world gets set ablaze. As someone exceedingly sympathetic to people who make the wrong joke, I understand why someone with what he has to lose would apologize, but I still think it's stupid as shit to think Bill Maher is at the heart of our racism problem.

Here's a fairly often shared sentiment I get from black people. “Well, it all contributes.” In that way, the racist joke is tantamount to redlining, is beckoning the death of another unarmed black male, is the sneers and comments from introducing yourself to a setting where you don't belong. I think this is a slip in reasoning. I think this disavows nuances. In practical terms, I think this actively creates barriers to building coalitions of people who are sympathetic and agree with most everything you'd say regarding race.

People notice differences. I think it's outside of how many approach race to think that some of the most “racist” language or behaviors someone might employ are precisely them treating you equally. Calling you black when you're black isn't racist. I've seen white people get uncomfortable when I say, “I don't know his name, the black guy, you know, the only black guy here so it's obvious and easy for us to recognize what I'm talking about, said he'd meet you on the corner.” It's frequently white people who are uncomfortable or ashamed to even acknowledge color. I think that's a harbinger for the “sly” racism in a way that saying “the black guy over there” is not.

In a further sentiment regarding noticing differences, that's human. That is going to happen, all the time, every day, to absolutely anyone that your internal judgmental machinery has denoted as “the other.” That is a long-standing in-built survival mechanism that I don't believe for a second is going away. Is it terribly helpful when you're trying to have a singular connected conception of people working and living together? Fuck no. Is it something that millions or billions of people in one capacity or another manage to get over in order to remain civil and survive together? Absolutely. Voicing difference isn’t necessarily divisive.

One thing I wish to make clear, I don't presume or pretend to know anyone else's daily bullshit or hardships. My interactions with cops, while too frequent, have gone over exceedingly well. I've never been followed or stalked thinking I'm about to get raped walking home. I'm not an invisible old woman who society doesn't think exists because the mainstream doesn't want to fuck me anymore. I'm not physically or mentally disabled. I don't get routinely called names unless I go out of my way to stick my neck into situations “no one invited me to.”

My night consisted of hours spent talking to complete strangers about the oppressive circumstances they grew up under, the cancer they overcame, the world travels they've experienced, secretive medical work they aren't allowed to talk about, and eventually experiences with race here and abroad. One woman even tried to hook me up with her sister. And I forgot what I discussed with the Oliver Platt looking 21 year old. The sun-raising race conversation ended on the person I was talking to getting heated and loud. Our stumbling point initiated on a difference we had regarding how much credit you should give people. I give them none. He thought something in the vein of “society will figure things out eventually.”

I pretty well forget precisely how it broke down, but I think I was arguing against a violent response to something and found myself saying, “Did Martin Luther King Jr. tell anyone to get violent or fight when they sat at white counters or marched in racist towns?” The black dude walking away turns and screams back, “And what the fuck did that get ANY of us!”

[529] 6 Deadly Sins

I saw a model for social mobility in a sociology class once. It explained that, relative to where you were born in life, maybe 10-15% of people were predicted to move up in their class. If my memory is lacking, I know it wasn’t 5% and I know it wasn’t 20%. It referred to the U.S. specifically, and I’m fairly certain it was speaking to how that number goes down depending on race and how those numbers have been affected as we moved into the future. (This was 6 years ago I was in this class.)

A word employed, I think too often today, is “privilege.” One must check their privilege. They must apologize and kowtow to the unconscious hurt it causes everyone around them. There is no hard and fast rules for believing someone has acted with enough contrition. The standard for what constitutes privilege is constantly shifting. It’s less a cautionary vehicle for awareness as it is an opportunity for someone to pounce on what they perceive is any edge they were not provided.

Here we can find ourselves in another conversation about “raising consciousness” or claim some capacity to be “woke.” In my view, to do either is as much a sham as it is to foist someone’s life circumstances on their unconscious biases alone. Let’s elaborate with some stories.

