[1061] Superstar

I feel like I'm not sure how "anything" works. The ways in which my life semi-does all boil down to being alone, spending money, or having a conversation almost entirely by myself. This line makes sense to me. So did the ones before it. I can follow the sense they made onto more thoughts and sentences I hope describe an antagonizing feeling. I don't, precisely, know what I feel. I just know it's "off." I know the handful of thoughts about specific individuals or scenarios sounds "angry" or "shitty" or "judgmental" in my head. I'm frustrated, in a sense, with what I perceive to be so many people castrating themselves and acting like they don't have a choice.

I had one gentleman substitute his opioid addiction for a gambling one. The moment you reach the point in the discussion about what he can do, literally that second, delete the apps, he's arguing that he's done that before and just downloaded them again in the past. You know how you lift a weight once and then you can enter the body building competition?

I have one lady who is emerging as the queen of thinking herself in circles and refusing to follow any conclusion through, even after she notices a change in how she feels when she half-ass does so. Each week a version of the same conversation that's not, in reality, a conversation at all. It's a merry-go-round.

I have my "healthiest" people get their boundaries or ideals tested in the lightest of ways, and newer, more nuanced, but still addictive coping mechanisms come in to pile layers of what feels like needless complexity on enough problems already. And often enough, that complexity manifesting as a new man in their life. That is, when it's not an old man professing to be a new man.

I have friends, literal counselors, who get themselves on the verge of heart attacks and abject depressive chaos, endlessly doubling down on the exact wrong behaviors they're literally supposed to be capable of counseling others away from.

I have a lingering absurd scenario I'm growing more desperately desirous of bringing some resolution that seems to threaten my last bastion of what I thought could be the basis of at least one stable friendship in my life.

It makes the idea of "helping" or "trying" feel so shallow if not altogether hallow if it doesn't speak primarily to how you wish to help and try in service to yourself. Perhaps I'm just "lucky" I've done the work in that regard.

Another week, and especially now that I'm leaving some of these groups, the adulation is pouring in. How? How am I helping? I'm making you think? I'm calling you on your shit? I'm friendly and non-judgmental enough to keep you talking? I want to believe I'm helping, but in a major way, the problem isn't something I can fix. Life fucking sucks. It's a miserable place with death around every corner and most everyone and everything gives no fucks about you. You're prey to those in power. You're on the wrong end of the bell curve. You're sick, you're broke, and you're a blip on the ambivalent ass of existence. No shit you're an addict, what else could you possibly be? Surely a great many things, but addict first, right?

Even with "things" going "mostly" right or appreciably along a sense of stability, they're still shit. There's still plenty of suffering and absurdity and "stupid people" to be had. Oh, how my clients this week wished to complain about the stupid people! And then they get frustrated and want to smoke, or take it out on their kids, or flirt with their favorite path to self-destruction.

We need to wise up. I think the wisdom is bred from literal work on specific things we claim to believe. Our language is dog shit. It gives us glancing blows without landing the emotional umph that prompts behavior change. We're not working to talk better. We're not pairing our words with anything meaningfully manifested. We're not working to create a place that reflects effort, growth, and sanity. We're fucking around with memes. We're silent. We're complaining into the abyss on an ironic ride to hell.

I get so discouraged when I think about what it is I do to try and remain okay, and how long it took, and how many aspects still go miserably wrong all the time, and I'm supposed to translate that into digestible chunks for people maybe less equipped? It's not about being intelligent. It's that you have to functionally turn your lived experience into something people can have faith in. Then you have to, in turn, have faith it'll translate and stick? That's fucking gross. I'm not operating on faith. I'm doing fucking work. I'm trying to be accountable by literally counting words and time and money spent to achieve things. You have to reduce all the work you're doing into sentiments that can land on ears that don't speak your language. You're talking about exercising muscles they don't realize they have and which tremble against the wind.

 
With our infinite capacity to reimagine and interpret, what am I even saying to people? Sometimes they'll start a sentence with, "Like you said…" and proceed to say none of anything I've ever said, but damn are they enthusiastic about what it meant to them! What on Earth am I supposed to make of that? What could they possibly be hearing if they're willing, enthusiastically so, to continue "coping" in the easiest and most familiar ways after YEARS of being shown, and testifying to how they've been shown, how it's harmful, unproductive, and not in line with their values? It's ways that keep them sad, unmotivated, defensive, and yet proud to…play along?

"We're all addicted to something."

