[1231] Add It Up

I think a lot about when I might believe I’ve “made it.”

I read an interview with a musician who explained that for many bands who don’t define success, it can feel hopeless or antagonizing that they aren’t getting a certain level of attention, money, or opportunities. If and when they are comparing themselves to The Beatles no amount of what they put in or get out is going to feel like “enough”.  This insight, of course, applies to many domains in life outside of music, and I think one of the reasons that explanation has stuck with me is because I’ve tried to apply the lesson to my day-to-day experience.

Is today “enough” for me? I woke up whenever I woke up after going to bed whenever I fell asleep. I was watching what I wanted to watch. I was playing with AI, or stated differently, creatively engaging with a tool I’m interested in and learning about. I’m going to another comedy show tonight after attending one yesterday. I’m digesting an apple fritter I got as a gift yesterday. I’m wearing a new band T. I’m on the verge of again-maximizing my base level of Last War. Food is cooking. I have enough money in the bank for a few beers and my debt consolidation payment coming up.

So far, even with the first few snippets of what I might say about today, yes.

Most of the days of my life look something like this. Even when I have a job, my days circle around the story of my otherwise fair-to-well operating environment. This is in spite of the negligence and fascism of my state and country. Even if, in general, I have a fairly precarious relationship to long-term employment. Even when it starts raining, and you can tell a compelling story about the different insurances I can’t afford.

The concept of “making it” feels all the more on the nose. I have to make a story of my context. I’d go a step further and call it something of an obligation of consciousness. Because my experience exists within some deep and perhaps unanswerable questions about what is “mine” or it means to “experience,” the narrative mechanism of my brain literally needs something constructed to anchor to.

When you’re poor, or poor enough, that constructed story ties intimately with your need to survive. A proud declaration of your “work ethic” might hide that if you didn’t, you’d starve. The hundreds, if not thousands, of times I’ve heard, “It is what it is,” from people in bureaucracies and social work environments. When your nose is pressed right up against the ever-failing human condition, you “accept” all of a sudden deeply “wise” and “obvious” things about what is or isn’t possible.

It works the opposite direction with every rich megalomaniac. You breach the bounds of “average” human activity? Now, all of a sudden, literally anything is possible! Including you being the one to lead us into your imagined future. The same trick is being played on your psyche though.  Your brain is under the impression it’s about “you.”

Many people have intuited ways out of this trap by finding themselves working “in service” to others. The difference between actually doing so and paying lip service to it could not be more clear. At DCS, I saw the people who got off on the power of what they could do to your family. Same in the prison. You can tell the people who are being led by the insecurities or inadequacies and laziness, dragging that posture over the struggling people they purport to serve.  Add to that, and I consider it a plague upon the modern condition, where your otherwise good deeds or service can turn into viral capital.

They say most kids want to be “influencers.” They want the money, prestige, and attention, superficially, like any musician might imagine about the lives of the biggest stars. The story of the work to get there will remain just as obscure. How many hours a day do you want to practice your instrument? How many posts do you want to feel obligated to every day? I question the desire to influence if you can’t wrap your head around the nature of what’s influencing you.

One of the ways I think I’ve found a degree of stability and quelled anxiety was to tell the story of what happened at each moment I got “the thing.” Did my life fundamentally change? Did my energy levels and time get utilized exactly as I imagined they would? Literally, never. I moved to the middle of nowhere, and I do play around with random projects and blast my music in the middle of the night, but it’s not my main preoccupation of time. I bought all the fancy woodworking tools, and have made a handful of things, but I’m not churning out an Etsy store. My “friends” and my friends don’t have any more or less time to spend with me. I’m still lightly concerned about my next unfulfilling job and how much it’s not gonna pay me to keep my head just above water.

