Its the People, Not the Stuff

I think life is not about what you have, or where you are, or even what you have done. Life is about who you are with and the moments you share with them.

We forget that because our culture emphasizes what kind of home you have, what kind of clothing you have, what kind of phone you have. The first thing people want to know about you is what you do. And we play the ‘places we have been” at parties like its a trump card.

We pursue the larger home, the better career, and newest thing because we think these things are the key to happiness.

But all of that is just the supportive structure for who you are with. Because the interactions between people are how we define ourselves and how we enjoy our lives.

Our happiest moments are when we are with people we love. People are important. Everything is just support for that forgotten fact.

We think that going on vacation will make us happy. But its not the vacation, its the people we enjoy the vacation with that make us enjoy it. We think having a large home will make us happy, but not if you are lonely in your large home.

I’m a depressed introvert and I still know this is true. I may not always want to in the same room with people, but people are the substance of all the best moments of my life. And the worst.

Our culture has made us forget the essential thing that makes human life bearable is humans. The moments between us are the real value in our lives.

How very irrational I am.

This morning I stopped at traffic light and saw a series of Trump lawn signs. After I got over my overwhelming urge to thwart the free election process and pull the signs, I realized I was partly offended by their existence because they surprised me.

They surprised me???

I’m seeing Trump everywhere online, why was surprised? Because my brain separates my real world from my online world. And so when I saw Trump signs in my real world it was REAL. It was more offensive because it is Real World.

I think that some part of my brain equates my online world with fantasy. Online is all just happening in my head, I can’t touch you guys, I can only read you and that means all of my interactions are just thoughts inside my head. Its ultimately not that different than my daydreams. Just stuff that happens in my brain.

The only tangible thing that makes my online experience different than my daydreams is this computer. But the computer’s physical existence is apparently a very transparent veneer – because I was surprised to see Trump signs.

And I’m irrational.

Life is More Expensive When You Don’t Have Money

This is a VERY hard concept to make people living in the comfort of middle class understand. But I’m gonna give it a shot.

3 years ago, I was homeless for a couple of months and when I finally got a job, I found a rooming house the let me have a 6×10 room for 60/wk. This seemed like a miracle. It was shelter I could afford.

But it turned out to be expensive shelter. Because I had no kitchen facilities in the room. And rules against any kind of heating device in the room. So I ended up buying fast food, which is both expensive and bad for you. If I tried to avoid eating 3 – .99 cent burgers a day, I was into much more expensive range.

In the end, I was able to get an apartment for $375/mo and found that my expenses were only a tiny bit higher than when I lived in the rooming house.
BTW – I only got the apt because of a government program. I did not have the money together for a security deposit. Nor would most landlords look at someone who was evicted.

Where you live is huge. Its not just being able to cook, but also being near a decent grocery that has reasonably priced food. The stores in lower socioeconomic neighborhoods called Dollar General, Dollar Store – all more expensive than Kroger (large grocery store). If you are lucky you have an actual Dollar Tree, where things are a dollar.

Being able to buy a lot of something when its on sale sounds frugal. But I live in a very tight budget. When Toilet Paper is on sale, I can’t buy enough to last until the next sale. I can only buy what I can afford now, which is maybe one extra pkg, maybe no extra. Maybe I’m just glad it’s on sale because the last light bulb went out and that’s not a weekly expense for me, so now I have more money toward new light bulbs.

I’m not buying LED bulbs. I’m buying whatever is cheapest. So my electric bill isn’t going down because I can’t afford the immediate expense of an LED bulb. They pay off in the LONG run. But I can’t plan for long run. I can only plan how this pay check will be used.

Most people without enough money do not have credit cards. Many don’t have debit cards because the banks charge them money to have an account because they can’t hold a minimum balance. Or they have been overdrawn too often and the bank refuses to open an account for them at all. Banks will often charge them to cash a paycheck that is DRAWN on the bank because they don’t have an account. So in order to get the money from their paycheck they need to pay money.

Because they don’t have a debit card, they buy pre-paid cards. These are VERY expensive compared to a debit card. So in order to spend money they have to spend extra money. This is why people in lower socioeconomic areas are using cash. Its cheap. But increasingly you need some form of electronic payment card. For example, if you want to rent a nice cheap movie for a $1 at redbox – you need a card. You want to buy or pay for anything online – you need a card.

I won’t even get started on the corporations whose ENTIRE business plan is to prey on people without money. Check Cashing and Pay Day Loan businesses are one of the moral atrocities of this country.

My point is that its easy to save money when you have money. Its cheaper just get and spend the money you already have. It’s easy to get to the cheaper store. It’s easier to buy a lot of what is cheap to save for the future. It’s easy to cook because you have the appropriate tools and appliances. Its easy to choose because you can still get the other thing in case its necessary. Its easier to buy something that is more expensive now but will be cheaper in the long run.

