[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.

[1112] The River

There's a theme from Star Trek, Buffy, and Angel that is sticking out to me. The whole crew is under a spell, and maybe one character isn't affected or is the first to see that something is off. Because it's TV, that character devines a way to gain allies, break the spell, and explain the anomaly. No matter how many times it happens, whether the arc is resolved in a single episode or over several, no one ever seems to remember that this precise thing has happened before. They can't seem to build it into their wisdom banks and offer it as a first hypothesis about what's happening this time. They don't build systems or protocols that anticipate it happening again.

Exploring that narrative arc or the pitfalls in the people afterwards feels like it could be its own short-story. I think part of the reason it's sounding bells in my head is with each "random" or "lazy" response I get to my reflections about my nonprofit efforts. My blog auto-posts to reddit as I must be something of a curious and lightly masochistic beast. Invariably, there's someone who says one of the handful of same things over again. "You sound manic." (or other armchair diagnosis) "I didn't read all of that." "I don't know what to say, but here's a lot of words anyway."

It's instinctively dismissive, reductive, condescending - - the internet. But also, it's the same attitudes I encounter in social work. The people who beg for court intervention or involuntary confinement are the ones who adopt the same attitude about their perspective and behavior. They occupy a "safe" or familiar and protected universe where their actions and words make a certain kind of sense to them, and in fact their whole crew, and you're the only one who has a problem with them. The elixir, unfortunately, often came in a compellingly-worded appeal letter to the judge and sometimes years of involuntary therapy before we could put a child back in your custody. For some, the spell is absolute, and they fuck up large enough to stay incarcerated or lose their parental rights altogether.

As with everything, there's a spectrum. We're all under different spells and happy to reinforce them well past a healthy point. I've read the Vulture article on Joss Whedon which discusses the power of fandom. Joss is a person, complicated, "good" and "bad," and not everything he's done in 57 years is perfectly respectable, mature, or with a deep appreciation for his experiences that drive his behavior. If you're wearing a "Joss Whedon is my God" T-shirt, you're likely going to find every excuse one does for any god to dismiss or situate their divine behavior.

One thing that never works against the spell is to just call it out. That, by itself, doesn't understand the nature of spells. It's to create a wholly different world of meaning from whatever you might say about a truly universal or objective and "mathematical" conception of existence. If you talk normally, and the rest of the cast can only understand you through song, "You're all singing, and it's crazy," literally doesn't translate. It can't be interpreted anymore than white noise. Moreover, when you're talking about spells people adopt in the real world, they have a deeply invested interest in denying there's anything else to be said or learned. Every pissed off democrat decrying republican "hypocrisy" has no conception of the nature of the problem or the irony. Neither lens on the world can even imagine what a "crack" is.

Writing is me calling things out. It's received predictably and I don't expect that to ever change. I call things out that I need to better understand as "cracks" on my lens into the world or spells we're all under. I want to know what I can build into my anticipatory framework. If I think I see the same kind of meme too often, the same kind of show, hear the same punditry and propaganda, hear the same excuses, or silence, or not-so pleasantries I want to know if there's a way to navigate it so I don't suffer in ways I don't have to. I'm going to suffer, as anyone who's read one of my "manic-sounding" posts delights in pointing out, but the nature of it is intentional and incidental more than wanton or irreconcilable.

I don't know all the spells. I don't come from a place that presumes to intimately understand how compelling every narrative can be or the infinitely intricate ways it can be weaved together to preclude action or change. I just know there are spells. I know their nature. I know some of their patterns. I can't figure those patterns out "just thinking" in anxiety circles. There's no actual bell that rings once you've used a cliche enough times to constitute literally not thinking or maliciously antagonizing.

If I had to point to one culturally-compelling spell, it's denial. I think I'm the millionth person to speak to it, but there's an infinite list of things one could wish to deny in any given moment of their life. It's a sublingual instinct, "NO!" to keep yourself "safe" and "comfortable." If you experience revulsion or disgust, you've got a millions-of-years instinctual legacy to respect that or follow-up mechanisms for weaponizing it. We deny our capacity and potential more than anything.

When I first started writing, you would not have "persuaded" me that I would be doing it for 20 years. I didn't have the tools or the language to discuss the utility of writing. I was dismissive and judgmental to my own writing, let alone if I would have been presented to anyone else's. I was under spells of immaturity, hatred, desperation and loneliness. I was at the mercy of the cultural norms I grew up in. I had no concept that I could even have my own words or perspective and understanding of a situation. I could only suffer everything I didn't know or the rules I took for granted.

I knew I needed something "more," but I had no idea what that looked like. I think it's precisely here that people "find god" or "get spiritual," because the cracks amass, and you're alone, and you're incoherent, but you still crave the certainty and "perfection" of your perception that your doubts betrayed. I didn't become "autistically obsessed" with reading about religion or scientific refutations of religious arguments unless I was fighting against an all-encompassing, and wrong, series of notions about myself. Notions pertaining to the girl I liked too much and the assumptions about my inevitable future given my academic performance, looks, or demeanor.

What did I really need more of? Meaning. I needed things to make sense. I needed to see a consistent cause and effect relationship that helped me keep my mood and behavior oriented. I didn't understand the depth of the crazy-making contradictions of the sea of nonsense words I was swimming in. I didn't understand how we break ourselves along the rocks of generational trauma and unarticulated responsibilities. I had no idea what my role or "purpose" could or should be, let alone the notion that I'd have to dictate it, and do it persistently, alone, in evolving ways, or it didn't really exist. That's a fucking huge undertaking.

If I connect with anyone, ever, it's because piece by piece, over decades, I'm trying to puzzle together the nature of these stories we're telling ourselves and needlessly suffering. Are you really an "addict?" Is your "loving" relationship serving you? Are you "just saying" a series of empty or hateful epithets you can't even recognize as such? It's always yes and no, and it's always changing, and it only gets better when you can label the spell with your own words and trust that when you say them you mean them. You were the cause, and you expect a certain effect. If you're not getting the effect you desire, you have the power to recite a new spell, stop casting them altogether, or look for the intended effect to take place elsewhere.

If you fundamentally deny your potential and power of your words, so it follows the story of your actions. You don't understand the harm. You don't understand the conditioning it takes to carry out the meaningful work to maintain or improve. This is as real to me as it is the physical exhaustion I do or don't feel in attempting to work on projects on my land. Week 4 of hauling scrap, fence building, or rock dispersal feels dramatically different than days 1 or 2. It's easy to describe any task as fairly simple or straight-forward, until the weather isn't perfect, or the tool breaks, or you get sick, or literally any reason, or excuse, arrives for you to deny what it's going to take to get the job done.

