[1141] Shadow Band

There’s been a decent shift in my energy and disposition since I’ve started applying and moving in the direction of returning to work a “normal” job. My sleep schedule has gone all over the place. I’m finding it harder to focus. Broadly, “adrift” and “pensive” have me in a hole of speculation about how to conduct the next few months of my life.

At the same time, I’m still attempting to consume all of media, so it’s a continuous string of podcasts, music, and TV shows. 99% of approximately 95% of my days are spent in self-reflection/conversation with those. I have a couple people I text each day. Fleetingly, I talk to someone who operates in some professional capacity. If you’re curious, 14.4 minutes is 1% of a day. I don’t spend 14.4 minutes speaking to anyone most days nor 14.4 minutes speaking out loud to nearly anyone most days.

I get this impression, pretty often, that even when a conversation is breached, there’s an insistence to “wrap it up.” I speculate it’s because there’s an underlying fear that things will get “awkward” or someone might get the wrong impression that you, I don’t know, might become too friendly? It’s not that there aren’t the natural talkers and “everyone’s friend” types that you can run into, but it feels very accidental when that happens.

Anyway, I suppose that felt relevant to bring up when I think about the large amount of information I glean from these nerds and their podcasts. I’m struck by how often a theme emerges. We just fundamentally talk past each other.

It’s weird to me because the dance of a conversation suggests there’s a shared space or reality. But the closer you listen, or if you do so at an “overwhelm yourself” kind of rate, you realize each player is kind of doing their own thing and more or less looking for validation. I pause every time I hear someone say, “I think that’s exactly right.” Do they? Do they dozens of times throughout a conversation on whatever the topic freely flowed into?

The same thing happens when you get people on different “sides.” A Conversations with Coleman episode really highlighted this for me. Coleman strikes me as an autistic-type. He wants the facts, details, history, data, etc. and will sincerely try to explore a topic in good faith. He’s willing to entertain mouthpieces for nonsense in the spirit of actively mitigating the development of his own idea echo chamber. It’s a laudable goal, but it’s his and his alone, and the strategy for achieving it feels fundamentally flawed by inviting characters in who don’t so much care about Coleman’s ability to reach truer truths. They care about being seen as legitimate by eliciting any exchange from people like Coleman.

I think a lot about what Michael Shermer points out with regard to smart people being able to construct these extremely compelling and convoluted ways to believe dumb shit. I think people like Elon Musk and Bret Weinstein are poster children for this complex or propensity. The deeply unwise thing to do is presume that just because you’re good or accomplished at one or a few particular things, it automatically translates into broader license for drawing conclusions. Fuck, add Jordan Peterson to that poster.

I don’t think I’m getting “smarter” in my hours of listening to nerd people. Whether they criticize books, describe history, or dig into the weeds of ideological and political projects, they’re all seemingly being driven by a similar pretense. Their particular lens is worthy of your Substack subscription. Their particular insight is novel in how it compiles and describes the subject. Their experience of “this historical moment” is capable and “helpful” in getting a handle on…certainly not what we should do…but maybe we’ve laid the foundation for our next intellectual foray calling out for scrutiny and contextualization.

I’m getting this sensibility that’s empathizing with people who know absolutely nothing about politics, history, or pretty much why anything happens anywhere, and don’t feel obligated to try.

This is in conflict with my baseline disposition that, of course, sought out all of these nerds and subscribed and has been listening to for dozens if not hundreds of episodes each. But when I engage in my Coleman-esc sincere effort to not sound like a fucking moron, who am I sharing it with? My dad and 2 or 3 friends extremely occasionally? I’m not converting my time and energy spent into an infinitely regressing meta-analysis in search of my own following and Better Help sponsorship. I’m not writing digressions like these for official publication. I’m not galvanizing democratic support and solidarity to push new better-informed policy agendas. What’s going on?

My mind jumps into thinking about social media influencers, particularly the pretty ones. You can get millions of people to look at you every day by just putting your hot self on display in different outfits at regular intervals. You can be dumb. You can be naive. You can be vapid and very much a product of your carefully maintained bubble. But guess what breaks through? You’re fucking hot, and eyes equal money. It makes me think of McDonald’s. They aren’t advertising to you, they’re normalizing the very essence and idea of Mcdonald’s as food.

