Welcome to the Land of Disenchantment

Buffalo.

Laguna Springs.

Uvalde, Texas.

Those are just the more heartbreaking, soul crushing events last two weeks, right? The very recent past has a whole slew of others.

The leaked SCROTUS opinion overturning Roe vs. Wade.

LGBTQ+ people and teachers (LGBTQ+ and straight teachers, mind you, basically everyone who isn't homophobic) being blithely referred to as "groomers and pedophiles."

The Southern Baptist Convention sex abuse report. (Wait, who's pushing this "groomers and pedophiles thing" again?)

CRT conspiracy theories.

"Inflation" as either some kind naturally occurring phenomenon like the weather or being treated as simply a matter of people wanting a living wage, while corporations rake in record profits not being treated as possibly, maybe being part of the issue. Oh, and this happening during a period of already historically high income and wealth inequality.

The myriad and sundry ways our institutions did an amazing 21st century rendition of a The Keystone Cops short film where COVID has been concerned.

All this, with the steady, constant growl of climate change continuing to advance and become more severe, as our institutions don't just do nothing, but instead aid and benefit from those who are most significantly contribute to the problem.

If you're not so filled with rage, sadness, heartbreak and confusion that you don't regularly battle feelings of hopelessness you're probably one of those folks who can afford not to pay attention to what's going on in the country and world around you. Good for you, I guess? Is fuck off just as pertinent? I can't tell anymore. I really can't. I don't say this to be curt or provocative either. I honestly don't know which one of these is more appropriate, but I do feel like one of them is. Suffice to say, it you feel like things are just fine and you're happy with how the future looks for you, your loved ones, and the generations rapidly coming behind us, I don't actually want to talk to you. That's not hyperbole. I mean it. I don't have the first clue what we would have to talk about, and I'm not interested in trying to figure it out. I'm sure you were going to have a good day, so go ahead on about it. 

For everyone else, let me welcome you though, formally, to this state of being. For many people (especially if they're white and especially if they've had a relatively comfortable life, free from the looming threat of the constant violence and inhumanity which has been shoved to the margins of American life), this is a relatively new feeling. So, welcome. It's good of you to join the rest of us in partaking of this constant sense of existential dread, wafting through your minds and hearts without invitation. I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm glad we could be here together. Not the best circumstances for us to meet like this, but at least we're here together, right? I hope I might be useful to you, in the few minutes you're here. 

I included the tweet at the top, from Jonathan Barkan, because it was what alerted me to the fact I might be useful right now. The short version of the story is this: I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety very young, probably eleven or twelve. I didn't actually have depression or anxiety. I actually had PTSD, and there's a whole long story about that part, which you can glean if you read my other work, so I'm not going into it fully here. I just want to be clear I've spent 35 of my 45 years on the planet experiencing symptoms of depression and anxiety, with varying levels of intensity. I've gone long periods doing well, and I've gone long periods living with that kind of simmering, constantly nagging depression. I've also dealt with relatively long periods of fighting with suicidal ideology. I have been hospitalized multiple times, because I was losing that fight. Anxiety has been part of my life no matter what is happening with the depression, except that it does tend to get worse as the depression gets worse. I am intimately familiar with hopelessness and nagging, thrumming existential dread. What fun, right? I am, indeed, a lot of fun at parties (certain kinds of parties, at least).  

The last few years have been a process of trying to unpack as much of this as I can, and to also learn what processes of thought and what basic actions I can take to prevent myself from spiraling. I've been drawing on all of the experience I've had in 35 years of living with it. If there's one thing I can speak to, it's the feelings of depression which grow from feeling you're helpless in a world in which you feel like an alien, with no place and no way to make a place for yourself because it all just seems to far from either who you are or who you want to be, it would be impossible to exist. Yes, I am a white guy, and I've also spent 3/4 of my life looking around, feeling like we should probably start addressing the very glaring problems we have, post haste or we were going to end up where we are now. 

