Today is the last day to join, so if you want in on it, be sure to read over the rules and PM Shakespearicles!created wants · 6:20pm May 25th, 2016
Reactionary (maybe alarmist?) thinking below. I say that because I'm trying to process some stuff that has been tossed into my sphere of thinking in the last week, and I have yet to find any counter sources that might anchor these views. Stream of consciousness about the economy, and society, and the future. I'm perfectly aware that this is just a starting point, and not the end point, of where I stand on the state of the world today. It's such a big thing to make any final calls on with any kind of immediacy anyway. I've handled this issue with a caution I afford nothing else. Basically, with the California primary elections coming up, I feel like this train of thought might be the deciding factor on whether or not I vote at all. My ballot is still sitting in my bedroom, gathering dust. I just feel so uncertain of it all.
Woke up to my son draping himself across my right side. He doesn’t stay in his crib most nights, a fact that frustrates my husband to no end. While I sympathize with how this can be an inconvenience, I know that someday I’ll be wishing my son will sit down to talk to me for more than five minutes, so I try not to grumble.
The humidifier on my bedside drawer spews steam. Gutters. The closed window blinds shift from the open window behind them. I can hear the birds outside. Behind our house is a small hill that is covered in a dense strip of trees. This acts as a barrier to a golf course. The same golf course that I was married in almost five years ago.
I’m at a point in my life where I am experiencing a great deal of fear. The only way I seemed to know how to confront fear was through anger. In this case, I don’t know if I can do that. It’s not because I lack the energy-- if I’m being honest with myself, I have energy in spades thanks to my otherwise humdrum life. That’s why I wrangled my blog into something pursuant of purpose. Because I am desperate for mental stimulation. If my life were structured differently, I’d be trying to find more challenging prospects IRL. But I can’t. So the internet is my answer in the meantime.
Anyway, a lot of my anxiety stems from being a parent. I had a therapy session yesterday. I have no desire to talk about much of what is covered in these sessions (why would I? They’re private) but there was one thing that we kind of stumbled on toward the end of the hour. I was telling my therapist about the different attitudes regarding people and society between me and my husband (my husband and I? I forget what’s correct here).
The analogy I used was of a concert. If we go to a concert, I’ll happily focus on the purpose of the event-- the performers-- and block out everything else. Interacting with people is scary to me, and I often find it frustrating to boot. My husband, on the other hand, has a more developed social acuity that allows him to put his best foot forward to extract the results he wants. It’s very utilitarian in a way. He was homeless for a few years, and so a survival tactic he learned was to be friendly and self-effacing.
Underneath that exterior, though? He has a very low tolerance for people in general. At this imaginary concert, whereas I’ll be blocking out the people around us, he’ll be painfully aware of that bloke puking his brains out just two feet away; of the bottle-blonde teen with the funny piercing in her nose screeching in his ear; of the rowdy old men cat calling at the backs of the women to the rear of the crowd. My husband will swiftly reach his limit, turn to me in my oblivious bubble, and snarl with sweat on his tense brow, “Let’s get out of here.”
Five minutes later, we’ll be outside, him puffing angrily on a cigarette as he rattles off the various things that pissed him off at the concert. It’s this attitude that makes him want to live out in the country, separate from society. When I told this to my therapist, a look of (mock) horror crossed her face. She knows, like I know, that isolation is the LAST thing I need. She laughed after my little analogy, and said, “It’s kind of funny that you’re very likely going to be the primary reason your son gets any kind of social exposure.”
I chuckle nervously. “Yeah… Funny.”
Honestly, what it makes me want to do is stick my head in the ground. I can’t actually do that, as much as I want to, but GOLLY do I want to.
We have to find a place to move within the next few months. A home that we could see ourselves living in for the next 2-10 years. A place near a good school, with enough access to resources for our family. No small feat, considering the area we live in. The transition will be nightmarish.
I think about all of this as my illness takes a turn. This morning I awoke to the disheartening fact that my cold has progressed into an infection of some sort. I could go to the doc, I guess, or I could try to let it run its course. Decisions, decisions. I feel too weary for decisions.
For some crazy reason, I thought today was a good day to try and watch a documentary about the American economy. It’s called Requiem for the American Dream with Noam Chomsky, and it’s… depressing.
Like most documentaries that attempt to dissect the US society and economy, it is horrendously bleak. I mean, they kind of try to end on a note of hope. “All we have to do is organize! Fight! And we can keep things from getting worse! Maybe even turn things around!”
