Because I do not have enough incomplete stories, I started a new one...
its a post-apocalyptic tale.
I'm putting a strange restriction on myself in the writing.
I named the story No Turning Back...because I'm not allowing myself to. In other words, every error and gaff I make, its staying in. Every bizarrre decision in the narrative. Its stuck there. I'm not turning back; there's no editing whatsoever.
God have mercy on my soul.
Since its doomed to be the best piece of awful writing ever, I'm hoping you won't have to wait too long for it. Stay tuned.
Tuesday, January 29, 2019
They're Not Bigots -OR- Its Not a Problem
This morning I'm thinking about the so called Conservative mind. Because its me, who can overthink a tea kettle, and because I get lost not just in trying to figure out what makes a person who calls them self a conservative tick, but what even is the definition of conservative. Should I apply the modern American understanding of the word, which is maybe a certain kind of tribal affiliation, maybe just branding? Should I talk about what they 'say' they believe, or what they do? Should I use the dictionary definition? And should I even be picking on Conservatives so much? Before removing the splinter from your friends eye, remove the plank from your own. You see, because I don't trust my own reasoning, precisely because I see so much unreasoning from others (who also see unreasoning in me), so why should I presume I'm smarter than anyone else.
Well, I'm not going to presume that, I'll just lay out my reasoning and let you decide. I'm at peace with being wrong. All it would mean is that global warming, the death of all global wildernesses, the end of democracy (if it ever existed), and all the problems of inequality in fortune and power are actually non-problems...
So let's start there, with this one thought: "Its not a problem"
You'll run into this with wealth inequality. "Prove to me that inequality is a problem." Now they aren't asking for evidence or reasons, they're asking for proof, and boy howdy do they mean it...kinda. Because obviously they don't really want a proof, they want to not change their mind. Now, being attached to your beliefs isn't surprising, and its not politically Conservative, not by any means; its a deeply human thing. You and me, we both get really attached to our point of view, because we identify that point of view as OURSELVES; to threaten a belief is to threaten the very identity of a person. Global Warming: not a problem. Racism: not a problem. Childhood poverty: not a problem. Or at least they're personal problems, to be fixed at a personal level; my heart goes out to good conservatives at this point, as they often are great problem solvers at a personal level, who genuinely care about the people around them, without concern for race or creed. When it comes to discussing it though, particularly with a Christian Conservative, these problems become a strange kind of means to an end: we don't help the poor because they're poor, but as a path to heaven.
But...maybe that's what Conservatism really is then, that attachment to order and regularity. And not necessarily to order and regularity in the real world, but the order and regularity of meaning.
I've mentioned this before. All those Confederate soldiers sending letters back to their loved ones, mentioning fighting the good fight for "states rights", but not slavery. They gobbled up that propaganda hook, line, and sinker. They were willing to kill for it; they were willing to die for it. But they were fighting for slavery.
Or how about this...we look down our noses at the medieval peasantry, who bought into the divine right of kings, maybe, but who just didn't question that authority, didn't question the order. And they'd plow their fields and march off to war at the whim of a tyrant, and proudly so. Long live the King! Long live Nation-State!
Why would a samurai ritually slice his belly open to be buried at the base of the first pillar of his lord's castle? There was meaning to it, that's why. He felt it. To die for his liege was his duty, and to fulfill one's duty was sublime.
Of course, that Samurai meant it. He put his money where his mouth was, so to speak. You can't get much more committed than ritual suicide. By comparison the attachment to the modern social order of Consumerism and Big Business Worship seems pretty, I don't know, insipid and uninspired. Maybe that's why the patriotism porn is ratcheted up to 90 with a lot of these folks; they smell the decay of their morality and mask it with a whole can of Axe Body Spray for Real Americans.
Meaning is what I believe it to be. And in a consumer society, I can buy it. I have a deep love and appreciation for my country, so how do I demonstrate that? By wearing the commemorative T-shirt.
Hardly slicing your belly to become the literal (and therefore metaphorical) foundation of a dynasty.