Now, I am no way saying I have The Way. I know enough to know The Way doesn't exist. Hopefully, you know that. The complicated interplay of different things in our lives that contribute to these feelings and these thoughts for us individually means there is no silver bullet. Let me say that again... There is no silver bullet. Individually or collectively. Sorry. It just doesn't exist, and chances are anyone who tells you there is a silver bullet is lying in order to scam your or take advantage of you in some way, even if they don't realize that's what they're doing. The wellness industry makes eleven billion dollars a year making claims about what they can convince us is good for our well being that cost them the least, but that we will pay the most for. It's nearly completely unregulated as well, so there's very little in the way of making sure any of them can back up anything they claim. Bullshit is free to manufacture, so it's very profitable. There are also many, many, many people in this world who want you to believe the lies they tell themselves, because it makes them feel more comfortable and less alone. They're in every aspect and area of life. Mental health, depression, anxiety, PTSD, none of these topics are immune to this dynamic either. Through the years, I've listened to some of them longer than I should have. We've all done this, at some point, with some aspect of our lives, if we've been on the planet long enough. I have nothing to sell you. I'm not asking you for anything, except whatever effort it takes to read this. 

I'm going to detail some things which have been helping me significantly in the last few years. If you think they might work for you, great. If not, I very sincerely hope you find what does. I'm not going to say I wouldn't wish these things on my worst enemy, because that's not true, and this is the kind of thing that's too important to lie about. I definitely wish them on my worst enemies. I wish them on my worst enemies because the probability they no longer should be considered my worst enemies would go up if they understood the experience better. I also wish them on my worst enemies because at the very least, a whole fucking lot of them would have less motivation to go out into the world or interact with the it and everyone while being horrible human beings. 

Here's the first big thing: You are not crazy.

We are all looking around at a world where innumerable problems are layering and intertwining, becoming more complex and more severe. We are also looking at political, economic and cultural systems and the institutions they are comprised of failing to make even an attempt to begin solving these problems. At best, they do the absolute least they can possibly do. As these problems continue to compile, they produce more symptoms, in varying degrees of severity. If we're lucky, our institutions do the least they possibly could to address a symptom. It's not even necessarily the most severe symptom. Violence, and particularly gun violence, is a problem of such severity, the United States is utterly unique in experiencing it the way we do, as just one example. We've done absolutely nothing to address it. Well, our leadership, institutions and systems have done nothing to address it, despite it being something a clear majority want. A lot of the other problems, outside of gun violence are not at all unique to us, and right now it seems like even some of the countries which have made some progress toward solving them are trying to undo that progress, as quickly as they can. 

A reality check is in order. 

Yes, we did have what amounts to an attempted insurrection in January 2021. That is true. Very little has been done to address it, other than the least powerful people involved facing criminal charges. It is, literally, the least our institutions can do, you're not wrong. You are not crazy. That did happen and is happening. 

Yes, we have lost a million lives to COVID, in the US alone, and we are still not taking seriously what that means, by itself. No, we are not preparing or attempting to understand how to be prepared for the mass disabling event that will be the number of people who contract long COVID. Nor do we seem to be making much preparation for Monkeypox as it arrives here in the US. You are not crazy. That is happening. 

Yes, we do have a focused, determined, anti-democratic, fundamentalist Christian white supremacist movement which has molded itself into a New American Fascism. It is targeting every variety of minority and/or historically oppressed population, and attempting to undermine and dismantle democracy in order to establish their variety of fascism. No, none of our institutions seem capable of plainly admitting to that fact, much less addressing it. You are not crazy. That is happening. 

It's very easy to look at these (and the many other problems we're facing and that our institutions are proving utterly incapable of making even the most basic attempt at addressing), while we collectively go about our lives as if it's still 1996 and none of this is happening, and none of what we've witnessed in the last two, four, eight or ten years has happened. I know what it's like to look around, see everyone going about their lives as if nothing has changed, very clearly understand there is a tsunami of horror coming over the horizon and wonder if maybe you've gone made, because no one else seems to see it or feel it. It's very easy to look around at the world continuing apace and wonder, "Am I the fucking crazy person here, because I don't understand how the fuck no one else is freaking out?" The longer this goes on, the more urgent and pressing the question feels. The more often it gets asked, the less confident you feel about the answer. 