But as I lay on the couch, feeling like gravity is pulling me deep into the seat cushions, every (congested) breath I take smelling of vapor rub, I think, “Our somnambulant society can only manage meager protests at best. Sure. People rise up for all of a few days. Maybe a month or two. Then… nothing. Nada. Everyone has jobs and schools to go back to. A system to keep going. Because we can’t survive without the system. Or rather, we’re afraid to try and figure out how we can survive independent of it. You can’t change things that way. It has to be a sustained fight. Our attention span as a society lasts as long as a GIF.”
I look at my son and I think sadly, “We’ll be paying student loan debt right up to when you’re at the age to start higher education. Maybe by then they’ll have privatized everything? We may have your regular education to add to the pre-existing debt. What a cheerful thought.”
“Overpriced Writing Advice” is a tongue-in-cheek name for my blog series, but it’s a real attitude that I have regarding my higher education. I paid a lot of money to get my foot into the door of the entertainment industry. That’s how pervasive this system of control has become. Even the artists have to pay a fee to even hope to make a living. I mean, yes, there are people who do it without the fancy degree… But they live in an uncertain “Wild West” market that is frequently impinged upon by the industry at large. The indie folks who succeed truly independent of corporate help are in a tiny minority, and they did it largely by luck, not skill. We are taught that playing to the system means we have better chances of success. That’s probably an illusion. I bought into the illusion. Oh woe is me! (I’m only half-joking.)
I’m sitting here and I’m trying to think of something brighter to say. To think. Our society is still freer than most other societies. This is true. Our society still has more resources than most other societies. This is also true. Is it possible to still find true happiness given the way our society currently functions? Yes. I think this is true. I don’t think the documentary I watched was trying to assert that people can’t be happy under the current system. I think it was trying to assert that the long term health of humanity, which is increasingly merging together as a global society, is heading for devastating destruction under these conditions. A single society can limp along with such a system of consumerism and control. The world doing it collectively would be catastrophic.
I’m not going to pretend I’m some revolutionary. I’m part of the herd too. Another little cog in the wheel in my humble-homemaker kind of way. It is scary to think that myself, and many others, are happily paddling toward our demise without much resistance.
Ouch. I can't say I know what you're going through there; my spouse and I have had some interesting conversations along the same lines-- some, in fact, in the context of having kids-- and a lot of similar conclusions. I used to think "Hey, at least civil rights are mostly getting better," but at the same time, there's massive backlash. We're coming up on an age where the wealthy increasingly no longer need to be concerned about the farmers ceasing to farm en masse and taking up arms because fewer and fewer are needed for food, let alone the rest of survival requirements.
I do believe that there is only so far that you can push people before there is a response. But as heartily as I believe that humans are intelligent and capable of intelligent actions in groups, I don't want the response to be that of the wounded human animal, lashing out, because it won't just be the tormentors being lashed at.
Whee, that got dark, didn't it? Not a lot of help, sorry. I do see hopeful things: for all they're being fought, alternative energy, microloans, challenges to evidence-antithetical economic conclusions, etc. there are a lot of changes being made that I believe do point at a positive direction. That out of the memetic stew of flailing, failing ideas, something brighter is forming.
I think that's one of the reasons to keep voting, to keep making one's voice heard, yes, but more importantly to keep up the chorus. To rise, even if it's slow. Trends are powerful things, both in terms of what they drive people to do and what firewalls they hold against contrary trends. To do the painful, long, work of years and lifetimes.
Anyway. *hugs* Be well, or, if wellness is still a glimmer, may you have hope.
I'm sorry to hear about that. Sinus infection? Those are very not fun. :c
What a lot of people don't know when they read the book the mad Saint they call the Revelator wrote is that he was very sane and he was very, very intentional and that this is not a reference to his future but to his present. He's writing about the price of food. During the reign of Domitian, there was a financial crisis centered around the Aegean Sea that rocked the empire. Domitian's attempt to control inflation coincided with his failure to turn the aristocratic basically Planter class in Anatolia and Greece to grow less cash crops (wine and oil) and more food (wheat and barley). The result was horrifying. Food was so expensive because of scarcity that people went without. The early church being made mostly of the very poor and the enslaved, many of them actually starved to death. The system had broken and they hadn't even the strength to fight it because it was too late.
And he went forth with a pair of scales in his hand, to weigh and find wanting.