Your posture matters. You need to demonstrate for yourself in a consistent way that walking "like that" is going to cause spine issues. Using the wrong tool is going to get you hurt. Making the same appeal to the same people in the same way and only finding yourself resentful and exhausted is a you problem. You're caught under the spell singing a very personal song only you can hear and the rest of the world thinks you look crazy. Can you even wake up from your own spell? Can you resist the urge, redirect the craving, to join someone else's? Yes and no. Can you exercise the process and language to identify and dispel versus deny regardless? Yes.

Welcome to the work. Each time you affirm and say "yes" you inch in a chosen direction more than you suffer one you didn't. Yes, I can. Yes, that may be true. Yes, there's a road to explore here. Yes, I grant that is your perspective and yes I hope we can both respect the limits and potential of perspectives.

"I am whatever you say I am. If I wasn't, then why would I say I am?"

[1091] To Infinity And Beyond

I don't know if my head is feeling particularly random or if I've just got too much time on my hands again.

I watch so much TV. I get my stats sent to me at the end of the year through Trakt. They look more insane given most of it is sped up, but even if they weren't, I can easily sit with it on for hours. 6.7 hours a day on average, according to Trakt, so 3.35. It feels like considerably more than that, but what does that mean? I spend huge portions of time in metaphoric realities.

My brain doesn't care. It needs stimulation. I can only play an instrument for so long before my hand cramps. I can only "grind" in a videogame for so long before all of the years that built up behind me quitting playing for over a decade start to bubble. I don't have the social group that's doing something every day or calling regularly. I'm not obligating my time towards family. It's cold and I'm not inclined to work outdoors in it.

I have no more practiced a habit than sitting around. Of course I'm fidgeting and ADHD-ing, and rearranging furniture or books. But I'm an isolated, sedentary indulger more than anything. The TV show is paused while I write this, but whether it starts up immediately after, or while I'm driving, or while I'm waiting around before a concert or comedy show, something is on.

I almost use it to mark time. I've always been suspicious that we've got an incredible amount of time, and yet most of us will claim how much of it is lost, never to be found. I feel in some ways I've practiced slowing down so much, that it makes sense to not only watch things sped up, but fit as much as I can into all of this space that's in the here and now. It makes me happy to think if it takes you a month to watch a season, I can get it done in a few hours.

I've always been that way though. I was perfectly comfortable cheating on old video games if it would help me get to the end. I took pride in speed reading. I would get my homework done as quickly as you told me what was required for that day, then become a pain in the ass the rest of the day with nothing to do. If it's a physical task, like moving hundreds of bricks or pallets, I'm going until I start shutting down and hurting myself because I can't focus anymore. I used to speed constantly. Even if it doesn't sound particularly musical or show up in any song you care about, I like seeing and hearing speed picking and El Estepario tapping drum sticks like hummingbird flaps.

Almost married to this preference and propensity is a desire to be "comprehensive." To this day, I feel a sense of injustice, I even think I've written about this before, on a 3rd grade report I was assigned to write about a U.S. State. I was told, explicitly, not to provide every town and city. That just didn't make sense or sit right with me, so I printed one anyway for the state of Texas. I had all the other stuff she asked for too, but you and I both know you're not reporting on a state if you don't even know what towns and cities are in it. Duh. I got a C, and note in red that said "I told you not to give me a list of cities."

I watched a video recently explaining the difference in the sizes of infinities. Not all are equal or "as infinite" as the next. I don't know what sense can be made of the sentiment, but I feel like I hop between different infinities. It can simply be a matter of descriptive word choice categorizing what I'm engaging. The broadest concept might be "media." If I can watch or listen to it, I could plug in to that infinity and keep a rather opaque resolution on what all that noise is doing for me. Distill it down into movies, shows, books, podcasts, news, music, lessons, lectures, clips. Break all of those into genres. Each one provides a lifetime. An infinite sea from which to draw inspiration or distraction.

I think I seek both simultaneously. I notice the duality across a lot of these infinite spaces. I'm both full, comfortable, safe, and warm, yet my muscles are tight; my head and eyes are begging to start hurting. I'm full of salt, fat, the wrong carbs, and I'm protected only to the extent of my proximity to dangers I can't see coming. I'm mostly warm provided a given part of my body is against a heated blanket. No one state is in the extreme, and no one shift to a little bit more or less in either direction suggests something "meaningfully better."

That is, I'm "comfortable enough" to continue to sit here and type. I'm lucid enough. I'm TV-satiated enough to keep it paused. I'm satisfied enough with my body to not think more closely about what I'm feeding it. I've got enough of an ambivalence towards my debt to work just enough to keep its minimums paid on time. In turn, that's enough for the credit card companies and capitalist machines that want nothing less than me to never feel satisfied enough with the amount of things I own.

I think we employ the language of "enough" miserably. "Why can't I be enough!" we might scream at our romantically idealized notion of the person we claim to love. They cheat. They grow distant. Instinctively you might feel like it's about you and everything missing. It seems like it's only when we've had enough misery, and not just enough misery, but enough misery with the right prerequisites and under specific conditions, that we move to change something. Could we change sooner? It's a question of what resolution your infinity is dialed into. If you're a big corporate monstrosity who deals in "data" or "information," which can be indefinitely mined, tweaked, and reinterpreted, it doesn't interest you to curb greenhouse emissions until a more specific descriptive number threshold from outside your preferred genre makes a compelling impact.

The presence of so many infinities suggests to me that they are the rule and so by definition, nothing, ever, will be "classically" enough. Enough doesn't exist that way. All the self-esteem genres telling you you're beautiful enough or smart enough or worthy of love just as you are are lies. Not malicious lies, mind you, just lies that don't understand the nature of the game we're stuck playing. No one idea is meant to account for the whole of anything. Innocently, you might just consider it a mathematical impossibility that you'll ever be complete. You will instead be enough to suffice across a different set of infinite domains.

You might be fuckable to a lot of people, including your designated "soulmate." You might find yourself entertained by Star Wars AND Star Trek, or all of science fiction AND sports, or find the requisite levels of continued enjoyment in studying quantum mechanics and vibing with Bluey. It's never either/or. There's not conflict or contradiction. There's different levels of your experience you can access an infinite amount of ways.

From the outside, you can't necessarily tell if anyone is actually doing that or just adopting the infinite linguistic disguises that claim to. We peacock values we don't know how to practice. We're a beleaguered and confused "middle" who lazily votes for fascism, or downplays how fascism happens, because we literally don't know any better. We can't see our infinite capacity for destruction anymore than we regularly entertain ideas of our infinite potential.