You are not crazy. A whole lot of us are freaking the fuck out, on the inside. Freaking out on the outside is called "making a scene," and that's in bad taste, because it usually interrupts things. There is no rational, sane, reasonable or logical explanation for the fact that we are experiencing and witnessing what we are experiencing and witnessing, in total. I mean, American history is the reason, and there's some degree of logic to it, but even then... its equivalence to rationality is the same as the equivalent the baby from Eraserhead has to a healthy, newborn infant. It's a twisted, horrifying thing. Probably most forcefully throwing you from your sense of psychological mooring, but not exclusively, is the depth to which our institutions are unwilling and/or incapable of addressing what we are experiencing and witnessing. Following that is how so many are able to go about their business, as if none of this is happening. There are only two explanations for the fact that we're all basically going on as if everything is fine which could be considered sane, rational or logical. One, is that we can't allow ourselves to accept it, because somewhere inside we understand it would mean we would have to do something, and it would probably mean a lot of something or very many different somethings that will drastically alter the current flow of our lives. It would mean our lives would become very different, but we don't really know how they would be different. The second possibility is that we just plainly don't fucking know what else to do. We know, on some level, that whatever needs to happen needs to be on a mass scale, and by design, very few of us have access to anything which would allow us to begin to organize anything of that scope. Those who do have access to this kind of power and/or platform are not likely to attempt to organize anything of the necessary scope, because it undermines the power of their platform or their power itself. You're probably also coming to realize this a feature, not a bug. Even if you haven't necessarily thought it in those terms, I'm betting a whole lot of you feel it. It feels kind of hopeless. You're not crazy. All of that is very real. 

I get it. I really get it. In 2018, I began a downward spiral that lasted about two years. I was hospitalized a few times. I spent much of that time battling suicidal ideation. I came to the conclusions many more people are coming to now, back then. If there's any reason I might point to for coming to this place ahead of so many others, I'd honestly say it was depressive realism. I'm no Albert Einstein or Nostradamus, and I'm not claiming to be. It was just coincidence, circumstance, and experience which caused me to be overwhelmed with a sense of impending doom a little earlier. 

Having lived with depression as a symptom of PTSD for a very long time, I've also learned to counteract or correct for the catastrophic thinking which often comes with depression and certainly comes with the terror filled thoughts PTSD so annoyingly loves to insert into so many of the sets of decisions or assessments of reality I try to make. I honestly think that before 2018, I was overcorrecting on that front. Basically, I interrogate the living shit out anything that seems like catastrophic thinking, and where a whole lot of things in my personal life have been concerned, as long as I'm not already pretty far into the downward spiral of depression, I can see what is catastrophic thinking and what isn't by interrogating it thoroughly. What I don't have, and what many people who have experience with long term depression don't have is optimism bias. The majority of people walking around who are considered "healthy" or "normal" have an optimism bias. I'm pretty sure that for a long time, I was counteracting what I felt had to be catastrophic thinking by trying to get to "normal" without understanding the optimism bias present in all of the "normal" people I was surrounded by. What many of you are feeling now is the unfortunate product of optimism bias being confronted with overwhelming evidence of its own existence. 

It was sometime in 2018, after a number of years of trying to learn as much as I could, do as much as I could and sound the alarm about the likely catastrophic consequences we were headed toward, I went through a process of coming to the realization that nothing I was doing or might be able to do was going to make a difference. I was never going to be able to sound a loud enough alarm. No direct actions I was going to attend or take part in planning were going to make any difference in any of the problems we are facing. It was this overwhelming realization that I had not, in fact, been engaging in catastrophic thinking, but had been assessing reality pretty clearly, and both we (collectively) and I (individually) were well and truly fucked, because we're all just going about business as usual and business as usual is directly benefitted by not addressing these very real problems. 

