Tag: politicians

Anomie

I first heard the word anomie in a sociology lecture. Anomie means: “social instability caused by erosion of standards and values, or, alienation and purposelessness experienced by a person or a class as a result of a lack of standards, values, or ideals.”

We are living in a state of anomie. I don’t know about anyone else but general consensus on just about everything is in short supply and a hard commodity to come by lately. I used to know what to focus on and give attention to. And I used to know why what I did was important to me.

I have memories of periods of intense focus. Spending a whole weekend (or a few) surrounded by books and papers doing research for an essay. Playing some sport that kept me outdoors and running around for hours. Either at a beach or maybe on a mountain.

A full evening of social time with friends may have started at 8 in the evening and could go on into the wee small hours of the morning. Not a cellphone in sight or in our imaginations.

There wasn’t another single activity that was more important than doing what we were doing in that moment. I’m not naive. There was plenty of “zoning out” in those days, too, but generally.

What’s missing today, I find, is global “permission” to carve out those unfettered blocks of time without feeling some sort of guilt or FOMO – fear of missing out. We don’t even agree anymore about where and what it is important to focus on.

I am way too susceptible to distractions. And there are plenty of distractions these days. We all know what they are and I know I am not alone. I believe we are all feeling it.

I am reading more and more articles about putting a label on these crazy times and collectively pray it is only a phase. A phase that has been ongoing for a good decade or more.

The world is grotesquely out of balance and that is not sustainable. I will not watch news coverage about Gaza. I cannot handle that level of inhumanity and insanity. Yet, clearly many do.

Watch it and shudder or sigh or inhale a half a cheesecake. These are very bad times for the easily triggered.

We can’t always see ahead to when and how things might slip off the rails. In our lives, for example. There are indicators. And if we don’t see them and pay attention, there will be consequences. Ignore them at our peril.

That cavity you avoid getting filled. That bank balance consistently slipping into overdraft. The credit card statements that “somehow” keep getting bigger and bigger. You’ll experience the consequences soon enough.

Consequences today seem haphazardly dispensed. Shady politicians and career criminals carry on blithely with minimal fear of paying any price for their actions.

That George Santos was expelled from Congress was a minor miracle that occurred this week. My question has been: how did he get as far as he did in Congress in the first place? Where is our system of checks and balances?

Sadly, the answer seems to be that it has eroded dramatically.

An insane system is kept relevant by enablers who either allow or participate in letting the insanity continue. Personally, I haven’t got the stomach for it.

So I am in full retreat. I am most reluctant to put myself on the line publicly for my beliefs. It has become a more private occupation contained within a circle of people I trust and like. That is where I choose to put my focus these days.

I have been testing society’s floorboards of late and find them a little spongy. If that were to happen in a real house, I would slowly withdraw from the room and back away to prevent being hurt.

I no longer have term papers to write but there are other activities that can absorb my attention. Books are always available. As is “me-time.” In a world where the rules have gone out the window and everyone seems to be in survival mode, it seems the most reasonable option.

No Wasted Words

“No words are wasted. Everything you get down on the page can be considered practice. This means you’re sharpening your skills every time you write, even if you ultimately end up shelving that work.

Today’s Writing Challenge:
Set a timer for 10-15 minutes. Now, write without pressing backspace. Keep your eyes closed if you think you can pull it off. Resist the urge to fix typos!

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The passage above popped up as a daily prompt from one of my writing groups. I often wonder why writing – as opposed to other vocations – is so riddled with angst and insecurities. Perhaps because writing is the activity most capable of getting inside our hearts and minds. Scary stuff.

Of course, we all know “the power of the pen” being “mightier than the sword.” Writing has started and sustained revolutions, after all. Writers and intellectuals are often the first to be shut down and imprisoned by dictators trying to control a population to deflect dissent. One thing is clear: what people think and believe is important.

I am inclined to ask why writing is generally viewed at the same time as commonplace and unimportant. Everyone with a basic education can read and write – up to a point. It rarely pays well. There is no well-defined formula for how to “make it in writing” like there might be, say, buying real estate and using the magic of compound interest to get rich.

My humble conclusion is that people are both intrigued and terrified about what they really feel and think about themselves and a lot of other things. To settle into a groove in life, most people adopt and accept certain assumptions and beliefs – usually ones passed on to them by their parents or culture.

Once made, people usually become quite comfortable with their choices. And once made, people are hard-pressed to alter their thinking. Too disruptive. To gain admission to and survive in a marriage, community or profession, there are unspoken rules to follow to maintain full membership.

But writers? We are often lone wolves. Our writing style and areas of expertise can be very specialized and divergent. Other writers might more often be seen as competition for scarce assignments rather than people to bond with as a group.

That is not to say that writers are not collegial. Of course they are. But discussing the basics of medicine is far less open to interpretation than who the greatest writers were and why. To say nothing about the proper time and place to use a semi-colon.

I remember once being part of a unionizing effort by magazine writers in Canada. We were nearly laughed out of the building by editors and magazine management with our demands for contracts and equal wages and reasonable kill fees if our stories didn’t run.

