[1041] Amen

It's no grand achievement to destabilize someone.

Something you're not going to encounter or understand unless you're in the "social work world" is how on-the-edge people are really living. They can present as "normal" or "friendly" or "smart enough" or have many "supports," and with what seems like the slightest bit of wind, conjure a tornado that throws their whole life into chaos. It's a world of anxiety that's so high that becomes the normal working condition. It's filled with so many medications, you start to feel "wrong" if you haven't built taking "something" into your day. It's a world where the futility and actual consequences of performing verses working mean relapse, jail, or death.

In the broader context of American society, with the decades long concerted effort to cripple school, health care, safety, infrastructure, individual freedoms, or even basic notions of public decency or good, it wasn't hard. Everybody who can't empathize with living on as dramatic an edge feels like they did something right or are special. Why on Earth would you attempt to embody the lived experience of people who struggle the most? You might fall into their black hole and find yourself as devoid of an identity or direction as them.

The illness manifests in how the victims go about "solving" their problems. How fucked in the head do you have to be to have your child's head blown off, and then you start your begging of leadership to "do something," with, "As a gun owner!..." bending the knee to your psychosis before you appeal to the power avatar. "Raise the buying age to 21!" Because that's the problem, just like "fighting for $15" means anyone took heed of inflation.

The problems are infinite, but the ones we pretend to discuss are literally crafted by those in control and with much grander greedy agendas than anything to do with helping you or preserving and protecting a life worth living. The fact that anyone has anything to say about trans issues beyond individual trans people and their doctors is the largest and latest. We still discuss the "opioid crisis" and not the corruption and complicity and greed of those who facilitated it. No matter what happens to the planet, profit will always take priority in how a response, if a response, is crafted.

Addiction is an apt analogy to so much of our broken psychological landscape. We're so deep down different holes, we're not entirely sure we've ever heard of the sun. When the entire framework for your existence is built on, not just a mythological framework, but with the mechanisms to make it self-reinforcing with each new traumatizing or inconceivable absurdity, all you can do is twist until something breaks. It's an abusive partner dynamic. The only kind of "love" you've known is them. You've come to look forward to the beatings and emotional withdrawal. You know what sets them off and are gratified in the knowledge and security. You take pride in understanding things on your terms where no one else can. It transcends "cycle" and forms a kind of orgasmic pressure cooker you cheer and pray for it to explode.

I watch it manifest across nearly everyone I know. I see the pivots to distance from doing the harder things to change. I see the dozens of details routinely skipped over. I see the safely self-scrutinizing posture of someone who knows exactly how to craft an argument for doing precisely as they've always done. This is why "things" and "we" will never get better. We can't conceive of it. We couldn't see it if it was in front of us. We couldn't sell it. We couldn't work to maintain it. "It" doesn't exist. It's a poll of what "a majority of Americans agree on" manifested in the exact same place of power an individual has to call the cops on their love-of-their-life-and-also-a-cop abuser.

You don't get it. It's either break the whole paradigm, or play pretend. Every single societal trend in this country is astonishingly terrible. Every symbolic "win" an abject mockery. Prove me wrong. Show me we have a remote democracy. Show me greed isn't king. Show me we have a shared ideal or vision of the future that has all the fixin's of a decent and meaningful life. Show me how much better we're getting at educating, granting rights, protecting the environment, generating power, or living in a way that isn't desperate to fit in as many distractions and indulgences before the fall as possible. We are a society on the familiar edge of my clientele, but literally can't conceive of the inevitable consequences of continuing to play along. And when we can, the destruction feels both deserved and glorious.

I think my fight needs to shift. I need to be more selfish. I need to hunker down and insulate and try to protect me and mine long enough to ride out the era. The era may last another 50 years, or it might aggressively break and shift in the next 10, but either way, I'm in a war with one soldier against an infinitely diffuse, ignorant, and ambivalent set of forces. I should sit and read because there's only fires raging outside and the illiterates will only resent and attack. I should play games because clearly something something "god wills it." And you're god, and I'm god, and let us bask in our creation. 

[919] Slap

Many of us are taught “the basics” when it comes to engaging each other. Say “please” and “thank you.” Shake hands. Say you're sorry. Where and why these ideas came into being each have their own history and confluence of forces that pushed the behavior into our consciousness. You may have heard that shaking hands was a way to demonstrate you were unarmed or that it gives either person the ability to gauge nervousness. You might have had it beaten into you that apologizing is required if you're going to reside in a peaceful household.

When you're a kid, at least when I was a kid, none of the “normal” or “basic” things people did made much sense to me. When I was told to apologize, I wasn't sorry. When I said “thank you,” I arguably felt entitled or that it was “obvious” that my caregiver would feed me or buy me something on Christmas. My family meets and kisses on the cheek. It's a habit I never picked up. We know now a lot of the things we've built into how to interact are carried over from poor understandings of trauma as much or more from tradition.

By adulthood, I want to believe you develop an appreciation for why you do or say the things you do. I want to hear “thank you,” and I offer what I appreciate about people or situations regularly. The world feels bleak, and to know you were even acknowledged becomes a little lifeline. I figured out how to relate to being “sorry” and under what circumstances I actually was. Being a going-through-the-motions liar has never sat well with me. I know how to shake your hand, but I prefer flashing a peace sign, and I'll tip my hat to the pandemic for helping normalize that.

I'm watching this series discussing the “meaning crisis.” A neuroscientist and teacher of enlightenment practices explains why there's this drive to be “mindful,” and dozens of pop-psychological misunderstandings about how to attain enlightenment. He covers a wide breath of history and literature. Sometimes he's more intelligible than others. At bottom, he cracks open just how many “basic” ideas and definitions we had to come to before our language continued to evolve and confuse or distract us today.

You can listen to a dozen teachers tell the allegory of the cave. None of it will compare to being the person trying to tell the other fools what the shadows on the wall really are. How many doctors and nurses were prepared for this level of vaccine “skepticism?” How many scientists need to cry foul before something more intentional throws its body on the gears of mindless mass consumption? We're children without the basics. We have timeless myths that we don't feel for ourselves and don't weave into our lived experience. We take so much for granted. We leave ourselves one option, to be “shocked” by preventable tragedy after preventable tragedy.

I think about the ideas of mine I considered basic or foundational and why or if they have changed. I've never been particularly “passive” or “non-violent,” but it's never been persuasive to me to fight or beat up women. Do I know there are crazy bitches out there? Sure. Are there large and trained ones who I wouldn't have a prayer in a fight with? Absolutely. Even at the height of the violence perpetrated on me from my mom, if I wanted to hit back, it would have been more to get the point across than the first of a series of blows until she was dead. We probably lucked out that I only had to catch her arm one day to send the message.

I never believed I'd encounter a circumstance that would have me act violently towards a girl, let alone a girlfriend. I never had the language of a “spectrum” of behaviors or the idea that corrosive emotional slights and outrage build over time. I took it for granted that I'd heard, felt, or seen it all before, and that certain things were simply off the table for me. It was a dangerous and incorrect position to hold.

Much is to be made of “harm” today and who is causing it. I had to get exacting about the conditions under which I could and could not take responsibility for what feel most often like presumptive claims to my willingness or capacity. Were the series of reasons that led to me slapping a previous ex hidden from me? Being drunk didn't help. Do I remember what I was thinking? I was shocked and panicked. Did I do anything to escalate the situation? Well, I functionally dared her, handed her the razor, and watched her drag it 6 inches down her wrist. Different than being a little man who gets off on beating women? Sure. Considerably worse than that in other ways? I lean towards words like “absurd” given the cartoonishly inappropriate “solution” I landed on for “she's out of her mind and needs to be slapped back into reality,” like in the flash of TV and movie scenes that scrolled through my head. It wasn't going to work without the actual “pop” noise, and I miffed it landing the tips of my fingers, so tried from the other direction with my left hand with more, but still inadequate results.