No. This is one of a thousand pithy sayings used as an excuse to feel better about what you're addicted to. The lack of control, therefore responsibility, is the point, not the deep desire to repeat something. I'm not addicted to writing, or eating, or picking scabs. I'm not addicted to TV or my go-it-alone "fuck you" attitude, or any food I thoroughly enjoy. Pretty much every single time I find myself getting lost or getting tempted to absolve myself of an awareness of my complicity or responsibility, it pops up here, at least to the extent anyone can pull themselves back.

Our cultural psychosis isn't an addiction. It's a mental health crisis to be sure. There's an infinite array of negative self-destructive feedback cycles we dip in and out of. But we're in severe denial about how many times we're capable of doing or saying "more" or something "better." I don't allow you to be held-harmless like you're at the peak violent throes of an addiction. You know damn well what's your fault, what's in your control, and what you're attempting to excuse and distance yourself from. You're not calculating a brilliant strategic approach, you're a pussy and a liar and you refuse to allow yourself to hate that about you as viscerally as it needs to be felt in order to change.

I'm no more willing to invite the vast majority of fights offered to me than I am willing to get sucked into the black hole at the center of anyone's individual universe. That doesn't stop me from recognizing my fight, my playing field, or my goals. Here's another 1,244 reps.

[653] Blame Game

Jordan Peterson related a line I heard today about why you're motivated to do anything. Discerning what you actually care about instead of what you've been compelled to can be incredibly hard. He emphasizes how important it is to have a framework from which to see the world. Be it religious or personally constructed, you can't operate without a set of values and means from which to judge whether you're in line with something. He relates Carl Jung who said the present self is the future self trying to manifest. Somewhere deep inside you view yourself as less than or incomplete, so no matter your explicit effort to lay in bed all day, whether your motivation is simple like getting fed or a form of lofty ideal and recognition, a reason manifests.

The friend who was recently angry at me for relating the “blah” I've inhabited for too long asked me if I finally figured out that I should live for someone else yet. I took her to mean more in the form of becoming a Big Brother or earning to give sense than hand myself over to the whims of someone else. I don't know what to make of the idea. In one form or another, you could say it's a godlike conception of ourselves. Jesus died for you, after all. The source of clearly all of my inspiration over the last few years, again Peterson, cautions against doing someone else's work for them. Surely he doesn't mean don't be a mentor to a child, but the stress is on the idea that people need to come into their own and take responsibility.

I feel I'm a super fan of blaming myself for things. I dig myself into holes. I chase people away. I stick to my rhetorical guns. I bite off bigger chunks than I can handle. I own every schizophrenic voice. I take immediate pride and shame at once in whatever I've chosen to share. I'm responsible for my own little hamster wheel. Long period of despotic bitching, celebratory day or two when something productive or unexpected happens, maybe mild period of contented contemplation, back to bitching. I still maintain a level of respect for myself over what I might hold for most people. I at least admit I don't like myself or circumstances, and whether you believe me or not, I don't have any creative or motivated fixes.

The word I can't escape these last few weeks, or maybe it's days but it feels like weeks, is “victim.” The string of sexual assault accusations, the anger I drew from my friend, the pleas from legislators and late night hosts about guns, and the millions of people who will be hurt and killed from the violent disregard for health and the environment all make a swirl of numbed panic. We've managed to normalize the idea of roommates into retirement, never getting married, never owning annoying, massive debt, underpaid jobs, broken social scenes, and the fleeting memory of animals we saw as children at the zoo. The world has disregarded our president insofar as they cross their fingers he won't start another war.

I'm thinking that part of that U.S. “you're special” narrative has done a fair amount of work to dismantle the care and respect you should have for the victim. This seen no more obviously than the stories of women in the past who were blown off or fired no matter where they turned, and what's been instantiated across industries today. If you didn't grow up feeling like you owned and ran the world, you might have a predilection to make the circumstances better so that people don't get victimized. I frequently disavow any claims I might have to victimhood no matter the blows I take nor yet for my growing concern over my mental state.

I wonder if victimization could be reduced to a numbers a game. So many points for having what are currently considered “privileges” weighted against instances or institutions designed to keep you stuck. This a game so delightfully perverse I'm sure I just made an ardent post-modernist cum in their pants. I don't want to play it, but I think the relative nature to oppression and means to fix it would be loud and present immediately. Don't just march, women, 90% of you go on strike like they did in Iceland. Peaceful protests are one thing Black Lives Matter, but the Panthers were a nice touch.