As I was cleaning up old emails I came across old fights. There's math breakdowns I've sent former supervisors of how much money and time I'm wasting working for them. There's back and forths with me and one of my exes. There's exchanges I've had in pissing-match format with people online. I save this stuff for the same reason I keep almost all of my writing from back when I started at 15. I have new eyes at 35. Infinite gaps in my perspective are sometimes traversed by a more infinite truth. Was I arguing like an entitled immature cunt? Or had I figured something out, and now it was time to die nobly on the hills of my choosing instead of at the mercy of my combatant? As time goes on, I'm thankful to discover far more of the latter.

I think there's something of an inevitability towards people seeking "spiritual" or "religious" scape-goatery with its embodied allegory for the infinite. This especially so when paired with the sense of never feeling like you're enough. Fancy that, here's a thing that calls it "sin," and conveniently lasts forever to match the infinite sea of whatever you need it to in any given moment. Infinitely insecure? No worries, these paring rituals are blessed and divine. Infinitely attracted to children? Check out these power dynamics and forgiveness concepts. Righteously indignant and protective of your ignorance? Brother, we'll point you in the direction of where to blow yourself up straight into the arms of the infinite reward that matches your commitment.

My only excuse, at least when I've slowed down, written, picked a direction, and decided something is worth fighting and biting about, is an ongoing infinite conversation that ends the moment the decision is made, and starts up again the moment the decision is being evaluated for change. I don't get to pawn my failings off on Jesus and claim forgiveness. I have to weigh the evidence. I have to describe what I can make of the context. I can count the amount of people who seemingly never want to talk to me again or the extreme limits of my network. I have to see who keeps coming back and wrestle with why. I have to make sure it's not because I'm taking advantage of their infinite capacity to feed something I might disingenuously or greedily eat indefinitely.

There's peace in attending to this duality. But the peace doesn't feel like anything more than potential. I don't feel "good" or "bad." It's still hard to use the word "hope" without sarcasm dripping off my tongue. If I "hate" something, it's really just the same thing over and over, the seeming lack of sense, awareness, or accountability, playing out across genres of situations. Will I be "happy" if every one of my dreams comes true? Hundreds of my dreams have come true, and continue to remain true every day. I would not describe myself as "happy" lol.

I'm happy when I can share something. I'm happy when I feel like there's a real connected intention brought to the same space. That's why I don't get along with people who are "just doing their job" in realms like counseling or DCS that require far more personal responsibility and integrity for them to meaningfully represent their impact. It doesn't mean they'll be conducted that way, but it does mean when you fuck about, we all get to experience the infinite cascade of finding out. That's how a 5-10% minority eats 80% of the time and space we pretend can't exist in service to anything else.

We can ground that specifically. It's every abusive family member one of my clients "can't help" but wrap themselves around. That's the frequent flyers of our prison and healthcare systems. It's any monopoly of power and wealth. It's the job, family, or hobby you know someone is abusing to eschew a conversation about balance or the real extent of their responsibilities. It's the jaded cynicism of pundits and influential personalities beating fear and hate drums. It's virtue-signaling language you try to stuff every conceivable, especially its opposite, idea into. You know, because pumping gas can be "green" too and words are "violence."

Whatever scale or frame we choose to adopt has to start with the acknowledgement, acceptance, and voluntarily adopted responsibility for the choice altogether. You choose to respect and weigh evidence, or you bolster the strength of errant faith claims. You choose to "stare into the void" or touch the infinite capacity of your potential, and you can allow yourself to feel diminished and helpless, or emboldened to carry on more deliberately in a manner you can increasingly see fits. Fits what? Fits your given moment. If you see the same things I do, maybe we start manifesting things we both wish to see verses a random array of noise we struggle to cope with.

I care very little, if at all, about what I'm watching if I have someone to watch it with. We can share in how bad it was or jokes we make about it or references years later. The parties I threw weren't about collecting hangovers. The business I want to run isn't about being catastrophically rich or irrational defiance to conformity and oversight. The access to the freedom and headspace to enjoy my time isn't so I am always available to tend to another cat. Insofar as the vast majority of the people I'm connected to aren't coming or inviting or speaking at all, it's easy to believe you're meaningfully different, and maybe not in ways you really want to be.

But I write. I search. I try. I work. I invest. I continue to acknowledge the infinite ways I can describe my experience until I find a frame that allows me to choose, and feel like it was a real choice, a step in a direction I want instead of a direction I "have to." If that practically translates into all I can really do is keep picking my words and hills to die on, that's what I'll do. If I must be in debt, I want to know it services experiences and things I can hide from repo men or the consequences of bankruptcy. If my writing has no capacity to "wake up" others in the way different authors have helped me to, I can trust it will at least continue to help me to when I've drifted too far into the wrong infinity.

[1087] You Really Like Me

I hope this one does the trick. For weeks I've felt like I'm floundering. I can't commit to the process of finding a job. I can't feel "more serious" about pursuing my hobbies or side-projects that might eek out a means of profitability with enough investment and focus. I can't justify sitting back and just watching TV or looking for the next show to attend. My mind has been all over the place, and for someone who exists with that as a standing condition of existence, it's felt acutely elevated.

Evidence of this state of mind is me making a doctor's appointment. I don't really know anything about ADHD beyond the amount of kids I came across with the diagnosis and the increasing cultural awareness of the behaviors associated with it. So much of it is as familiar to me as the feelings of when I read/learned about autism. I've never been one to much care for many people's claims regarding a diagnosis or the implications that followed. The more I start to meet "pathological" impediments to my sense of well-being or capacity to get shit done, the more my sympathies grow.

I discussed recently how I can manage well-enough with structure. In a closed-enough environment with rules and consistency, it can be really easy to downplay or ignore what about you that looks to derail. Most jobs pretty much insist you have to get up at a certain time, pay attention to the commute, fall within the guidelines for behavior to not get fired, and keep the threat of not keeping the bills paid hot enough to justify indefinite suffering or excuses. The longer I go left to my own devices, I feel consequences of a lack of structure compound.

One way that happens is the "drama" of the space between doing things gets elevated. If I'm not otherwise plugged into something, it lends itself to irrational negative emotion. This gets complicated further because I'm, on the whole, generally muted emotionally. Whether we want to chalk that up to a learned behavior trauma response to my upbringing, autism, or deliberately cultivated practice given age, wisdom, and the nature of my professional responsibilities, I'm willing to entertain it's all that and more. Practically, it means I will never be persuaded by the "passion" or "depression" or "anxiety" or "angry" that others claim moves or motivates their behavior.

In fact, particularly with the word "passion," I regularly discuss how much I hate that fucking word and how stupid or misleading I think it is. It's employed to downplay the circumstances and privileges that enable someone to pursue one route over another. When you don't have these swings in emotion, very little signals to you to change, dramatically or otherwise, whatever you're currently doing. I'd like to believe it makes a certain amount of sense the reasons I build through writing and conversation to do one thing over another. Whether or not that's the case you only care to the extent it affects or entertains you.

