[1166] Bye The Numbers

When I was a kid, my mom was shopping around for a church. For a few weeks, we’d try different ones, some we literally couldn’t stop laughing and making fun of as we sat in the pews, one that felt like a YMCA with the different activity rooms and mega-church-wanna-be vibes. I wandered into what was a kids playroom and those vegetable cartoons were playing on the TV. “We are the pirates, that don’t do anything.” I’m 36 years old, and that line still bugs the fuck out of me. It feels like a summary of the several books I’d need to write explaining my problems with “religious” thinking.

Whatever one wants to accept in regarding the modern era as having a “meaning crisis,” I think words still mean things. I think pirate means something. A pirate was my school mascot. Pirates of the Caribbean is a franchise so popular it can be bled for attention and money indefinitely. You can get a grounded and historical view of pirates and how Thomas Jefferson handled them. What pirates aren’t, are shitty lyric-singing entities that “don’t do anything.”

Religion is a process that is designed to turn Truth, into truth. It gives you a personal truth. It let’s you invert words. It lets you empower your feelings and create substructures of reality that do the heavy lifting where you’re unwilling or unable to find the personal responsibility. A pirate is a rapist, murdering, thief who has no business in being associated with children. The caricature and theft of the word “pirate,” can go anywhere at any time for any reason, like becoming my school mascot.

Now, I’m someone who understands and does not have some kind of visceral emotive reaction every time a concept is seemingly misappropriated. I don’t care in some kind of aggrieved nerd way about protecting IP or cannon when it comes to cultural expression broadly. I care about the ability to recognize what’s happening when you do so as a matter of habit across different contexts. I care when you get stuck in a “religious mindset” about something, oh, I don’t know, like one that wants to obliterate the word “genocide.” Or one that habitually downplays the spirit and nature of fascism.

I’ve heard a lot recently, from debates between Richard Dawkins and Jordan Peterson to discussions with Peter Boghossian and what sounded like a brilliant and articulate scholar and yet horrifying Christian apologist Wael Taji Miller. It’s the notion that we’re “all Christian,” in the broadest sense of Western values. You’ll get soundbites of someone like Dawkins “agreeing” even as he’s trying, hopelessly, to keep the conversation grounded in “yes” or “no” answers to things like “Was Jesus born of a virgin?” No one should have trouble answering that question, yet, in the obfuscating equating substructure of religious apologetics, “was” “Jesus” “born” “of” “a” and “virgin” all mean something so convoluted and contradictory to match the mores of his individual sense of self, Jordan has to pause, answer with a another question, belabor the mythology, etc.

This is something I think is most damaging and painful to think about when it’s literal scientists who practice the same behavior. You won’t find a better explainer for some highly complicated topic like gene expression or chemical bonds, and then they’ll wedge some sentiment about god in there for …antagonistic effect?

There’s a lot of problems when it comes to how you market and teach information. They don’t get easier when your motivating principle is the one like social media has adopted of “engagement.” How you engage, for how long, what content, what it’s doing to you, none of that matters. Religious thinking was our first attempt at creating a social media company. *Have you heard the good news? Now you can connect with anyone, anywhere, and be united forever if you just sign up and follow these rules that violate your autonomy, privacy, and capacity to think freely beyond emotional manipulation.

I think, literally, you can’t even recognize what I’m talking about unless you’re someone hyper-concerned about things like “rhetoric” and “apologetics. For your average person, I don’t think those are words they’ve ever used, let alone can define. Unless I’d fallen down the “new atheist” rabbit hole as a teenager, I doubt I’d have many occasions to use them in spite of my academically-inclined disposition. You don’t go to church to hear about the “reasoning” behind “love thy neighbor,” it’s just more or less demanded of you, in spite of your actual, practical, ability to do so.

And here’s the most confusing and insidious layer, because actual, practical, abilities of money, group-think, and cultural influence manifest explicitly for people. When “the church” helps you rebuilt after a fire, you give zero fucks how many little boys they want to rape when you’re back in your bed and so thankful. When “the church” runs the food bank, it may as well be Jesus personally stuffing the nearly-expired food down your family’s throats. The cultural zeitgeist and landscape, therefore, gets considered “Christian.” You’d think we were the only species to share food.

I think everything good and contributing to our survival is derived from evolutionary, reactive, processes, and as our intelligence grew to protect us from deadly consequences, we’ve let narrative arcs supplant harsher forms of natural selection. You want a girl basically pledged to you since birth? Stay in your religion. “Women’s rights” aren’t really a thing, because “rights” aren’t a thing, because “your right” is whatever “you are right about” within the confines of irrational-yet-(co-opted concept)rational religious behavior.

Religious thinking always wants it both ways. They want the excuse, but to claim the responsibility. They want the reason, but the infinite sea of irrationality that justifies. They want the power while claiming victimhood. They want to be of consequences at all costs while maintaining they’re just following the rules.

“With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion.”
― Steven Weinberg

The section below I wrote a week or so ago and never completed. It was what was bubbling for me to arrive at the above.

If there’s one thing I wish “we” as a “culture” would learn how to do, it’s quantify.

I think about how much gets lost in the weeds of rhetoric and emotional appeals. Why, ever, in a modern environment would we be so compelled by a “strong man” or any narrative that is explicitly disinterested in context? Personally, I’m so rarely moved by emotion just as a probably-autistic person that I’ve watched my entire life situations compound and explode utterly baffled by why no one was willing to even nod in the direction of the greater reality or circumstances.

I do think this is an outgrowth of the psychological apologetics we engage in to protect religious thinking. When your faith claims come in the form of “absolute truth” instead of “practical necessity,” to my mind, literally anything goes. Up means down, wrong means right, just like an animal reacting in any instinctive way to circumstances it doesn’t understand. I see nothing more reliably consistent than this across environments. “Smart” people do it. “Rich” people circle their wagons. Any time you get two people together who desire to feed off the other’s excuse-making energy, we default to our basest animal that justifies compounding deadly sin.

This is where things that aren’t complicated get to be played at indefinitely as though they are complicated.

I’m not a thought or word police person. I do think, fundamentally, comedians like Tony Hinchcliffe get to say bad jokes as often as their career can handle. I don’t think jokes, in and of themselves, and especially coming from professional comedians, are the thing that “pollutes” the public discourse or “harms” and “endangers” people. That’s not what a joke is nor the function of a comedian.

The massive, under-stated and under-appreciated problem, is when you adopt fascism. Fascism is religious fervor played out in more directly and practically implicated ways against a particular group. Fascism empowers an individual to double down on deadly sinful behavior. When you “just do you” next to or in service to fascism, you’re no longer what you were the moment before you made that choice. Every one of a fascist’s generals were otherwise “normal” people with held-harmless jobs and lives until they started playing into and normalizing the depravity. The ones that survived immediately tried to return to that normalcy, some being tried at The Hague decades after because…you don’t get to.

We entertain an endless stream of disingenuous and completely vacuous conversation around what is or isn’t “dangerous” and “harmful” that doesn’t count things. We even pretend to count! In forming a narrative around our particular oppression, when in context, tells the exactly opposite story. We just don’t count the money and what it does. We don’t count the people getting directly negatively affected by a policy. We don’t count the time it does or does not take to engage someone and persuade or inform them. We don’t break it down into a cold and useful calculation like an assembly line does for man-hours-to-parts anticipated.

I don’t think we even barely grasp the conditions from which we’re starting, and we have no idea where we want to go, so we don’t even entertain the idea there’s something to be counted or approached in a more deliberate and methodical way.

