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How goes the cosmic dance in your corner of the infinitesimal universe?
Life has been a delightful romp through the garden of existence, with just the right amount of sunshine and whimsy. I'm working, happy, and healthy. I've been reading a lot, per usual, perhaps even more these last two years, you can check out my goodreads account [here] if you're so inclined. Right now I'm reading The Idiot by Dostoevsky. I'm still working a steady schedule as a cashier at the local market. I go out everyday to get exercise. I've stopped playing video games as often and instead got more into ai art. I go out to the bar every now and then in an attempt to be more social. I'm a man on a mission, it seems.
Looks like Mother Nature decided to fast-forward to summer mode, giving us a taste of July in April!
I listen to a lot of music still, but become even more specialized, now, I listen to a lot of opera, mostly old ones. My favorite is Mozart's Magic Flute and Cosi Fan Tutti, but lately I've been on a Vivaldi binge, Vivaldi wrote some 50-60 operas, whereas Mozart, genius as he was, only wrote about 22. Frank Zappa: All the good music has been done by the people in wigs. But I also listen to a lot of jazz, I'm particularly fond of Kind of Blue and Out To Lunch mixed in with A Love Supreme, those are die-hard g0-to albums for me daily.
I think a lot like a philosopher. About life in America, at this current time-period or level, about the person I am/was/created/now, and there's a lot there to think about. But just as Voltaire said, "a man can very rarely rise above the ideas of his time." We live in a crossroads of history. They just passed a full-scale abortion ban in Arizona, bringing a state in the United States back to the 1800s. Something similar might happen in Wisconsin soon according to the news.
We find ourselves navigating the curious currents of an eccentric epoch. The cult of personality [Trump] has infected a large portion of Americans. As Huxley said, "The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human." We see this time and time again, from the MAGA crowd. After all, lest we forget, the first thing Trump did when he was in office was to instate a Muslim ban in the United States like a typical fear-monger.
The fear of a Trump ascendency back to the Presidential Office is startlingly scary. Not just for democrats like Biden, or women who want reproductive rights, or the little guy struggling to provide for his family, or single parent moms trying to feed their little ones. It's scary for the entire statehood of our country and/or the world.
The decisions made during these voting processes end up lasting 30 years or more in some cases. Consider the fact that these conservative Supreme Court judges are now more than ever willing to pass abortion bans now all of a sudden, only, that it isn't all of a sudden, but a directed, planned, and successful attack by the Right in an attempt for more control, in this case, literally over women's bodies. The Arizona abortion ban was passed yesterday but it's been in the works forever.
There's this sort of intergenerational politics that we young people don't quite understand because we're distracted by girlfriends, wives, our kids, jobs, and making money to survive to provide for ourselves and loved ones. Behind the scenes, these plans have been made sometimes without our even being involved, because the seeds were planted in the voting processes 30 years ago or more. What does that mean? It is my opinion, that certain political ideas and actions were originally planted decades maybe even a 100 years before we came along and even voted.
The Roman Empire only lasted 1,000 years. The Egyptian Empire lasted 3,000 years. The American Empire is only 247 years old. Do we really think we could be better than the rest of the world forever? There's a certain bit of apathy as regards to this sort of stuff, politics in general, as well as within the people in the society. Nowadays when you try to get advice from the internet or in YouTube videos, people just post things about how negative everything is, and somehow this fine advice is supposed to help you on your way in this topsy-turvy universe. I see that oftentimes bad ideas and bad advice usually come from young people or university people that are marketing their brand to an unsuspecting audience.
Have you noticed how now, more than ever, things have become strictly commercial? It's irritatingly comical in that fact. The invisible hand moves the economy, but in most cases, people are spending much more than they should have to, especially when it comes to rent, gas for their car, food, childcare, and schooling, be it private school, public school, and college.
In a sense, the world changes once you wake up to the actual realisation of a commercial state. Your spending habits sort of define what kind of person you are, what your politics are, your job, your hobbies, your likes, dislikes, what sorts of races of people you hangout with even or talk to, the studies done by companies about what you're buying daily, monthly, yearly, tell them more about you than perhaps even FBI and NSA findings about you.
I believe it's all about pumping more and more money into the economy at all times, even at times when people should be saving more and buying and spending less. But I'm probably more of a classical liberal on this subject than I lead on. I'm no marxist but I do believe that more people take advantage of the system in capitalism, now, more than ever. Technically capitalism is good, right? But you see the ramifications of capitalism going out of control, like today, where a burger and fries at McDonalds is $13 because they're paying the burger flipper $20 even though they pay people less than that at a lot of jobs here.
Oftentimes, just talking about things can straighten things and even people out. Everything that you're going through, somebody else has already gone through it. Someone you know knows what you're going through because they've already done it themselves, or perhaps they're going through it at the same time as you? Likewise, jotting down your ideas and thinking in the form of writing sort of clears out a lot of ideas that you've been thinking about daily and perhaps monthly as well.
It's like philosophy, life. But philosophy is not an idea. Philosophy is action.
Likewise, its not enough to be a smart guy, or a guy with good virtues, who performs good acts throughout the world. A man must also have the right character. Especially in these dark times. If you believe what you hear, the world is a dark place; women/men will cheat on you, fathers will leave their children to single parent moms, Trump might win and smite all his enemies somehow, the economy is doing great and people have jobs but they're all terrible jobs like ubereats, grubhub, lyft, uber, so-called 'gig economy' work, corporate retail has become more machine-like and un-human to a startlingly high degree, Americans keep consuming more and more, they emit the most greenhouse gases into the atmosphere because they all want to drive around everywhere, harming the planet, causing more natural disasters, the propaganda doesn't look good online, so where do you go, what do you do?
The fact that you simply asked says more about you than the question itself. But again, a man hardly ever rises above the ideas of his time. If you predicted that you would be here doing this at this time but 10-15 years ago, you are either a god or a wild beast.
It would be okay to be both.
[ps covid is still lingering, image ai generated]
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