There's a very neat and forgone conclusion you can tie that situation up with. Drunk boyfriend hits girlfriend, bad, fuck that guy, we always knew what he was capable of... It doesn't ask where either of us was coming from. It doesn't account for the months, if not years at that point, of being emotionally invested in attempting ways to bring peace to her mind. A mind that was entertaining suicide seriously enough to describe to me how she'd go about it in detail. The moment doesn't speak to the amount of times you ask the person you care about to seek help, try different pills, take time off, or take your money when they cite concerns for the cost. If I told you I was crying, wrapped her wrist up in my red blanket (you know, because red) and immediately called the police, that would be me trying to garner sympathy and downplay my otherwise violent soul, right? A few days later I offered to let her stab me, only half-jokingly, because...eye for an eye? I had no tools and no ideas for what, if anything, makes that situation “better.”

It's been like ten years from that night and I still ask myself questions. Was I angry at her? No, I was terrified. Could I have done anything better? Not been drunk, not handed her the razor, not let myself be consumed by the hopes and dreams I had for our relationship that had been cracked and peeling for quite some time. I don't deny my actions nor expect anyone close with her to associate with me or really bother to understand how or why things played out. I've never been anymore or less tempted to fight or hit anyone, let alone girls, before or since. I just have a new outlier data point I use to contextualize when and whether outbursts of emotion seem more likely. If I'm angry enough to hit anything, there's likely a pretty serious underlying problem that's not being attended to. The irony then hits that even if you can identify, for over a year, the habits of an unhealthy dynamic, it doesn't mean you're going to immediately sever the tie and not find yourself punching a wall or throwing recycling bins.

What is a “basic” notion of “love” or “civility” that isn't understood, isn't embodied, and functionally doesn't mean anything? Why do we have “harm-reduction models” of “care?” Don't people who care try to “fix” problems, not drag scarred skin over slightly less jagged rocks indefinitely? I still don't see myself punching a girl in the face for any reason but self-defense. I don't think it's very “loving” or “civil” to try and partner up altogether if we're going to remain perfectly ambivalent to how our behavior plays out on the brains of our partners. We might not always know how things will play out, but also, as we find the language and identify the feelings before we just react, we need to acknowledge whether or not we're deliberately working to share an effort, or merely resentful our minds aren't being read.

That's how I differentiate my behavior and sense of responsibility, at least. I don't hate you for not being like me. I don't get angry that your interests or perspective is different than mine. I get angry when you tell me where I'm coming from before you show any interest in reading a blog or dozen. I get angry when nothing I say or do can return to my ears as an accurate account after passing through your lips. I know I can practice, through this, examining how to find one more day, if not hour, of patience or decision to make more in advance of things getting escalated in a less controlled way. I didn't drag out the drama of my last relationship, but I also didn't insist 3 to 6 months in that she stay primarily in her trailer. I didn't refrain from buying more expensive pieces in service to her garden I knew she couldn't appreciate.

I think sometimes people wish they could “take it back.” I wouldn't forgo my perspective for anything. There's plenty of people living in pain and daily screaming or violent situations that haven't learned what I have. I'm not better or worse then them but for my willingness to keep talking and trying to measure what and whether there's something better. I don't hate myself. I don't even necessarily blame people as consciously responsible for the conditions under which things deteriorated. When the flames die down is where I look for blame. Are you willing to own it? Can you keep exploring? Has it changed your behavior in a way anyone but you can recognize?

It's incredibly hard to balance your own confused, contradictory, internal state and dialogue well before you try to introduce someone else's. Complicate things with your culture's norms. Become extra-informed about all of the words you've been using incorrectly your entire life. Try to see the contextual forest for the tree of any aberrant display. It might not be gratifying to think of yourself as weak and conflicted, but those feelings can lend themselves to openness and humility. They can feed your propensity to take responsibility and power an otherwise dead or excuse-ridden tongue. It's how you build a “basic” engine for turning the things that happen to you into the things you can actually do. I can't take it back, and neither can you, and I'm not asking anyone to save me. Not even Jesus.

So where does that leave us? I'll be here, in my writing, in my field, trying to keep speaking and working towards what I wish to embody. It's not someone unsympathetic to how you feel, but you'd be a pretty fucked up person if you flatly accepted my behavior just because I told you, “I felt like it.” We have the same impulse and ability to check our behavior, even if we only want to trust it when it's employed against someone else. And at your core, only you're going to know if you're lying. That is, if you've managed to figure out how to speak to and own yourself at all.

[717] Safety In Numbers

I have a sense. There have been different instances over the last few days that have reinforced it. It's as if a big puzzle were constantly shifting, and then here a piece, there a piece, and as they slide in, you get sudden “ah ha” moments. It's a mild reassurance. It's a degree of comfort. It feels like understanding, and whether it actually is or not doesn't seem to matter.

A consequence I blame on getting old is starting to see everyone as a child. “Big” and “important” and “dramatic” things lose their shine. The connotative value of the life or death scenario that's playing out at all times loses its ability to provoke a sense of urgency. When I talk about having a foot in the grave, whether I were 5 or 50, it's still true. It's not some screaming insecurity or genuine fear as one might experience as they're actually spiraling out of control on the highway. It serves as a kind of reminder that in order to maintain a kind of persistent motivation, it needs to be rooted in your ideas.

As far as reminders go, I'm now living the firsthand experience of the kind of “safety” the “normal” world craves. If I stay polite and fill out paperwork, I could do this job indefinitely. Every home broken or saved isn't really on me, no matter the “faithful” lip service. When people trust you an inch, they give away miles of their lives with information for you to work with. I can make their lives easier or harder, throw their mistakes in front of authority or bury them, or maintain a standard of care and authority, or bemoan getting home a little later than I'd prefer. It's the same kind of choice you make every moment of every day even alone watching TV and reading, but it's dressed up with “consideration” for people's petty egos.

I'm reminded that I'm good at it. As “friends” found their safe spaces and stopped flirting with the idea of drunken hook-ups with me before finding a spouse, they liked the guy who could talk about anything and not judge them. They liked when I had a plan to entertain them or went out with the agenda to help them get laid. The energy it takes to keep a party flowing is 10 times more than to encourage a person struggling with addiction for a few minutes every week. Writing blogs takes me longer than the paperwork for a dozen families might take to fill out. I could choose to complain in greater measure and slack off, or I can place this job and its relative impact into my giant bag of life experiences that engender that much more credibility when I bother to opine.

It's in watching people rationalize in real time their inadequacy that sense of reassuring calm comes over me. Oh, right, this is why when I first started writing I was obsessed with discussing non-maliciously manipulating people. They give themselves over, all the time, every day, with every chance you give them. I choose to take to the page and lay out every possible detail for you to twist or learn from me, they pack a handful of sentences with how they'd like to be treated and understood the rest of their lives. They tell you how they're going to fail or how they justify. They imply things they know you understand.

And in the world of “implied understanding,” I thrive. Big and tall well dressed and well spoken man? It's night and day going to the bars in that outfit verses my normal tattered shirt and cargoes. I feel like an infomercial; it's just that easy. It's why I got bored with it initially and stopped whoring around. It's why conversations of potential malicious toying with the dynamic can creep up too often if you're not paying attention or no one is around to hold you accountable. Lucky for me, I keep sharing my writing.

There's also the reason I'm persistently angry prevalent as well. Particularly of my smart friends who didn't become doctors. You know it's that easy too. You could budget better, or organize, or try and create something new. You have the time to speak to big whole-world issues. I'm “busy” too now, except, of course I'm not. Just like we found the time to party in spite of college and still graduate. The “real world” is the magnified insecurities and fears never dealt with, not this looming mediocre fate one needs to suffer in solidarity. Remember, my biggest complaint isn't “failing” at the things I try, it's having no one to try them with, and it's not for lack of asking.

