Strawburry Miwk²

Mindless Faith - In Every Eye

Our culture is one that is fixated on a linear way of thinking, a black and white polarization of cause and effect, beginning and end, good and bad, right and wrong, functioning or dysfunctional. We are trained and we are stuck in a way of thinking that when we are aware of one thing, we must be aware of its opposite as well. It’s comforting to recognize opposites and similarities, like matching a star-shaped block to fit into a star-shaped hole when we were infants. We were trained this way, we know everyone else was trained this way, so it’s comforting not to be alone in our own thoughts.

This is why when catastrophe hits, and we collectively recognize this as bad, as an effect, we crave, we pray for something good to rectify it, and we’re more than eager to find a convenient cause, our scape goat, to fixate our blame on until we find a fix, a cure. In our linear way of thinking, whatever bumps or roadblocks we stumble along are just more obstacles to be overcome in the same way we’ve overcome all our previous obstacles. Find the cause, blame the cause, remove the cause, and move on.

The problem now is, our linear, polarized way of thinking is a large part of what brought us into this mess in the first place. What once was black and white is now grey, what once was cause and effect is now a twisted story of multiple sub-plots that never seem to end. But we’re scared. As always, we’re scared. We hear numbers and statistics in the news, we see discouraged faces and we see our own pay checks dwindling or our own sources of amusement growing further out of reach. Our dreams, the ones we thought were at least somewhat realistic, are evaporating faster than ever and being replaced by…nothing, really. Perhaps a cold, survival instinct that we haven’t felt in years. Our culture fixated on entertainment, we’ve forgotten how to truly survive when our linear continuation of comfort and excess is wiped out, the rug pulled from under our feet.

So we blame. We forget the future and ignore the past out of embarassment and fear and perhaps a little bit of loathing, we fixate on the present and look for people to blame. Individuals, organizations, governments, policies. We blame, and maybe we try to seek resolution but it’s never as cut and dry as finding a singular item to blame. To focus our anger on when all the consistency we knew and loved is being torn away from us more and more.

Perhaps it’s just the psychological stages of grief, to childishly point the finger and say “he did it!” before cleaning up the mess and learning the moral of the story. We have a long standing culture of pride in personal responsibility, this individualism where we look out for ourselves, we take really good care of ourselves and our belongings, and we give a cold shoulder to everyone else. We lock ourselves in our homes and our rooms at night, just ourselves and our things, and we only cross paths with others when we need to.

The manta now is, “the world is growing smaller.” It’s usually in reference to information technology, the multitude of ways its possible to have a best friend and a real shoulder to cry on through your web cam on the other side of the globe. But perhaps the better way to look at it is, the rest of the world is your next door neighbor, your roommate, even. And somehow your garbage has just spilled all over your lawn or your kitchen. You want to know, did one of you come home drunk and knock it over? Accidentally back your car into the trash cans? Did a raccoon tip it over while trying to find a morsel to eat? It’s a big, stinking mess, and you only know it’s not yours. It’s not yours, and you shouldn’t have to clean it up. In fact, it’s such a big mess, that even if you’d want to clean it up, you wouldn’t know where to begin in the first place.

Our linear way of thinking, our black and white way of viewing the world, that pile of disgusting garbage will sit there for weeks just piling up all the more with no one doing anything about it, no one resolving where to place blame and where to find a resolution. We are blind in this way, encaged in our own minds for how we have been trained to view the world, how we have been trained to blindly rove onward and how to ‘overcome’ any obstacles we face, or in some cases, outright ignore them. We never consider that, maybe the trash shouldn’t have been there in the first place. Maybe our consume —> collect —-> throw away —-> repeat way of life needs to be rethought, restructured. Maybe instead of wondering who caused the mess, much less who should clean it up, we need to think…what conditions brought about the scenario for such a mess to occur in the first place?

But in the way we blame things and brush our problems under the rug once they seem to have been dealt with, so too do we never change our way of thinking. So too do we continue to train generation after generation to find the star-shaped hole to fit the star-shaped block in, never questioning how either object came to be, or why they came to be, in the first place. There’s a blind spot in every eye. It’s not just you and me, it’s not the first time.

Out of sight, you’re out of your mind. Still trying to see, don’t realize you’re blind. They call it ‘thinking outside of the box,’ but perhaps it’s a glass box we don’t realize we’re in, and we’re comfortable with the view anyway.

Of course, I’ll do my part to think outside the box, to clean up the mess, once you do yours. Once you figure out what went wrong and how to fix things. Then I’ll do something.

Snog - Vaguely Melancholic

In these dreary times, a lot of people are wondering, what keeps you motivated? What keeps you going, keeps you improving, keeps you working, seeing your friends, embracing your loved ones, eating the sustenance of life and breathing fresh oxygen for your blood stream? What keeps you running in the hamster wheel of life?

A lot of people have good answers to this question. Maybe they have a hobby, or a close friend that inspires them, or a celebrity or great mind they look up to. Maybe they have parents to please or a job promotion to go after. Maybe they were just brought up right; They don’t have any qualms or see anything wrong with being an ant in the ant colony of human existence. A pay check, a beer at the end of the work day, a night out with friends, an annual vacation to someplace exotic is all it takes to keep them going.

It feels now like nothing motivates me. I have my hobbies that I’m fairly good at, that I continue to improve in. I have friends and even a boyfriend I want to see. There are movies coming out I’m interested in, books I ought to read at some point. I’m not much of a drinker anymore, but I still want to party, in whatever sense that word makes to people. I still want to see the world. I want to experience life outside of being in the wholesome midwest of the United States, this black hole of culture and people and entertainment and commerce that the rest of the world is constantly being sucked into, and forgotten for.

But even with these desires, even with two or three cups of coffee in the morning, a multi-vitamin pill, and new postings on Craigslist and other job boards each day, the things I want or think I need feel more and more out of reach every day, more elusive. It was so easy before, Acing every test, getting good grades, finding a job for some petty cash or rent money, even getting into 10 different colleges was easy. I know the point of it all wasn’t for it to be easy, but for me to be good at it, to be intelligent, creative, smart, quick-thinking. The way things are now, I feel I’ve spent my whole life doing well at these things, forever becoming what the world needed me to be, and now find myself dumped on an alien planet where I have no idea what the rules are and am having a hell of a time learning them. I’m trying to find the beauty in this alien landscape, but it seems for every step forward I take, someone grabs me, spins me around like they do before your turn in Pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey, and I don’t know where to begin again. Which direction was I going? Which direction am I facing now?

There must be more than this, I know. I always know this, for, as always, things pick up ultmately and I find my footing again, I find my way through the fog and I can see myself clearly in the mirror and what I need to do, what I was meant to do, again. Through it all I suppose the promise of certainty motivates me. We all want security, it’s in our human psychology to need security, and I know I would do whatever it takes to have that. To have a solid income, a place to live, the certainty of privacy and solitute when I needed it, friends to count on, people to love. I am motivated to find certainty, the certainty that I am worth something, can contribute to something, and can keep improving myself for the betterment of…well, everyone else. Whomever I love, whomever I care about, whomever I’m working for.

Whomever promises certainty, security, whomever promises motivation… please show me more than this. I know.