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Wrong Conversations

The trolls are winning.  If you take a few steps back and look at the world for what it is, I think that you'll pretty clearly see that there is a lot of confusion.  The ability to clearly see confusion?  Follow me for just a minute, please.

When forced to analyze the validity and perspective of my world view, which happens often, I am often struck with the thought that I disagree with many things on many different levels.  When I get to the meat and bones of various topics, and it usually doesn't take me long to get there, I'm often left feeling as if the real topics are shrouded in misdirection.

Wrong Question: Is Global Climate Change real?

Real Questions: Are we excessively polluting our planet in the name of higher profits and GDP?  Is that pollution causing causing a reduction of biodiversity?  How do changes in biodiversity affect the health and survival of humanity on the grandest of scales?

This is probably the most infuriating question of our time.  In the name of money, we create arguments to dispute the validity of Global Climate Change.  Do I believe that Global Climate Change is real?  Yes, of course I do.  There is a lot of scientific evidence  to support this idea, but more importantly, we don't even have to look past our own kitchens and homes to see that we are far more wasteful than we need to be.  To clean up our own wastefulness would ultimately result in lower consumerism, which is bad for the economy, which is why the real questions don't get asked.  Make it a true or false question on whether or not the science is real, let American choose to believe either scientist A or scientist B, let's do that.

Wrong Question: Did Hilary really win the 2016 presidential election?

Real Questions: Did an internal or external body unfairly affect Any votes in fair of one candidate or another?  Can we hold faith in the security and accuracy of our current system?  Does anyone at the top care about what is moral?  Or do we only care if it affects the actual end results?

Yes I'm a liberal/socialist/supporter of not-trump.  Regardless, I do not hold any delusions of Hilary winning in a post-election controversial upset.  What I do hold delusions of is the idea that if there is reason to check into vote validity, then we should do it.  If the constituency believes that their vote doesn't count, then less voters will turn out, and the process becomes even less valid than it is already.  We need to believe that our system works, regardless of whether or not it affects the end results.  It's that whole "means are just as, if not more than, important than the ends" thing (I'm going to give a detailed explanation of my previously stated beliefs in a future post).

Wrong Question: Is not standing for the National Anthem an act of anti-patriotism?

Real Questions: Is standing during the National Anthem an act of patriotism?  Why does negative media coverage receive more attention than negative media coverage?  

If donating time in addition to millions of dollar to charity received as much attention as refusing to stand during the national anthem, then maybe we would see more positive action towards causes.  Discrimination is real.  As a professional athlete who is on television every week, I cannot think of a more effective way to communicate dissatisfaction with social inequities.  I'm not saying it's proper, but there are many improper things that go on in the world, this is certainly one of the least of these things.

There are many more questions that we will touch on in the future, but you get where I'm going with this.  The trolls are winning, you just don't know that they are winning because you don't know that they are trolls.  Instead of hurling insults, they hurl the things at you that you want to hear.  What you hear is what you need to hear, a perfectly valid sounding explanation to keep living life as you always have, the easy option.  "Remember, if the time should come when you have to make a choice between what is right, and what is easy, remember what happened to a boy who was good and kind and brave because he strayed across the path of Lord Voldemort"

Let's talk more soon.

Flickering Lights

     I'm not crazy.  Ok, I might be crazy. My thoughts wander aimlessly through halls of flicking lights, anxiously pushing through each set of swinging double doors only to find yet another empty hallway and more of those damn flickering lights. The air is stagnant and chilled, goosebumps prickle my brain, but I am not alone in this most uncomfortable of spaces.  

     Though there be a handful beside and behind me, outside there are more. The many desire nothing less than for all of us, me and these few, to find a room with a bed and shut our eyes to this world, their world.  A window in each of these blue and white tiled hallways shows us their numbers and their faces.  Some who could have been beside us are set to deny us, it stings, but we are not permitted to cry.

     I feel alone in my views, tilting towards what the others label as extremism.  Not extreme by action, but extreme by consequence, as to fix all that I view as obviously broken, would change the way every human on this planet lives.  Optional participation is not an option. And so, we are the few, lonely but not yet completely alone.