Alas, in the parallel normal world, I'll find all sorts of people! Yes, I'm sure soon I'll have co-workers inviting me to lunch or after a flurry of a few busy weeks that bank account will have me nonchalantly talking about actually making good on a few cross-country visits. Is that what I want? Well, sure, I wanna go chill with Hatsam and Wendy, no doubt. Is it going to be what I need? Is it going to speak to what gnaws at me every day I don't see a road to achieving? Hardly.

I feel I've moved a little too far away from that sense though. The pieces falling into place have everything to do with having lived, to some degree, through a similar scenario before. I've been in many random places and homes before I started doing it for this job. I routinely gamble with how much I should or shouldn't say so negotiating the space between me and a “problem” client doesn't register as intimidating. My fundamentals and outlooks are clear, so the wordy details get a little less important. It's easy to see how “playing by the rules” makes you think of ways to support a family or plan for trips months in advance that come without notice and are over too quickly. There's an extremely powerful cultural flow that isn't all bad.

My concerns remain the same. It can arrest your perspective. You work yourself to death. You make excuses and apologies. You get too polite. I let my “jaded” sensibilities breathe in writing, and perhaps it's a testament to a measure of wisdom to rehearse and release here so blowing up in real life becomes less likely. There's still a fuck ton broken and that we're not paying attention to. You know how little I've thought about Trump? I'm just busy enough writing a report that he's the furthest thing from my mind. Not terribly long ago, I was railing about the creeping fascism arresting this country. That's still true. Bill Maher calls it a “slow moving coup.”

I think my anger towards “friends” and confusion about my relationship to them is in taking for granted they could transcend this flow to the same degree I try to. They could see past their paycheck and bills, I supposed. They wanted to take chances and live differently. NOPE lol. God, I'm a fucking moron. They're as happy to capitulate to normal feelings and obligations as the next guy. They didn't take my blogs as predictive prophecy, THE BASTARDS lol. My anger seems more a mourning in that light. It was the comfortable “school lie” like this comfortable “work lie” keeps paying as long as I keep singing their gospel. You play along long enough, you might get a shot at affecting some “real change” (you know, because they're the guardians of the “real world”) and your name will go up in lights...or a plaque or something.

I still want to be what's underneath. I'd rather never be known and watching my impact unfold than be handed some award and be expected to give a polite speech about how the system really isn't out to get us. I'm not full on conspiratorial wing-nut believing every junk piece of “alternative” media, nor am I a buttoned up rule bloviator, but it seems I've exercised a degree of competence across layers that no single one is ever going to speak to. You don't care if I'm a “good” social worker. You want to see me build secret rooms in my playhouse and whether or not I can “revolutionize” some industry or way of living. You know why you want to see that? Because I want to see it of myself. I speak to what I actually want, even when I'm exactly confused or wrong in knowing how to get there.

I just wonder if you've taken enough time to know what you're really built out of. I'm still fitting in pieces some 717 blogs in, but what's stuck has really stuck. I keep shifting into different versions of familiar, and fairly fucked up, worlds. Breaking out is extremely hard. Doing it alone, I suspect more and more, is impossible. How many times have I advocated for a “culture” level change? That means I see myself shaping more than our professional or interpersonal relationship. I want to shift the tides of life itself. That takes a level of creativity and people signing on that you're willing to concede to the Scientologists? Even Waco managed dozens of people. I can't get one or two?

I suppose it's that every playbook is already written. I'm nothing special, I'm just reading. I want my story to be interesting and encompassing. I want the people in my world to view themselves as equitable characters and not incidental pawns or tragic failures filled with hopes and dreams about what they'll get to read about me one day. I want the kind of help that's actually people helping themselves. Because they're not, and you, the majority of the time, aren't actually helping. I can't stop people from doing drugs, or beating their wife, or from sexualizing children. I can learn and approach the topics in ways that could improve the culture that essentially acts like profiteers on their behavior. Be it emotional profiteering in lazy ill-informed donations and inflated budgets or actual cash grabs in sneaking in as many “extra” 15 minutes as you can plausibly defend in billing.

Who's side are you on? Your own, and therefore mine, or the end of some passive agenda? You do remember you've got a foot in the grave too, right? You know there will be plenty of struggle left over for your kids, excuse me, puppies, because none of you want to admit the dire circumstances you're living under which are constantly at war with your biology. What's it gonna take? Because when you're not the one acting, shit's going to happen to you. You're gonna get sick and old. You gonna have enough money? You're gonna wish and pray and try to remember the good times. Is your small donation or encouraging facebook post gonna prop you up?

Do you want to be the bigger and better culture, or just ride the one you've been given? Doing so doesn't mean you're thinking or have figured something out. It means you're already dead. Don't fool yourself into thinking there's a dollar amount or number of friends that will ever count if that's your umbrella. And you certainly shouldn't think of me as anything but a faint eccentric memory of our youthful folly. My begrudging ignorant pragmatism isn't condoning the larger picture in hiding behind the perks or recognition. My obligation remains. My real anxiety isn't being tangibly spoken to. Are you better off than me?

[685] Credit Dues Blues

♩ I said they always got me working, got me working all day long. ♩

Let's start by expanding on a status I posted earlier regarding your “work ethic.”

I find it funny that there are terms so duplicitous in their ability to sound and function explicitly while retaining a world's worth of a hidden underbelly. Don't we all know what is meant by work ethic? It's how hard you're willing to work in order to achieve your ends. It's the extent to which you push your body and mind. It's the amount of respect you carry for yourself and those who are also putting in the time. It's as striking an entire code of ethics as it is common parlance regarding something we're all expected to do in order to earn our place in society.

Given my complicated relationship to work, I'm frankly aghast I haven't explored this in great detail already. If, and you might as well for this digression, you take the above paragraph as more or less true regarding our conception of work ethic, there seems to be a gigantic story involved with how we get there. Rarely does it seem people are keen to discuss “ethics” at all until they're nodding along at the punishments bestowed from cops or a judge on TV, but one can only strike the bell of our cultural folly once again and move on.

Personally, I used to work a lot. I say that after my last 6 months of working primarily 11+ hour days and taking 5 or 6 off a month, usually only because my car died. Before that I had 3 jobs I worked most of the day and night on. Before that was 2 years of needing to stay basically sedentary to refrain from screwing up my blood work to get into drug studies. I've experienced prolonged periods of both extremes. I tend to function in extremes for reasons I don't have the best explanation of. Increasingly, I feel the imposed conditions of my experience have taught me lessons you only get from suffering through them. Patience becomes a virtue when the alternative is to be driven mad. A naive full-throttle go-getter spirit is not an endless well of energy.

My ideas about work came from stories about my grandparents and seeing what my dad has been through iron-working. Mind you, it wasn't until relatively recently that my stories and molding got to interact with what I was learning about the world and the diminishing power of the dollar. If my grandparents could work 9-5 closer to home and raise four kids in a nice house in a safe neighborhood, my parents had to commute an hour away, one gone a good portion of when I was younger, in a modest house in a neighborhood on the verge of white-flight. My brother and I either lived with roommates, or still do, or had to move back home, only in our late 20s flirting with distorted versions of the kinds of things a newbie family in the 60s or 70s might get right out of high school, and definitely with a degree.

As the times changed, as the pressures became varied and the dialogue about how to understand it flooded from the internet, we never took the time to examine where we were going or why. We never bothered to ask anymore what “the good life” or what “middle class” stood for. We let the people born into wealth scheme to keep it from “trickling down.” We adopted self-destructive narratives of self-sufficiency. I'm telling you, read the comments on facebook under plans for a universal basic income or articles about the minimum wage. Without fail you'll get the nastiest judgmental, “WELL WHY SHOULD I PAY FOR YOU FOR ANY REASON!?” Somewhere along the way we forgot that we're beholden and rely on each other. More than that, we built up an entirely new working ethos that appears to be aimed at destroying even the memory of empathy.

