city_noise

I have been pondering the nature of decline and the events and decisions of the past couple of decades.  This is a subject that is fraught with contradictions and gradients.  In a sense, the best description I have ever heard is:

“The future is already here – it’s just not very evenly distributed.“  (William Gibson)

I have read many folks out there who get all pissy-bitch about this quote, because, in their self-centered little minds, they feel that somehow thinking this way detracts from the fantasy that their personal agency means something to the big bad universe and by acknowledging that the conditions of the future aren’t a homogenous layer means that your desires are not the center of the universe.

I suppose that I look at it differently and there are a lot of folks out there who will pronounce anathema on my scribblings and go away, but be advised, that doesn’t bother me.  The future that an individual sees is a summation of that person's personal belief system juxtaposed upon a world system that doesn’t care one damn bit about that personal belief system.  It isn’t that the world is trying to bust your balls or anything, the world just doesn’t care.  

As I am working through the process of Vanaprastha I am continually reminded about the differing circles of engagement and my effect on the other denizens of each circle compared to that circle's effect on me.  When I was younger, I was of the opinion that the world as a whole could be made better, as I grew older I drifted toward the idea that the country could be made better, for the decade prior to this, I shrunk the circle down to the metropolitan area where I lived.  Now the best I can do is be frugal, be nice to my neighbors, and love my family.

But to some folks, this kind of thought means that I am back to my old demi-survivalist mode, but really, nothing could be further from the truth.  You see, being a survivalist seems sexy and noble below the age of fifty and you have a family you are responsible for.  But when you are an old geezer like me who is on your last legs, it doesn’t make a damn bit of sense.  

SO I am going to be working on a new catchphrase for us boomers in the decline and fall.  By actually following vanaprastha you become “one who departs to the forest”.  Which means that you are leaving behind the greater bulk of desires as well as your stuff.  Which to me means that I need to spend more time calibrating the spectrum of needs and desires.  I need to strip even more but to do that, I need to define what I need “in the forest”.  

So to circle back to the quote that I started this piece with, I need to figure out my best guess on how to enter the uneven and uncaring future with the least amount of luggage.  

Gotta travel light, everything that you own ends up owning you

I think that I never really got over the act of writing physical letters.  For years (let say until about 1900) I wrote to mother and sisters about every two weeks to tell them what happened, but as the non-cost of long-distance calls (by cell phone) and the ease and speed of email became ubiquitous, I just kind of dropped the habit.  So when I write to you on the current processes wandering around inside of my body (I am currently fascinated and pondering the "Enteric Nervous System"), I suppose that I am following a path worn long ago sent in flimsy paper envelopes and sealed and stamped with nasty tasting glue.  If you are reading this, this is as close to a letter as I can get.

I am currently at a standstill on philosophy.  The weather here has been just nice enough that I tend to go out and wander around instead of sitting down and pondering.  For some reason, when the sun is shining on me, I find it difficult to ponder anything serious and I either wander about semi-aimlessly (I refer to these mindless forays as "walks") or sit down in a chair on the front stoop and bask, walrus-like, in the sun.

Lately I have been fascinated by the clown-car that is Washington D.C./Tel Aviv/Kiev.  I can't see any decent outcome.  To be honest, the messes there have been baked into the cards for quite some time now and we are just watching the processes leave the middle game and enter the end game.  I really think that we have been in zugzwang since around 2008 and have just been delaying the loss for the past twenty years.  I don't judge this, I have been lucky enough to reap benefits out of a collapsing system that I am still surprised to be getting (and I will take this gravy for as long as it is available).  

I suppose that I have always been of the opinion that the system that I worked in and from which I draw my current sustenance was never built to last.  I tried to never have that much of my "self" attached to the system.  The game of the system was always about accumulating as much as you can as fast as you can and then living on memories of what you did in the past.  Since I was never all that thrilled about the system (another subject altogether) the idea of living on those particular memories never held that much appeal.  So I went with the simple bet that I wasn't immortal, and that by skimming the edges of a system I could come away with a small and completely adequate share when I managed to some distance the mess.  It is working thus far.

I think that I have spent the morning writing this particular post because a lot of this well-aged angst appears to be coming to a head.  A lot of folks out there will get all shrieky and butt hurt when I say that I feel sorry for Donald Trump.  The poor bastard is so far over his head that he can't feel the hand up his ass that treats him like the salesman/PR flack that he is.  Being old, I remember Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy.  That is how I see Trump.  He is the "vice-president of sales" that always gets boosted up into leadership roles in dying companies, thinking that selling bullshit is akin to leadership.  I knew too many of these folks and they usually didn't end their careers on anything resembling a high note.

But it is my opinion that Donald Trump, like Joe Biden, is not in charge.  The folks who pull his strings don't have quite the simplicity that their predecessors in the Biden administration had (I think that Trump likes signing shit, as this makes him feel like he is in charge, so the autopen is gathering dust).  But what is happening here is that the folks who have been stewing about the fall of the Shah and hostages and the FUBAR that was "Operation Eagle Claw" have finally come full circle and somewhere in hell Zbigniew Brzezinski is cackling.

Nope, Donny is there to take the fall and bask in the attention while he can (remember, for attention whores, bad attention is better than no attention)