One of “the things” I got was the ability to start going to a large number of shows. I’ve clung to that as a thing I both wanted, still want, and sacrifice other things in service towards. It was in making graphs with my show attendance data that informed my feelings about “making it.” It was my hundredth “fun thing” event last night this year. It was 109 last year, 143 the year before that. I’ve been playing catch-up and taking an active role in shaping my story by the things that I enjoy, like music and comedy, and the rituals around getting to where they are on display. You can ask me where to eat, drink, navigate parking, or best place to stand at dozens of venues across the Midwest. I can say, “I saw them open for” dozens of bands who are getting big or who I’m betting will.

I’m working on “more.” Because I want to not just attend these shows, I want to attend them on any day, in any location, they might happen. I want to get to them in a car that’s even more reliable than the ones I’ve been driving. I want a T shirt for every band I’ve even wanted to support a little. Is it a selfish or greedy goal when there’s so much going on in the world? It could be.

I’ve learned that the nature of my wants isn’t about “instead of.” I want it all in concert. Derek Thompson of Plain English and the book about Abundance fame, talks about how he can’t stay locked into one domain of interest. His brain begs the question of the broader metrics and narratives that explain something. I resonated with that idea. I’m not a “woodworker” or “musician” or “political junkie.” I’m not a “counselor” or “landlord” or “fan.” I’m just generally interested in the interplay of things and how we manage to react or work with them. I don’t want anything beyond feeling meaningfully engaged in that interplay. Because I accept that meaning derives from the narrative, I’m interested in continuing to write said narrative.

For me, it’s important that narrative is true. I mean true. I don’t mean “my truth.” I don’t mean arguing the weeds of subjective experience. I mean, for any English speaker, you can read these words. That’s a true statement. I mean, I’m a dude. I mean, I just ate meat, and regardless of how much suffering or intelligence I can attribute to the pig, it was delicious. I feel “intellectually” bad about it, and would eat pig cells grown in a lab and seasoned the same way if it were an affordable and reasonable option. I don’t feel bad enough to stop eating meat today.  It’s not telling a simple story of my righteous vegan posture or ambivalent negligence towards other conscious beings. It’s a true sliver of “me” and what I think it would take to change my behavior.

My relationships to things are always in flux. That’s not about making room for moral relativism. That’s about the exercise of accountability. Those who are innocently confused and those who are motivated to bad-faith reasoning will operate functionally the same way in the face of this idea. I’d call it a simple and easy truth, but for whom there’s an eternal mystical reality, one imagines it’s too disorienting for them to grapple with.  God can be their Rock. I’ll take Chris.

It’s true I want to get lost for weeks arguing with AI until I find it more useful than for torrenting and efficiently organizing my media. It’s true I want to be involved politically creating grassroots infrastructure to combat the rot I perceive at the base of our ability to collectively survive. It’s true I want to watch nearly anything that’s been turned into a TV show that was actually trying to say something. It’s true I want to learn how to produce music, and create worthy-of-sale woodworking things, and have the kind of “fuck you” money that doesn’t blink about empowering my cartoon soldiers on a gambling-adjacent phone game.

There are, easily, a dozen things I could rifle off about genuine desires I have that exist in each moment. Sometimes my presumed ADHD gets a chance to demonstrate that when I’m juggling 6 at once. A couple days ago, I undressed, turned on the shower, noticed something about my bathroom mirrors, and proceeded down a rabbit hole, naked, which included, cooking, power tools, a shattered bowl cleanup, and grime cleaning, before I found my way into the actual shower. Did I want to shower? Or clean? Or cook? Or adjust the mirror? Or not cut myself? Or ensure my tools were organized so I could find one easier next time? Or get that spot addressed while I’m down here? Yes.

I don’t want it all. I don’t want it now. I want to feel like I can do any of it in the moment I really want to do it. I want to celebrate the freedom of ambiguity more than feel trapped by obligations. I want you to feel as freely chosen as I was to choose otherwise. I want the power of my awareness and capacity to build as much as destroy. I want the conversation to start from that mutually shared place and routinely surprise and delight with where it goes. Given that I don’t really know where to begin in that endeavor, I guess I’ll go back to dinner, my shows, and keep my ears open for what the next story is that hits me.

