Tag: Stream of Consciousnesses

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Culture Politics Preparedness

Day 943 and Glimmers

I find myself filled with optimism today, even as I’m quite sure we are ramping quickly into the era of chaos I’ve been prattling on about for nearly a thousand days. Everything feels a bit “hold on to your hats” as we collectively experience the fear and joy of an illegible moment without any dominant narratives.

And yet today inside this chaos without clarity, the internet is filled with enthusiasm as a small niche of enthusiasts try to replicate the results of a chemistry paper that claims to have made a superconducting at room temperature material LK-99 produced with common materials like lead and red phosphorus.

Add that on top of fervor over Congressional investigations “aliens” program whistleblowers while we all collectively wonder at the potential for artificial general intelligence to be accelerated and the zeitgeist is a fever pitch of vibe shifts from doom to foom.

All of these glimmers of joyful uncertainty and hopeful chaos are emerging from a youth culture that is quite sure it has been abandoned by its own past as it is bombarded by a dystopian future by its own geriatric elite. Is it any wonder it feels like the social contract is hanging on by a thread?

Historian Peter Turchin is taking a victory lap with the accuracy of his theory of cliodynamics

When the equilibrium between ruling elites and the majority tips too far in favor of elites, political instability is all but inevitable. As income inequality surges and prosperity flows disproportionately into the hands of the elites, the common people suffer, and society-wide efforts to become an elite grow ever more frenzied. He calls this process the wealth pump; it’s a world of the damned and the saved.

Peter Turchin “End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration

The broader popular rediscovery of historians Neil Howe and William Strauss is no coincidence. They wrote the The Forth Turning twenty five years ago.

Looking back at the last 500 years, they’d uncovered a distinct pattern: modern history moves in cycles, each one lasting roughly eighty to one hundred years, the length of a long human life, with each cycle composed of four eras—or “turnings”—that always arrive in the same order and each last about twenty years. The last of these eras—the fourth turning—was always the most perilous.

The Fourth Turning Is Here

Clever Simon and Schuster realized it was an opportune moment to point out that the fourth turning had arrived with a new book from Howe.

So perhaps these glimmers are here to show us that the churn is here, the fourth turning is now, and Turchin’s race to become an elite to outrun the effects of dislocation may already have its winners.

Amidst all of that there are those of us seeking to believe that we might find a way forward. I’d rather be looking for the glimmers of hope. I’ve already done what I can to warn about the need to prepare for hard times. If you haven’t yet come to terms with the doom then I certainly won’t convince you of the need for optimism either.

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Chronicle Emotional Work

Day 941 and Unreasonable

Today marks our one year anniversary of moving to Montana. I noted yesterday just how much we achieved in just 365 days.

I’ve tended to think in terms of time in terms of days over the past three years because no other metric seemed sensible. Too much changes every day even as too little seems to be different.

I do believe that what gets measured gets managed. So it makes sense that someone like me who writes every single day thinks that days are the manageable metric. Not that being manageable means anything is under control. Merely that I have some metric to measure back into to make life seem more reasonable.

I am however all too human. We are feeling animals with the capacity to reason. It’s important that it’s not the other way around. Much as I like to reason my way through life I’ve learned to remember feelings matter. This has made me both much more open and also much more careful about how I treat myself.

I suppose this makes me unreasonable simply by definition. Humans are unreasonable because we do not operate through reason entirely I’d encourage even my most autistic friends to remember that this means you are unreasonable too.

Narratives are the comfort we seek as our apophenia runs rampant. Spotting the one thing that is not like the others is how we survive. We seek sense in the chaos. It’s an unreasonable thing to do when we know we’ve not yet managed to measure even a fraction of our reality. One day I hope I come to terms with that.

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Homesteading

Day 940 and Dishes

Much to my surprise, tomorrow it will have been one year since my husband and I moved from Colorado to Montana. It feels like the time absolutely flew by. We achieved quite a bit on the homestead in just a year here.

