televisionianestamisimemology

[televisionianestamisimemology]

I was supposed to have an appointment with my therapist today, but he never signed on. I think I was going to share with him a perspective that I sometimes take on when trying to make sense of my general struggles. I think it’s possible that, on some level, I suffer from affluenza. To be clear, I did not grow up rich. I grew up comfortable, middle-class. But, in a weird way, I share some similarities with people who grew up with a lot of money, more specifically, those who grew up with a lot of money but never achieved true independence. For me, it wasn’t that I was given everything I wanted; it was more like my parents felt guilty for their missteps in my early education. They also worried about my well-being and mental health, so they took care of a lot of things for me. I didn’t have to work through college. They got me out of tough spots with credit card debt. Basically, I had a giant safety net, which maybe resulted in me not developing strong independence. I was also afforded the ability not to overcome obstacles, like depression.

And this is kind of a weird comparison, but my brother has this really strange reaction to physical pain. When he stubs his toe or accidentally drops something on his foot, he screams loudly and punches the wall. It’s incredibly dramatic. He seems a bit unaware of how intense his reaction is. I think I have the same response, but to emotional pain, specifically any moment where I am rejected or when someone says something negative to me, or I catch wind of a negative thought someone holds about me. While I don’t punch the wall, I do completely become undone. It has led to some dangerous moments in my life, periods of self-destruction. But there’s part of me that thinks there’s a relationship between this strong reaction I have and a feeling that’s hard to put into words. It’s like I don’t understand how someone could hurt me like that; don’t they know how much it hurts me? I need to let them know. This is sort of equivalent to my brother punching the wall when he stubs his toe, screaming out in agony; he’s letting everyone know.

So, is it possible that the coddled existence I had growing up, where I was handled delicately, and my emotions were so considered by my parents, educators, and psychiatrists, has led me to think, when someone hurts me, that this isn’t how I’m supposed to be treated? I don’t know if I’ve fully formulated my thought on this. It’s not a recent epiphany. I’ve always felt that a lot of the neuroses that I experience now are the result of growing up in a town filled with psychiatrists, just waiting for hypervigilant mothers like mine to sign up their child for weekly therapy.

But what’s got me thinking about this a lot now is this bandmate of mine. The band recently broke up, but it was led by this woman who seemed to me to be a bit socially and emotionally stunted. And, at the risk of sounding slightly misogynistic, I do psychoanalyze her and pathologize her with affluenza. She’s on antidepressants, and she, in my opinion, is on these because she suffers from some identity issues. These identity issues are the result of having all of her needs taken care of by very wealthy parents. I think I have a lot more in common with her than I care to admit. I’ve met other rich musicians like her who might possibly be leaning in on their own psychological problems because there’s an incentive to do so. It’s sort of like they’re cultivating the helpless, sensitive artist as a brand and identity, and they do this because it’s what brings the monetary support from their parents. I don’t think people I know who do this do it knowingly. I think it’s like having a job; you behave in a way at work that ensures your continued employment. The only difference here is that employment is being helpless, and the bosses are mom and dad.

I don’t want this to sound super cynical, and I’m not going on about this to trash these people. I’m just drawing a comparison between them and myself. With all of that said, I think it’s also a possibility that I’m just giving myself a hard time. I tend to think the worst about myself, and maybe I’ve invented this whole thing in order to put myself down. It aligns with my narrative that I’m a terrible person, so it must be that all of my problems are just selfishness.

Regardless of whether or not this is true, in a weird way, I think that thinking in this way—that I have developed neuroses as a result of helplessness, and that I am perpetuating these neuroses because they serve my interest—could actually be a constructive thing for me. Here's what I mean by that: If failures at tasks at work, or in my social life, are in my mind the result of me being a spoiled, helpless child who failed to develop the skills early on, and if I'm doing this just to bask in my own helplessness, then failure doesn't feel good. I'm not incentivized to fail. I think I had a productive week at work because I had these ideas in my mind. I was a little more organized, driven, and thorough. I put a bit more effort into developing social relationships at work. It's because it's no longer comfortable to fail. I think this is a good state to be in.

I imagine that many people who go to seek therapy go to bask in the comfortableness of failure. While that can be satisfying and cathartic, and maybe emotionally stabilizing, that's not what I want out of therapy. I want to want to get better. I'm not all the way there in wanting to work on it, but I'm working on truly wanting to work on it.

