The men who live in my memory had work to do. That work had a purpose: to feed their families. They were not career men with five year plans and KPIs. The men who live in my memory did not worry about what it meant to be a man or whether they were good at “adulting.” They knew that whatsoever their hands found to do, must be done with all their might.
Some of us children of empire are rightly worried about further damage to colonized cultures. We try, therefore, to build walls around these cultures and call any breach of those walls “cultural appropriation.” The fear of cultural appropriation, though, is itself a product of empire. Such a fear attempts to freeze those cultures at a moment in time, specifically the moment when the colonizers “discovered” those cultures. Only an imperial mind would make the mistake of ignoring a culture’s entire history, pretending that it had sprung into existence only when noticed by imperial eyes.
Following up on my post about rational abstraction. That mode of thinking is an acquired skill, taught mainly at universities. It is a technical ability needed for certain types of work; its the equivalent of the knowledge of accounting rules for accountants. Because of the self-involvement of the elites educated in such environments and employed in such jobs, it has been generalized into a skill thought to be a base requirement for functioning humanity.
I came across this in my notes from two years ago. I don’t recall if I planned to do more with this or not, but it seems okay to me in its current form. My political action plan: Our political and economic system is a world eating monster with an unalterable hostility to life. Until the powers that be get serious about killing that monster, I’ll continue assuming they are emissaries of the monster and accord them all the respect that position is due.
One alternative to streaming music I don’t think I’ve ever seen discussed: radio! You probably have an oldies (or similar) station in your area with a local connection. Music: So, yeah, maybe it isn’t your favorite and maybe you have stronger feelings about music discovery than I do. But oldies are basically another canon of standards at this point. It ain’t bad! Local ads: This is America; you don’t get to escape advertising.
The text critiques the Trump administration’s dismantling of USAID while invoking Ivan Illich’s anti-colonial perspective on the shortcomings of international aid.
Content warning: paganism This year, a few holidays fall into this weekend: Candlemas, St. Brigid’s day, Imbolc. Maybe they’re historically related, maybe they’re not—you’ll have to look into that for yourself. Today I’ll just be writing about our plans. At some point in the past twenty years, I found out about Candlemas and the associated practice of eating crêpes (possibly because of their sun-like appearance?). That sounded good to us so we’ve been eating crêpes by candlelight every Candlemas for a few years now.
This article is being passed around in my little circle here at micro.blog. Absolutely worth reading. All of the vigor, these days, seems to be outside the mainstream (i.e., universities, legacy media, Democrats). Rachel and I were watching some videos of Dr Zach Bush this morning. He (and other “alternative health” folks) are clearly out of the mainstream. Yet his vision is so compelling.
I don’t know what to make of his claims (or those of Thomas Cowan) that fall outside the mainstream. Maybe they’re wrong in important ways. But, as I said to Rachel, I’ll take being wrong in details but right directionally. What does mainstream medicine offer us? Depressed and lonely? Take this pill. Sick? Take this other pill. The two pills causing new problems? Here are more pills to handle that.
I’m too dispositionally cautious to go very far into the deep end. But the Recognized Authorities are less compelling every day.
One of the most clarifying things Charles Eisenstein says is (paraphrasing):
If you were placed within the totality of another’s circumstances, you would behave in the same way they do.
That is, if you had the right mix of childhood trauma, economic deprivation, lack of exposure to a wider world, etc., you’d be a racist too. Given the right mix of circumstances, you’d also abuse children. To deny this is to live within the illusion of moral superiority.
This doesn’t mean bad behavior is excused. It does mean, however, that the right response to the temptation of moral superiority is to reply “there but for the grace of God go I.”
There seems to be an epidemic of anger, and it’s been this way for a while now.
I made a traffic mistake today, took my turn too early at a four way stop. My mistake, no big deal, no near miss. But the guy immediately laid on his horn and flipped me off, and not briefly.
One of my neighbors plowed the snow off the alley and the next time I saw him I thanked him. He told me another neighbor came out while he was doing it and started griping at him because as the snow was being moved, it blocked a part of his driveway. The first guy offered to fix it but second guy snapped “I don’t need your help.”
We’ve had some unpleasantness on micro.blog this week. I stumbled across it and was shocked at the heatedness of the accusations. Everything cranked to eleven. Accusations of bigotry and fascism. It was a lot to take in, given the normally placid nature of the micro.blog timeline. In my dismay at the fury, I called someone’s response “unhinged.” That was not a helpful word to use. Nevertheless, all this anger is deeply disturbing.
For years now, our politics have operated in the register of anger, and now more than ever. Anger is one of the primary languages of social media (the other being sarcasm). Based on the behavior I’ve seen over the past few years, it would seem that people walk around just at the boiling point. How else would they explode so quickly when something goes wrong?
What is it like to live with such rage all the time? No wonder there is so much addiction!
When the guy disproportionately reacted to my traffic mistake today, I waved back at him through the back window–with all five fingers. I tried to pack a spirit of contrition into the gesture. He must have caught it, because he backed off.
When I saw angry neighbor shoveling snow shortly after he griped at helpful neighbor, I asked him if I could help. I’d been making an effort to be friendly with him since last summer. He’s a prickly old guy, but I found out he’s had back surgeries. My dad had back surgeries; I know how that kind of pain and discomfort can affect a person. Angry neighbor appreciated the offer and we talked a bit about how heavy this snowfall was.
Heaven knows I’m not holding myself out as an example for anyone. I’ve waved back at other drivers with a single finger, plenty of times. In fact, all of my worst outbursts of anger happen behind the wheel; I don’t know what that tells us about driving, but surely it means something.
What I’m saying is that there is an epidemic of anger and we must take care not to catch it. That will require some practical steps to avoid anger triggers. It will require some self-examination and–dare I use such an abused term?–shadow work. What causes anger to rise most quickly in you? Could it be a violent reaction against something you have repressed in yourself? Are you acting out of some unacknowledged trauma? The source of the red hot, fast rising rage I’m talking about is never really its object.
The epidemic of anger will burn the world down around us. It will start wars, foreign and domestic. In 1954, some students asked Jung if nuclear war could be avoided. He replied:
I think it depends on how many people can stand the tension of the opposites in themselves.
That is, it will depend on our recognition of the messy strangeness within each of us, patiently sitting with the tension that runs straight through our souls. Or, alternately, we can join the anger party and impose our pain on everyone else. Your choice.