So, today, it’s normal to have strange hot people you scroll through with regularity. It’s normal to engage in “debate,” as though the exchange is at all concerned with what debate actually entails, or that it could be considered an exchange altogether. “Binge” became something of a badge of honor. Ceaseless professing of values and virtue signalling stepped in for civic engagement and meaningful sacrifice.

I’m also struck by how much I don’t really see a “fix,” to what I’m experiencing. You set yourself up for a trap if you conceive of something as a “problem,” more than a simple state of things or small description from your perspective. Say I want to “be more social,” so I’ve attended adult game evenings or been to hundreds of concerts and comedy shows. Do you make friends there? The performance is still ongoing. Volleyball is 35 random lonely dudes, 5 married girls, and dispositions possibly less adept at handling being alone. Softball was people seemingly seconds from changing the rules to allow drinking and smoking on the field.

Are these cunty ignorant observations of someone unwilling to even try? Maybe 5%, but they’re not inaccurate nor coming from a place of disgust or hatred. Add to the mix that I know I’m an aberrant personality who routinely and immediately turns people off to entertaining what I might have to say or joke about. Where’s “my people?”

I’ve never been good at finding a home with a group based on superficial qualifiers. I don’t feel “Serbian” despite my last name being a literal Serbian word for smoked meat. I don’t find solidarity in adopting sky-daddy ideas. I’m technically a Cubs, Bears, and Bulls fan and couldn’t tell you a single player on any team nor when they’re playing next. I’ve watched thousands of hours of “okay” television voluntarily before I’ve made myself look at a game at a bar for longer than 5 seconds. I can’t put together what they’re doing has anything to do with me. My sense of fulfillment and identity isn’t a function of group-think or proxy pride.

Different sports teams I’ve attempted to join as an adult started to drift. The ultimate Frisbee guys wanted to start taking the fun games we were playing to more “professional” levels. The dodge-ball crowd drifted to disorganized chaos. I’d also now have a built in 1.5 hour round-trip drive to most anything I might try to join, and I don’t get enough emotional or physical gratification in exchange for the gas and impending car issues to bother with a sincere pursuit or commitment.

“Disassociation” is a word coming to mind. None of it means anything. It’s all to fill the air and kill time. Whether I get fit or fat, I’ll be mostly alone to do whatever it is I’m doing any given day. Whether I know every sordid detail about Israel, Palestine, Ukraine, or Russia, or never even whisper their names again, I’m not going to speak on those subjects and “move the needle” on entrenched belief heuristics about power and identity. Even on the pages of my “friends,” facebook isn’t going to show you my thoughts and work to stay sane. It’s not a happy picture or doesn’t match your algorithm preferences. This, if it wasn’t for me, would be one more in an ironic fruitless exercise to toss more into the void.

I’ve dug myself such an isolated hole on social media, that even when I share work I do home renovating, my pets, the concerts with the artists tagged, or anything that you’d think would play the “look at me and how happy cool I am!” game of social media, I have literally never gotten more than 5 likes for any reason. The spam bots barely even fuck with me. I’m like not even part of a fucking hashtag community? I watch people get 30 likes for asking what to make for dinner.

I find these feelings, or lack thereof, especially curious because I have non-trivial and non-superficial friendships and family dynamics. They’re in no way the majority of my daily life. They play an outsized role in orienting how and why I think about how my time is spent. A perfect fool would read any part of this as some form of indictment about them or my inability to appreciate and celebrate “enough.”

But then, isn’t it the case for almost everyone to consider their family and friends non-trivial and non-superficial? Isn’t that the way we perpetuate horribly toxic and stressful family dynamics because they’ve been our Mcdonald’s for the whole of our lives and species’ evolutionary history? Our fruitless exchanges and familiar roles providing a comforting feedback loop in their predictable flavor. Do we ever get “enough” of whatever we believe we’re getting from our families?

So much of the make-up of your mind is there for you perfectly independent of whether you have the awareness or intention about it. As you grow more aware and make more decisions, it feels like an invitation to the kind of alienation I feel like I’m describing incredibly terribly from bizarre or seemingly arbitrary angles. My mind returns to my “Older woman who’s been 3 times divorced or had spouses die, has enough money, a long braid or butch cut, hiking boots, a glint in her smile, and knows what she wants by now.” Is she ever rolling 20-deep? She doesn’t need the noise or errant opinions about where to go next.