Mostly though, think about will power. Will power is something we exercise when we feel strong. Being poor is a constant drain on your mental and emotional energy. It’s harder to make a conscious choice to not spend money on a frivolous thing when your life is in tatters. And when you are poor, everything is a choice – this OR this. Its rarely this AND this.

Poor people are seeing all the same ads on TV that you are. They are constantly bombarded with the same manufactured desires that companies want you to feel about their products. Do you think it’s easier for them to avoid those wants because they don’t have money and should be just content? Its actually harder to make a good choice when so many things in your life are bad and when everyday you have to make so many of these choices because every damn thing is a value choice. There are studies that show that every choice you make lowers your will power for the next choice.

Poor people are disproportionately overweight and far more of them smoke. You know why? Because life sucks and when life sucks it is WAY harder to make a good choice. Even when you know what the good choice is. So the poor end up spending too much money on things they don’t need like cigarettes and junk food because life just sucks and you grab comfort where you can. And relatively speaking these are easy cheap comforts.

Being poor is not only more expensive, it is littered with hidden obstacles that are invisible from the glorious heights of middle class American security.

I know. I was born in that security and I lived there until 3 years ago. The middle class is blind. It’s more comfortable that way.

CAVEAT: I’m saying this from a US viewpoint. I have no idea if the same is true world wide, but I’m going to guess that it is.

Humans continue to suck

There are humans in the world, adult humans, in their 40s, who do elaborate prank calls just for the fun of it.

And the internet has allowed them to create a gathering place, to feed off of each others ideas and be even greater oozing pus boils on the ass crack of mankind.

Listen to this podcast for the story. But to summarize, a guy had a problem with comcast. He tweeted about it. They resolved it and gave him a discount. Story that happens all over the internet.

A few months later, he gets a call from a comcast rep asking him to delete the tweet. They go back and forth, with the rep comparing keeping the tweet up to keeping a mean tweet up about your girlfriend which you posted during a fight. The rep eventually calls him a dickhole and then he deletes the tweet. Eventually she’s mean enough that he hangs up.

It was a prank. For fun. Not to steal anything, just because this person finds prank phone calls entertaining. Manipulating people is entertaining to her bored self and so why not choose a random stranger and make them severely uncomfortable for awhile.

I’ll be honest. I find prank phone calls with no other purpose than self gratification to be SEVERAL rungs lower than some asshole who would con someone for money or ID over the phone. And I think those vermin are the shit stuck in the butt crack of dirty heroin addicts. But the shit vermin are at least working toward a productive end, not just idly entertaining themselves like the oozy pus pranksters are. It does not justify the behavior, but as a motivation for doing vile things, the search for money is more understandable to me than the search for entertainment.

Humans have always been terrible, but the internet allows us to find other people who enjoy our worst selves. And they create subreddits and websites and skype and then – poof – we have a club of people who support and grow this terrible behavior. Its the dirty underside of all the good things that are the internet. And sometimes I worry about it.

The Power and Danger of Social Media as an Engine for Change

A few days ago, #WhichHilary was trending on Twitter. It was highlighting the various inconsistencies in Clinton’s current position vs her past positions and actions. It was used heavily by Sanders supporters and various Republican Supporters. It had A LOT of traction.

It was started by an activist twitter @guerilladems. That account was suspended soon after the hashtag started trending.

The trending references were removed from Twitter. Upon realizing that it wasn’t working, an alternative hashtag sprang up #whichhilarycensored. That one disappeared too.

Twitter later said it was a mistake.

The Twitter CEO hosted a fundraiser for Clinton.

But it was a mistake.

Right.

Twitter and similar social media have been very powerful agents for change and political focus. Everything from the Arab Spring to Ferguson gain energy and inclusion and focus through social media.

But these things happen on a very limited number of websites. And those websites control the content. So essentially what happens in the world is now controlled at the pleasure of the website. At the pleasure of a very small number of people.

Its a terrible power to place in the hands of a human.

We like to think that the web is, for better or worse, a truly democratic place. Where the voices of the many can come together and express their similar views. Voices that used to never be heard.

But ultimately they can only be seen if that website allows it.

People will blame Clinton and it is not unfair to do so. I have a hard time doubting that someone in her camp didn’t make a call. But the real power in this situation isn’t from the person begging the favor. Its in the person who had the ability to grant such a favor. A very powerful favor. That favor represents more power than should be given to anyone.

I have always been a proponent of the idea that a website has the right to control the comments that happen on their website. I would NEVER allow any sort of hateful comment to live on my blog. I would censor it in a heartbeat.