We installed a solar grid so we can be off the power grid if we chose. We repaired our well pumps & installed a top of the line water filters. We installed air conditioning because sadly that’s a thing you need now even in the Northern Rockies now. We replaced the roof on the barn and the house. We furnished the living room, dining area, and a full guest floor (come visit seriously). We built out a gym in the barn. We set up a small hydroponic system for vegetables and herbs.

That feels like a lot to when I write it out, and yet oddly it was a purchase we made just yesterday that made me feel like we’d settled in. We bought dishes.

Yes, dishes as in in plates and bowls. We bought a proper nice set of matched china. It took us an entire year of living in our first home, but we finally have something to serve our guests on.

This may require some context for the significance. We got married at city hall without anyone present. We didn’t have a registry or any kind of celebration, so we didn’t get a single gift like a serving platter or soup bowl.

It turns out if you don’t do things the traditional way, neither friend nor family will bother with the rituals of gifting midrange china to celebrate what used to be a major life milestone. I don’t think we got so much as a congratulations card let alone a teacup. Not that we’d asked anyone to do so.

Our kitchen reflects this ten years later with a hodgepodge of Ikea ceramics so chipped and mismatched it’s become a running joke. And while we are clearly willing to invest in substantial equity building activities, spending $500 to acquire dishes felt insane.

Heirlooms don’t really get passed down anymore so it’s just a consumer good. To be fair, we also thought spending the equivalent of a year’s college tuition on a wedding was a waste so maybe it’s just how we prioritize. We invest in things that will be worth more over time like company stock.

I think there has been a persistent fantasy about how millennials rely on their Boomer parents that has just never really been true for my own experience. The grind to build enough stability and cash to own a home can be nearly impossible when starter homes in middle tier cities are over half a million dollars. Letting go of things like weddings was a small sacrifice in my mind given the challenges of earning enough.

But I’ll admit to feeling a little surprised that even getting a hand with your kitchen necessities wasn’t something the older generations wanted to help the younger ones with. No wonder my generation is a bunch of workaholics with no kids.

If you own parents forget to send celebratory tokens, what hope do have for maintaining any of the social fabric of past traditions? We may as well accelerate as fast as we can into the future if we can’t even rely on the past for dishes.

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Internet Culture Media

Day 937 and Conspiracy’s Greatest Hits

The rising volume on complaints about the mainstream media has struck me as a little bit silly as I’ve been entrenched in skepticism of institutional authority my whole life. Thinking the news had a bias isn’t new and conspiracy is practically an American art form. So be careful out there.

When I was a kid in the late nineties we still had the national broadcast evening news as the center of discourse. I was considered a bit odd for being interested in news at a young age but my hippie parent had a healthy skepticism for institutional authority so they encouraged it.

I remember before the mass adoption of social media and self publishing, if you wanted an alternative perspective you had to turn to AM radio. If you were lucky you lived in a college town and had access to library cooperatives and computer labs. If you were very lucky like me, your parents had invested in personal computers and internet access early on so you could mix formal libraries with early choose your own adventure newsgroups online.

Thanks to the confluence of the above factors I read Adbusters, went to the local anarchist book cooperative and listened to Art Bell late at night. I was practically stewed in every early conspiracy and counter culture narrative that had any amount of reach. If a zine cared or an indie publisher could cobble together a story I read it. This lead to a general fascination with media and how Americans decided on what was credible and what viewpoints were discouraged.

I was a curious child. My family welcomed skeptics and mystics. This is perhaps what happens when you take children on meditation retreats. I got inoculated to a lot of crazies, cults and whackadoodles because America has always been where utopians gather. Our evangelical cultures have led to uniquely American interpretations of our Gods. And I loved nothing more than watching these subcultures flourish.

My family bought a cable news package and I watched CNN and Fox News battle it out. I read Naomi Klein and Marshal McLuhan. I convinced my mother to get me a subscription to the Economist when I was fifteen. Embarrassingly I used their motto in a year book quote. I talked my way into a job famed talk radio juggernaut 77WABC when still technically in high school.

If there is one thing I learned from this lifelong obsession with who controls what we think, it’s that we rely on the same simple narratives over and over again. The conspiracies of yesterday are the facts of today. We change our minds. We recycle the same prophecy. If you start seeing a lot of chatter about aliens remember we’ve had this news cycle before.

