[895] Sharp Dressed Man

Perhaps it's because lately I've been inundated with more religious-themed books and media, or perhaps I just can't sleep because my dinner was 7000 calories of delicious carbs, but here we are.

I consider myself a reasonable person. Why? I remain aware of how limited reason can be. I don't “believe” I'm a reasonable person. I think I'm a reasonable person. For me, there's a huge gap between thinking and believing. I struggle to conceive of things I believe in. I have an endless array of ideas which I either can or can't reason my way towards some kind of relative conclusion.

When I'm angry, down, or incredibly confused, I turn to reason. I don't pray the pain away. I don't deny what I feel or the words I wish to use to express it. I don't try to act like things are okay. I don't lust for someone to make excuses for me nor whisper in my ear that everything will be okay. Reason, for me, is nothing if not a tool first. I find meaning in attempting to be reasonable as I allow my thoughts to act through my fingers in searching for what I have to say.

I understand why people don't want to be reasonable. Reason is, at least theoretically, dispassionate. A story told boringly or series of facts aligned don't necessitate your opinion. A reason might be cold, flat, and weighing you down, while an excuse comes out hot and ready to protect you or float into as many ears as will take it. Reason gives us a path to often just as cold and heavy conclusions as the facts required to get us there.

I watched a short documentary from Braver Angels using marriage counseling sessions between democrats and republicans. I listened to Chris Hedges' book American Fascists. I watched What's the Matter with Kansas? In some ways, I don't know how to refrain from rehashing what I feel exists in one tenth of my writing about religious thinking, conservatives, or the inevitable consequences of forgoing your agency in service to things with less evidence than farts in the wind. There's still something I'm missing.

I think I understand religious belief. I think I understand it as a series of forces, not some ardently defined moment or act of “belief.” I see it as a kind of parallel mind where the only thing that matters is remaining alive as a character in some kind of story. I take it for granted that people are incredibly psychologically fragile. The fine line of remote sanity, in sheer practical terms, bolstered by religious myth or interpersonal cult feels almost reflexively mandatory. I think people who bemoan the amount of alleged believers often ignore the series of myths you're required to adopt even as an otherwise “reasonable person” just to function.

As such, I've come to understand the strategy of poking fun, getting angry, or otherwise attempting to belittle someone's faith as futile. It doesn't mean it can't be fun or justified, but it does mean if I'm to maintain that I want to change culture, my pitch is going to have to be more comprehensive. I'm positive I've stated this years ago, and it's manifested as a generalized disinterest in engaging with anyone remotely religious about anything religious more than any kind of advocacy specifically.

What's important to understand about my change in position is that it didn't come from anymore respect for religion or any one religious person. In fact, I still hate staunch ideologues and think religion is the best tool they use to destroy most of what I care about, including the practice and teaching of reason. Reason allowed me to take in more information and adopt a broader view. I could further contextualize not just my antagonizers, but myself and how I feel about them. No religious person was persuasive. No religious argument just shook my feeble atheistic mind. I just kept working to understand the problem broader.

A lot of my anger for religious people is for a perceived intellectual laziness and dishonesty. Fear I can at least basically respect insofar as it's a complicated emotion at the basest level of our brain, and when you're afraid, you're bound to be unreasonable. Once you've removed the fear, or poor excuses to pretend you're afraid, I think it's a direct flight to dishonesty and laziness. Flying right over facts, questions, “I don't know,” or any one of a thousand things that might chip away at the catch-all answers of “faith.”

Religion is often referred to as something very personal. Whether or not you even want to use the word religion, people flock to “spiritual” or some such “mystical” realm of communing with forces “beyond” or “greater.” I've done drugs that made me feel that way. They did not result in religious conversion. Before I did those drugs, I did a lot of reading about the ways people achieve those states and what happens in our brains when they're going on. I sucked the magic out. I didn't let the question linger like no answer could possibly exist and moved on with my life.

We act like there's any real separation of church and state. This intimate, deeply personal, often rallying cry to go out and convert others, global phenomenon about how to characterize your place and organize the world is treated as though it's an incidental afterthought when you go to the ballot box. A lazy economist might say you've got “perfect information” from which to decide who's going to represent your best interests and disregard your “personal values.”

