19 February 2015

On not posting many blogs anymore

At first it was work. Was working as the manager of the building I lived in, along with all my other jobs.
And filling most of my free time with dating.

Then I actually ended up finding her.
Not even somewhere I was looking.  A series of very random and fortunate events.
I'll probably write more on that later.

So she's been getting most of my free time ever since figuring out that that was settled.
But she works full time, and I most certainly don't.

I have had just about as many thoughts, but been much less motivated to take the time and effort to actually write.

I think I may slowly be getting to that final stage.
Acceptance.

Maybe there is so little writing from the wisest because they realize how little impact it would have, and so don't bother. (Or at least, that's what I'm going to keep telling myself.)

As the robots say: "all of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again".
The more I learn, the more I start to believe that.



Things get better in someways - in some places, but always worse in others, and on balance it seems more or less the same.  That change that does stick, its due to technology, mostly, and some to randomness.
It certainly isn't because of some guy typing on a computer at home.

Now that the Colbert Report is over, I mostly avoid learning anything that passes for "news".
Some infotainment is more blatant than others, but in the end all there is is human interest stories.

Other than my closest personal friends and family, I've pretty much given up debates or discussions or informing people of things.
Human psychology. People will find a way to believe what they want. Whether its comforting because they've always believed it, or because its pleasant to believe, or because the human brain gets off on feeling superior and self-righteous, or because of our rubber necking blood lust for being horrified and outraged.
People will always find things to be outraged about.
People will always go by raw emotional response first, and then fill in the details to justify it afterwards.

That's the part I never got, which is why all the things I've been writing since 2006 have had so little influence on those few who read it.
And why, while the cast and settings change, newspapers today look so much like ones from hundreds of years ago, why reading detailed history from long ago feels eerily familiar.

I spoke to a friend of mine once, about my belief that efforts to generate outrage over supposed slights and insults based on race or gender were counter-productive to the goal of societal advancement and equality, and I gave lots of specific reasons related to recent facebook posts and the like.  I was thrown for a loop when the response was more or less an acknowledgement (or at least lack of dispute) of my point, and the explanation that the goal wasn't to make the world a better place, the goal was simple catharsis.  It felt better to vent about things happening in the world that made a strong emotional impact, posting or writing or complaining in person were ways of dissipating bad feelings - and it didn't matter if the end result was making the world better or worse.

There is nothing really to say to respond to that.
Thats a lot of why I stopped writing.
I suspect most people don't have the self-awareness to realize that's what they are really doing, even though so many are.

If I don't know how to reach someone who is doing it consciously, I certainly don't know where to even begin with people who truly believe they are "saving the world" with whatever cause, whatever perceived injustice, they are devoted to ending.


All that said, though,
I'm not 100% there yet.

I still live in the Bay Area, CA.
I passed by all the demonstrations over the supposed epidemic of "police brutality" in upper middle class Berkeley, made up almost entirely of people who have never actually lived in an area of excessively high crime, have never lived with the constant threat of being personally assaulted...
It generates quite mixed feelings
On the one hand, there is so much to say about it - and in fact, the one time I wrote a post in the past many months, it was inspired by that crowd.
But on the other hand, it just reminds me of every other mindless mob I've known of, from the people who drove their cars to protest a Mid-East "war for oil" (in which my partner and I were the ONLY two to ride bikes there), to the march on the streets of SF which turned to avoid cops at every intersection and ended up going in a circle and getting trapped on itself, the "protests" that turn into plain old riots - or just watching groups of sports fans or religious groups or gangs.  Hell, for that matter, trying to talk to a confirmed "liberal", pointing out something that goes across the standard accepted liberal doctrine, its no easier (or harder) than debating a "conservative".  All of them are about identity first and foremost, and once you identify as part of a given group, you have to accept all of what the group believes (although sometimes with pre-specified exceptions just so it seems like they aren't too rigid!)

There's no way to argue with that.
The "decision" of what to believe, how to think, what is true, has already been made.
The only thing left is to figure out how to fit facts of reality to fit.
If you have decided that the world (or "America", or whatever) is full of oppression, or that (fill in the blank) group is treated unfairly, there will always be one or two isolated examples that can be used to "prove" that it is rampant, there will always be disparities that can be explained lots of different ways.
If you have decided the world has lax morals, or is too religious, or not religious enough, that we've gotten to soft or have lost our compassion, that all politicians are corrupt or justice is a farce or the homosexual agenda is winning, you can find the evidence you need to sustain that belief.

I say this, but like I also said, I'm not 100% there yet.
And so I'll probably write at least a little more before I give it up completely.
At least until I get the ideas that have been stuck in my head for the past year out of there.

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