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Emotional Work

Day 936 and Take The Beating

I got my ass kicked yesterday. I made a decision that I knew would be disliked. I knew how unpopular the decision would make and that I would have to suffer the consequences. I did not bend on my decision despite knowing how much I would suffer for it. It was right for me. But damn it always sucks to take a beating.

I have taken my college cafeteria’s name as a law of the universe. TANSTAAFL. There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. I know it’s a bit unfashionable to be a Hayek libertarian these days but I do think we have to accommodate some basic physics in life. Actions have reactions.

I had to take my beating. I made people hurt. And it’s entirely possible that we have different expectations and realities. As soon as I give my firm position on my reality and energy I can expect a response.

I think it’s genuinely healthy to feel like you have the capacity to endure criticism. Sometimes you can’t make people happy. Sometimes you’ve done something wrong. Sometimes it’s just that you couldn’t find an accommodation between what you gave the situation and what it gave you.

Life has a budget. There is a balance to the energy of the world. I suppose sometimes you just have to take your licks.

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Emotional Work

Day 935 and Rebranding

Changing someone’s opinion is hard. Twitter is being rebranded to X so the topic is newsworthy. I was on rebranding efforts at Pepsi (the infamous one) Tropicana (that didn’t go well) and Ann Taylor (which won us a lot of awards & made money) so I have lived through the challengers of remaking a corporate identity.

That sounds so much more professional than what is actually happening . A lot of people have bought in on something that is no longer the thing they loved. A change was necessary but not everyone so ready. Something that had meaning is being remade into a new set of meanings and it will provoke a backlash.

People all adopt new ideas at different paces. And hold outs and middle of the road types can be equally challenging. Any change can be greeted fairly with skepticism. Trust is hard to gain and easily lost.

Even when circumstances on the ground demand it, people fucking hate change. It’s scary. I get it. I find a lot of the world right now to be scary. Failure rates can be high. But if we don’t change we don’t get different outcomes.

Categories
Chronicle Preparedness

Day 934 and Planning Ahead

I have been doing a short “season of no” over the last few weeks. I’m pruning my calendar and letting go of some projects, people and attention hogs. I’ve reoriented myself to obligations that give me as much as I give them.

The upside of saying no is that many obligations I’d assumed were set in stone are now blissfully gone. You can say no to more shit than you think as it turns out. I had a death in my extended family that provided me with clarity.

I do however feel as if it’s going to be hard to make plans too far out into the future for a while. A lot is happening and schisms in every community make it hard to see how some things could turn out. I’m keeping flexibility in my life so I can be mentally and physically prepared for rapidly changing conditions.

Especially as we come to grips with a world that is more chaotic, and a future that is less predictable, planning becomes the kind of exercise you hold gently. I’ve got goals and ambitions for the near term but I’ll play it as it lays.

Categories
Chronic Disease Emotional Work

Day 931 and Open Calendar

I am about to sunset a long-standing weekly appointment that has been on my calendar for literally years. And I was surprised to discover how much getting back that time made me happy.

The block on my calendar was for something I very much loved doing and valued highly, so the sheer joy was unexpected. But as it turns out I loathe having a consistent obligation on my time.

This isn’t to say that I don’t like being responsible, reliable, or on time. But rather I like knowing if something comes up that I have some flexibility. And I don’t like to disappoint people by needing flexibility.

My suspicion is that this represents some lingering guilt I have about having a chronic disease. While I rationally know that I did nothing to deserve being sick, I do carry a self limiting belief that being sick is a weakness.

I’ve always prided myself on being a “mind over matter” person. I’ve shown up to countless events, meetings, pitches, and other obligations while in pain. I’ve been known to repeat “Michael Jordan, Game 5” as a mantra to remind myself that I can perform in even the worst physical circumstance.

Michael Jordan famously played and won with the flu. And the logic in my mind was surely I can do the same when something is on the line. So I always have. If someone expects me to show up and perform I do it even if I am struggling.

But as my season of no has begun I think it’s time I stop romanticizing my capacity to work when sick. I love having my time back on my calendar and I love the flexibility that I have to work whenever and wherever I want.