Broadly speaking, you're not invested in my well-being because you have your own life and things to suffer and barely figure out as well. That sentence feels like a major part of "the rub."

I feel myself envying anyone with a community. Even shitty communities, there's a sense of togetherness, belonging, understanding, and consistency that I sorely lack in my day-to-day. For most of my life, I've felt explicitly on the outside playing observer to how people treat each other, what you're "supposed to" say, or trying to figure out what "really matters" in the dynamic.

If I thought to myself, "How do you get a girlfriend?" No exaggeration, 9 out of 10 relationships I would observe would be explicitly abusive. No, not everyone was beating the shit out of their girlfriend, but yes, both parties were using emotionally manipulative and personally guilt-inducing behavior to maintain that dynamic. In fact, the older I get and the more I've watched relationships maintain or falter, it's not like that pattern has gone away, but the "healthiest" couples realize, maybe in their mid-to-late 30s that they have been behaving in those fucked up ways towards each other and start therapy.

This kind of disconnect permeates pretty much every level of my life. I'm not, nor have ever been, "normal." Yes, I exist like all things, and there is nothing new under the sun. I'm not claiming "special." I'm claiming "aberrant" or "noticeably and consistently different." I'm the only Vulcan on board. There's a whole fucking planet of Vulcan's, but I'm the only one on my particular ship.

This means when I sit here, contemplative, with a level of "anxiety" that I will never score higher than a 1 or 2 on a scale from 1 to 10, I may or may not address that by a dogged pursuit to "fix" what is probably 10 different things nagging that at one time. I've been paying extra attention to how all-over-the-place my mind is when I've got nothing in particular I care to focus on. I can start vacuuming in the middle of making a sandwich. I'll start a movie in the middle of another paused show.

Incidentally, as I finished that last line, my dad calls me and we talk for a half hour.

My dad is my most consistent force in my life. When people are acting like complete shit-heads, I'm not looking over my shoulder for my dad to fuck my life up or take advantage of me or threaten my safety like my "best friend." When I talk about the projects on the land I wish to focus on or when I needed to get things done to make the house livable, like how I imagine some people's friends and families work, he offered and continues to offer to come down and help me. If I were to strip away a lot of the nonsense related to my approach to work or fantastic dreams and what I am or am not doing every day in service to them, it makes an incredible amount of sense for me to spend more time in the region with him trying to grow the gravesite cleaning and yard work business.

My closest friends continue to maintain different forms of distance. They have their own families and paradigms. Very much to his credit, I do believe Hussain would help me with a project on the land and has offered to do so. That's not, like, the only or most important criterion for whether or not I can call someone friend, but it's akin to the question of "Who helps you move?"

Who enables your expression and embodied physical manifestations of space? The drywall in my house was a result of my dad helping. My nice electric guitar my dad again. He's also the most frequent one coming along to shows. The..whatever's left of it…garden outside and room extension have everything to do with Allie. The vehicles that have gotten me all over the midwest have been worked on, for free, or bought from Hussain. Jess, Hussain, Brandy, and before the break Byron came to shows. That's pretty much my network of people I see or interact with in person with any remote regularity until I get a job and meet coworkers with no desire to unionize or talk about anything that helps us transcend our capture.

I also feel like it's not for lack of effort or compromise that I find myself most-often alone and wondering what to do next. I've tried to start the regular meetups with not just the people from college, but different coworkers over the years and with Hussain and Byron. Whether it's just to grab a drink or hit the bowling alley, or see a movie. I want to be clear, it's not that I can't or can "never" persuade people to hang out or chill, but doing so is distinctly not the priority. One might disingenuously personalize and take it a step further to consider themselves the lack of priority, and while that is practically true, it's not an honest way to comprehensively understand the dynamic. People care about themselves waaaaay before they "don't care" about you or what you're up to.

The psychology of this is spoken to by too many things to account for. We blame the isolating echo-chambers online. We can point to the dire economic situation where "the jobs report is improving" has nothing to do with even the concept of a living wage, savings, or what it means to live day-to-day. You have dedicated institutions meant to obscure how we talk about or understand how to "fix" anything, and overwhelmingly you meet people who are just exhausted and adopting versions of "slave ethics" in order to cope and squeeze what little positivity they can out of their circumstances. If that comes with waterfalls of denial, compulsive abuse, or sweet smelling stories of personal dignity and direction, all the more comfortably they sit with no one bothering to notice or care how they play out.

I think about the conversation I got into with Smash, and at one point I said something that triggered "that face" that people get when they are convinced you can't be persuaded or have said something so egregious they both feel sorry for you, angry at themselves, and abjectly hopeless in considering there was a point to beginning the exchange at all. What, of course, separates a Smash from a regular person is that she pushed through it and we found a better place to resolve whatever the discrepancy was at the time. That's a special capacity and awareness we don't practice culturally. If we're already suffering, working incredibly hard to deny or downplay it, what purpose does more serve?

I put it to you that I'm just an extension of my circumstances first. Before I can ever attempt to "personalize" something or claim some power of "will" and freedom to express it, I'm just reporting on the cold, the silence, the self-reports, and variations on the theme of "I'm confused and struggling." I'm not a lowly detached desperate-for-any-kind-of community person flinging out theories about how life works or doesn't. I'm reflecting on my own, not-comfortable-enough or not-comfortable-in-the-right-ways circumstances as well as the literally thousands of pieces of input I've received professionally.

I think there is a palpably different experience between "life is hard" sentiments and "there's a concerted effort to keep you feeling empty and desperate." I think we're suffering the latter. I don't think it's precisely a "conspiracy," but I do think it has a lot to do with us losing a sense of honesty and ownership regarding what we allow to pass as acceptable from each other. I think we're like Byron, allowing the consequences of our behavior to pull guns on each other, and without irony or malice, remain perfectly baffled about what we should be expected to do to be accountable to that.

The "middle-ground" Nazis play the same role. The vast majority of Germans were not in the S.S. or filling up mass graves. They were still Nazis. Apologists for Trump, fascism broadly, religiously-motivated persecutors, and every single time you point your finger before you recognize your own hand plays the same instrument. This is how people get so comfortable ignoring atrocious behavior. At absolute bottom, they know they're doing the same thing. Or, they know they don't care.

"I'm not doing the same thing!" You protest. No, you're not butt-fucking children, but you thought about it, because I just typed it. You didn't enjoy the thought, but the more specific I get about that old Catholic dick inching towards that blonde-haired innocent little booty hole, I take over your mind. Your infinite sea of ridiculous and random thoughts is a source of infinite guilt, denial, distraction, and confusion by default.

