[898] Both Ways

I'm still thoughtful about a status I wrote this morning, copied under the blog, and after listening to part of an episode from Know Your Enemy discussing a prominent Jewish leftist who turned conservative while mixing in the intellectual circles of the 50s and 60s.

 

I try to emphasize in moments between frothing that I'm but one, infinitely small, window into the world, often befuddled, confused, and barely approximating the language that would “best” describe where I'm coming from. I approach sharing and vocal exercise with the idea that they are stomachs that need feeding or muscles that need stretching and conditioning. It's an analogy for everything worthwhile or terrible in life. You are what you do, or if you're stuck trying, what you're working on and shooting for.

 

As such, walking the line between “what I feel” and “how I think” can seem perfectly arbitrary or endlessly ambiguous to someone reading a blog in isolation or who is wholly unconcerned with giving me any credit. If I doubt that my tone or word choice was altogether awesome, I'm gonna bring it up. I'm gonna ask myself why and make another pass. A lot of that is just work I think you do as an individual to keep yourself honest. I want you to believe I'm doing my best, but I also need to be confident that it is, in fact, my best representation of the moment, if nothing else.

 

I want new ideas. It underlies why I bother to be an “everythingist” about life. I watch all the shows for a line or character I haven't met before or a point of connection with a stranger where something harder to recognize is never known. I want to have a perspective on different mediums of story-telling, like podcasts, and attempt to discern the “best” messages I've been missing or strategies for explaining something in a skillful way I lack.

 

In Know Your Enemy, the hosts are very giving of their praise and cutting in their criticism for different writers. I might choke at the idea of a “conservative intellectual,” but it means something that has practical and longstanding implications. They read the books. They describe the psychology, justifications, and emotional tenor of people compelled to functionally destroy what may otherwise be a salient opinion of fiscal responsibility or foreign policy but for all of the racism and ego. They point out how weird it is for a prominent public figure to brag about his A+ grades at 35 and to ignore his “self-made” conception of success started with a publishing company passed down from his father.

 

I really don't want to be that dumb. I try to incorporate the people that have shaped my perspective and drive. I try to shower praise and include your perspective into the larger project. It is very real for me how little I can do alone. That comes with it the burden of making sure people grasp and respect themselves and relative place in the picture so you can honestly discuss how to move forward. That comes with some actual vocalization and engagement with perspectives that are different from yours and approaching them with the patience and openness to ask more than tell.

 

For whatever I do in fact excel at, I have extreme deficits and perfectly visible blind-spots that almost everyone is keen to keep secret from me. Occasionally when they interject, I have a habit of pointing out a contradiction or confounding variable that becomes the pivot to a meta-discussion about the discussion and eventual derailing. One such instance is the offered argument that “I need to take responsibility for how I come across.” Superficially easy to say and agree with right? That alone is good advice when you're dealing with a world that is going to judge you and hold power over you. What happens when you breathlessly move on to your next argument that “you shouldn't care what people think?”

 

The details start to matter. Well, you should care about what the people close to you think, but not the ignorant masses lazily judging. You should at least vocalize you are taking responsibility for your “harsh” language, and then continue to do it anyway. When we feel personally attacked, we want the other person to take responsibility. When we feel we're “just being honest,” fuck the haters.

 

I don't believe you get anywhere if you don't start honest and believe the other person is too. Norman Podhoretz, the conservative on focus of this podcast episode, was friends with James Baldwin. He went on something of a racist tirade towards Baldwin who told him to write all of his grievances down and publish it, which he did, and it became a notable historical essay. I love this story, because I regard James Baldwin as an extreme truth teller first and foremost concerned with the truth. He didn't lash out and fight back, he said put that naked ass of your honest expression on paper to someone very comfortable displaying their naked ass, fast forward 50 years, we get a coherent throughline and useful perspective on how to discuss racist cultural issues.

 

I want a zeal for accountability. I'm fine with “crazy” people, so long as they are honest in their craziness, and we honestly account for their influence or what we're going to do about it. There are sincere racists that I want us all to be on the same page about how large we empower their influence. There are 74 million proud fascists which you shouldn't shy away from calling fascists. Your boss or owner is probably greedy and proud they sit above you, high on the perch of their small window. Lazy and loose talk will allow you to try and have it both ways, a false notion of your own righteousness married to perpetually justified ignorance of the many roles you're playing in destroying what we need to survive.

 

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From daily life to catastrophes, I can't shake the thought that it's a product of over-thinking. Over-thinking is not critical thinking. Over-thinking is coming to a relative or often obvious conclusion, and then doing nothing. Over-thinking is a coy held-harmless description about agency and taking responsibility for the moment.

 

I haven't been particularly anxious this week of snow days and very little money making. I'm not worried about the bills, the car or shed debt, or myself as an ardent TV watcher. This morning the sinking stomach started. I'm reminded how good I felt being able to pick up scrap again. I'm going to see how my play to leverage a new job works to let me make something worthwhile out of my current one.

 

It's obvious I should be paid enough to live and reward what I do. Every day I don't build how I'm going to live the obvious truth and consequences of that is on me. The "cling to practical" model of how to cope in two-week stints is obviously a path to hell. I'm not anxious about advocating for myself. I'm anxious about how hopeless it feels to do so. I'm hearing the "professional" excuses. I'm anticipating the open questions and work of mitigating an attitude that has crippled how we are to conceive of and relate to ourselves.

 

I want so little and increasingly obvious things. It makes for a stark contrast when I evaluate how little the systems I'm plugged into are designed to provide for those wants. If I want to grow, the system wants me in debt. If I want to show up and work every day, the system gives me an endless sea of entertainment. If I want more responsibility, the system says we should hold several meetings to dissect this curious notion of "responsibility," and maybe you should consider "doing your job."

 

I'm to believe that "fixes" or "hope" lies in some "generational struggle." These systems are failing me every day. They're freezing Texans to death. They're starving children. They're addicting you to opiates. The excuses for why the world feels like shit are happening right now. Can you hear them? Can you recognize the familiar patterns and design?

 

Why don't we, obviously, hold ourselves accountable? Why don't we force power to pay up? Why don't we strike? Do you want dramatically more than me at the expense of everyone else and the future? Why are you quiet? Why are you pretending you are a "good person" who can sit and wait until "the world" will bother? Are you a coward, or cunt?

 

Listen to the array of excuses and pleading for sympathy that washes over you from the last question. Feel the guilt. Watch how you ignore the real enemy and focus on my tone and word choice. Then forget this moment when someone pats you on the head and dismisses your needs in a "polite," professional, political manner. Come back to your easy target when you can't sort your feelings out, but you'll be damned if you're not going to continue thinking and praying about it. And you don't need my negativity trying to provoke you.

 

There is no hero if you're not one. It's obvious, at least to me, that I'm not the problem or enemy. I speak. I fight. I create. I state my goals and work on them. I pay attention. Do I want allies? If I could recognize any, sure. I'm not alone, but our club is too small for the size of the problem. It's got its own obligations and personal problems too. But it stays honest and fights back. It remains open and informed. It wants to isolate and judge and believe you can be left alone to suffer your decisions. But it knows the consequences of abandoning the project. The cancerous cultural mass is consuming us all.

[897] Gomu Ningen

I'm on the verge of being caught up on One Piece. It's been a 2 or 3 year saga, serious periods of not watching at all, and nearly every episode sped to twice normal speed. It's not an accomplishment. It's not something to be proud of. It's not even a show for which I've watched the most episodes. It's just another show in a lengthy perspective-informing bender on what I'm to understand from my seat observing culture, even if Luffy is my spirit animal.

Regular watchers of anime will know this one falls into the same category of many others. There's an underlying thread of constantly improving, training, or getting stronger as the chaos of a world full of enemies ups the stakes every arc. A previously perceived unbeatable foe is actually the key to unlocking new abilities and an awareness of your own power. Enemies become friends. Characters you may not enjoy end up getting normalized for their look or play some integral part you wouldn't guess upon first meeting them. It's got jokes, it's got fan service, and like most things that I've spent a lot of time with as I near the end, I don't want it to end. At least with this series, it's likely got several more years, and I've never read the manga.

