What motivates you?
Increasingly, I've been thinking about incentives. When you move away from the idea that everyone is immediately and personally culpable for "the way things are," it opens space to investigate their environment. Indeed a major portion of my counsel to people is to spend a considerable amount of time examining who and what they are plugged into. If you have no context or underestimate its influence, you can take on unnecessary guilt and stress. You also fail to frame whatever your problem may be in a way that allows for it to be fixed or a real solution to be discovered.
Money appears to be one of the biggest incentives for an array of questionable, if not downright abhorrent, behavior. In fantasy, how many plots are motivated by the antagonist's greed? Cash wildly flying through the air as a masked bad guy flees a scene with a giant duffle bag are ubiquitous whether or not you've seen that actual scene somewhere. It's not a secret. It's not hard to understand. They want money, so whether it's fashion a complicated Ocean's 11-esc plot, or put a gun in someone's face, they go in and get it.
A deeper-layered story starts to unpack that antagonist's relationship to power. They often have money. A supervillain will be super smart, or maybe have a super team, and none of them can put their heads together to figure out how to live well and leave things alone. What's their motivation? "Power," in and of itself, is incomplete. Even the ones that do manage to take over the world or achieve their goals, are they ever depicted as "happy?" Was it "enough?" Thanos didn't keep fighting to preserve his "perfect balance."
The story you tell yourself is the foundational incentive. The ability to maintain a familiar, predictable, and, even if it's self-destructive, reliable self-conception. There's so many things built into the formation of that story, and almost zero cultural cues to attend to them, that you maintain the unhelpful habit of pretending "that's just who you are."
I'm someone who has been told his whole life he's smart, good looking, talented, yada yada. That's certainly a story I wish to keep. Who wouldn't? Younger me felt very alienated by any commentary related to my looks. I cut off my hair. I never wanted to be in pictures and definitely wasn't smiling when I had to. I've never been a particularly "cut" or in-shape person, so even a little fat made me think I was "too." I resented the narrative otherwise until it started manifesting as success with girls. I didn't start growing my hair out until college. It took a while to realize I wasn't fat so much as surrounding myself with runners and rock climbers.
There's a running story we have to maintain. At least, it feels that way. The nature of your sacrifices. The goal at the top of the hill. The things about you that mirror your loved ones or echo what you want to believe deeper about yourself, but might struggle to. The closer your behavior and your words match that story, the more you carve out a "safe" psychological home to live in. Whether or not the nature of that story is more or less true doesn't even enter into the discussion foundationally.
What disrupts the story? I observe the consequences of chronic punishing conditioning. I have a friend who's so stressed, he can't lift his left arm above the shoulder. He can't sleep. He ruminates and repeats stressful events dating back years and takes on new things he can't get organized and achieved. I have a friend who habitually takes on more work than she has to. (That's the most common thread I see across friends and clients.) They say, "I wish I had time for…" or "It'll be fine if I can get to next week/month/August" or "They're counting on me! I have to!"
The lie is built into the foundation. You don't "have to" do anything. It's instantaneous the moment you go from the language of potential agency to helplessness. The presumption when you tell someone you "have to" is that they'll nod along knowingly and throw up their arms in concert, because we all know what we have to do. Of course, we don't. We don't know shit about shit. We don't spend any time trying to. And when someone comes along pointing that out, we seek to punish or silence them.
So, I ask again. What's your motivation? What incentivizes you?
They aren't the same question, and each is their own big bag of words the closer you look.
I'm motivated by the idea of scaling up things that have worked for me. I know the visceral experience of less stress and more freedom, and the conscious long-term deliberate acts to get there. I know what I had to focus on. I know why I chose to focus on those things over others. I know what I'd like to enjoy as a result of seeing the efforts and practices carried forward and manifested through others' interpretations. I'm curious about what that looks like, and I don't think it happens often. I like believing I have both the capacity and awareness to achieve something many find it hard to even conceive. I feel good about that story. I can draw practical steps along the road.
I'm incentivized by feeling understood and being communicated with. Those things generate positive emotion and a feeling of being engaged. Even if I'm feeling "unmotivated," when you have something to communicate to me, or you are making a genuine effort to understand something I'm saying, I can engage in that exchange almost indefinitely. If I'm in an environment that's force-feeding me bullshit, I need to leave, like so many past jobs. If I make a genuine effort to articulate and seek empathy, and you ignore me, I keep my distance. I'm, by default, a major turn-off to those, and this includes friends, who are "too tired" or disinterested or distracted to genuinely communicate and seek mutual understanding.
Thus, "friendship," by itself, isn't the incentive nor is it necessarily a "motivator."
You can frame any relationship this way, be it to your child or romantic partners. If you're unclear with yourself and are unduly motivated by superficial things, you'll find the deep dissatisfaction of introducing as many of those unhealthy relationships into your experience as you can find. You'll spend a lifetime developing apologetic language to justify the abuses. "Hell is just a fun way God shows us he loves you!" "Well, he pays the bills and I get fancy vacations, what's a backhand and shout now and then?" "My friends and parents tell me how lucky I am; surely I'm just confused about how much I really love my child, boyfriend, job, circumstances…" etc.