I recently took a trip to the ghetto. A friend of mine organizes his uncle’s pills, runs him to the store, and just generally checks in to make sure the aging former Gangster Disciple diabetic is still kicking. The man’s grass was a jungle, he smelled like unwiped ass. He told, more like barely coherently mumbled, stories about how crackheads (or, rock stars as he hilariously called them) sneak into his house to do crack while he’s asleep. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he has a few mental health issues as well.

We can draw a contrast from that man’s experience of life to that of his nephew’s and mine. Me and my friend live within 5 minutes of each other and both grew up solidly middle class. The quiet, quasi-dead, banality of the neighborhood in which I’m writing this was something we were both born into. We’re both “woke” to the realities of poverty, him in his own family, and if only me because I’ve known him for so long, or watched what’s happened to my area as ghetto-like conditions started creeping in.

The dialogue about his uncle goes a few ways. Screaming accusations and appeals to personal responsibility happens often enough. “He should mow his lawn!” “Lock the door!” “Seek help!” Because the man “shopping,” at a store that doesn’t mop its floors, for pop to accompany the bread and leftover cake on his table, probably has a world-class health clinic up the street, right? You remember it was us that drove him to the store as well as sort out the 8 different pills he needed a day.

You can also go completely oblivious the other way. “He should be totally taken care of!” “We should create all the resources possible to make sure he’s living like a human being!” “If we only had access to better healthcare!” While my sympathies certainly lie more in this camp, it’s wholly oblivious to the realities of an impoverished culture. There is no plug and play fix to an institutional disposition. There is no amount of “education.” There’s not enough health clinics you can open. There’s not enough empathy bombs you can set off in someone’s mind to provoke a march and overhaul. In an extremely important wording and sense, “he” cannot be fixed because “he” is not really the problem. Many things went wrong before he got here.

It’s this reality that makes me, not want to blame and berate people of my or higher standing about their lives, but encourage them to talk. It’s why I wish they’d get over themselves. Without even realizing it, we’re quick to cry, kick, and scream about things that happen to us. (My future was tied to the girl!) More importantly to me, we’re quick to brag and boast about how picturesque our lives are, when of course they’re not, while we spend everyday pretending the realities of the ghetto don’t matter or impact us. We act like the institutions we middle-manage or wage-slave at don’t create conditions of a chronic illness. We think working hard, or more insidiously, “harder,” means we’re being smart or justified. We’re not.

This is what kills me whenever I’m told, “well we already know this!” about something I’m writing. I don’t believe you. I don’t believe the vast majority of people who grew up like me know the feeling, look, and smell of poverty. I don’t think they’re regaled with stories from their Uncle Tom grandpa getting soooo excited to be treated like white people. I think this because I’ve had people tell me, “I’ve had many racial interactions throughout my life!” trying to defend their not-racist street cred, as they doubted the legitimacy of Black Lives Matter or that the amount of people getting shot was accurate.

Do you know? Do you feel things in your bones and change your voice and actions?

Recently, I was watching a former NFL star talk on Chelsea about what a major payday looks like to you, as opposed to Uncle Sam, as opposed to your agent or your family. Managing that money and having those difficult conversations about why you’re not going to let someone invest in a barber shop in Tokyo are skills you don’t often acquire on your road through the sports world. It’s a kind of clash of civilizations in your own mind, as you often come up from less than ideal circumstances. For many of these guys, it takes losing millions before a stabilizing and wiser perspective sets in.

In other words, you can’t just throw money at it. If you’re going to my friend’s uncle’s house, you shouldn’t even bother keeping ten bucks in your pocket, or you’re gonna be compelled to lie to him when he asks if you have any extra cash. The kinds of changes that I would argue for aren’t simple shifts in monetary policy. They’re shifts in what we’re willing to put up with conversationally. They’re shifts in what constitutes “work” or a well-written or reported perspective on some area of life. I want humility and struggle against the system, not braggadocio and tired confessionals mirroring every other complacent or self-indulgent soul.

But how do you know I mean it? What makes me “special?” Why listen to my voice, sounding eerily like those bleeding hearts with pie-in-the-sky ideas that could never work!?