[695] Everyday Whisper

I feel if I don't write this correctly, I'm never going to be able to approach the task I've set out for myself with even the prayer of remotely completing it. The longer I linger on a fundamental question about myself, the more it sinks in the reality of the implications and hindrances.

I have what I think is a healthy fear of myself. I know my potential. I've proven things to myself time and time again. I know how I can arrive to just about any justification. I know how to change moods and mindsets. I know how to extract money whether I need to lean on illegal or immoral ways. I know how to earnestly practice. I know how to read all day. I know how to binge watch. I know how to meal prep. It feels like just yesterday I decided to “work all the time” in service to completing my house, and while I know I've watched a shit ton of media and made progress, from July until now March, it might as well be one condensed blur I regard as a kind of “sacrifice” of my 29^th year. The problem is that I've stated a number of times that I'm no martyr.

A good portion of my life looks the way it does because I've always been embedded in a structure. Every inch of your formative years requires waking up and going to school. Every assignment needs to be completed, if only poorly. If I wasn't forced to march in band, I wouldn't have any good or bad memories of it or an imposed perspective that's permeated my decisions and associations indefinitely. In a flash, your structure gets erased if you aren't keen to search and sacrifice to get plugged into another one. I keep thinking I'll get to “start my life” after a dollar amount or perfectly balanced budget. I look back on old messages about visiting friends or making plans that fell by the wayside because something “more vital” felt pressing.

Ultimately, my efforts are futile. Chris Rock's words come to mind in a piece of advice he tries to beat into his children's minds. Once you step outside the front door, not one single person gives a shit about you, and really, sometimes that's true about the people inside the house too. I find this one of those ideas I accept intellectually, but my body rejects in a fit of anxiety. My school structure reinforced ideas of what constituted good behavior and achievement worthy of reward. I got paid to read. I got the A so I could continue to keep partying. It “mattered.” People did give a shit about me, at least enough to punish me if I didn't do well enough.

But what is the punishment if you're “smart enough” to pay the bills and stay alive? What's the self-imposed selection pressure to become every inch of who you are? I try to be conscious of when I'm doing things out of desperation verses actively picking to engage with them. I do this so I don't end up picking up bad habits like lazily practicing an instrument and working against myself. I do this because I think we're sort of defaulted to a position of always trying to dig ourselves out of holes and are perfectly unaware of what making a choice really constitutes. I read through blogs dozens of times to figure out what kind of illusion I've weaved for myself to keep me away from my vaguely imagined “ideal.”

In my life, there are exceedingly weak standing repercussions if I don't do things. I've now gone so far as to orient my life in a way white trash or a junkie could support. If you can pay your bills via plasma donation, what's stopping you? It takes hiccups of effort to pay $100 here or there, resolve yourself to sleeping in your car, or work part time at a mind-numbing job to keep just barely above water. No one cares if I can play an instrument or 10. No one cares if I lose 30 pounds. I'm not headed to prison if I can't remember the brunt of a philosopher's argument or name of a character I've seen in 100 episodes. Reading 9 books one week and 200 comics isn't getting me an award from a librarian. Every single thing I do with my day is beyond meaningless to everyone but me, and I hate that idea so much I allow myself leeway to forgo all the meaning I could grant myself.

I think I've arrived here for a number of reasons that I don't feel right describing as “faults” on anyone's behalf. Whatever I am, I'm still an ape, and apes work best with a social component. Byron's sister came to town and we went out like the old days. It felt like putting on a perfect fitting jacket making jokes and pouring drinks and shivering for each trek between bars. Mild past grievances go up in joyous tipsy smoke. It simply feels great to be on the same page, regardless of what you're reading together. Now look at the other 364 days of my year, and I'm back to wondering what whim will swing me where.

I, of course, still have much to prove. I've concocted a gigantic narrative about myself and what I'm capable of. I reference my track record often. I still get indignant at the hint of condescension and lazy retorts. No matter how many “lazy” or “depressed” days I have to put away, I still haven't come close to abandoning a conception of myself at a fundamental level. But it remains hard to dream. It sucks to be humbled daily about all of the shit you can't control. It's sad and tired to report to yourself “progress” that always comes with a catch. I'm not motivated to buy more things, I don't want more time to myself, and I reject out of hand undue praise or persistent self-destructive indulgence. I'm terrified of the idea of “peaking too early” as if there's any reason to believe you can't always be progressing along some metric.