If you don't know that you're motivated by confusion and fear significantly more than a desire to own and understand, you'll grow the plants of confusing and terrifying consequences instead of taking pride in or capitalizing on your garden. If you engage the narratives around the nobility and utility of money, fancy products, and fantasy posture, you might be well-consumed by the idea that you give a fuck what strangers on the internet think. You might align your morals to an imperative to post, lie, and curtail a raw opinion, if you bothered to form one at all.
I, always, feel the pull of "normalcy." Every day I spend consumed by media, I think "I could be…" What? Answer the question. Driving to work? Wearing down my car? Sitting around waiting for a meeting to start? Resenting getting paid half or less of what I'm worth? Spending time taking direction or instruction from someone wholly captured by corrupted systems, obligations, and narratives that bleed into your awareness and make it hard to believe in anything? What could or should I really be doing that isn't patiently waiting for the narratives I truly believe in to get their time in the sun? I think you should be bored more often. I think when you work, it should feel meaningful and useful, not obligatory. I think you should write songs, and talk with me all day about TV or who's left that can reliably report on the world. I think we should be building something together.
But, I know my motivations and what incentivizes me. I don't trust that you do. I mainly don't trust that you do because you all sound the same. And if everyone is saying the same shit, where are "you?" Is it where you belong, or where you've stuck yourself? Are you fighting the correct fight? Are you fighting at all? Or are you laboring under a narrative of your victimization and circumstance? Are you suffering the delusion that tomorrow is guaranteed? Are you pretending you don't matter?
I've started to go overboard in my TV consumption having mildly shifted my approach to it. For how many hours I've spent sorting and separating things, it dawned on me that I don't want to sit for hours and just watch cartoons or sitcoms. Each story or style registers in approximate lanes of intrigue or interest, and my motivation for engaging heavily depends on what my environment is otherwise incentivizing.
If I need to "kill time," it's a stream of shows I have either a passing familiarity with, or ones that have been popular that I never cared for at the time or don't interest me anymore than a random painting might at a gallery. I'm not anticipating an episode of NCIS or Law & Order is going to put me in a particularly thoughtful place about compelling narratives. They're safe and familiar, that's why they never die, and are wholly uninteresting.
If I want to challenge myself to think deeper about why something is catching my attention or what makes it different, I put on a different set of shows. Maybe it's cast chemistry, the joke timing, the way it's shot, drawn, or paced. Maybe it's having a compelling heartbeat and message. Maybe it's an individual's kick-ass ability to sell what's otherwise unsellable. Maybe I'm delusional and certain works just click with those delusions. I think shows like Legion and Scavengers Reign flirt with transcending the medium entirely. I'd feel absolutely brilliant if I could achieve the humor of Shameless, The Great, or Airplane!. If I could transport you like I've been transported to Cinema Paradiso and Dogville, I'd feel I've put in the right kind of work.
I think I connect with creators who tap into the incentive space that can barely pronounce "money" or the words "I don't have enough." I think there's a craving and unyielding desire to connect and be understood at a transcendent level. It's a level that exists only when you start from the right place and weave together all of the pieces that inform the message. That's the music, the glances, and other gritty details that are both absolutely necessary and hopelessly insufficient on their own. "I would have made a better movie, but the budget!…" "I would have called you for dinner, but I've been so busy!…" 100 million dollar movies have been made for $15,000. I can eat in 10 minutes, if that's what you really need from me.
I separate my desire to feel useful and needed from what the evidence needs to look like in order for me to claim I actually am. I'm not a good counselor when I can juggle 150-200 people on my caseload. I'm a good counselor when a plurality of those people say something like, "When I started practicing what you said, I felt better, people noticed, and now I'm able to do this next thing." I'm not a "good person" through merely refraining from going out of my way to cause harm or a few bucks I might toss to a charity. I define "good person" as a useless concept first, and focus on being comfortable existing altogether in whatever manner my personhood brings forth. I then try to notice when what I do or say makes me feel good or seems to result in what I deem good generating from others.
Christians think it's good to indoctrinate contradictions and capitalize on mental weakness. Muslims think it's good to ignore the consequences of normalizing radical hateful mantras. Conservatives think it's good to control women and enshrine greed and grift. Liberals think it's good to pretend they don't have their own totalitarian compulsions that have destroyed important pillars of speech and science. Most people think it's appropriate to use as broad and incoherent ever-changing labels like "Christian" "Muslim" "conservative" and "liberal" to race away from any real discussion about how any given individual abuses the terms to their self-serving narrative ends.
Every layer of your life incentivizes you to speak and operate in a manner that protects you from crashing too hard against normative practices. Right or wrong, good or bad, true or false, useful or useless, constructive or destructive…familiar binaries that arrest our capacity to investigate what's underneath or beyond the traps they set. It's a place of your subjective and yet removed observation of your experience operating under their spells.
The more "normal" I try to be, the angrier I feel. The more I've tried to be like the "friend" people wanted, the more alienated and like a liar I felt. The more I was begged to "love" as others professed to love, the harder things crashed when the truth was finally allowed to be spoken. The "work" I took so much pride in was never recognized or rewarded. The things I was "afraid" of had nothing to do with their actual consequences or my deep understanding of their nature. The people I thought I looked up to were brief ideals painted upon the infinitely fallible. The expectations I built for myself were bred from spite, naivety, and insecurity. The story I was telling myself was stuck, and I was pretending I wasn't obligated to continue writing it every time I needed to.