Well, I’m the one writing about my brush with actual poverty, you’re not. I’m currently looking for a spot to build an eco-friendly straw-bale house, because I didn’t get the “middle-class” lifestyle promised to me either. That’s currently, not “one day” after I’ve exhausted myself at some bullshit job, I very-well know is bullshit, but refuse to say so out loud because it’s so drab and depressing, blaaaahhh. “Not everyone can do drug studies, asshole!” No, but you can pull resources. You can shack up next or near each other and put away resentful naiveties about the capacity of your bootstraps. My living room and extra bedroom have opened up for at least 4 friends to help find their footing. You can try figuring out something new together instead of playing out the well-worn excuses and traversing the poorly-paved roads before you.

A sonder is the realization that everyone has a life as rich and complex as your own. I often think about this as I’m passing what feels like a hundred thousand cars on my way to take pills for more than most will make this month. Rich and complex? We’re all on the same road. In my area, we’re all wandering the same mall and eating the same food. We went to, about, the same schools. If we truly had any capacity for appreciating complexities, you’d think we’d introduce “simple” ethics regarding shared experience into the compounding equation before anything else.

Still, I’m provoked by the language of sin. We’re greedy. I want my toys and house and cash as much as the next person, but I won’t do it hiding behind my small donations here and there or even pretending blogs like this count for more than they do. We’re sloths. We’ll struggle to the ends of the earth to defend our “love” and our “rights” as long as we don’t really have to tackle what that means for our neighbor. We take undue pride in what I AND I ALONE, or at least, what my family nodded in support of, have accomplished. We envy those who can pull off the best Instagram picture or magazine depiction of a modern living room. We gorge ourselves on unsustainable food. We get insanely defensive and angry at people like me who perpetually point out the emperor is naked. When it comes to lust, I think people should be fucking considerably more often, so let’s say I think religion gets that one pretty wrong at least.

Everything in my life is a first-world problem and complaint. I barely discussed what happens in the ghettos of America. Tell that story to the perpetually bombed teenage Palestinians. You mean their house ISN’T reduced to rubble? Bling Bling! I don’t want to live like the poor and I don’t think I need to flog myself for aspiring to more. I do think I have an obligation to encourage, as often as the mood strikes me, a conversation that I think begets real change. I want the kind of conversations that drove me to drug studies and straw-bale houses, and investing in software that hopefully helps me respect the time I’ve spent reading about the details.

The conversation doesn’t get better when it doesn’t happen. Our “consciousness” remains stunted at whatever snippets we can remember from the half-read article before or after work. Our jovial polite impressions of one another, or stark raving lunatic screaming professions about one another, remain different extremes to the same end. Maybe not your end, in your little world, concerned with your little self. But an end that might terrify, or dejectedly relieve you, were the circumstances switched. The “government,” our “educations,” the “fix,” whatever you’re mad at or supports you are all what you’re choosing to do right now. Or, they’re all subjected to the unconscious whimsy of business as usual.

Am I trying to guilt trip you? Is asking for informed empathic conversation too much? Is working together not just unreasonable given proximity, but who has the time? I won’t pretend I know what your path or method consists of, but it shouldn’t be silence. It shouldn’t be judgment or anger. You should do like me. Be weird. Insist. Encourage. Try to do it differently and experiment. Talk for as long as it takes. Dive into what makes you afraid and uncomfortable. That’s where my friends lie and what I want to see the future consist of. Anything less seems pointless.

[519] Mortal Criti-sin

I'm trying to recall the last time I heard someone criticize something in colloquial conversation that didn't reduce to a cliché. It strikes me that the backlash I receive for not describing things in generally positive ways might be comprised of several screwed up forces in tandem. Like threads on a rope that snap together to whip me into submission.

Consider Pokemon Go. It seems like it is on its way to taking over the world. Jokes about getting outside for the first time in whenever. Screen shots of who's got the most and where they found them abound. For every article that's abused the relentless capacity for “millenials” to feel “nostalgic,” this app seems to have screwed right into the heart of it. I certainly don't blame people for having fun or connecting with people. I'm unable to shake how this feels like a culmination of perpetual infantilism.

