[1078] Almost, Not Quite

Whether I had a specific or genuine intention to be or not, I'm a critic. I critically compare or analyze the things I see and listen to. So rarely does anything make me "feel" that when I'm doing so it can register as if I'm being unfairly judgmental, jealous, or begrudging and negative for their own sake. I've spent a lot of time developing my tastes or competencies. I'm going to have an embodied and informed reaction, or lack thereof, to most things even just by virtue of continuing to stay alive and pay attention.

Why? Why criticize anything ever? Why not "let people create" or "live and let live?" It sounds so simple and easy, right? No one is obligating me to engage with what they're putting out. Tastes differ. What's the point of investing any energy whatsoever into an opinion, particularly one that's less than supportive?

That's the framing from the uncritical. To them, all information can be treated equally. They act as though any piece of music, any article, movie, or any interaction with another person just exists in this neutral space with more or less equitable consequences and presumed decent enough reasons for their existence. It's why you can have dipshit day-time talk shows that have been having the same conversation since their inception. There's a gigantic herd of people ready to be info-taimed via the perpetual novelty offered through their ignorance.

There's only so much time. There's only so many stages, radio stations, movie studios, or remotely informed opinions it's worth incorporating into yours. If your time isn't precious, say, because you think you're going to live for eternity after you die, whether you spent 5 minutes or 50 years trying to inform yourself on something, it doesn't matter. It's hard to believe you have a real concept of "trying to inform yourself." I'd argue you're mostly killing time.

It's scarcity that breeds critical opinions. If there's truly moving, energetic talent out there, they only have so much in the tank. You want to promote them. You want to enable them and connect them with people who share not just some naive sensibility that broadly "celebrates artists," but can say, "Oh fuck, this is different, special, or plugged into the zeitgeist right now." People who are paying attention want to hear from others who are actually saying something. Finding voices in an endless scroll of noise is hard enough without entertaining bad arguments for bad art.

I criticized Ayaan Hirsi Ali under her article describing converting to Christianity. It was really poorly written. It was wholly devoid of any discussion regarding secular and scientific value systems, which, she's perfectly aware exist and has written about in the past, and just kind of discarded. She straw-manned the word "atheist" as if it's a value or belief system. She spoke to her failing mental health and fear as the things making the argument for her. It was really bad, especially for someone who's a noted figure on religion.

What was the pushback? I should allow her to feel what she feels. You know, because I have the power to stop her? Every time I hear this one it confuses the fuck out of me. The usual attempts to read my mind and question my character came in. Laugh emojis, personal stories about dead daughters who came back as undeniable signs. Just a ton of nonsense. Per usual, no one quotes me. No one asked me any questions. I'm not even sure most even read the article, and they definitely didn't read Michael Shermer's response, which I also shared.

In the non-critical mind, any perceived affront to someone's profession of "truth" is worthy of vitriol. It doesn't have to make sense. In fact, that's precisely the point. The more and more sense you try to make, the more you fuel the fire they'll use to burn you. You're not occupying the same universe of values, words, attention, or evidence.

Artistic works of all kinds, good or bad, impress upon us regardless of whether we want them to or not. How many advertising signs can you recognize quicker than people you went to school with for 4 to 15 years? How many jingles come to mind at their mere mention? We, creepily, applaud rhetoric and obfuscation from propagandists. Hitler is literally Hitler, and it's rare you hear him mentioned without props to his performances. Because that's what they are, efforts to compel your attention.

I've written a few songs. I play a few instruments. I've made a little documentary about the Merrillville Marching Band. I've written jokes. I've written 1,100 blog posts. I have as much of the creative spark as anyone, and yet I choose to share it with almost no one. You have to come to me and seek it out. You have to cling to the rotting corpse of facebook or have bookmarked blogger.

I put out things that I actually wish to say or I think are worthy of sparking more conversation or reflection. I'm not keen to spam our shared space with "demo" level noodling and experimenting if I know that's what I'd be doing. Let me write and record a song I'm proud of, you'll hear it. If someone comes in to criticize it who listens to exactly one band over and over again, I'll take them as seriously as I do people arguing religion with bronze age insights. I say or share jokes I think are funny and at least make myself laugh first or while I'm thinking about them. I share poems that burst out of me. If I ever got an opportunity to publish things I wrote, 95% of it would be left on the floor.

The same criticism applies to myself and people who wish to create "great" things. They want the work to be recognized, not hop between a series of flukes and incidentals. How many artists get popular with songs they don't even really like or thought they wouldn't include on an album? It's a lot. Listen to interviews about song-writing processes or thoughts as stars are on the rise. The cultural forces that popularize dumb or annoying one-hit-wonders are riding that ambivalent arm-chair capacity for evaluation or cynical spam. Is that what you feel about what you might create? It's so much more noise to be tossed into the ether?