Showing posts with label Narrative. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Narrative. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 24, 2024
Saturday, August 12, 2023
[1057] Distance
Today's feeling like it just might pass on by. I thought I might get up fairly early and do some work outside or more advance note prep. Instead I stayed in bed extra long. I got up and started reading some old blogs. I've made some coffee. I'm just in a kind of holding pattern until I hit the comedy club I hate tonight, Helium in Indianapolis.
My latest quasi-obsessive and frequently returned to thought is about getting an official autism diagnosis. In the blogs I was reading, I was searching for the key word "sociopath" and reading what I said about myself over time. I think the first time I ever mentioned it was in the 100s, 2007 or 2008, and pretty much every time I describe it as something learned or peg an example of how "not really" I could be described by it. Being "cold" or shutting down and methodically observing I've come to understand as forms of self-protection and coping. But, also, I suspect part of what felt so natural about doing so was me leaning into my natural pre-existing condition.
There's a universal theme in every piece of writing. Distance. I'm outside looking in and breaking down and try, desperately, to figure out the lesson or course of action or cause of events. I treat everything like there's some literal 1+1=2 going on, and it's an obligatory task and responsibility to input all of the variables. Where "people" or "the world" want to build a story about their relationship to math, I'm trying to do the math. They'll tell me, "Math is hard! I suck at math!" Then they'll stop. That's all they need. That's the important line in the narrative that explains why they will never attempt to do math again. It tells you they suck at math, and if you invite them to do it, you're telling them to feel like they suck or are helpless, confused, overwhelmed, or an infinite list of negative emotions associated with math.
I have a friend who is reflexively dismissive of getting a diagnosis. There's many reasons underlying her position I could extract just from my own observation of her relationship to her own health. She's half-heartedly argued about the greed and incoherence of the medical system which I'm sympathetic to, but I consider diminishingly ancillary points in lieu of my larger goal or the potential utility of the diagnosis. I don't want to be at the mercy of something I can't conceptualize more explicitly. I want to feel the potential and see the utility in ways I can't when I remain in the realm of speculation or strong suspicion. Circumstantial evidence has convicted many an innocent person.
You, apparently, don't know what it's like to be "stuck" in an observer state. Literally every single thing I may say or write is, seemingly by design, going to antagonize, threaten, question, or cause a level of psychological harm in a "normal" person. When you adopt similar attitude affects of trauma, it sends a false signal that we're more alike than we are or understand things in the same way. Being a general odd-ball who has learned how to play along invites hundreds of misreads and false hopes every week. You're hurt and feeling crass, so my jokes or demonstrative way of being register as a way to access your inchoate "realness" as you recover. Your insecurity gets betrayed when the cute-enough whore is effusively complimenting and appreciative of your presence, in all sincerity to be sure, but a robust long-term solidarity or bubbly attraction is incredibly unlikely to be maintained.
In my reading today, I read where I was feeling guilty when I noticed a girl was into me. I knew then, as I know even better today, people don't really recognize or see "me." What they like is what I've learned how to do, and that makes you feel all the more distant and like you have a responsibility to report more than be in the moment or appreciative someone's there with you. Because, are they? No, not really.
I can reliably and predictably do things in ways others can't even describe back to me. They just know they feel a certain way depending on what hat I'm wearing. I'm a really good professional counselor. I fuck up and say things in very messy ways rarely, and know how to account for them after I do. I see the face of "wheels turning" when I describe certain subjects certain ways. I see posture relax. I see smile cracks. I see head nods and notes getting taken. I recognize when the tone has shifted from combative defensiveness to acquiescing awareness. I suspect you won't find a single counselor at my company who would describe what they're doing as even 5% of what I put into a single paragraph. ::nods to Nietzsche::
Why would I say that? They tell me, and you, what they're doing as a form of professional narrative.
They're first and foremost "trying to help." "You don't get into this field unless you wish to help people." "You don't work here unless you're passionate about others or reducing harm." At DCS, "We all care about the children" very regardless of actual outcomes or behavior of our least qualified staff. They want to "provide services" and employ "therapeutic interventions." Every field has its propaganda because, at scale, the human condition requires the narrative, not the truth.
What am I doing as a counselor? I'm staying curious about what's true, or true-enough, for you to change in chosen ways. I'm looking to divorce you from as many cultural narratives as you can get your mind around, and hand back the notion of agency and accountability. That's an incredibly difficult and ridiculous task that takes a lifetime to get even a little good at. Every day, until you can train to occupy every moment, needs the affirmation. Every shade of gray or black in the latest attempt to bleach the scene needs acknowledged. Every poor choice of words that keeps us psychologically trapped needs challenged. A prolonged holistic impression of where and how each of us exists across time needs to be constructed, then deconstructed and reconstructed along metrics and choices that serve your values and needs. Practically, specifically, that looks like self-care, boundary discussions, self-reflective writing, and genuine expression of the depth of your feelings.
The last, maybe week or so, has started to make the nature of "the narrative of people at scale" clearer. I've attempted to analyze and compensate for aspects of my disillusion as well as what I perceive to be an emotional breakdown from my business partner. What's "more true" or "less wrong" about this point in time? Am I missing something important in how I describe people's reticence to actually, you know, do anything constructive about a problem? What forces are at play that make it hard for my partner to relax while I'm rocking out and hitting clubs? What should my approach be, professionally, personally, in this monolith of "basic" and consistent human tendencies if I'm not going to win, will never be in the club, and still desire some sense of accomplishment or belonging in an otherwise hostile or ambivalent space?
