So What Are We Doing Here?
This week’s podcast episode was supposed to be about Bigfoot Chewies, but I realized early on that there was just way too much backstory required just to understand it.
I’ve written about it in context of Dragged Into the Light, and I’ll share that link below. Instead, I talked about orgone, which is a made-up element that all stripes of spiritual practitioners recognize for its mystical power.
It doesn’t have any mystical power, but that doesn’t bother them, or us really, and I wanted to look at why. I hope you’ll give it a listen, it’s only a few minutes long. It’s about anger and impotence.
Speaking of anger and impotence, I skipped last week’s newsletter because the essay portion was, um, swear-word heavy. It wasn’t the kind of thing anyone wanted to read around the holidays, but it’s probably worth reading now.
People are scared and furious and I don’t know what I can do about it. I think it’s in the air now, too. It feels as if half of us hate the people determined to hold us hostage until every person in the country has been robbed of their right to smell and taste things, and half of us hate the people who would prefer to be able to smell and taste.
I’ll put my cards on the table. I don’t know how I’m going to behave if I can never enjoy the taste of whiskey/whisky again. Poorly, I think.
But I don’t want to be mad. I don’t want to just keep lashing out at people for being shallow and selfish when, in reality, they’re probably just terrified.
I want to pity people whose emotions are too complex for their intellect, who seek out these long, impressive-sounding explanations that make them feel as if they have some control over their lives.
At the bottom, I feel as if access to information is a lot of the difficulty. I don’t have the kinds of skills that are marketable (or really even valued) but the one I’m proudest of is my ability to understand complex things I research.
I’ll be writing more about this in the weeks to come, but research isn’t just finding a source that you trust and repeating what it says. Instead, it is getting a wide enough picture of an issue that you can make sense of it on your own.
It has absolutely nothing to do with a command of the facts.
Committing facts to memory won’t give you insight, but I worry that so often we’re just happy to have something impressive and also accurate to say that we’re not that worried whether we understand it or not. Critical self-assessment is something for the weak, for some reason, and that is depressing as hell.
With any luck, we’ll find a way to come to terms with all this insanity. I don’t for a second believe that there are any facts that will help people be more humane to one another.
I mention in the podcast that I may be suffering from belief indulgence fatigue. After a lifetime of letting people believe whatever they want, no matter how ill-conceived or dangerous, I’ve learned that there’s no margin in placating people, but I also know that making enemies isn’t the best way to affect change.
I am wide open to suggestions. Meanwhile, I’m looking forward to a happy new year. I mean, what else can I do?
Keep the Faith,
Tony
Personal Update
I was on the disembodied podcast this week. I spoke a lot about spiritual-type things that don’t have to be spiritual to count. We had a nice conversation and I think it went well. We spoke for a bit about orgone, I showed her the pendant I bought.
The only downside for me was that I already had recorded my own podcast about how much of a problem orgone is. She opens her show with a brief statement about orgone energy which makes my story feel like a response. It isn’t, but it sounds like one.
I have something of a pigeon obsession. It’s a long story I’ll tell another time, but I wanted to show you one of the presents my wife got me for Xmas.