If there's anything my work ethic has taught me, it's that I'm not shit. It truly is worth mentioning, a lot, that you can work yourself to literal death or passed out exhaustion, and you can still live in poverty. You can still go hungry. You can humble yourself and take the “lowest of the low” positions, you can take 3 of them, and people will balk and call you lazy and entitled and smug as you explain to them why freezing your account over back taxes might as well drive you to suicide. The situation is dark. But the only dialogue you tend to hear is the most ridiculous shit about the stock market or one-off company raising wages while pretending they're not laying off thousands or destroying the environment.

Consider, I still feel guilty about taking days off. I wait until several points on my body are throbbing and I've gained an extra 10 pounds before I think it's okay for me to cook for myself for a week and take a walk on the climate change induced spring day in February. That's a bad work ethic. I don't want to die of a heart attack delivering idiot children their food. I didn't want the majority of my memories from my last year as a 20-something to be of TV shows I watched while driving my car.

I posted an article this morning about how neoliberal ideas presenting “gig economy” jobs as a “lifestyle choice” are robbing people of the ability to recognize the power of organizing and being members of their society when they're not working. I've never felt so understood. I genuinely can't remember the last time I was a person. I don't recall when I was doing something fun or immersive for me, and not as a desperate escape to masquerade as someone more free than he feels. That scares me. I'm not making this sacrifice for kids. I'm not seeing some humanitarian effort manifest at the end of each exhausted day. I'm trying to stem the bleeding of payments set up in exploitative interest schemes for my tiny house garage. I'm trying to break even with back taxes. I'm trying to keep my car running. I'm trying to start more work with entrepreneurial gigs I hope can net equal or more without me needing to spend every waking hour doing them.

Every dollar that stems the tide of the poverty plague speaks to what the land represents. Really, truly, by the numbers, even if I'm throwing the IRS $95 a month to leave me alone, I'll be able to be as “bill free” as you can reasonably hope to be in life. And for all of the hell that it took to get there, I'm afraid it's going to feel like a cheap imitation. I'm still going to be doing things alone. I'm still going to have to circle round and round or make bets in trying to work out something that grows large enough to compensate for the ongoing cultural decay. I'm still going to cross my fingers I can mentally exhaust myself enough to mock my anxiety to death in order to get back into studies, after I stick to salads and a treadmill for a month. I'm still going to be obligated to the cultural work ethic that keeps me as tied down as everybody feels and despotically praises.

Right now was when I was supposed to be “living it up.” I was supposed to take my brain and work ethic to the top of something and revel in the glory. What am I doing repairing a car every month and delivering food 11 hours a day? It's the incidental “lifestyle choice” I'm making to try and put out fires I never started in the most efficient way. It's a job that at least allows me the option to dip into protecting my mental health verses forcing me to sit through a 6 hour presentation on how to organize cans. It doesn't promise the world and then expect free labor. It's a new kind of exploitation. It's an algorithm that has a number for your psychological breaking point. You see, the ethic evolves to meet the pathology of the times.

The difficult part is feeling stuck either way. I like feeling like I can progress on my house. The immediacy of my, in some form or another, perpetually suffered moment is pressing. When I can black out and wake up to a dollar amount high enough to accomplish something, it's a nice higher ride in a period of otherwise self-immolating wretchedness. I realized that I've been trying to trick my brain into tying what I'm doing that day to something happening on the land. I'll try to plan for when he's going to pick up supplies before I leave, so that while I'm working I can connect in real time each dropped off order with a pipe installed or hammered nail. If I take time off, what am I doing? Hanging out and talking with you? Seeing a movie by myself? Spending too much on restaurant food? I don't have a life any way you slice it. Explicitly, I don't have a reason to live that isn't on credit. To the extent I believe my own hype about what I can accomplish or who I want to be for the people in my life I care about is it.

In being forced to sit and save with studies, I started to feel a certain sensibility take hold that speaks to what I'm feeling now. It's summed up in the phrase, “It's all part of the plan.” I had to start couching the “shit years” in a larger context of the story of my life. When a comedian gets on Colbert and exclaims, “Do you have any idea how long it took to get here? 25 years! I've been doing comedy.” What's 2 years of being poked and prodded and a year delivering food in the face of that? What's a few extra pounds and assorted pains if you spend 30-31 actually going to the gym consistently and eating better? You'll be able to afford it, after all. Why am I stressed out I can only drum so fast and barely play my first scale on a trumpet? A good weekend's wages will pay for lessons for a year. “The moment” of your suffered circumstances becomes next level compelling, and the boss battle at the end is your capacity to accept it.

That's perhaps a funny and horrendously sad thing as well. I can feel myself accepting it. I don't work as often or hard as I do because I accept anything less than all of the shit I'll need to drag into the future I desire. What I struggle with is knowing what any form of balance looks like. Again, I can see friends taking off on trips or seeing shows, certainly having saved up during the same months I have. Is it back to the grind when they return? Does it ever really get “better” or does the shit just stir in more or less shitty configurations? If I saw all the shows I wanted and took all the trips I flirted with, I might not have my land. Were they worth the sacrifice if every other week from 31-32 I can travel nearly anywhere in the world? My standards, my comfort levels, and my goals are apparently fundamentally different. The only people I engage with at length about them have the ignorance and arrogance to disregard waking up an hour early to even bother discussing making something work.

There's a scene in Vikings where Rolo is freaking out about his place in Ragnar's shadow and seeks guidance from the Seer. The Seer starts laughing. If Rolo only knew what his future held.

[566] Human Faces

I try to look deep. That is, I try to pick up on things beyond what they initially show or say. I look how your face and body move as you're telling a story. I notice little changes in the tone of your voice and come up with reasons you might be getting angrier or happier. I watch your posture or mood shift over time and infer things about your relationship or job. I try to classify the stories you're willing to tell or what people are willing and quick to say about you. If I ever get a writing sample, then it's like part of you has been put under excessive flood lighting. I can literally watch where your reasoning starts and stops and pick out your particular word choices I might have skipped over in a cordial conversation.

We're born, to some extent, to be able to do this naturally. Just as most people can see, taste, and smell. You can get a job tasting, smelling, or spotting forgeries because the very senses you take for granted have more layers than you might discover on your own. You can then take it a step further. The reason there are FBI profilers and body language “experts” (as that field I hesitate to say has the required scientific uniformity of reliable replication) is because with enough practice you can start to see trends, pick apart particulars, and often see reliable-enough information into the future about who a person is, is becoming, or is trying to be. Absolutely it's not perfect and people can opt to be perfectly random or be thrown off course by unforeseeable circumstances, but the point is less to argue for the strict scientific basis of my claim, and more to talk about the practice.

Band taught me that “practice makes permanent.” If you hold yourself to bad standards and ingrain bad practicing habits you'll subconsciously move into those spaces you've carved and synapses you've strengthened. The malleability of the brain is such that you can reinforce or degrade these proclivities, but the earlier you start and learn something and the more you replicate it, that's often what will stick. This is the heart of learned prejudices and poor stress or conflict resolution strategies. This is irrational fears and insecurities that play out as the most confident and intense people you'll ever meet. This is why when conversations all degrade the same way I'm not surprised, because through our families, cordiality, and the media, we've all been trained to deal with information we don't like or understand the exact same ways.

Now I'm caught running with the thesis that we're a society of extremely bad social habits. I can repeat that to myself as many times as it takes to become convinced. I can make it harder for myself to see the arguments in favor of the social games we play and how they beget more cohesion or happiness. Every single supposition I take, by virtue of “it came to mind,” I can argue in the light of criticism, damnation, or depression. Precisely at this point is where we can either do and say what I just did or carry on like we're perfectly unable to recognize our ideas and what they may be translating. When I write, I don't particularly feel unduly or unfairly critical, like I'm damning the world to hell, or that what I say should make you particularly sad, but how often do my words get the kind of reaction that would suggest I'm doing anything less?