But I have to question whether places like twitter or facebook have grown beyond the bounds of private gardens where individuals can control what happens on their sites. Perhaps they are now a truly public forum, as much as a public park is and as such, perhaps it really is a place where the rights of free and uncensored speech apply.

What do you think?

Expressing Emotions

The problem with having a language is the belief that our emotions should have a corresponding verbal expression.

Emotions are primordial. They don’t correlate well with words, despite thousands of years of expressing them that way.

Dogs could teach us a lot on that subject. They manage to express emotion and support without any verbal language at all.

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Being Framed by my own Mind

All the remembered and current events in my life change when I stare at them.

The way they look depends on how my brain is feeling at the time.

When my brain is seeing them from the cesspools of depression, all of my actions look like failures, all the events look like disasters, and I am a pretty bad person all around.

When my brain is seeing them from a healthy happy perspective, all of those same actions are reframed into necessary actions, learning curves, challenges I can find a silver lining for and I’m a pretty decent human.

Everything in my life is framed by my mental disposition at the time. Nothing has a black and white truth.

Humans don’t have a solid line inside of them that we can use to judge the world or our own actions with any accuracy. So we reach out to some outside reference point because if we look too long at the ever changing landscape of our past, we start to recognize the wavering nature of our reality and truth becomes a hazy construct.

We realize – Nothing is ever true.

That is the attraction of looking outside of ourself for some unchangeable set of truths by which to measure our life. That is the attraction of fundamentalist religion.

I love the end of the year “People are Awesome” video compilations

Its a compilation of amazing and often stupid things people have been filmed doing.

Extreme feats generally – like jumping off buildings, acrobatic impossibilities, rolling a car, etc.

Almost all of the things are deliberately done and done with skill. Which is why I like them.

I think about what someone from 1816 would think while watching these videos. Were there people who could do such amazing things then? Or are these strange extremes a sign of how much leisure time we have today? Or in many cases, how much spendable money we have.

I don’t really have a desire to do most of the things in these videos. But I do have a desire to have that level of commitment to achievement. The energy and motivation to push myself to the limit of my ability. I have never had that. Mostly because I have no idea where to find the energy/motivation.

But its inspiring to know it’s possible.

Clean Sheets and Clean Nightgown = Bliss

I just washed my sheets and put put on a clean nightgown and now I’m sitting in bed feeling all kinds of lovely.

Its these tiny familiar moments – little things that can be savored that make life worthwhile.

There are quite a few of these moments in life, but we tend not to savor them. To take a moment and just luxuriate in their comfort.

I would argue that these moments are very best moments in our life.

The very safe warmth of being cuddled by someone you love.

The feeling of being gifted something precious that is created when a cat curls up and purrs next to you.

The feeling of unbroken love that emanates from a toddler who hugs you.

The feeling of home and nostalgia that comes from a familiar kitchen smell.

The feeling of love from seeing something created for you by your grandmother.

They are everywhere. Look for them. These tiny moments that make you aware of life being rather fine after all.

You can usually find or create at least one per week if not a solid half dozen.

Spoilsport, Me.

I don’t like practical jokes. I never get the humor when its played on me, I never end up laughing after the initial scare, inconvenience or pain. I get angry and I stay angry.

But it is bad form not to accept the joke played on you with grace, so I keep the long term anger inside and let my tormentors enjoy their laugh, with culturally appropriate grace.

But I don’t understand the point. Why is it wonderfully funny to scare the crap out of someone, make their life harder or more painful? It’s not a surprise to anyone but the victim, but still the jokers laugh hysterically.

Taken apart, a practical joke is just cruel. But we don’t call it cruel, because we have decided it wasn’t done with evil intent. It was done to be funny. Why isn’t it considered evil to do a mean thing to someone that you like, just so you can laugh? I don’t know.

I think the laughter is what gives people the free pass. We are OK with a lot of crappy things if people laugh. There’s a whole bit that Conan O’Brian does with somebody in his office where he’s basically a dick. And we laugh, so its OK. If it wasn’t funny, then we would think that Conan is a dick.

But I think Conan is being a dick in any case. Just like I think people who pull practical jokes are often being dicks. But our culture thinks, hey its OK that they were a dick to that person because its funny.

There is a whole subculture on the internet of ADULT people who run elaborate phone pranks on people. They get together and swap stories and ideas. Things like calling a person and pretending to be from Verizon Customer Service and trying to get someone who tweeted an angry complaint down. They end up berating the tweeter. Its beyond my understanding. Why would you basically call to annoy and upset another human that you don’t eve know. As a JOKE.

I wonder if the practical joke is the evil part of our brain, that each of us carries around, finding a harmless way to get some exercise.

I know I’m not alone in hating the practical joke, but I am in the minority. I’m also in the even smaller minority of people who think that being a dick to entertain yourself or other people is a terrible way to live your life.

cranky kid