Thank you Amanda. This is so good. I am not an intellectual, I am just a lower class, hourly wage earner who is searching for more answers. Your writing is so good. I literally am "touching the grass" more often to escape the chaos in my head :)
A lovely piece. I agree entirely about Dillard--there is something of a shock in her prose, an electric engagement with the world. She offers a helpful corrective to our present inability to apprehend the textured complexity of the real world.
"The more I paid attention to what was tangible, the phonier the narratives began to feel."
Tangible, real, material... stuff you can really touch, see, smell and taste. That is the antidote. I see it as a two-step move through life going forward. Step-1 is the real. Step-2 is the feel. It is all messed up when the walk is backwards.... feeling made into some mythological deity or monster that becomes the narrative.
Ideology is an outcropping of uncontained fear, and consists in projectional delusions which create an ersatz stability and knownness in the world. If you are pushing a world out, then the actual world can never actual punch its way back in. You are protected, and your psyche, if not your body, safe from unwanted change.
What you are describing is an open psyche, which a whole lot of people cannot manage in a world where anxiety is planted continually in every direction, for a variety of reasons, most of them quite indefensible.
But it's what all of us need to learn to cultivate. At root Liberalism is about emotional openness, and anyone who is not open--who subscribes reflexively to banal and usually abusive stereotypes--is not Liberal. Almost no self described "liberals" are any more. Look at Meathead and Hawkeye. They went off track somewhere. I don't know why.
Ad pitches, branding, influencers, the counterfeit currency of hyperbole, the tired central casting drama of Identity, the tyranny of Status, and the Potemkin villages of Image erected in social media to perpetuate the fictional appeal of those bogus values- it's all trite and formulaic. Even if you're winning the rat race, you're still a rat, as Lily Tomlin once observed.
A butterfly landing on your finger at the exactly perfect moment, there's nothing contrived about that.
Living in the suburbs, I've been noticing the wildlife and the birds seem to be making much more of a show of themselves in recent years. They get closer, sing louder, and stay around longer. It's like they're saying to humans "Notice us! Do not ignore us. We're important. We're people like you. The bird people. the fox people, the frog people, the mouse people...we're like you."
~There are other worlds they have not told you of. They wish to speak to you.~ Sun Ra
Amazingly good. Thank you. The powers that be ignore nuance. It's all good and bad, black and white, left and right. In reality, it's never so easy. Sharing with people of all stripes.
Enjoyed the article. It seems we’re still figuring out how to positively integrate technology into our lives. We lose our humanity when defaulting to tribalism and the nuance and complexity of interactions are lacking when we’re only left with the black & white letters of a message board. There’s a better way but we haven’t found it yet.
There is an intense cognitive dissonance among the moral absolutist crowd.
They "hate all Republicans" until their friend's conservative parents invite them on a ski vacation. They "do not tolerate misogyny" until they start dating that frat bro. They "stand against [corporation x]" until they run out of deodorant.
Their inability to see the contradictions in their own life is shocking. I am not calling out the hypocrisy because I believe they should "stand by their word" -- I believe, like the author points out, that we need to understand that human life is full of these ugly, messy paradoxes. It's GOOD that things don't line up perfectly along the ways we think (or ways we think we think). We destroy our hypocrisy not by holding firmer to our siloed views, but by zooming out, and continuing to do so until all of this messiness is in frame. Only THEN we can decide what something means.
Your story brought me some of the peace you found in Montana. It too, of course, is a narrative, designed to manipulate the reader into a path to freedom from the more sinister manipulation common to the others. Thanks for the nudge!
“I sat on the deck and did little but watch animals.”
Venture into the woods. Be still and quiet. Within an hour it’ll be like a busy city street. But in a good way. Best in the fall after the leaves drop. Better view of the trees and the crunchy-crunch of the leaves make the critters easier to spot. Plus, it smells wonderful.
What a beautiful piece of writing.
Wonderful piece 👏
I must check out Dillard. Her focus on the particular of nature and person reminds me of Irish philosopher-mystic John Moriarty.