I vibe with the thesis of normalizing a certain kind of struggle or exercise of power. I think I've felt what might have been my ultimate knock-out blows become warm-ups, both in periods of actual physical activity, but also psychologically, and as it pertains to coping skills. I don't know if you've heard, but I hate everything and am super negative, so the fact I've managed to keep anything together or going at all is nearly miraculous. (You wanna talk about comments that have stuck with me, I genuinely have yet to fully understand or digest being called “negative” as assertively as I heard it however many years ago, so, good one, Chelsea.)

Right now, as it pertains to my cartoonish conception of my ever-growing power, I think about the cold. Our heat has been out nearly all winter. Space heaters weren't cutting it. I've got make-shift insulation in the form of blankets draped from the ceiling. I could, in theory, help the situation marginally by filling in certain gaps and holes in the room addition. (Which, I'll remind you, is arguably more extended garage than proper room.) But as inconvenient and shitty as being cold can be, it hasn't risen psychologically to the point that it's required an immediate fix. We've made quasi-stabs at it, watched the Youtube videos, sourced the illegal-for-us-to-buy and expensive refrigerant, and found a guy who might even be able to help but for the sudden onslaught of snow preventing his travel.

I've been colder. I've spent nights out here without power, under a mountain of blankets, and without several layers of appropriately warm clothes. I've worked and carried heavy things through the pre-paved unmowed hellscape of my yard. It doesn't mean I don't want to be cozy and warm no matter what, but the drama and pain and degree of being annoyed is dampened. I don't regard the cold as something happening to me, more a problem on an infinite list of problems I haven't prioritized. That shift in perspective lends itself to all of my ongoing efforts on what I'd like to create.

Luffy doesn't stop. He's impulsive and kind of dumb. He never gets more amped or focused than when he's trying to save or defend his friends. He takes people at their word. He says the quiet part out loud and is almost certain to force an alteration of the plan. He's perpetually looking to learn and explore. He renames people to fit his understanding or memory. He's always hungry.

Me, human, takes enough time out of his days and nights to watch a ton of TV. I still make moves. I look for righteous fights. I maintain focus on how I need to feel during the ride more than what I expect from the future. I'm doing things like leveraging my ability and awareness in aggressive ways to attempt to make a wage that's kept up with inflation. I'm politely, but curtly, snapping back at dumb bitches telling us “we know what we signed up for” in response to someone talking about needing the money to survive and model habits our families require. I'm adopting the headache of insane and inane facebook messages in attempting to sell things.

Right now, on the ride, I'm warm, I'm full, my adopted outdoor cat just came home and jumped in my lap, and I've got the time and inclination to pause my show and reflect. Again, I recognize how many ways in which I've peaked. Again, I can describe the future as the series of doors left to open and peacefully acknowledge and accept the heaters that need fixed. They can be fixed, and I intend to fix them. What else do you need if you're living the truth of your intention and ability?

One of the reasons I enjoy anime is how nakedly *them* they are. The weird ones are comfortable in their weirdness, and then they don't register as weird anymore. If you looked at a random still from a scene of One Piece, your first impression might be that it's one of the goofiest things you've ever seen. How much snot needs to come out of a character's nose? Why is that guy's head in a hippo? It's a test of whether you can pull the substance from what your eyes may be telling you. How good of a story is it in its ability to wrap you up and immediately cut through the garishness while also letting you appreciate the creativity?

As with every show I've wanted or not wanted to end, it will. I'm often suspicious of people who stay too psychologically attached to one show or idea. I've gotten to be a super-fan about Firefly and certain video games, and the reasons for doing so were often about deficits in my real life. I wanted a kind of family or dramatic saga that my often boring or depressed and resentful environment was not offering. Over time, I've watched that depression and resentment grow, and the chasm between me and my “negativity” in what Allie and I have put together out here and whatever you want to make of how others are navigating their subversion, isolation, or poverty is on full display. Anyone feel like we've been diligently hammering away at the issues we railed about in college? Don't you feel the energy and hope in your intentioned and sustainable community?

I don't have a crew, and I'm not the captain. I'd love one, but I'd want everyone on it to be like the Straw Hats; their own powerhouse with their own stories and reasons and vital roles to play. Still, the dumbest, most naive, and childish part of me is trying to create something large enough to carry a crew through the unforgiving seas of fascism and almost certain death. That death is played with constantly in anime. The bullets are sliced or kicked. The Earth shatters in every direction after a fierce blow before a few deep breaths, and the hero stands back up. Certainly the stakes don't feel that high in our day-to-day lives.

The different crews are after a mythical treasure left by the last Pirate King. I suspect a future episode in which Luffy becomes the Pirate King and/or when he finds One Piece will not be the most memorable. They're something of forgone conclusions like in Game of Thrones when Jon Snow sits on the throne. It's the drops from the peaks that make your stomach wrench. It's when you're actually invested and are mitigating the consequences of loss in real time, keeping death close. You felt the dramatic deaths in Game of Thrones, and you feel them in One Piece, even if most are incredibly hard to kill.

One of the familiar criticisms of an anime like One Piece are the amount of filler-episodes and extended intro reminder redundancies. Boss battles can run for 20+ episodes, story arcs over the course of a 100. Part of what makes watching so many episodes so quick is that of 23:50 minutes, only 9 is new information. You're going to keep watching, just like you're going to continue to live every boring or miserable day of your life. Tension needs to build, right? Every episode of a series can't be a perfect 10 with surprising revelations and an end that leaves you silently struck.

I appreciate the kind of sleepiness of snow days and a binge, but equally enjoy being busy, sweaty, and putting together large creative pieces on how to go about this life game. It's a practice-turned-quasi compulsion. I can't rot. I can't slowly die a martyr for some stated ideal or conception of myself. I dare myself to contradict the forces that try to fuck with the example I wish to set, practical-filler-training-malevolent days be damned. I find the next wall or corner to be backed against, and fight through the idea I should settle down or die there. After all, I'm pretty much powerful or comfortable enough, and we all know how the battle is going to end.

[896] Magic Carpet Ride

Settled in for the snow-day-ish, let's begin.

I was a touch unsettled at the prospect of lunging into debt, attempting to get my truck fixed, for projects we're attempting to prepare for spring. I, again, forgot that I should be receiving a tax return, a stimulus check is coming, and I hadn't calculated a paycheck. I should still be “even” within $100 or so dollars over the next month, as opposed to being shackled to my job for a minimum of two.

I'm exploring how to get different certifications when it comes to doing I.T. work. I told my supervisor I plan to leverage not only the good work and efficiency I'm building into their visit system, but my proclivity to learn new things and change on a dime to see if my company will find the wisdom to pay me what I'm worth. She supports the plan. At the same time, I'm finding a kind of pace and resolve for how I engage in my job duties that I find eerily similar to the “comfort” or “familiarity” I found at DCS that had me clinging on for 2 years.

I compare that feeling to the endless fervent desperation to get things done and be “on” that I've managed to, more or less, subsume to what I'm considering a patient wisdom or beaten-into-me humility. Is there “something” you could be doing every day in service to your goals? Depending on how broad or specific your goal, sure. Is it worth it? Can it be assessed in the context of other goals and obligations? These questions are where it starts to get complicated.

My goals have certainly changed over the years, I believe on the whole for the better. Where I might have one day just wanted to be “generally rich,” I have a deeper appreciation for maintaining a contented-enough head-space from which to work in. I like when things feel personal and meaningful on my own terms. I've stated enough that I could pay the bills with a McDonald's-esc job, but I have yet to apply to fast-food in spite of my many points of disillusion about social work. Practically, I'm married to some form of devil for the discernible future, and this one pays a touch more.

I think actually living through all of the sacrifices and negotiations to get to where I am now has taught me considerably about how to prioritize things. I've trained myself to appreciate the good fortune I have when my car gets stuck a mere 5 minute walk from my house and I can pair music with my stride. I recall the images and expenses before I could look at my camera feeds and see projects completed or in-waiting. It makes me think about how difficult the transition from talking out of your ass about hopes and dreams and wrestling with the reality can be if you haven't experienced the work or are simply unwilling to do it.

