Introduction
There were roughly two months of 2023 left to pass as I sat to begin work upon this inaugural entry of what I am planning to be an annually recurring project into the foreseeable future: a year-end retrospective on my life and times, documenting the state of both in the context of the preceding twelve months and their relationship to each other. Though this sounds on paper at least half something that would be only of interest to myself, the objective is to write with intention of this being useful and relatable in distant, retrospective reading by others. That said, it will also be filled with many contentious statements presented matter-of-fact that will not be elaborated on in proof, else this would very quickly become a book or three.
Two months was plenty of time for occurrence of major change and/or socially notable events in my personal timeline; at time of project commencement, these things were likely and expected. In some major underlying ways, things happened. But in externally-observant results, they regretfully have yet not. Recognizing and breaking some of these patterns that hold me back is a key point of this process. My life on the whole is in a state of transition, not unlike greater humanity, only on a significantly more condensed timescale measured in months rather than centuries.
It is precisely the unfortunate effect of this very difference in frames of reference between the personal and bigger picture, and how poorly the human mind balances perspective between, that drives me to commence this project. From birth, we naturally and desperately seek emotional reward from experience in the here and now, so both our natural tendencies and conscious decisions of what to focus our thoughts upon are most commonly heavily weighted toward that which is nearest to us in the here and now.
As we grow older, this most commonly results in an unsurprising congruence with the preexisting social systems and customs we have been perpetually surrounded and immersed in designed to provide such output. Of course, the reasons for those systems’ provision are as varied as the inputs required for output. But the beneficiaries of that systemic emotional reward inevitably bolster those systems’ endurance and ensure propagation into the future.
Like ourselves in isolation, these systems operate on an interconnected mix of routine and habit that creates cycles. And like ourselves, the cyclically-operating institutions of these systems care little for matters of the past that do not impact the most obviously self-serving parts of their current situation. Nor for any deeper understanding of our universe irrelevant to that current situation in oblivious, single-minded focus. And nor for any “bigger pictures,” which acknowledgement of could undermine gain from the current situation. Such extraneous things are deemed either irrelevant or dangerous.
In a world that, at its core, is a struggle for survival, personal safety and security are foremost desires. Anything or anyone that provides this establishes a strong psychological bond with the beneficiary that strengthens with the assurance of stability over time. Further biological needs provided for, such as the desire to establish a family or be socially validated (in any number of ways good, bad, and ugly), further strengthen this symbiotic relationship, as does supporting satisfaction of our myriad non-essential wants and urges.
Loyalty of the indoctrinated is the primary mechanism by which the systems of the past maintain their grip on the status quo. While providing a stable state of safety, security, and comfort that satisfies its peoples’ needs and desires should likely be the aim of any society, it’s important to recognize that doing so unavoidably becomes a means of psychological control over a population, whether intentional or not.
(Bit of an aside, but we operate internally like this as well, often choosing what feels safe out of familiarity over better options, even if our choice is something horrible and inconceivable to others, like staying in a downward-spiraling, abusive relationship.)
Whether from the system’s foundation or finding a way to emerge later in its cycles, elements detrimental to humanity, corrupted, and outright broken can easily, and very often do, become intertwined and interlocked with good elements, becoming indistinguishable to them, even desirable, even required for continued existence of the good elements, down to the very core of the system.
A good example of this is the current state of American police. The very foundation of what police in general is is already a mixed bag of necessity and assured corruption. For society, like any human or animal family alone, there is certainly a need for guardians, someones looking out for threats, protecting the weaker members of the group, and allowing the rest of society operate unburdened by the unfortunately perilous nature of this world. This is where the concept of police being required has legitimacy. But ultimately, any straightforward, unregulated policing force will never end up serving the people or ensuring the best for society, but rather become crony to whoever is in power and the origin of “order and stability” in their particular society’s conservative mind, which under capitalism are the sources of capital.
So, there is already a moral complexity to the very concept of police unless ideologically neutral, future-proofing discussions that address the fundamental nature and potential issues of the thing are had. But among human groups of all sizes, it is exceedingly rare to undertake exploratory, critical, fundamental reassessment of any subject, as we’re each and all born into long-standing systems that ingrain, from an early age, a multitude of often unchallengeable assumptions, and establish in us, by our relationship to those systems, the previously discussed psychological loyalties which serve as the base from which we live and majorly make our decisions.