I could get a "perfect" team together, and as it grows or we increase caseloads, fundamental trends and truths of the human condition will take over. This is a blindness in people who rage against "systems" or belabor "isms" and "ists" in their human narrative "explanations" I'm tempted to conceive of as pure "placations." Our brains thrive on lazy short-hand in lieu of introspection. Pick any antagonist, you're always off the hook.
I want to spend a little more time on the idea of the space being "hostile." It is to me. Women describe hostile working conditions with unwanted sexual advances or threats to their professional prospects. Abusive households conform to implicit rules around the aggressors. The psychological boringness and pedantry of bureaucracy is intuitively designed to obscure the underlying violence of our under-examined behavior. I feel under attack, constantly. It doesn't seem like it, because your narrative, your culturally imposed and simplified "we all agreed to this" tells you I'm decently employed, own property, white, tall, powerful, straight, a man, etc. If I think I'm "smart" you have to hear "narcissist" or "manipulative." If I think I'm "right" you have to hear "defensive" or "complicit." If I think I'm wrong, you have to hear "guilty" or say to yourself, "I knew it!"
You have to.
That's the survival rule. You have to remain under the protective social and psychological shell or something akin to the whole of the universe starts to unravel.
Aren't I proof enough? Your "friends" will abandon you. You'll look combative. You'll seem angry and, most importantly, unjustifiably so. You'll seem restless and disorganized. You'll be a perpetual target for criticism for all of your "unrealistic" posturing. But mostly, you'll just make people feel uncomfortable, and they don't need anything fancy or more complicated than that to cut you off.
The real and proper psychopaths among us construct narratives more deliberately. They too have a narrative, but depending on just how aberrant an end it must conform to, the self-justified universe constructing just takes that much more reinforcing facts drawn from the depravity or misdirection of the culture writ-large. That's political propaganda. That's religious indoctrination. That's your favorite interview with a serial killer. The Unabomber got a lot of boring factoid prediction things right, and critical, relatively straight-forward, if not timeless, aspects of wisdom and accountability horrendously wrong. They all do.
When the goal is "try to help" or "provide resources" or "save" or make a habit of othering or blaming that "ist" or "ism" with psychopathic efficiency you arrive at the conclusion to an argument you weren't even aware you were making. Your fight or flight amygdala feels better, so, you win, always. You're correct, always. You're doing exactly what you say you're doing, always. Because "evidence" doesn't exist in the narrative. It's ideological possession. It's an existential exercise of bullshit.
As such my, or any, writing, in that it exists at all, is a threat. If you write about yourself, you'll start to discover things you weren't so good at noticing beforehand whether you wished to learn them or not. You'll be killing yourself. You'll be concurrently failing to mourn the parts that are dying. Who's doing that shit? You literally exist as a substate of the collective narrative. You have no conception of yourself or what exists beyond it. The acid trip went horribly or you were too scared to try it in the first place. The moments you tried to be brave and ask a question or stick your head out you were summarily dismissed or whipped. You don't know where to get the tools and those alleged to have them hurt you even more with their narratives. Someone, please, pass the heroin.
I was under a powerful narrative delusion about who my friends were or what they were supposed to mean to me. I'm certain I still am, but not in the way that's going to stay my hand anymore.
I'm lucky that, if I'm technically "disabled," I think that I'm literally unable to experience the addictive identity crisis which makes analysis like this functionally impossible. I'm lucky that if I'm going to be condemned to obsess about anything, at least it won't be trying to hide or accelerate my destruction. My order is your disorder. My literal ordering of my thoughts and deliberate conducting of myself in the world makes you "hate" "me" until something breaks you or you discover some "safe" way to break yourself.
The number one thing I hear feedback wise from my clients is, "You seem like you give a shit." Whatever else they say, it generally summarizes and condenses into that sentiment. In their-narrative-speak there's terms like "seem" and "give" as though what I'm doing is "only" an "impression" or that "shit" is something tangibly handed out. In my world, I ask them deliberate questions. I share the most explicit understanding of my perspective in analogous situations. I write. I go to shows. I build my house. I buy toys that make me happy. I practice skills that keep me from getting "stuck" in stories that make me want to kill myself or others.
I seem like I give a shit? I don't. I don't care what I "seem" like. I don't know what you mean by "shit." I'm not giving you anything but an opportunity to answer a question you haven't asked in your own muddy terms. I wish to live in an environment that isn't trying to kill me for being accountable or doing shit that makes the most sense. I wish to achieve my goals without wasting so much time trying to translate idiot-proof things (to other autistic-types), but act as insurmountable barriers when the cultural narrative can't conceive of what I'm talking about. I don't wish you harm. I'm rooting for you. "You seem" doesn't mean anything to me, just like all of my behavior, example setting, work, or blogs don't mean anything to you. You're not practicing like I'm practicing. I'm not talking like you're talking. In fact, you're not talking at all.
My latest quasi-obsessive and frequently returned to thought is about getting an official autism diagnosis. In the blogs I was reading, I was searching for the key word "sociopath" and reading what I said about myself over time. I think the first time I ever mentioned it was in the 100s, 2007 or 2008, and pretty much every time I describe it as something learned or peg an example of how "not really" I could be described by it. Being "cold" or shutting down and methodically observing I've come to understand as forms of self-protection and coping. But, also, I suspect part of what felt so natural about doing so was me leaning into my natural pre-existing condition.