The disconnect between generations I think embodies the space where discussions about work and what constitutes it takes place. The privileges afforded to generations previous are now weaponized resentments for what they feel is slipping away. My generation had to cope with their entire sense of being in the world systematically attacked. Add the baggage of our country's racial history and sexual inequalities. Add the financial crashes and useless exploitatively expensive degrees. We're broken as fuck and rarely want to admit how beyond meme-i-fying our medication regimens and prompting our celebrities to talk about their own mental health issues.

Say you're not generally as good as me at finding a process to ride through your insatiable desire to comment or bitch about things. Your struggle becomes tantamount to poverty. It's a poverty of spirit if nothing else. You can't be blamed, and much like things aren't going to change if you simply never get the money to afford your basic necessities, debated as they may be, there is no environment, self-help book, or series of interpersonal interactions that's going to magically show you the way to cope or “progress” through your feelings. You might know there's work to be done, but can't define it, never get the tools, and never be able to afford to keep things working over time. Your emotional break-even point is to drag yourself through the day and stave off the worst consequences while you still manage to meaningfully suffer. It's a suffering in service to a broader negligence and disregard for your being, and ironically resentful that you want the bare minimum.

My funds tend to stay “even.” My money is in my land and the potential of the tools I acquire. I rarely have the cash or am not buying things on credit. I liken this to how Amazon runs its accounting, never showing a profit, hiding its money in numbers games. Of course, I'm not making money like that, but I think an underlying logic holds true to both. My money is attempting to service a long-term vision. I don't go into debt for debt's sake, it's overwhelmingly an investment on what I can continue to do or do in a bigger way. My truck, for all of its headaches, has enabled more, considerably so, than it has cost.

I trace back what I'm doing to various pivotal points in how my perspective is being shaped. I don't get the tiny house without a place to put it, way to transport it, or credit card to buy it when I don't have the cash. All fairly large, for me, bets and long-term stories that combine into the “easy” and “quick” decision today. That house/shed is going to save me untold hours in the future attempting to build something like it, let alone the cost of materials for which I have an intimate understanding. An intimate understanding, again, born of a willingness to do the work on my room extension and other projects.

The experience chasm only grows. I'm not 22, extra insistent and incorrigible about spending every waking minute in pursuit of my latest idea, cost be damned. That time taught me a lot, not least, it isn't sustainable. Sustainable healthy practice takes a level of commitment and work that is considerably more than we culturally have a notion of. Individuals certainly take on projects or educational pursuits and remind us of the dedication it takes to get certified or promoted, but on the whole most of our future talk is reduced to a kind of bar banter. We shy away from the work knowing it's hard and we've loaded on years of baggage before the idea of voluntarily adopting ever more.

It's hard to find it simply within yourself to pursue anything. You know what your bottom really looks like, and it's a fraction of what you've put together so far. Most of us could be some level of quasi-vagrant if any movie-esc apocalypse scenario played out. We wouldn't like it, and some of us would be overly dramatic, but we'd do it. When you compare that potential reality to the fed, warm, superficially communal and riddled with distractions environment you currently occupy, why fight for more? It becomes an intellectual exercise and boundary pushing that, evolutionarily speaking, is meaningless without an outward compelling force. Why divine reason-enough for manifesting yourself beyond familiar bubbles?

I think the question by itself is an overwhelmingly compelling argument for complacency, whether people understand it as such or not. “Complacency” is a word that doesn't pack a connotative punch given what I believe can be understood about the drama and degree of consequences. It's disguised as a genuine sense of comfort, or worse, “conservative.” It suggests a state of being that is, by default, not doing enough accounting for the constant state of change that we're all experiencing. We don't seek to remind ourselves of this or we'll almost immediately remember that we're going to die and our decisions matter.

I worry about success. I think people are going to drive themselves even further away. I consider what I'm pursuing now a dream-like opportunity that has been clawed away from a reality perfectly ambivalent of my existence. No series of “opportunists” are jumping to be a part of what should be our creation. Why? The excuses are infinite and personal, comfortable and complacent, familiar and in keeping with a baggage story they haven't chronicled in almost 900 blogs.

It can be complicated joining forces or negotiating goals and budgets, but it's absolutely necessary. The level of “risk” it takes to build what it will take to survive is only mitigated by a shared burden and vision. If we can only martial those forces in service to insurrection and war, we're absolutely fucked. Whether we want to make the decision to face that head on, now, together, or be forced into a permanent isolation that kills us slowly, and then all at once, is one presented in every moment. We have individual countries or examples of who we know we'd rather be more like. Adopting our share of the work is to wrench the culture from the hands of the violent and negligent. Are you living in the world you feel comfortable dying in?

[895] Sharp Dressed Man

Perhaps it's because lately I've been inundated with more religious-themed books and media, or perhaps I just can't sleep because my dinner was 7000 calories of delicious carbs, but here we are.

I consider myself a reasonable person. Why? I remain aware of how limited reason can be. I don't “believe” I'm a reasonable person. I think I'm a reasonable person. For me, there's a huge gap between thinking and believing. I struggle to conceive of things I believe in. I have an endless array of ideas which I either can or can't reason my way towards some kind of relative conclusion.

When I'm angry, down, or incredibly confused, I turn to reason. I don't pray the pain away. I don't deny what I feel or the words I wish to use to express it. I don't try to act like things are okay. I don't lust for someone to make excuses for me nor whisper in my ear that everything will be okay. Reason, for me, is nothing if not a tool first. I find meaning in attempting to be reasonable as I allow my thoughts to act through my fingers in searching for what I have to say.

I understand why people don't want to be reasonable. Reason is, at least theoretically, dispassionate. A story told boringly or series of facts aligned don't necessitate your opinion. A reason might be cold, flat, and weighing you down, while an excuse comes out hot and ready to protect you or float into as many ears as will take it. Reason gives us a path to often just as cold and heavy conclusions as the facts required to get us there.

I watched a short documentary from Braver Angels using marriage counseling sessions between democrats and republicans. I listened to Chris Hedges' book American Fascists. I watched What's the Matter with Kansas? In some ways, I don't know how to refrain from rehashing what I feel exists in one tenth of my writing about religious thinking, conservatives, or the inevitable consequences of forgoing your agency in service to things with less evidence than farts in the wind. There's still something I'm missing.

I think I understand religious belief. I think I understand it as a series of forces, not some ardently defined moment or act of “belief.” I see it as a kind of parallel mind where the only thing that matters is remaining alive as a character in some kind of story. I take it for granted that people are incredibly psychologically fragile. The fine line of remote sanity, in sheer practical terms, bolstered by religious myth or interpersonal cult feels almost reflexively mandatory. I think people who bemoan the amount of alleged believers often ignore the series of myths you're required to adopt even as an otherwise “reasonable person” just to function.

As such, I've come to understand the strategy of poking fun, getting angry, or otherwise attempting to belittle someone's faith as futile. It doesn't mean it can't be fun or justified, but it does mean if I'm to maintain that I want to change culture, my pitch is going to have to be more comprehensive. I'm positive I've stated this years ago, and it's manifested as a generalized disinterest in engaging with anyone remotely religious about anything religious more than any kind of advocacy specifically.

What's important to understand about my change in position is that it didn't come from anymore respect for religion or any one religious person. In fact, I still hate staunch ideologues and think religion is the best tool they use to destroy most of what I care about, including the practice and teaching of reason. Reason allowed me to take in more information and adopt a broader view. I could further contextualize not just my antagonizers, but myself and how I feel about them. No religious person was persuasive. No religious argument just shook my feeble atheistic mind. I just kept working to understand the problem broader.

A lot of my anger for religious people is for a perceived intellectual laziness and dishonesty. Fear I can at least basically respect insofar as it's a complicated emotion at the basest level of our brain, and when you're afraid, you're bound to be unreasonable. Once you've removed the fear, or poor excuses to pretend you're afraid, I think it's a direct flight to dishonesty and laziness. Flying right over facts, questions, “I don't know,” or any one of a thousand things that might chip away at the catch-all answers of “faith.”