Comme ce comme ca

     My post from earlier this week was difficult.  I've had so many thoughts running through my head in the past few days that I find myself not knowing where to start, what to include, or the best way to conclude.  On top of that, everything has run through my brain so many times that I have to keep telling myself that it's all been in my head, and that it still needs to be written down.  There is also the small matter of specifics.  Sometimes it's just easier to write generically, rather than calling into play specific feelings and taking the time to explain and justify what I'm saying and how I'm trying to say it.  Explanations are important, eventually.
     Emotions are still running high.  This trip has done nothing to calm the vibrant nerves of the presidential election results, and I'm glad of that.  Our visit with Bob and Rachel created some great conversations from across different sides of the table.  Neither of them voted for Trump, but they do have pretty Republican oriented views and end up voting Republican pretty consistently as a result. This vacation has been a success in that way alone, having the opportunity to share thoughts with those whom I love and whose opinions matter immeasurably.  I don't believe that either of them has been converted more towards the way that I view the world, but I do think that each of us has a better grasp on how we feel and why it is we feel the way that we feel.
     Sharing opinions(beliefs) with people who do not live inside your life and experiences can be a tricky business.  I've come to the conclusion that it's next to impossible to directly change how someone views a particular topic unless they are already coming to that same or similar conclusion on their own; this is probably why cross-table talks are difficult at times.  It gets to the point where we feel the conversation isn't worth our time, because "you're going to walk away thinking the same things you thought before and I'm going to walk away thinking the same things that I've thought before as well."  This conundrum is largely, I think, an Americanized problem.  We don't want to wait for the webpage to load, we want results at the tap of a finger, click of the mouse.  The conversion of opinions(beliefs) is a far subtler business, more like nursing a pineapple into maturity.
     It surprises me that it's taken so many years to make this connection, but all of this opinion(belief) changing talk reminds me of the movie Inception.  You can't just walk into a room and expect to permanently alter the core of someone's being, who the fuck do you think you are?  You have to put in the time and find the roots of their belief systems, use your linguisticly intuitive fingers and try your best to understand where they are coming from; even then, there is no guarantee your idea will grasp hold of anything permanent.  As in Inception, most of our belief roots start with our parents, our childhoods, our experiences, events that are so unique and special to who we are that it's hard for us to think anyone could possibly relate or even begin to understand what makes us, us. The goal must not be to change opinions(beliefs), the goal should be to get people thinking, so that they can come to new conclusions on their own. There is a lesson here, and it's not deep.
     I've learned that there is a big change that needs to be made inside of me if I truly desire to be a part of these thought provoking conversations; the changing of my opinions(beliefs).  Well, not really, more like the changing of how I present them to others.  As I fall further down the rabbit hole of disillusionment, disestablishment, and disappointment, I've noticed that my views of the world have skewed sharply to the left.  I am in large part ok with this shift because of how well they match with my roots, but I've also noticed that people, even friends, have a tendency to shut your words out at the door, keep the core of what you are trying to talk with them about at arm's length, if that.  It's frustrating at times, but it is the way the world works, the way the game is played.  A dispassionate or moderate person is likely to tune out anything that feels like extremism, and extremists tune out fucking everything that doesn't match directly with their credo.  So, I do not want to be tuned out, nor do I want others to think that I am tuning them out.  The truth is, I want to both make people think and let them help me do the same.
    Change is hard.  Setbacks are frustrating.  Environmentally speaking, we need change now, but that isn't how the world works.  We do need to prepare ourselves for more than just thought provoking conversations, and that includes everyone sitting at the table(Earth).  Let's talk more soon.

Goals on Vacation

     Let's talk about goals again for a minute.  As we've previously established, goals are hard!  That's only half of the truth though, because from conception to completion, goals are composed of many different stages that can be difficult to properly appreciate.  Now, imagine those goal complexities and throw them into the blender that is vacation; let me know how that turns out for you.
     The word vacation can really be interchanged with any another other words that result in some kind of disruption to an established routine.  People from some studies that I don't really know much about say that repeating a new habit for over 20 days makes it much easier to incorporate into your everyday life for every day after the 20th.  I have to agree that daily goals / habits do become easier after that point, and not to downplay how hard it is to get to that point, because sometimes it feels impossible, but it really does get easier, ridiculously so.  The next big hurdle comes when your string of success finds an interruption, after the 20+ day count resets back to the big ZERO.
     I'm writing about this now because I'm on one of the goal destroying vacations.  Everything has gone out the window: French, exercise, writing, water drinking, meditation.  You might think that these are nothing to cry about, but I used to be on a 30+ day streak for all of these things.  Knowing that I've gone from the road to an outlying success story back towards a tale of an ordinary failure really sucks.
     In a moment of self-doubt, I remember what it was like back in the 997 days in a row that I was able to do 10,000 steps a day without any problems.  In that same 997 days, Brianna was attempting to accomplish the same feat, and because of a much more demanding life schedule, was failing.  Her failures aren't significant in and of themselves, but the large gaps of time in-between each attempt are. What's harder than achieving a new daily/regular goal?  Picking yourself up, dusting that ass off, and giving it another go the very next day.
     Vacations and other routine disruptions do not have to cause goal and habit failures.  The difference between temporary failure and permanent failure is acceptance of the result.  I did climb a mountain, that has to be worth something right?  One down, infinity to go.

Yes, I still feel guilty about vacationing.  Yes, I still believe that I can make a difference.  No, I'm still not 100% sure how to do that, but I have some goals.  Let's talk again soon.