My habit is to dig. Digging has its problems. When I dig into people, they stop looking like people. They look like forces. They look like habits. They look like parts of every poorly done psychological test on biases and highlighted parts of the brain from an FMRI. Anymore, I apply the dig to the “bulk” of news articles and look for trends or styles in the information. Is there a general voice of bloggers and newscasters beyond, “Oh fucking shit?” Can you put your finger on what the public is digesting and sharing and wishing when the well of commentary is the actual place you should look if you want to see unfair criticism, depressing sentiments, and general damnation? Is there more to Hitler 2's cabinet picks than the simple observation that opposite day will be in effect indefinitely?

I got the jolt to write this because of an article that pointed out one of Hitler 2's picks plagiarized their PH.D. Can it be anymore on the nose? Someone who's gotten to such an academic level that they're even writing a PH.D suggests a whole world unto itself. Then you go and corrupt, or celebrate depending on your view, the notion of advanced and specific education by cutting corners at the top. You want the letters, not to be what they're supposed to represent. You want the authority without the work. You want the respect that you've never had for yourself and you want the empty fame, or infamy, to keep you hidden in plain sight. You'll take your fake credentials and no-comments to the highest places of authority and accountability in the land, and you'll get in anyway. You, and hundreds of your closest inadequate, lazy, and dangerous friends.

I'm forced to look at the deeper picture. I'm forced to comment on “people” when that many terrible ones are glamorized as worthwhile and capable of being leaders. It matters as long as I don't choose to commit suicide. In precisely this moment you have to understand that when your larger picture is as corruptible and fickle as the human animal, it is not rational or helpful to rely endlessly and needlessly on the artifice of this faux leadership. It isn't hard or unexpected to practice bad habits until they feel normal. It speaks to why I have to constantly write and pick apart what I'm doing in life. How much of me feels so normal that's actually beyond destructive to those around me and my long-term feasibility as a human? If you're willing to look, your mind can be a picture of emaciated squalor that nobody had the perspective or bravery to inform you about.

The work of paying attention is hard. I rail against cliches because they skip over the work of identifying why they're true. To be in the moment can be to suffer, and suffer a lot. It can be anxiety and depression. It can be always throwing down a wall of judgment and doubt between you and the people you meet. And it's why you have to habitualize recognizing how you're practicing doing so. Am I writing to beat myself up, give myself excuses, or try too terribly hard to convince myself of something stupid I refuse to find better words for? Am I repeating myself for effect and stress or because that's all I have to say? Am I truly frustrated at “the world” and what it's constantly doing to me, or that after another groggy night of television and big dreaming, I'm still freezing in basketball shorts writing this, instead of seeing what I want to come true beyond my living room? It's not always clear.

Something I do notice too often is how the words never match up with the actions. That's how I get to employ the word “superficial” more than any one word should ever be employed. That's how I get to bitch about all the “friends” I never see or talk to who are perfectly happy to agree with you about your ideas or plans, and would love to see something like that, but are actually more happy in their game servers or work station or classroom. That's how you see all the “informed” and insistent commentary that tells you what's wrong with the country lamenting how far we've fallen, but if I tell them, “Live free, right here, just put me on the phone with someone with the resources to get us started” nothing still happens. The deeper truth, the fundamental things about us are what is shining through, not that I believe you believe anything about what you're saying.

I like to think my world reflects to it's best ability what I actually think and feel. I believe I can run a general food or service establishment as good as anyone, so I tried. I believe my future is perilously threatened if I don't learn more about being self-sustainable and connect in a more informed and democratic way on a smaller scale, so I bought land. I think the overwhelming amount of conversations I get into and criticism I get is so beyond the pale unfair as to border on abuse, so I ask you to explain yourself, get genuinely angry when you don't, and am more sad than I'll never get credit for in knowing when and why we can't be friends anymore. It wasn't because I blog. It's not that I'm too confusing. It's that you're not willing to admit...anything, ever.

Our daily practices aren't about who we want to be. We're practicing who we are. When we're “innocently lying” about our circumstances, that should bug and scare you. When we're able to overlook and downplay ethics, literally just general ethics, you need to bring that reality to the center of your being and figure out what it's done to pollute how you operate in the world. If you're not sounding as “crazy” as me, why? If you're not worried about the day your town becomes Flint or New Orleans or someone wants to privatize and bankrupt or kick out your neighbors, it's not that I sound too critical, you're a lying person who's dead inside. It feels so normal.

The keys to respecting our station and relationships to each other aren't just dangling in front of us, they're perpetually thrown right between our eyes. In order to not make yourself crazy with the joke and stress of just existing at all, you have to do the work and be honest. If you can't account for your outside life in honest terms, I can only suffer in thinking about what's going on internally. Here, another brilliant opportunity. Do you believe I'm suffering? If not, you're broken, because you can't even recognize what it's doing to you. You're not looking as deeply at your face as I am. Are you unwilling or unable? Are you going to say out loud how much you don't care what I think or if I die? If not, I'm only going to keep doing what I do and tell you what you're actually saying. I'm going to work around it or throw it back in your face. I'm gonna keep suffering your face trying to look and talk like something deserving while you plagiarize and kill even the memory of what the real work looks like.

[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.

[526] The Point

I think this is going to come across as very “judge-y,” but I don't want it to. The aim is to describe the working model of discussion that describes how we spend our time. Also, I need to attempt to banish any guilt I have for the amount of privilege I exhibit in my day to day existence.

How many jobs might we describe as “pointless?” I don't think there's a hard and fast ranking system, but if we attempt to make a number of comparisons, one might start to manifest. A comedian or doctor? If you had to choose, every comedian would be pointless. A lawyer or garbageman? Trick question, as both are about to be outsourced by machines here shortly. Does it sound weird to call a lawyer pointless? In a world that can produce a computer that can cite precedents and make better arguments than a human could ever manage, maybe not.

It's also important to distinguish the difference between the profession itself and the human desire or need of what it's providing. Comedy certainly isn't pointless and in fact is essential to well being and cohesiveness. Have we immediately contradicted the line of reasoning that would throw a comedian under a doctor's bus? Perhaps marginally. At the same time, it's hopefully becoming apparent how “loose” it is to talk about the merit of any one thing without a context.

A world without comedians would need one or many. A world entirely consisting of comedians would be doomed to fail. Is there a balance? Is there a compelling case for the amount of comedians we have verses doctors? Sounding like impossible questions to me. Questions that have to be approached very personally and from a kind of holistic impression. I've stated, at least, that the world doesn't need me as a comedian. I can cite dozens who are saying almost word for word the things I'd want to say. I've no desire to surpass or crowd them and will gladly share with you the joy they bring me. I'm happy to crack my own shit up or try to get friends to laugh.

The question of “pointless” activities is one that we're going to have to deal with in greater measure than I think we're even basically aware of. Of the jobs that are left not being done via modern slavery, the ones that employ the most people are rapidly changing for reasons well independent of anyone's concern for your place or title.

Anecdotally, I can describe how pointless I felt at basically every job I've been in. It's a hard illusion to see through that just because there's a structure of some sort, doesn't mean it stands for worthwhile or valuable reasons. I excelled at my jobs, either evidenced through raises, promotions, or a heaping of responsibilities. But I excelled at being pointless. School is a close analogy. I got the As and Bs. Nothing about those As and Bs meant anything to the places I ended up working for. And the tasks required of me certainly didn't lean on my capacity to “intensively write” about obscure legal questions or describe the paths of neurotransmitters.

My mind always shoots to jobs of leisure. Critics still blow my mind. Paid to love or shit on things. Have an opinion? Here's money! Sports follows in my thoughts mostly because nobody needs you to be the best (even if it means doping) more than they probably need to leave the couch more often. I think you're less often an example, more being abused as a scapegoat. Think of the amount of pride fat America is going to take from any gold medals it wins.