Religion is often referred to as something very personal. Whether or not you even want to use the word religion, people flock to “spiritual” or some such “mystical” realm of communing with forces “beyond” or “greater.” I've done drugs that made me feel that way. They did not result in religious conversion. Before I did those drugs, I did a lot of reading about the ways people achieve those states and what happens in our brains when they're going on. I sucked the magic out. I didn't let the question linger like no answer could possibly exist and moved on with my life.

We act like there's any real separation of church and state. This intimate, deeply personal, often rallying cry to go out and convert others, global phenomenon about how to characterize your place and organize the world is treated as though it's an incidental afterthought when you go to the ballot box. A lazy economist might say you've got “perfect information” from which to decide who's going to represent your best interests and disregard your “personal values.”

The challenge, and I think so few people understand or agree with this, is to understand how totalizing and threatening it is to have a perspective subsumed by a religious mindset. Maybe Jesus isn't your brand, but something in how we respond to story-telling and club-affiliation is speaking to you. It's no better to be emotionally hijacked by a political party than it is a sky daddy.

We know as well much about how and why people pick these fascist feelings and tendencies over reason. They're desperate. They're alone. They're exhausted and ashamed. They're angry, perhaps even as angry as me, and they don't know what to do about it besides burn things down. Could you have asked for a more lame coup? It played out like a bad TV episode of a TNT show. Faith without acts is dead? The hollowness of faith is clearly alive and well.

I think I semi-consciously decided that the psychosis was too large and the numbers too few to really combat it. I started praising the idea of so much to eat and watch as forms of a stop-gap to any kind of genuine movement towards destruction. There' no more fat, hopeless, and addicted than the ones who vote in service to their fascist values. Fight the next Civil War from the top of any flight of steps and you'll be done by the afternoon.

The word “reason,” like all words in double-speak land, gets tossed around to mean its opposite. “The reason I vote is to save the unborn!” Of course, you don't need a concept of “save” “the unborn” or “reason” to form those words into a sentence. You don't need science. You don't need statistics or analogies implicating your god in significantly more natural abortions than are ever sought medically. A reasonable person knows you're tribal. Your morals are shaped by a story, not morality. Your feelings dictate instead of inform. You feel the story in a way that facts don't concern themselves with.

Reason, devoid of context, gets you into as much or more trouble than being merely faithful. Now, you've functionally broken all the rules. Nothing weaves your thoughts into a context. Psychotic breaks put this on display. Even when you're perhaps technically saying a series of true things, they're anchored to nothing, and you, not anchored, can't tell. Our fundamental need for a story now becomes the game of people marketing their “family atmosphere” at a slave-labor job. It's a story of manifesting destiny and entitlements. It's class warfare. It's righteous slaughter of the threat just over the hill or those guilty of thought-crime in not believing your origin or orientation story.

Where does the individual, or just the capacity to reason, go? If we must have a story, and I think we must, which one do we choose? Here, the apologists for various faiths point to the generally large number of people not blowing themselves up or stoning gay people and consider that reason enough to pat themselves on the back for their club membership. I reject this, and say you should be choosing your story.

Your story is anchored by choice. Refined choices are dictated the larger you make your perspective. If you're a child and you choose milk and cereal for breakfast, because that's all you've ever had or known, or perhaps all your parents could afford, you have little choice. Your story is small, predictable, and speaking to a universal story perhaps about poverty or simplicity. Now you're grown. You can eat literally anything, food or otherwise, and you pick a piece of fruit for books and books of reasons that still may tell a story about poverty or simplicity, but now with your agency and intention. You can recognize your choice now in the broader context. You can reflect on your “choice” as a child as primarily a series of circumstances and ignorance.

It appears many people struggle with this kind of exercise, not because it's hard, but because it begs a lot of questions they start afraid, and then end lazy and dishonest, about answering. How much of your day are you really choosing? Are you still practically a child? What horrible terrible things are you choosing? What might've happened to you as a child that you have no choice but to relive the terror of each time you think of it? What if the people you care most about in the world were actually choosing to do things that would hurt or kill you and the people or things you care about? What if you don't know or aren't confident you can, in fact, ever choose to do anything about anything? (Just double-dog dare these people to lick a toilet seat and then ask them how helpless they feel because they know the rules.)

Much more polite, simple, and “safe” to step right over all that and, god forbid, anyone remark how banal some Jewish snobs regard evil or remark on how it triumphs.

This is what will kill us, in my estimation. It won't be bloody Trump nuts hanging like balls from a neutered nation. It won't be nuclear war or mishap. I don't even think it will be climate change. It will just be the silence of business as usual. It'll be on the wind between the pages of a trillion memes. It will come like a virus. It will come straight-up, nicely dressed, and telling you, exceptionally reasonably, what it's doing and intends to do to you in the future, and you'll usher it inside, introduce it to your kids, and pray it's only joking.

[894] Tell Me Why

What if I can't be fixed? What if there's never a stabilizing point where it all just clicks? What happens when I can't find my stride, I'm stuck rehashing old rhetoric and beating a dream of a kind of existence to death as my hairline recedes, my joints ache, and I struggle to hear what's been said across the room? What if I'm destined for a generalized forlorn blog or biting indictment of politics every week, and every sincere exploration of my being or state of mind is reduced to a randomized index number of a whole-internet archive and never to be seen again? What if I'm not even granted the irony of dying from a car crash while I'm tweeting about how likely it seems I might be about to die in a car crash?

I was riffing on “hate” yesterday on the drive home. I'm reminded often how much of my behavior is driven by hate. I don't “accept” things. I'm not particularly stoic or disengaged. I'm not boundlessly joyful at the sheer absurdity no matter how many jokes I can come up with. Hate is first and foremost on my mind and only after I engage the hate does room for other modes of being come through. I have to talk about how much I hate my job before I pick up the phone and schedule the next appointment. I have to bitch about the weather before I pack on layers and attempt some outdoor task. I have to belabor the shittiness of any given situation before the joke comes or the move to account for what may, innocently-enough, contribute to the shittiness.

It's a hatred that keeps me clenched, tight, and taking Advil like candy. It's a hate the cups the anxiety in the pit of my stomach. It's a hate that has me rehearsing conversations with people or interviewers when I actually have power or the ability to be of the kind of grand consequence I'm under the impression will pacify the hate. Mostly I think it will do so because when I get to “do more,” whether it's the opportunity to demonstrate my competence for things I don't even care to do, or stay busy enough to justify my time and energy, I do feel better, if brief enough to know it's not a long term fix or really the kind of example I'm attempting to set.

I remember not feeling necessarily “good” when all I had to do each day was read or do drug studies, but I don't recall seething with hatred nor regularly clenching my jaw and needing to constantly massage my shoulders. There's a different kind of pain when you put your body, not just your mind, into some kind of contradiction. Thinking convoluted, contradictory, or conflicting things comes with the territory of having a mind. Working and watching yourself betray what your muscles or attention might otherwise be focused on is another level. I don't just think it's silly or inefficient the way the organizations I've saddled myself to run, I'm the engine that doesn't get the oil to function right. And if they give me drops of oil, it's on the condition I ignore the grinding brakes.

Social workers broadly seem to epitomize that “make the best of it” mindset I think has choked the country as a whole. Whether you were driven to the job because they're always hiring, or you actually have some genuine regard for the work, the default presumption, whether voiced explicitly or not, is that people are pretty terrible, and it's up to us with our models, good will, and belief in our better natures to show them the door and hold their hand through the chaos. That chaos can sometimes just be meeting attendance and paperwork, or the ongoing drama of a mental health struggle and addiction.

At bottom though, we are all operating under the basic premise that people suck. It comes out as “it's a hard job” or “I could never do that.” Every study on stress has DCS or social workers as its focus. It's our cultural narrative. People suck so much, they don't deserve to get paid, get healthcare, have access to time off, or even live if you prefer to call them “illegal” or “antifa” in a deliberate dance around the human and ideas they represent. We take these suckers and we get them addicted, hold the pharmaceutical companies harmless, and then we take their children in a process to be overseen by an office with a 50/50 chance you'll get an insecure power monger with their own incredibly sucky behavior dictating how it proceeds.