Disney Wishes

     It's been about five days since we began our vacation travels.  I have learned much in this short period of time, whether or not they are things that I wanted or needed to learn is another matter.  Learned...? No... remembered, reminded... reobserved the unchanging belly that is the beast of an America.

     Allow me to begin by saying that I understand, perhaps better than you do, how hypocritical my recent journal entries seem after you hear that I spent this past weekend at both Disney World and Universal Studios.  The best I can do is to say that I have attempted to view this entire experience from hungry eyes.  Back home, from the comforts of my cemented basement walls, it's dangerously easy to presume that the world in which I live is similar to that of the rest of the world.  This vacation has reminded me the folly and danger of that thinking.  Some lessons can only be learned from travel and experience, I'll do my best to share with you the most recent of what has come unto me.

     From the very beginning, the planning of this vacation had me feeling very apprehenive.  The core of planned vacation activities were things that I absolutely wanted to partake in, seeing my old friends and their family, hiking in Tennessee, and spending some quality time with Brianna.  What bothered me about this vacation were the amusement park plans.  Yes, of course I wanted to see and experience Harry Potter World, but the bigger picture is a difficult reality for my changing core values to properly handle.  Imagine my changing core values as a no nonsense Monk with a very balanced view of the modern world (let's call him Gary). Now imagine that Disney World is a Titty bar and that Gary has been forced to spend several days in the dirty little stripe club and it's variety of patrons.  Gary is a very level headed, he realizes that good can be found in the oddest of places, but there are many places he would rather be practicing his meditations.

     Before we left on the trip, I felt like enduring the amusement parks would be a struggle for me because their existence is an affront to so many of my beliefs and feelings.  How much more wrong could I have been?  The amusement parks are not a personal affront at all, the world is, as a whole,  in stark contrast and disagreement with my beliefs, if not in thought, then certainly in practice. Yes, I am also an affront to myself, I'm working on it.

     I know what you might be thinking, "If you don't like how things are in this country, feel free to leave." Unfortunately, this is a world problem that cannot be run or moved away from.  When fight or flight takes over and flight is no longer an option, we fight.  We fight apathy, we fight hate, we fight gluttony, we fight selfishness, we fight consumerism, we fight people.  

     I realize that this blog has been a lot of words without really saying much.  My emotions have been hard for me to process and put into words, like eating ice cream when you're still full from dinner, it tastes great, and makes you feel like a fat wasteful fuck.  Well, it should make you feel all of those things, some people just feel fat and happy.  Finally, a paragraph with some meaning behind the words.  Let's talk again soon.

Moral, Duty, Honor

     Firstly, I feel the need to apologize for all of the political references.  Political frustration is what has been fueling my brain into this week or so of writing frenzy.  I listen to the radio, hear people talk about things in the office, watch videos on the internet... and my brain just goes to work.  Words rapidly pop into my head unlike I've experienced in many years.  It starts with a sentence that runs through the back of my eyeballs like a teleprompter stuck on repeat.  Before you know it, a second sentence crawls into the bottom of the picture.  By the time a third sentence is ready, words are pushing the sides of my skull in an attempt to escape.  It hurts, but it's closer to ecstasy than it is pain.

     There was an interview with a woman who once worked for NATO on NPR this morning.  I'm not going into great detail on what the conversation was about, but it was political in nature and most of, if not all of, the questions were in regards to her opinion on Trump as the new president.  The part of the interview that really sent my teleprompter on the fritz was at the very end.  This woman, and I apologize for not remembering her name or being able to quickly Google it successfully, her final words of the interview were something along the lines of "We have both a moral and civic duty to get 100% behind or president-elect."  Honestly, I'm not sure I could disagree more, and if I could disagree more, I can't even begin to imagine what that might look like.

     If it were me being interviewed, I probably would have said something more along the lines of "We as Americans have both a moral and civic duty to stand against that which infringes on or has the great potential to infringe on the freedoms that we hold so dear."  I have to wonder why these voices are being played to us in nearly every medium I allow into my ears.  What is the end game here?  If citizens disagree with policy, is it not our moral and civic duty to protest in the physical streets as well as the digital highway?  I know that I've said all of this before, but what I haven't mentioned is how scary it is that even NPR is sending these messages, unapologetically, unequivocally, repeatedly.

     There are so many examples in history, American history, where no change would have happened if the people hadn't voiced their opinions, some even sacrificing their lives.  How crazy is it to think that human-beings had to give their lives in order to be free, in order to be treated equally, in order to vote... and it's still not enough.  It's even crazier to think that they were fighting for these freedoms not from a dictatorship, not from a caesar,  but from a community of people who didn't like the color of the skin they were born with or the gender they were born as.  Those wars are still being waged, and it's difficult for me not to draw a direct connection to LGTB struggles of today as well.  Freedom to practice religion should not mean freedom to discriminate based on beliefs --> opinion or fact?

     A common saying in the United States is that people have the right to their own opinion.  I'd really like to talk more about what that really means, so let's talk more soon.