Category: philosophy

edited out

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I’ve noticed a weird trend among my extended family over the years.

For whatever reason, they edit us out of their public lives. I’m not really sure why; it’s not like we’re over here spouting off Trumpisms or committing acts of wanton criminality.

Still, somehow, we never seem to make it into the pictures. If you searched online and tried to find me or my stepdaughter in any picture with my granddaughter (that we didn’t post ourselves), you’d never know we’d even met. Similarly, though pictures of my nieces are routinely posted with friends and other family members and friends of the family, we, despite having spent far more time and energy on the girls, are noticeably absent. These pictures are often accompanied by comments about how great that person is for the kids.

The suggestion, by way of omission, is that we are not good for the kids.

Indeed, at both nieces’ graduations, in which we were present, we weren’t mentioned at all. Well, technically, the second one, no one got thanked at all, it was more about musing on being empty nesters, but in the first one, well, every rando from birth to that day got mentioned, no matter how little time they spent with or on the girls, except us, who were with them more than anyone, except their own parents.

My youngest niece and my wife have a ridiculously close relationship and yet, for some reason, even she can’t make the cut.

It’s a gripe I’ve had for a while, but I just can’t figure it out. It’s not like we’re embarrassing white trash, out here spouting QAnon and JK Rowling.

I’m pro-equality, anti-racist, anti-bigotry of all kinds, anti-fascism, pro-free health care, pro-basic income and taxing the rich (in fact, let’s just do away with billionaires altogether), and I believe all people should be evaluated based on the things they actually do, not whatever random defining fact, like who they’re into or skin colour, happens to be one part of their make-up. Assuming that’s all there is to a person (even if that person is yourself) is such an injustice to people as they are.

We’re all so much more. We contain multitudes, and the only thing we should really judge by is action.

Anyways, not complaining, I get it. People curate their social media and they don’t want people they consider “lesser than” ruining their carefully crafted social images. I personally want my reputation to be based on what I do, not the fucking fluff people put on Instagram.

We all know that shit’s B.S. anyway. Your performative liberalism is better than being a Trumper, for sure, but it’s also shittier than being, you know, a good fucking person.

Disingenuous is better than evil; that doesn’t mean it’s good. Same with hypocrisy. If your hypocrisy is getting people killed, obviously, that’s worse, but if it’s just stalling real progress because the only thing it does is serve your reputation by being part of the collective (and socially and mentally toxic) online outrage?

Well, shit, dude. That sucks too, just not as bad.

It doesn’t help anyone.

And shouldn’t we aim to be better than, you know, not as bad as the other guy?

I mean, I know that’s what I’m aiming for, even if I fall short quite a bit. Being a good person, a happy person (something I’ve not entirely given up on, despite the last forty-eight years of evidence), that’s all I’ve ever wanted. To write me off as an alcoholic redneck and ignore every other aspect of me and the rest of my family (and I suspect a great deal of this is rooted in ableism, even if it’s unconscious), well, then, fuck.

That’s pretty shitty, and it doesn’t feel good.

Maybe we strive for better, yeah?

Target: 1300 words
Written: 1203 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: World Of Ptavvs, Larry Niven
Comics: Tomb Raider: The Greatest Treasure Of All 0, Tomb Raider 19-20, Tomb Raider Journeys 2
Music: Weezer (Teal Album), Weezer

twenty-twenty-five on speed

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Is it just me, or is this year moving like a freight train whose throttle is wide open and stuck down?

Barreling toward an inevitable conclusion that can only be catastrophe?

I’ll admit, Bad Neighbours, being largely about conflict and unreality, about dichotomy and the endless fight of us versus them, it’s done a number on me.

I know, as a writer, you have to live in the space about which you’re writing. When I did Romance #1, it was fun and goofy, ironic and sardonic. Western Cradle was about trying to make shit out of suffering. The Mungk was months of exploration into trauma and hopelessness.

The fatalism nearly got me.

But I’m largely conflict-averse in my life, so this obsessing over the fight, being at war, at odds with each other, especially in light of the world’s political situation, it’s anathema. And it’s bleeding into the rest of my life.

I’ll be glad when this is done, for more reasons than just completion and the pride of having finished it.

