Mind

Got my implant put in at the oral surgeon yesterday. There’s nothing quite like nitrous oxide to let you understand, by tone of voice alone, just how much a douchebag someone is.

I love men, but there’s a Cranky Old White Bastard subset that I just don’t favor.

Speaking of nitrous, how’s this for an effect of growing up in what’s fundamentally still a Puritan country: I felt like I had to periodically make a point to show the doctor and nurse that I was breathing out of my mouth, and not the happy-gas nose tube, so they wouldn’t think I was “enjoying” the nitrous too much.

Because they’d laugh at me, and think I was a druggie…while they drilled into my jawbone.

Sssnnnnniiiiffffffff…

As I was  heading towards Landis Green on the FSU campus today, I saw a maintenance man using a piece of machinery to clean the Gilchrist dorm wall. Sitting over by the sidewalk, by itself, was a gas can. It was very red against the green grass. Its blue-rag-stuffed nozzle pointed engagingly towards passers-by, like a dog poking its nose through a fence. In the movies, whenever you spy a gas can, you can be sure that Something Will Burn. Or else why show the fuel? As I walked on, I pictured the obvious–myself taking the container, shaking gas all over something, and setting it on fire. I had no real will to do this, only impersonal curiosity. And my mind just as predictably recoiled, negating the thought with a tired reflex.

The bored automation of my response startled me.  In my life, have I ever done anything truly destructive? I think of myself not only as terribly experienced, but also plenty openminded. But I suddenly perceived an experience that not only have I never really engaged in , but from which I actively shrank. Destruction bad, preservation good. Why? I saw my desire to preserve everything for the numbing superstition that it was, just another sad compulsive leftover of my New Age upbringing. There are some unhealthy people in that spirituality, people that frantically fear the dark, who try to rid themselves and their lives of all traces of it–as if that were possible. I don’t think I’ve ever feared the darkness, I’ve only feared the fact that I didn’t fear it. I feared what it meant about me. And I’ve overcompensated.

I’ve always had an active conscience. If I see a bug in my house, I kill it–but I feel bad. I hate crumpling paper and throwing it away; I want to recycle it. I’ve even gone back into a store to retrieve a bandaid that fell off, so nobody would see it on the floor and want to puke. I’m well aware of how absurd that is. But I guess I’ve not let myself realize yet what a fucking prison I’m in, to be so inhibited from making a negative impact on the world. And I understand that’s how people felt after the PC ’90′s, which is why Bush got such a following–government-sanctioned destructiveness, both political and social, probably felt liberating for a while. Kill life, waste resources, disgust people. Doing so, thoughtlessly, would render me into the kind of person I most hate. But if I hate them for their disrespect of life, and then choke my life off trying not to be like them, what have I accomplished?

But you see, I didn’t snatch the gas can up, pour it over Landis Green, and dance around the bonfire like a “Fight Club” fanatic.  I went home and wrote a blog entry about my thoughts. Maybe it’s enough that I saw something a little differently. I was conscious enough to catch my thinking and change it, open up to a new idea. But what if that isn’t enough? Do I strike the lighter next time?

This was originally posted in the comments section of a post at Bring It On:
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“If you would rather kiss off any chance of winning the other over and would rather fight, by all means, call them names; use sarcasm, threats, shouting, ignore what they’re saying, etcetera. “

If that doesn’t work, why are the neocons in power?

I’m not saying liberals should endeavor to be like them. I’m saying we need to admit the reality of what we’re facing down. Hate is a very powerful thing, and a lot of the Right’s tactics are based on it–not greed, but pure hate and the desire to wantonly destroy. And that’s spoken to many people across America for the last 6 years. Perhaps they got sick of the PC thing and feeling like they had to “behave”; but I do remember a “cutting loose and misbehaving” kind of mischievous hatefulness that started after Bush took the big seat. I think everyone has the potential to be manipulated by fear and to act out of hate, but we all also have the potential to control such atavistic feelings with reason and conscience. Hatefulness can win control of any person anywhere if they fail to choose something else–Democrats and atheists can be hateful, as well as Republicans and religious fanatics. But it’s important to admit that some doctrines decry hate, and some promote it. What we have now in this country is six years of the cumulative self-indulgent hate of a country that ought to know better.

This administration has removed from the American people the need to have a conscience. They have decided that they are powerful enough to decree that. The effects of this administration can be seen in everything from foreign governments’ actions, to our own pop culture. And so we attack each other, and the harm the rest of the world. But like any pleasurable-but-ultimately-poisoning indulgence, America as a whole seems to finally be getting sick to its collective stomach. I see more and more people slowing down and asking “WTF?” We’re waking up to the hate hangover and beginning to see the real live, “it-affects-me-too-whoda-thunk-it?” consequences.

It would be a mistake to label this a “liberal” or “Republican” or even “religious” problem. It’s a hate problem, and we’ll periodically go through phases with it until we eventually decide that power stemming from giving a damn about people and fighting for them, is stronger power than that coming from hating people and trying to destroy them. Everyone wants power. Democrats need it. But they need to grab at the right kind.

I’m not part of any religion, and I’m not promoting any one moral code. But one thing that has to be valued if a person values life on this earth, is the willful attempt to deny the indulgence of hate. I don’t believe in blind “openmindedness” or tolerating others’ intolerance, I believe that dogma has in part kept us from turning this tide before now. But the only way to fight the power that comes from something negative and shitty, is the power that comes from something good. If we can’t morally agree on what life-affirming things to fight for, then the false “culture of life” crust over a sea of tarry hate will continue to engulf us, even as we wake up just in time to watch ourselves drown.