The broader view that can approximate how many people are dispositionally fascist is about as close as we can get. The one that shows us how often we’d rather disengage and isolate is on full display with the amount of people who don’t vote. The long-term impacts of legislation and cultural narratives get hijacked to every end and supplant the graphs that depict republicans bankrupting institutions and enriching friends in spite of children. Before we had any data, we had what used to be compelling stories about the nature of greed, gluttony, and pride.

In fact, we don’t need religious dogma to witness “sinful” behavior in nature, but you’d think it was all invented wholesale by religion. A series of chronic inescapable conditions for which we all must be constantly redeemed. That’s convenient.

[1165] Bottom Feeding

Whether it's a book, or a YouTube series, there's something about argumentative patterns I'd really like to explore. I've noticed, for as long as I can remember, these habits we get into when we're trying to sound reasonable. We presume it's "the following list of reasons" we offer that "make sense" or "justify" where we're coming from. From what I can see, it's the exact same internally emotional places using language in a very particular way.

My sensibility was kicked into overdrive when I listened to a Bari Weiss podcast where she's interviewing 3 people who switched from voting democrat to Trump. They were all deeply political types who march, volunteer, run for things, etc. These aren't the arbitrary "undecideds" who can't spout a book-length answer to questions. If you have the patience to strip down the extremely feverish rhetoric, it's hard not to see that they're each just hurt or confused emotionally, and there's choice phrases and redundancies that clue me in.

And here's where I get to be disappointing because I don't want to re-listen to the podcast right now and pull them all out.

What I can do is provide the process and mechanism that people use to justify breaking their capacity to reason.

One has to assume they are coming from a "first principles" place when they make a declarative or moral statement. Something, at bottom, has to be "true" or practically assumed for anything else to follow. Whether that something is coherent or consistent is an extremely open question.

It doesn't matter what the issue is. That's the key thing to keep in mind. You can't understand how the mechanism breaks if you listen to someone's line of reasoning down the track they take alone. If someone tells you "I don't like her answer on foreign policy!" That's not the operative information. What matters is that they feel a certain level of fear, despair, exasperation, and/or other things that emotionally persuade them to start carrying water for what was previously unacceptable about the opposition.

It then becomes exceptionally easy to write-off literally anything you need to. You also get stuck to a handful of reasonable-sounding reiterations.

I've learned that it doesn't matter how "smart" you are, or how quickly you speak, or how many references you can make, you are at the mercy of your feelings until you choose not to be. A "first principle" that is conjured by your feelings is neither first, nor a principle. It's the needy, hopeless, ridiculous child of insecure instinct and ego that is constantly begging to be appeased.

You can see a snapshot of this articulated brilliantly with Ben Shapiro as a person in general, but especially when he's talking to(at) people at The Oxford Union. The clash of alleged first principles is on display explicitly from the people arguing against him. They operate under the working assumption that Israel doesn't have a right to exist in the first place. Ben, to his credit and seemingly only in this area of life, manages to ensure this is brought to the forefront of the "debate" they're trying to have over history or who's "more genocidal."

As to the "true impact" of religion? That's going to antagonize Ben's internal irrational animal, and he'll speed-run his mountain of apologetics that are perfectly unpersuadable. I don't believe he, or anyone, needs magic sky daddies to come up with moral frameworks or good reasons to tow certain lines because I have a first principle about the nature of pain and consequences. If I can see something coming or don't want to get fucked up, the universe "magically" shows me the way to keep my hand out of the fire.

You know when a comedy show goes into a crowd of radicals and starts on-the-spot questioning? The loops people go into. The honest ones will betray their emotions and state explicitly they don't know something they're allegedly angry about. The rowdiest ones will return to their catchphrases or megaphones. Well, "intellectual" people will do that too, but they'll use a particular interview or quote from someone with the right letters and credentials. Both demonstrate that, what's at bottom, is how they feel, and literally nothing that comes out of their mouth is the kind of truth they wish it to be.

To develop a first principle you have to believe certain things about what it is to exist altogether. You have to ask yourself, constantly, what your individual responsibility is to that existence. If you don't develop that belief system, or don't defer to a falsifiable metric in your attempt, nothing really matters. It, in fact, can't matter, because it's not rooted or defined. It's a constant abstraction of your feelings, dressed up in so many words or justifications. This is why we're so hungry to "just accept" religious doctrines, and celebrate "faith" because they pretend to do the work of that first principle formation for us.

This is where you'll find every level of equivocation, precisely without irony. When someone exists as anything they need to to get away with anything they desire, without even realizing it, they will offer you the format of technical and philosophical "bullshit." It's an attempt to persuade, without regard to the truth. The target of persuasion? The person touting the bullshit themselves. They're searching, infinitely, for the words to match their emotional truth. Emotional solidarity and polite looking the other way becomes the only currency.

Of course, they're never going to define their emotional truth as an irrational screaming child suffering a sense of betrayal and disorientation. That would clash dramatically against their self-conception as a Harvard graduate or community organizer delegate, or serious person who memorizes pivotal historical dates like a preacher does bible verses. But, the truth, as far as I can tell, is they are, like most of us, screaming, scared, irrational animals first.

I think mental murder is achieved when you pretend like "all politicians" anything. You have not even the remotest first principle about the definition, importance, history, or purpose of "organizing" as a concept. Why would you? It's not taught in school. Your day to day life is provided. Your road to "serious person" with appropriate title was laid out clear as day. When you pretend to care about what a politician "lies" about, you're not literally counting lies and saying, "By the numbers, I'm going with the democrats because Trump lied 30,573 times over 4 years." That would be too dispassionate and grounded.

When you pretend to care about lies, you're elevating your token issue. When someone is "incomplete" about how they'll "support the Jews," they will exist in that state indefinitely until you've gotten your emotional revenge. One way you can be extra sure this is where someone is psychologically is when they can't stop repeating some hateful label about what you are or what your beliefs mean. When challenged, they'll just repeat themselves and say something like, "Why would I talk to an (x) altogether?" Tried and true strategy in maintaining a stupid bubble.

A first principle around communication with the "other side" would be capable of developing a tool for discerning a troll versus partner in conversation. It would concede more alikeness than difference if only because you're human or sharing a language in spite of its many connotative conceits. It would remain sensitive and qualifying when it moved to make a caricature or assumption about where someone was coming from. There's a soft pedantry for the sake of clarity. You're not trying to "gotcha" when a colloquialism or fair-enough sentiment betrays a dictionary.

If I could ever get paid to do like "take down" videos parsing out conversations and podcasts, that'd be fun. I appreciate those with like advanced degrees who refute, with deep technical prowess, morons. I know there are plenty of logical fallacies and psychological terms related to everything I'm talking about, and I think it's a lot harder to see just how quickly and fluidly they manifest in what otherwise presents like a reasonable adult or professional conversation.

I get the jarring experience of listening back-to-back Left and Center-right podcasts/people which helps inform how I see the pattern too. The dismissive quips offered by the If Books Could Kill and 5-to-4 crowd feel irksome when they're doing exactly what they'd accuse a Bari Weiss of with regard to a given author or "deeply personal" subject matter like Gaza or trans activism. It's funny to see how earnestly Anthony Scaramucci prioritizes a piece of Tim Walz on the debate stage versus how the Pod Save America guys do. The "secret" value statements of their class and character pop out.