We send inexperienced or exhausted people out to “advocate” that you don't suck that bad and just need someone in your corner, when the country, county, town, and any remote authority in your life has failed you, considers you a criminal, and were they to not actually consider you a giant ball of irredeemable suck, couldn't help you in a meaningful and comprehensive way if they tried. They are forced to draw inspiration and meaning like a parent cheering way too hard at a soccer game, thinking the deeper they feel and the wider they prostrate, the more of helpful consequence they'll be.

And you're supposed to carry on like this, every day, your whole life, swapping in one job for another, one excuse or company policy disavowing the language needed to liberate. You're supposed to maintain professionalism and maturity as you watch yourself prematurely age or resent every minute you're finally “alone” to think about how deeply you're haunted by the next obligation. And they're obligations because they lend themselves to guilt. You, somehow, still know what you're worth and what you could be doing. You know that the “little bit of good,” be it colloquially or practically is seemingly all you ever get, and being a tired or depressed stick in the mud contributes only one more to the instances in which you weren't able to justify your existence.

How liberating, some people tell me, to be less attached, not full of feeling dramatically one way or another as though the hatred isn't squeezing and visceral. Why don't I go back to school? Why don't I apply to be a...? Why don't I try to pursue? There is no goal if you're not enjoying the ride. The processes that are difficult are supposed to be in service to something, not a self-inflicted painful reminder of something severely lacking for which no one seems bothered to account for. I can't enjoy the movie while the theater is on fire.

We don't have the time to process how big of a fuck up it is that we're at once manifesting and suffering in a loop. And we're told by those who would never doubt their own sincerity or utility of their being that maybe we're just having a bad day or haven't come to appreciate enough about our circumstances. When your hair falls out during chemo, there are so many fabulous wigs, after all, and they just so happen to be in sales.

I want it all to come to a grinding halt. I don't just want “stimulus” money, I want stimulus time. I want to pause functionally begging for the right to exist, be pretty much left alone, and I'll throw you some cash to let me go to the doctor, eat, and keep watching TV. This shit shouldn't be so hard. It shouldn't rise to the level of existential crisis every single fucking day when the car blows a tire or your billable hours maliciously coordinate to cancel on you the same week. My body shouldn't hint to me that maybe an occasion deserves a tear when I'm shown a moment of compassion, understanding, or opportunity because it knows how short we are on supplies.

I'm so incredibly tired of feeling like I have some disorder, deficiency, defect, or determined role like I'm over here wisely choosing each day to play the, “What can I swallow?” game. I'm tired of singing the same song. I'm tired of seeing shit like a Bernie fucking meme go more viral than every fucking thing that man has stood for his entire life. I'm tired of looking for the excuse to tap out gracefully as though the mental and emotional worlds we're occupying can even grasp the concept of grace beyond its weaponized god-ridden invocations.

There are battles worth fighting. There are reasons to live and worse struggles to endure for the kind of rewards required to thrive over being afraid and exhausted. Why does no one believe that?

[893] Tool Boxer

I anticipate a bit of a scatter-brained amount to talk about, but I need to focus so I can turn my day into something remotely productive.

I have something of a list of “philosophical cliches” that I take for granted when I talk, but that I also apply to my life broadly. It's things like assuming an “ambivalent universe” beyond naive ideas about good and evil. It's that time is an illusion. It's that all conversations are happening at once and about everything at all times.

To someone not familiar with me or my, probably-poor understanding of physics or quantum mechanics, and how it's married to hopefully-not-Chopra-esc ideas about how to conduct myself, the purpose or utility of how I talk about things or why I engage in one thing over another are going to “seem” very hard to understand.

I liken it to the cultural understandings of narratives, and meta-narratives. You might have a narrative about “minimum wage” that says definitively there's a standard or floor that we're all going to agree or adhere to. The meta-narrative is the assumptions built-in about the kind of work that pays minimum wage or the type of people who would “choose” to engage in it. We would certainly get a lot more done and agree much quicker if we just did the math on what it costs to live with the necessities, but someone's always going to start a selfish fight about what's really necessary.

To the best of my ability, I try to refrain from meta-narratives. I ask questions for answers, not because I've built in the question an implication I think you should follow. If you use damning and oppressive language or words in how you orient yourself in the world, I'm perfectly okay with that, if you are also able to maintain a sense of the ongoing forever-narrative that's curious and open to change in service to the facts. For as often as I've been begrudged my “negativity” or negative language, rarely if ever can the person doing so concede that, one step beyond the level of their emotion, is the mere fact that needs to be contended with on its own terms.

My buddy's mom died the other day. It was relatively sudden, and she was only 62. Aggressive cancer infected her entire body, and a 4 day hospital stay ended with her dying. All things about that scene remain true at all times. We could develop the same cancer. The depth of his love and care for her is as true as the depth of my ambivalence and cheering for the death of my own mother. How you're spending each day and whether or not it's with the idea of when, not if, the cancer analogue gets you is an important thing to remain vigilant and contemplative about.

Can you remain contemplative? Are you responsible enough to maintain the level of thought and concern for your place relative to everyone else?

I stay angry. I'm relatively domineering and unsympathetic. Some of that's built in, some of that took work. I'm angry because I'm not represented in the “democratic” country I live in. I'm angry that I'm subjected to the task of money-making in a rigged and violently idiotic game. The anger focuses my resolve to be singularly focused on how to create the conditions that make it so I'm not so angry. I frame that story in terms of “me,” but I intimately understand myself as an amalgamation, a limited window, and an expression of “everything at all times.”

This is why advocacy and a voice is important. One angry person, perhaps disproportionately so, tells us nothing. I could have a broken brain or many bad ideas. I respect shows of solidarity in marches and protest. The problem is forgoing an individual responsibility and sense of agency or accountability in pawning off to those willing to do or be.

If “most” people are ambivalent, and the rest left to “progress” by “the narrowest of margins” as every media outlet likes to refer to the democratic majority, I don't believe we'll make it. We have to be clear and determined in what's right. We have to be defending every day the right to not be subjected to the power-mongering fear-based narcissism of fascism. We have to normalize and cope with our inherent Nazi-impulses and decide, consciously, actively, to reduce them to the numbers, the contemplation, and the work. It's a work that does not reduce us to our story of victimization. It's a work that requires sacrifice.

I think there will be a temptation to read things I write and react as though it's somehow abstract. I live in a country that is over-extended. I drastically reduced my bills, sacrificing presumptions of convenience and comfort. I made dozens of unhelpful, impractical, and mentally exhausting attempts to connect and be friends with people I thought could “do better.” I stopped romanticizing, sacrificing an unproductive and ignorant assumption about the power and utility of mere feeling. I've taken ideas I had about ownership or money and distilled them down into a process of how they do or don't balance with my internal sense of happiness or well-being. I sacrificed the narrative of “me alone” and look instead for how I can build my understanding of circumstance into a more robust and honest picture of the whole. Everyone should have their own sense about what they need to be doing or working in service to. It's an individual exaltation or failure, every day, every moment.

You can recognize that you are the cancer. You are a cascade of multiplying ambivalent forces eating up the resources, time or material, looking for as many host cells as possible. That's every one of your bad ideas. That's every moment of impatience and imprecise “fight” or conversation. That's each moment of ingratitude and presumption. The cancer's going to win, but ours is a story of what we were doing each day to understand it and mitigate it. This isn't something to “debate” with “another side.” This isn't something that can leave you feeling like you've won or spared feelings. This is whether or not you can acknowledge the boring deadly fact and divorce it from the meta-narrative that implicates your prejudices and pithy feelings.

By the numbers, I need more money to do what I want and support my household than what I will make scrapping or side-hustling. I, pretty much hate, my job, but I've aggressively approached it with radical honesty about its relative utility against how I might otherwise be spending my time. For now, cold hard cash speaks louder than old water heaters. I hate that. I hate it so much I've written a blog over the course of an hour to aid in pushing back me starting to work in service to that job again...on my day off, because I hate that fact at least as much as I hate the detailed day-to-day. And now you know. And I'm coping in my way with my words, and whether I stay on for another 2 weeks or 12 months, it's something I'm actively navigating, not resolved to, not heedlessly suffering, and not sacrificing my understanding of what informs that hate to paint a rosier picture than is due.