There's a universal theme in every piece of writing. Distance. I'm outside looking in and breaking down and try, desperately, to figure out the lesson or course of action or cause of events. I treat everything like there's some literal 1+1=2 going on, and it's an obligatory task and responsibility to input all of the variables. Where "people" or "the world" want to build a story about their relationship to math, I'm trying to do the math. They'll tell me, "Math is hard! I suck at math!" Then they'll stop. That's all they need. That's the important line in the narrative that explains why they will never attempt to do math again. It tells you they suck at math, and if you invite them to do it, you're telling them to feel like they suck or are helpless, confused, overwhelmed, or an infinite list of negative emotions associated with math.
I have a friend who is reflexively dismissive of getting a diagnosis. There's many reasons underlying her position I could extract just from my own observation of her relationship to her own health. She's half-heartedly argued about the greed and incoherence of the medical system which I'm sympathetic to, but I consider diminishingly ancillary points in lieu of my larger goal or the potential utility of the diagnosis. I don't want to be at the mercy of something I can't conceptualize more explicitly. I want to feel the potential and see the utility in ways I can't when I remain in the realm of speculation or strong suspicion. Circumstantial evidence has convicted many an innocent person.
You, apparently, don't know what it's like to be "stuck" in an observer state. Literally every single thing I may say or write is, seemingly by design, going to antagonize, threaten, question, or cause a level of psychological harm in a "normal" person. When you adopt similar attitude affects of trauma, it sends a false signal that we're more alike than we are or understand things in the same way. Being a general odd-ball who has learned how to play along invites hundreds of misreads and false hopes every week. You're hurt and feeling crass, so my jokes or demonstrative way of being register as a way to access your inchoate "realness" as you recover. Your insecurity gets betrayed when the cute-enough whore is effusively complimenting and appreciative of your presence, in all sincerity to be sure, but a robust long-term solidarity or bubbly attraction is incredibly unlikely to be maintained.
In my reading today, I read where I was feeling guilty when I noticed a girl was into me. I knew then, as I know even better today, people don't really recognize or see "me." What they like is what I've learned how to do, and that makes you feel all the more distant and like you have a responsibility to report more than be in the moment or appreciative someone's there with you. Because, are they? No, not really.
I can reliably and predictably do things in ways others can't even describe back to me. They just know they feel a certain way depending on what hat I'm wearing. I'm a really good professional counselor. I fuck up and say things in very messy ways rarely, and know how to account for them after I do. I see the face of "wheels turning" when I describe certain subjects certain ways. I see posture relax. I see smile cracks. I see head nods and notes getting taken. I recognize when the tone has shifted from combative defensiveness to acquiescing awareness. I suspect you won't find a single counselor at my company who would describe what they're doing as even 5% of what I put into a single paragraph. ::nods to Nietzsche::
Why would I say that? They tell me, and you, what they're doing as a form of professional narrative.
They're first and foremost "trying to help." "You don't get into this field unless you wish to help people." "You don't work here unless you're passionate about others or reducing harm." At DCS, "We all care about the children" very regardless of actual outcomes or behavior of our least qualified staff. They want to "provide services" and employ "therapeutic interventions." Every field has its propaganda because, at scale, the human condition requires the narrative, not the truth.
What am I doing as a counselor? I'm staying curious about what's true, or true-enough, for you to change in chosen ways. I'm looking to divorce you from as many cultural narratives as you can get your mind around, and hand back the notion of agency and accountability. That's an incredibly difficult and ridiculous task that takes a lifetime to get even a little good at. Every day, until you can train to occupy every moment, needs the affirmation. Every shade of gray or black in the latest attempt to bleach the scene needs acknowledged. Every poor choice of words that keeps us psychologically trapped needs challenged. A prolonged holistic impression of where and how each of us exists across time needs to be constructed, then deconstructed and reconstructed along metrics and choices that serve your values and needs. Practically, specifically, that looks like self-care, boundary discussions, self-reflective writing, and genuine expression of the depth of your feelings.
The last, maybe week or so, has started to make the nature of "the narrative of people at scale" clearer. I've attempted to analyze and compensate for aspects of my disillusion as well as what I perceive to be an emotional breakdown from my business partner. What's "more true" or "less wrong" about this point in time? Am I missing something important in how I describe people's reticence to actually, you know, do anything constructive about a problem? What forces are at play that make it hard for my partner to relax while I'm rocking out and hitting clubs? What should my approach be, professionally, personally, in this monolith of "basic" and consistent human tendencies if I'm not going to win, will never be in the club, and still desire some sense of accomplishment or belonging in an otherwise hostile or ambivalent space?
I could get a "perfect" team together, and as it grows or we increase caseloads, fundamental trends and truths of the human condition will take over. This is a blindness in people who rage against "systems" or belabor "isms" and "ists" in their human narrative "explanations" I'm tempted to conceive of as pure "placations." Our brains thrive on lazy short-hand in lieu of introspection. Pick any antagonist, you're always off the hook.