The challenge, and I think so few people understand or agree with this, is to understand how totalizing and threatening it is to have a perspective subsumed by a religious mindset. Maybe Jesus isn't your brand, but something in how we respond to story-telling and club-affiliation is speaking to you. It's no better to be emotionally hijacked by a political party than it is a sky daddy.

We know as well much about how and why people pick these fascist feelings and tendencies over reason. They're desperate. They're alone. They're exhausted and ashamed. They're angry, perhaps even as angry as me, and they don't know what to do about it besides burn things down. Could you have asked for a more lame coup? It played out like a bad TV episode of a TNT show. Faith without acts is dead? The hollowness of faith is clearly alive and well.

I think I semi-consciously decided that the psychosis was too large and the numbers too few to really combat it. I started praising the idea of so much to eat and watch as forms of a stop-gap to any kind of genuine movement towards destruction. There' no more fat, hopeless, and addicted than the ones who vote in service to their fascist values. Fight the next Civil War from the top of any flight of steps and you'll be done by the afternoon.

The word “reason,” like all words in double-speak land, gets tossed around to mean its opposite. “The reason I vote is to save the unborn!” Of course, you don't need a concept of “save” “the unborn” or “reason” to form those words into a sentence. You don't need science. You don't need statistics or analogies implicating your god in significantly more natural abortions than are ever sought medically. A reasonable person knows you're tribal. Your morals are shaped by a story, not morality. Your feelings dictate instead of inform. You feel the story in a way that facts don't concern themselves with.

Reason, devoid of context, gets you into as much or more trouble than being merely faithful. Now, you've functionally broken all the rules. Nothing weaves your thoughts into a context. Psychotic breaks put this on display. Even when you're perhaps technically saying a series of true things, they're anchored to nothing, and you, not anchored, can't tell. Our fundamental need for a story now becomes the game of people marketing their “family atmosphere” at a slave-labor job. It's a story of manifesting destiny and entitlements. It's class warfare. It's righteous slaughter of the threat just over the hill or those guilty of thought-crime in not believing your origin or orientation story.

Where does the individual, or just the capacity to reason, go? If we must have a story, and I think we must, which one do we choose? Here, the apologists for various faiths point to the generally large number of people not blowing themselves up or stoning gay people and consider that reason enough to pat themselves on the back for their club membership. I reject this, and say you should be choosing your story.

Your story is anchored by choice. Refined choices are dictated the larger you make your perspective. If you're a child and you choose milk and cereal for breakfast, because that's all you've ever had or known, or perhaps all your parents could afford, you have little choice. Your story is small, predictable, and speaking to a universal story perhaps about poverty or simplicity. Now you're grown. You can eat literally anything, food or otherwise, and you pick a piece of fruit for books and books of reasons that still may tell a story about poverty or simplicity, but now with your agency and intention. You can recognize your choice now in the broader context. You can reflect on your “choice” as a child as primarily a series of circumstances and ignorance.

It appears many people struggle with this kind of exercise, not because it's hard, but because it begs a lot of questions they start afraid, and then end lazy and dishonest, about answering. How much of your day are you really choosing? Are you still practically a child? What horrible terrible things are you choosing? What might've happened to you as a child that you have no choice but to relive the terror of each time you think of it? What if the people you care most about in the world were actually choosing to do things that would hurt or kill you and the people or things you care about? What if you don't know or aren't confident you can, in fact, ever choose to do anything about anything? (Just double-dog dare these people to lick a toilet seat and then ask them how helpless they feel because they know the rules.)

Much more polite, simple, and “safe” to step right over all that and, god forbid, anyone remark how banal some Jewish snobs regard evil or remark on how it triumphs.

This is what will kill us, in my estimation. It won't be bloody Trump nuts hanging like balls from a neutered nation. It won't be nuclear war or mishap. I don't even think it will be climate change. It will just be the silence of business as usual. It'll be on the wind between the pages of a trillion memes. It will come like a virus. It will come straight-up, nicely dressed, and telling you, exceptionally reasonably, what it's doing and intends to do to you in the future, and you'll usher it inside, introduce it to your kids, and pray it's only joking.