Do not let yourself be deceived. Do not follow the herd. Do not pretend like dispassionate analysis is the antithesis to really engaging in life and discovering what your place in it might be. You will not be erased by rendering things down into their component parts, you will be a pointed tool for building something only you are capable of. Use it.

[892] Death Cult For Cooties

I'm annoyed. I'm watching “The Vow,” where Scientology-lite ex NXIVM members functionally recreate Leah Remini's series with, somehow, even more exposition. I don't know if I even really appreciate the amount of catch-all nonsense cliches people employ to describe their time under the influence, but I know I'm losing my patience for this narrative that seems fit to start and end at, but how could I know!? This could happen to anyone!

The cult leader started as a multi-level marketing scammer in the 80s. If that's not enough to sound the alarm, say, because back then the nature of those organizations was less understood or you were young enough for him to consider you a target, there's more to explore. Hell, I've fallen under the allure of an MLM. I was 16, made one pathetic attempt at sending my dad to work with an energy drink catalog, cost myself like $20, and thus ended my career in “being my own boss.” I've also fallen for an Ebay scam, and believed I had a shot at girls I absolutely had no shot with. I characterize a good portion of my 16-25 year old self as something of a wide-eyed idealist verses deliberately naive.

As such, along those lines, I can empathize with these people. They had their own social and emotional issues. They were “looking for something,” and a nice-enough crowd with a persuasive personality coaxed them along. I think as someone who recognized his own capacity for manipulation and concern for the potential consequences, here's where I dramatically diverge. I start writing. The narrative used to justify the different environments that were making me miserable needed to be explored, not justified.

Part of the reason I didn't and still don't feel naive about the parts of my life that haven't gone as planned or didn't feel like they “should” was because I was actively examining them and making decisions in spite. You hear the same thing from the cult members though. They don't consider getting branded a bad thing. They don't think the bad press is anything but nay-sayers and people threatened by their growth and influence. What makes my conception of examining my life better than theirs? It seems too easy to point to the things any one member might have been convicted of, right? We were definitely drinking heavily, drugs were all around, and clearly not everyone experiences the party or sexual energy the same way.

I don't know that there's an “objective” analysis here. I think one of the reasons I insist on constantly writing, sharing, and exploring, is because with the ounce of sympathy or empathy I might have for any one member, I can't shake this sense that there's something dirty not being addressed. I can't believe they wouldn't be having the same kind of conversations I was, internal or otherwise. I can't stomach the amount of silence and circles one would need to let “everyone I know is starving themselves and exhausted” go unexamined.

Easy enough to think of the cult of Nazi Trump supporters, no? How many interviews have you watched of them just sounding dumb. And it's a deliberate dumb. It's a proud dumb. It's the kind of dumb that is servicing a disregarded maliciousness. That maliciousness is ravenous to see how much it can get away with or devour. That's what I feared about my awareness of my capacity to manipulate. Even before I had any real sense that I could go about it deliberately, I knew simple things like, smiling a certain way defused or disarmed people. Humor works pretty much always. To what end?

Maybe if most of your days are doing workshops and yoga classes, it's a little easier to be dragged along in a more-or-less agreeable way. What's the fat, drunk, gun-toting basement dwelling retard's excuse? Do you think he subjectively views his life as one worth living? Do you think there are a few, pretty easy, hard truths to wrestle with before you find yourself face-painted and shitting in the halls of Congress? There's a scene in The Vow were an old actress says her mom is second cousins with Prince Charles and he needs to do her a favor to get the Dalai Lama on the phone. Cletus T. Dickhead would certainly spell it llama and accuse him of being a pedophile. These are superficially entirely different worlds.

What unites the two is ritual lies. Shitty families operate this way too. They lie about the impact they have on each other. They lie about what holds them together as though blood is sacred enough to divine kings and soak up the mess of incest and emotional abuse. We're all shaped and shape culture, as much as we wish to deny the latter. “Generational abuse” exists as a term because we've come to understand that trauma travels over time. To the extent you are made aware of this and then proceed to ignore the obligation to examine how it's almost certainly playing out in your life, any asshole who gives you enough reason to distract from that line of inquiry is going to become compelling.

This is a big reason why I don't hero worship. I have people who I tend to admire, briefly, and then I start to let what's human about them creep in. Jordan Peterson is an easy target. I've gorged myself on the podcast 5-4 the last few days. If you ever make the mistake of letting your favorite band's members speak, you're in for a ride. Every thing and every one can be credibly criticized. They can be subsumed in your subjective estimation or they can be incorporated into our collective objective measuring. Nothing about what we should seek to understand in our enjoyment or promotion of something needs to rest in an angry or defensive space. It's disingenuous cowardice or intellectual narcissism otherwise.

Accountability is something that's just not here anymore. I think accountability is often thought of as “someone” “out there” who needs to “do something.” Like there's indeed something to be done, a hero is on the way, and whatever our obligation, it's to squawk like the morality is in sounding the bells everyone else has already been ringing. This is why your silence is terrifying to me. This is why when in the days after the literal attempt to overthrow the government, dumb as it was, gave license for these fucks to escalate further, why am I not seeing every single one of you demanding the assholes be arrested?

I can speculate that you don't hold yourselves accountable, not really, to anything of consequence or sacrifice, so it feels really hard and like some undue burden to add what you might only perceive as noise. Okay, and what else does your cult leader tell you you're not allowed to say? How many millions of psychological cults have you joined that have so many of the features of the Nazis? Dressing up fear and shame as pride? Seems likely. Wishing for death? Pretty much my constant thesis for the last few years. Deliberately isolating yourself in a deadly comfort zone from any further obligation to the world around you? Please, stop me if this shit all feels made up and reaching.

[891] Salty

“Can I come out now?”

I want this to be very broad. As something of a fundamentalist when it comes to the method of discerning and repeating factual information, there's a sense that literally anything, big and small, is playing some version of the same song. I think there are functionally foundational methods to not just orienting yourself in a conversation about the natural world, but about what it means to be human. I think a lot of those fundamentals have been dressed up and confused in the manner in which they've been shared in school or between cultures. The truth of them, and the consequences of playing in concert or discord, play out predictably.

To be a little thirsty is familiar.

Everything, everywhere, needs to replenish itself in order to survive or perpetuate. You don't get life on Earth without a closed energy system constantly raining down from the sun. The light doesn't know nor care if it's illuminating a book or a torch. Heart disease is the biggest killer in the world. You clog the rejuvenating system, it prematurely ends. Your body is a closed system that can only work with what's been put into it. So far, we haven't learned how to scrub our veins and arteries so we don't feel burdened by the effort or expense it would take to eat healthier. We prefer instead to adapt by adopting a “you only live once” mindset that makes poor attempts to cope with death in every onerous bite.

In one of the last episodes of Vikings, a group is lost at sea. Slowly, they begin to die, and one boy hastens his death by drinking the salt water. Hopefully, if you're reading this, you've never been someone so thirsty you would deeply empathize with his plight. For all of the things these adventurers were excited and motivated to discover about the world, they already figured out it's foolish and deadly to drink from the sea. What goes through a person's head, so desperate, so deluded and bereaved, to do it anyway?

Our biological systems are a wealth of knowledge. Before we began the conspiracy to persuade ourselves we were ever “safe,” we built a complex series of understandings that tracks straight from our genes to our hero stories. That understanding was meant to provoke us to react to danger, real or imagined. It said we can take a thousand cuts to our skin in service to protecting what lies deeper. Practically overnight, those systems were subjected to modern environments they weren't designed for. When the physical plain or jungle disappeared, a new stomping ground was created in the mind. Now, convoluted philosophy or religious ideas shape and bind. Needs multiply in keeping with ever-iterating abstractions, to be saved, to follow rules, tithe, consume, or otherwise obligate yourself to your neighbor.

I think at every single moment, since the beginning of time, and at least since the beginning of consciousness, it's the same tools, same game, and same decision as to whether or not to drink the sea water. As deadly as it may be, a little won't kill you. This provided you drink 2.8 units of fresh water for every 1 unit of sea water. It will never be “safe” anymore than drunk driving, but each time you make it home without killing yourself, someone else, or ending up in prison, you have a visceral reminder of what *seems* to work. That fresh water is coming is taken for granted. Unrealized consequences, in fact, aren't consequences.

