Really Who is Paying Attention?

This essay (?) was an email I sent to Alonzo Boden, http://www.alonzobodden.com/, a comedian who runs a podcast titled "Who's Paying Attention". I enjoy his sense of humor about his political and social views.

Really Who is Paying Attention?

It starts out you think you found something new, you figured it out and you're outraged. You're not going to sit there passively and just take it. You are going to share your revelation and it's going to make things different. You are going to know the truth and that's going to make things right somehow.

Then over time you start falling into place just like the rest of them. So what are you going to do to make things right, what is the better alternative? You don't know, just like no one really knows. So all you can do is see how things are wrong.

Then you start seeing the same pattern repeat itself over and over. What at first was this brilliant inspiring revelation that changes your life and makes you question everything, now becomes this rehash of a single thought. You thought once you saw the truth, it would lead to a brand new world of other new truths and that would get you somewhere. Turns out there weren't all that much going on, the Big Secret wasn't too complicated, or as much of it as you figure out at least wasn't.

Without any solution of your own, all you can do is repeat the same criticism of the same types of actions that repeat in a pattern over and over. Where did you get, nowhere. Except before you didn't know it was nowhere, cause you didn't realize The Truth. Now you know it's Nowhere and there's no where for you to go, least far as you can figure out. You were brilliant enough to realize you're Nowhere, and sufficiently stupid to have no way of getting out now that you've found it.

That's how I feel about shit I'm powerless to do anything about. Cause to really make a movement, a cause, there involves to any degree two things: manipulation and coercion. Then you need the people to be somewhat ready, somewhat malleable, similar enough to your will that you can bend them towards it. Cause who really 'gets it' truly the right cause? Most people are clueless to some degree, in it for a wrong reason to some extent, slightly resentful inwardly of a couple things, playing along until something better or flashier or more exciting comes up.

People don't want to think coherently all the time about what's best for themselves and the rest of the collective. People don't want to compromise and figure out how much is too much and when it's not enough. All of that is exhausting and stressful and potential for failure. They want to choose with their emotions, and their impulses rather than their rational brain. No matter how much it might be a bad choice, they *know* they don't like the guy that's different from them. And that they like sex, and the feeling of power possessing weapons and wealth, and feeling like they are special chosen privileged superior. We don't need to reason or logic those intuitions, we just know they are right because that's the way our psychology works.

So I see three options the problem presents. 1) Champion your own cause, one you believe is right, and do all the manipulation and coercion that can be tolerated by your personal morals that you can stomach until you get the people to move over to the 'correct' side, that you believe is right. 2) Forget about everything you seen, ignore it, accept it, or deny it and move on with your life doing something else you'd rather focus your attention on and get out of its way, and move around it until it goes away or you have to do something to move it aside. 3) Bitterly resent it constantly and refuse the first two options and fight with yourself over knowing why it's wrong and bad, but feel victimized by not doing anything about it.

I think your personality kind of decides for you what option you take, though you can force a different option if you go against your own nature. But then you're not really being yourself, it will always feel labored not natural. Some external influence drives you. It won't feel right unless it's the option fits your personality. At the end of the day, you know whether you like the seize of power and to lead and control a group against your opposition. You know if you don't give a fuck whose leader's face is on the dollar as long as you've got plenty of them and can spend them however and wherever you like. You know if you'd rather not inconvenience the minimum wage minority worker at the drive through by telling him that he gave you a Mountain Dew instead of a Pepsi and got your burger wrong.

But whoever you are and whatever role suits you, there's no part in this charade that is 'better' than another. Nobody's saying let everybody be lions ripping each other to pieces for power, or we'd be better off as indifferent self-serving cats, or that everyone should be nice docile sheep. Whatever your role is, you play it to the best of your individuality. You exemplify that mean son of a bitch that gets things done by breaking a few eggs. Or you go show the rest of the world you can have fun while the rest of the idiots kill each other over something stupid. Or you remind people how nice the world can be with gentle caring fellow human beings.

Then there's the bitter tormented poet or artist. All he can do is suffer and create. Invent and imagine beautiful creations to cast away his pain. He absorbs pain from the world and cannot adapt to it. He salvages what good he can and molds it, extends it to become art. Art is a vessel to take him away from a contradictory reality. A means of transcending beyond his time and environment, to a hope and a vision of a more nurturing and hospitable world.

So who's paying attention... and really *who* is paying attention?  Who?