I think, without meaning to, I started to rely too heavily on “hope” despite my persistent condemnation of it. I should present an offering to the underlying ironic pulse of existence. I hope someone joins me on the land or wants to create something together. I hope I get a chance to give back and take care of in equal or greater measure to what I've been given before I die of a coronary from sitting too long or catch a catastrophic accident. I want to be right, desperately, so I make appeals in the dark to the faceless and voiceless amalgam of ghosts from my past who've helped shape me thus far. I started taking cues from likes and upvotes and nit-picking the vitriol at the heart of earnest imbecile commentators. I let one of my hands fill up with the shit of stress from over-working, under-organizing, and letting things I care about slowly die via mismanaged sacrifice.

I want to always be the guy who can start a coffee business in 3-6 months. I want to be the one who can reconcile everything with the right amount of alcohol, jokes, and mixed potentially difficult company. I want to watch way too much TV. I want to boast about things about myself that age thinks it won't have to rip from my cold dead hands. I want to know more details about shit you don't care about and things you're only pretending to care about. I want to create things you'd never imagine. And I want to do that because that's who I am, not because it means anything to you. I'm a complete and unrelenting asshole, and the nicest guy who's earnestly suffered in service to the people he's cared about. I'm fat and lazy as shit, and work more than people in countries who are killing themselves over the same amount of hours. I can set and meet any goal for myself, and write up a ten page compelling argument describing the relief and craving for death.

I've been living in one long hangover. I've poisoned myself with a grandiose dream, while perfectly achievable, by no means so in the short term barring an extremely improbable turn. The day after dosing I'm clamoring to quell the anxiety and guilt of my temporary embarrassment for my circumstances. But I'm not embarrassed. I'm disorganized. I'm alone. I'm incredibly angry. It feels like I already had what I wanted, and life construed itself to tear it apart. I had an amazing friend group that one by one gave up on either me or each other. I had the energy and time to bring people together. I had the resources to bring my ideas to fruition practically this instant. I had a place. I had help. I had a sense that I actually meant something worthwhile and important.

That's where the energy comes from. That's where the “reason” works its way into a positive feeling feedback loop. I don't mean for this to sound like I don't appreciate or recognize the people who have been nothing but supportive either. I never care to pit my despair against someone else's. But as the structure around me degraded, so did I. I retreated to a kind of street hustle. I looked for things to blame as I was tired of it always being my fault. I'm still tired of that. As long as it remains true, I need to reconfigure what I'm to blame myself for. I'm sorry I flirted with accepting your standards. I'm sorry I asked you for a reason, for you to want me to come around. I'm sorry that no matter what example I set I'm never going to think it's good enough. I'm sorry I throw my life at you like you give a shit. I'm sorry I don't care how you feel. I'm sorry I hang on to every fucking ridiculous thing I feel you've done to me. I'm sorry I'll never trust you. I'm sorry to be alive and bother trying too hard. I'm sorry for apologizing because I don't have better words for “I'm not fucking sorry and I don't give a fuck.”

I clench my jaw. I am wired tight. I get food handed to me 30 times a day, and I still jump when they come up to the window. I suspect that only way I'm ever going to “normalize” is by getting back into studies, and I still have only managed to think a severe acid trip paired with an anxiety inducing incident I'm forced to overcome might rewire my brain enough to bother trying again. I need to stop pretending like I even have a concept of “vacation” or want to spend money hanging out before a higher level of comfort has been achieved. I need to plug myself into a machine of my own making, reintroduce the butterflies that kept me going to pointless class, pointless jobs, and pointless social interactions. I've extracted all the value I could handle from that system and need to believe the dividends from what I borrow and improve on will pay out in even higher measure.

