Sensitive times...
Everyone's right.
You're definitely wrong.
Racist or insane?
Selfish or short term thinker?
You have not lived long enough... not enough experience to know.
You've been here too long... time for young blood.
"Hold up... none of that is me, I don't know who he's talking about..."
...but someone thinks you are.
WE think WE'RE right. So if WE'RE right, THEY must be wrong. Right?
Right?
But I'm pro-police... so I must be racist.
And I do feel we have a deep layer of systematic racism still at play... so all cops and judges are bad.
or maybe, just maaaaybe, we're all being played. Are there bad cops? yep. Are there racists? yep. Are there assholes of all sorts? yep. Are there even black or minority racists? yep. All that is true. There's bad doctors, there's bad politicians, there's bad teachers, bad parents, bad bosses, bad everything. It's true. It all exists out there in the world. You may have had experiences with one or all the above. I'm sorry to hear that.
I am not one of them. I can easily scan through my phone and find a hundred people who would say the same for themselves.
There's a very weird space where we can say as an individual human, "I am ____," or "I am not ____," but then we see these masses of individuals on television forming a type of tribe and think "jeez, they must all be _____." I'm sorry, its not even a television, its a social media app. A social media app that makes a lot of money keeping you engaged.
So how real is it?
Pretty good, right?
As individuals, we don't have this anger and hate and fear. But we create a symbol of a thing that is not us and we must conquer it. I think this is ironic.
"Why is this ironic?"
Because creating an external suppressor (and both sides have) is much easier to deal with than dealing with yourself.
...And then when we can paint friends and neighbors into the tribe that is not us, now we have a real deal going
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I'm may say a few things that may read hypocritical.
I might not make perfect sense.
I might say "maybe," a lot.
Because I dont know anything.
But there's a math here and trying to re-scramble the numbers, because everything I'm reading doesn't add up.
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We dont trust anything... maybe for a really good reason.
Looks like the govt owns the media. Someone definitely owns the media and it does not appear to be actual journalists. So we pretty much know we're not getting unbiased info. We're getting click bait and sensationalism because they really need your face glued to whatever face they have staring back at you. I don't know the names of many stations, but I hear station x leans left and station y leans right. Twitter is censoring people, instagram is removing hashtags, Zuckerberg sold all the info to the CIA.
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Zoom out...
Remove yourself from yourself and take a seat high above the country. Lets slide time back to early 2020... walk yourself through March... April... May... think of everything that happened as an unbiased observer... think of the order of things... think of how moving one decision to one space, created a reaction in another space... June... July... will school start on time? August... September... October... November..
I hope you were able to review without judgment... try again.
Look at ALLLL of those events and moments that snowballed into more events and moments and it somehow all connected to one scenario.
Keep thinking.
Isnt this all a little too odd?
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We've been so busy tribing up and hating those who are not us, we stopped paying attention.
Stress levels have gone skyyyyYYYY high. We're walking around, wearing masks - worried about covid and the cure... how about that? We don't know what's scarier, covid or the "cure?" Everyone says "boy we need that vaccine," and now we here its 90% effective. But I dont know if I know one person ready to be first in line.
We cant seem to trust a government operation to count ballots, you think I'm going to trust a rushed and clearly politically motivated vaccine?
Or maybe everything is just a political tool. Even us. A bunch of tools.
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I've seen some really weird things on social media...
A lot of violence. Maybe we're really not as advanced as we think or wish we were. Maybe we just really suck, but really good at projecting versions of people we wish we were... maybe thats why everyone is so depressed. The acting. The pretending to be good and decent is exhausting and we eventually crack and the real deal comes out.
Maybe.
A lot of posturing. Same as above but maybe more gross. The above "pretending," is probably subconscious, we dont even know its what we do, its so deep. But the posturing is a gross decision. It's where people think, then decide, "I want to be viewed as _____."
"What's the cool thing I can be now? I'll posture up and become it."
A lot of fear. It's sad. I've read and searched too much, things I wish I didnt. Sat and thought too much about things I wish I didnt. The future feels uncertain, more than ever and that lack of vision is shaky. I'm speaking as a culture, as a society.
We have badly lost our way.
A lot of abuse. Abuse of power. Abuse of influence. Thats pretty bad. To intentionally deceive. no accidents. "I am going to bait you in and trick you and then I own your thoughts."
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I dont blame a politician. I dont blame a cop. I dont blame the news. I dont blame God. I dont blame the older generations.
I blame myself. And I think you should do the same.
I dont really care much but what any dumbshit on television says, no matter if behind a podium or playing basketball.
I say I blame myself and I think you should do the same, for a reason. But first think.
Think "I am responsible for this," and I dont mean the events. I dont blame myself for covid, dont do that.
I blame myself for my emotions and the reactions they've created inside of myself. (I want to say "im sorry if that reads crazy," but I cant.. think).
If we all took personal accountability and owned everything in our personal world. Every outcome, we worked to steer it properly, mindfully, to secure the best outcome for each other...
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Remember when we were little and afraid to act up, especially as we got closer to Christmas? If we got in trouble in March, "santa," would forget that one. But if we f'd up in December? Santa will absolutely find out.
So we checked our own behavior.
Then as I got older, it was coach. Act up, coach will find out.... you should see me shaking my head even right now... coach finds out, it will not go well.
So we checked our own behavior.
Maybe the lack of religion and faith has left us we no coach, santa or great judge assisting us to check our own behavior.
And maybe this lack of faith has influenced also a lack of shame.
Remember when we would do something we knew was wrong, and the conversation we had in our own heads weighed us down? We knew we were wrong, but we did it anyway and now we feel like shit. We judged ourselves. Good. Shame. It's needed. Do something stupid, you should feel like shit about it.
But do we?
I'm not innocent.
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I'm just sitting in my basement, listening to The Doors, trying to feel "ok," about being called a racist for living in a county that voted for Donald Trump. That bothers me. For one, it was a friend. Should I say former friend? Or is he as confused as everyone else?
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Rogan referenced Reagans reference to "Alien watchers," and I wondered.
How insanely embarrassing it would be if all the lights turned on and the curtain fell and there's the crowd... staring at us... in complete disbelief about our behavior and what we've done with this opportunity.
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Can you have faith and be progressive?
Is there wiggle room for a variation of human evolution while maintaining tradition?
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We stopped communicating respectfully and because of that, we've removed opportunities for compromise and understanding. Because WE are right and THEY are wrong and absolutely nothing else except our ideas and opinions could possibly make any sense.
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That's how I'm feeling today.