(aside: I find this reminiscent of Heidegger's 'Building, Dwelling, Thinking' at this point. The gist is by and large, that the best symbol is also something that is itself the reality. The sign matches the signified. I hadn't thought of that in ages. Way to go philosophy degree)
So, maybe at this point you're wondering about when I'm getting to the bigotry, and how things like very real racism fit into the conservative point of view.
They don't.
Its true that you're going to find all the white nationalists, so called, basically on the Conservative side of the spectrum. Of course, just because the vocal ones are there doesn't mean they all are. It doesn't mean that all racists are conservative nor that all conservatives are racist. But when it comes to discussing politics and social-justice in this world, what you are more likely to get from a Conservative than a Liberal is this: "It's not a problem."
And here's where you're about to be really disappointed. You've labored your way through my hodgepodge of thoughts to get to this point, hoping maybe that I had some kind of conclusion. I do, but its terribly, terribly unsatisfying.
Why do we get this, "Its not a problem."
Its simple.
Because that. Would. Change. The. Meaning.
And that is scary. Its scary, and its also, how do I put this...not heroic. Its not virtuous. And the whole ethos of the Conservative--who does a bang up job of personally taking care of their family, their community, their church, and those around them--is that they really do believe in virtue. And so when it turns out that their virtue is questionable, well...that's why you don't question it, isn't it?
I will die to protect my king, and moreso the idea of my king's rightful place, the idea of my king, because if you destroyed that idea, there'd be no meaning to my life. Destroy my ability to consume in a consumer society? Holy hell you are an evil, evil mind.
Again, I feel I gotta reiterate. I see this from my perspective because I'm not conservative (really I think of myself as a Left wing conservative, but I'm def not the popularly branded American conservative). And you can see the same kind of problem on the Left with things like the vilification of Syrian rebels and US involvement there in favor of the brutal Assad regime, because that keeps the meaning for those folks on the Left...that America is the most evil Imperial power today. It does happen...but it doesn't happen with climate change, racism, inequality, lack of healthcare, increased rates of auto-immune disease from industrial toxins and screwed up hormones from endocrine disruptors...with all those things, for the conservative brand, "Its not a problem."
But there's no king to be attached to. There's no great cause to find meaning in. There's just consumerism and pretending that being an American automatically makes you virtuous and superior, and that what we earn is what we deserve. And that's enough. And people will fight for it, kill for it, die for it, just so they can be lazy enough not to change their minds.
...
I thought that was a nice, bleak, cynical, and pleasantly final way to end the post. But I had an afterthought, so I'll ruin it all.
So why not change their minds? It is scary. I mentioned that before. It does threaten ones identity. But if I left it there it would be because I'm a westerner enamored with the self as the core unit of, well, the Identity of Western values, as it were. See, I got suckered into faulty reasoning myself. The real reason...well, the other real reason...that its so hard to change our minds is that we're not wired to find truth, we're wired to get along. We are hyper-social animals. Its made us really successful, adaptively. So when it comes to fitting into our groups, we subvert truth for commonality and togetherness. And who are the folks who really like groups? Who identifies most strongly with their team? With their church? With the notion of their Nation as God's great gift to the world? For whom does that group identity become their own identity, and the modes through which the group become a group...even if that's focusing on the importance of a lone figurehead? I'll leave it to the reader as an exercise.
Well, I'm not going to presume that, I'll just lay out my reasoning and let you decide. I'm at peace with being wrong. All it would mean is that global warming, the death of all global wildernesses, the end of democracy (if it ever existed), and all the problems of inequality in fortune and power are actually non-problems...
So let's start there, with this one thought: "Its not a problem"
You'll run into this with wealth inequality. "Prove to me that inequality is a problem." Now they aren't asking for evidence or reasons, they're asking for proof, and boy howdy do they mean it...kinda. Because obviously they don't really want a proof, they want to not change their mind. Now, being attached to your beliefs isn't surprising, and its not politically Conservative, not by any means; its a deeply human thing. You and me, we both get really attached to our point of view, because we identify that point of view as OURSELVES; to threaten a belief is to threaten the very identity of a person. Global Warming: not a problem. Racism: not a problem. Childhood poverty: not a problem. Or at least they're personal problems, to be fixed at a personal level; my heart goes out to good conservatives at this point, as they often are great problem solvers at a personal level, who genuinely care about the people around them, without concern for race or creed. When it comes to discussing it though, particularly with a Christian Conservative, these problems become a strange kind of means to an end: we don't help the poor because they're poor, but as a path to heaven.