The more you really dig into any particular task, it feels more and more predicated on “because I can” or “because it kills time.” It becomes dignified because people tie it to the amount of money they're making or they describe it as taking care of their families or of course their amount of effort or struggle or knowledge holds some particular weight over yours. This of course is different from demeaning the amount of work or time it does in fact take to learn things or what you've personally overcome in order to do so.

I've been practicing instruments. I have so much time on my hands I can start to surprise myself with the progress I make in a relatively short amount of time. I still seem to reflexively shit on what I'm doing. I like music. I marvel at people who can do it professionally. But it still feels “pointless.” That is, I'm doing it almost like a show. When I can pick up an instrument at random and pull it off, that moment will validate the months of metronome beats in my head or canker soars. I care about music, but I can't make it “the point.” At least, not yet.

I've been watching TV. What I find I seem to insist on in any conversation about TV, is that I do it often sped up and via torrents. A 60 minute show is actually often 45 without commercials, and a 45 minute show meant to “empty-headedly entertain” is 22 minutes at twice the speed and more like 19 or less when you skip introductions, segment transitions, or musical acts you don't care about or already like. I can also practice on the drum pad, do squats, or hit the treadmill while Stephen Colbert is shitting on Hitler 2.

Mind you, I literally have nothing else to do. I don't have anywhere to be. I don't have anything that needs paid for. I'm not aware of anyone that needs my help. What the hell am I doing saving all this time, so I can have more time, to apparently complain about having too much time? It's less confusing than I've managed to phrase it there, but on its face, it seems kind of ridiculous, no?

Well, I also like to read. I also like to create software and want to build businesses. I'm also pricing land and have projects I've contacted literally every person in the state tangentially related to what I'm after. That is, I know what I wish could be “the point” at all times, happen to do everything I can in service to the point, and then am left to my own devices. I have money I know how to spend, but only have 3 or so ways I'd prefer it done so. I have time that I hope I can remain respectful of, even when I seemingly have too much of it. A sentiment I think no one over the age of 35 would ever dream of thinking was their problem.

I know what I want. My perception shows me that a lot of people, at least claim, to know what they're doing. It's anyone's guess if what they're doing matches what they want. I know what I want in conversation. I know what I want an argument to consist of. I know what I want in a partner or friend. I know what tools I want to use. I know what I want my house to be capable of. I know what I'll want to find the time to watch or play when I've finally created something that allows me to exercise “the point” instead of whatever else it is I find to do.

I also think I only ever discovered what I wanted because I gave myself all the time in the world to fall into it. I exhaustively explore what's on my mind and then consist of what's left. Hopefully, it's an informative and “wise” position. Hopefully, it allows me more opportunities to offer help instead of noise. Hopefully, it allows me to keep personal guilt levels at an appropriate place when the contrast laid bare of my life seems so strikingly different from yours.

My relative freedom is temptation. It's asking for trouble while you're waiting for things around you to catch up. Will you cope like me? Do you have a point besides waking up to take your prescription? Will the societal lid stay on the pot when huge swaths of humanity are trying to persuade themselves an “arts and leisure” existence is as worthy as the coal mine ethics they were born into? I doubt it.

Simply, I think it's important for people to face the true depths of their pointless behaviors. The hours spent in traffic listening to the same 30 songs. The hundreds of one line emails because neither of you wanted to take the elevator. The scrolling and scrolling and scrolling for any cue to smirk or like or become “outraged.” The minute to minute existence not burdened by the point because you don't have time.

In a primarily superficial sense is my life an easy place to be. I have the same luxuries as you, just the added time on top of it. A day doesn't go by where I'm not annoyed I can't “just do” the plans I have. Each comment I catch about thrown away money makes me sick; the fact that I'm reduced to my bank account. The fact that my purposeful and thoughtful self garners less attention or value from society than 30 failed presidential campaigns. The fact that there's millions of people who desperately need more attention and care than I'll ever deserve piles it on further.

We're a society of “unknown unknowns” who revel and take pride in it. For me, never will a personal story overshadow speaking and paying attention to our general health and awareness. Part of that health is taking back our time to re-learn what it is we should be focused on. It's to work it into our bones how to detect distracted from impassioned. I need to hear it in my every day speeches and interactions. I need to sense it from the average Joe. I need people to denounce, instead of actively encourage, behavior that attacks being thoughtful.

When I write, I try very hard to mean what I say. It's important for me to have a fairly prolonged defense for any lazy jabs. It means something to me, if not to you. I want to mean something to you, but won't be the whipping boy. This isn't a ramble. Your anger is unjustified. I'm not the enemy. If I were a betting man, I'd say you hate yourself for the same reasons I do. You're actively missing the point and resent the person calling you out. Learn to do it to yourself, and maybe we'll flirt with getting somewhere better together.

[502] Hate By Any Other Name

Is there a single, more motivating, more prevalent, and more accurate assessment of why humans do anything than out of hatred? Know that I ask this sincerely, and am not just trying to stick with some theme for the sake of it. When the tides feel like they're turning and the world you knew starts to become unrecognizable, I feel I must argue that it started with hate. While the only truth may be change, the more significant facts seem related to what accelerated or provoked that change. I'll argue two-fold; I'll describe why I think it's hatred, and I'll speak against those who would claim it's about love.

I want to add an initial caveat. For the sake of this argument, I'm forgoing any presumptions about “balance.” I think it's an artful word often employed to swallow bullshit. Anyone who wants to point to the grayness of life and decision making, needlessly leaning on “how complicated it all is” or the amount of give and take involved I'm not going to find persuasive if merely asserting that is the extent of your argument.

So, as I often do, I want to give examples big and small and hopefully throughout history. For a small example, consider weight, both loss and gain. For me, when it comes to loss, I'm never more motivated than when I think about how much I hate and constantly make fun of ridiculously out of shape or gargantuan people. Claims about my immaturity or civility aside, all I have to do is think of each successive pound gained and the amount of things I'm ignoring, forgoing, or hating about myself to get that large in order to zap away my sympathies. I don't mean to unfairly clump moms, people with conditions, or the otherwise basically healthy person who finds themselves gaining as they get old.

For the above, I consider culture. Why is it when an area adopts a “western diet” do they start to die earlier, find all forms of disease they never had, and help contribute to the destruction of the environment? Is it because “they absolutely love shitty food?” It's an easy way to state the problem, absolutely. It's a way to overburden our sensory reward systems and make it sound like a good thing. But what's really happened? I would argue, some executive and dialogue concerning profits and the free market are held in greater esteem than a concern for humanity or the planet. Someone hates you. Someone with significantly more power and influence than you can appreciate has shaped us into translating their hatred into lovable language regarding your preferences and presumed decision making.

Now, you get to love being fat while pretending and ignoring just how much you probably really hate it. You hate knowing that people like me can tell non-stop fat jokes for hours. You hate breathing hard. You hate worrying about your health or taking it for granted that you'll be dead a little sooner anyway and won't have to worry for as long. You rely on the language concerning sabotaged “choices” to both reinforce your sense of ownership of your circumstances and distancing yourself from notions of anyone behind the curtain.

This bridges neatly into a discussion about capitalism and the free-market. It's a religion by any other name. Companies hate losing money more than they like to put on some shiny veneer about some “revolutionary” and “necessary” new gadget or food. They hate competition. They hate notions of equality and sharing. They'll, to their dying breath, espouse the “morals” and “freedoms” that you lose by not having big corporate brother to dictate what belongs in your home or body. The Hayek or Friedman ideologues who, even when given the chance to run their neoliberal experiments, ignore the human suffering caused because they can't own and be honest about the amount of hatred they have about losing their station.

“Nation building” is all about subverting wills and keeping people dead or ignorant. “Energy independence” couldn't take foot until the profit margin could be realized. The New Deal was people reacting to the hatred they felt towards starving and a predictable, arguably planned, market crash. When new presidents are ushered in, it's because the population is often too stupid and forgetful to understand that what they hate started 30, 100, or 1000 years ago, and the president isn't outside of gas stations manipulating the price. It's an elite hatred that condenses and protects power with psychopathic efficiency.