I liked Pokemon as much as the next guy. Then I started to grow up. I don't want this to be overstated as I don't draw stark lines in the sand about acceptable ways to kill time, have fun, or whatever. Collect Pokemon, stamps, jerk off all day, I don't give a shit. I care that we only seem to find enthusiasm for “stupid” things like apps or get arm-chair “outraged” by things like shootings and racism. Our emotional perspective seems trapped, stunted, and ignorant.

What if we put as much time and emotional energy into learning about the world as we did wandering the neighborhood to catch Pokemon? Let me put it to you like this. Time is the most valuable thing. I have watched more movies and television than anyone I've ever met, and am a couple hundred levels from beating the main story of Candy Crush. I know how to waste time. I don't call what I do any more or less worthy of my time but for it's capacity to distract me or keep me entertained. But I couldn't do any of those things unless I thought I could offer a salient opinion about my place in my country or our collective responsibility to the world. I get guilt stricken. I feel lazy and dishonest. I honestly don't know if other people do, and frankly doubt it.

I fear we abuse apps and “nostalgia” like we abuse alcohol or drugs. One is arguably better if you had to choose, but what provokes the abuse and, perhaps overstated enthusiasm, I think is the same mechanism. The mad dash away from coping and dealing with larger problems. These are late 20's people who can't afford shit, aren't fucking, and have been under the unrelenting heal of debt and corrupted social services, if the news is to be believed, so why not Pokemon? It rings like the modern peasant farmers who at least get to get wasted at the end of the day.

Your 20's seems to have become this new tender age. People react so poorly to my critical statements because subconsciously their whole life has been under review and doubt and problems. They're just now maybe glancing at an opportunity to look like an adult and achieve things they dreamed about as kids. And here I come shitting even more. The stark contrast between why I seem to get along with adults verses kids is simple. Kids just wanna have fun and I'm a meanie. Adults have grown resolved to hear it all and move with or work past without much fuss.

While I was working out the details of emotional struggles and the lack of wisdom in relationships, people were doubling down on those feelings and believing in the future 10 years later. While I was giving myself headaches learning every angle of choose-your-topic, school was stressful enough for them or, “what's the point?” of driving yourself insane about things you can't fix. Add the backdrop of financial insecurity onto the undeveloped disposition of a batch of children, it's not a secret why anything remotely not ironic or critical on a site like reddit gets shit on to oblivion. It doesn't matter if you have a point, no one has developed the capacity to see it.

This is also different from a pretentious thing. Like, you can make convoluted crazy “points” about anything, drawing from your disparate experiences that...well they certainly seem to make sense to you. I'm talking about a kind of ignorance that has old white people saying Black Lives Matter is overreacting and need to take more responsibility for themselves. Any black person, as well as any reasonable person, would not look at someone in police custody ending up in a coma and say, “He should have worn a seat belt” like the dude wasn't kicked the shit out of. You can see the rates of incarceration, read histories worth of racially targeted legislation, and just be generally awake and honest and land on the side of sympathy.

I look down on those people. The ones who have no reason to pretend about something simple, but choose to anyway. Impersonal hive-mind children on an internet forum? Not my target audience. The same mechanism of defensive fear for conceding that the world ain't roses? I think it stems from the same kind of insecurities. The world can be described accurately in a way that transcends your opinion. There's degrees and levels to consider if you're going to act like your approach is relatively wise. If we persist under a cultural lunge to suppress and escape, well, Hitler 2 is actually a presidential candidate.

So I'm willing to double down. I'm willing to write 10 blogs contemplating why you would think it's me who's “negative.” The negativity stems from your avoidance and reluctance. It stems from your inability or unwillingness to respect your time or capacity to change something. Me talking about it isn't the problem, and never will be. You making me the enemy instead of yourself will always be. By choosing to react to the suffering of institutional guilt instead of motivating yourself from a personal one, you ensure we'll drive right over the edge of a cliff while I insist it’s not worth trying to catch the Onyx at the bottom.