[televisionianestamisimemology]

I hope you’re doing well. To be succinct,

- [x] I don’t want your stuff at my parents’ old attic anymore. It’s endlessly painful to know it’s still here, and also, I know getting your stuff back has been a big priority of yours.

- [ ] So I’m arranging for a friend of a friend to drop it off in Dover. If your address has changed, send that to him at [email protected]. Also, please don’t respond to this message, and please don’t attempt, in any way, to leave anything of mine in return. I don’t want it. Throw it away. I use nothing of yours that you left behind, so don’t use anything of mine. I’d prefer that my records and things aren’t yours to share with whomever you’re pretending to share your life with now.

- [ ] That makes me sound bitter and Jealous, I know. I am both of those things to no end. I can’t help it. I’m sorry.

- [ ] Lastly, please pay me the money you owe me when you get your stuff. I spent everything i had on us. I know you feel otherwise, but I did the math, and I went into debt, to the point that I needed a credit card, which, coincidentally, was weeks before you decided to break up with me.

- [ ] It’s okay though, I “miss represented myself”. I’m sure you can go on about how awful I am. I’ve seen you trash others and I always knew it would one day be my turn. I’m not going psychoanalyze you here. That’s too cliché. And I’d rather say this to you in person or over the phone rather than in writing but I think you’d gain a lot by exploring your upbringing with a therapist.

All I’ll say is that I worked with a psychoanalyst in Montreal, and learned a lot about myself, and in the process gained some insight about the effects of a dysfunctional caregiver.

Finally, please keep in mind that I since our last correspondence, I’ve had on repeat I my head everything you wrote. It’s clear that I’m too sensitive to be in love. It’s too risky. So, If this message made you angry, please don’t respondS i I have no people I my life to share these things with. I’m so alone. The weekends are unbearable

[televisionianestamisimemology]

*Response to “says who?” when I said I was too old.

Good question. I don’t know. society really. But I’ve noticed the expectations for with whom I fraternize change depending on where I am. On the West Coast it mattered far less. And when I lived among expat artists in East Asia, age was almost a joke. So New England is pretty ridged by comparison when it comes to how you behave and what your life look like by what age. As someone who moved here from New York, do you feel this stodginess? The pressure to conform here has me wondering all the time if I’m a big ol weirdo. I think it’s a discomfort that leads people to do terrible things they don’t really want to do, like marry the wrong person or buy a Tesla. But I think that due to being a teacher, a musician and artist, my life has been more aligned with youngish people. My neurodivergence has also, in a weird way, let me off the hook of society’s expectations, desensitizing me to the pressures of conformity through a lifetime of being the square peg in a world of round holes. As a fellow neurodivergent, would you agree we have this advantage to not care as much?

But being childless due to having lived abroad for so long has also had an impact on where I’m at. Some would say, without responsibilities. But I don’t think that’s true. In fact I think I’m more engaged. It’s led me to be more fluid and better able to evolve as a person. I pursue new interests as much now as I did as a teenager. Like I still plan to be an established artist eventually, and this pursuit is not at the expense of my career. I take my teaching really seriously. It’s just my identity isn’t wrapped up in what I do. Okay, Wowzers! That was quite a Ted Talk. Pardon me for using your Hinge to process. You seem cool and so for some reason that inspired me to go on for too long. Maybe I’ll copy and paste this for my Tumblr. :)

[televisionianestamisimemology]

I’ve been playing the drums since I was 10 years old, and I’m reluctant to identify myself as a drummer. It doesn’t really match my sensibilities, banging on things. But my decision to play them was made when I was a boy so I’m stuck living out that little boy’s fantasy to be skilled at this obnoxiously masculine instrument. I mean these things happen. Pretty much all doctors decided to be doctors when they were like 18. It’s weird to think of doctors having my attitude about playing drums when they’re doing surgery though. They’re suturing back together a vital organ thinking, man, wish I were a drummer.

[televisionianestamisimemology]

I bought a 40 year old security camera online, the kind used in banks, and then I modified so it records to SD card and runs on batteries. Now I’m taking it to beautiful places like beaches at sunset and marshes, the subtext here being the futility of taking in beauty when the metaphorical lens through which that beauty is taken in, is incapable. So maybe it’s a meditation on the limitations of our senses and our sometimes failed attempts to experience beauty due the incongruity between the natural world and our capitalist conditioning. So I’m hoping that these ideas are kind of communicated by the idea of a security camera filming a sunset and the resulting footage, which I’m really loving.