The tools you develop in being critical you can apply across domains. You can be tough but fair to yourself instead of anxiously and despotically tearing down every effort you might make. You can borrow and allude to elements from patterns you notice verses plagiarize. You can work a sensibility into your bones that translates through nuances and between other critical sensibilities. You see this in music constantly in trading off jazz legends and guitar heroes.

I find myself begging for criticism sometimes. I don't exchange a lot of information for all I share. I have like 2 people left in my life who I can talk in depth or at length about some things with. We don't have a competent and critical culture. We have fandoms and feelings. We have tribes. We have overwhelming amounts of debt, sadness, health issues, and we're staring down the literal potential fascist takeover. It feels silly, one might think, to be critical of art or music at times like these. Irony forever wins the day and you might start arguing chicken vs egg.

If you dismiss, or are too exhausted, or "just don't care," or rush to call everything "fair" and declare what everyone's "rights" are as though you're not shitting on expressing them when they arrive in reactionary turn, you lose the whole game. A willingness to offer and engage sincere feedback bred from an earned perspective feels like it's wholly evaporated.

I have incredibly strong instincts about people and relationships that get proven too right way too often. I feel like I'm cheating and clearly must be ignorantly doing what others are so keen to do to me, but unfortunately I just keep seeing the same patterns and people willing to mindlessly let them play out. I'm deeply informed by having worked with, partied with, or attempted to engage in things "differently" or "better" with thousands of people over two decades. I actively listen to hundreds of bands and watch hundreds of shows. I've earned the right to say at least a little something about how someone or something is operating. I'm not stomping my foot and screaming my right to, I'm citing and reflecting on my experience.

Only when you do that do you afford yourself the opportunity to see how many gaps it contains. I can be incredibly right about someone's shitty romantic dynamic. It has nothing to do with every beat of their history and day to day that I'm not privy to. I can summarily dismiss cliche, boring, derivative bands and watch them soar never even knowing I exist. I can reduce the years I've spent learning about religion or human psychology to facebook pissing matches. Whatever amazing person that cunty moron might be when they're not talking at me I'll never know.

Take what gets into your head seriously. Respect yourself enough to utilize the evidence and recognize the patterns. They are there. From the fascist pattern to the shitty country music pattern, you don't have to listen or pretend it's tantamount to Bach. You don't have to stay silent as though your polluted landscape isn't worth coughing out of our collective lungs. All it takes is sincerely qualifying what you don't know, asking questions, and actually sharing what you believe is worth people hearing. We don't really have a prayer as individuals or as a society otherwise.

[493] Me Be Me

What if I am but an instrument? What if every selfish pursuit is a necessary lesson in the continuum of existence? There’s a line that’s been haunting me. “Be the hero of your own story.” It’s that I don’t know what to think or feel about it.

At first pass, it sounds insanely naively selfish. Fuck your story. Who gives a shit about your story? It’s only been in the relatively recent history of humans that “you” was more than cannon fodder or something highly likely to die before the age of 2. It seems to bump into the very fact of existing at all. “Why” as a question always seems insufficient. “That” you are here and can decide it’s about you or whatever else is what’s massively intriguing. 

If you consider yourself an instrument, a product of incalculable forces, your life gets easier. You don’t feel guilty about your travels around the world peeking in on poverty and silently endorsing unfettered capitalism. You can spend as many hours as it takes behind your startup or hobby. You can freely exchange words and love like they’re of no consequence. Sure, you’re a cog, but a cog that flows. You’re a happy cog. I recently said we’re looking to be a part of almost anything. Finding your place in the machine can be immensely reassuring and life affirming. 

If you’re not an instrument, you don’t get your answers to “why.” You’re left making many assumptions. You’re left leaving things up to testing and chance. In other words, when you don’t know for sure that you fit, despite your inclinations and general sense about what should be done, you’re left in a fairly dangerous spot. You can devolve into nihilism. You can act arbitrarily absurd and seek out authoritarian regimes. You can pretend like nothing is ever wrong and be the intractable hippie type I hate. 

I think existence suggests orientation. That is, I think being is as much a conclusion as anything else. “Should” we exist becomes a non-starter bullshit question. Should I write this blog? Fuck you, an infinite number of forces came together consistently until I found the capacity to put words to the “page.” It’s a miracle you can read me. It’s a miracle I have the opportunity to try. 