I want to spend a little more time on the idea of the space being "hostile." It is to me. Women describe hostile working conditions with unwanted sexual advances or threats to their professional prospects. Abusive households conform to implicit rules around the aggressors. The psychological boringness and pedantry of bureaucracy is intuitively designed to obscure the underlying violence of our under-examined behavior. I feel under attack, constantly. It doesn't seem like it, because your narrative, your culturally imposed and simplified "we all agreed to this" tells you I'm decently employed, own property, white, tall, powerful, straight, a man, etc. If I think I'm "smart" you have to hear "narcissist" or "manipulative." If I think I'm "right" you have to hear "defensive" or "complicit." If I think I'm wrong, you have to hear "guilty" or say to yourself, "I knew it!"
You have to.
That's the survival rule. You have to remain under the protective social and psychological shell or something akin to the whole of the universe starts to unravel.
Aren't I proof enough? Your "friends" will abandon you. You'll look combative. You'll seem angry and, most importantly, unjustifiably so. You'll seem restless and disorganized. You'll be a perpetual target for criticism for all of your "unrealistic" posturing. But mostly, you'll just make people feel uncomfortable, and they don't need anything fancy or more complicated than that to cut you off.
The real and proper psychopaths among us construct narratives more deliberately. They too have a narrative, but depending on just how aberrant an end it must conform to, the self-justified universe constructing just takes that much more reinforcing facts drawn from the depravity or misdirection of the culture writ-large. That's political propaganda. That's religious indoctrination. That's your favorite interview with a serial killer. The Unabomber got a lot of boring factoid prediction things right, and critical, relatively straight-forward, if not timeless, aspects of wisdom and accountability horrendously wrong. They all do.
When the goal is "try to help" or "provide resources" or "save" or make a habit of othering or blaming that "ist" or "ism" with psychopathic efficiency you arrive at the conclusion to an argument you weren't even aware you were making. Your fight or flight amygdala feels better, so, you win, always. You're correct, always. You're doing exactly what you say you're doing, always. Because "evidence" doesn't exist in the narrative. It's ideological possession. It's an existential exercise of bullshit.
As such my, or any, writing, in that it exists at all, is a threat. If you write about yourself, you'll start to discover things you weren't so good at noticing beforehand whether you wished to learn them or not. You'll be killing yourself. You'll be concurrently failing to mourn the parts that are dying. Who's doing that shit? You literally exist as a substate of the collective narrative. You have no conception of yourself or what exists beyond it. The acid trip went horribly or you were too scared to try it in the first place. The moments you tried to be brave and ask a question or stick your head out you were summarily dismissed or whipped. You don't know where to get the tools and those alleged to have them hurt you even more with their narratives. Someone, please, pass the heroin.
I was under a powerful narrative delusion about who my friends were or what they were supposed to mean to me. I'm certain I still am, but not in the way that's going to stay my hand anymore.
I'm lucky that, if I'm technically "disabled," I think that I'm literally unable to experience the addictive identity crisis which makes analysis like this functionally impossible. I'm lucky that if I'm going to be condemned to obsess about anything, at least it won't be trying to hide or accelerate my destruction. My order is your disorder. My literal ordering of my thoughts and deliberate conducting of myself in the world makes you "hate" "me" until something breaks you or you discover some "safe" way to break yourself.
The number one thing I hear feedback wise from my clients is, "You seem like you give a shit." Whatever else they say, it generally summarizes and condenses into that sentiment. In their-narrative-speak there's terms like "seem" and "give" as though what I'm doing is "only" an "impression" or that "shit" is something tangibly handed out. In my world, I ask them deliberate questions. I share the most explicit understanding of my perspective in analogous situations. I write. I go to shows. I build my house. I buy toys that make me happy. I practice skills that keep me from getting "stuck" in stories that make me want to kill myself or others.
I seem like I give a shit? I don't. I don't care what I "seem" like. I don't know what you mean by "shit." I'm not giving you anything but an opportunity to answer a question you haven't asked in your own muddy terms. I wish to live in an environment that isn't trying to kill me for being accountable or doing shit that makes the most sense. I wish to achieve my goals without wasting so much time trying to translate idiot-proof things (to other autistic-types), but act as insurmountable barriers when the cultural narrative can't conceive of what I'm talking about. I don't wish you harm. I'm rooting for you. "You seem" doesn't mean anything to me, just like all of my behavior, example setting, work, or blogs don't mean anything to you. You're not practicing like I'm practicing. I'm not talking like you're talking. In fact, you're not talking at all.
Monday, December 25, 2017
[665] Jingle Bells
It’s 17 minutes before Christmas, and all through the house, two creatures are stirring, each the size of a mouse.
I feel the buzz of the holidays. (Christmas, for you non-heathens). I can feel people trying to loosen up. The radio station is blaring the “wrong” version of the Christmas song I thought I knew better. Being in The Region, I’ve gotten to contend with a perfectly timed snow storm ensuring the whitest of Christmases. Of course, the setting is right, the food is delicious, and the company I don’t care to talk to is just as happy to not talk to me either. It couldn’t get better.
In the spirit of the holiday, let’s try excruciatingly hard to write with that upbeat contented smile you see from all of the family pictures hitting the feed. If I want to get into a “sensitive” or “negative” topic, I’ll take extra care in showing that it’s not so bad and there’s a way out. Just because I want to write, after all, doesn’t mean you need to suffer. I won’t grab the back of your head and beat your face against the screen until you’re paying the right kind of attention, like I did all those other times.