[televisionianestamisimemology]

I keep thinking of this gif that was passed around a few months ago of an office desk through the ages. So it's like a time-lapse that spans decades starting in the eighties, showing how computers and phones have slowly done away with the need for calculators, cameras, picture frames, phones, clocks, drawing pads, etc. As time marches on these items keep disappearing until we reach 2023 and all there is left on the desk is a computer.

I think about this for a number of reasons. Firstly, is this march toward a minimalist world, a march that the world agrees should happen? It feels to me like it's happening against our will, and people accept it as inevitable. It's not though. It's really just a handful of companies in Silicon Valley reducing our lives to an app.

Unlike in the modernist movement, which was this collective belief that we should embrace our humanness and strive to create a world that is based science and human reason, this march toward reducing our lives to an app is not a collective project. It may resemble modernism, but in reality, it is three tech companies whose goals are just simply to increase profits for shareholders, not make a better world.

Just look at Apple's new VR classes and Facebook's Metaverse. The purpose of these multi-billion dollar projects is really to just get get rid of the need for human contact, which it views as the last unnecessary item on this office desk. Yes, it can be useful to meet with someone online instead of physically being there, but is this good for us? Has Instagram been good for us? What long-term goal for human kind do these apps serve? Are they inching us closer to achieving a society that is the ultimate expression of our humanity with all of its rationality and creativity? Fuck no.

What I'm getting at here is that Apple and Meta are products of the postmodern world. They exist, with all of their toxicity that's literally killing teenagers and propping up dictators, because people have abandoned the idea that there is an ideal and just world that we should strive for. Instagram and Meta exist becusae people subscribe to the postmodern view that the world is irrational and the only truth there is to be had is that the world is made up of power struggles.

I saw this video the other day that was Noam Chomsky talking smack about postmodern philosophy, saying that postmodern philosophy in academia is a bunch of baloney and it has only stuck around because its belief that morality is relative serves the interests of those in positions of power.

I think it also serves apple, meta, twitter, etc. It's okay to poison the world because, what? Okay, I've got to go to bed. I'm going to wake up at 4am, take an adderall and do all the work that I was supposed to do today but didn't because my brain is hijacked by social media.

[televisionianestamisimemology]

I read a study about how women process their heartbreak with friends, gaining solace by confiding in others. Hate it when I fit the bill when it comes to being a man, but it is inescapably true that I got little to nothing from talking about the breakup with people around me. I tried hard to lessen the pain by doing that. I talked endlessly with what few friends I had on the phone, but the pain remained and still remains. And that is because it doesn't matter if people told me I was in the right and that she was no good. I know deep down those were just words. Sharing pain does nothing. The only way out of this was to face the harsh reality of my deep-seated faults as a person and do the painful work of letting go of someone I felt deeply connected to.

It got me thinking about another difference between men and women. The same study also talked about how women think far more negatively about their ex compared to men. When I tried to reach out to her three months ago she unleashed a torrent of anger in response, mostly about how I terrorized her with emails about how depressed I was after the breakup. It's a little strange. She was raging mad at me for being depressed. It didn't help when I told her I wasn't doing that to get back at her. I had no one to talk to and I was scared. It didn't make a difference. And It didn't add up.

So then I thought that perhaps this knee-jerk reaction to hate me was because she was able to get over me by simply talking to friends. While that was helpful in the short term. It's a paper-thin way of getting over someone, meaning the only thing separating her from feeling bad about the breakup were these shared moments, which, would start to tear if she had to hear me talk on the phone and consider me as a human being. So hating your ex is a way to get over them is all I'm saying. It doesn't work for me, unfortunately. I simply can't hate her.

[televisionianestamisimemology]

"The Politics of Desire" is so interesting. It always seemed to me that the same part of the brain that lights up when we’re buying a new car is the same part that llights up when choosing a partner. It’s a cynical take, I guess, but I don’t think it’s necessarily universal. It’s just that within our hyperindividualistic capitalist culture, our desires are intertwined with a need to establish our status. I saw less of this in the more collectivist cultures where I lived in Asia. But here, nowhere is this fixation on social status more obvious than in the high school where I work.