If you expose yourself to information often enough, you might think to yourself, "Man, I have a problem with how often I think about butt-fucking children? Does that make me a pedofile?" Of course not, you just work at DCS. The problem is not the thought in and of itself, as any meditative practice will teach you. The problem is not recognizing how much your environment is disconnecting you from a feeling or capacity to get your thoughts organized and acted upon. You're being intruded on. But, worse, you're intruding on yourself with algorithm-assisted means to make you feel good about it.

The best person who has ever existed is still a mammal, a person, and completely fallible in the ways you are. What better way, Jesus story, to comprehensively justify and placate all "sin?" You are born, often enough, into a culture that insists you don't question the dictates of your prophet, lord and saviour, or all-powerful "mysterious force" that absolutely must "make sense" when infinity is over. It's an analogy for your infinite potential. It's a way to not fall into literal insanity trying to calculate the combinatorial explosion that is existence.

Say I return to my younger self. Say I ask "innocent" questions like a child would and tried to analyze the current landscape in front of me. "How do I be an adult?" Take a job that doesn't pay enough, fall into debt for literally any reason, but definitely for school, health issues, and car or mortgage payments. "What does it mean to love your family?" Put up with them just flatly and consistently disrespecting you, from your sobriety to anything you've accomplished, and make sure you show up to any and all gatherings regardless of the gossipy hateful things that have been said and done every day in between. "What does it mean to be a 'good Christian or Muslim?'" Protect pedophiles, cheer Hamas, deny science, control women…

Our narratives are generated from broken internal systems. We don't identify how they break. We double down on mistakes until we turn them into virtues. We act confused and innocent when asshole autistic-types like me bite down on these discrepancies and shake them with as much or more religious conviction than you've ever experienced. Appeals to do things "differently" or "better" are viewed with hostility and suspicion. We'll find ourselves undermining others in their effort to do so just in how we talk about them. Extolling the pageantry over what practically happens.

Then, I need to come full-circle and figure out how to blame without blaming. I need to figure out what's the next piece to take responsibility for and hopefully more deliberately than not choose a course of action that accounts for how perpetually harmless you're going to hold yourself for our collective dynamic. Consolidating and sacrificing aren't optional for "things" to start changing for the better. We're not hungry, there's certainly plenty of food, but we're absolutely starving. We show up when it's "convenient" or if we're desperate, which means we're not showing up at all.

I need a robust network of both accountability and potential. I'm so at the mercy of that need that I've tolerated years of emotional abuse. I want friends so bad I'll talk about them in quotes for dozens of blogs for years and years before it sinks in they aren't friends. For every tool at my fingertips, I'm not inspiring anyone to join me, play music with me, build anything, or contribute in any way to the effort of creating a means to own the work we put into the world. It's not exactly that the more I look the less I find, but even some of these Upwork hires are helping me compare and contrast what they've accomplished in a few weeks compared to me and "my network" over years.

Intellectually, I'm comfortable with things constantly in flux. As a human, I would appreciate stability and predictability along certain metrics until the day I die. I don't ever want to be confused about the location and safety of my food. I don't want to feel like I'm gambling on whether or not I'll get to keep my stuff or have my house burn down to humble me and teach me the value of still being alive. I don't want to occupy an environment that's Mad Maxing every time I leave my house because the collective psychology is arrested by violence and in-group out-group primal instincts. We either drag what we want the future to be into the present, or we suffer the fallout of machinery that compiled all of the survival mechanisms naturally-selected to keep us alive so far. The infinite vacuum of space is "natural." Not good or bad by itself, but wholly antithetical to life as we know it or would prefer.

[1059] Incomplete Data

Something I like considerably more than any one "thing" is the realized expression of getting into whatever it is I wish to do in any given moment. It's exceedingly rare any one show is going to connect with me in some deep or individualized way, but I like knowing that if one is going to, all I have to do is click and it starts up. I only seem to find the intention to practice an instrument in starts and spurts, but when I do, it's on a high-end machine training my fingers the right way. I've got a t-shirt maker, sticker maker, sewing machine, and some wood working tools I've barely if ever touched. But the day I feel I have the time and focus to learn and set them up will make up for any thoughts of their "wasted" potential in the meantime.

I'm not a "passion" person. I have a severe distaste for the word. I can't say that when I was irrationally driven to be some concept of "best" that I was doing myself any favors. Now, in contrast, I have my attempts to be balanced and deliberate or day-to-day in how I conceive of myself. If I dropped everything to drill down on some instrument for the next 6 months, I'd get really good, or return to some mastery I had with my guitar, and then what? I cross my fingers I maintain the humility of elite players who are always looking to the people they stole from or they think do it better? I audition for a band? I produce my own stuff and claim a vaunted identity as an artist?

I don't want to be an artist, I am one. I don't want to be a big business guy, I am one. I don't want to be a country-folk coming up with redneck fixes to things, I am one. All that I may wish to occupy in the future, I currently am, just at varying degrees of resolution. What dials in any layer is both time invested, but catching when the thoughts swirl around what I believe are impediments. If I don't have the tools ready, I can't work on whatever feels like the most pressing thing to work on. There's a series of inspirations flowing through, and I want them captured on the right instruments.

It doesn't give me an irrational compulsive rush to spend money. I've been thinking about this when I spend months agonizing over whether or not to click to confirm an order. Am I just feeling listless and trying to fill the hole with junk? I'm still missing components of my otherwise "perfectly fulfilling" or "best flowing" kind of days. When I buy things, it's not that I don't want them or I don't enjoy using them, it's that I'm trying to talk myself out of having what I think, in a world that made sense, I'd already have without this lower-income negotiation.

I also, and this has been the prevailing energy for quite some time, just don't give a fuck about much higher degrees of debt than I ever thought I'd get comfortable with. I'm considerably more concerned about my day-to-day experience of life more than I am the infinite series of atrocities on their way that will be "impossible" to "pay back" as though I really owe anyone anything. I don't honestly believe I'm trying to justify being irresponsible. It's not without many calculations and spreadsheets and months of "Do I really need…?" No. I don't "need" anything past whatever keeps the poorest of the poor alive. Do I want? Yes. Is it speaking to something more intangible, yet necessary? Yes.

 
For most of the people in my life I'm either an ornament, novelty, or antagonist. The time in between is filled with me and my stuff and how I can justify each moment or activity. Any given hobby or skill can be parlayed into connecting with a broader ecosystem of people, but I'm not people. So I need stuff to connect with more stuff and parts of myself I'm not going to see reflected back or ever acknowledged by people. That's okay, it's just a bit expensive.

Anyway, I'm thinking of ordering/building the stuff it would take to get all my outside projects engaged. That and some missing electronics and instruments and lessons would put me at about $15,000 in debt. I'm still pulling about $2,000 a paycheck for the next couple months. I'm going to focus a bit more on meal prepping and still wouldn't hate to find something part-time on Fridays and weekend mornings. The last 4 times I've been told something would fit that have just disappeared into the ether.