I don’t socialize like a woman. I haven’t had a vastly fulfilling professional or relationship dynamic for so long that it’s time to rest on my laurels and indulge. I’m not soliciting unwanted attention indefinitely. I’m not seeking solidarity with niche groups, co-opting a fetish or hobby in lieu of an identity. I’m also, if you can believe it, not attempting to hold people to some high pretentious standard of engagement or expectations, particularly when I’m just roaming about the world. I just don’t fit, and I never have, and I see no path to a place where I might.

I’ve been in “desperately maintain” or “work exhaustively for forlorn dream” or “see how much I can get away with before it breaks” modes my entire adult life. The attempts to build things with people are, sometimes weirdly violently, rebuked. My attempts to build competing or parallel ways are wrought with complications. If I “pull out” too far I get stuck in abstract write-forever space and eventually a deep foreboding that nothing matters anymore. Who wants that?

[491] Fear and Loathing

When do we get to stop being afraid?

I almost just want this to act like something of an exhaustive list. Why shouldn’t we be afraid? If you’re financially insecure, something as small as a flat tire can cripple you for months. Live in that place long enough and try not to think about getting hurt or sick. What if your life is at the apex of decisions you made long ago you didn’t realize were terrible? What if you never find the job? What if you never find the partner? What if the partner leaves? Isn’t it great that if things go well you’ll get to watch your family members die before you? 

What if you’re afraid of yourself? How are you going to get the depression and anxiety under control? You know how you are when you drink, what if you hurt someone? What if you think too long about why you drink? What if your friends or boss finds out you’re a fake? What if you can’t face how much your heart isn’t in it anymore? How can you deal with what people will think and say about you if you pursued what you wanted? How do you expect them to forgive you when you can’t forgive yourself? And what are you going to do about all this debt? 

Make the misstep of being a well-read person. Heard about our crumbling nuclear infrastructure? Read up lately on the long term fall-out of Fukushima or the Deep Horizon oil spill? Can you keep up with the number of going extinct species or what comparable state’s size describes the last chunk of ice that broke into the ocean? Think the government is spying on you? They are. Think we’re cultivating unrest and perpetuating terrorism? We are. Think your food and water is poison? It is. Are you afraid of Russia or ISIS and yet ignorant of how much more likely you are to die in a car crash? But at least the car isn’t actually trying to kill you, right? Unless you ask the quality control department at GM. 

Did you know that advocating for fascism from a national pulpit to an enraged and ignorant populace can literally have us replay instances from various Holocaust-adjacent scenarios? Did you know a Trump presidency is 6th on the highest rated threats to global economic security? How funny was his comment now? You were only laughing because you’re afraid though too, right? He can’t be serious...that’d be as insane as your support for him! And you’re not insane. Things aren’t your fault. You’re just scared and getting by. You could be randomly shot at like in Paris and Turkey! You could be on the next plane headed for a national icon! 

Let alone you just meditate on how quickly time seems to be going on and how you’re significantly more afraid of being alive and being full of shit than you are death. Gotta meet the celebrities, travel everywhere, compile the Instagram photos, put your heart and soul into a lost but meaningful cause. Why think about neglect, abuse, greed, and social security when you’re so fit and capable now? When your knee starts shaking another reason to be afraid. When your arm can’t raise as high you keep it securely wrapped around your stomach in an insecure hug. 

Infuse your being with your minority or sexual status. You have crazy people constantly targeting you as randomly as terrorists seem to. You have institutions who threaten to punish you more severely than one of the “normals.” You have an entire sex that can single-handedly kill you any time they get angry. You’re demonized daily for just being alive and then told things about how “great” the country once was when every “ism” was (still is) in state-sanctioned overdrive. You’re told a “just” god is inspiring language and legislation that will see your grandchildren eventually oppressed. 

And what do we do in response? 

As much as I reflexively feel like I don’t want to blame people, I feel forced to. We take pride in distracting ourselves. We chalk the real work and responsibility up to a few donations or volunteer hours here and there. Our job title more important than what it’s purported to do. We adopt every possible cliche about how life operates and how little our role in fixing it means. Or that role has to be “humble” and give you a quiet smile that let’s you carry on like you really care, don’t you, you do-gooder you. We point and blame and celebrate fringe details and ignore the all-encompassing smog suffocating reasonable paths forward. We pick and peck, looking for grains of food in a quicksand pit.