The world has been this way far longer than we would like to admit. Life is, we forget, hard by default. Humans are fragile--we are paradoxically resilient and fragile--and the world easily snuffs us out. Problems of supply and labor have plagued us for millenia. Rome had the same problems as we have had in the last century. Things get worse. Then they get worse. Occasionally, there's some light. I'm reminded of the bonfires in the Dark Souls games, like little waystations of bright in the vast sea of decay.
I'm 23 and I'm only now getting enough money to pay rent this month, and because I did some work for my mother's law office and got lucky to have generous parents. Everyone is hiring but no one is hiring. Their signs don't give me hope anymore. The advice of the generation that thought the commies lived under their beds is about as useful as they themselves were. The world is moving so quickly. I'm not sure if I'll ever even have the chance to have a family most days. The other days, I'm simply resigned to the impossibility. When would I? Most of my friends who have married have done so by absolute blind miracles, managing to stay together geographically just long enough to tie the knot, managing to stay just ahead of the spectre of the taxman and the noose of corporate. I've jokingly said that my father's generation revered Edison and my own revered Tesla. It's not funny anymore because more and more I think we're going to end up like him, too. Crawling around in the dark unfulfilled because we weren't quite evil enough to make it.
But what do I know? I trust hermit'd bachelors least of all mankind and I am one.
Sorry to hear about that man. I wish you the best of luck
American society tends to amuse and depress me, because I've chosen to live outside of it.
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It does feel like a demented circus that I kind of chuckle emptily at.
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Thanks!
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Oh no! This was plenty helpful. There's a reason I avoid watching politics too closely, and that's because I find it so very depressing. I try to focus instead on advancements that are being made. Positive changes.
I'm thinking this will just have to be my view on things going forward. No one on the ballot is wowing me, even locally, but I can't expect to see change by sitting on the sidelines. I sort of wish I had been well enough to try and see Hillary Clinton speak today. She visited Salinas, CA, which is just 30 minutes from me. I'm not a supporter of her by any means, but it just seemed like a good opportunity to hear a candidate speak to the issues that most concern our area.
Thanks! I will try and rest. I'm being stubborn and holding out on scheduling a doc visit. Bastards can't do anything half the time, and the other half they just throw anti-biotics at me. Let's see what some good old fashioned resting will do first.
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Thank you.
I was all stoked the other day because I thought SmallCaliber and I were getting over this stupid cold, but then last night I fell asleep without getting any writing done and awoke to some crumminess. It was no fun.
Chilling. And what I fear about our society. That we'll sleep, dreaming of fast cars and fancy clothes, while our burning world crashes down on top of us.
There was a view that my Buddhist upbringing has afforded me, and that is that cosmic law, Dharma, will continue regardless of the human race. Essentially, if we throw things out of balance, the universe as a system will forcibly correct what has gone wrong, potentially wiping us out in the process. Cause and effect. Life will find a way to keep living. Maybe as little microbes in a boiling sea. Maybe as an army of penguins. Whatever the case may be, humans are not necessary for existence to continue. I wish people would consider that. The world does not revolve around us. We CAN wipe ourselves out.
But we're also resilient too. I try to remember that. Maybe one of those post-apocalyptic stories I like so much will be looked at as some kind of haunting vision that came true?
You just summarized my life before my son was born. "Opportunities" everywhere. Too bad none of them were for me. I really struggled to find work in Georgia. Eventually I got lucky and found myself working as a banquet server at the Augusta Country Club, where they have the Masters golf tournament. It was such a hard job, and I earned nowhere near enough to live off of. Thankfully, the only reason I wanted to work was to get out of the house. What I earned just supplemented my husband's Air Force earnings. But it was a temporary thing. I was painfully aware it was a temporary thing.
My husband gingerly mentioned to me how people at his old job working at a hobby shop garnered some... shitty comments to say the least about my situation. He assured me he defended my honor, but when he lamented our financial situation to people and revealed that I was a homemaker, he'd get comments like, "What? Tell your wife to get a job! This is the 21st century!"
Despite my husband's attempts at keeping a lid on my temper, I still blew up anyway:
"FUCK those assholes! I'd like to see them try and find work AND childcare in this area that doesn't cancel each other out!"
Which is what some people don't get. We're actually SAVING money by me staying home and caring for our son. Childcare has become horrifically expensive. I've tried looking at night jobs, but husbando is at work often late into the night. No one would be around to watch our son. The scheduling was just too limited for me to even work part-time.
I can't wait to get back into the workforce. Even if it's just a small thing at first. I love my son, but being a homemaker is a pretty isolated way to live. I don't really have the force of personality to keep things super amazing and social every single day.
For years those were the only kinds of people I would talk to.