In the current order of the United States, add into the moral complexity of that equation measuring police validity a force originating in (see: slave patrols) and culturally persisting in (see: the weekly news) the US’s particular brand of conservatism, that once championed slavery and later systematized racism once no longer allowed to, and it’s no surprise opinion on US police forces are especially divisive, before even taking into account those forces’ aggressive, cavalier culture comparable to state-sanctioned gangs.
But despite all these contentious parts, we need some form of the whole concept, right? Some type of assertive protection? See: Bad becomes wrapped up with the good and/or necessary at a number of levels, creating a complexity one’s loyalty to the system has no incentive to address and much peer-pressure to not. This difficult-to-unravel complexity is regularly taken advantage of in discourse and debate by all ideologies and political affiliations. often to pressure in bad faith. Political affiliations arise from taking pieces of life’s complexity to ideological extremes, which is why you see very few nuanced discussions across party lines.
When we see unapologetic, deplorable, monstrously inconceivable behaviors at behest of or that support an organization or state, it is through the power of this selfish attachment by our emotional needs to what has been gained from that thing. Everything the perpetrator considers themself and depends upon is tied to existence and social legitimacy of that organization or state. The spirit of conformity always spreads like a virus among any materially-established group. The spirit is known as patriotism on the level of nations. This steadfast allegiance to the social arrangement that has provided, regardless of the presence of or lack of benevolence, justice, or fairness is the essence of conservatism.
In all the places I have lived, every institution, system, and custom is ultimately beholden to generation and exchange of capital, and the people under influence of those institutions, systems, and customs predominantly to the emotional reward capital works particularly well to grant. Especially in a world where, through routine, habit and the passage of time, we’ve been thoroughly convinced of capital’s critical importance to a degree that it is ingrained in the discussion, planning, and execution of everything we do both on an individual level and as a species. We’ve been locked in these patterns of thinking for several thousand years at this point; thoroughly habituated. The only changes to these systems we see is so they can keep surviving without fundamentally changing.
Here in my systemically diminutized place under rule of these society-defining systems, I like everyone else, move through existence by needs and instinctual urges, one of which is an ever-pressing preference for the comfort and safety in familiar regularity. Here in America, systems offering such provision surround me at all times. I often find myself pulled along within the social machinery of those systems by either seeking that regularity, which is often built around the aforementioned, ingrained desire for emotional reward. If I am recognized to be too far outside the confines of that social machinery, I am pushed back into capitulation by overwhelming social expectation to, and ultimately stern requirement to, seek those provisioning systems’ rewards as the only valid end goals. Alternatives are permitted as far as they deliver to the systems what the systems would have received from full conformity and do not significantly interfere with the systems’ dominance. A marriage of passive and active control perpetually reigns.
But, since my developing childhood brain’s happenstance reconfiguration largely through influence of counter-cultural art and society-critical figures (as many philosophers and scientists through time have been), accelerated later on by access to the burgeoning Internet and the endless sea of varied perspectives it provided, my higher mind has operated with a conscious independence exacerbated by decades of recognition of failure, fraud, and corruption in those aforementioned systems and most other things I was (and still largely am wherever I interact with others) expected to wholeheartedly believe in and devote myself to: other monolithic but broken social systems, the unquestionable decisions of selfish and ignorant superiors up a seemingly unscalable pyramidal hierarchy, nonsensical and harmful religious dogma, and a social environment of dysfunctional interpersonal relationships in which all communication is purposed solely to feed the desperate seeking of validation and that ripples through every aspect of every life, even in solitude.
I will stop here and move on, as this would only be the beginning of a very long list of woes. On through teenhood and young adulthood, the regularity of these watershed moments of painful revelation instilled a deep-seated, eventually habitual, doubt within myself around most things, that has evolved to near-contrarianism at this later point in my life. The majority of those ills of yesteryear are still depressingly relevant, and have compelled me ever since to seek truth beyond the pale and desire a world very different to that which prevails. But the world of man as it has been built is resistant to change, even reassessment, and has injected a societal repulsion to both change and precursory reassessment that works quite efficiently to cast potential or successful cycle breakers as pariahs, does all it can to break any rebellious spirit, and turns even to physical violence when all else fails to corral a deviant.