[530] I'm A Fake I'm A Fake I'm A Fake

I’m in a particularly cynical mood tonight. I can feel the irrational levels of hatred forming the front lines of an outburst. I loathe these moments for how informative they feel. My deepest sense of reality pressed at every pressure point. And it’s brought on by a stupid board game.

I see the rest of my life. I’ve met people like me, or more often read about them. The “go-getter” with an unassailable spirit to keep trying. The one who’s interested in everything and never backs away from a fight, especially ones he doesn’t need to have. I’ve been comfortable for some time with referring to myself as much a cliché as I may label someone else. It’s the healthy mix of naivety and wisdom that let’s you keep moving in spite of yourself.

The psychology I’m molded from has just enough drops of abuse and despair intermingled with selfless sentiment. Each moment I choose to make an opponent of myself, or “humanity,” or “your stupid stupid self who has no capacity to properly use words.” There’s no surprises. There’s nothing engaging. Whether I get on an old-man ramble how I’m going to be having the same conversation about the Middle East 25 years from now as my parents did 25 years ago, or if I get drunk and talk for 3 hours to a group of people on their porch in the middle of the night, to me, it speaks to nothing.

Because this is my voice, I don’t have a voice. Because those examples are when I’m loudest, when I pick up a megaphone, you’ll never hear me. The pen is only mightier than the sword in a battle of wits. It takes almost negative thought to exist as we do. I phrase it as such because I offer people the chance to read or recognize and they literally tell me they feel sorry for me. I don’t deserve to be as sure of myself as they are themselves. I’m not worthy of the game they’re playing.

I feel my grip loosen as each finger is plucked by the macabre man who oversees existence. How does one not dance about in the depravity? What’s worth it really mean anymore?

Depravity, for me, looks like taking the money and running. It says, rather insistently, fuck you, I got mine. No, you didn’t hear me, FUCK YOU, I GOT MINE, LIFE’S HARD ENOUGH NIGGA GET THE FUCK BACK. And then when the guilt or pity kicks in from time to time you donate to the dying children. Depravity looks like sleep. So much sleep I up my capacity for indulgence to induce it artificially. Why not? Although, lately, even my dreams haven’t been safe.

What’s left for me to believe in? That I’ll get my cool house or compound? That I’ll give more privileged travelers opportunities to mask the depravity of the “gig economy” and spectacle of dipping your toes into the homogenized commodities that are becoming the rest of the world? That I’ll “find someone” who so amazingly and wonderfully thinks like me! And it will all be okay again because we’ve been hurt before and learned so much!

The tragedy is belief. I believed in school. I believed in love. I believed in family. I believed in my work ethic. I believed in my intelligence. I believed in my interested and engaged perspective. I believed in conversation. I believed in sincerity. I believed in, practically unconditional, acceptance. I believed in selfishness. I believed in manipulation. And apparently I believe in an endless stream of disgusting words that speak to my snarled lip and furled brow.

I’m always lying. What to make of all the time I’m lying and I never even meant to. When I’ve bitched too much it wasn’t enough. When I stopped hitting the wall after the first hole or first few drops of blood I let myself off easy. When I set my computer aside and roll over thinking I was done writing and might be able to sleep it will be complete and utter bullshit.

I already told you, total cliché.

I’m being dragged around by life. It’s blowing me in every which direction and I’ve found nothing to ground myself in but wandering around, saving money, and complaining. I pick goals for their ability to retain my attention for longer than a few days. I form opinions on thousands of movies and shows so I can say, “you know, I forget that scene in particular, but overall I thought it was good.” Because what else is there? Start smugly goose honking like Chris Hedges? Seek academic sainthood like Noam Chomsky? Get ripped and fuck bitches because I am all that is man!? Act like I feel brotherly love and know how to translate that message like brother Cornel West? Buy it all like the rich kids of Instagram? Drink it all? Catch em all?