What does it look like if every single day I do a little bit in service to every part of me? I know what I'm capable of, but what's the catastrophic upper limit? What if I make a blood-thirsty show of my sacrifices of “hope” and “luck?” I can work, and manipulate, and learn, and play, and create all at once every day. I can do it “alone.” I can try and fail studies and go back to work the same day. I can have depressed indulgent days and still make my 30K a year and budget like I'm making 100K. I can keep in mind every person I've met who's done it or is doing it as well or better than me who I want to be just like, and I can watch myself transform just as I have into whatever you want to call me right now. I know where I want to go, and I know the very small number of things I can control in order to get there. I need to retain that control. I need to crave my future and not make desperate swipes at it while know-nothing hollow dogs bark in my ears. I need it to be the kind of difficult I know I'm the only one suited to overcome.

So let's kick it off. All at once, all the time, every day.

[661] Goo Goo

I'm sure half of this headache is sitting in my car for the last eleven and a half hours, and half the stupid “conversation” I got into, but I'm still hoping to feel better after explaining it anyway.

All at once. My body reacts all at once to people or phrases or conversations. A dozen lines of what's “wrong” or “right” flood my head, and I mostly react with a scowl, chuckle, or blank expression (meant to convey I'm about to explode). It's exciting and anxiety inducing and altogether hopeless.

Someone complains about delivering food across town. It's a complaint I've made to some degree before. I was written off, “politely handled,” and then ignored. So a new person brings up the complaint, I offer a comment that was tantamount to the same one I got. “We're going to look into this to make sure we know how to fix it right.”

First, his problem is a simple one. If you spent 30-40 minutes on the road and are dependent on the goodwill and tip of your customer, often you're coming back to the kitchen having made $4.50. A scoundrel's rate if there ever was one. You're missing out on the orders building, you're getting a line of cars now being added to the queue to keep up to contend with, and every minute you're out on the road is one where you could be hit, pop a tire, or be subjected to the problems of what are generally poor condition cars.

I chime in, yes, like an idiot. I tell him that I've grown resolved to viewing this job like all jobs. We're “independent contractors,” after all, so we have no expectation of a reliable wage. The company didn't want to worry about health or car insurance, why would they be that sympathetic to your gas and time? There's a line around the block for other poor people who are happy to lap up what the company is serving. Keep in mind, customers think they're tipping you, but it's actually helping the kitchen not have to pay you as much. My, purely speculative, suspicion is that if you get out of line or start to disappoint as a driver, they tweak the program to discourage you from working with them further as “being annoying” isn't cause enough to simply fire you, like they've done to the last people of any influence who whispered about paying drivers more. It's not like we could form a union and compel higher wages.

Do you think I got a good response to that? Because the answer is no. Instead of taking the ideas away that, “Huh, you know what? Why don't we try for a union!?” or perhaps, “It was shady they got fired or shipped away!” or, “Why don't they just actually pay us out our tips the customers think they're paying?” or, “A pooled insurance or gas incentive would help out a lot!” Nope, I get, “Wait, 5 minutes ago you were on my side, and now you think they're actively trying to discourage me?” You know, because if you didn't zero in on the speculation, why would I bother speaking?

I informed him we're on the same side, said it was a losing one, and then asked him how he'd like me to help after he said “with that attitude” of course we're on the losing one. He didn't respond.

The real problem, more of course, isn't that you can get stuck delivering too far and not get paid enough. The real problem is that, in the aggregate, I can work for 80 hours a week, average 10 an hour, and still be struggling to pay for things like car repairs. The real problem is that we're not unionized or have any expectation of health or car insurance. The real problem is that it takes an idiot helming the complaint who will swallow an idiot's “fix” that will amount to dodging everything truly important. Whether they pay a little more or simply decrease the order radius, none of that will speak to you putting your ass and time on the line indefinitely if you want to get anything from this, or any other, job.

