D.O.C.

When Claire asked me to go down to Iowa to see her, I was instantly terrified. I’d never flown in a plane before. Never taken a trip out of state alone. And how awkward would it be? I was awkward as fuck when she visited this last summer and I’d seen her two days that were days apart. How much more uncomfortable might a whole week of being around her in a place entirely unfamiliar to me be?

The anxiety was immobilizing. The automatic thoughts were putting in overtime. I kept telling myself, I have to. I have to do this.

So I planned on asking for the vacation time. Before I got to that point — and yes, I was putting it off — I see on Facebook that she’s now in a relationship with a guy she never once mentioned to me despite the frequent texting as of late. Stranger still, I wasn’t so much angry and jealous as I was embarrassed.

Though I’d been ignoring it, the realization had been creeping up on me that she doesn’t care about me the way I care about her. So often she has vented to me via text, and I never did. Until recently. Just once. And she texted back some time later and was polite about it. I’d apologized for the venting and she said I could vent to her whenever I needed to, which again, was a nice thing for her to say, but I could feel the deception. She really didn’t care. I stopped a moment to truly question the bond I always felt we shared. All this time, has it not been that she loves me, at least not in some romantic way, but that she loves the fact that I love her?

In any case, I’ve been blind to the fact that this is one-sided. Which sort of makes sense. She never seemed to get involved with a guy that actually knew her, and that never made sense to me — and I’ve come to accept it doesn’t have to. She never seemed too interested in probing my depths as I did hers, either, and perhaps it was selfish for me to be hurt by that. It is what it is and I’ve been neglecting to see it.

So I decided it was high time to just let go. Fuck it. Stick a fork in it. Her and I? It’s simply not going to happen and I’m tired of the fucked up fairy tale I keep telling myself that eventually it will. After all, wasn’t it I who used to critique her for chasing after a fairy tale that was simply incompatible with objective reality? And here I was. Here I had been for over two decades.

This was my epic hypocrisy.

Since I met her, thoughts of her, dreams of her have been my drug of choice. I was addicted to an illusion and it was time to bear the withdrawal and just get over it.

I was never going to be what she needed. She was never going to be what I needed. Fuck, I’m still not entirely certain I know what I need. It’s more akin to a process of elimination when it comes to me. And so another one bites the dust.

I still hope the best for her and still consider her a friend, of course, though I must admist I am perplexed a bit as to why she didn’t tell me, as she’s told me some incredibly private things over the years. Maybe she thought it would hurt me or maybe she just didn’t feel it needed to be said.

Whichever. Whatever. In any case, it’s none of my fucking business.

I am glad it happened, though; I prefer being aware as opposed to being in denial or being delusional, and I do believe that was where I had been before this realization.

For a short time afterward, it was as if I were riding a high. As a friend of mine put it, it was as if I had given away my power to her and had now gotten it back. I felt calmer, more controlled. I had this boost of mental energy. The anxiety went down, my depression lifted.

Or was it coincidence? After all, I’d been trying to lay off the booze again. I’d also started taking CBD in the hopes that it might alleviate the depression and anxiety, and it did seem to be helping. So all of that may have been a factor as well.

I don’t think I’ll ever get married, as I enjoy my isolation too much, and that never works out in a relationship, or so it has been my experience. Even getting into another relationship after — what has it been? A decade and a half? — seems inconceivable, and for precisely the same reasons.

If there was any girlfriend of mine that I should have stayed with, any relationship that actually held promise, it was Anne. That was something that struck me shortly thereafter. She was intense, intelligent, responsible, incredibly sexual, knew how to make her way in the world, and I do believe that she was the only one who honestly loved me. She just concluded, much as I now have with respect to Claire, that I didn’t care for her the same way she cared for me.

Was that true? I was so hung up on Kate, another ex-girlfriend, at the time that I couldn’t even say. And when Anne and I had had a chance years earlier, I was hung up on Claire. Both Claire and Kate were Virgos from California, had tattoos of the sun, moon and stars on their body — and both obscured any hope Anne had of really reaching me. It was like a ghost taking on alternate manifestations that always stood between her and I.

Shit happens. What goes around, comes around. So it goes, I suppose.

It’s been eight years, so as shallow as it sounds, I do hope I get laid again before I shed my mortal coil, but I’m not holding my breath. But my naive hopes for the perfect and longlasting intimate relationship is all but dead in me.

I feel like I’m at a point in my life where certain possibilities are falling away — and though it initially might seem otherwise, I’m quickly convinced that it’s not entirely a bad thing. Closing the book on particular potentialities, tying up loose ends, it’s like decluttering your life. And focusing on changing what you can, accepting what you can’t be and just letting go: it’s actually quite liberating.

Waves of Man-Hate and Fears of Intimacy.

During work, I’d gone out into the dining room and passed by a table where the wife of one of the managers sat solemnly, head down, lost in her phone. I knew a day or two before that the family had to put down their dog, who they’d had for under a year and who had been very sick for most of the time they’d had her. As I walked passed, I said that I’d heard, and that I was sorry, and as I did so I instinctively touched her arm with my fingers. It was meant as a comforting touch and for all I know that was also how she’d interpreted it, but for the remainder of the day that moment constantly came back to me, sort of haunting me as it played over and over in my head as I worried that I’d intruded on her personal space by touching her and left her feeling violated in some way, which could only have elevated or further aggravated the suffering she was already going through.