I’ve stated before that entropy is the rule. It’s also only the rule as far as we know. It’s the rule to as best as our instruments can tell. We can’t figure out quantum mechanical structures or behavior. What is the word “entropy” subjected to the statistical underpinnings of every particle in existence? An absurd question we’ll never answer. 

In the meantime, we’re left doing what? Me? Writing. You? Working. Society? Denying and slowly (but not slow enough) dying. Questions require scale. They need conditions and parameters from which to understand things. I don’t reflexively call Trump a fascist. I waited till he literally parroted Hitler and Mussolini. But what else is there? What more are you to worry about than the body politick? Why shouldn’t you be overly concerned with interpersonal struggles? Why shouldn’t you campaign as ferociously for love as I try to denounce it? 

I’m scared of loving what I do. Stated differently, I’m scared that the farther I disappear into my own ass the more “good” we’ll see as far as changes in society goes. 

Hopefully, you’ll see immediately why. I’ve adopted a narrative about “it isn’t about me.” I’m enough for me. I believe in me. I don’t need your help or endorsement. But if I start doing well by “doing me” and in turn there’s some positive fall-out for the rest of the world, I’m provoked to endorse everyone being as selfish as I feel inclined. Is that not dangerous? 

There are immediately points of contention. I consider world-class musicians and athletes. These people can be heroes for spending years focusing on a single subject. They can “inspire” youth to transcend their circumstances or live in accordance with a regimented lifestyle. At the same time, no matter how beautifully you master a piece of music nor perfect your bounce and shot, we’ll happily die and cow-tow to political forces that transcend your ability to get good at something. Sure, this is fairly linear thinking, but is it ever referenced or used in any other fashion? 

I always wonder why I feel hopeless when I try to learn something like physics or a new instrument. Does the world need me to learn these things? What happens if I’m Yo-Yo Ma with all my ideas about how to help people get engaged and knowledgeable about their place on the planet? I feel like you have to hate me at that point. You have to be disgusted that I would turn on the thousands of words I’ve expressed about what seems to underlay my being. How can you give a fuck about my “passion” or “talent” when I scapegoated the larger issue to impress you with my muscle twitches? 

And then what do we do with the person who feels like me about something I think is a speck? What if you’re as passionate? What if you’re as “convinced?” And now you make Michael Jordan look like a bitch. Is the world better for it? Can we be compared? Is the exercise patently futile? 

It’s at the same time that I think we should all be able to find the time and inclination to learn something at the world-class level, but no-less engage in the forces that are larger. This is the problem. It’s not a comparison; it’s that we’re not comprehensive. We don’t add to a plate we pretend is too full already. We deny there’s a world beyond. 

The ego of “survival of the fittest” is small-minded. The moment we could say “I” and recognized it as a part of everything, we opened up an opportunity. We suggest transcendence. We provoke a level of understanding and behavior that doesn’t even recognize the modern myopic vernacular. This is my struggle. Am I learning a new instrument for me, or to fit into a group of people that understands what music means to us all? Am I creating a website and compiling information to stroke my ego? Or do I want to stop hating the stupid ass fucking responses I get from you for why you’re not as stoked about what I’m doing as I am? Is it bask and gloat or teach and engorge? 

I think when people have lofty dreams and forget it needs to be about us and not them is where you get stories of “my whole life was dedicated to this, and when it happened, I thought, fuck, that’s it?” Your life should be an example. You have to acknowledge, not concede, how integrated your being is to everything. Then you feel the rules for more than empty edicts handed down through an authority. Then you can act confidently in the face of nihilism and solipsism without fearing enduring ignorance. Take what you can be “sure enough” to be true to heart and to be true enough. 

If you understand every line or none, we’re still on the same page. I’m trying. You’re trying. We’re basking in opportunity. “Potential” is the mirage you allow yourself in service to inaction.

[214.9] Who's Really Deceiving

I just got done watching “The Obama Deception” by Alex Jones. There are a ton of thoughts rushing through me right now so if this is insanely disjointed or seemingly random, my bad.

I want to state first that I don’t agree with motivation through fear. When I watched this documentary, fear is the most resounding feeling I thought they were running with. I didn’t feel enabled, necessarily more informed about something specific, nor told how to do such abstract things as “get my liberties back” or properly juxtapose the histories of Stalin, Hitler, and Mao with Bush and Obama. It really does a disservice to a cause to draw such dramatic analogies of complex historical examples and say, “just go do your homework.” It doesn’t help your cause to have someone who may or may not know something about economics or the early history of our country, and also call global warming a sham or conspiracy. Yes, I will question their judgment and perspective much more because scientists not so motivated by politics and greed across varying fields and countries concur independently a fact not dictated out of a fearful and distrusting perspective.