But...maybe that's what Conservatism really is then, that attachment to order and regularity. And not necessarily to order and regularity in the real world, but the order and regularity of meaning.
I've mentioned this before. All those Confederate soldiers sending letters back to their loved ones, mentioning fighting the good fight for "states rights", but not slavery. They gobbled up that propaganda hook, line, and sinker. They were willing to kill for it; they were willing to die for it. But they were fighting for slavery.
Or how about this...we look down our noses at the medieval peasantry, who bought into the divine right of kings, maybe, but who just didn't question that authority, didn't question the order. And they'd plow their fields and march off to war at the whim of a tyrant, and proudly so. Long live the King! Long live Nation-State!
Why would a samurai ritually slice his belly open to be buried at the base of the first pillar of his lord's castle? There was meaning to it, that's why. He felt it. To die for his liege was his duty, and to fulfill one's duty was sublime.
Of course, that Samurai meant it. He put his money where his mouth was, so to speak. You can't get much more committed than ritual suicide. By comparison the attachment to the modern social order of Consumerism and Big Business Worship seems pretty, I don't know, insipid and uninspired. Maybe that's why the patriotism porn is ratcheted up to 90 with a lot of these folks; they smell the decay of their morality and mask it with a whole can of Axe Body Spray for Real Americans.
Meaning is what I believe it to be. And in a consumer society, I can buy it. I have a deep love and appreciation for my country, so how do I demonstrate that? By wearing the commemorative T-shirt.
Hardly slicing your belly to become the literal (and therefore metaphorical) foundation of a dynasty.
(aside: I find this reminiscent of Heidegger's 'Building, Dwelling, Thinking' at this point. The gist is by and large, that the best symbol is also something that is itself the reality. The sign matches the signified. I hadn't thought of that in ages. Way to go philosophy degree)
So, maybe at this point you're wondering about when I'm getting to the bigotry, and how things like very real racism fit into the conservative point of view.
They don't.
Its true that you're going to find all the white nationalists, so called, basically on the Conservative side of the spectrum. Of course, just because the vocal ones are there doesn't mean they all are. It doesn't mean that all racists are conservative nor that all conservatives are racist. But when it comes to discussing politics and social-justice in this world, what you are more likely to get from a Conservative than a Liberal is this: "It's not a problem."
And here's where you're about to be really disappointed. You've labored your way through my hodgepodge of thoughts to get to this point, hoping maybe that I had some kind of conclusion. I do, but its terribly, terribly unsatisfying.
Why do we get this, "Its not a problem."
Its simple.
Because that. Would. Change. The. Meaning.
And that is scary. Its scary, and its also, how do I put this...not heroic. Its not virtuous. And the whole ethos of the Conservative--who does a bang up job of personally taking care of their family, their community, their church, and those around them--is that they really do believe in virtue. And so when it turns out that their virtue is questionable, well...that's why you don't question it, isn't it?
I will die to protect my king, and moreso the idea of my king's rightful place, the idea of my king, because if you destroyed that idea, there'd be no meaning to my life. Destroy my ability to consume in a consumer society? Holy hell you are an evil, evil mind.
Again, I feel I gotta reiterate. I see this from my perspective because I'm not conservative (really I think of myself as a Left wing conservative, but I'm def not the popularly branded American conservative). And you can see the same kind of problem on the Left with things like the vilification of Syrian rebels and US involvement there in favor of the brutal Assad regime, because that keeps the meaning for those folks on the Left...that America is the most evil Imperial power today. It does happen...but it doesn't happen with climate change, racism, inequality, lack of healthcare, increased rates of auto-immune disease from industrial toxins and screwed up hormones from endocrine disruptors...with all those things, for the conservative brand, "Its not a problem."