I’m nothing. I’m nowhere. In 2 days, I’ll be the QT/QTC microsecond data point from the ECG measuring what some pill has or hasn’t done to delay my heart. That’s why I went to college. That’s why I wanted to be an entrepreneur. That’s why the 180 degree reorientation of my life feels invigorating and definitely not manic because I no longer get to think someone else is the most important thing in my world. As if I wasn’t clued in to that self-inflicted drama years ago. Just keep swimming!

I’m a constant roll of the dice. Maybe I’ll wake up and you’ll all be gone. Maybe I won’t make it back off the highway. Maybe I’ll go bankrupt. Maybe I’ll get sick. Maybe the psychopath I pissed off online will find me. I’ll roll and roll and roll and only see two lifeless eyes fixed straight up affirming the only thing they’re good for.

What the fuck am I doing? My job clearly isn’t to keep close connections with like-minded individuals I met in school. It’s not to become some famous insightful writer, so full of RAGE and passion, Brava! It’s not to teach you fucking anything you’re not happy to dive headfirst into anyway. Or it’s not something I haven’t poorly reiterated from those on the ground or with photographic memories and a penchant for elegance. If I’m not here for anyone, I can only be here for me, and that’s the most depressing, horrifying, and life-ending thought I can come up with.

How to frequently resolve that without being suicidal? Or maybe I’m just incidentally suicidal, like in eating shitty food and breathing hours of basement air. Or in speeding on the highway and leaving my contacts in too long. Fuck my eyes, right? I’ve seen enough. Let’s not forget picking scabs. Nothing so on the nose than literally digging at yourself to pieces. It’s not that I’m just watching people “get by” and “make the best of it.” It’s not that they just leave this ooze I can’t wash off. It must just be me. They’re not killing themselves with my mirror neurons going apeshit. I’m just the only one that doesn’t get it.

So singular minded. So closed-off and resentful. I should broaden my horizons. Find the good in everything. Use my resources and thoughtfulness to turn this window into the world onto all that is good instead of icky knowledge of a nuclear holocaust, climate apocalypse, or rape porn. Which of those made you most uncomfortable to think about? It doesn’t matter! The world is filled with beautiful mountains and love and opportunities to be surprised every day! We’re all in this together!

[461] Lessons In "Fuck It"

Every day I feel a little dumber. The sentiment usually goes the other way. “You learn something new everyday!” The idea is that someone should always be curious and striving to learn, even if it’s from something like a word-a-day calendar. The world, an endless mystery with evolving technologies, myriad cultures, and new opportunities every day imbues the power to motivate and help you self-determine. Or so the sentiment at least hints.

So why do I feel dumber? With every new piece of knowledge you have a responsibility to recognize its sides. That doesn’t mean there’s always good with bad or vice versa. It just means that nothing is self-contained and you can run yourself ragged in pursuing the implications and influences. An easy analogy is to think of comic book arcs. You can read a single series that alludes to 6 different series that in turn each point to 6 more, all leaving a small but particular mark for those in the know.

When I learn, I pick up on the thousand ways I’m going to fail. I probably overuse the word “naive.” I think it’s the quintessential attitude, a sort of dispositional lifeblood if you will, underpinning most peoples’ motivations. Because in order to be naive, you only have to feel as if you’ve acknowledged dissent and then carry on. It’s where you get terms like “haters” and “naysayers.” Haters tyin’ to keep you down because they can’t appreciate the higher plain your actions and perspective exists on. People who don’t believe in you because they don’t share, or more likely aren’t capable of, your capacity for a vision for the future.

Essentially, it points to a difference in “acknowledgment” verses “internalizing.” Say you lash out in anger over some political point during a debate. Your opponent can quietly nod and say “I understand” as they move right into their point of view. They don’t feel your anger. You want them to feel your anger, because presumably then they’ll understand just how you got there, but they don’t. Like a practically neglected child, a random pat on the head or reaction to crying doesn’t in turn automatically manifest loving feelings.

I can acknowledge, for example, the many barriers to success in the political realm. From gerrymandering, rampant corruption, general voter ignorance, too many moving parts, historical perspectives lost to time, the cost of “doing business,” the grand timescales movements and revolutions rest on, what’s happened to the “best attempts”...the list could go on for a while. But until recently, maybe the last couple weeks, it hasn’t struck me as a kind of “existential lost cause.” I didn’t really feel it.