With that said, some ideas the documentary presents do seem to make sense to me. For example, I have no problem believing there are a handful of rich people with all sorts of interests and future goals. I have no problem believing they don’t really care if I live or die. In the documentary it’s referred to as the Bilderberg Group. These are alleged as the people who cause financial crisis, start wars, and swallow the world in debt. I don’t like feeling that this isn’t hard to believe either. Do you remember when I asked why someone can’t just be “stupid” or “immature” they have to go on and compile it with a host of actions that make them look exponentially worse? Well, now I think I can apply that to our existence.

It’s not just good to be rich, you have to be SUPER

rich, and have a need to dominate. It’s not simply that you fucked up the economy once in the 1920’s or 30’s, it’s that you continue to fuck it up 90 years later. You can’t just employ one asshole with biases and ties to organizations that you police; you have to put someone like that at the head of every organization under your umbrella. It’s never one lie to one person, but a thousand to a thousand people. Negativity begets exponential negativity. Negativity only “exists” when you refuse to create or preserve something positive.

I try; I try ever so hard to view things simply. I felt overwhelmed trying to process the sea of “facts” and “documented material” I was swimming in while watching this. That isn’t to say that some parts didn’t show the actual documents, nor does it mean that some factual information wasn’t translated. What that does mean is those facts I feel comfortable denoting as such, consisted of the recorded speeches of campaign promises later contradicted, the reporting of “secret” meetings, and the actual sections of bills and reports highlighted on screen.

But let me go back to fear and make things simple. Take a situation where you’re sitting with your friends at a coffee shop. You see someone who isn’t a cop with a gun holstered. While you might not be completely freaked out, it isn’t hard to believe that you or a good portion of people around you might become uncomfortable. Why are they becoming uncomfortable? It’s because a guns sole purpose is to kill. That idea of a weapon does not bode good feelings, comfort, or togetherness. It preempts the idea that someone or something is dangerous. A coffee shop in Bloomington is an unlikely spot for such caution.

Weaponizing anyone or anywhere will only cause this effect en masse. Yes, you might feel comfortable around guns as you would a field of daisies because you were raised on them or just love to shoot. I would probably get off on the idea of shooting shit too, let alone an opportunity to blow something up, but I would gladly forgo that feeling if no one else had to do it with a gun either. So, when I see a war, I think automatically bad. I know if I had bullets flying by my head, it would suck. I know that the idea of accidentally killing a random kid or “innocent” person isn’t good. I know there are people that want us dead. I know there are ideologies that call for my death and people planning on using their weapons to do it. I think there are better ways.

Switching gears a bit, I want to talk about the “war” for ideas and information. I have to say, even as a person who fights to stay objective, it was pretty hard to try and sift through information I thought I might find semi-reliable, and shit that was absolutely ridiculous, while watching this documentary. If it was hard for me, and is still hard to really swallow and make sense of, it will be damn near impossible for most. I’ve already stated that the tone I got was fear, which means fear is presumably all anyone will feel if they don’t have the will or mind to pick it apart and dig deeper.

But again, the war of ideas can be fought simply. If in fact there is a secret sect of people who are willing to control us, then, as the film calls for, we have to take responsibility for ourselves and direct our actions appropriately. If we can say to ourselves, “A gun would not make this scenario better” and put the gun away, no one trying to put a gun in our hand is going to succeed. If we can understand that no single person can possibly enact the kinds of promises that Obama made, then we can stop celebrating the collective ignorance about saviors. Also, we can stop demonizing the puppet put in place to convince us. We need to persuade ourselves of better ideas about what it means to be rich and healthy. We need to persuade ourselves, and this is the sickest thing misunderstood, that as we suck away money or attention towards the things that make us heroes, we suck away our reasons to live.

I’ve said that I’m celebrating our species demise. I can’t begin to persuade myself that things will get better as long I see how we go about establishing our “beliefs.” When you believe in a god for example, despite every single good thing you can attribute to it, you are disposed to magical, impossible, fanatic thinking and when something emulates that, you will be disposed to trusting it. This isn’t because you are stupid; this is because that is how brains work. I’m not trying to insult my religious friends; I’m trying to scream from the rooftops BIOLOGY.