I'm not tired, not looking forward to work tomorrow, and it's probably going to feel like a busier day. I just started the last season of Star Trek TNG. I have no events until Bastille and Duran Duran in Chicago Friday, Disturbed in Noblesville the day after, and Wargasm in Indy Sunday. Monday is a holiday. I think I'm occupying a similar disheartening space after hanging out that happens after working out. You get a taste of how it "should" or could feel all the time, but it's the exception. The energy or enthusiasm can't sustain and iterate, it just kind of sits there and nags you until it dissipates. All the more prescient one must be in capturing what manages to manifest I suppose.

[1054] Thumb Drive

Let's see if I can set my week/end up for success. I've been up since 5. I made some of my specialty coffee I got from Wisconsin. I finished all of my work notes. I've watched a few episodes of Star Trek The Next Generation's third season. Earlier, I envisioned myself going outside to cut up pallets for the burn barrel. I kind of want to reorganize the bathroom, do house-supplies shopping, and maybe bowl before it gets too late and packed.

For the last few months, it's felt like it wasn't worth writing because there's been "too much" on my mind. So much that I've wanted to make music. I'm frequently all-too aware of how often I'm singing the same tune, so why not externalize it as a melody or sound? I have tabs open to try and learn proper recording and production. But the prospect of doing so conjured the stomach-drop anxiety feeling. Today is a free weekday. I could be marketing, or researching, or grant writing. I could be doing something…you know…important.

 
This is the rub I'm persistently privy to over the course of my counseling week. People work, constantly. They get off work to go to work. When they're not at work, they're worrying about work, how little money they're making, or what their work will do to hurt or punish them if they speak about how little they enjoy their work. They come home to work to keep their kids or house in order. They're, hopefully, working on their sobriety and emotional regulation while situated in as selfish and self-destructive an era and area as you could ask for.

So, what? What's asked of you in any given moment that life's circumstances may be brought into your awareness? The industrious, superstitious problem solvers came up with religious ideas. The modern solipsist worships through happy-branding and memes. I don't believe most are actually willing or capable of diagnosing or methodically and deliberately addressing "the problems," as such. So, again, what? What does that mean for you? Where should your anxiety rest or obligation manifest?

I'm an expert indulger. I doggedly pursue what I want and like, for me, because me, and the because "fuck you." Whether I write an indulgent blog, song, or defiant piece of rebel propaganda, I'm scratching an "I'd like to feel better" itch. Not necessarily long-term better either. In the moment my stomach is dropping and I'm trying to figure out where I'm going, that's what I want fixed, redirected, or obliterated. If I never felt that feeling again, it's hard to say if I'd ever write again.

The religious "fixer" or anxious miserable fuck tries to establish universal order in their creative expression. God wills it! Dominion over death, ain't it grand? The world isn't fair, ever, especially when we keep it abstract and blame-worthily denoted as "the world." Whether it kills your kids, gives you cancer, or bakes your brain until you babble and froth for fascism, the color of the tragedy doesn't matter and the consequences are predictable.

A secular or "spiritual" cunt might start, incredibly poorly, describing their understanding of energy or physics, dip into ideas about karma or personal responsibility, and ultimately scream their relative hedonism through literally everything they buy, share, or speak highly of. Weird, Bo Burnham's "White Woman's Instagram" comes to mind.

I tell my people constantly to engage in self-care and decompression. I know where the vast majority of them are at. It was misery-inducing enough to get me to move out here. For a minute though, I've had the exact opposite problem. I'm not compressed enough. I don't have an antagonist that isn't the disembodied general dissatisfaction I have with "my crowd" or lack thereof. I have battles with insurance I can't effectively fight. I have an endless list of chores or projects or hobbies. It's not the kind of drive either of desperation or that terrible word "passion."

I stayed up all night on Wednesday trying to do a 750 piece puzzle in one sitting. I haven't put a puzzle together since I was a kid (besides another simpler puzzle a few days prior). I wasn't desperately trying to finish it. I wasn't feeling particularly defiant. I just allowed myself to keep going. In my perfect world, I'm up all night doing whatever it is I wish to do, falling asleep at 5 or 6, and getting up at 11. I very nearly did that exactly on a work night, got up still did my job, and less than an hour after my last group finished the puzzle. Maybe I needed some light proof that I can still go into that "autonomous" or "robot" mode?

The world hasn't felt like it's closing in on me in a serious way for quite some time. It's still shit. I still hate everything. But I have a (wise?) calm about it I suppose. I think the weather's nice enough that working outside would be prudent. I have clean clothes. I haven't eaten yet. I don't suspect I'm going to hear back from anyone I've texted until it's much too late. I really do just need a crowd or cooler people to hang with. Before I think of anything else I might do fun or creatively, I need to plug into something that's at least passable. I just kinda want to exist around decent-enough people. I'm not trying to chore, fight, work, or spend in and of themselves.

[1033] Stormtroopers

Today reached a stressful point. It did so because I didn't see it coming. I couldn't see it coming. There was no "one thing" that was definitely more annoying or catastrophic than normally happens each day. I even went above and beyond what I normally do on Thursdays and ate food between my block of groups that often leave me tense if not with a headache every week. But, it just didn't stop. I couldn't run my decompression pattern. I couldn't find a fucking moment to breathe. I find it incredible and fascinating that so much happens "all at once" like this to...test me? It's bizarre and too coincidental.

My baseline nature to want to attend to things or apply "fixes" was pushed too hard. Idiots at work who refuse to take responsibility for their shitty attendance and communication wait until precisely the moment I close out my last note to open a can of worms we'd been dancing around to get done for two weeks. My friend's car breaks down, can he take my recently gotten home truck again? My favorite tool which I immediately put to good use and started making plans for utilizing for other things as well? The one with 220,000 miles on it and just cost $1500 and 2 months to fix? Can he also get $50 because drug dealers don't take credit cards?

I've got childishly entitled clients on the brink of emotional collapse raring to lose it any given week. Nice enough people, decently hard-working people, selfish, normal childish and entitled people who will come to me about "my dose" as though it's my job to just continuously answer their every panicked thought at any hour of the day. I ignore most of that, to be sure, but it's another phone ring. It's a call for my attention. It's a passive aggressive comment locked and loaded for next week about what it is we aren't doing to help.

I've been told about 9 times over 3 weeks that a "had no reason to believe she was that chaotic" client was going to get signed up. She apparently wasn't receiving texts and emails, has the money and then doesn't, wants individual counseling, but then maybe for her kid who has massively improved from his traumatizing situation, but actually hasn't at all. At the end of the day I get to spend several hours at the least convenient time troubleshooting, quasi-counseling, caseworking, and I've not been paid. Then, I get to dodge panic attack paragraph texts as though I'm an emotional support animal on retainer.