To my mind, I've listened to them all sound not-batshit and agreeing on what I would consider my first principles, but their emotions don't allow them to say so. I've heard both If Books Could Kill and Bari Weiss podcasts say, for example, that the science around trans stuff is incredibly sparse, and there are meaningful reasons to be skeptical about the DSM and implementation of diagnostic criterion. Why not start there and have a conversation? Why, ever, introduce the language of "mutilated children," like the increasingly myopic hyperbolic rabbit holes of Peter Boghossian's universe where he "can't find anyone on the other side" to talk to." Coleman Hughes manages to, somehow. Neither side wants to mutilate children. Neither side agrees on the number who have been. Those seem foundational for coherence.

Like me, I think people who vehemently argue for anything are implicitly trying to synthesize. It's very disorienting to be fielding a constant stream of information and never feeling like you land somewhere. It doesn't feel right to be rooted in dispassionate skepticism. It doesn't feel right to use your emotions as one, relatively small, informer of your overall viewpoint. It doesn't feel right to find common cause with something "disgusting" or "hateful" or hellbent on "erasing your identity." It's nearly impossible for most people to accept that that's precisely what they are and where they're speaking from. It's nearly impossible to accept because emotionally defaulting to black and white thinking, either/or, in-crowd out-crowd, is the default.

I'm disgusting, hateful, and trying to erase self-conceptions all the time. That's not something I "admit," it's just a true series of things. Devoid of context, the hundred other things I can say about myself, they'd carry all they needed to for anyone disinterested in understanding me. More to my point, they won't understand themselves. Then, hours and hours, and often lifetimes, will be spent trying to fill something that was never a wholly conceived capable-of-being-filled "thing" in the first place.

[1133] Fog Of War

You're born into a fog. It's little droplets of absolutely mystifying information sometimes cooling your face, sometimes collecting so thick you can't see and feel like you're drowning.

I find one of the defining factors of what I consider a "great" or superb-to-perfect piece of media is definition. The characters, good or bad, actually sit within the consequences of their strengths and flaws. They aren't randomly inserted at choice times because "the plot must go on." They aren't apologized for. They aren't treated like a schizophrenic episode manically punctuating a moment because a substantive idea couldn't be had. Things like "over acting" fall into this category, or the too-humbled place someone falls in being made an example of in your message-piece.

The analogy holds for the difference between a great and superb life. You can do a fair amount of "good" or "fair" things, and die without scandal or offense. But the people who lean into their characters seem to define precisely what we don't wish to be, or explicitly could. I think this is where ideas about "celebrity" versus "influencer" really diverge. A celebrity depicted timeless tropes and stories that have sustained us since we started telling them. We're drawn in. An influencer is trying to trap your attention. They're selling easy and accessible in a way someone pretending to be Hercules isn't.

Why should you want to be your character? I think about this a lot. My head echoes with the guy at a beerfest years ago who said, "You have celebrity energy." I feel like I know exactly what he's referring to, but have done next to nothing with it. I don't even know if he's actually met any celebrities, or if he's just unfamiliar with extroverts on a good day, but I'd be lying if I haven't, for years, rehearsed what I'd say on talk shows. But, what business would I have being there?

Famous chefs and political figures get their time in the sun without needing acting credits. If you spike in popularity for some viral moment, occasionally you can sucker well-known people into entertaining you for another 15 minutes when they're struggling for material. It's not something I really aspire to, but has always felt like it'd be something I should be prepared for. It may be one of the most irrational persistent thoughts I ever entertain. Bert Kreischer got mini-famous for partying. There was a couple years in college where people were shouting my name across campus still-enthused about one of mine.

Arguably, I'm more "blunt answer on the news" kind of "potential famous" at this point. I want to be known "in my world" whether it comes to social work things or if I manage to develop anything on the land. I listen to famous-enough people talk about how it's nice to not get mobbed, but it's never a bad day to have a stranger smile at you and tell you what an impact you've had on them. Garnering a certain notoriety tied to a creative approach or genuinely helpful fix to something is what I'd like most to lend my energy towards more than "look at me" or "let me sell you."

It's only exhausting to be the "life of the party" if you don't enjoy the party. If you're there out of obligation or desperation, it doesn't feel important or wise to invest in your character while you're there. If you're an appeaser who smiles and laughs at everything that doesn't earn it, or frame your existence as the thing other people need to enjoy themselves, I don't know how you refrain from resenting that immediately.

It's been about 2 days since I left off, and I've noticed another pattern that informs my foggy thoughts.

I look for people smarter than me to listen to. I like listening to nerds who specialize in some area to give me the details and history of topics I'll never have the patience or sustained interest in to research too deeply on my own. The thing about nerds, they usually only really know about that one thing. Even when they're talking about the logical fallacies or lapses in wisdom that "smart" people succumb to, breathlessly they'll mindlessly and unapologetically engage in said behavior if you give them 5 extra minutes to talk.

This makes me wonder what would happen if these people I enjoy listening to could get together and identify how to put a stop to that.

After 100 hours of Peter Boghossian interviews and videos, I can identify somewhere around 10 things he consistently does that feel like expressly poor framing, straw-manning, or frustration stoking that impede his ability to understand more about what upsets him.

The If Books Could Kill guys will matter-of-factly relay what they believe to be someone's, say Steven Pinker's, political opinions and conclusions to be and poo-poo qualifiers and context to endlessly insist there's a more insidious misstep occurring. Because they'll do so back-to-back with a genuine fact check that refutes bad research, it feels more right of a behavior and posture than it is. I think you get to score a point for calling out a bad, old, or piddling example used in service to the broader argument. You don't get to mind-read.

The amount of times Jordan Peterson is invoked as a kind of shorthand for alt-right nonsense is such a cliche lazy thing to do, he feels like the next Ayn Rand in the mind of a liberal who thinks reading or listening to him will make their head holes leak. He's become a king for speaking outside of his lane and religious apologetics, but he didn't start that way, and still sometimes recognizes when he's fallen off certain cliffs. That should matter. He's couched in so much stupid, but he's not Ben Shapiro, Candace Owens, or even the most manipulative religious dicks he gobbles like Jonathan Pageau.

The religiosity of Chris Hedges and Cornel West keeps them perfectly blind to what you'll hear argued from Sam Harris and the guests like John Spencer who specialize in the history of urban warfare. Masih Alinejad, Yasmine Mohammed, and Maajid Nawaz are functionally silenced when it comes to an honest discussion about the practical and moral consequences of cultural ::ehem:: differences. Noam Chomsky will talk out of one side of his mouth about American imperialism, and downplay what funded his early career with biting defensiveness.

I think Coleman Hughes does a decent job of bothering to engage people on different topics while being less adept, than say Sam Harris, at knowing enough particulars of a given subject matter to undermine his fastest-talking guests. Coleman can get a side-stepping apologist or defensive Ph.D. to get caught in their errant missing-the-point loop which can be interesting in shedding light on how hollow the basis for many popular and too-many-books-about ideas really are.

I just listened to Yanis Varoufakis refer to what's happening in Palestine as a "genocide," after detailing a historical picture of how France and Germany have played out politically and economically. His penchant for insightful financial analysis or digestible conceptual frames stalls outside his lane like so many on the left who think this is the first time in history war has killed or starved children and continually forget who started the whole fucking thing.

Seth Meyers, who've I've gathered has cared about real shit, has a segment where he does corrections on what he's broadcast on his main show. John Oliver will do similarly, but you can feel him routinely skirt and downplay the brunt of a critical conclusion about the position he's explaining, and pawns off deeper responsibility like Jon Stewart used to do before his return on a sensibility that, "It's comedy first, after all."