As is always the case, there's never room or time for referencing some labor struggle from history. It's never going to be worded correctly all of the other little things that would make life working easier as long as the issue raised demands too much yet simultaneously faux focus. They'll find what amounts to a duct tape fix, and we'll keep driving, and they'll keep expanding, and life will go on just as precariously. All of the energy and curse words and empty, “BUT WE REALLY DO CARE ABOUT OUR DRIVERS!” will get eaten up and echoed until we find our next resting state until a new person pops up about something else that won't really be fixed.

Meanwhile, if anyone dares address me, it's with the sunken shoulders and dead eyes a mother with an endlessly crying child might. Empty, exhausted, screaming, “WHAT DO YOU WANT!?” as if I don't articulate it. These people exist in that feeling-laden space that every ignorant tyrant abuses to hold themselves harmless for being completely oblivious to the harms they perpetuate. “I want to get paid more.” We're looking into it. I've worked 80 hours this week for no bonus or incentive. You can always just sign off. Deflect, excuse, and outright lie. They're a tech company first, trying to zero in on the perfect pain point that can keep a driver feeling rewarded just a bit more than hurt so they keep driving. If they could pay you $4.75 a delivery instead of $7, they would. Chris Rock said it best.

You can't fix labor and wages anymore than you can envision the entire country being able to fix things. We're morally bankrupt, uninspired, unintelligent, and more willing to eat our own than find the patience to recognize what's actually been said or the reality of our own circumstances. My job sucks as much dick as anyone else's, they've just hidden it behind a kind of lottery and lies to the customers who aren't going to ask questions. They at once want to mine us for answers and good ideas, and provide nothing in return. My biggest takeaway from each shift is the season of TV I get through, not that someone understands my plight or is looking out for me and my interests.

I deleted everything I said on the comment train. I know that this is the extent of my voice, and every time I venture beyond it I'm going to overstep, over-speak, and alienate. I'm going to watch people adjusting the mirror and debating its cleanliness while the car is on fire about every topic until the day I die. As long as I'm going to work alongside them, I need to accept their terms and burn along with them. Or, you know, suffer a fate worse than death and get called pretentious and get posted to /r/iamverysmart for my deep and pressing concerns and knowledge regarding the underprivileged working class. Because you're never allowed to just suffer one death.

[459] Ctrl + X

All things being equal, what if you had to reduce your friends to a single sentence? Maybe make it harder and use a single word. Would this exercise help you better understand them? Or perhaps, would it better clarify your feelings about them?

The word “judgment” has been on my mind for several weeks. I'm finding myself unable to solidify it's meaning and consequences. It's a word that seems to extend the word “perspective.” People innocently share perspectives, but levy harsh judgments. We alter the connotation to suggest judgment is meant to perhaps shame or correct for something that sounds wrong.

A judge, in theory, is an impartial observer meant to toe a line determined by the collective wisdom of past judgments. They're supposed to follow the laws enacted in order to alleviate situations judged as harmful or unjust. They speak to a kind of idealism. That with enough trial and error, or moral gumption, we'll progress past our human failings and towards something more fair or equitable.

People as well think of judgment when it comes to “lifestyle choices.” Usually felt by the oppressed who yell “don't judge me!” for their actual style or very sense of being if they're in a racial or sexual minority. Even, if not especially, amongst believers who feel the implicit judgment at all times by their fellow churchgoers to live up to the, if not godly, churchly or familial expectations.

Invariably, given that our perspectives are limited and often flawed, our judgments remain fundamentally corrupted. This isn't the same thing as saying they are totally and absolutely wrong, but it does mean that if you don't adopt a kind of scientific manner in your opinion and exercise of judging, you're going to end up in a bad place.

Take the idea of assessing a room. I've been in instances where the person next to me will genuinely say something racist or sexist because “all of them act like that.” It's weird and uncomfortable, but they're none the wiser, to my discomfort, or especially about the target of their comment. So what do we have and what do we do? Reflexively, most want to call him ignorant, get angry, maybe escalate things to violence or throwing him out. Does that help? Maybe the vibe in the moment, but in general, is our understanding of that situation going to be understanding and preempt growth, or reactionary and stagnant?