I was stunned to read in a recent Psychology Today article that facts don’t do much to alter people’s established beliefs anyway. Not to wander too deeply into political territory, the 45th US President freely committed crimes “in plain sight” through much of, and after, his administration. This behavior was clearly old hat and pro forma to him. He was, and remains, unchastened.

That may be the allure and terror of writing. No one wants to tell the emperor he is wearing no clothes. It will be left to future writers to dig into the facts and analyze their context to create an accurate account of all that has transpired in American politics in recent decades. Sure glad I won’t be one of them. Not my circus. Not my monkeys.

I write about healing and the human condition and my musings about making the best use of our time here on planet earth. That exploration and the people and stories it has exposed me to have always been infinitely more interesting to me.

Politicians, in order to survive at their profession, sadly seem to play the same old games and sing the same old songs. In perpetuity it would seem. The unspoken rules of their community.

Thoughts and Prayers

The Thirty Day Blog Writing Challenge’s organizer Frank Taub says linking to a video we love counts as a post. Was happy to stumble across this one by Randy Rainbow while wandering around the Internet.

Like Randy Rainbow, I am sick to death of the mealy-mouthed “thoughts and prayers” that are uttered by public figures and followed up with no valuable action.

Rainbow speaks my mind. I am sure he speaks for what used to be the “silent majority.” (I won’t take time here to sing the praises of Randy Rainbow to the rooftops as I want to. One day though, I well might.)

Sending “thoughts and prayers” is facile. It accomplishes nothing. You want to express your genuine concern and distress? Change something. Do something. That’s what will have meaning and value in the face of outrageous acts of tragedy and injustice.

Otherwise, you are just another well-mannered, insipid, do-nothing automaton in society. Heaven knows we have more than enough of them already. Many of them are politicians.

Ain’t It Awful?

There is a personal payoff in being a little withdrawn and isolated from the world occasionally. Many people spend a lot of time observing the world and listening to the news and hearing politicians expertly and bloodlessly dissect their opponents. Those people, understandably, often have a very dim worldview.

A common complaint I hear about the state of the world is that it is awful and they can’t do anything about it. For the most part, they are correct. But what most people don’t get is that what happens out there in those other theaters of life isn’t of much importance or relevance to their own daily lives.

Yes, of course, the decisions of politicians and policies and laws that are enacted affect our pocketbook and standard of living. They may decide what we can and cannot do or where we can and cannot go. As for our regular daily lives, they are simply so much noise. It is our choice whether to listen to that noise or not.

I feel sorry for young people today who are held sway by the endless pageantry of new developments in technology and the Internet. There is this influencer who must be followed and then that one and have you seen whats-her-names newest trend-setting video but he’s all the rage now and she no longer counts. How in hell do they keep it all straight in their heads. Maybe they don’t.

Unplugging from technology seems analogous to committing social suicide these days. It is particularly sad that young people – teenagers say – who are at the very point of trying to discover who they are and what they want to be in life, have to dig through, filter out and mirror their life choices against the preaching of dozens of online personalities. Strangers in point of fact.

I am not as vulnerable to this information overload as I once was but I cannot say I am not influenced. Some websites and video reels catch me and have an uncanny power to eat up a half hour or more of my time before I am even conscious of it. There are several excellent writers out there who have my attention and I feel I can barely keep up with their output.

The chief culprits in my life presently are Facebook video cooking reels. A revolving cast of chefs from all sorts of genres display feats of culinary prowess that I would give anything to replicate. The videos are almost choreographed ballets as much as they are recipe-sharing. Happily, I am old enough to realize, that while they are dazzling, I am not inclined to beat myself up if I cannot recreate their splendid creations in my own kitchen.

I take that analogy and apply its potential to more impressionable and searching young people. I can only imagine that they must suffer for not always having the “right” clothes, or the most up-to-date cellphone, and maybe spontaneous weekend trips to anywhere but here. It is kinda diabolical.

As old as I am and with the resources I can draw on, some of these come-ons attract me. I don’t act on them and I don’t suffer for not acting on them. But if I were younger, I might feel left out.

I was at first bemused by and then a little sad to learn there is an actual thing out there called FOMO – “fear of missing out.” It seems to be there is so much technological space litter available out there that you can’t help but be missing out on something.

It is like some kind of fiendish device that is deliberately designed to keep us all “off-balance.” It seems to force people to rely exclusively on “significant” “others” “outside” themselves to find joy and happiness. They even seem to rely on them to tell them who they are. That is the biggest fraud of all. And a dangerous one if you are particularly fragile or vulnerable.

My version of “Give Peace A Chance” is unplugging from time to time. I rarely watch the news on television anymore. It is an irritation to the spirit and has an eerily similar sameness with its litany of tragedy, and skulduggery, and focuses on the worst of what humans are and do.

Books give me greater comfort. I can pick and choose among them for lessons I want to learn and master and access the emotional experiences I want to have. That is why popular successful authors are so popular. They are reliable and predictable in their style and output. Sure seems to me that in a world that is most kindly described as a little topsy-turvy, I’ll take a circuitous John Grisham novel bashing the legal system over CNN and Youtube anytime.

It keeps a rein on my sanity and a paddock for my well-being.