When you cut out the magic sky baby stuff, I believe the spirit of the season is about giving. Just because we’re living in the throes of the Republican cult giving your future away to big business, doesn’t mean you can’t devote your time and attention to people and causes worse off than you. With so many simultaneous things going wrong though, it can be hard to figure out just what it looks like to be an effective giver. To care so much, or to try in earnest, can get exhausting. Rarely are we given the tools, or prone to the discussions, that see our best efforts become manifest.
Historically, I haven’t been the best at accepting gifts. People being nice to me feels...off. This doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate them. This doesn’t mean they are wrong for doing so. There is nothing inherently bad about buying gifts for someone or feeling yourself compelled to get me one. But, I have everything already. I can think of no greater gift than to be listened to and understood and to see and hear your thoughts in how or whether they motivated you to get involved or speak up. I want what is rarely on offer and I mostly tend to ask for it in blogs. I, of course, need extra hands for the dirty work, but if wants aren’t particularly forthcoming, needs slipped out the hole in a back pocket.
Not everyone is as simple as me. Very few people will genuinely believe themselves if they say, “Don’t get me anything.” Well, perhaps it’s easier to believe it when you’re older and are sick off all the crap you’ve accumulated. Slight difference for me personally too, I can always use money, and it’s why that’s always been my gift since around the age 13. But still, simple. Not everyone is in a position to always know what they need either. You can genuinely surprise a child with a toy they never knew they wanted. The clothes they unwrap might be their favorite thing to wear one day.
What about bigger scale? What about the giant donations to impoverished areas? What about the money being slipped into the boxes with jiggling elves? These are opportunities to give back and feel good. These are a show of solidarity to the underlying caring human spirit that always has a little change to spare. Considerably more is known today about which charities actually turn money into well-being for who they’re advocating for so you don’t even have to feel guilty if you skip right past The Red Cross. Much has been studied about the impact of cheap clothing donated to areas who eschew a local economy in anticipation of the U.S. scraps.
I can feel myself getting all over the place. That’s sort of the point. The “spirit” of the time of year isn’t any one song, one present, one dinner or favorite movie. It’s not in the passing deference to the Jews or jokes about Kwanzaa. It’s not the snow and other assorted imagery. It’s the overwhelming all-at-once force of culture that wraps up the willing in a comforting blanket of warmth and positivity, and pushes the lonely and the suicidal over the edge. It’s the power of a collective narrative. It’s the spell of togetherness.
There’s so much talk about the “divisive” age we live in. I think this, as with most things, is precisely backwards. When a “side” manifests, it’s precisely because people are rallying behind something. The energy they don’t know what to do with rallies in spite of themselves. As such, it can work in service to things that actively harm themselves. You cheer for sports teams where none of the players are from where you live. You fall for TV shows for their hype and meme-ability. Christmas and Hanukkah aren’t in competition, dividing up the faithful. One “side” just doesn’t bother to care enough about their immortal souls.
No narrative wins until it gives people a focal point. After that adoption, it can spiral off into the myriad ways people personally interpret everything. I’ve asked before, what did Obama’s “hope” get us but the chance to ignore the millions willing to vote for Palin in any capacity. It was truly the re-reading of the “argument” I got into about Twin Peaks, and the seeking out of a few other negative reviews, the pushed me over the edge to start writing this. My biggest issue with the show is its fundamental lack of coherent narrative that makes it incredibly boring. The hardest core advocates turned disenfranchised make passing praises to the initial mystery and individuality it had in 1991, but don’t have any more a clue than I do why it continued after the narrative wrapped in the middle of season 2. People keep seeing what they want to see.
The hardest core continuing fans, like those most in love with Christmas, like the intimately familiar with fighting injustice, prop up their preferred narrative. It doesn’t have to be completely devoid of reality, and it doesn’t mean there’s no utility in doing so. But you have to recognize it’s a narrative. It’s a spell just like any other. It’s the same spell that makes me “negative” before we ever start talking or you recognize anything I’ve actually said. It’s a spell that knows every quarter or dollar you drop into the box is going towards helping someone and not corrupt leadership or advertising. It’s undying faith in your team colors, because nothing about how they make their money erases the fun you had attending games with your dad as a child.
I wish that everything you give or get can be done in earnest. I don’t want holidays to be taken for granted anymore than any other day. I don’t want you to rate your time together like a show designed to trap mindless dupes who’ve invented a 10/10 narrative to supplant the soupy malaise of incoherent writing. If you want something, ask for it, work intelligently towards it. If you have nothing to give, don’t force it, keep yourself from sacrificing your truth for a worse story. If you don’t know where you reside, in your family, in life, start talking and asking questions. Give yourself the kind of gift that Santa can’t bring. Be a charitable force of time and attention. In my experience, it’s the only thing that’s kept me remotely sane or bothering to carry on in spite of my overwhelming capacity to complain or break things down. It’s also the only force I see that we can rally behind in trying to piece back the fabric of reality that’s been obliterated by our access to so many competing narratives.
I feel the buzz of the holidays. (Christmas, for you non-heathens). I can feel people trying to loosen up. The radio station is blaring the “wrong” version of the Christmas song I thought I knew better. Being in The Region, I’ve gotten to contend with a perfectly timed snow storm ensuring the whitest of Christmases. Of course, the setting is right, the food is delicious, and the company I don’t care to talk to is just as happy to not talk to me either. It couldn’t get better.
