Julie Sedivy, writing in continuance of Nautilus’ severe downward trajectory, has composed a verbose thing (that kettle is black, black I say!) essentially arguing on behalf of ignorance being bliss. And that truly woke persons today should bury their heads in the non-proverbial, time-stealing sands of pop cultural fictions, presumably so that they will then be just incapacitated enough to be always caught unawares whenever the societal anal-rape commences. She is of the mindset that emotions are all that matters, and that they were invented relatively recently over the long course of mankind’s evolution. All extremely subjective arguments, when in truth, I do believe, feelings were only afforded weight recently, hand in hand with the feigned comfort proffered by pop cultural fictions, all to distract from the modern definitions of open enslavement.
Entertainment no longer can hide under the guise of education or anything comparably respectable, but rather now serves no other purpose than to cater. The pro-tip that the customer is always right. When, if they were complete then they would have no needs for filling voids or killing time. Masquerading identity for personality or personality for identity is bluntly duplicitous, no matter how uncomfortable such a statement might make virtually everyone feel.
Don’t get me wrong, I was as dumbfounded as the immodest handful of other awoke persons in Western Civilization to learn that “social justice” is no longer a good or welcomed thing, on par with the denigration of “truthers” which represents the non-figurative reply to liars. People need to believe that whichever subset of culture they most identify with is the more demonized and belittled, literally allowing their emotions and feelings to cloud any and all objective considerations. In pop cultural terms, Rick Grimes is blind to the obvious this season, in that no utopia shall ever come to be because the majority of peoples do not want equality. It angers them, to have those outside of their preferred, identifiable subset to be permitted the same rights and opportunities. What’s more, most people would not work unless obliged to, and I think that in saying *most* right there that I am being uncharacteristically generous. In real life, most Americans right now would gladly show just how textbook Christian they can be at the prospects of a Muslim of Russian lineage or whatever getting the same tax incentives. It’s the one and only reason why such things as gerrymandering are legal, to guarantee a lack of equal rights, and everyone is visually fine with that.
When it’s never actually a matter of competing subsets stealing rights from others, but that rights are disproportionately delegated from those who sit above one and all, explicitly to perpetuate divides among equals. And rather than abolish whips, everyone would rather fetish the whip-wielders, dreaming of the day when they can manifest that authority over others themselves. The zeal to control makes them controllable, because feelings and emotions build nothing visceral, certainly not bridges or roads or hand-holds in quicksand. Your inner voice and its yearnings give you the most priceless and irreplaceable perspective, but outside of yourself they are entirely weightless, and genuinely do not matter. I would even argue that, more often than not, they are used as an excuse for neglecting any variety of moral compass altogether.
If that offends you, then you are selfish. It makes for a great purity test in that way. Mistaking fuel for fire.
Elsewhere, Alison George has written a positively glowing observation of the work of one Genevieve von Petzinger, whose name has been popping up for me quite a bit in the noosphere lately. I first caught samples of her research on one of those normally sensationalist archaeological docu-series, streamed illegally away from its cable television origins. Basically, she has painstakingly traveled the globe at personal risk, finding surprisingly clear commonalities among very early lines etched or painted onto assorted cavern walls. I had then found her TEDtalk from soon before, where she elaborated at length on the history and scale of her archaeological expertise and it really was so fascinating. I was blown away. I admittedly avoid most TED crap, because as with therapy they are merely one-sided conversations, which can be quite dangerous insofar as catering to egos. But I really have a love/hate thing for modern archaeology, drawn to it in hopes of finding exceptions like von Petzinger, as all too often whenever archaeologists find something they do not care for or cannot explain, they simply chalk it up to astrology, as though no cultural evolution, whether per tribe or in unison across intercontinental divides, could ever happen short of the white man coming along to pillage and take credit for this and for that and the other thing. So, she is an exception to all of that, as her years of physical exploration and discovery of these lines too simple to have emotive context, is proving that communication prior to written (or possibly even spoken) language did in fact exist among drastically different cultures of eras long buried.
Our earliest ancestors, who we demonize and belittle today for being backwards and not yet woke enough to grant each subset its own national holiday, clothing style and personalized public restroom, were in fact quite rational, thinking creatures capable of expressing ideas without emotions or feelings as their media or medium. With enough joyously sweet irony to trigger erect nipples, the first art. Oh, but these hysterical women!
After all, in today’s modernity, news can be openly, widely and readily branded as fake for no other reason than that it personally offends us. Especially when it’s totally true. What perpetuates such a backdrop? I mean other than your mom.
The secret is to forget your own personal feelings and emotions, and try to find ways to live your life without them, and replaced instead with focusing on making the feelings and emotions of others matter and find weight and achieve meaning. Which is possibly Zen in a cliffs-notes nutshell but I am operating from a high school equivalency and many years of substance abuse here and this continuing, brutally dramatic lack of rest. If I do not give til it hurts then it hurts til I give, because such is the balance of natural equality. The one-sided mobius strip turns to forever.