It’s rainy, and slightly unsettled, but I feel grounded well enough. I want to do things again, and I don’t want to feel disappointed by failing to follow through. Good old Yoda comes to mind, the old saw about there being no “try,” only “do.” Feels like an advertising slogan (…oh, wait), but it’s not bad.
What’s conveniently left out, of course, is that there are many, so very many “dos.” Perhaps we’re typically focused on the many “don’ts,” so we miss how manifold the “dos” actually are. Or should that be “how manifold the ‘do’ actually is“? Probably the latter. It’s a one-thing in many guises. It’s what keeps forward momentum, and, since entropy is the natural state of things, it needs many guises – a manifold – to ply its tricks.
Yesterday W. and I walked back home from our beach walk through downtown, and all the churches on [main street] seemed to be having Christmas fairs. (Well, “all the churches” just means the Baptists and the UUs; the Catholics weren’t participating, nor the Episcopalians just off the main street.) People were coming and going out of the churches, it was only about 10a.m., greeting each other, etc., and I thought, “Huh. Community.” Of course my inner (Groucho) Marxist – or is it my inner Dorothy Parker? – kicked in fast enough to remind me about not wanting to be a member of a club that would etc. etc.
And I thought, “Why?” I’m not a completely disagreeable person, but I know that I would rapidly fall into disagreement with people in church. It’s somewhat akin to my last attendance at the Jungian Study Group: I lose my patience with Stupid. Stupid doesn’t get a pass with me. Sure, I don’t bite children’s heads off (they are still developing), and if I’m in a teaching position, I know that my job is to promote inquiry (along with imparting knowledge). I wouldn’t kneecap students, ever. But if “authority figures” spout “the Stupid,” I feel really frustrated and angry. Teachers, professors, doctors, study group leaders: anyone in any kind of perceived position of authority who talks in platitudes and cliches makes me crazy. They “constellate” me, I guess. Today we’d say, “trigger.”
One thing that sends me over the wall these days is politics, and the inane parroting – so very very similar to the early 2000s bullshit about Saddam Hussein’s alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) – the inane parroting of the legacy media’s “virtuous” take on the 2016 election, Trump, Hillary Clinton, and “the Russians.” The latter are 2017’s equivalent of the 2002 canard of WMD. The same people who sprang into the breach to convince us of the existence of WMDs are now doing it with “muh Russia” …and the same kind of people who believed them in 2002 now believe them in 2017. I want some brighter bulbs in my life, not these dim lights. The voltage runs low, even if the emotions don’t.
It seems to run even lower the higher up you go socioeconomically. The middle- and upper-middle-class around here are most likely to be pearl-clutching. Women, like our esteemed study group leader, who have benefited the most from our allegedly vile patriarchy by rising into the professional ranks, with all the status and financial benefits this implies, are most likely to pearl-clutch about “muh patriarchy” and male oppression of women, even as they have NO IDEA how hard real working men work to keep the roads repaired, the trains running (sort of), the power grid going when a storm hits, etc. Talk to dairy farmers – men and women – and ask them, as they work like lunatics, side by side, to keep the farm afloat, what they think about systemic patriarchal oppression. Heck, ask the dairy cows. Nietzsche asked a horse. Its anwer broke him.