So, between the pull of all these opposing forces, there has been a danger, and unfortunate personal history of despite much action of will, getting ultimately nowhere. And worse yet, there is danger of our innately necessary need for regular psychological relaxation becoming twisted into a submission that this state of limbo is satisfactory, resulting in letting time tick away however it will, in waves of apathy until death, and in worse case until then, comfortably numb. From this, an undercurrent of apathy builds beneath all things, and excessive immersion into the many diversionary comforts (simple and direct to appeal to the most simple and direct parts of our brain) available in nearly all societies becomes increasingly attractive. Many counter-cultural rebels have fallen prey to these opiates of the masses, at dead-ends taking up the bottle, the pill, the dice, and all other manner of self-destructive deviancy and distraction.
By necessity of personal change to continue existing in a place that could not instead be changed to fit myself, a duality of two simultaneously existing yet contrasting personalities came to be within my person, along with a peculiar mechanism of moment-to-moment personality switch to fit the constantly changing circumstances that is life. One self in public (or more likely multiple depending on what I’ve desired out of a situation) and another in private. I think nearly all people come with this feature to a degree of a public-facing self disconnected by personal fears, anxieties, and social pressures from their real self which exists only in total privacy.
But this is rather especially extreme in my case, because otherwise I could not function in a society so completely incompatible with my true self, and would probably end up viewed by its common constituents as some kind of detestable weirdo, which is generally not the case my ego and the socially-conforming half of my aforementioned duality likes to think, and ostracized. For decades, I have likened myself to a social chameleon, half out of the needs of social function and half out of psychological necessity.
Being an unsteady platform, this is an unsustainably stressful spot to stay for long, which has likely been a key factor in my preference to anti-social behavior, despite the fact I feed off others’ energy and have an ego socially-fueled, properties of an extrovert. It is important to understand this state of unsteadiness within those not wholeheartedly subservient to the systems of provision is by design of those domineering systems. “It doesn’t have to be so hard,” whispers the machine. “The comforts we provide are right here for your indulgence. Eat, drink, and be merry.”
Throw untreated health complications into the mix that have, until their seemingly life-changing mitigation in very recent times by various factors (principally of lifestyle), recurringly did much to hamstring any momentum and contribute to a personal history composed of incredible spurts of activity and a subsequent vast graveyard of unfinished projects, and consistent progress in any direction has been quite literally impossible. It is hard for me to say what ratio of responsibility for my failure of noteworthy accomplishment (as far as anyone else is concerned) is attributable to the psychological and what has been health complication, but as long as as I am driven in the way I have been as of recent that leads me to do things like commence this very project, I see little reason to make such a determination.
Wherever there is a better future in moving forward and little chance of that which had previously hampered progress recurring, fault is irrelevant and apportioning it does more harm than good. This is true not only internally as in this context, but also when dealing with others. In fact, attribution of fault usually doesn’t come from a place that has anything to do with betterment or justice, regardless of context.
But there is much reason to look back than looking for blame. There is much worth in perspective gained from being retroactively mindful of what has happened when our perspective in the moving moment itself is so incomplete and small by nature of our brain’s limitations. We cannot truly know our present unless we know our past, and cannot make our future very well at all unless we truly know our present as best as we can. We must recognize, admit, and accept our mistakes. We must recognize, embrace, and build upon our successes, which are often left in the wake of other matters erroneously deemed more pressing and that even steal, like charlatans, the spotlight as successes we and others embrace. We must recognize the repeating patterns of our lives, good, bad, and ugly in the greatest context available, for we, one and all, are, more than most anything else, creatures of habit, and ensure the loops we see ourselves in are worthwhile contributions to the truest and best lives we can live.
Of course, what is a “best” life will inevitably be a subjective assessment, but as long as we are working upon deeper and broader introspection to the best of our abilities and knowledge base (which we should always be seeking to expand) and not avoiding the difficult questions, revelations, and necessary actions that may come from that, regardless of our particular personal outcome, we should feel accomplished and content in this work. Nothing in life will ever be perfect. It is just important that momentum be moving the right way. When the loops we find are not worthwhile contributions to that truest and best life we can live, we must begin the process of changing those patterns out for better options, by establishing new routines until they become ingrained as habits. This is how one breaks cycles, but first one must recognize the cycles to be broken.