In the spirit of the holiday, let’s try excruciatingly hard to write with that upbeat contented smile you see from all of the family pictures hitting the feed. If I want to get into a “sensitive” or “negative” topic, I’ll take extra care in showing that it’s not so bad and there’s a way out. Just because I want to write, after all, doesn’t mean you need to suffer. I won’t grab the back of your head and beat your face against the screen until you’re paying the right kind of attention, like I did all those other times.
When you cut out the magic sky baby stuff, I believe the spirit of the season is about giving. Just because we’re living in the throes of the Republican cult giving your future away to big business, doesn’t mean you can’t devote your time and attention to people and causes worse off than you. With so many simultaneous things going wrong though, it can be hard to figure out just what it looks like to be an effective giver. To care so much, or to try in earnest, can get exhausting. Rarely are we given the tools, or prone to the discussions, that see our best efforts become manifest.
Historically, I haven’t been the best at accepting gifts. People being nice to me feels...off. This doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate them. This doesn’t mean they are wrong for doing so. There is nothing inherently bad about buying gifts for someone or feeling yourself compelled to get me one. But, I have everything already. I can think of no greater gift than to be listened to and understood and to see and hear your thoughts in how or whether they motivated you to get involved or speak up. I want what is rarely on offer and I mostly tend to ask for it in blogs. I, of course, need extra hands for the dirty work, but if wants aren’t particularly forthcoming, needs slipped out the hole in a back pocket.
Not everyone is as simple as me. Very few people will genuinely believe themselves if they say, “Don’t get me anything.” Well, perhaps it’s easier to believe it when you’re older and are sick off all the crap you’ve accumulated. Slight difference for me personally too, I can always use money, and it’s why that’s always been my gift since around the age 13. But still, simple. Not everyone is in a position to always know what they need either. You can genuinely surprise a child with a toy they never knew they wanted. The clothes they unwrap might be their favorite thing to wear one day.
What about bigger scale? What about the giant donations to impoverished areas? What about the money being slipped into the boxes with jiggling elves? These are opportunities to give back and feel good. These are a show of solidarity to the underlying caring human spirit that always has a little change to spare. Considerably more is known today about which charities actually turn money into well-being for who they’re advocating for so you don’t even have to feel guilty if you skip right past The Red Cross. Much has been studied about the impact of cheap clothing donated to areas who eschew a local economy in anticipation of the U.S. scraps.
I can feel myself getting all over the place. That’s sort of the point. The “spirit” of the time of year isn’t any one song, one present, one dinner or favorite movie. It’s not in the passing deference to the Jews or jokes about Kwanzaa. It’s not the snow and other assorted imagery. It’s the overwhelming all-at-once force of culture that wraps up the willing in a comforting blanket of warmth and positivity, and pushes the lonely and the suicidal over the edge. It’s the power of a collective narrative. It’s the spell of togetherness.
There’s so much talk about the “divisive” age we live in. I think this, as with most things, is precisely backwards. When a “side” manifests, it’s precisely because people are rallying behind something. The energy they don’t know what to do with rallies in spite of themselves. As such, it can work in service to things that actively harm themselves. You cheer for sports teams where none of the players are from where you live. You fall for TV shows for their hype and meme-ability. Christmas and Hanukkah aren’t in competition, dividing up the faithful. One “side” just doesn’t bother to care enough about their immortal souls.
No narrative wins until it gives people a focal point. After that adoption, it can spiral off into the myriad ways people personally interpret everything. I’ve asked before, what did Obama’s “hope” get us but the chance to ignore the millions willing to vote for Palin in any capacity. It was truly the re-reading of the “argument” I got into about Twin Peaks, and the seeking out of a few other negative reviews, the pushed me over the edge to start writing this. My biggest issue with the show is its fundamental lack of coherent narrative that makes it incredibly boring. The hardest core advocates turned disenfranchised make passing praises to the initial mystery and individuality it had in 1991, but don’t have any more a clue than I do why it continued after the narrative wrapped in the middle of season 2. People keep seeing what they want to see.
The hardest core continuing fans, like those most in love with Christmas, like the intimately familiar with fighting injustice, prop up their preferred narrative. It doesn’t have to be completely devoid of reality, and it doesn’t mean there’s no utility in doing so. But you have to recognize it’s a narrative. It’s a spell just like any other. It’s the same spell that makes me “negative” before we ever start talking or you recognize anything I’ve actually said. It’s a spell that knows every quarter or dollar you drop into the box is going towards helping someone and not corrupt leadership or advertising. It’s undying faith in your team colors, because nothing about how they make their money erases the fun you had attending games with your dad as a child.
I wish that everything you give or get can be done in earnest. I don’t want holidays to be taken for granted anymore than any other day. I don’t want you to rate your time together like a show designed to trap mindless dupes who’ve invented a 10/10 narrative to supplant the soupy malaise of incoherent writing. If you want something, ask for it, work intelligently towards it. If you have nothing to give, don’t force it, keep yourself from sacrificing your truth for a worse story. If you don’t know where you reside, in your family, in life, start talking and asking questions. Give yourself the kind of gift that Santa can’t bring. Be a charitable force of time and attention. In my experience, it’s the only thing that’s kept me remotely sane or bothering to carry on in spite of my overwhelming capacity to complain or break things down. It’s also the only force I see that we can rally behind in trying to piece back the fabric of reality that’s been obliterated by our access to so many competing narratives.
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