Or maybe a less inflammatory example. Look at the biggest muscle bound guy in the room. Is he an insecure bro? Are you scared if he gets too drunk something bad is bound to happen? Do you feel insecure assuming he's bound to attract every girl in the room? If you can stop yourself from ceaselessly asking open-ended subjective experience questions, can you begin to speak to a kind of underlying truth of the situation? Are there better places to look than in your insecure mind?

I think there are plenty of places to look. I think you can look at history. I think body language is often forthcoming. I think you can rely on rules and ideas you've personally cultivated for different situations. And I think you can dip into the cultural tide to err on the side of “more accurate assessment” instead of “frank ignorant judgment.”

Now, this can be extremely hard to do. It's almost impossible for a vast array of people I've met. It may sound extremely old hat for my facebook crowd, who will get yet another gold star suggesting more in common than our pretty faces, but it seems a general cultural failing I certainly don't hear discussed.

You have to think of all the things that can get in the way. One, you're own reflexively insecure mind starts the bad feelings and wrong-headed questions the moment you encounter someone new. Two, you may not acknowledge or be aware that there are cultural waves and imprints that suggest certain types and certain behaviors roll together. As Chris Rock puts it, your slutty dress doesn't make you a ho, but you are wearing a ho's uniform. I know my long hair and full beard has prompted plenty of folks to make assumptions and comments about my obvious levels of marijuana consumption, much to their dismay when I explain otherwise. Three, we have past evidence of gut-feelings proving correct and confident friends ready to reinforce our position, filtering out or diminishing conflicting evidence.

I hope it's becoming obvious that for a stranger, you're only going to be able to get so far. Far enough? If you're deciding who to offer a shot or strike up a conversation with, perhaps. In contrast, if you take your friendships, you can play the same kind of game, but take from so much more specific history. I'm fairly confident I call someone an asshole practically every day. I'm also fairly confident that when my friends refer to me as an asshole it's not the same superficial idea I'm expressing to whomever cut me off on the highway. I also don't think it's the singular word they'd settle on when assessing me.

In my own practice of the one sentence or one word exercise I notice something peculiar. The “problem children” reduce to a word or sentence of sympathy. The people on my mind when I raise concerns about the future or being immersed in a series of, hopefully not regretted later, decisions aren't “just an asshole” or “just being stupid.” But in our day to day, in our spatterings of communication or stories about each other, we're forced to shortcut. We innocently forget. We practice judgment, pretending to draw wisdom or value from our mere assessment.

I struggle with ideas about how impressively bad we are at speaking towards what it means to be human. It bugs me to hear “the first black/woman/muslim yada yada” like it's a celebration we've “fixed” something about race, sex, or religion. The fix is to stop referring to race like someone is an alien. To that end, I support and understand the logic and purpose of Black Lives Matter, and it's the blunt instrument for our blunt times, but attempting to pull back, I think they're marching with a nail in their toe. The idea that you would support neoliberal Hilary Clinton because she's a woman is both sexist and politically disingenuous when you compare her to an old-fashioned votes his conscious liberal like Bernie Sanders. Am I happy we tout someone's religious affiliation when I find it the height of an irresponsible and terrifying proposition that someone is speaking to an invisible infallible man in the sky to help them make decisions?

But in attempting to assess and not judge humans, you can nonetheless say there is some measure of progress in Barack Obama being elected, even if his blackness has nothing to do with his ability to govern. You can look at someone's actions and see to the degree in which they conform to sense or caring before you arbitrarily malign their faith. I'm not saying the scale isn't weighted against or my opinion is any less negatively shaped about religion, but an “incidental” faithful person speaks more to the human condition than the crazy ideologue.

As we get older and move farther apart, I think we lose the opportunities to practice how we can think about people in general. None of you who don't live around me are sharing your thoughts or blogs with me lol. But more to the point, I want there to be a bigger line between small and snappy and informed and comparative. I think practice becomes permanent and I don't know how we last into the future permanently ignoring or hiding behind a real conversation about what it is to be human.