We distance ourselves. We smile too hard. We drink too much. We spend all day in front of our TVs or phones or desks as we project our lives “one day” against the office backdrop. We smugly shake our heads like “I could never” or we naively play with fire like all’s fair in this hopeless headless chicken race to the end. Could I possibly do or say anything as negative as the person who can’t figure out the difference between Trump and Sanders? I’m negative? How much do you have to hate your own sense of reasoning and how burdened by intrusive thoughts must you be to be suffering like that? How broken of a soul is willing to innocently inflict such impropriety upon their friends and family? How broken and negative do you have to be to entertain them in return? 

We campaign! We say “it gets better.” We say wait till you’re older and the bullies start to respect your affinity for science. Hell, they’re gonna be the one’s paying for your skills to be rolled into the next war machine. We proselytize for different gods and Eastern mysticism. Come into the moment and self-actualize. Find your direction and better digestion when your mind is at ease knowing it’s all about you and your ability to physically kiss your own ass. Know that god is love and this ephemeral ineffable thing is perfectly reasonable the more you stoke your sense of loss and helplessness. It’s not enough to have a scrapbook with personal photographs and cherished memories. You’re in marketing now. You have to be a cheerleader for your definitely happy life and pay deference to the struggle by lip service to how real it can feel but assure us it’s definitely still your bitch. 

Fear is a mental handicap to honesty, and honesty is the only way to learn how to not be afraid. Fear hijacks and makes excuses for your perspective. It literally lowers your capacity for intelligence. Fear beats your chest in the dark trying to chase away apparitions created by blood vessels racing across your eyes. Fear cripples humility and fairness. Fear taps into the life affirming response for why you’re here and another animal is not. In doing so, fear always feels justified. It always feels righteous. It’s maniacally invigorating because it seems to belay existence itself. 

Perhaps most disconcerting is the thought I have about someone reading this. An extremely loud and condescending “WE ALL KNOW THIS! WHY DO YOU EVEN BOTHER!?” 

I think we’re lying. I don’t think we know in the same way someone who experiences an epiphany and changes their behavior in an instant might. I think we pretend to know like we pretend to be friends and pretend to love our families. Because it’s a common narrative that brings order to the chaos. Because generations of people who were quicker to die with infinitely more accessible reasons to be afraid gave us stories and habits to pretend otherwise. As we currently exist on the precipice between human and whatever human plus Pentium chip will be called, we still refuse to do anything but play into the legacy of fearful thinking. We don’t demonize the universal roots of atrocity because they retain their utility in giving us every excuse to play our own selfish games with the mythical demons. 

Here though, I’m not going to tell you to stop being afraid. I’m not going to offer a fix. I’m just gonna say watch. It’s the thing we’re absolutely stuck doing no matter the amount of effort we put into fighting it. You can’t shut off your eyes. Watch Trump become president. Watch a bomb go off in a major U.S. city. Watch cities get swallowed. Watch your fellow ignorant monkeys adopt cartoonish faces as they bask in the glory of their demagogues. Watch every day as your reality and morality morph to excuse and accept the ethics of ignorance and fear. 

I’m negative? In trying to incorporate and work with the danger and fear, in mocking, in joking, in reminding, in building it into my proposed solutions and resources, in owning and tattooing the idea of it on my very being, I’m the negative one? We’ve been sold this mythology that evil is to be overcome like by becoming a champion of implicit quasi-religious morality. Like Jedi don’t turn to the dark side. Like angels don’t fall from heaven. 

Do you think my approach to fear is one of excuses, hand-holding, or avoidance? Because all I seem to ever see is people putting distance between me and their idolized version of what they consider constitutes life and their obligation to it. My biggest sins are what? Getting nit-picky in conversations? Getting a little too drunk and obscene sometimes? Trying to play the games offered to me despite a feeling of constant personal sacrifice to your own fears of starting a fight I wasn’t offering? 

The lack of perspective is our cultural sin. It’s our collective denial that turns non-issues into declarations about dramatic life-altering consequences, and genuine problems into cat toys we bat around the floor without irony. Kick up your feet and watch.