But it's not all bad. It's really heartening to see how inclusive teens are these days. It's quite beautiful. No one laughs at or bullies LGBT or neuroatypical kids. They're embraced, as far as I can tell, at least. But that doesn't mean the impulse to set oneself apart and above others by punching down isn't there. In this new inclusive world, it's the bullies who get bullied, and despite their appearance, from my perspective, they are themselves victims. It's amazing how resistant people are to recognizing the humanity in all individuals. Someone's got to make up the base of the pyramid. As my high schoolers become aware of the latest group whose humanity is crucial to recognize, e.g., overweight people and the idea of fat-shaming and body positivity, the pool of people to dehumanize gets smaller. However, classism finds a way, and I see teenagers solidify their status through means other than picking on kids, such as through music. 

This is where I think the embrace of Taylor Swift comes in. Maybe it's that I just don't understand her music, but she strikes me as a kind of cultural white flight. Maybe her appeal is her whiteness. She's like the personification of the cul-de-sac I grew up on in a segregated suburb of Massachusetts. 

The idea that we use music to reinforce our status is funny because it feels like music should transcend these concerns since we experience it at a primal level. But I was just learning about how the god-like quality of bands in the 1970’s was a public relations strategy by the industry and Rolling Stone magazine to market popular music to boys. The more masculine, the better, which explains the likes of Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones. I’ve always struggled to articulate why these bands offend my sensitilities, and this is it. 

I’d love to hear your thoughts on what a more evolved approach to working with desire would look like. So far I feel like letting go of a fixation on social status and an embrace of connectedness is the likeliest road toward living in a way where your desire is more aligned with values.

[televisionianestamisimemology]

Pain that seems to have no end is the engine of change. I think I've achieved a level of mental clarity that wouldn't have happened had I stayed in that relationship, which, at the time, seemed like a vehicle for becoming more of who I am. But that's not what it was. Is the impulse to be in a relationship antithetical to personal growth? Do we just pursue relationships to anesthetize ourselves? Being with someone was once a necessary part of our existence. Something happened between then and now, maybe the dissolution of the collectivist society when we once were who we are in relationship to others. Now that we exist as isolated beings, pairing with others is neither here nor there. So is our need to be in a relationship this vestigial impulse passed down from our ancestors? Or is it just me who subscribes too much to the idea that we are all unique rather than interchangeable? Some people complain of being bored by others. I don't think I've ever felt bored by anyone. To me, everyone is endlessly themselves. Maybe that's my problem. She is far too much like her for me to move on.

[televisionianestamisimemology]

Every 9/11 I get annoyed by the lack of people asking the basic question of why was it okay to build a tower that would collapse 40 minutes after being struck by an airplane? Skyscrapers are in the sky. The sky is where airplanes go. Even if collisions are rare, isn’t the risk of 50K office workers dying enough of a reason to design towers that can withstand one bad or drunk pilot?? The answer is simple. It cuts into profit margins.

To understand how this came to be acceptable it helps to talk about modernist building design and its cocaine- fuelled capitalist pursuit of “efficiency”. Modernist design not only entailed stripping away all superfluous design elements that detracted from achieving a perfect blend of form and function but it also regarded redundancies in structural integrity as a necessary compromise. A building was considered as safe as the regulations mandated.

And so acknowledging that there are flaws in modern architectural design opens up a Pandora's box that calls into question the safety of most tall buildings and the profit-driven reliance of an entire real estate industry on their 'big and cheap' construction. As with any topic that challenges the interests of a massive industry, public discourse is shaped around it. Think of how for four decades society never discussed the efficacy of recycling. Turns out it was all a PR stunt. Why are we finding this out now? It’s because it was a fact that was inconvenient to a massive plastics petroleum/plastics industry and private industry has a big influence on public discourse.

The inconvenience of the idea that modern skyscrapers could collapse from a fire led to it being taboo, which explains the conspicuous lack of knowledge within the New York City Fire Department about the possibility that the Twin Towers could collapse - knowledge you’d think a fire department in a city made up of modern skyscrapers would have known. 