My personal life was falling apart as this realization was slowly sinking in, because I was consumed with terror about my future and the futures of everyone I love or care about. It was kind of like realizing I'd devoted a significant amount of my life to a scam, and that I'd helped scam myself. As a young person, I'd been pretty fairly sure what we called "life in America" was unsustainable. As I aged, in part because I came to accept mental illness played a significant role in my adolescence and youth, I went along with all of the things and people in my life which suggested my suspicions about the unsustainability of American life were part of those symptoms of mental illness. I wrote that off the idea that "the American way of life is unsustainable" as tinfoil hat stuff or just the kind of edgy thing depressive adolescent males go through as a phase, and the depth to which I felt it had to be due to living with mental illness to some degree. It was time to put on my big boy, adult pants and go do adulting. If you want to be healthy, you have to act like healthy people do, right? 

Well, I was selling myself some snake oil where the "healthy/normal" part was concerned. I helped con myself into believing that as long as I did all the normal things everyone is supposed to do, I'd be fine and everything would be fine. When I came to the realization that was not, in fact, going to be the case, it was soul crushing. I felt like I'd sold myself out, and in doing so, I'd contributed to a whole lot of the problems which are now beginning to crest into the tsunami of horror many of us are realizing is going to come over the horizon sooner rather than later. It was this feeling I'd essentially faked my way into failure, and sold out the values which really meant something to me, compromised what I thought should really be the important things in life. All to get a shot at being "normal," when I could have been devoting that energy and time to doing more socially, morally, and personally constructive, useful things. 

There aren't really words to accurately express what it meant to finally come to the conclusion that even if I may have a mental illness, and it contributes to some negative, destructive things in my life, I'm not crazy. I basically participated in my own gaslighting, because it seemed like life would just be easier. It's a helluva realization. I recommend not doing that to yourself. 

You're not crazy either. There is nothing being done about problems which are genuinely threats to the a few hundred million of us who happen to share a flag. You're not wrong. It's crazy to believe otherwise, given the evidence. Not only am I not crazy, but a huge part of what made me feel I had to be crazy was that I'm existing in a time and place where all of the markers of what is "normal," the social norms, taboos, institutions and structural systems are working in direct opposition to a reasonable, logical actions to address these existential threats. You are not crazy. What's happening around us everyday is absurd, destructive, dehumanizing and directly at odds with human well being. You are watching a much more complicated, absurd, hateful, mean spirited, dehumanizing version of Nero fiddling while Rome falls, bread and circuses, toddlers stomping their feet and going into hysterics because no one can turn them into a hippopotamus, whichever analogy or metaphor you like. It is actually what's happening, while all of our institutions keep acting like we can basically just believe hard enough and make it stop. There's a collective inaction in response to the overwhelming evidence of reality, because it's too overwhelming for the average person, and the current circumstances are still really comfortable and profitable for the people and institutions who have the power to address it. 

This is the second big thing: Give up on being "normal."  

Chances are you've had your life significantly disrupted in the last two years. COVID has rearranged things profoundly, and we're still trying to figure out what that means. Over a million are dead because the people who have real power and the institutions we're told were built to help insure the well being of the nation basically sold us out. That's the optimistic version of the story. The less optimistic version of the story is power and the institutions of the country were only ever really built to insure the well being of the powerful and wealthy in the first place. Whichever of these explanations any of us believes, it still means we watched life get turned upside down, while the very richest of the rich get much, much richer as the rest of us sat locked in our homes, terrified of what the next few weeks or months might be. Those million dead all have people who loved them, now mourning them, holes in their lives where loved ones used to be. 

Along with this, it also meant "normal" was severely interrupted. If you really look at it, the virus was the cause of the deaths, and we did learn we can survive and sustain ourselves amidst a severe interruption of normal. It might not be fun. It might actually suck, but we can survive and sustain ourselves. For a lot of people, it also meant a chance to reexamine their priorities, and what they were going to be willing to do once "normal" was an option again. There's been no shortage of carping, gnashing of teeth and wailing about The Great Resignation, and no small part of that is due to what people learned during quarantine. 

This is important because it highlights the degree to which "going about business as usual" isn't the only way we can survive. The change in the status quo has had some positive outcomes, despite the reason for it. Also, if there's one thing we should all be sure of, it's that continuing to go about business as usual is the best way to insure we don't get any new answers to the myriad problems we face. At what point we, collectively, become willing to start shaking the foundations of power with enough force to terrify them into something other than the least they can do, I have no real idea. There is a possibility the point never comes. 