Target: 1300 words
Written: 1794 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: East Wind: West Wind, Pearl Buck
Comics: The Seasons 6-7, Escape 1
Music: We Rebuilt This City, Closet Monster

deja vu

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Did I do the reverse Schrodinger’s Cat?

Can you do a reverse deja vu, or is that just, you know, everyday living?

You don’t remember any of it. Is reverse deja vu all the shit that you forget that you did, because it was so unremarkable?

Target: 1300 words
Written: 1784 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: Magician: Apprentice, Raymond Feist
Comics: Napalm Lullaby 8, The Seasons 1, The Sacrificers 14, The Holy Roller 9
Music: We Built This City - The Very Best Of Starship, Starship

reverse schrodinger’s cat

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I had this in my notes about the nature of “alternative facts” and how conspiracy theories, no matter how insane, can go viral and I thought: that’s exactly the mentality the right takes towards reality.

Schrodinger’s cat is basically a thought experiment where if one puts a cat in a box, so one can’t see or hear it, one doesn’t actually know if the cat still exists.

The idea is that the fact of the cat’s life or death is entirely unknown, until the box is opened and facts are gathered. Until that point, the cat is neither dead or alive, but could simultaneously be either.

In right wing land, the opposite is true. As facts are revealed, the right wing becomes increasingly convinced that the entire proposition, whatever it is (the economy tanking, concentration camps, the illegality and immorality of masked men abducting people off the streets in the name of “law”), is entirely false.

However, the fewer facts there are, in this land, the more likely a right winger is to believe a thing is true (Haitians eating dogs in Springfield, the Bowling Green Massacre, 2020 election bullshit).

Basically, in a right winger’s mind, the fact that you can’t see the cat is proof of its existence – the cat must be alive. Ironically, opening the cat and showing it as it is, either way, dead or alive, is proof that the cat does not, in fact, exist.

I mean, it’s not a perfect theory, but you get the gist.

The stupider and less proven a conspiracy is, the more likely it is to be true, according to the right wing. See: Pizzagate.

The more logical and factually proven a conspiracy is, the more likely, in their minds, to be utterly untrue, a total cover-up, entirely fictional: see, Trump and Epstein, or any of the various grifts that piece of garbage has run on the American people.

One can only hope at some point that reality asserts itself, but the reality of their unreality is currently shaping the direction of the rest of our reality, creating an insane cognitive dissonance between where to draw the lines of real and unreal, which is what they want.

You can’t fight insanity with logic, and you can’t fight bullshit if you don’t know where to draw the line of truth.

I mean, we all know where the line is, and what’s bullshit, but we’re not the ones that need to be convinced.

Reality will come for us all, but whether it’s the reality of reality crashing down on their heads, or their unreality going scorched earth on our disbelief, either way, it won’t end well for somebody.

Or anybody, really.

Fuck.

Target: 1300 words
Written: 1349 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: Magician: Apprentice, Raymond Feist
Comics: The Sacrificers 12-13, Grommets 6, Napalm Lullaby 7
Music: We Built This City, Closet Monster

mary, mary, quite contrary

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I’m a contrarian. I don’t do it on purpose. There’s just something in my brain that hears an opinion or a thing accepted as fact and can’t help but play devil’s advocate and ask: what if it wasn’t?

It’s an absurd desire to see the other that I can’t quite avoid. I used to call it opening worlds, and that’s a good an explanation as any, but it comes down to this. Whatever the view is, I want to see the other one.

Or another one. There’s rarely just two. It means constant growth, and it avoids dogma, but it does tend to put one on the outs with everyone else.

Always asking the question: what are the other ways to look at this? What if it’s not?

What if there’s another way?

What if there’s a hundred?

What about a thousand?

What if it’s infinite?

It’s taken me a long time to get used to the idea that this will never end, that there can be no end to perspective and questions.

And if puts me at odds with humanity, well, so fucking be it.

Target: 1300 words
Written: 1026 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: Hammered, Elizabeth Bear (finally, enjoyed it, but too much interference)
Comics: The Sacrificers 6, The Holy Roller 2-4
Music: Even If And Especially When, Screaming Trees

introspective return

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Being up north, as frustrating as it can be at times (family, am I right?), always leaves me introspective, and as we wound back down highway 11 toward home, I could help but think:

Has chastising someone for saying something politically incorrect ever actually worked?