Maybe some people would chose to work less under these conditions. For me though, having more flexibility in when I show up means I’ll find even more time to put into my work. Because I love showing up for me. And sometimes it’s easier for me to show up when it’s not a damn calendar block.

Categories
Aesthetics

Day 930 and Quantity

I was very kindly tagged in a Twitter thread today with a lovely compliment about my daily writing habits. Does quantity have its own quality? As I close in on a thousand posts I think my answer is a strong “maybe!”

What are your favorite examples of “Quantity has a quality all its own?”
Examples:
@tylercowen writing a post a day, a column a month and a book a year for two decades
Kanye’s “5 beats a day for 3 summers”
Seinfeld’s “Don’t break the chain” one joke a day. Reply from Alan Simon @ almostmedia She’s not for everyone, but she’s been very dedicated and is approaching her 1,000th daily post.

One aspect of creation that is perhaps a bit understudied is just how much it is dominated by the truly prolific. The outliers practice a lot. Every single day I practice because I both enjoy it and I trust that doing a thing over time improves the thing. You can imagine how this predisposition makes me sympathetic to Calvinism.

I credit hippie parenting and the Waldorf curriculum. I was taught early on that it was good to make things even if you sucked at it. So I just spent a lot of my time sucking at creative endeavors and not finding it all that discouraging as I don’t mind being embarrassed.

So I suppose my quantity has demonstrated its own quality in its sheer persistence. Reminding yourself to do a daily practice has its benefits over time if you can stand it. Personally for me writing has always has a kind of blind optimism that has never been beaten out of me. I am a writer. I write. If it every becomes more than that I wouldn’t mind but I don’t need it to. The thing has been it’s own reward.

Categories
Media

Day 929 and Right Speak

My day has been a little off as I’m nursing my husband through some surgery. Through frankly he’s recovering so well it’s mostly just keeping him company while I do my regular workday. But I have consumed some good content in the process of keeping him company and making sure ice packs are rotated & medicine is taken.

I watched John Mulaney standup special Baby J which was surprisingly good. My main takeaway was “being liked is a cage” but also you’ve got to watch out for how selfish everyone is in the process of managing their own traumas and addictions.

Mulaney is a fascinating example of someone going from beloved to fuck up as soon as it was clear he was a human and capable of sinning and hurting himself and others.

He got a good dose of being condemned while being shitheel as an addict. Who he really hurt other than himself I can’t say. But he was problematic says many inches of gossip writing and critical reviews. Wrong speak and shame and condemnation is so interesting as a social engagement issue for culture. It’s never really about them. We can all be assholes and unlikable in the process of being hurt and healing our hurts.

I suppose this is why I believe it’s better to never take anything personally and be sure you take care of yourself if you find yourself reacting strongly to a person’s frailty. The ones who love you will forgive you if you need to reorient yourself into doing what’s right for you so long as you don’t hurt anyone in the process. And oftentimes even if you do.

The follow up movie we watched was also about wrong think. But instead of it being about the addiction and selfishness of a celebrity it was about the selfishness of trying to decide what’s right for an entire nation. We watched the Tetris movie.

Which is quite a dramatization of how totalizing even the most glorious of ambitions can be in the hands of hands of normal frail humans. Yes I think wrong think comedians and communists are related and I swear I still think Bari Weiss is kind of an asshole. Most of the comedians asking for forgiveness for wrong think aren’t actually that funny to begin with. Back to Tetris

I found myself inspired by the frustrations that come from human nature & self dealing while glorifying ambitious end goals for social good. The collective good can often be patently false if someone ambitious enough gets perverted. Maybe I’m just being that asshole capitalist but I think nepotism and corruption come in many forms. And it’s easier to spot it in British billionaires and communists bureaucracies. But we’ve got plenty of right speak and “for your own good” pleas right here in America.

It’s inspired me to look harder into how we are perversely seeking control and benefits for large corporations and political parties in our current race to regulate new technologies like crypto and artificial intelligence. If you want a hint as to where I’m worried look no further than Gary Gensler and reinforcement learning for artificial intelligence alignment. And yes I’m making bets to that effect.