Very practically speaking, if we take what the documentary says on its face, very important implications come out of a few scenarios. There have in fact been bills that have called to restrict or prohibit gun access to the” not convicted of a crime” public. It starts with those on the no fly list, it ends where? Now no, I don’t believe we should have the guns in the first place, but it’s at this point that I think we get into a situation of self-defense. If cops become federalized, if the military actually is being used to destabilize countries, if we are in fact being driven by corporate interest into a depression, I’d shoot a mother fucker or two myself if I was in that specific of a proverbial corner. But, things don’t have to get that complicated.

Every person in the military is a father, mother, brother, sister etc. There is no such thing as the “military” there is a collection of people with various ideals and reasons for joining an organization they either believed in or believed would help their life. Super soldiers follow orders, individuals make decisions. I can’t think of a single person I know who is in the military or has been that would comply with oppressing or fighting people in this country for government or corporate interests. Does that mean they wouldn’t? No, but I find it so unlikely I’ll state it for the record and chance at being proven wrong.

Before someone controls you, you have to give them something. What our elected officials, what your religion, your school, and your clothes company all want is your trust. This is why trust, for me, is the most important idea possible. It is the most respected thing to keep, and the most powerful thing ever abused. We trusted Obama; that was our folly. Well before him we trusted ourselves to know what to trust. We trusted that Federal Reserve meant actually federal and an extension of the government, not a private company. We trust that people give a fuck because we insolate ourselves around the few that do about us most often. The “awakening” as it’s referred to, needs to be an overt display of our reality, our nature, and our potential. Consciousness razing is more than becoming a bleeding heart for cancer or starving children.

The irony here seems to be that it already exists; we just refuse to accept it. It’s not a movie when you hear of genocide and/or people starving. Every time someone says, “It’s 2010 and we should be past this now” is only speaking to denial, not technological or moral maturity. We are in a war. We are killing innocent people for oil. We are poking holes in our atmosphere. We are bankrupting people before they are born. We are polluting our food. We are just a bunch of stupid fucking apes. Every complicated issue with its years of history, context, cause and effect, yada yada boils down to we are stupid fucking apes. This is why I just kind of “am” about our existence and factual in my assessment of it. I try to live and hold ideals in spite of my reality. That doesn’t mean I don’t accept it, it means I assess, idolize, and express the best parts of it.

This is what I mean when I tell people to wake up. This is why my thoughts are always racing. This is why I say things matter and other things don’t. This is why I feel like I have any authority what so ever over anything and appreciate people who are willing to engage the discourse or express the ideals. When you hear a person say “This bill prevents so and so from spending money or such and such organization from doing that” in an interview outside the building where a group of people are defying that bill, the bill doesn’t do shit. You’re reciting something stupid. You’re wasting your time. The bill did its job by getting you to recite what it is allegedly supposed to do The reality about the governmental body, law process, and nature of “regular” people to want and believe in it is just an “oh, duh”’ away.

What’s the motivation for a 125 people to control the world? Who cares!? What can happen when 1 person controls too much? Ask yourself this question about your shitty boss and your shitty job. What’s their motivation? It’s to maintain his or herself. Be it supporting a family, paying off debt, or just getting the bills to shut up, it’s not hard to imagine. To a greater degree, I’ll guess this is those rich peoples’ motivation as well. They understand what 7 billion confused, ignorant, pissed off, ideological, etc. people can do if destabilized. If they didn’t, I don’t imagine they would care to be in the business of destabilizing. The real “sin” of theirs is not making things simple and living humbly. And honestly, I think this is the only way to combat that problem regardless of the motivation or intention on our lives.

This is only possible with that sense of personal responsibility, accountability, and sense of being “awake.” You have to make your own rules that follow simple principles. Be specific and honest. The reason people are allowed to complicate an issue with platitudes like “it’s not black and white” is because they refuse to get specific. Is a belief in a god good or bad? That’s the wrong question. Does this person’s belief in a god create more positive in their life and the lives of others than it does destroy? Potentially. Make no mistake, because it does indeed destroy something, but what it’s destroying can still exist and even grow in the mind of someone else. Also, when whatever is being destroyed is contained in the mind or collective consciousness, it brings the “fight” to a much safer and tolerable landscape. I would be much more content with a world where everyone but me believed in a god, but no one wanted me dead or to kill themselves in service to it.

If there is one service you can do for yourself or your country it is to make people be specific. Don’t allow thousand page bills to be passed in an hour. Don’t believe everyone, particularly you, is entitled to everything; this ranging from the nominal and obvious things like guns, to abstract notions of respect and love. The idea that people would refuse to even acknowledge and change themselves scares me way more than a police state or Illuminati-esc super group pulling strings. One means our generation, or maybe foreseeable generations, will get fucked, the other means we literally will never care to know how to stop it.