Shouldn’t that be a good thing? Isn’t this “voters holding leaders accountable”? This is the whole point of a democracy, right?
While not perfectly aligned, what best helps his re-election, should best help the country. Or, politics have become so divorced from reality that we need to reconsider the entire governmental system.
Like a drowning man clutching a straw, my inborn optimism clung to this thought: These prisoners look quite well, they seem to be in good spirits and even laugh. Who knows? I might manage to share their favorable position.
I think it was Lessing who once said, “There are things which must cause you to lose your reason or you have none to lose.” An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.
I shall never forget how I was roused one night by the groans of a fellow prisoner, who threw himself about in his sleep, obviously having a horrible nightmare. Since I had always been especially sorry for people who suffered from fearful dream or deliria, I wanted to wake the poor man. Suddenly I drew back the hand which was ready to shake him, frightened at the thing I was about to do. At that moment I became intensely conscious of the fact that no dream, no matter how horrible, could be as bad as the reality of the camp which surrounds us, and which I was about to recall him.
For the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth – that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way – an honorable way – in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, “The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory.”
Life must fail, love doesn’t.
If proper effort is committed, much of what we “want” will be achieved. Now, energy expenditure of course varies quite a bit based on both the want and the abilities of the wanter, but an input = output sense of order, of fairness exists regardless of want difficultly. And even if the want is never fully satisfied, one necessarily grows closer to the coveted outcome through proper inputs; you may not lose 100lbs, but if you cook every meal, you will lose something.
There exists, however, another category of wants (titled Courageous Wants) where the input = output formula cracks. The #1 CW is love. Almost everyone contests this judgement, because by placing love in CW, one’s agency is apparently swindled, because there are no “right things,” no “proper inputs,” no “blueprints” for CW, because more effort (however defined) does not necessarily get one any closer to the want. Sure, one can seemingly tilt probabilities – going on 100 dates instead of zero – but this is mostly an illusion. In non-CW, nobody “accidentally” loses 100lbs; in CW, people routinely “accidentally” fall in love. Hence the courageousness of wanting love: you are throwing your well-being into a grinder of luck that can’t be conquered by self-will.
Here we are again getting fired up by the news of the day just itching to talk with someone about it. I gotta vent. And so it is that now all conversations trend toward politics.
But what if what we fully controlled (i.e., our actual lives when not reading the news) was deeply interesting? What if the incredible thing you just did, saw, pondered, earned is what you couldn’t wait to talk about? Suddenly, politics would no longer be so interesting, triggering, or consuming and our conversations would be better, would be more meaningful. When, however, our actual lives are boring…
There must be an official name for the propensity to remain disciplined until you aren’t, and then upon that slight discipline slip throw away ALL discipline, as if degrees don’t matter.
Well, now that I’ve had one doughnut, I might as well eat all 12.
But I gain so much pleasure from [x].
So?
So, are you saying I don’t get to do [x] anymore?
Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.
—
If things are radically wrong, radical changes are required. Stop expecting this to be pleasant.
Yet, most are still left wanting – a state of being endemic to humanity. Two explanations are generally proffered. First: people pick wants that are far too ambitious. Think of the obese person aiming for 100lbs of shedding or the unpaid intern expecting to be salaried at $200k/yr in 16 months. Incredible turns are indeed possible, but compelling them into existence almost always requires tremendous work. This degree of difficulty is too easily underestimated basking in the glow of outcome dreams, and so when the grind really sets in, few have the willingness to persist. They’ll make excuses or claim they didn’t really want what they thought they did or employ any number of defense mechanisms aimed at preserving a confident self-identity. None of this erases the fact that most wants are achievable if one can avoid tapping out.
Second: whenever a want is met, a new one emerges. It happens with little things: I’ll feel good today as soon as I eat lunch – [Eat lunch] – If only I had a coffee, then I’d be content … It happens with big things: I’ll be happy once I become VP – [Become VP] – If only I was CEO, then I’d really feel great … These cycles are infinite, and only by seeing them as such does one have any chance of defeating them. Good luck with that, though. This challenge is so oppressive it takes a certain type of credulousness to think it can be resolved with a few minutes of observation and meditation. Still, this challenge remains fundamentally in the realm where input necessarily yields output.
In the midst of a terrible moment, “better” seems a hopeless, foolish wish; the temperature will rise forever and always. Of course, that’s not how anything works. Ebbs do follow flows, even if the change arrives not nearly soon enough.
The end of Trump, whenever it comes, will not magically wash away all tensions. I do think, though, it will subdue one terrifically corrosive element of the culture whereby you see someone with a MAGA sign or hat and conclude the is awful. Accurate or not, this clearly is not an ideal reaction if one cares about both community and individual well-being. To be sure, going forward there will be other markers that trigger negative responses, but I struggle to see any of them surpassing Trump. I have this faith because it’s tough to imagine a more divisive figure than Trump. If that prediction is true, whenever future triggers begin, one can partially comfort himself by recalling that this current thing can’t possibly be more incendiary than Trump. I may not like this thing you support, but at least it’s not Trump.
Any discussion about our current polarization is guaranteed to include some commentary about how our “echo chambers” are part of the problem. Which totally makes sense. If you only listen to one set of ideas, you are much more likely to believe those ideas are correct. But, actually, I think what we have is indeed worse than pure “echo chambers.”
Listen to any partisan media – from The Daily Show to Rush Limbaugh – for a mere 10 minutes and you’ll quickly notice that opposing voices are not only not absent, but featured prominently. Hell, the entire programming model is play clip of political rival, make fun of clip, and repeat. Some of this is particularly egregious when the rival’s point is intentionally misinterpreted or when a particularly fringe rival is cast as representative of the other side. Though even when that perniciousness is absent the point is the same: the other side is so stupid so as to not even be worth trying to interpret charitably. This amounts to something far worse than an echo chamber because a consumer does rightfully1 believe he is indeed hearing from the other side. Echo chamber? I’ve heard all those lib senators and they are idiots. This belief is surely possible because the host will always direct you to that conclusion, because the host is telling you what you want to hear.2 Which is all to say that the consumer is far more sure of his rightness than he would be if he only ever heard his own side speak.
The not-actually-echo-chamber phenomenon is also weirdly true with Twitter, the place everyone is so sure is an echo chamber. The disconnect is apparent as soon as someone, inevitably, talks about how Twitter is such a “wasteland filled with hate.” This sounds fine, but it doesn’t compute. If everyone only listened to their own side, who is doing this hating? Some can be explained away as the fun of “scoring points” on the enemy. Some can also be explained by the general attraction of celebrity and the desire to stand out. But there remains the non-prominent journalists getting vicious responses to innocuous tweets like, “I’m not going to be writing an article this week.” How does a hater even find this non-trending person? They would have to, like, being following them, right? Even if you want to dismiss this all as bored people having fun by trolling, these people are necessarily being continually exposed to ideas they do not support. And unlike in the case of Rush Limbaugh, there is no host telling them why the idea is awful.
Hence my skepticism that “listening to the other side” will get us out of the current mess.