Not only did fire departments not know of this as a possibility, but they also didn’t have a strategy for fighting fires in skyscrapers. I was in New York that day and spoke with someone who was on the 50th floor when the first plane struck. He was in the bathroom at the time, and the impact knocked him to the floor. What he told me runs counter to all the documentaries made about this day. Firefighters were telling people not to leave the building as they climbed up. They were entirely uninformed about the potential for structural failure. Moreover, what was their plan once they reached the fire-affected floors? Utilize fire extinguishers? There appeared to be a glaring lack of knowledge among the fire chiefs.

And so I see firefighters as victims, and see these heavy handed commenorations of their bravery as missguided at best and at worst an glossing over of the capitalist drive to walk the line between profits and human life. I wonder if the lack of discussion of these things is because, if we were to really face the facts, which is that modern buildings are made with winning contracts of real estate companies in mind rather than human life, then we’d need to reevaluate, not just building design of 80 percent of our buildings, but all the ways in which capitalism is an engine of destruction. This explains why corporate media is the biggest propagator of this narrative, which is that the only takeaway there is to be had from 9/11 is that a lot of brave people died. This is far better than the alternative. Modernist design is a perfect illustration capitalism and so many o criticize the modernist building design is to criticize the company that owns corporate media and our society as a whole.

I’m not suggesting there’s a conspiracy here. No one is in the newsroom at 60 Minutes writing the 100th emotionally overwrought piece on the bravery of firefighters in an explicit attempt to hide the culpability of building industries and the lack of backbone of the city to address building collapse as a real possibility. These campaigns of misdirection and misinformation occur organically. Information presented by corporate media follows the path of least resistance. Just as you don’t do things at work that would upset your boss, NBC Nightly News doesn’t write stories that examine the perils of capitalism evident in the collapse of the twin towers, and definitely doesn’t want to report on anything that could offend their boss’s boss’s boss who might be the biggest office building real estate company in Manhattan. 

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The fact that we’re going to die builds character. If it weren’t for death, art history would probably be a bunch of stuck figures over the centuries. Impending death makes us interesting

[televisionianestamisimemology]

First Telephone App Date Since Moving Back and Other Stuff

The last paragraph below is a message I wrote back to a woman on a dating app who responded to something I wrote on my profile about Twin Peaks, The Return. Is it too much? It's hard to know what's too much and what's not enough. The trick is not to care. These apps used to work for me when I was on them just to have fun writing weird messages to people. The more aloof I was, the greater the chances were that everything would fall into place and i'd get cool and interesting dates. Either I'm taking dating too seriously and that's a turn off, and or things have changed a lot since I last used OkCupid in 2021. Now it feels like all my matches are looking for an excuse not to meet with me. In the case of this David Lynch-fan I just matched with, I might come across as a try-hard. Too much thought, and too many commas.

I also think that constantly matching with people who later turn me down is because of my age, and or my occupation as a teacher, or because of my interests in making art, which, for many might indicate that I'm less income driven, less materialistic and therefore poor.

It could also be because app dating has become really toxic, and the field of potential mates is so oversaturated that people are on the apps for the dopamine of anticipation. It's like the gambling addicts hooked on slot machines who actually don't like it when they win because it interrupts their engagement with the machine and the dopamine they get from the anticipation of waiting for the wheels to stop. Could it be that finding a person who's genuinely interested in meeting a partner, is a slight bummer, in that he/she will interrupt the engagement with the app? I think this could be true even for people who don't like the app.

In fact it seems possible that the more negative and bad about yourself the app makes you feel, the more you judge others in the way you think you are being judged on the platform. And so that leads to people getting really entrenched in the app for long term, growing less receptive and open enough to actually meeting someone.

That was my take-away from a telephone date I had the other day with a woman who seemed really defensive right off the bat. Her voice was hard like she was talking to someone who hated her and who she didn't like, and this was her disposition before I really said anything about myself. And when she talked about what she did for fun, like surfing, she said, I still like it even though I'm not good at. It's okay to like things you're not good at. It was rough. I'm struggling enough as it is with not seeing myself as irredeemably damaged beyond repair. These bad experiences, even simple phone calls with people who hate me, reinforce these feelings of being damned and put me in a really dark place. The trick is to not let this inform the way I approach dating, writing profiles that omit things that I think might make people think less of me, like my interests in art, and not letting this turn to bitterness, hating on people before they can hate me. That's usually not a problem though. I rarely blame others for not liking me.