My mom said Indian; my sister-in-law barked INDIGENOUS at her, with vitriol, like my mother was some raging bigot who wasn’t just stuck in the habit of saying Indian for over seventy years.

I see this all the time online and every time, I think, and you wonder why people radicalize away from you?

One could say, “I think they go by indigenous now,” in a nice, non-condescending tone, thereby sparking a conversation and education that ends amicably with at least one party elevated with an updated viewpoint, to hopefully, do better the next time around. If that party still resists at that point, and won’t listen to an updated viewpoint, well, then, yeah, okay. Maybe you got a bigot.

But most people aren’t that bad, and by escalating so quickly, and implying that they are horrible people right off the hop, well, you’re invalidating everything they are in favour of a label of bigot, fascist, whatever other horrible thing you’d like to use, over something that more often than not, is more micro than macro-aggression.

Think of it like this: you probably don’t think you’re a bad person. You likely don’t think you’re perfect, you might even think of yourself as being flawed or broken or screwed-up, but you probably don’t think you’re evil. You might think you make everyone’s lives worse, but that’s because you’re a fuck-up who can’t get their shit together, and not because you’re, you know, Hitler.

But let’s say one day that you use the word (and let’s keep it kind of ridiculous here) “ginger”.

And maybe a family member immediately turns to you and escalates, labelling you an absolute bigot, and telling that they go by “rouged” now, and that using ginger makes you a horrible racist and probably supportive of all the anti-trans, homophobic, sexist nonsense out there, and a Republican while you’re at it.

Now, you, even thinking you’re kind of a loser, probably don’t think that of yourself. And so, how do you respond?

Like pretty well everyone does when they feel they’ve been unjustly accused – defensively.

You get your back up. You get defensive because this person is trying to invalidate all the good parts of you,. And no matter how screwed up you are, at your core, you know you’re not that, you’re not EVIL, but still, they reduce you down to this one thing – rougephobic.

And with that, all the other nonsense gets conflated with that level of bigotry. If you’re transphobic, you must be anti-gay as well. You must hate lesbians and black people and Latinos and women. If you’re a women, you must be a TERF and probably pro-life as well.

Of course, you know you’re not that, so even if you don’t say it out loud, you push back. You internalize your indignation and all of a sudden, all these disingenuous assholes talking about the elitist left looking down their nose at you, start making a bit more sense. And you’re sucked in, a little more each time it happens, until you’re a full blown Trumper (I mean, hopefully not that far, but imagine this isn’t just one person doing this to you – it’s a million people, a literal million, in some cases, online, constantly, without cease. How far down the rabbit hole might you go in your anger at being unjustly labelled Evil).

And all this is knowing that if they’d just said, “I think they go by rouged now” in an informative and non-judgmental way, sparking a brief, but important conversation, you might have avoided any of that, avoided the defensive trigger response and even possibly, gained an ally.

Education, not condemnation. These are the keys to winning back those on the edge, those that just maybe need a little bit of knowledge, rather than vilification.

These are the things I think about as I drive.

And they’re the things that are killing the left – why we get smaller every day, while the lunatics swell in size.

Target: 1300 words
Written: 1256 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: Hammered, Elizabeth Bear
Comics: A Righteous Thirst For Vengeance 10, Deadly Class 54-55, The Scumbag 14
Music: The Essential Weird Al Yankovic, Weird Al Yankovic (sometimes, absence makes the heart totally forget how awesome something is)

last day

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I spent much of the day on the water, trying to ignore everyone. I could float forever.

The sky was giant blue; there was beer on the shore.

My dogs seem tired, but happy, a little nervous.

The water is cool and refreshing. How nice it must feel to go deep.

Would that I could settle into a soft buzz.

Sadly, I don’t do drugs (anymore).

I do kind of miss them, though; just not all the shit around them. A whiskey to sharpen the edges, a cold beer to take it off. A nice glass of wine to sparkle, a long, low rum to get happy, man.

Nothing beats mushrooms.