Did you hear? I'm not just in debt, but courting more of it because I just don't care anymore. I want stuff. I want to go to shows. I want to build more on the land. I just don't care. I'm not likely to get fired, getting directly paid through my business, and haven't scratched the surface of where referrals can be generated from. I'm, inch by inch, day by day, on the verge of fundamentally shifting the priorities and nature of my problems in life. But, it's not here, and I'm still debt-ridden first-world poor, and the things I have walk an incredibly precarious line of functional instead of financial burden. What if I then played the imagination game?

You think my truck is insured for another driver? You think I trust my friend's parents to help him replace it because, you know, could he? The parents who fucked me on the house? What happens when the wobbly car-jerking issue with the Scion finds me in a wreck. It's begging for it. If 2 is 1 and 1 is none, I might have a solid half with my 3. I have a coffee van that doesn't reverse, a truck who picks a new thing to break every couple months, and a Scion with an as yet undiagnosed issue I'm genuinely gambling won't go catastrophically wrong on my frequent hours-long trips.

I didn't exactly forget that life is always coming with the next thing to charge you, but I felt it in a deeper way recently. I got home insurance, of course catastrophically expensive because my home isn't "normal" and abnormality, regardless of the actual value, risk, or practicality, means you get fucked for the invitation to play the insurance game. Add the utility bills, interest charge (you know because you got fucked on how much it cost to get your water back because the only person you know who can do it can't fucking figure out how to bill, record, or communicate to save his goddamn life). You don't pay down as large as you planned. You don't pay off like you planned. You can't take enough long showers to feel like they make up for yet another negative spiraling trend built into your financial picture.

Let's not forget though, I don't really care. Most people my age carried tens of thousands in debt, which they paid towards for years, mostly in interest, never paid it off or barely have paid it off, and they have mortgages, car payments, a few have kids, health issues, etc. I might spend $15K on 100 shows, yearly bills, a new computer, guitar, rolfing, building supplies and car repairs? Every 2 weeks I can pay off 10%. If I can get 10 more clients, 20%. I'm certainly impatient, but it's not an irrational perception of that impatience driving my decision making. I'm almost 35. I live in a fort in cousin-fuck Indiana. I live in a proto-fascist country. It's kinda time to live it up, especially if we're the new tornado-alley. (Oh man, that would have been such a cunty thing to nickname my ex when we were fighting.)

My licensed therapist is in some, probably emotionally abusive and awkward power dynamic with her husband, so when I need her to fix something related to login information or to help our insurance wranglers proceed down the lie of the "80-100" day process of getting empanelled, she just won't respond to me. She'll call Hussain and get panicky and ask him all sorts of shit he can't answer, won't even respond to a text of mine. Won't send me a picture and bio to advertise on the site. Talks about spending money she claims to not have to rent a building in town to hold sessions individually, but also confidently asserts how perfectly unable she is to handle the business end of things. I have back ups, but it's all so needlessly convoluted and always in the background nagging.

I want to be reliable. I want to "help" and "fix." I feel like I'm constantly trying to do my best and do more while the people around me are getting by. They're along for my ride. I created and threw the parties, they were happy to drink and fuck and puke on things and carry on right into the resentment for inviting them and locking them inside. I provide the platform, pay for the infrastructure, maintain the fighting and cheerleading spirit. You think anyone ever calls me with news about who they contacted or who might help in getting more referrals? Hussain, to be sure, but that's why he's the business partner. Have any resulted in us getting paid though? Well...

It doesn't matter how much I do, create, risk, build, or invite to join. It will never be enough. It will never be persuasive or indicate that it's worth a kind of investment and sacrifice that I've made so many fucking times for so much shit that hasn't panned out. LIke, I fucking own land that I've offered for people to live on for free lol. I'm fucking ridiculous. I've paid thousands to live on a fucking couch after getting fucked out of my affordable apartment! How am I not the most entitled and shitty fucking cunt on the planet? I never get help moving. I've spent most of my life begging for an extra hand or the recognition that I would put up with emotional abuse for the better part of a year after finding someone who actually cared to work alongside me.

There's a decent chance if I ever get particularly successful I just disappear. I'm sick of talking to your memes. I'm sick of "normal" conversation about the infinite list of things holding us back. I'm sick of politely engaging every iteration of sit-and-spin you can bring to your imagination. I know I'm fucking sick of it because I'm this fucking frustrated in spite of literally every week if not often each work day, someone tells me how much they appreciate what I do for them. The words feel empty. I gave such rousing encouragement to one of my people who I was so proud of, she nearly broke into tears. Professional courtesy, of course, dictates that we're not friends, and neither she nor I should exist in a mutually supportive context where we're getting the help or money we need to feel secure and grow versus being reduced to the cursed encouraging words.

I've been buying expensive black band T-shirts too. I don't want your branded bullshit from the jobs I work. I don't want to be buttoned up. The whole of my feelings in blogs are summarized by the collective works of the artists I enjoy and the creative energy they inspire. Maybe in 30 years they'll get special vintage status and I'll get to be even cooler than I already am, also for no one to care or notice lol. I have so much shit filled with so much potential fun and worthwhile consequences, but it only feels like it when I can cast a convoluted verbal spell that lays out the embedded vitriol and sabotaging forces. I have no reason beyond chaotic chance to believe I won't continue to get everything I want, provided I can keep it specific to things and experiences that merely cost money.

Do I want you to share my spirit? Do I want you to find the energy and the way forward no matter what? Do I want absolutely anything from you, and each time I allow myself to accidentally set some subconscious expectation delight in the inevitable let down?

I will always be fascinated by how many people wish to dress up as stormtroopers. I will always be baffled by how many wish to be a mere crew member on the starship Enterprise. People delight in the uniforms, soldier status, mythological families, and piety. I have always, always, looked at the hero as the thing to emulate. What is the main character doing, and why? Who supports them, and why? What is their obligation? What transcends their flaws? Who are people but nameless trudgers along micro-fascist environments. They're capitulators, persuadable, and predictable. They're not trying to be heroes, they're imbibing the reassuring feeling that someone or something will save them no matter what.

You fucking idiots. No, they won't.

[1011] Listen Jesus I Don't Like What I See

Wikipedia defines fascism as, “a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement. characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation and race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.”

I want to ensure that I get the comprehensive definition somewhere in my writing situated closely to my next sentiment. I hate religion. I hate your god. I hate your faith. I hate the, extremely human, impulse to see mystery and wonder and giant open questions and slap a self-soothing excuse over any inclination to learn, doubt, work, or hold you and yours accountable.