"Yeah, that’s the atomic bomb one. I love the gas-station stop motion from that. I agree about trusting his imagination. Although, i didn’t always feel that way. On my first viewing of The Return, I felt that some of the scenes had missed their mark a little, like Lynch was making up things on the spot that didn’t work. Then the second time I watched, all those awkward scenes suddenly felt perfect. I guess I’m speaking specifically about Dougie in the casino. :) I later learned by watching some behind-the-scenes footage that David is in fact making up some of his films in the moment, as he’s filming. He definitely did this for The Return. I think for a lot of people this is a turn off. No one likes weird for the sake of weird and there’s need for solid meaning behind any ambiguity. But like you said, if you trust Lynch’s imagination, it works, and that is because, I feel, he seems to have tapped into a kind of dream logic we all share. His ideas will resonate with you if you let them and don’t overanalyze. The story will register in your mind on some primal level, even if you can’t explain it. Maybe that’s why I find him so inspiring. Any idea you have, no matter how weird, is valid and should be turned into art without fear that it needs to adhere to a ridged discipline or needs to be defended."

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Maybe if I journal about my app dating experiences they'll be less painful. And they have been painful lately. Each encounter reinforces self-doubt and fears about myself and my future, which looks so incredibly grim. I've always had some amount of optimism about what'll happen next, seeing some degree of possibility in my future, even in times of struggle. Now, I see nothing but dying alone. So suddenly app dating is this high-stakes game where each rejection is a confirmation of the idea that I am no one's cup of tea and will certainly die alone. Maybe this discomfort is normal. This is what motvates people to better themselves and getting higher paying jobs so they'll be more marketable to the opposite sex. Typically I escape into fantasy rather than face harsh reality.

[televisionianestamisimemology]

I adore this genre of GIFs featuring 1980s/early 90s commercials where people combat insomnia and sickness while in bed, using some brand-new, brightly colored pill or cough syrup that promises to "finally let you get the rest you deserve." A nighttime cough and cold wave, perhaps? What should we name it?

In my opinion, there's nothing more dreamlike than the notion of being sick with a fever at 2:10 AM in 1989, delirious from the effects of potent medicine, with the TV on, casting a blue glow from late-night TV you didn't even know existed. Your wife doesn't mind the sound, making an exception to the no-TV-after-10 rule because you can't sleep, and she needs to stay awake to ensure your temperature doesn't exceed 102. The pain and discomfort start to fade as the psychedelic effects of the medicine take hold. Either that, or your brain is overheating, inducing euphoria, and causing the blue glow from the TV to become oversaturated, making the images appear three-dimensional, as if you could step into the screen and become part of the commercial advertising the same nighttime cough and cold medicine you're taking. Coincidence? Or are you dreaming?

Suddenly, you remember what you were saying to your wife when she woke you up an hour ago to take your temperature. "What will the newspapers say when we redo the kitchen?" It had stopped making sense to you after she asked what you meant. What newspapers were you thinking of, and what did that have to do with repairing the kitchen cabinets? Now, however, it's all coming back. When you redo the kitchen cabinets next week, you'll need to place newspapers on the floor to protect the tiles from paint drips.

What will the articles say that will be facing up, ready to catch a drip of paint from the cabinet? Should they be about topics related to cabinets and painting? If they're about something else, the paint won't dry. And as for the delivery driver, will he not realize that the door is now painted the same color as the cabinets and might deliver the wrong package?

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If you think about it, collecting rent from tenants as a landlord shouldn't be called, "passive income" since tenants are working 40 hours a week to keep the roof over their head. There's nothing passive about it. Being a landlord is more like being a dependent child. It should be called, "dependent income", because it's like you're asking all your tenants to be your mommy and daddy, working day and night so you don't have to, to provide you with everything you need to be comfortable plus some extra presents to keep you happy, like a boat.

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I just transferred my lease over to the new tenants, two sisters from Turkey, who I thought were quite charming at first, but after spending 15 minutes talking to them, it turns out they’re raging racists. I wish I recorded that conversation. They kept dropping these incendiary, racist remarks about the neighborhood being overrun by Mexicans/Indian/South Americans who are having babies, and being a burden on the system. They were so casual about it but I could tell it was important to them I agreed, but I gently pushed back, talking instead about my work teaching English to immigrants and how they’re a value to society, and how my students are from Mexico, Columbia, Africa, and TURKEY

It gives me the sense that for some victims of racism, subscribing to the idea of a strict social hierarchy within which they’re above others is comforting. That was the vibe I got from these two sisters, who themselves are immigrants and disadvantaged. 