Notably, I feel it when I listen to my political heroes. When my leaders paint the world as a dramatic borderline chaos factory with little to no advice on how we get better barring an unforeseen miracle or catastrophe, everything I think to do in spite or to help feels very dumb, small, and pointless. It’s not a nutjob Tea Party member that scares me when they bang the war pots and pans together. I lose hope when Chomsky details perspectives and decisions over years from the people closest to the flames. I’d love to believe in Bernie Sanders, until Nader and Hedges lay out his position in larger contexts that laugh off capacity stadium attendance.

And yet, I don’t necessarily feel the desire to turn into a straight cynic. My understanding of a cynic is someone like Ben Carson. A person who can fluidly and perpetually lie about literally everything defines the kind of absurdity of our times. The fact that he’s a brain surgeon again shows God to have a sense of humor. A cynic would seek the attention for the sake of it. The cynic would seek to capitalize on the bluster and ignorance. I, on the other hand, want to just be left alone.

Who wants to fight for a lost cause? When you can feel so profoundly how screwed up the world around you is, how do you go anywhere but away? “The World” isn’t ready for and doesn’t deserve the kind of luxury and opportunity that’s on offer. We take it for granted. We assume things will work themselves out. We’re too “smart” for our own good.

I throw out the idea of being a kind of “sociopath” so often it’s lost all its luster for me. Another way of relating to how I feel might be characterized as an “overflowing empath.” I started in life feeling too much and just got paired with a crazy person long enough to learn when to shut it off. If I feel too much, and I just feel dumber, maybe the direction “in general” has won out. Maybe in my heart of hearts I know that whatever experiments I run, whatever resources I create, and whomever I meet or work with, will only be drops unable to quell a spectacular sea of fire.

It’s that I don’t believe in us, even a little. I don’t know if that’s being dumb, or self-preservation. I believe in me. I believe I can survive and ride out the times, provided I generally stay away from large cities. But the world from my corner has been shrinking for so long, I think this is a point where I say it’s swallowed me up. Bernie isn’t my savior. My heroes are old and detailed. The momentum is such that fighting all but provokes martyrdom. Revolution? We’re not evolved.

[428] Do Or Do Not

I think there's an important distinction between types of people that isn't often talked about. When attempts are made to talk about it we tend to regard people as “optimists” who contrast with the “pessimists.” I think the distinction has less to do with your positive or negative outlook on life. I think the distinction lies in how you are socialized to think about your circumstances. That is, it's the difference between people who “want to live” and those who are “waiting to die.”

I get hung up on old movies, shows, and documentaries about bands and political theater. You get the impression that there is a genuine underlying cultural sensibility and understanding. Regardless of what you can say about misogynistic and civil rights failures, people seemed to “get it” in a way that I absolutely cannot find today. This is surely part media bias and rose colored glasses, but at the same time, I think it's the same reason I tend to get along with older people in general if not old women in particular.

Old women seemed to be socialized to “take care of the family.” A very life affirming, always on the go, navigate a million moving parts including your children's needs, husband's emotional distance, and whatever the neighborhood gossip or family secrets. Men were just expected to work and provide. Being tired at the end of the day and teaching a few life skills was tantamount to good parenting. While I was antiquing the other day, a couple of older women lamented that you can't just get into a fight now-a-days without getting sued or put in jail and, no exaggeration said, “in my day things were different.”

It's often talked about “the simpler times.” When what you knew you knew and what you didn't you didn't. Information wasn't being uploaded to the cloud to be checked and debated endlessly every minute. You didn't have a million TV channels and competing sources for your attention like the 1000 people you follow on twitter or the hundreds of friends and their meme pictures and statuses. I genuinely think from a psychological standpoint, this was a better circumstance than what we have today.

I think this because I consider myself an educated person without a fucking clue as to what I should be doing. I spend so much time “doing everything” and absolutely none of it has felt like the “right” thing to do in anything but philosophical or health terms. That is, I don't want to be a wage slave if I don't have to, and I respect my time to a greater degree than my money. I feel a genuine sense of responsibility towards the world because I chose to adopt a stake in it. How I got to a point of adopting that stake is a long and complicated picture that I don't think the modern era makes clear.