[195] Stupid Can't Save You

Thursday, August 13, 2009 at 7:04am

Before rehearsal today the band "director," or guy who may have taken charge without even realizing it, said how he hated biology and that it was evil. His reasoning? It tells him that he comes from worms. The statement being stomach droppingly ignorant aside, he said it while addressing the seventy band members he was handing drill charts out to. Many interesting things aren't happening in this situation. One, I'm not spouting off insults at how bloody fucking ignorant he is. Two, he isn't caring or checking on how ignorant he in fact is...and why should he? He did just get out of college and all. Three, the majority, hell, all of the kids completely ignored or didn't hear what he had to say so while they won't be swayed to his stupid view, they won't be terribly affected negatively either. When you already exist at a level that has very few hopes for humanity and then start your day with something like that transpiring, it's quite the blow.

Is this what we have to expect from our "learning zones?" Flapping gums, blank stares, and people like me trying to slow their heart rate and debate whether it's more moral to hand him his ass right then or lie in wait for a more opportune moment. If our in shape, educated, job-having, white males are so stupid that they can hate biology because it teaches them "we come from worms," I really can't compose a convincing enough statement about our future. You know what this means. Black people, rise up even farther. I know you got the presidency, but like Chris Rock says, you need to be the white guy who is signing the president's check. Don't believe all those videos showing you guys and the hick white people believing in leprechauns, and just be thankful it's the extra crazy white people and Hispanics who are seeing Jesus in cheese sandwiches and wooden bathroom doors.

Ridicule and realism aren't pessimism. Part of the reason I can even remain remotely happy despite all the bullshit I see is because I'm actually capable of discerning the bullshit and probable ways of fixing or ridiculing it. Your inability to think on my level or handle a discussion about relevant subject matter is not the time to call me anything but correct after you've submitted yourself to Google. I only point this out because I see it as a common trend in peoples' behavior towards me and it's completely misplaced. Perhaps closely tied to this is where people feel compelled to avoid talking about certain things with me. Maybe I have a selective memory, but despite the topic I've never resorted to throwing things, screaming, or actually mind fucking someone into a stroke. Part of the reason I try to read and learn is so I can engage people, not give them an excuse to avoid me. If you think I'd demolish you in a religious discussion, take that as an opportunity to overcome an irrational fear.

I'm fascinated with how "little" we know, and how incapable we are of picking up on the correct ways to interpret ourselves and our world. Combine The Black Swan with Penn and Teller's Bullshit and you get statistical data to back up funny (more sad) personifications of everything wrong with our species. We have some big institutions fighting against the mental handicappers, but in a world of idiots, I fear that all is seen is two opposing sides that somehow need to reach a middle ground. Doctors don't negotiate with cancer. So I say just take the religious and lunatic strategy, or at the very least, give it a spin if only to distort their ranks. Every time there is a town hall meeting with someone screaming something so unbearably stupid you hate yourself for dignifying their presence, send in twenty more hired "assholes" to yell and scream all sorts of other ridiculous shit and ally themselves with the initial retard. When "both sides" of the evolution and creationism "debate" arise, start another battle screaming for both sides of whether the Holocaust happened, and always make sure to stand uncomfortably close to the creationists. At the very least it would be fun for a while.

What bothers me the most is that I see no evidence of people getting better. In a moment you can realize that almost to completely everything you knew about something was wrong and now you can and should proceed down another path. What incentive is there to make people want to screw with their world views? Even the most obscure and ostracized in the social sphere manage to find their way to comic-con or a snuggle party (actually exists). We have room (we don't) for every bad idea and every idiot that wants to keeps them, and not only will they keep them, they will profit from them, they will be self-assured, and they will be insulated from the handful of things that would wrestle it from their minds. And while all this goes on, the vast majority of us with mental faculties and promise will say "let them believe what they want, it's not hurting anybody." This is so exceedingly opposite the time you should choose what you want to see, yet it comes out so fluid and natural.

We don't need any governing body to step in and control our lives. Our dumbass ideas handle things just fine.