I guess I want to know, what is it that makes the ability to reason, and reason so strongly, simply, and concretely just stop at a certain point?
Is there a mechanism in the brain that gets overwhelmed or hijacked?
Is there something we can measure at the level of emotion that prevents new or conflicting information to take hold?
Why does it feel impossible and unrealistic to get a standard for discerning and discussing information to as good as it ever can get, and then strike a dissonant note so simultaneously fluidly, and weirdly consistently in that extra bit of time you give someone to talk?

At a certain point in my "learn everything" behavior, it sank into my bones the futility of the effort. Whether I was trying to record every animal name in notebooks as a child, read/watch every book, lecture, debate, or online fight related to religion versus science, or do ALL THE THINGS when it comes to home projects, playing instruments, playing video games, listening to bands or podcasts, or seeing shows. You either learn to enjoy the ride, or you suffer the infinitely incomplete indefinitely.

It feels like the project of being a "public intellectual," is to professionally create a fog around yourself as you detail out someone else's. Are you both united by reason? Occasionally? Certainly more than you're united by a god concept, but a god complex instead? I'm not sure.

In my naming different people, I feel I should shout out to Naill Ferguson, Christopher Hitchens, and Michael Shermer. For the amount of subjects they can (or did) opine on, I've gotten the most consistent sense of that general respect for reason and its process. That Naill and Ayann Hirsi-Ali are married suggests to me your heart is clearly the most irrational thing, thus invoking "passion" for your position is always a loser. My pithy grievances with Sam Harris and "free will" I'll probably take to the grave like Dan Dennett.

We'll "believe" in "science" until it threatens our "identity." Our statistics are the one true statistics and not something to contextualize with dozens more at all times. I see another in road for why people adopt the perpetual high-horse-ery of a religious system. Is there any greater power than feeling no obligation to even state plainly what it means to butt-fuck your little boys or bag your women?

The intellectual wants to feel powerful too. I think they fuck up when they wish to cling to a certain "truth," like any religious apologist, instead of the truth of a process. You'll never lift the fog just by blowing your hot air.

[1124] Anomaly

I'm "weird." I know I'm weird. It's been apparent my entire life. I do and say the things you won't. The fact that I'm writing is weird. The fact that I've been writing for nearly 20 years is weird. I live in a weird house. I approach normal things like TV in a weird way. I'm in a weird field and trying weird ways to attempt to do business. There's something(s) about what I was born with that differentiate me. It's more than something like brown eyes or curly hair, but it's also no more than "boring" attributes like that put to work over time.

I'm still in the woods of Peter Boghossian and his interviews with people who have been bitten by reactionary forces. He can get exhausting in how much he lets on, but I think his core perspective and points are sound. He wants evidence and reason. He wants conversation. He wants to figure out how we protect institutions from the human propensity to devolve into tribal incoherence. He's weird.

I'm increasingly aware of how weird it is to want to "do better." A growth, evidence, and accountable mindset are the exception, not the rule. I happened to have watched the first episode of The Imagineering Story. Walt Disney was a weird generator from which the whole of what we know as amusement parks has followed. It took dozens of imagineers and thousands of people to put it all together, but he pushed everyone over the cliffs. It makes me think about the first time I heard that it's something like 5% of overly-motivated and radicalized revolutionaries that overthrow something or kick off new eras. The vast majority of the population is living in the wake of a relatively small handful.

To be sure, I have serious doubts about the "great man of history" narratives. I do not think they take away from my own sense of weirdness nor the impact of small deliberate pushes where something hasn't been pushed before. I don't think the future is inevitable, and the choices and focus some maintain in their realms have an enormous spill-over effect. We see this in medicine, the leadership of certain countries and companies, and in the wake of the death of the stabilizing force in our own families.

What constitutes the difference? Why am I weird? Why, and this is from Boghossian, do pretty much all people fall for the latest trends, political waves, language hijacking, and others just seem constantly skeptical and impervious? Why am I willing to see the reason in J.K. Rowling, yet the people who know her will spend years voicing pain and concern? Why do I care about gun violence statistics, but most will belabor the worst anecdotes devoid of 95% of the context? Why can I understand why Kyle Rittenhouse was deemed not guilty, even if I think he has the most cunty punchable Ben Shapiro-esc face that I've seen in a while, and question the motives of anyone carrying around guns?

I want, genuinely, to not believe incorrect or dumb things. That's the weird difference. I want that more than fitting in. We're a tribal species who does not inherently see the dangers of the tribal wisdom that maintains a certain internal coherence. Whether or not that internal coherence comports with reality, evidence, or consistent accountability does not even enter the conversation sometimes until it's litigated or there's concentrated sustained outrage.

For the longest time, I did not understand why trans issues were even part of the political conversation. As I've listened to more and more of these interviews, it's becoming clearer the lanes of disingenuous outrage and language being used to hijack our understanding. I was perfectly unaware of how deep the corruption went or how it manifested. As a liberal, leftist, generally "live and let live" person who vehemently hates religion, barely tolerates guns, and wishes we had drive-through abortions, I'm going to instinctively say "Yeah, trans, whatever, let them do what they want."

Oops. Except, the science wasn't there. The journals purporting to have the science were publishing literal garbage invented by Boghossian himself to prove a point. The "it's not dangerous to block puberty" and "children know what they are" narratives are just lies. The stats on people who de-transition, who turn out just to be gay or have autism, or who have some often well-documented mental health struggles overwhelm the actual data and story of what it means to be pursuing "trans rights."

You say something like that, you get labeled. Not by the data or the scientists or the people with direct experience who might testify. You're a "terf" or "transphobe" or "hateful" or whatever damming epithet is trending that month. You're silenced, and depending on what place you occupy in society, punished. We've been doing this dance long enough that those punishments are getting reversed after lawsuits, and the adults in the room have woken up to the liability of riding trends instead of science.

The battle wasn't about whether or not we should accept trans people. The battle is about language and facts of biology. I don't think anyone sincerely gives a shit how you wish to dress, modify your body, or present in the world. I think everyone who is reasonable cares about male bodies beating the fuck out of a woman's in a physical competition. I think we need to protect the facts of sexual dimorphism, know the numbers behind exceptionally rare intersex conditions and what that constitutes, and be of the general constitution of taking claims seriously, investigating them with evidence, and opening debate in service to policy.

Is it actually a good thing to build into a curriculum for kindergarteners to entertain the idea that they're trans? It seems not. It doesn't "feel" wrong or right to me, the evidence suggests children are dumb and confused. That's what it is to be a child before we even introduce longitudinal studies, which exist, and we could talk about, if we actually gave a fuck about raising healthy children. Is it actually a good thing to erase the differences between the sexes? The evidence suggests there's a catastrophic impact socially, psychologically, and disproportionately bad compared to any given individual who wishes to insist they are different than how they were born.

Doubt shouldn't be a death sentence. Questions are not harm. Doubt and questions are not hatred, erasure, denial, or evidence of some immutable destructive power complex.

I was absolutely fascinated the day I got railroaded by 15 people on facebook under a former friend's post. She talked about binding her chest and I think was entertaining non-binary? I was already sympathetic and on the crowd's side, but all that was on offer was incoherent hatred. The attempt at a conversation wasn't about her as it was some spin-off related to hormone blockers or something. I was a transphobe, ignorant, impatient, unwilling; anything but a sentiment that was trying, engaging, or sharing the evidence of what was forming my view. I literally hooked up with the friend in question, but somehow I'm "afraid," but my dick wasn't? I "hate" her for being uncomfortable with her femininity or sexuality? I'm antagonistic or evil by referring to her as "her" when I have no clue what she may or may not wish to be called today having not interacted for pushing a decade?