Today, if you can even define “friend,” when you don't like them you click an "x" and add a new one. We'll have more jobs by the time we're 25 than our parents had their entire lives. What does that do for your conception of a relationship? A relationship to your job, your town, neighbors, coworkers, or how you conceive of your work? I used to think the words “union” and “collective bargaining” went hand in hand, but with union membership at like...7? 8? percent, and if you poll people, you'd think 1900-1935ish didn't exist in this country. We've destroyed respect for your effort, time, and health.

I was listening to a Jack White song where he says something like “we're not entitled to a single damn thing.” If that's true, does that mean we don't owe anybody anything? Because surely someone is entitled to my basic respect for their being. Perhaps you only get the idea of entitlement when you subscribe to wanting to be alive in the first place. But what is it to entitle something? You are held in trust. You should be living up to said title or taking responsibility for claiming ownership of something. Do we just overwhelmingly abdicate responsibility and therefore feel like we don't deserve things?

I've been wanting to shit on myself for trying. And I feel like that has way more to do with the overall culture than with me. It's that no matter what you're doing, you're being punished. I got the degree, for an exorbitant amount of money. I'll let you talk to my fellow graduate and friend what it feels like to apply for 100+ jobs, in the same field, and get nothing for it because I skipped that headache and went for opening my own business. There again, punished for not being able to afford a lawyer with better advice, or a lawyer to sue when you were lied to and sunk costs, also by “the terrorists,” often mislabeled as Islamic extremists, who gouge you on insurance, rent, and of any scraps of self-respect you might have left. You're certainly being punished in a minimum wage anything. And now, I'm finding a way to punish myself in the stress of trying to rely on my blood pressure and drug studies to even begin something resembling savings or investment.

And I'm still supposed to remember that by not being in debt and having my bills paid for a year, I'm doing better than nearly everyone on the planet. At such point I'm supposed to what? Bend the knee and thank the gods? It isn't about me.

It's concordantly hard to deal with having, barely, examples of people who “represent me” in the public eye. As far as the political realm there's maybe 4; Warren, Sanders, the Seattle Green chick, and Nader. With celebrities, Michael Moore on a good day and I suppose Russell Brand is a little batty, but he speaks true shit and gets his hands dirty.(edit 2024. Oh, how people change.) Writers like Naomi Klein, Chomsky, Hedges (most of the time), and Taibbi. I can give as much shit about Bill Maher as your fundie uncle, but when he's lucid I can nod along. Mostly, I prefer Jon Stewart or Colbert, and increasingly Oliver if we have to leave real reporting up to comedians. Thankfully, albeit very recently, Vice's HBO show is filling such a massive void their facebook editorials should feel ashamed of sharing the same name.

But each name or organization I could point to feels like a pebble. They belong to the old women, and me, who have the time to read their books and “educated liberals” who can laugh more than cry about what's being reported. It's for the people who can afford HBO or aren't so baffled by technology they can figure out torrenting is easier than Yahoo Mail.

My world feels so small. It's why when I like my friends, I really like my friends, drunk “fuck everything” blogs aside. It's why I'm really sad when one of them gives up or becomes too busy or writes off my genuine concern as “just what Nick P. does or thinks.” I'm pushing a full stop when it comes to existential exploration and the exhaustion that comes with putting yourself out there so often to ill or non-defined ends. I don't want to be Nader publishing a book about all my letters that didn't get answered and call that not giving up.

Literally all I can do is wait and learn more. But even if I figure out something new to try, I feel like I'm going to be doing it alone, and setting myself up for a new punishment. Still none of those personal wins or promises to yourself are gonna matter. If I don't consider it about me, I can't endorse you making it about you. But, I want to choose life. That includes how our culture helps or hurts, even and especially for those who feel like they're stuck waiting around to die.

[382] On Disillusionment

I'm interested in how quick the pendulum swings, and for what reasons. Of course I mean between when you're motivated, and when you couldn't possibly care less. I'm interested in this because of how I feel myself respond to something affirmative. How things that are in line with my perception genuinely motivate me to talk a little nicer, work a little faster, and excited to get on the path to learning more.