Why do we genuinely have to fear a Trump presidency? It's not because people tap into the energy of love or the stream of youth consciousness fighting to keep his name relevant. It's because hatred, blind ignorant hatred for you, for themselves, for the history and facts they'll never understand, is the most powerful force. I've asked how so many Tea-baggers got into congress. Racism is more powerful than any liberal idealism. Bernie or bust? They hate Hilary, not love Teddy and FDR. Let it all burn if you can't get your way. Because it's easy. Because it's normal. Because until we started inventing notions of high-society and worldly-inclusive mindsets, it's been a couple hundred thousand years of instilled habitual hatred towards the other. It's been ignorant fearful animals lashing out in order to stay alive or revel in the glory of conquest.

You will never and not fix anything until you appreciate the depth of our cultural hatred. You will never escape the negative feedback wheel of adopting that hatred, protecting that hatred, and spreading that hatred. You “choose” between Target and Wal-mart, with an ignorant smug smile while you say “Tar-gjaaay,” you know, because you're fancy, with the thought that every indebted food-stamp using worker doesn't deserve to be freely educated or have access to healthcare because they're not you who's really had it rough and deserves a lifestyle and attitude befitting.

One of the best tricks that's ever been played is getting you to adopt the attitude and hateful extravagance of the rich without getting any of the benefits. You think being able to afford a gym membership or to be able to vacation once in a while is something to be proud of. Spending and acquiring to put distance between you and your hard-fought modern sensibilities and “the rest” who don't or can't access your resources. It's not your love of poor people that provokes the charitable donation. It's the hate and resentment you hold for what you have, that you know, in some important way, you don't really deserve.

Ask yourself what happens to people that do love. Where do the advocates end up if it's not in jail or to obscurity? Dead? Often enough. Immortalized in a facebook quote, statue, or documentary? Whoo-hoo. Manipulated and re-interpreted or reimangined to promote the exact opposite of what they intended? If a slurry of religious myths doesn't come to mind, take away how easy it is to ignore how much God hated what he had done and the award-winning re-branding there. The language of love used to ignore the sheer depravity and depth of the hatred. You love your country that would rather pay middle men than keep you alive? That sends your poor to unnecessary war? That bilks you for tax dollars while daily reports show the rich stocking and hoarding? That literally has a paper trail describing how they plan to keep you down? (I encourage you to read as much as you can about the Powell memo.)

It's the anecdote of immigrant parents who, escaping more visible and dramatic hatred, sought a place where they could comfortably instill the mythological powers of achievement born out of a specific time and place. That part itself wasn't done maliciously, but when given the opportunity to expand and become aware of larger forces that helped shape their “self-made” image, they recoiled like the rich and said, “No! Fuck you, fuck them, it was all about me!”

[373] Middle Ground Zero

I want to talk about the idea of “the middle way.” I also want to criticize ideas and statements that masquerade as the reasonable adult way of understanding the world.

Initially, I think about the ideal political situation. The idea of negotiating a center that keeps extreme positions at either end, and the reasonable people basically being able to agree on a common premise. In a democracy, it's theorized that rational actors with the perfect information would make decisions in service to their best interests. Clearly, that works every time. I think there are places, like our political realm, where that idea, that there is indeed a middle ground, does a lot of work in misleading our cultural conversation.

Another easy one is health. Would you rather be healthy or have cancer? Why not shoot for the middle ground and we just give you diabetes and a broken leg. It's manageable and not immediately life threatening, right? But no, you'll insist that you want to be healthy. Most sane people would because when it comes to the stark reality of “I feel like shit” it's so very clear what an ideal situation would look like.

I was reading over a reddit thread, specifically this one “hate the liberals” guy's comments to people expressing frustration over Obama's new bill to lower student debt interest rates. Examples of his comments amount to “you were an adult, you shouldn't have signed the loan,” “You're a fucking retard thinking the government owes you anything,” “Education is not free (n)or a right,” “I made better decisions than you, studied something better than you, I don't want to pay for you,” and “you entitled parasites don't seem to understand life isn't fair and that not everyone succeeds.” There are severely worse comments, but this will do for now.

Let's respond line by line. This idea that “you were an adult” seems to say that “now that you're a reasonable and wise individual with no unfair barriers and perfect information, you picked the objectively worst thing to do to yourself in this situation.” I, at least, had about as much choice to go to college as I have to currently work at McDonalds. It's amazing how many parents bought the idea that college meant job and opportunities well before their kids did. It amazes me to think that we'd admonish someone for, what's been touted as the “adult” thing to do, go to college, for incurring the costs that became normalized at all levels of society, in order to do so.

It's not being “reasonable” to lean on the idea that “well, people are adults!” Adults in a context. Or children who are as old as adults who've never been taught or engaged with by a reasonably better interpretation of the word “adult.”

The idea that the government doesn't owe you anything is particularly interesting. In a representative democracy, the government owes you everything. The government owes you its very jobs. If the majority of people with unreasonable crippling debt call on the government to do something about it, the government should respond. This accounting and thought experiment has been done hundreds of times. Things like relocating agribusiness and oil subsidies. Why begrudge the guy who tried to get educated and be responsible instead of writing angry letters to the banks? What did the government owe them? Whatever it was, it's still being paid.

Education not being free nor a right is a statement of fact. But, more to the point, nothing is a right besides the right to die. And then, only if you don't drag that phrasing into the political arena! Rights are bread from understanding and struggle. When you have access, ability, and intention, a “right” starts to manifest in louder and louder fashion. How many blacks and women have been explained to them the rights they don't have in our democracies over the years?

There are things you state because they are true. There are things you state, while incidentally true, only serve to promote the status quo or deliberately ignore other avenues. To say something like “don't touch that pot, it's hot” is not the same kind of factual claim as “don't complain because the government doesn't owe you anything.” The second statement is the kind of folded argument “logic” you get from religious types. “Well, you can't prove there's not a god!” Okay...true, but that usually has absolutely nothing to do with why you think that god doesn't want me to have an abortion. If you don't want to get burned, you don't touch the pot. If you want a different financial obligation, allegedly you appeal to your representatives.

The next lines are about personal responsibility. I don't know how you can talk of responsibility without speaking to what society considers responsible. It goes back to simply going to college in the first place. That's what higher paying jobs expect. That's what they did, that's their standard, and for a great many things, college isn't simply a giant waste of money. But, not only are kids in schools screwed going in, but when they're out, a lot of the jobs they were shooting for, say in medicine, are proving less than useful in paying back their loans anymore than the art student can. There's an underlying societal/governmental problem that makes a truly “responsible” decision, at best difficult, and at worst practically arbitrary.

Finally, the idea that not everyone succeeds and that life isn't fair. Maybe you come across someone who's been in a serious car accident. Do you pull up next to them and yell “life's not fair fucko!” and speed off in celebration of your ability to better avoid being in accidents? Probably not. It's a statement of “fact” that doesn't really speak to whether or not the accident happened on a bridge that wasn't reinforced or a road that wasn't properly paved. It ignores the poor car quality standards that could have reduced it to a fender bender instead of someone bleeding out on the pavement.

There are levels of responsibility and “fair” that we install. Also, we install them for reasons. If you want to speed, you don't argue with the cop that it's not fair he pulled you over. Why make the care able to go so fast if I can't use it! It's fair to assume that most people most of the time should try to drive in ways that don't make it more likely for you to die arbitrarily. We'll leave aside Montana's odd speed experiment, imposing speed limits and seeing an increase in death, with that analogy.