Purpose
It is difficult for me to proceed in this task without clearly defining what is my truest and best life, for ideally but certainly not realistically for the aforementioned reasons and others, everything of significant time investment I have done this previous year and want to do in the next is in service to that. Given all I have written herein thus far, the core of that vision is obvious: to be a cycle breaker. And in the grandest stage I can manage, for there are few niches of satisfactory contentment and completing fulfillment otherwise in this world as it is for me, insofar as I’ve been able to see from any place I’ve been.
I have written upon social resistance to change and to even the exploratory, challenging thinking from which it emerges. But, societal change does happen. Though many elements persist across even centuries (often unfortunately so as I’ve already lamented herein), most societies are fundamentally different in a multitude of fundamental ways than they were even one-hundred years ago. One-hundred years, though a wholly consequential time-frame to the individual life, is mostly minuscule to degree of irrelevance relative to eternity apart from the potential knock-on effects of change within that time.
How do these social changes occur? Like evolution, gradual deviations, regardless of resistance to them, inevitably occur over time, slowly transforming the social landscape until thresholds to social upheaval are reached and breached, sometimes only noticed by those paying close attention and sometimes manifesting in dramatic turning-point events or periods only the most isolated can miss. These finally visible expressions of changes that had been occurring for some time prior–and it is important to clarify them as such so they are not mistaken for sudden revelations or switch-ups–can flow with ease, but more often result in times of contention and even violence.
And, like myself as I recounted earlier being perpetually wrangled back into line with the status quo, change doesn’t always win out, for throughout human history and persisting to today there have been constant battles for power in and around all human matters, and the victors of those struggles win the opportunity to exercise some degree of control within the realm of their particular supremacy. So, sometimes change is snuffed out completely when it is not adequately strong or supported enough to overcome the Powers-That-Be. More often, it is merely delayed, as the unrelenting force of existential chaos over time tends to eventually overwhelm any human capacity to maintain control.
I think it is an edge case, but there is a danger in the possibility of designing systems of control too perfectly counter to diversity as to result in a complete lockdown of idea mobility. This hasn’t happened yet on the greatest stages, only in temporary, isolated pockets of iron-fisted despotism and mass delusion, but I believe it does remain a pertinent serious danger to humanity’s march of progress.
Once the essential freedom and cultural flexibility for social change to even occur is ensured, the question arises of: Is all social change good? One would like to think that over time, by learning from our mistakes and achieving better understanding of our universe, genuine improvement in the well-being of all living beings and the world they inhabit would be the trending outcome. If one takes into account the whole of human history, such a positive assessment of our collective path thus far could realistically be made. There is certainly a higher degree of freedom for the common person in thought, communication, and action in most of the “First World” today compared to centuries ago, as well as a broader base of concern with compassionate topics, such as human rights and opposing injustice, and a greater allowance to work more freely outside our beholden-to systems and societal bubbles.
At the end of it all, regardless of whether my work is effectual or not, the overall optimistic outlook I have for humanity’s future (if we can survive the worst parts of ourselves) keeps my spirits in much more hopeful esteem than they otherwise would be. If “it” (the zeitgeist of humanity) is slowly but surely getting better (and this has seemed to be the case thus far) outside of whatever I may or may not do in my lifetime, then at the bare minimum I wish my existence to act as accelerant to alleviate suffering and ignorance sooner rather than later.
But, a good outcome to a time of great transition, such as the world finds itself in now, is by no means guaranteed. Even where power is not limiting positive change, intellectual regression can take root. Circumstances both orchestrated and truly random, especially in chaotic times of unrest, can plant all manner of aggressively-invasive species of weedy seeds into the garden of collective thought. New ignorance can bloom and old ignorance can make a resurgence. Injustice, oppression, and suffering both new and old (some ancient) abound today.
Regardless of what we do or don’t do, we each play some part in tending some piece of that collective thought garden that is culture, typically (though not always) our patch infinitesimal in isolation but world-defining in aggregate. What seeds we choose to share with those our existence touches is everything when it comes to the make-up of that garden’s flora. It becomes a matter of responsibility for any cognizant mind in a capable enough body to seek ways of sowing, nursing, and curating as big a patch of subjective goodness as it can.
