Typed but not read back or edited.

I can see things so clearly, it’s hard to know if others are purposely (purposefully? idk) ignoring things that seem perfectly obvious. Perhaps they do see those things, but they just let those thoughts float by and focus on what’s more important to them. (Or just what’s seemingly important?) I’m probably over-analysing things compared to the most- everyone. 🙃

But then I look at myself and I see the things that should be super obvious to me; the ones that’ve been, looked past (aka ignored and repressed), deprioritized, or simply undiscovered and new. And it’s like… I totally get it. But there’s a continuum of scales to that- phenomenon, I suppose I’ll call it?

Like making yourself blind to something that only affects certain mundane things is bleh, whatever… Like, we really could make ourselves some food, but we let all these things get in our way. Many of them being lies we tell ourselves that are often built on other parts of our lives that have little to do with making food. But somehow, it’s connected. (I’m not writing about this angle right now, but how the view of oneself, the world, our perception of the universe, and our place in all of that and how that relates to others- all of that, and how that can tie in with the main subject, is fascinating to me.)

But sometimes… those built-up defences to protect ourselves or make us see situations and the world in a certain way can be quite destructive to those around us. And with the power and objectivity of written words on a surface being wielded at an ever-increasingly, unfathomable rate, by (not actually) anyone and everyone at will, across the entirety of the Earth, and with emotions simultaneously being dulled and enflamed by screens and hyper-sensationalized (yet overly-simplified [and in some contexts overly-repeated]) stories, when everyone is justly and rightly hurting but playing on an uneven battlefield… when everyone is just looking for some peace and quiet with whomever they care about… how can we let all the other stuff get in the way?

We’ve built up all these systems and facades to reinforce our feelings and desire for comfort. It’s been our goal this whole time; to improve and ease the lives of humans. (Usually a subset of humans… but still.) And now that a large portion of us pretty much have that, we’re using the extra time to get back to what we’re good at; collectively forgetting about just how terrible things have gotten in the past and willingly ignoring signs of similar significant world events happening now (or encouraging those kinds of things to happen- or worse yet, causing them to happen) and we freak out over every. little. stubbed. toe. on. other. people’s. feet! What’s that about? Like, empathize if they’re really hurt, but don’t drive off and start a whole social movement and claim rights violations or whatever without even asking, “yo! Ya’ll right? Good. You friggin’ dufus, flat parking lot all around you, and ya had to walk into the only pothole. C’mon. Watch where you’re walking.” Seriously. Just laugh at them and get it on video for YouTube, yeesh. 😑

(Sidenote: I realize that was a metaphor, so a video wouldn’t always work (like, practically), but metaphors often don’t stretch. So, please… don’t put too much thought into that whole… thing. Thanks. M’kay.)

For the larger things, I think that it’s often largely a case of apathy. I mean, why bother care or try to impact things if the people around you are just gonna say, “yeah, bro. We all pretty much agree. But just hush, we’re trying to watch/do something. It’s not like we can actually affect that situation anyway. Plus, it’s not ‘directly’ directly affecting us as much as other annoying things are- we have to pick and choose our battles, brah.” So, we kinda just have to swallow the things we can’t do things about, I suppose. Rather, let those things go.

But for the things that we, as a society, turn a blind eye toward. The things that are dirty open secrets, but we run to anyway because it’s embedded in our culture and in our minds through marketing, in our daily lives through town planning, and many other ways. So, it would become hard to rely on other sources.

It wasn’t intentional, to get to this point. There were just systems of optimizing for certain outcomes all operating at the same time, and certain ones grew more impactful. Now that those systems have bred new opportunities, people see how they can use the systems and the opportunities to accomplish something… or maybe get away with something. Maybe to certain individuals, it’s even a challenge. To others, it may even seem like a game. With that mindset, those people might think that everyone in the arena is thinking that way and playing the same dirty tricks already, so why shouldn’t they?

We’ve bred a weird hybrid zombie-esque… creature that really doesn’t look like it should be able to be alive, but somehow, it is. And it may not live for much longer in its current form, but by gosh-darn-Jiminy Cricket, it’s sure gonna try to outshine the sun and outlive the universe.

So yeah… that’s (partly) what’s on my mind right now.

M3