It wasn't so long ago we emboldened the Nazis to start marching again. Think they're screaming and chanting because they feel empowered and capable and worthwhile? No no, they're victims of the immigrant hoards and other incoherent babble. Purely at the level of using the word “victim” though, no one would want to be compared to an insecure Nazi. If that Nazi were human, then his actions might make more sense and there'd be some common ground. If he wasn't so filled with hate for his environment and how it makes him feel, we might be able to shuffle him into a reeducation camp until he's gung-ho about officiating lesbian Jewish weddings one day.

Victim seems to stem from an inability to go tit for tat. A girl is a victim because she can't fight back without risking further harm. A minority is a victim because they're outnumbered or denied access. Children are victims because they don't know any better. Animals are victims of the forces of nature to begin with before tinting that nature human hues. This could speak to why a word like “equality” has such a poignant ring for many people. This seems to speak towards the gun-lover's fever dream of fighting off a tyrannous government. This is the resentment the rich feel for “moochers” and “entitlement.”

Each case is slightly different, but they all require a certain blindness. Whether that blindness is imposed or faithfully adhered to is going to depend on each person's level of personal responsibility. The idea of being like water just popped into my head. Does the girl really want to take on the greater risk of fighting back, or can she flow into another form of exercising power and resistance? If you're black in the U.S. is your community destined to fall into disrepair and violence without the tax base, or did efforts to stay organized and informed leave with the money? I feel perfectly blind to how I'm going to achieve my goals in a manner that doesn't keep me glued to my car delivering food or some otherwise demoralizing and uninspired labor, and the stress of how to flow around that hurdle is constant.

This is the only way I know how to try and understand why people don't get anywhere. This is rough. This is sad. This is lonely. I hate it. I hate myself. I'm not a victim, but that's a statement bread from hopeful denial of the list of things I'd lose my breath trying to say all at once. I'm forced by my own conception of personal responsibility to always acknowledge, but downplay, the negatives happening to me. I have to keep inventing new options, exploring the smallest chances, and shaming every moment I can't get it together. I've fashioned my life around something like, “Early is on time, on time is late, and late is unacceptable.” Me doing everything I know how to the degree I'm capable needs to put me in the parking lot before the building opens, if you want to discuss my idea of “early.”

So now, I might try to claim I'm a victim of my own mind. I've habituated a delusion. I've condensed every conclusion into some flawed metric by which to judge my value or place. And I can't shut it off. Everything I do that isn't in service to “what matters” is by default on a scale from boring to harmful. Worse than resenting other people's happiness, you don't even recognize it. What does a kiss on a mountain top have to do with me? Why do I get the impression your nightly prayers are for your cats or dogs to speak English? How fondly will you regard your vacation when you're 70 and still working without a pension or 401(k)? I don't care to be bothered by matching someone else's happiness, I want them to match my concern. I want an acknowledgment of our collective victimhood with regard to our avoiding minds and get-used-to-it biases.

My future self isn't trying to get everyone to quit their jobs and just get drunk in a field with me indefinitely. My future self is one who never has to bitch because he's gotten to the ground floor of problems that can actually be fixed. He wants to give a shit about happiness. He wants to think it's worth bringing kids into the world. He wants to spend as much time tripping balls or on morphine as it takes to forget he's on his way out, and when it's over, no one will have to use his death greedily and fearfully. My future self is creating and exploring not out of desperation, but because new details and new technologies will require pioneers. Does anyone reading this feel like that? Can you remember when or if you ever have?

I don't seek to make it sound so dramatic, but we get absolutely nowhere alone. You don't get a title or a dollar amount and then finally time to start on your dreams. I didn't do the coffee shop alone, the party house, picnics, acid trips, or ice skating by myself. I didn't get all fucked in the head about relationships and friends or get to be better than average at Super Smash Brothers from steeping my nose in preteen novels and watching Twitch. I didn't even get a single task done correctly on the land over 3 months and 4 thousand dollars until my dad drove the 3 hours to knock out a 2 day task in 2 days. Whatever you think about the path you're on, if you have some specific conception of yourself that you've hung over the fence surrounding your job or convenient social structure, it's dead in the water. That's why you grieve for your lost loved ones whether they've physically died or not.

Why not? I'll ring it again. I want help. I need help. I need presence and the smallest enthusiasm with which to run with. I'd settle for someone to talk to while I'm digging a hole big enough to burn 80 yards of carpet in. Do I deserve it? I'm not a lonely kid or hungry veteran. You probably only want to help the real victims, piecemeal, in ways that make you feel like you're contributing. You're not a victim in lieu of them, right? The battle you can win? You're right on time.