So, in such a role have I committed myself. I think what all that means in terms of specific work will be unique to each person. Internally, I have battled between the choice of direct or indirect action, knowing the inevitability of conflict in what I want to do either way, and have come to the conclusion it would be a suicidal fool’s errand to attempt direct interception of and confrontation with the omnipresent structures and machinations built to ensure the status quo’s continued dominance.
I want to be the loudest champion of my values I can be, but I feel that the most effective method of being so in the current environment I face, given thus-far non-existent backing against the seemingly insurmountable might of foes working in long-perfected, militarized conjunction with many nations of aggressively fervent supporters, is to maximize amplitude within those with ears to hear, through a power of messaging more deeply affecting and higher resonating than that of those antagonists. A more subtle, indirect approach to achieve social upheaval indirectly over time.
I suppose laying this all out bluntly in black-and-white erases any subterfugal element to my tactics, but my aims will be clear through critical assessment of my work any way. I wish for there to exist a straightforward repository of knowledge on my opinions, from which to understand my perspectives, lest I not get the chance to present those perspectives otherwise.
The approach of indirect social change through planting seeds in the cultural thought garden that will later bear intellectual fruit for mass consumption has been the go-to strategy for counter-cultural types throughout time, reaped through published works, performances, actions, and events organized and improvised across many disparate and intersecting realms of the liberal arts. As I already explained, it was precisely works of these types, experienced initially through entertainment and academic adjacency (as in, in and around schooling and libraries), and later the Internet, that nudged me early in life up a path of mostly intellectual difference to the social bubble of my birth.
In most non-despotic societies, there is a variable degree of allotted freedom for a certain amount of contentious liberal arts output, but the more potentially disruptive of the flow of status quo, the moreso the output is pushed into niche channels or even outright halted if considered too dangerous to the status quo or those with the power to crush it. Especially prior to the Internet, business dependent upon and therefore beholden to status quo has regulated what’s allowed a chance to gain social traction and what’s not.
Unsurprisingly, these business interests synergize well with that most common cultural mentality found in people all across earth that has little to no place for honesty, doubt, or reassessment. In general, “the people,” as they currently are, want affirmation, not challenge. This has always been a major issue with the cultural makeup of all peoples through humanity’s existence. But those same applications of the liberal arts that are rejected for their non-conformity and discomforts they come with, are simultaneously (by all available evidence) the best means by which to change that very cultural makeup, so the fight to bring truth to the senses of precisely those that shun it is constant.
As this (usually) cold war has raged for as long as civilization has existed, through history recorded, I have a vast library of successful and failed examples of people who’ve done similar work to my vision from which to formulate more effective tactics. What those particular tactics entail may be too specific to get into within this context, but my end-goal is addressing the common man, which means meeting them somewhere between my idealism and their world incompatible with that idealism.
As far as I have been able to ascertain, the application of the humanities within entertainment offers the best ratio of effectiveness-to-compromise and is able to gain the maximum amount of headway possible outside of the niche my challenging idealism would be otherwise relegated to. The nature of what entertainment is changes quickly with the times, and similarly, the humanities employed in developing that entertainment. To break down in more minute detail would go beyond explanation of my overall purpose, so I leave it at this.
Break
The inaugural entry of this project has addressed the grand stage of who I am in regards to my closest motivations and a multitude of the most important aspects orbiting them. I feel this general overview of principal concepts that have dominated previous decades of my life, and likely will dominate future unless some great, unexpected internal change occurs, was essential to understanding who I am and where I come from throughout what’s to come of this project, but the writing of this overview has taken longer than expected despite avoiding most intimate details of my history. Future entries will be more personal, including more anecdotes, reference to specific events, and names, and not so singularly focused upon my relation to broader sociological concepts.
The first actual year’s review will come with the conclusion of 2024. I will be taking notes throughout the year to facilitate the task. To commence a deep-dive into specifically 2023 now would be helpful, but would also be blocking progress on other projects I am eager to work on, precisely so I won’t have to feel regret when I look back twelve months from now upon the status of those projects and what I’ve planned to come after. I can’t say for certain whether or not I have, through what I’ve done so far in this project, recognized, and by doing so done enough to break, the particular cycles that have repeatedly thwarted success in my purpose. I can only hope, move forward with the knowledge I have, and see in twelve months if anything has changed.