I just watched this documentary on Ralph Nader. Peeks into history that account for so many things that make our lives better today are invigorating. From the countless hours that a single man put into advocating, training, and campaigning, your life today has been altered in incalculable ways. It's a reminder of your obligations, ability, and potential impact.

I think about the people my age who've become disillusioned. They aren't getting the jobs they want. They're always at risk of getting sick or becoming a burden to their parents. They're bored as shit. Frequently lamenting that they didn't go into a different field or alluding to the external problems that keep them stuck. They feel as if they're in impossible circumstances after a few years of not getting the dream, and primarily for themselves.

Then I think of the people who lined up behind Nader. I think of the teams of people and the amount of legislation that was passed in order to protect human well-being. Years spent researching, writing books, advocating, door knocking, and testifying. And it gets railroaded and degraded piece by piece. Imagine not only having to work hard to get “common sense” things to happen, but then seeing your hard work deliberately targeted and torn down by monied interests. Imagine watching old friends turn their back on you and what you are fighting for because they no longer believe and blame you. Imagine people physically turning their backs to you and shutting you out because you won't play their political pandering game.

Would you keep going? Would you find resolve in some adage amounting to “if I can only help 1 person, then it will all have been worth it!” How many people have figured out or discussed their motivation before they lamented the paycheck or lack thereof? How much of your motivation to change something is tied to how comfortable you make yourself first? You don't need to be rich to read, to advocate, to organize. And that's the brunt of what's striking me so hard.

Nader shied away from the limelight and offers to run for president for a long time. He wanted to drive home the idea that people should be “professional citizens.” He didn't betray trust. He had people sending him all sorts of problems and help me letters, well outside of his purview, but it spoke to the kind of trust he could illicit from his fellow man. I feel like a kindred spirit; even if it only starts in my endless advocacy of people beginning to actually talk about things.

I catch the documentary while I'm in the middle of “The World As It Is” by Chris Hedges. One of the pleasures of writing is that you perk up and get to recognize when something you said is being echoed in different examples and tweaked words, but no-less your point. The idea that “how do we fix it if we don't know how to talk about it” is prevalent. Hedges consistently praises Chomsky for his attention to detail and pages of digressions into the minutia of some conflict. Chomsky's not writing to be relevant 100 years from now. He's testifying to the truth that wins debates. He's giving you tools where and when they're needed that the other side is too lazy to find or determined to avoid.

There's an idea of scholarship speaking to genuine emotional outrage for your circumstances. It's not just storming the street with a pitchfork. You're armed with the knowledge that you're right, the details matter, the consequences carry, and your obligation to the world and future are worth the struggle. That's another reason I want people to speak up. I want to feel that you're obligated to anything. Even if it's just a call for an answer to a question about something important. I want us to find more room to be each others' keepers, and not squander the opportunities to connect or brainstorm. The right ideas are always there, but do you feel them. The people who are crazy sure feel them, and that's why they move into positions of influence.

The day where we're all just comfortable enough to start on our high-minded liberalism's idea of how to change things is not going to happen. I'll never catch up to the intellectual dedication and rigor of people like Hedges, Chomsky, and Nader, but that doesn't mean my voice doesn't matter. It doesn't mean there isn't an uphill battle that is always worth the fight. Your testimony matters. Your voice gives someone else license. Exercise it.

It can't be done alone. You can be isolated, you can be demeaned and painted in various lights. But that only becomes a problem when you make society's problems yours and yours alone. When they need a champion who isn't given a loud enough voice to remind people that they're the champions. Our biggest, baddest, business as usual corruption factories are made out of individuals. They're “truth” is in morally bankrupt greed and corporate culture. We need to speak more truth to power. We need to hold ourselves accountable to the system that has fucked us, but a system that we help stay that way.

Just talk. Just start telling me what you see or what you'd want to do. Or what you're doing. Or why you think there's nothing to be done. Talk.

"I don't care about what they say about my legacy. What are they going to do? Rip airbags and seat belts out of cars?" - Nader.