I fought pretty much everyone I could find about religion versus science for 4 years of my life. I read every book. I watched hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of debates, lectures, and panels. I was as detailed and evidence-based as you could get about the 30-odd things tangential to "the debate" the New Atheists kicked off. That shit was my world. I persuaded no one. Evidence mattered to me, not to the faithful. "Evidence" was merely a fungible concept to them, not the preponderance of probable reality. They were not foundationally situated to hear me, nor was I aware of the nature of the game I was really trying to play.

The same rules apply in counseling. I persuade no one. I'm speaking a different language. I'm trying to get them to turn the insights of evidence into their own working practice. You don't know the same things I do because you're not practicing the same things I am. I say sometimes there's a difference between knowing something "intellectually" and knowing it "in your bones." It's the difference between physically working to create something, and telling yourself "Oh yeah, I could do that." You almost certainly can't, not as you are now, but the hours, weeks, or years it takes to get there, what you could do starts to manifest in reality. What "I can really play" manifests frustratingly as a direct proportion to how often I'm practicing my guitar.

You can get to a place where you're not as emotionally reactive and self-justifying. You can read that and profess to be a certain way, but I guarantee there's a large majority of people who read the names Kyle Rittenhouse or J.K. Rowling and have been running their prepared-for-them speech the entire time they've not-read everything else here. The reaction is dictating, not reason, not curiosity. You know how I know? Because I still feel a certain kind of way talking about Rittenhouse. I've never held animosity towards Rowling, as I found it self-evident that women need their own space free from dicks.

I've got some broad rules. The name-callers are wrong. I say this as an incredibly inventive shit-talker. If your "side" is stuck on labeling someone, and cannot be moved to offer data, reason, patience, or listen to a divergent point of view, you're just wrong. I'm someone who calls his state senator a Nazi every few days. My state senator wrote a letter saying he wouldn't certify the election. If tomorrow he sponsors a bill that raises the minimum wage to $30 an hour, I'll tell you my nazi senator has a great grasp of faux predatory inflation and the needs of his broke-ass constituents. I'd call him a Nazi to his face, and give him credit where it's due.

The silencers are wrong. There is no "platform." You have a voice. "Crazy" people have a voice. You're crazy about something. If you're uninterested in learning how to identify and incorporate what makes you or them crazy, you're wrong. If you can't talk and articulate, or more likely just refuse to be bothered, you are wrong. You hurt the project of long-term societal sustainability and undermine whatever underlying liberal ideals that keep you comfortable.

Boghossian does a series where he breaks down NPR segments. It's been widely acclaimed by people, also weird, but like me, who genuinely want to learn and do better. If you don't have it in you to be perpetually swayed by what's popular or normal, when you hear endless reams of propaganda or unscientific superficial takes, it frustrates and bores you. I think we're so unsophisticated and dishonest, we think the Candace Owens' and Ann Coulters' of the world are fundamentally different in their instantiated absurd propensities to dodge and obscure a subject while professing their independent or critical thinking capacity. Crazy fucks make shit up and don't hear words for what they actually mean. Why would you ever want to emulate them?

Your god forbid you ever read a blog of mine echoing fear for fear's sake. Pretending there aren't people doing the work compiling the data on whatever the subject might be. I entertain the idea indefinitely that I'm wrong. I want to be less wrong. Why don't you? I want to be articulate. I want to have a real shot at accomplishing the things I profess to care about. I want us all to feel more understood, capable, and alive in what connects us. That cannot happen if you "disagree with biology" or "those aren't MY numbers," or you "don't feel that comports with your experience." Ok. Well. Your experience, like my experience, is infinitely small, corrupt, and comprised of seemingly contradictory forces. I'm willing to ask if my feelings make sense. Why aren't you?

I used to believe in the Southern Poverty Law Center statistics. I would previously have said of course you can trust The American Academy of Pediatrics. I would say listen to NPR or VICE. It's not "merely inconvenient" about who does crimes, in what neighborhoods, and why people die. You're allowed to worry about wildly divergent cultures poorly integrating into yours. You're allowed to believe you're the superhero of your own life with your weapons and grudge against authority and state influence. You're obligated to suspend every reactionary posture in service to another question. You're obligated to maintain a certain level of integrity in the face of any claim. Go on, simply disagree with that and scream at me. Let's keep getting exactly what we deserve.

[1123] Be All End All

I don't know what it means to accept something unless it's being put to work.

I'm not above getting into an internet pissing match. Most often, it's going to be about a TV show, or who is a literally-defined fascist with a stranger. In the past, I've lost "friends" arguing about religion, trans stuff, sexual assault, or pretty much any topic where there's a cultural wave of bullied undue confidence that the conversation is settled and "everyone knows" how you should or shouldn't respond. If I were emotionally invested, I know the 3 "friends" right now who would be happy to never speak to me again if I brought my concerns related to Israel/Hamas to their memes and shares.

I believe in conversation and argumentation. I believe in debate. I believe in freely exchanging ideas in a way that doesn't see you silenced, ignored, or shunned. I believe it so much that I've functionally alienated everyone who might, but only in theory, profess to believe in the same things, until it gets real. They don't want to work to defend their position or get more articulate. They want to feel correct. They want their definitions of words to hold without scrutiny. They want to be validated by the tribe who can't be bothered to think any deeper about the topic than they care to, and not suffer the fate that I've chosen.

The breakdown happens the same way regardless of what you're talking about. I've been going on several 3 or more hours-long drives over the last few days consuming over a dozen Peter Boghossian interviews and street epistemologies. His experience appears to be precisely mine, whether he's discussing abortion, trans, academia, cultural statistics, or anything that we've been insisted upon to stay quiet about because of the "harm" that's allegedly caused by even talking. The concept of "woke" gets put through its paces to see how it manifests and the real consequences of following the logic through, once you've actually defined and boxed in what you even mean by "woke."

We can make it easier, maybe, by thinking about a TV show, like Star Trek, which kicked off my desire to write. A few weeks ago I responded to someone criticizing Discovery for "not being Star Trek" and I asked them what they meant. I ask them, and probably a dozen other people because "this isn't Star Trek" is the most ubiquitous "criticism" I see when I read posts unhappy with any given Star Trek series. He responded, and then I responded, point by point raised.

It took only 3 responses for the breakdown to happen. No longer was he entertaining my answer or evidence as a response to something he specifically said. If I tried to refute that updated camera work "wasn't Star Trek," well now he introduces a point about the way the Klingons look. That's not what we were talking about, but it feels like it to him. Something changed about a look he didn't like, so it's fair game to bring up whenever it feels appropriate. He instinctively doesn't want to acknowledge or simply disagree that unless you shoot modern shows the same way you shot shows in the past, you're missing part of the heartbeat of Star Trek.

It doesn't have to be "serious" or a "hard" point. But the same move is made. It's pretending there is no potential for a shared truth, definition, or understanding and insisting in iterative ways that your feelings can cohere more than you're willing to work to reasonably justify or translate.

He argued Star Trek doesn't have "a main character." I told him Picard exists as its own series. He told me he hasn't seen and won't even watch Picard. He doesn't need to for the point I'm making, right? Some characters are certainly more "main" than others, and you can perhaps arrive at what constitutes that main-ness. But that's not his goal. His goal is to vibe on hate for Michael in Discovery. When she's featured, too prominently for his tastes, therefore "Star Trek doesn't have a main character."