Thank you Amanda. This is so good. I am not an intellectual, I am just a lower class, hourly wage earner who is searching for more answers. Your writing is so good. I literally am "touching the grass" more often to escape the chaos in my head :)
My thoughts exactly. Thank you so much for this beautiful piece of prose.
Happy Holidays to you and yours, Michelle!
Love this!
A lovely piece. I agree entirely about Dillard--there is something of a shock in her prose, an electric engagement with the world. She offers a helpful corrective to our present inability to apprehend the textured complexity of the real world.
"The more I paid attention to what was tangible, the phonier the narratives began to feel."
Tangible, real, material... stuff you can really touch, see, smell and taste. That is the antidote. I see it as a two-step move through life going forward. Step-1 is the real. Step-2 is the feel. It is all messed up when the walk is backwards.... feeling made into some mythological deity or monster that becomes the narrative.
Ideology is an outcropping of uncontained fear, and consists in projectional delusions which create an ersatz stability and knownness in the world. If you are pushing a world out, then the actual world can never actual punch its way back in. You are protected, and your psyche, if not your body, safe from unwanted change.
What you are describing is an open psyche, which a whole lot of people cannot manage in a world where anxiety is planted continually in every direction, for a variety of reasons, most of them quite indefensible.
But it's what all of us need to learn to cultivate. At root Liberalism is about emotional openness, and anyone who is not open--who subscribes reflexively to banal and usually abusive stereotypes--is not Liberal. Almost no self described "liberals" are any more. Look at Meathead and Hawkeye. They went off track somewhere. I don't know why.
Ad pitches, branding, influencers, the counterfeit currency of hyperbole, the tired central casting drama of Identity, the tyranny of Status, and the Potemkin villages of Image erected in social media to perpetuate the fictional appeal of those bogus values- it's all trite and formulaic. Even if you're winning the rat race, you're still a rat, as Lily Tomlin once observed.
A butterfly landing on your finger at the exactly perfect moment, there's nothing contrived about that.
Living in the suburbs, I've been noticing the wildlife and the birds seem to be making much more of a show of themselves in recent years. They get closer, sing louder, and stay around longer. It's like they're saying to humans "Notice us! Do not ignore us. We're important. We're people like you. The bird people. the fox people, the frog people, the mouse people...we're like you."
~There are other worlds they have not told you of. They wish to speak to you.~ Sun Ra
Excellent. Enlighning and inspiring. Many thanks.
Amazingly good. Thank you. The powers that be ignore nuance. It's all good and bad, black and white, left and right. In reality, it's never so easy. Sharing with people of all stripes.
Beautifully written.
Enjoyed the article. It seems we’re still figuring out how to positively integrate technology into our lives. We lose our humanity when defaulting to tribalism and the nuance and complexity of interactions are lacking when we’re only left with the black & white letters of a message board. There’s a better way but we haven’t found it yet.
There is an intense cognitive dissonance among the moral absolutist crowd.
They "hate all Republicans" until their friend's conservative parents invite them on a ski vacation. They "do not tolerate misogyny" until they start dating that frat bro. They "stand against [corporation x]" until they run out of deodorant.
Their inability to see the contradictions in their own life is shocking. I am not calling out the hypocrisy because I believe they should "stand by their word" -- I believe, like the author points out, that we need to understand that human life is full of these ugly, messy paradoxes. It's GOOD that things don't line up perfectly along the ways we think (or ways we think we think). We destroy our hypocrisy not by holding firmer to our siloed views, but by zooming out, and continuing to do so until all of this messiness is in frame. Only THEN we can decide what something means.
Your story brought me some of the peace you found in Montana. It too, of course, is a narrative, designed to manipulate the reader into a path to freedom from the more sinister manipulation common to the others. Thanks for the nudge!
“I sat on the deck and did little but watch animals.”
Venture into the woods. Be still and quiet. Within an hour it’ll be like a busy city street. But in a good way. Best in the fall after the leaves drop. Better view of the trees and the crunchy-crunch of the leaves make the critters easier to spot. Plus, it smells wonderful.