Water, at least, you can tell whether or not it's salty. Whether that's enough to deter any one person is its own question. What to do about murky ideas? What to do about abstract or deliberately convoluted ideas taking years to impact? You just got away with drunk driving yesterday, sipped a little sea water to celebrate, and now you're being told to ponder what happens to children you don't have 10 years from now when billionaires get tax breaks? Meanwhile, it's completely lost on you that the reason you were out drinking is because you feel generally miserable from your low wages now impacted from what was done to you maybe 40 years ago! How can you be expected to wrap your head around this game or these timelines? Especially because you've been told never to trust who's told you about them.

The more you own your complicity, the easier it is to understand. That is, say you've been given an opportunity to join something, say something, or build something, and you don't. First, and this is the insidious yet most meaningful detail, you have to recognize you had the choice to join, say, or build in the first place. Much of the modern discourse seems wholly engulfed by the idea that we're all just along for the ride. (Choo choo Trump train!) It's not me, it's my boss. It's not me, The State is all-consuming. It's not me, the rules are *clearly* written down. We're afraid to get called out or be held accountable. We're, pathetically, afraid of disassociating with the worst perpetrators. We don't want the burden that comes with holding and fighting for what it means to choose to be a rational and responsible actor in the world.

A little, dumb, coup attempt took place not 2 days ago, and there was an infinite saltwater sea of moments between certifying the election and going home to “debate” whether or not a president inciting insurrection should be removed. His vice president isn't on board with the idea, and the cowards and opportunists he hired resigned before even chancing getting asked the question. These aren't people. These aren't leaders. These are the result of previously unrealized consequences filling a power vacuum when you don't join, speak, and build.

So much of the narrative over the last 5 to 10 years has been about “canceling” or extirpating “problematic” ideas from our thoughts. We learned the dangers of social media, and continued to sip at regular intervals. We learned that absurd math of “trickle down” and devoted cherished Disney classics to the folly of greed and pride, sip sip sip. Mollify the angry Whites, don't condemn. Beat the Blacks for daring to claim their lives matter. Fake news and foreign interference. Nary a nod to the misdeeds in our own backyards when it comes to spying, environmental destruction, war mongering, or entertaining a unique racist brand. It's as simple as representation! Don't you know words like “qualified” are toxic and maybe violent and sexist?

By default, we are wrong, and nothing about how we engage with the world tries to reckon with that save scrupulous scientific pursuits. By default, we are thirsty, and we can be persuaded to drink sea water. We can squeeze it drop by drop, or gulp by the handful. I see people who swim or surf that perhaps accidentally drink it. I know some people make a game or guilty pleasure out of downing a cup here or there before racing to the water fountain. They go on to pretend like it didn't happen. Then, they pretend they can't see dehydrated people on the verge of death gleeful and delirious as they reach once more over the side of the boat.

The Nazis become the Germans we know them as today because we gave them a plan, dignified work, and an opportunity to buy-in to this increasingly precarious global experiment to prevent the extinction of humanity. (Or at least to get them all shopping.) They were very thirsty, and those as equally informed by history and human psychology as anyone else of their day opened fire hoses of sea water. These same monstrous fools are in every third house in your neighborhood. They're still thirsty, and no one is turning on the water. They don't know of any good wells. And whatever you're drinking has made you quiet, afraid, and unironically entitled. Onto the infinite negative feedback cycle you go, justifying your ongoing posture as the threat escalates sip by sip.

[890] Lesser Gods

I've been trying to write a certain kind of blog for at least two weeks. Maybe after watching “I Am Greta,” I'll be able to find it.

There are problems big and small. We address them, or don't, in the same fashion. We regard them as big, and respond inadequately. We regard them as small, and perhaps ignore them. Rarely, perhaps in war or specific disease eradication, can I recall gigantic problems being addressed in gigantic ways. In fact, when you look into the details, it's a dogged and select few who get about the organizing and persuading to make the rest work.

There's an idea that you don't want a king who wants to be king. It should be a begrudging obligation and responsibility. It should come with the “divinity” bestowed upon revelous privilege. For so long we've only known the power of kings as something to abuse. We're kings of our own story, insofar as we ignore our neighbor and history. We tax the planet insatiably. We use the language of war until the words indefinitely obscure the violence they retain. We look for heroes and scapegoats.

I identified a lot with Greta. She speaks, the world imitates. She learns, the world hurls opinionated condescension. She doesn't want to be a person who says one thing and does another. She's an extremely begrudging leader. She responds reflexively, “No, we're here together.” when praised for coming to give a speech. She knows that for every increasingly angry or emotional talk she might give, it's going to take us all. She does not falter on this point.

As I've gotten older, I've had to reevaluate what it means for me to be a leader. I have a lot of not-exactly-empty words about being a loud, combative, and obnoxious voice, if nothing else. I dream of driving around with a mega-phone and fact pamphlets. I rehearse what I might say on stage in a talk or to reporters. The things that I've learned about my capacity to cause a fuss and draw attention are ripe to be exploited by the media noise machine. I could see myself dance and smile and laugh about whatever bumbling following or accolades I might receive. I'd then sit back and watch Trump get elected again or some other oligarchy-based right-wing tragedy unfold every day.

My understanding of myself, power, and my relationship to it has changed. I don't think attention means anything in and of itself. Attention is cheap. Commitment, focus, dedication, and truthfully serving an ideal? That changes the world. It changes it in dramatically terrible ways, and makes incredible saves here and there.

I think it's easy to confuse my conception of truth. Truth is ambivalent. The power of it indifferent. I don't try to speak the truth to obtain some kind of badge or out of a sense lording pride. I try because I decided I wanted to make my individual impact on the world in spite of how impossible and shit I think most things are. It sucks to feel abandoned and naive. It sucks to be poor and always in struggling to catch-up. It sucks when your water smells like sulfur and when everything you own seems to break at the same time. It sucks talking about it for as bad as it sucks, and hearing silence suspiciously disguised as tinnitus.

If I were ever in a leadership position of my design, it would be to first lead with the ideals and practice of what I believe in. That's writing and the land. That's my budget being hyper focused on paying off debts or bills and investing in tools. I'd want to be in a world, small as five acres, of people leading themselves through the ideals and work they stand for. If and when it draws attention, I don't want it to be for its novelty. I want it to be as a provocation. I want what I build to make you feel like shit and then immediately feel like you need to create something like it in your world.

Greta is finding out the hard way, just like I had to, how much of it is talk and pageantry. They'll cheer you on. They'll fixate on your image or at least their caricature of it. They won't, you know, do anything after the splendid walk through the city streets. 10 or 20 will try. 1 or 2 will succeed, kinda, before being wrapped up in the greater artifice as they learn the language of “compromise” and “maturity.” What are you supposed to do then besides carve out your little space that you hope fills with water and one day becomes a river?

I like to think I'm ready for it. I think I can handle the bad reviews, the thousands of opinions, bot, troll, or otherwise, about how I sound, something I've said or done in the past, or just how incomplete and wrong-headed I am in being soooo whatever the adjective. At the same time, I want none of it. I want to be smarter than to get sucked up in that kind of attention hole. I want to overwhelm with my force, not get battered around by rage and hype machines. I want the example I set to be as strong as I genuinely feel about what I'm trying to accomplish in the world and who I believe needs to be standing next to me.

The “argument” for driving on the correct side of the road makes itself. I want to be understood at that deep psychological and normative level. I want to infiltrate and divert power across so many mediums, I hear my talking points on your lips and in your headlines. I want to blithely wave my hand at what I'm doing when asked for a comment. I want to turn privileged and poorly dressed information into instantly accessible resources like a tool you might see on Star Trek. They don't have time to argue with user-incompetent software!

I think this takes the kind of “reflective grind” I've been in what feels like indefinitely. I lost the zealotry to sacrifice everything in service to my most compelling ideas. I don't have the energy to fight every battle. I have what I intend and believe, and as many alters as I can erect in service. There are so many churches, humble and ornate. If nothing else got built, people ensured a church did. I'd prefer a star ship, but the same underlying mechanism is what's at play. What do you believe in?