I've not had a rosy outlook about where we are or where we're going, for a long time. I don't know that I do now. Sorry if that's what you're looking to hear, but again, this is all too important to lie about. The possibility exists there is a point where enough of us collectively become willing to signal our willingness to revoke our cooperation and consent though. Revoking "consent of the governed" doesn't only have to mean it takes the form of outright violence. We're conditioned to associate it specifically with ideas like civil war or violent revolution. That's not all it is. Consent also comes in the form of cooperation and participation. However small it may be, as a possible way to start to pressure our institutions, the possibility exists. The only real hope we have, at this point, is starting to figure out together how we survive and sustain in a way which significantly disrupts "normal" and "business as usual." 

It wouldn't be easy, of course. It would require sacrifice, probably of material comfort from those who can afford it and in labor from those who can give it. It would be hard, extremely hard. These are the kinds of things we think about when suggestions about things like general strikes, work stoppages and the like are suggested. However, we don't consider what we get, and not just in the form of forcing our institutions to take actions that support our well being, but beyond that. 

One thing to keep in mind is that starting to work together in the goal of revoking cooperation and signaling a revocation of the "consent of the governed" is that you wouldn't be alone. We're all still dealing with two years of quarantine, and trying to figure out what we want our lives to be, now that we've had some time to reconsider just whether or not the "normal" before quarantine was really so good for us. One thing which is pretty universally understood is that the loneliness, not just resulting from quarantine, but also from the way we're forced to prioritize the profits of our employers over the prospect of having full, fulfilling lives and relationships is a bad deal. If for no reason other than being now absolutely assured how many of the people we are laboring to produce profit for are absolutely, utterly uninterested in our well being to even the most basic degree. We've lived with the veiled excuses and the vague misdirections about every business having to balance it's ability to profit against it's workers well being, but the pandemic, and the reaction to common sense actions in favor of public health have made it pretty clear there was never a balancing act. There was a cultural and economic campaign to convince us profit outweighed our well being, at every turn. 

There's a different kind of community and society (in the small scale and the large scale) available to us. It's a society where we have actually sacrificed and worked to contribute directly to each others well being, and to resisting the continued adherence and coercion of systems and institutions which are blatantly uninterested in our basic well being. It's being able to understand, in a very direct way, the relationships that grow out of investing in each other, and being invested in, in an effort to alleviate suffering and exploitation. It's about creating common goals and common norms that actually work for the well being of the people involved, instead of being in place to coerce us all to continue being batteries powering the motors of capitalism and the power of institutions, and doing that with people as invested in it working as you are. 

One of the other things this does it to help alleviate those feelings of powerlessness, hopelessness. Even one hundred people, working together, can help to address the issues they're facing more thoroughly and profoundly than one of us can alone, and that's how millions of people feel as they keep watching the present unfold. Maybe they don't feel alone as individuals, but they feel alone and powerless as a family or a close knit group of friends. But with one hundred people, together, they can share their knowledge, experiences and resources in a way which gives them all more power to effect changes in their own lives. Add that together on a mass scale, and it becomes something altogether transformative.

What we have to gain from weathering some period of shared sacrifice and communalized hardship, which we can do, is immense. What we have to lose is something already failing us at an accelerating rate, producing death, widespread suffering and trauma and robbing us of the years of our lives which could be dedicated to empowering our own humanity. 

It's impossible to look at the future, with the evidence we have now, and think, "This is going to be GREAT!," unless of course you're vulgarly wealthy and think you can profit off the chaos. For the rest of us, starting to work together, disrupting the status quo and working together to help insure we go through it together, means we also have some power to effect what happens. We don't have to feel powerless, and the powerlessness we feel now is a product of continuing to try to do "normal." 

Otherwise, we can all just keep doing what we're doing. The lawmakers, other powerbrokers and our institutions will continue doing the absolute least possible to address what we can all see are problems rapidly becoming disastrous, while intertwining in ways that are proving catastrophic.