The thing you need to accept is that you, not only can be wrong, but are infinitely wrong about everything. You're missing details and subtlety. You're missing an appreciation for the stress and work of incorporating difficult and conflicting pieces into your worldview. In developing my land/space, it started more idyllic and hopeful. Until you spend the day digging up saplings, dealing with heat exhaustion, and improvising tools you can't afford yet, a desire to move "off-grid" doesn't really translate. What I had to accept about my ideas was that they were going to take a whole hell of a lot more time, work, and help than I had, nor ever have, in any given moment. But then I get to work anyway.

If you're going to be understood or taken seriously, the same rules are going to apply. There's someone with the power and resources who is making an incoherent point that feels right. You're not going to logic them into submission. You're going to have to build your own resolve and asymmetric approach. You're going to have to work in ways you didn't realize were going to take so long or so much effort and sacrifice.

My Star Trek guy doesn't speak my language, and my "goal" is not to persuade him. My goal was to try and understand if there was serious concern/criticism about what constitutes "Star Trek" altogether. As with most things, again, the answer is "no" to "not even fucking close." We start with radical, in their selfish minutia, opinions. We recoil and lash out when they can be shown as paper thin.

[1121] The Friendly Ghost

Today feels like a day that could be described as "crazy-making."

Am I sick, hurt, or otherwise dramatically impaired? No. There's been a theme and a confluence of forces though. Let's go.

This week, literally everyone has canceled on me. For work, for fun, for things I was anticipating to use to feel useful and good. I spend pretty much all of my time alone, talking to no one, blazing through TV, playing my instruments, reading, or getting myself into some trouble playing with something I shouldn't because I can't stand feeling idle and useless anymore.

I lay this at no one's feet. I could, theoretically more than practically, invest a considerable amount of time attempting to connect to other people, organizations, or things to do so I don't feel as reliant upon others and their consistency or capacity to manage. And, in fact, that's what I've done in getting started with CASA, and hopefully seeing that spin-off into more first-hand interactions with clients, other volunteers, and the inevitable messes that will bring.

First, one of my attempted hires to fundraise ignores my outreach. I thought she was on the verge of stealing $1,200, tracked her down, got a brief invitation to her life's blow-up, and she's since refunded $500, on what she's proposed is a schedule to refund the whole on her paydays. In the meantime, I patiently idle and refrain from catastrophizing her silence, and now 6th missed scheduled discussion, and who knows how many ignored texts.

Ok. I got an early text that client 1's phone is broken and needs to be rescheduled. I attempt to call client 2 around our meeting time, no response. I text if they are okay. I get a "Not at all, can we talk later today?" I text later in the day, no response. That whole day was designed around another person supposed to come out and talk about plans to upgrade my space. They had other life complications with family illness to deal with, so the project lingers.

I'm left with more idle time. We need to be incredibly clear that whatever I feel about that time, it's not being laid at the feet of "everyone" or anyone I refer to. I do not blame a single person ever for focusing on their sick loved ones or deprioritizing whatever we had planned.

I proceed to go about my days. I go to the symphony for the live music playing of Star Wars as the movie runs. An entire section of kids talked, crinkled pop cans, and just generally made it about them for the entire film. No usher told them to shut up. No seething patron closer to them said anything. They just took what could have been a pretty straightforward enjoyable experience, and my inability to mute them turns them into a few aggrieved lines in another bitching blog.

Before the show, I walked around the continues-to-be-miserable city a bit. There's "cowboy" bars with country music that mostly surround the symphony. There's healthy servings of homeless people ranging from decently aggressively shouting to sleeping in places it's hard to tell if they've closed early or closed permanently. At one point, I'm almost certain a dude was following me. I'm in a "major" city, wandering, feeling isolated and arbitrary, and oh, look, there was also a pro-Palestine protest on the circle where they're screaming an anti-semitic chant and parroting empty party lines.

On the ride to the city, I was listening to some of Peter Boghossian's videos. He's known for setting up hot-button questions and agree/disagree lines he asks people to stand on and defend their position. He's, in a world that made sense, simply trying to remind people that we're here to engage ideas and should have a remote sense of what we're talking about or what might change our minds. Overwhelmingly, the people who brave his exercises are not that articulate, nor claim they can be moved, at least in the moment.

I'm now back home, where a comment I wrote on, arguably one of the worst places on the internet, reddit, was removed because I described getting into a "pissing match" in a comment to another person who was asking for feedback on what people might want in a new TV-related website. The term, in and of itself, I was told is the #1 rule that's not allowed and the person wrote "p - - - ing" like that as though it's particularly aggressive language or like I said, "I'll piss in your face, cunt!"

It just echoes that ideological capture and perverse power dynamics that I feel plague pretty much every level of my experience.

I know, as much as I know anything, that no one holding a sign on that boring and sad circle is persuadable. I know that no elderly usher at the symphony feels they are obligated and empowered to insist and correct inappropriate behavior. I know those who are eager to belong, be it through their status as a victim or the oppressed, are going to die on a hill that transcends parody when mocked up against real life. I know that my clients who cancel have a vastly different concept of "get better" than I do. I know the "innocent enough" obligations and life circumstances that relegate time someone might spend with me to be practically incidental.

I also know that I feel that I need to escape this overwhelming belief that I can't trust or look forward to things. It's a feeling that stifles my capacity to invest both in myself and in what I can only speculate others get to feel for what's captured them. I don't believe it's worth it, whatever "it" might be, that I'm going to plan, try, or work on for more than a day or so. It's a hollowness that haunts whatever I might do to prepare, or when I stifle one thing and rearrange another, trying to be there and be present and not suck you into this ever-hollowing sense. I can't fill it with the manufactured drama and concern that appears to fuel so much of other people's experience.

Whatever I do or think I can create, I can't erase the context I'm working within. The world's best talker in a country where they don't speak the language is flirting with homelessness and starvation. The shared values and understanding that comes with an ongoing relationship or dynamic of cultural expressions and sets of experiences I just don't really have. It's not "never," but is 6-10 times a year I might get to spend time with my dad or a friend doing something fun count as the kind of fabric I'm trying to weave?

I'm like a ghost. I feel like I just kind of haunt things or memories. You have to think, I'm drawing on my experience of the last decade. It's not just been a particularly lonely or disappointing week or something. This week was just the same record blasted about as loud as I can take. But also, I clearly don't know how to "fix" it. I don't really believe it's a thing I can fix because my efforts to do so only seem to teach me ever-nuanced ways in which the problem compounds and reinforces itself.

You can't afford it? I'll pay. That doesn't matter, it wasn't about being able to afford it. You don't have the time? I'll come to you, work around your schedule. That doesn't matter, it wasn't about not having time. It doesn't interest you? I'll do whatever you want to do, I'm open and amenable like that. That doesn't matter, it wasn't about their lack of interest. When you're feeling good and fun and free, I'm not the one on your mind to call or invite. You were desperately waiting for that window so you could "catch up" on the "fun" you're otherwise indefinitely denied. Every moment where you can feel remotely human or "free" is not one you're trying to interject a bunch of Nick P.-ness into.

There is no striking-up conversations with strangers and informal friends anymore. Maybe that's just a problem with me? Feels bigger, but I don't know. My "best friend" I gave my terms to and they still haven't been met, so I'm not lending myself to get back into his spin. My business partner, who I also see maybe once every 3 or so months, has been barreling towards a crash for probably over a year at this point, refuses to slow down or establish better boundaries or utilize me in any way but to - very maybe - decompress an inch when he bitches about something? I have to tell clients all the time there's a difference between indefinitely complaining and still being a ball of stress and actually coping and incorporating whatever it is that's getting at you and changing your behavior.