But there's no king to be attached to. There's no great cause to find meaning in. There's just consumerism and pretending that being an American automatically makes you virtuous and superior, and that what we earn is what we deserve. And that's enough. And people will fight for it, kill for it, die for it, just so they can be lazy enough not to change their minds.
...
I thought that was a nice, bleak, cynical, and pleasantly final way to end the post. But I had an afterthought, so I'll ruin it all.
So why not change their minds? It is scary. I mentioned that before. It does threaten ones identity. But if I left it there it would be because I'm a westerner enamored with the self as the core unit of, well, the Identity of Western values, as it were. See, I got suckered into faulty reasoning myself. The real reason...well, the other real reason...that its so hard to change our minds is that we're not wired to find truth, we're wired to get along. We are hyper-social animals. Its made us really successful, adaptively. So when it comes to fitting into our groups, we subvert truth for commonality and togetherness. And who are the folks who really like groups? Who identifies most strongly with their team? With their church? With the notion of their Nation as God's great gift to the world? For whom does that group identity become their own identity, and the modes through which the group become a group...even if that's focusing on the importance of a lone figurehead? I'll leave it to the reader as an exercise.
Friday, January 25, 2019
Shade Thoughts
A ten year old lies in bed, hugging his teddy bear after a hard day, and wondering why it doesn't bring him the comfort it once did. He realizes he can never go back to the child he was.
A teenager has his sexual innocence stripped away by a stranger called puberty. He misses the simple joy of imagination, of action figures and make believe and five foot walls being castles, but at least he has new toys to play with.
In middle age he loses his appetite. He is dead now, but still living to witness his lost self somewhere back in the folds of time.
A girl falls in love, gets married, has children. She gets to be a mother. The mother who would have been ages past menopause, and that identity is forever shut off from her. She's never to be a mom.
Everybody dies everyday, their identity stripped away by ceaseless time and our hormonal fates. There's the person we were behind us, and we can never be them again. We can never again feel the ecstasies we have already lost. Our new identity becomes one of acceptance, by necessity. Should I therefore not fear death, having died already? There's always something more to lose.
A teenager has his sexual innocence stripped away by a stranger called puberty. He misses the simple joy of imagination, of action figures and make believe and five foot walls being castles, but at least he has new toys to play with.
In middle age he loses his appetite. He is dead now, but still living to witness his lost self somewhere back in the folds of time.
A girl falls in love, gets married, has children. She gets to be a mother. The mother who would have been ages past menopause, and that identity is forever shut off from her. She's never to be a mom.
Everybody dies everyday, their identity stripped away by ceaseless time and our hormonal fates. There's the person we were behind us, and we can never be them again. We can never again feel the ecstasies we have already lost. Our new identity becomes one of acceptance, by necessity. Should I therefore not fear death, having died already? There's always something more to lose.
Wednesday, January 23, 2019
Not a real Argument about The Wall...(but maybe still fun)
Many people rail against 'sanctuary cities'. A sanctuary city is basically just a city where the local police aren't doing the job of the Feds.
There are also folks who rail against people with fences around their homes who are opposed to the wall. The analog is (supposedly) obvious.
It raises the question: If you are for The Wall, but not for building a wall around your own city, are you a hypocrite? If you are for The Wall, but do not have a fence around your home, are you naive?
There are also folks who rail against people with fences around their homes who are opposed to the wall. The analog is (supposedly) obvious.
It raises the question: If you are for The Wall, but not for building a wall around your own city, are you a hypocrite? If you are for The Wall, but do not have a fence around your home, are you naive?
Scattered Thoughts on Reading, Rereading
When it comes from learning from reading: You don't learn from reading, you learn from rereading. This just in rereading a very simple older book on kettlebell swings I hadn't picked up in a long time (Pavel's Enter the Kettlebell...there's no need to laugh at me).
You'll never catch everything, even in a simple book or manual, the first time through. Reread it. There are details you've missed.