I have brief moments in my day where I can sometimes see the information I've given someone has actually helped them. They had no plan, I told them what to do. They had no understanding, I spelled it out until they almost get as bored with the details as I am. I believe what I'm doing is a good thing. I think people need organized, practical information that will help them gain control of their lives. I think that while I'm supposed to be dealing with a “difficult” population, I just see people as ridiculous or boring as anyone I've ever met with a little less money, tact, or luck. I use this understanding to knock everyone down several pegs.

I'm never tempted to exploit these people. I want to shit on the leadership of places I work. I want to get angry at coworkers who put in less than an appreciable amount of effort or respect for themselves and the nature of the task. My world gets better when people are accounting for each other, and when I see myself actually helping. It's brief, and why I'm not suited for ongoing empathy-based work, but it's there. I'm not willing to act that by virtue of my title or experience, I'm anything more or less, in a fundamental way, than anyone around me. As such, the artificial and empty words used to justify how the world looks stick out as the disproportionate source for the generalized misery that burns people out and makes the future look bleak.

I think people deserve to lead their lives. I don't think this comes without a consideration for the world they inhabit. Never in the history of our species have we been so unequal, faced challenges so large, and faced the kind of catastrophic consequences of inaction, denial, and mindless fighting over what side of the road we're driving. I think you are obligated to lead. I think you need to take bigger steps in service to your voice and perspective, and I think you need to defend it when no one's around to hear or support you. I think more people need to hear what's wrong, the truth about how wrong it is, and what's going to happen if it doesn't get fixed.

It's not Greta's job to save us. I've already pulled out of the “argument.” We continually serve our heroes up to be devoured by the attention-machines; “follow me!” What's your daily devotional after you concede God's not there? What's your understanding of “the problem?” I need to see it. You need to see it. We are built around saying one thing and doing another, while the arbitrary swings of power maybe, kinda, work here or there. Where are we going to get the appreciation for the divinity in the work that needs to be done without talking about it, deliberately, with a plan, and a sense of responsibility to get it done? Is it space we're going to continue to cede to the most delinquently faithful and ideologically possessed?

I go back to “work” tomorrow. I did “better” in staying on top of my notes and mileage this week, but it's still not complete. I get to scramble for a few last-minute hours in service to my wage-slavery. I get to carry on like the sliver of “help” I provide, be it in visitation or information, is supposed to sustain me until I find myself with enough paychecks saved to call it quits. I find the world outside of genuine effort and creation absolutely miserable. I hate myself slogging through it. I hate every time I'm compelled to use the word “practical” in service to it. I hate every wasted minute and repeated thought about abuses of power, money, and someone's otherwise good nature and skill. It's going to take considerably more than my voice or effort to change that. I won't pretend I believe help is coming.

[889] Nothing More

I suspect a mess.

One of the things I struggle most with is giving people credit. That's not to say I can't see what they're worth. I simply see people as “only” worth a series of superficial things that pass for what a lot of modern day culture consists of. Maybe you're smart, so you stay in school and get advanced degrees. But you'll subject yourself to a kind of financial or emotional ruin because “smart” only got you so far. Maybe you're really good at showing up or encouraging others, but you let your fear or ambivalence keep you from reaching out when you need help or contributing in service to a deeper ideal. Maybe you forgive everyone besides yourself.

A frequent topic of conversation between Allie and me is about the environments we're cultivated in and cultivating. You can take something as simple as a grocery store to think about everything implicated and matter-of-fact that goes into it. You don't have to pick fruit, cut vegetables, come up with a way to keep things cold, build a cart, or expect a fight to break out about when you're next to check-out. Food costs money, right? It grows everywhere, but you don't go to the store without money or the intention to steal. Food you don't eat goes in the trash, right? There's a large amount of people who wouldn't dream of composting or thinking of things in a cyclical manner. You go to the store, you buy food, you throw away the waste.

Every area of our life has these in-built expectations or hesitations whether we are paying attention to them or not. What's an online conversation? Does it even exist? Not even among friends! It's a fight by default. You're hearing in your mind an unwanted challenge, you don't have the wherewithal to “debate,” and you are situated in a place that cannot understand. It's what's expected and beaten into you. You're fighting, you can't hear or see what's said, and no one is attempting to understand. This whole conversation happens with yourself before you ask, “Why bother?” before posting anyway. If it's not a meme, emoji, or pleasantry, it's an off-limits way to engage.

I have my fair share of pissing matches with people online. It doesn't matter if I'm slinging hateful words or asking sincere questions, across the board my act to respond to someone's voice is treated as hostile, not an invitation. I think this is partly a consequence of the internet algorithms who assure us the world can be cultivated for us to see only what we want. I think this is a display of humanity's basic insecurity of discovering just how fraught with problems and complications their thinking can be. God forbid they be shown to be wrong, and in front of so many people!

Then you devolve into the condescension, the dismissing the very notion of “debate,” inevitably someone's mistyped word or phrasing gets latched onto, and the fight over the last miserable word until the post gets deleted or locked ensues. It's familiar, it's ridiculous, and no one has seen fit to study the consequences of it or how to get out of it.

I still try. I look for the analogy. I've got print-outs on toddlers who destroy houses and act like they're the boss. What is a parent supposed to do? Reset to a baseline expectation. This is akin to me insisting you actually quote me before claiming to disagree with something I've said. I don't trust your contrarian impulse, it's the default one offered to us by our internet training. If someone wants to pull their cord and recite cliché after cliché, return them to the question they've ignored. Don't give them more words to destroy.

What's worse than arguing with idiots, if it isn't something of a not-so-scientific study and exercise for you, is when your “friends” don't give you credit. I think I go above and beyond to share the most clear, researched, or affecting things that I read. They're almost never shared. I can say either people aren't or don't care to read. I can say they just don't have time. I can say they don't think it's actually as good or informative as I do. I can say they don't believe their crowds care or deserve to see it. I can say anything, because I don't know anything. There's no real feedback besides the handful of people I know pretty regularly read. The most important voices, that aren't even mine lol, are not breaking through to networks I'm not a part of. Whether what I post even makes it in front of a plurality of my friends, I don't know. I do know, it remains something of a personal secret whether anything was read or enjoyed.

If good information is treated as arbitrarily as cat videos, this medium that connects us all makes us feel hopeless and attacked by default, and even with regard to the people we seem to get along with or enjoy in real life don't tempt us to share or celebrate how they're orienting themselves to their thoughts, by what mechanism are we ever really sharing anything? What's the genuine connection? Who am I really hanging out with or talking to? How much credit can I give you, when the means by which we relate to each other 99% of the time, you appear to give me practically none?

I want to stress how large and impersonal I think this problem is. I know I read a disproportionate amount regardless. I know no one subscribed or signed up to hear from me or what I have to say. I know we've all got reasons we're too busy to be bothered with each other. None of that helps us pay attention to why or how we engage online. We can see thousands of sentiments about reducing screen time, the dangers to our children, and the ripping at the fabric of society, but we won't ask ourselves if maybe we should think out loud, deliberately, slowly, and try to piece together a collective framework for better understanding the world that isn't so miserable?

I've said it a lot how much I wish I had a blog a week from each one of my friends to read. No one wants to share, but I don't advocate for writing just because I've done it a lot. I think it's vital. I think we need to fight back against the many default forces that suggest our spaces and resources can only be used in specific and harmful ways. You have options of how to relate to me, to each other, this medium, and the world at large. How many people could live in an abandoned Wal-Mart? How much dust could you blow in the face of your enemies after grinding down its concrete walls? Who would bother or think to ask such a weird thing? Someone choosing to be just a little more creative and motivated in service to what's possible.

For as meaningless as the word “balance” has seemed to become today, perhaps we can move on to “tempering.” You're perhaps in balance at all times, physics-wise. But is your environment tempered by better choices about where your energy is directed? Can you simply read and respond to something? Can you share because you need to even and especially when you don't want to? There's nothing more or less dramatic going on nor exercise in patience and humility to practice.