I have another friend I see maybe once every 2 or 3 months whose dad might be dying, and she has her own health issues, so it's like where would I get off thinking we should bowl more often? lol I don't know, it's this weird thing where you're invited to pit your desire to feel like you belong or have a friendship against their given tragedy or circumstances. It feels like it would be infinitely unwise and unfair to "blame" as though they're any less stuck within their contexts than you are, but you happen to be the loudest example of anyone you know on how to defy circumstances and work towards what you might actually want and need.

Blame language is overwhelmingly a move to adopt nonsense framing, but emotionally, you're like, am I just supposed to kinda glide through the air until I happen to crash into you? To be extra clear, this feels like an existential thing with everyone to some degree or another. I do not get the sense there's any remotely deliberate care and focus to cultivate and protect a mutually beneficial dynamic. It's like every hangout is getting away with murder or their mind is physically unable to be present because it's been captured by the superficially "chosen" drama.

I mean it in a more damming way than that, which implicates this litany of sick family members. I think we're also gluttonous. When you're not choosing the drama, you're feeding on the familiar sensibilities of your relationship to it. Aren't you needed? Doesn't that maybe scratch the itch that I'm taking 9,000 words to articulate? I'd like to feel useful and needed and like a "good boy" for doing what I'm supposed to by way of expressed care. I don't. No matter how much people tell me I help or what I say makes sense, it does nothing for me, and I don't think a single person has even tried to articulate to me they understand why.

It's pretty easy to disregard everything you're not doing to gain control or a sense of personal responsibility and agency by attending to everyone else. There's also the unyielding irony where I'm witness to what appears to be people who will go to the ends of the earth for especially the ones who don't deserve or can't truly receive what's being offered. Almost like each party knows what's on offer isn't made of what either of them needs, but this perverse Munchausien bargain is struck. What kind of massive deserves-to-be-alienated cunt would try to turn your lovingly devoted heart into the problem!? You're right, I see it now why no one wants to hang out lol.

[976] Taut

While this kicks off after an inspiring Peter Boghossian video, the topic is more to do with “tension.” I haven’t been able to get to my rolfing appointments during this “training” period and have noticed some jaw clenching. I’ve had a few tenuously suggestive emails whispering towards later strife. As I continue to run with “the environment shapes us” as the prominent beat of my thoughts, I notice the tension that acts on the psychological construct.

 

I hear it from prominent writers and famous people who often say they don’t wish to even brush against “trans” issues. They anticipate a backlash. They know they’re going to get labeled a “transphobe” regardless of what they say or how they feel. The power of the radical vocal minority is just as vicious from the faux-Left as it is the Nazi-right. There’s a “cultural tension” around whether or not “we” as a “society” are able to put prejudices and “systemic injustice” aside, and “progress” in our conception of each other’s identities.

 

Lately, myself and others, have been plagued by the tension carried in their bodies. Most people, according to my rolf guy, carry it in their shoulders, neck, and upper back. This suggests to me it’s concentrated as a result of thoughts physically manifesting around where you think. Maybe you scrunch your face when you concentrate or recede into your seat after defeat, folding your posture to stress your neck. Somewhere, you’ve probably got knots or spots that need attention because your stress didn’t hold as an intellectual abstraction.

 

I’m winding up into my new job. Twice, I’ve gotten emails that carried the tension of, “Can you read between the lines?” It’s subtle, polite, reminders that I’m not “free,” and that if I keep up too long or push too hard with using my “reasoning” to try and not suffer or conform, things will surely escalate. This week, I have literally nothing to be done in person at the office an hour and a half away. I email last night asking if there’s anything in-office that needs to be done, and if not, I’d appreciate not adding to my gas bill for no reason. I didn’t get back “That makes sense, just stay home.” I got back, “As a hybrid counselor you will be expected to spend half your time at home and half in the office yada yada…., but for this week you can go ahead and stay home.”

 

Do I know my role and responsibilities? For the most part, yes. Do you remind people what those are when you’re agreeing after you’ve heard and understand them? To me, no. But that “professional tension” is used to keep yourself corralled in as much as the people you’re attempting to supervise. You can’t talk plainly about oversights about how to respect time or…? I think your body reminds you the tension is going to manifest somewhere regardless. I think the frothier the fearful ideologue gets the more you see negative implications and other physical indications of how much stress and tension there really is.

 

Like most kids who grew up with an abusive parent, I’m someone who is too-attuned to that tension. Shifts in body-language, tone, or how you put the key in the front door were things I learned how to react to at a subconscious level. It’s part of why I’m generally an effective communicator today. I can get yelled at, cussed at, talk about your dead kid (like I literally did 2 nights ago) and you’ll find yourself drawn in, comforted, and like I’m on your side. And, I am. I feel it too. Maybe not the extent of the sorrow or the anger, but my fight or flight is working, and I’m pairing it with different behaviors.

 

Unfortunately, most people don’t want to lean into the tension. Their body is signaling that they are going to get hurt, ostracized, or otherwise embarrassed and humiliated if they even allude to the “wrong” opinion or attitude about something. I think this speaks to why people adopt caricatured versions of themselves. If you’re a “mean girl” or a “cowboy” or an “uber-fan” of something, you side-step the internal analysis and opt for the reshuffling of qualifiers of your worth. You can stay at a shitty job with the right awards or summary comparisons. Those so quick to the “You’re phobic!” accusations are utterly terrified of being contradicted or losing how they orient and identify themselves. I keep finding the irony to tell the underlying story.

 

The imposition of this tension is what I have come to routinely malign as the wrong form of selfish manipulation. You don’t want to talk about something? Scream it out of existence! You don’t want to own your complicity? Deny, deny, deny, and then put all of your energy to imposing your denial into controlling those who don’t believe you. We’re still seriously having to deal with fascism with ever-elevating lies rooted in election-denial. I don’t think it’s a coincidence this coincides with attacks on women’s autonomy or civil rights. The more you’re radicalized, the more “we” are. You know what you need to shape institutions or build a stable society? Radical patience and a deep understanding of how power flows.

 

Whether your family expects you to act a certain way, “society” or your “institution” and its rules are overbearing, or you’ve conjured up a wholly pathological set of expectations and standards for yourself, it’s seemingly always the tension doing the work. I think this is how you bolster the argument against “free will” as it’s colloquially understood. Your biological imperative overriding common sense about your budget or sense of commitment. Your history and culture impressing upon you certain spiritual or financial obligations. Your fledgling conception of yourself keeping you rooted in familiar social or intellectual patterns.

 

I acknowledge how tense I am by default. It starts there. I’m not actually “not thinking” about the things that piss me off or the many futures I might occupy. I can’t “just believe” things are going to go a different direction than the evidence suggests to me. I can’t create more tension of self-denial on top of what’s already on offer. In pointing out the discrepancies and nuances, I tend to feel better or capable of recognizing my capacity and responsibility to move through it. How many of you have shared anything related to trans issues, race, “rape-culture,” wages, fascism or otherwise that hasn’t been in meme form? Are you thinking about things? Do you care?

 

You just know, like I know, that even world-renown scholars on any of these topics will get ushered off college campuses and questioned for their motives. It doesn’t feel worth it. But, somehow, it feels worth it to embody the stress of not methodically dealing with complicated things. Maybe because it’s familiar, it’s the default, and it only kills you slowly until it kills you all at once.