I think I miss kids books a little because of this. I'd read the same dinosaur book every afternoon, pouring over the illustrations and descriptions. (I honestly wish more adult books had good illustration)
This is a problem with I daresay both reading and writing today; its too long (and convoluted) to read more than once. And the more it is read, rather than hidden gems being discovered on each rereading, we instead discover the lack of polish.
Fahrenheit 451 is only 46,000 words. Thomas Payne's Common Sense is only 21.5k words.
Part of being an inviting piece of writing (fiction or non) is not having to put up with a great deal of extranea. As Saint Exupery said, "Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."
I suppose this is one reason that, despite the lowering level of casual readers, there's such a high demand for knew books still...its because none of the new books are becoming classics, something to be read perennially, over and over. I can say as far as nonfiction goes (I read more new nonfiction than fiction) that I find the prose typically much more obtuse and roundabout than older, classic works...with the exception of philosophy...that stuffs been insufferable for ages (says the guy with a degree in it).
I'll keep trying to get better at it myself, because, jeepers, Celia 2 is long winded.
PS. Did you know extranea is not a word according to the dictionary? It certainly seems like it would be a useful one. Extraneous things=Extranea. Anyway, I can't claim it as my own as I'm certain I've heard it used before.
You'll never catch everything, even in a simple book or manual, the first time through. Reread it. There are details you've missed.
I think I miss kids books a little because of this. I'd read the same dinosaur book every afternoon, pouring over the illustrations and descriptions. (I honestly wish more adult books had good illustration)
This is a problem with I daresay both reading and writing today; its too long (and convoluted) to read more than once. And the more it is read, rather than hidden gems being discovered on each rereading, we instead discover the lack of polish.
Fahrenheit 451 is only 46,000 words. Thomas Payne's Common Sense is only 21.5k words.
Part of being an inviting piece of writing (fiction or non) is not having to put up with a great deal of extranea. As Saint Exupery said, "Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."
I suppose this is one reason that, despite the lowering level of casual readers, there's such a high demand for knew books still...its because none of the new books are becoming classics, something to be read perennially, over and over. I can say as far as nonfiction goes (I read more new nonfiction than fiction) that I find the prose typically much more obtuse and roundabout than older, classic works...with the exception of philosophy...that stuffs been insufferable for ages (says the guy with a degree in it).
I'll keep trying to get better at it myself, because, jeepers, Celia 2 is long winded.
PS. Did you know extranea is not a word according to the dictionary? It certainly seems like it would be a useful one. Extraneous things=Extranea. Anyway, I can't claim it as my own as I'm certain I've heard it used before.
Monday, January 21, 2019
Stupid Reasons
I heard [identity redacted for shame and despair] having a political discussion the other day. It was via telephone, so I only caught the one side of the conversation, but I'm reasonably sure I got the gist of it. Just so as to not seem partisan, I won't even state which side of the aisle this person is on. Basically, I got this statement: "They won't do anything unless its actually destroying the United States." In other words, this person believes (and I'm not making this up, they've said as much before) that the side they're not on actively 'wants' to destroy the US. Not that their designs are cynical and happen to be destroying the US, nor that they are well meaning and she just thinks they will destroy the US, but that they actually want to destroy the US, that that is their goal.
Ya know how during the Civil War, all these soldiers were writing letters to home. Almost none of them talk about fighting to preserve slavery. If they mention the cause of the war, and why they're fighting, it is about Northern Aggression and States Rights. But of course, the war was fought for slavery, regardless of what the rank and file thought they were fighting for; the Declarations of Intransigence, I mean Declarations of Independence from the seceding states all mention the need to preserve slavery, and no historian ever thinks the war would have been fought if not for slavery. If we want to put a caveat on it on it, we can say the war was actually fought to preserve the Union, not to end slavery (from the North's perspective), but the south had seceded to preserve slavery. Despite that people will deny this, they are doing so because of their delusion, just as the soldiery, if they really believed they were fighting merely for states' rights, thought so because of their delusion.
I have some questions: How much do they know they're deluded? Do they recognize that their real beliefs are immoral and therefore lie to themselves? Do they self delude and create a wall to protect their sense of righteousness? Are they actually trying to destroy the United States, as they presume the 'other side' is?