But I’m just sort of describing the nature of all hatred and elitism. From my experience teaching kids, it’s always the ones who are the most comfortable in their own skin, who are the least exclusive when it comes to with whom they socialize. So this got me thinking that the motivation to demonize people is always present in most people. It’s just the groups we demonize who change depending on what's socially acceptable. 

It’s a thing I see happening. As the public becomes more woke to the fact that the poor are poor due to capitalist economic forces outside of their control, it becomes unacceptable to demonize them. But the old way of thinking that it’s okay to call the poor scum doesn’t just dissolve. That motivation to demonize a group to maintain the stratification of classes for the purposes of establishing one’s own status still exists. And so hatred just moves on to the next group that’s still socially acceptable to demonize. So overweight people were like the last group of people it was okay to dehumanize until the body positivity movement brought awareness that doing so is on par with racism, and so now it’s all about calling lonely men creepy incels. Soon, I predict, people will stop calling depressed men inherently awful when people begin to recognize the mental health crisis happening among them. At this point, the shift will move from men to the rich, which is where it should stay because the rich are in fact scum who are a burden to society :)

I mean this line of reasoning makes me think that being rich is really just about knowing that there are people below you. Is that what it's all about? And if so, is the drive to be rich stronger in societies where the poor are worse off? In America, for example, being poor means being at risk of dying due to lack of access to healthcare, and being forced to live in violent, run-ridden neighborhoods. So the pursuit of wealth is about distancing yourself from the reality of the poor. As evidence that this is true, look at the average middle-class American who has all his/her basic needs met. Now compare that person to an ultrarich and powerful Roman Emperor from 2000 years ago. The middle-class American's quality of life is actually far beyond that of the wealthiest emperor. He/she has access to modern medical science, air conditioning, mental health therapy, all the food they want, etc. So if the pursuit of wealth were just about accumulating things that make life good, Roman emperors wouldn't be driven to wage war to maintain what is essentially, by our standards, just a normal existence.

But I guess, since our status in life determines who we get to sleep with, we are driven by our biological imperative to believe in a social hierarchy of humans, and our need to have people below us. But what happens when someone achieves complete acceptance of all people, seeing everyone who does poorly in life or commits terrible crimes, as just being a victim of not having their needs met as children? What motivates that truly empathetic person, who lives in a world where everyone's humanity is seen as just as real, worthy, and valued as their own?

Since the breakup, I've been the most sensitive I've ever been. Everything makes me sad. And I can't see people get hurt, on TV or on the street. People, through my new frame of reference, are victims. I want everyone to be okay. And maybe this feeling, that all people have value, is making me less motivated by money and status to succeed. At this point, I just want to make enough money to buy a new camera. I also don't want to die alone and so that's really just the thing that is driving me to get a good well-paying teaching position. Not much else.

[televisionianestamisimemology]

One of the potential problems with AI art that I've been trying to formulate is that when it becomes easy to execute an image, the intention behind creating that image becomes less careful. Take this painting, a lovely painting, that probably took the artist weeks to complete. When a piece of art takes this much effort, the concept behind it, in this case, a vase about to fall, is an idea the artist thinks is worthy of this much time and effort. As a result of this barrier to entry for concepts, we get innovative art that expresses ideas that challenge people and does what art is supposed to do, which is to help push culture forward. My thought is that if you make creating an image as striking as this as easy as writing a prompt, there's no barrier to entry for ideas, and the people making the art are not steeped in the discipline with an awareness of its history and iconographic vocabulary. So art will become more like tweets on Twitter with "artists" making hundreds of images based on uninformed whims, basically repeating old ideas, throwing everything against the wall to see what sticks. And art will lose its succinct power and its important function in society. I've already seen this happen with people fawning over AI images that just look like art nouveau threw up on my monitor. They're strikingly vivid images that pop, but they wouldn't and shouldn't exist, because no artist with the amount of skill it takes to paint such an image, would put that much time into what is basically a cheap pastiche of a 120-year-old aesthetic, shallow and devoid of meaning, like an advertisement with no other mission than to ingratiate itself. I know this might sound elitist. The democratization of art is great, but the crafting process plays an important role. It's not an arbitrary barrier. Something will be lost. Maybe. I don't know. actually, forget this.