[967] Love Me Knot

Maybe just consider this a first draft of the many things I was thinking about on the drive home.

My last day at the prison was on Friday. I left early. Almost no one showed up for my last two classes. I considered it another marker on the “people don’t care about you as much as what you can do for them” score card. I don’t say that to suggest I wanted or needed people to show up or lavish praise and attention. I say it to speak to the incongruent nature of what people profess and how they behave. Most, if not all, of the counselors have cancelled classes for good and bad reasons, often without notice or at the last minute. This led to the quick, “They don’t care about us” sentiment you hear often. Me? Never missed a class, never cancelled a class. Did you show up? No. Especially not when it might’ve mattered in a different way. Shout out to Boaty.

I left the job because I got another lined up. Unbeknownst to me, I can’t start for a month given their training and HR schedules. What did I do next? Volunteer myself for shifts at the place my buddy is working. I still need money, right? I’m still in debt. So, do whatever is available to get it. This is my automatic response. I don’t think, “I have a month off, I can get caught up on so many TV shows.” I didn’t think about things I could do around the house to organize or pretty up the space. I didn’t think about playing my guitar in a more dedicated way. I said, “Get back to work.”

Then, I find myself in a text exchange with my newest friend. She speaks regularly to her desire to “play.” That’s her vibe, desire, and drive. The idea that she would get straight back to work elicits a “Ha! I’d be enjoying my time off!” Different strokes, perhaps, but also resounding as a decent point. I don’t *have* to be anywhere. I could organize this time around a certain kind of play or fun. I could just relax. Is that precisely what I want to do? Not really.

When I started to entertain the idea of not just going back into some job environment, I discovered the energy for more grounded thoughts about the logistics of building more of my fence. I came home and, in spite of being pretty freakin tired, I organized a few things, showered, and started typing this. I made lists of things to buy and calculate. I thought about how lucky I might be to have an uninterrupted week to collect more pallets. You know, I am falling asleep as I type this. I’m gonna try to pick it back up in the morning.

---

In this precise moment, I’ve got perhaps a dozen of things to do that don’t involve “regular job” kind of work. I need to wash blankets, buy groceries, weed whack, check my roof for a leak, get more pallets, organize clothes, do dishes….but that’s the thing. Once you start listing the things, they start to look like a list that can be more or less accomplished in a day. Whatever can’t, starts turning into project that needs budgeted and prioritized. Pallets are gonna be gas money and hopefully a healthy truck and trailer throughout. Same rules if I start plotting my fence continuation, but add nails and a trip to pick up my air compressor.

I also understand the work I give myself with these projects falls considerably more in the “want” than “have to” category. That then bumps into how much I “want” to add more debt or court injury or sweat to death. I have to note that the landscape I’m working within has changed. I didn’t used to get opinions from neighbors about what I was doing. Will my effort be met with more bullshit or the county telling me I’ve crossed a line and need to tear things down?

Or what if we think about the out-patient clinic? Why not spend this entire time networking? Why not go out and make introductions and get what I want, even if it’s exasperated by all of the dead ends? We still have this disability paperwork to fill out, which I know is stressing out Hussain who’s concurrently working two jobs and needs to start on his paper for his doctorate. Shouldn’t I buckle down today and see about getting that 50-page document wrapped up?

I just feel generally tired. I’m exhausted by the idea of sitting around and watching TV. I don’t have the get-up-and-go mode engaged to approach anything I’ve mentioned.

--

I let myself sleep a few more hours. The dishes are done, things moved and organized around my house, and I found one pair of my shorts. I’ve only managed to eat dark chocolate freeze dried raspberries, and I’m listening through a “meh” list of artists from an Altpress article. My thoughts swung to the idea of “learned helplessness.”

I think one of the biggest things I hate about people is a lack of desire to improve or change. When I think about how little ill-will or anger I hold towards most people, I have to wonder how I consistently garner the kind of resentment, suspicion, or silence that I do (as though their contingent). I think some of these thoughts were prompted after watching Peter Boghossian get into an all-too-familiar altercation with social worker students in Portland.

Peter set up a Socratic thought experiment outside of the social work building. He started getting yelled at and told to “fuck off” from people on the roof. They read his sign with the proposition that “there are only two genders.” They gathered around eventually to all-but berate him into silence. They didn’t ask or care about the exercise he was doing. They reiterated over and over and over again about the “harm” of posing or asking questions and how they might be perceived. Mind you, they never said “misunderstood,” the only thing that mattered was the perception of those who were so distraught they had to go home verses look at a sign.

The kid my buddy is fostering has a kind of learned helplessness. He can find all the intention in the world to hang out with friends or locate and smoke his weed, but when groceries need bought, he’ll idly wait and make comments like, “Bro, we need food.” Yeah, get in the car and go get some, you ain’t got a job and you’ve been given the money. He’s certainly experienced a litany of traumas throughout his life and grew up generally impoverished. He has something of an excuse, though it is dwindling rapidly.

If you’re attending a university and have the capacity to pass your classes, you have the privilege and obligation to figure out how to fucking talk and listen to people. The irony that these people are going into “social work” is not lost on me. Do they know what people even are if a sign is going to send them home in tremors and tears? A sign and thought experiment, mind you, employed by a literal scholar and philosopher who is as much fodder for indiscriminate ridicule and dismissal as the “white” caricature they employ for all of its insisted upon derogatory connotation.

Literally one person who’s behaved like the students in the video I’ve watched has apologized to me. One. Kristen’s the only one who it dawned on her that berating, assuming, and swimming in shitty rumor mills isn’t, like, friendly or respectful or appropriate. Allie literally ripped off part of my house lol. I can read old emails where I’m constantly apologizing for being impatient or misunderstanding or picking the wrong words. People in my life? I’m the enemy to be isolated until death it seems. The cunty addict I worked with? Bet the thought doesn’t even occur to her that reading someone’s open sharing as “fuck you” is incredibly insensitive and shitty. But it can just sit there as a reason to not engage with each other indefinitely. You think my mom has ever apologized for being a psycho lol? You think the cunts at DCS have wiped the smug off their lips as they target the best employees or families?

I’m a big believer in not apologizing if you don’t feel it. I rarely if ever felt it growing up. I, most often, didn’t even realize what I had done wrong because, again my mom is a psycho. Or, I felt shitty, wanted you to feel shitty, and said whatever I said and meant it. Why add insult to injury by offering a lie? If I extend that rationale to the people who’ve been shitty to me, here’s my standing problem. You don’t even recognize the nature of how fucked you are, and you don’t care to learn, and you won’t improve no matter the consequences. There’s no apology coming because you’ve done nothing wrong.

Say I believe some of my clients and their capacity for growth and change. What world are they plugged into? One in which I can as easily discuss the improvements I’ve witnessed in their behavior and capacity for exploration and accountability, but also can’t be bothered to own when it screams at you for no reason, breaks your shit, or blocks your ability to do something worthwhile. “No one cares about us” starts to ring true. The reasons for staying selfish and sober for your own reasons gets incredibly obvious.

Once I figure out that I’m just tired or hungry as reasons I’m not up and about, the mess of existing among so many cunts creeps in. The question isn’t whether I want to work or not. The question is whether I’m resolved to beating myself stupid against the bricks of intransigence, ignorance, and indifference. Do I want the thoughts of how isolating my project is to toy with me, or can I situate them front and center and get on with it?