There is a, I don't know what else to call it but “religious zealotry” that people, at some level or another subscribe to that they coat in unhelpful and unnecessary “facts” to try and sound reasonable or advocating for “something in the middle.” These are idealists not because they understand what's actually ideal, but because they are allowed to create and defend to the death what they personally define as ideal. They subscribe to axioms about age or habits of “good leaders” instead of describing the context under which different ideas are formed. They appeal to reputation and common ethics above cause and effect evidence.

These are the people who say one of the dumbest and most popular statements right now, “there are some scientists that don't believe in global warming.” If you watch the episode of “Years of Living Dangerously,” try not to throw something through your TV when the pastor of one of the country's biggest churches argues that “because you haven't addressed my points!” He's neither convinced nor impressed. It's a guy you can't persuade ice melts, but you'll try, until you don't know whether you hate him or yourself more.

The “middle way,” to me, is not making these empty aphorisms about “life” or “how it works.” Nor is it taking a bath in shit, then in honey, and showing off how beautiful you look and awesome you smell. Put the shit in the garden and the honey on the toast. Understand that every time you say “Democrats suck” you're not really saying anything. The middle is about perspective, not leveraging bad or empty ideas against each other. It means you can advocate for equal opportunity without bankrupting potentially vital pieces of infrastructure. It means you're influenced by history and examples that aren't feeling laden anecdotes. It means you can respect when the responsibility is truly yours, you know, like for going to school, and when you should expect the burden for certain things, like how it's paid for, to be on everyone. Every old person on Medicaid who complains about entitled millennials should unironically drop dead on the spot.

“Objective” is not a negotiation. You don't want just a little bit of cancer. In the same way you don't track increasing tuition for 30 years, for no other reasons beyond corruption, and blame kids for “being adults who made the poor decision to pay for an education.”

[365] Swing Swing Swing

I suppose one way to say it is that I'm after “the drum beat” of culture. If we think of a university setting. Even with thousands of kids from all walks of life, whether you join a rally, run a naked mile, quietly do your homework, or network your way into a lucrative future, the underlying pulse, purpose, and utility of a university is to set kids up to “do better.” It's the place to learn academically and hopefully about your roles socially or in the realm of personal responsibility.

Now, arguably, what the modern university has become given the costs associated, the little reason to think you'll find work when you're done, and the corporatization of once essential public rights and goods, the needle has moved away from that underlying logic and expectation, but for the analogy, pretend we graduated before the mid/late 70s.

If you're constantly looking for culture, it feels natural to gravitate towards big institutions. “Corporate culture” is certainly a thing that ranges from open plan utopia-esc tech firms to Dilbert hellscapes. But you still manage to see hundreds or thousands of people plugged into a system where they start to act and think alike, to varying degrees, about the nature of their work and their role in it.

Religious institutions tend to have straight forward enough agendas. Those that want to quietly worship or believe in something garner their small flocks and maybe never step onto the world stage beyond a bake sale or charity event for a sick member. On the other hand, huge swaths of tea-baggers and evangelicals actively shut down women's health clinics in every spot but one city in the entire state of Texas...

But I only pick these to try an contrast the Bigger Conception of culture I'm after. I want the Human Drum Beat. I want, to as best as I can measure, the actual likelihood or possibility of getting the future I'm after. I know there are millions of people that I would describe as “bat shit.” But, I don't know for sure there aren't millions + 1 who could stand in opposition and “win.” More importantly, win in a way that sustains objectively positive and life-affirming changes beyond the whims of the bat-shitters.

Eventually, most retreat to the realm of anecdotes. I have as much a “Bloomington friend group culture” as much as I have a conception of “most people my age I've engaged with culture.” They both provoke me to say something about what I think the world would look like maybe 30 years from now if this is the level of circumstance and discourse I'm generally presented with. If my disposition is any clue, it's not simply less than reassuring, it's almost explicitly the opposite of what I think needs to happen in order for things to change for the better.

I've stated previously things to the effect of “I don't have hope” or “If I have hope, it's in the endless void of information and potential I have no real way to quantify yet.” What's notable about these statements is that they aren't deliberately trying to avoid snippets of positivity and potential I see every day. They come from staring into the void. They come from the struggle of trying to rip out of people something more resembling what I want.

Immediately I want to say, “It's not about what you want.” But if it's not about what I want, then who's it up to? I can draw a pretty clear line from many things I didn't want that I nonetheless have to live out the consequences of. I think my reflexive response is a symptom of the sickness of our current invisible culture. So then, it seems more appropriate, if not obvious once it's pointed out, of course it's about what I want. Perhaps, in a very important sense, that's all it's about.

So then I become intrigued by what other people want. Surely, I can't hope to achieve what I want without assessing their variables and seeing if there is a mutually beneficial plan or path of least resistance to getting there.

And here is where I run into the difficult music of the current drum beat. All I think I'm hearing is “main-tain, main-tain, main-tain.” You need to keep doing what you're doing to keep the bills paid. You need to buckle down and power through school. You need to keep certain discussions off the table because the sliver of happiness or expectation you've cut out of life is paramount. On the surface, this seems so taken-for-granted as not a problem, it's almost flatly ridiculous to even point out. So why do I think it's exactly the reason we're going to lose the game?

People want to “be happy,” no? I'm to call their happiness wrong? It's my place to pretend I know what's best for someone else? My advice, my perch, my street cred in the realm of thinking and bitching truly accounts of the nuance of all human behavior?

I'm going to skip over unpacking all that. It's simply the typical gut-reaction or classic kinds of responses when you talk of overhauling a system. For those who can't see through the superficiality in asking such questions, run along and play.

While I don't try to go out of my way to be an emotional bitch, when I do feel things they tend to swing rather dramatically. I'm still really confused about nights where I'm having an amazing time only to, in the last ten minutes, feel like I need to hit things and write something angry. My initial speculation is about how I tend to think of “the game.” Part of the reason I tend/ed to run so selfishly is that things become extremely simple. But what happens when you invite complications?

Say I wanted kids. What planet am I leaving them? What lesson about “politics” do I hope they get to fall asleep with at night? How soon do I want them to learn that “things just are this way” as if they would “just be” had I not made a decision to bring them into the world? The advice can't be, “hunker down and ride it out. I brought you here so you could feel desperate and cut off from your fellow man. I thought, when the world starts to burn, you'd get a kick out of how high the flames really got.”

Look at “climate skeptics” aka ignorant deadly cancers to society, if you want to see what happens when you Maintain at the expense of everything else. These are people that can't be persuaded to read a thermometer, or that ice melts. As you'll learn over and over again, they're “happy” to believe in their god, their “facts,” and carry on promoting their ideas because, after all, in their not-so-humble opinion, “it just doesn't seem right to them.”

Less dramatically, I think about the level and nature of conversation or discourse. When you maintain what you like to talk about, and nothing else. There are as many consequences of that waiting for you psychologically, financially, or otherwise as well. It's not the planet running out of oxygen, but I always, somehow, can find people who eventually notice it's getting harder and harder to breath about something.

I think it's increasingly unreasonable to assume, unsustainable, unacceptable to pursue, and unlikely to be achieved “what it is you want to do” at the expense of something larger. I recently heard something to the effect of, “show a man that he's part of something more, and he'll realize he's capable of anything.” I don't get the sense that people do things in service to the larger picture. Or if they're trying, it's not sufficient. I think there's great utility in even burdening yourself with things you don't yet know how to fix as opposed to “not caring” or “moving on.” It's like stepping in shit and then leisurely strolling through your house pretending not to notice the smell.

And here's the next point of “hope from ignorance.” In one on one conversations, sure, you get people who have read a lot. You get people with a cause. They use their anecdotes or their classes and have this motivation to step out there and change something for the better. It's where the most insidious facts about their effort lie. A burning building isn't quelled one bucket of water at a time. You need a fire hose, or ten. Sometimes, you have to let it burn out and build a new structure. The fire cares not about your good intentions, your personal resolve, moral certitude, or stress-reducing novel philosophical take on fires. It's just going to burn.