Except mushrooms while staring at the great white North, falling into endless stars, rapt with aurora borealis.

I will miss here.

I hate the fields.

Target: 1300 words
Written: 256 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: Hammered, Elizabeth Bear (maybe someday, maybe someday)
Comics: Deadly Class 52-53, A Righteous Thirst For Vengeance 8-9
Music: Essential Thorogood, George Thorogood & The Destroyers (oh fuck, did I ever need this, especially after that execrable Billy Joel - anything for a lifeline out of saccharine, talentless, mediocre tripe)

woo, doggie

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I’m playing in the land of metaphor this morning, detailing exactly where the left coincides with the right and the metaphors that bind them, in the context of Bad Neighbours.

Ironically, it ended being filtered through the judge’s verdict on the Hockey Canada sexual assault case acquittal, in which she posited that while we are all on the train of believing victims, doing so without examination essentially means applying the doctrine of guilty until proven innocent, when our system runs on innocent until proven guilty. There was enough conflicts, contradictions and assertions that didn’t agree with established facts in the case for the judge to reasonably decide that she could not say there was a crime committed, beyond doubt.

Reading the specifics of her verdict, I would probably make the same choice.

And it’s important, the distinction of innocent until proven guilty versus guilty until proven innocent. How many of us had listened to someone make assertions about the behaviour of their ex, or a coworker, or a friend or enemy that had no actual bearing in reality, even if we didn’t know it at the time? How many of us have had someone assert that their significant other was mistreating them, or playing the role of victim, or rationalizing away bad or regrettable behaviour on their part, because they didn’t actually want to take responsibility for what happened?

Most people don’t want to be responsible for their own actions. They live in denial. They falsely equivocate, they exaggerate, they outright lie, often to the point of deluding themselves as to what’s actually real, in order to avoid accountability for what’s ultimately on them.

You say you want freedom? You want truth?

You have to accept two things then: understand that total freedom comes with total responsibility – these are inseparable – and secondly, that reality is not what you want it to be, it’s what is, and if you want truth, you have to be willing to suspend your beliefs and the little fictions you tell yourself about yourself, or about the way things “should” be, and surrender your open, empty mind to what is, no matter the consequences.

Freedom is responsibility. Freedom is accepting consequence. Truth is what is, it’s not what you’d like to to be, or how you want to frame it. It’s what is.

So, innocent until proven guilty is the better way to go, because believing the accuser means automatically accepting their version of the truth, which we all know can be a highly creative, even self-deluding fiction at times. It can also be true, but that’s what the process is meant to find out (and admittedly, that depends on the competence and relative framework of the process, whether truly fair, fact-finding mission or kangaroo court). But guilty until proven innocent It’s not about what is; it’s about what’s asserted; it’s hypothesis without testing. You claim donkeys can fly, you have to prove that they can. The people you’re telling they can don’t.

That’s the way it works.

And that’s infinitely better than someone shouting, “Donkeys can fly!” and then having everyone that heard them run around scrambling to build wings for mules to make it true.

Target: 1300 words
Written: 2749 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: Odds On, Michael Lange (John Crichton)
Comics: Low 22, Black Science 40-41, Deadly Class 39
Music: Endless Wire, The Who

martyrs and charlatans

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I once saw a chart that showed someone who worked super hard but made no connections versus someone who didn’t work, but made nothing but connections, and basically, it stuck them in two categories.

All work and no connection creates self-imposed martyrdom, while all connection and no work creates charlatans. Bullshitters versus drudge horses, with those that can find the balance (working hard and creating worthwhile things versus connecting with fans, with industry leaders and insiders, in a genuine, non-bullshit manner) as the true exceptions, the step above the rest. A martyr can find its work recognized and suddenly reach popularity, only to flame out over time (but still leaving behind good work).

A charlatan can become popular for nothing, and lose everything and be leave nothing behind.

I’m a martyr right now, that’s for sure.

May I never be a charlatan.

May I someday find the balance.

Target: 1300 words
Written: 1114 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: Odds On, John Lange (Michael Crichton)
Comics: Deadly Class 37-38, Black Science 39, Low 21
Music: Endgame, Rise Against (palate cleanser after Don Henley)