And because I'm "woke" about human fallibility and my place in it, how much do I commit the same thing? Is my analysis off? How much have I been duped by propaganda without realizing? I have no qualms admitting I am left of center, but I hardly toe any party line. Obama, as talented a statesman as I think he was, still committed the US to more endless warring and filled cabinet positions with corporate powers. Some in his administration already have been accused of war crimes, and as time passes I have no doubt that Obama himself will be found guilty of war crimes as well and need to avoid the Hague, despite his Nobel prize.
But on the other hand, so as not to sound as though I'm trying to equivocate unnecessarily and come down too hard on myself or like minded folks, I'm not the one who naively thinks "the other side" is out to destroy America (or the world). Even if I think we are headed toward a multi-front ecological cataclysm that the "other side" refuses to recognize and act on, despite ample evidence, I don't think they are actively trying to destroy the world. I just think that certain truths are too painful for them to accept, or that they conflict too much with their world view, and therefore they cannot wrap their heads around it.
This is definitely an evil thing, but I don't think the people themselves are evil...or at least I don't think they are intentionally evil. Even Trump and his cronies, who I'm convinced actually are ushering in one of the greatest existentially threatening eras of all time, I don't think "they're trying to destroy America," even though I'm sure they are actually destroying America. I don't think Trump supporters are all trying to destroy America; hell I don't even toe the common line that they are all racist. I don't believe that for a second.
And those Civil War soldiers who said they were fighting for states' rights, not the preservation of slavery? I really believe they meant that! I really think they thought they were fighting for a righteous cause. They were certainly indifferent to the slaves and no matter what, guilty of not trying to end the evil institution themselves, but I honestly don't think they thought they were "fighting to preserve slavery", just as the soldiers fighting today think they are fighting for American Freedom when obviously all our wars are about American Hegemony, not Freedom (unless you believe that to maintain our freedom we must maintain our Hegemony...one might wonder then how we were free before our ascent to world dominance, and also whether we think any other nations deserve to be free, since they don't have hegemonies...don't hurt your head).
What's the real question I'm asking? I'm not really going anywhere unfortunately, this is a kind of thrashing and question rather than analysis. How does one work on somebody who has an obviously ill formed belief? How would I ever have convinced a Civil War soldier that his side was actually fighting for the preservation of slavery, rather than States' Rights? I can't even convince modern 'Confederates' of the same thing? Is our intransigence only about preserving our precious egos? And is that a human failing that we should understand and sympathize with, or is it an evil worth killing over? And how can we ever know if we are not demonstrating the exact same quality while trying to change it in the other?
Ya know how during the Civil War, all these soldiers were writing letters to home. Almost none of them talk about fighting to preserve slavery. If they mention the cause of the war, and why they're fighting, it is about Northern Aggression and States Rights. But of course, the war was fought for slavery, regardless of what the rank and file thought they were fighting for; the Declarations of Intransigence, I mean Declarations of Independence from the seceding states all mention the need to preserve slavery, and no historian ever thinks the war would have been fought if not for slavery. If we want to put a caveat on it on it, we can say the war was actually fought to preserve the Union, not to end slavery (from the North's perspective), but the south had seceded to preserve slavery. Despite that people will deny this, they are doing so because of their delusion, just as the soldiery, if they really believed they were fighting merely for states' rights, thought so because of their delusion.
I have some questions: How much do they know they're deluded? Do they recognize that their real beliefs are immoral and therefore lie to themselves? Do they self delude and create a wall to protect their sense of righteousness? Are they actually trying to destroy the United States, as they presume the 'other side' is?
And because I'm "woke" about human fallibility and my place in it, how much do I commit the same thing? Is my analysis off? How much have I been duped by propaganda without realizing? I have no qualms admitting I am left of center, but I hardly toe any party line. Obama, as talented a statesman as I think he was, still committed the US to more endless warring and filled cabinet positions with corporate powers. Some in his administration already have been accused of war crimes, and as time passes I have no doubt that Obama himself will be found guilty of war crimes as well and need to avoid the Hague, despite his Nobel prize.
