However I don’t feel anything like normal, if “normal” presumes a certain level of trust in the social structure and authorities around me. There is less I feel I can take for granted every day. I wake up and go to sleep with an inner and outer watchfulness. I watch others. I watch myself, listening to my own words and actions and wondering, How truthful are you? Other than the general aim for truthfulness, I don’t always know exactly what I am watching for. Patterns in the underbrush I suppose, movement in the shadows. I go to bed exhausted most nights.
This article by Matt Taibbi does a good job of pulling together many of the stories I have been following the past few months with an increasing sense of uneasiness. It’s been 6 months since my break from Face.book and I’m not at all sorry. There are a few groups and people I miss, because they manage to be positive social ecosystems within the larger negative complex. But investing time in local, personal relationships has had far better results for the time and effort put in. When I want to step outside my parochial worldview, carefully choosing where on the internet I put my attention is far better educationally. I have read more books this year than in any of the previous 5 (and quite possibly cumulatively). I do a pretty good job of keeping up with podcasts too (though there is always more than I have time for). There is of course the risk of getting into an echo chamber, but all the people I listen to are curious and/or educated people and there is my own extremely high openness to experience, which acts as a counterbalance I think.
I am open, but I also like to know where the boundaries are. There is a line in Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series that I really like. She is talking about being a leader, or maybe about being a man, I forget which. (Doesn’t matter anyway; I have a well integrated masculine side.) It goes something like: “What it really means to be a leader is to draw a line in the sand, and to fight anyone that steps over it.”
2021 is about drawing my lines in the sand. I may put them in the wrong place sometimes; I may be ignorant of many things and make mistakes. I am not interested in convincing anyone of how right I am because I am rarely convinced of that myself. But the lines need to be drawn so I have some way of understanding what is going on when information and/or its suppression is used like a weapon. I have to understand clearly what is real and important to me when propaganda and gaslighting is the order of the day. I have to know who I stand with and what I will and won’t tolerate being done to them.
I wasn’t sure what to call this post. “There is no more normal” is maybe a bit of an extreme statement. I have calm happy days. I continue (I hope and believe) to be a positive influence. I think what I really mean is: “There is no more normal I take for granted.” In so far as normal exists for me now, it is created through my daily actions, reactions, and sense making. So I do hope I have the strength and the skill to continue to make that happen.
The pulse of the uncertainty of these times is beautifully captured both in your blogpost and Taibbi's article about the high tech strangulation of voices like Brett and Heather's as well as the those like them. I can relate to your response to be more defensive and selective of the voices you listen to and to the pain of the sacrifices that necessity demands. I too miss the people who compose the “positive social ecosystems within the larger negative complex” but I cannot, in good conscience, support platforms that, like the church once did here in the West, assert themselves as the supreme authority of what is truth – who is permitted to have a voice and who is not. I will decide that for myself, thank you.
ReplyDeleteThis act of tyranny is done while these same organizations are simultaneously not aimed at truth, nor the best interests of our common good, but on nourishing and defending their cultural supremacy – this parasitic act is unwittingly and foolishly nourished and defended by the tacit approval of vast armies of quislings who are drunk on the well crafted narrative – as they're milked and ultimately led to the slaughter.
Big Tech media has become the modern church. At the same time it abdicates the responsibility to act in the interests of the common good. Corporate media, big tech and politicians have morphed into an incestuous cabal of blatant social butchers – engaging with each other to carve cultural divides at the same time feeding on them. I'm hoping people increasingly understand this and in the wake of that awareness develop an immunity to being manipulated. I think it is best we shape culture from the bottom up and deplatform these parasites and predators that feed on our attention. I also think any bottom up movement that is in our best interest will start from a first principle that we're better off having each other's backs than being on them. It's the only way we have ever forged the emergent fruits that come from cooperation and made sustained progress.
People who use dominance to obtain and maintain their positions generally do so because they lack the competence to rise. Rather than investing in behaviors that cultivate a return on that sacrifice that is greater than the investment, dominance oriented persons feed on status and position, the focus is on taking, not mutualism. As a cultural movement, this dark side of ourselves can become so denatured that it produces people willing to scorch the Earth if they think it means reigning over the ashes. North Korea is an embodiment of such a cultural malignancy that is in full bloom. Millions suffer for the sake of a few while the energy needed to cultivate food is devoted to forcing compliance.
Competent people must learn to understand and contend with these threats. We either effectively negotiate this parasitic and predatory aspect of the social landscape or we continue to experience the cycles of collapse that flow from power corruption allowed to run unchecked to its conclusion. This is embedded in the story of the flood as well as many other stories.
Thank you (again) for your thoughtful reply. These words especially resonate:
Delete“ . I think it is best we shape culture from the bottom up and deplatform these parasites and predators that feed on our attention. I also think any bottom up movement that is in our best interest will start from a first principle that we're better off having each other's backs than being on them.”
At my best I would like to think I live by what you wrote here. I think I am not too far off base there as specific names and faces come to mind as I read your words: the people I am trying to create culture with. I appreciate the encouragement.