It’s a persistent hate. It’s a sincere hate. What is more authoritarian than an all-powerful god? What is easier a set of rules to pretend to follow than dictatorial edicts? How “naturally” it follows that those in the majority, or of the same color, or who can sound off the same creeds stand above the “other.” How liberating is it to sublimate individual desire for the glory of the hoard and the eternal reward after death? What could possibly suffice as a big enough lie to get you through your entire miserable life, ensuring that “you” never actually live it, than layers of fascist ideological narrative structures to plug your enfeebled mind into?

If you watch closely, people can’t fundamentally let go of their inherent fascism. If they eschew a god, they’ll worship the state. The state disappoints? There’s any hodgepodge of “individual values” or hobbyist preoccupations that never quite fill the void, but allow for a release of passionate advocacy that looks a lot like political violence and bids to control. Yes, far-left sensitive types who think racist jokes are tantamount to violence literally want to prevent you from speaking in the exact manner that far-right insanity wishes to prevent you from ever remembering what America was supposed to stand for. It’s about control, anticipating the end, and couching your sense of identity and future orientation alongside a pre-approved in-group story.

Simply, there is little to no control. That’s increasingly hard to believe as technology advances and we pretend the algorithms aren’t practically dictating mental health. We pretend that “control” certain groups have is in the form of blunt instrument money waves that get a lot of things wet, but it’s unclear what that moisture does but keep everyone annoyed and catching cold.

It always returns to a lie. The pretend certainty you have about what happens after death gives you cart blanche to pretend about anything for any reason. The pretend fairy tales about souls and babies let’s you remain blissfully unbothered by the science around birth, abortion, or the logistics of handling the 407,000 children in foster care and otherwise abysmal social safety net. How many times do we need to interview someone who says, “This country was founded on God!” It categorically wasn’t, but those giving the liars the mic don’t reflexively stamp the fascist-level ignorance with the truth or implications.

Why not? They’re in authoritarian-adjacent capitalist systems. The flame-war keeps the money going. The fear keeps you watching. Even if a report is as “unbiased” as you can reasonably portray, the dictates of daddy dollar win the day. Every “ist” and “ism” is a shortcut window into someone’s, “Tell me what to do” and, “Use me” sensibility. If I’m racist enough, will you give me more money? If I’m sexist enough, will you excuse our collective mishandling or subjugation of the opposite sex? If I’m a proud capitalist can I bankrupt your town with humble impunity and pollute the world for my starving share-holders?

The truth is pain and sacrifice. The fascist animal is “me me me” and “right now.” It wants the power by taking your life, your control, your agency, and resents any demonstration of responsibility or accountability you might engage in. I brought up 407,000 children earlier. That’s, at best, a lazy taunt to the fascist who can write every atrocity off on “god’s plan.” Those kids are living wonderful fantasy lives, and if nothing else, will certainly be rewarded for their struggles in the afterlife.

This is as familiar and tired a pattern as anything that has ever existed. And It’s reflexive and it’s in every one of us, and depending on the nature of the topic, your fascism will get triggered and feel perfectly righteous. How, ever, do we entertain the Palins, Trumps, Walkers, Boeberts, Greenes? Literally, how can they be a persistent and genuine danger…ever? They’re the hydrogen in a water molecule. There’s 2 people who can be driven mad by any given topic for every 1 person who stays vigilant in checking their biases and messaging or in attempting to think things through. Those pre-water oxygen molecules occasionally persuade one of the two hydrogens to hang out and vote with them for a while instead of drowning us all like an angry ironic god. It’s not a great metaphor, but you get it, right?

This is what Star Trek-dreaming types and scared broken Gen Z people need to figure out. The crazy is within us all. The entitlement takes exactly one generation for you to forget where you came from and feel as though your given “ism” can suffice for the work of writing legislation, holding anyone accountable, or having the conversation about why any of us bother to continue living. “Socialism doesn’t work!” It’s as ignorantly fascist a statement as you can make. It’s not dismissing a definition of socialism; it’s denouncing that we’re social or responsible for each other *by existential definition.* It’s a meta-lie designed to undermine the very concept that we’re actually, fundamentally, connected.

The impulse to lump is a fascist one. There are good psychological reasons our brain condenses things and we create summaries. Then we shit the bed and infuse our lumps with assumptions. We prejudice ourselves against de-lumping. All Blacks this, all Jews that, all women must be controlled etc. We then try to disguise this prejudice under banners of our “values,” “morals,” or “traditions” which act as hate propaganda. “Heritage not hate!” “Blue lives matter!” Our Left fascist counterparts say we have to “defund the police” while deliberately ignoring statistics on actual police behavior. They use media-fueled animosity to make the disingenuous lie that guns, while certainly a problem, are killing significantly more than is actually the case. Sam Harris has a really good talk getting into the numbers on that one I might look up and link here.

It’s our fascist impulses that let power do batshit things like take the world’s foremost innovator and futurist get reduced to pathetic Twitter Nazi. He does not have the wisdom to stop pretending that he can or should attempt to control anything he desires. The “ists” that make him rich design elaborate financial narratives to justify erratic behavior. The “ism” that his family fortune was built on is a not-so-dirty little secret. And we want to marvel at the fallout. We want to be entertained. We want to sit from our authoritarian toilet thrones and levy judgement and situate him against every new name and situation waiting for our engagement.

And it was good.

God, so pleased with himself, so circular in his logic, said it was good - until his fascist tendencies jumped the oxygen atoms and drowned us all.

You’re not up against “conservatives” or “republicans” or sects of historically relevant “fascists,” “socialists,” or “communists.” You’re up against yourself. We live in what I still consider an extremely confusing and painful world where it’s practically a toss up whether a brain-dead lying violent sexually and emotionally abusive cunt will “win” to “lead” against even a basically nice and “normal” person. A person who uses his fascist religious instincts to at least tout the values someone like me wishes we could figure out without sky daddy dictates undermining a robust and mutually-agreed upon means of caring for each other into the future. Jesus doesn’t persuade me not to manipulate and control you, he’s just a persistent nag about your sheepish nature and smirks all the way to the bank at getting you to believe coming back to life constitutes a “sacrifice.” That’s why you have to forgo an individual identity and sacrifice the other. You don’t actually believe him, but you can’t let anyone know that, especially yourself.

I hate that you’re willing able and proud to play this game of self-delusion and self-denial that, not figuratively, gets me and what I care about killed. I’m not naïve about how much needs to die to appease the angry whiny bitch god you pretend to venerate. It’s everything. You literally can’t stop because a lie, a betrayal of that which exists, needs to keep betraying like an infinite Judas. You can’t repent, because there’s nothing to forgive you. And you don’t exist, so you can’t learn how to forgive yourself. So, who’s next to blame?