But on the other hand, so as not to sound as though I'm trying to equivocate unnecessarily and come down too hard on myself or like minded folks, I'm not the one who naively thinks "the other side" is out to destroy America (or the world). Even if I think we are headed toward a multi-front ecological cataclysm that the "other side" refuses to recognize and act on, despite ample evidence, I don't think they are actively trying to destroy the world. I just think that certain truths are too painful for them to accept, or that they conflict too much with their world view, and therefore they cannot wrap their heads around it.
This is definitely an evil thing, but I don't think the people themselves are evil...or at least I don't think they are intentionally evil. Even Trump and his cronies, who I'm convinced actually are ushering in one of the greatest existentially threatening eras of all time, I don't think "they're trying to destroy America," even though I'm sure they are actually destroying America. I don't think Trump supporters are all trying to destroy America; hell I don't even toe the common line that they are all racist. I don't believe that for a second.
And those Civil War soldiers who said they were fighting for states' rights, not the preservation of slavery? I really believe they meant that! I really think they thought they were fighting for a righteous cause. They were certainly indifferent to the slaves and no matter what, guilty of not trying to end the evil institution themselves, but I honestly don't think they thought they were "fighting to preserve slavery", just as the soldiers fighting today think they are fighting for American Freedom when obviously all our wars are about American Hegemony, not Freedom (unless you believe that to maintain our freedom we must maintain our Hegemony...one might wonder then how we were free before our ascent to world dominance, and also whether we think any other nations deserve to be free, since they don't have hegemonies...don't hurt your head).
What's the real question I'm asking? I'm not really going anywhere unfortunately, this is a kind of thrashing and question rather than analysis. How does one work on somebody who has an obviously ill formed belief? How would I ever have convinced a Civil War soldier that his side was actually fighting for the preservation of slavery, rather than States' Rights? I can't even convince modern 'Confederates' of the same thing? Is our intransigence only about preserving our precious egos? And is that a human failing that we should understand and sympathize with, or is it an evil worth killing over? And how can we ever know if we are not demonstrating the exact same quality while trying to change it in the other?
Wednesday, January 9, 2019
The Burnout Generation
There's this here article HERE. Go ahead and read it. It's an article about the perpetual state of burnout Millennials find themselves in.
I can see a lot of myself in it for sure. There's the undo anxiety about small stuff: errands, paperwork, opening mail. There's the lack of feeling accomplishment even when finishing an important or large task. There's the guilt surrounding the already existing feelings of helplessness for feeling so helpless.
There's not much by way of solutions presented here, only commiseration. The author seems to conclude that there is no real solution, that awareness and commiseration are the closest things to a solution there are, which only highlights the depth of the trap. Burnout is an oubliette. One can't even make enough contact with the prison to understand it.
She touches on its beginnings in childhood, how this is an old feeling, not something that started in adulthood. And she sees this as being part of the culture of aggressive helicopter parenting that predominates, itself perversely enforced by shame and guilt. I've seen friend's raise children in much the same 'understanding' way as I was, where from an early age conscientiousness is heaped upon the child, burdening them with thought. Every decision they make must be a conscientious one. If they try to escape conscientiousness through drugs, which for awhile has taken the form of screen time for the young, then it abates the immediacy of the conscientiousness but ultimately only makes things worse, just like the drunkard who drinks to forget he's a drunkard. We are so overburdened with thinking that simply being and doing are almost impossible. Thoughts intrude at every turn.
More research about spanking has come out, always in the negative, showing that spanking leads kids to express themselves through violence more often. But is the alternative really to internalize all spanking as metaphor and become mind crippling self-flagellants? And not only self-crippling, but particularly susceptible to being victimized by others. How does one come safely out of that training in adulthood? How do we train our children to be both conscientious without becoming prisoner to it, to such extent they become paralyzed?
I'm inclined to (perhaps tritely) say that the cure for this as children is freedom. Freedom to roam more, to associate more as we choose, the freedom to solve problems and dangers and scary situations on our own. There are movements like this arising--free range children-- but they are slow and often resisted, both from without and from within. Because what if your kid is the one who's kidnapped? What if letting kids roam more does lead to more disappearing children, more child predators? Maybe to save the sanity of the young it is worth it, but is it worth it if your kid is the one taken? Not only will you have to deal with the loss, but the community will not let you forget your failure. They, afterall, kept their kids safe and sound in their panopticon.
The author also brings up academics, and more could be said there. The structure of our schooling has been awry for awhile, but with the increasing emphasis on constant testing it is becoming more and more its perverse self. Math is maybe the best example here. Give a child--a smart child--a problem with just a bit of novelty and they'll throw up their hands. Despite all the time devoted toward math, these kids have no idea how to manipulate it to solve novel problems nor the belief that this is something they can even do! There's the crux. All these kids grow up, grow up, try to "adult" and find that nobody told them the whole thing was improvised, and nobody ever taught them how to improvise! If anything they had it crammed into their head that improvising, that deciding for themselves their goals, discerning for themselves what is important, was always not so subtly suppressed by their culture. And we are so clueless about this ourselves that we do not realize that implicit indoctrination can be every bit as oppressive as the explicit kind.
I can see a lot of myself in it for sure. There's the undo anxiety about small stuff: errands, paperwork, opening mail. There's the lack of feeling accomplishment even when finishing an important or large task. There's the guilt surrounding the already existing feelings of helplessness for feeling so helpless.
There's not much by way of solutions presented here, only commiseration. The author seems to conclude that there is no real solution, that awareness and commiseration are the closest things to a solution there are, which only highlights the depth of the trap. Burnout is an oubliette. One can't even make enough contact with the prison to understand it.
She touches on its beginnings in childhood, how this is an old feeling, not something that started in adulthood. And she sees this as being part of the culture of aggressive helicopter parenting that predominates, itself perversely enforced by shame and guilt. I've seen friend's raise children in much the same 'understanding' way as I was, where from an early age conscientiousness is heaped upon the child, burdening them with thought. Every decision they make must be a conscientious one. If they try to escape conscientiousness through drugs, which for awhile has taken the form of screen time for the young, then it abates the immediacy of the conscientiousness but ultimately only makes things worse, just like the drunkard who drinks to forget he's a drunkard. We are so overburdened with thinking that simply being and doing are almost impossible. Thoughts intrude at every turn.
More research about spanking has come out, always in the negative, showing that spanking leads kids to express themselves through violence more often. But is the alternative really to internalize all spanking as metaphor and become mind crippling self-flagellants? And not only self-crippling, but particularly susceptible to being victimized by others. How does one come safely out of that training in adulthood? How do we train our children to be both conscientious without becoming prisoner to it, to such extent they become paralyzed?
I'm inclined to (perhaps tritely) say that the cure for this as children is freedom. Freedom to roam more, to associate more as we choose, the freedom to solve problems and dangers and scary situations on our own. There are movements like this arising--free range children-- but they are slow and often resisted, both from without and from within. Because what if your kid is the one who's kidnapped? What if letting kids roam more does lead to more disappearing children, more child predators? Maybe to save the sanity of the young it is worth it, but is it worth it if your kid is the one taken? Not only will you have to deal with the loss, but the community will not let you forget your failure. They, afterall, kept their kids safe and sound in their panopticon.
The author also brings up academics, and more could be said there. The structure of our schooling has been awry for awhile, but with the increasing emphasis on constant testing it is becoming more and more its perverse self. Math is maybe the best example here. Give a child--a smart child--a problem with just a bit of novelty and they'll throw up their hands. Despite all the time devoted toward math, these kids have no idea how to manipulate it to solve novel problems nor the belief that this is something they can even do! There's the crux. All these kids grow up, grow up, try to "adult" and find that nobody told them the whole thing was improvised, and nobody ever taught them how to improvise! If anything they had it crammed into their head that improvising, that deciding for themselves their goals, discerning for themselves what is important, was always not so subtly suppressed by their culture. And we are so clueless about this ourselves that we do not realize that implicit indoctrination can be every bit as oppressive as the explicit kind.
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