At the same time, I realized how absurd this worrying train of thought was. Even so, you can’t be too careful anymore, as things have gotten so bloody absurd that such worrying trains of thought just might be justified.

In today’s culture, the man-hate is strong. It’s surged again lately on Facebook due to the whole heartbeat bill here in Ohio. Men want to control the bodies of women, say the memes, and some begin there and run down the list. Men have held us back, raped us, and so on.

It finally hit the peak in my mind yesterday. To the point that I can’t help throwing my fucking hat into the ring.

Look, I happen to be passionately pro-choice. I also have a penis, and know of others bearing that same kind of appendage who are also pro-choice, so no, not all men feel they have the right to control the bodies of women. I also know women who are anti-abortion, so there are also some women that want to control the bodies of all women. So the man-hate? It isn’t justified. You’re framing it wrong. You’re manipulating facts so that they fit the man-hate narrative. Just fucking stop it. Don’t alienate men who are on your side and ignore the many women who are not.

By written word, spoken word, protests, you should certainly speak out against unjust mindsets, laws, policies, behaviors, and groups of people defined by the ideas and ideals they embrace, particularly when they impose upon your rights — not by groups of people defined by their skin color, genitals, sexual persuasion or country of birth.

It’s a war of ideas, as Sam Harris has explained another issue.

It was the same thing when the #metoo movement amped up, with some loud voices damning men as a whole for being prejudiced towards women as a whole, as if they were trying to cure sexism with — well, sexism. News flash: Two wrongs don’t make a right and you don’t defeat an enemy by becoming them.

Aside from that: you’re just plain wrong.

Not all men treat women like that. Stop being so absolutist. And while we’re on the subject, stop throwing everything into the category of sexual assault. Making someone feel uncomfortable because you verbally came onto them like a naive jackass is not at all equivalent to forcably inserting your part into her hole.

And stop pretending like we should accept accusation without investigation, too — that to doubt an accusation makes one “a part of the problem.” Blind faith is never a good idea.

And by the way: men? They get raped, too.

Again, this makes me glad I’m not in the dating scene. That I’ve given up hope of so much as getting laid ever again. I was anxiety prone before all of this, terrified of approaching a girl or making a move as I might make them feel uncomfortable or violated. Today’s climate has only delivered seeming justification to what many had formerly dismissed as ridiculous paranoia on my part.

In Bad Company.

As stupid as we all too often seem to be as a civilization — particularly when you try and take the wide-angle lens, third person perspective — perhaps our path of self-destruction is not an uncommon one.

I remember hearing once that “intelligence is a failed mutation,” but I’ve come to disagree. There may be species infinitely far more intelligent than ourselves who aren’t in the appropriate environment and/or have failed to evolve the bodies necessary to manipulate their environment so as to develop a high-tech civilization. Dolphins or octopuses that developed on an ocean planet would have neither the right bodies or the right environment, for instance.

Perhaps when an intelligent species is in the appropriate environment and has evolved the biological technology necessary to manipulate the environment and build artificial high technology, however, they have a damned good chance of engaging in species suicide and potentially bringing most life on their home planet down with them. So perhaps one of the reasons for the Great Silence in the cosmos is that the Great Filter is ahead of us — that advanced, technological civilizations may be relatively common but have the tendency to kill their planet and therefore their high civilization before they migrate to space.

This might be inevitable, for instance, if such a civilization needs fossil fuels to achieve our heights of civilization and beyond. If so, perhaps all such civilizations also need to change course before the damage is irreversible and civilization collapses — and maybe intelligent species just aren’t that likely to change course. If they can migrate to space and become an interplanetary civilization, perhaps that helps to some degree, but unless those factions of the species are self-sufficient and need not rely on the home planet to sustain their existence, it wouldn’t help much at all.

And maybe climate change and ecological destruction isn’t the only element we share with fallen global civilizations across the universe. Maybe the kind of political divide we’re presently experiencing in the US and the general disagreement on what constitutes truth is not unique to this time, place and species but is instead a recurring theme across life-bearing worlds that have developed intelligent and capable creatures.

It’s a thought that’s been plaguing me lately, and it certainly doesn’t make me feel any better about our curcumstances.

In more ways that one, we may not be alone.

UBI’s Survival Advantage.

Imagine there are two groups of hunter-gatherers, each of which move around within a fixed territory in accordance with the seasons, just as our species appears to have done for most of it’s history.

The philosophy of the first group goes as follows: if one member makes a kill, they get the largest portion, but the rest of the group members get equal portions. This ensures that the hunter be rewarded and that the rest of the members don’t starve. This also ensures that all members of the group will have sufficient energy to attempt a kill the next day. It also ensures that when another member of the group makes a kill, the same will occur — the successful hunter today, if he is unsuccessful tomorrow, will not starve, either. It will also maintain services other than hunting, as members of the group that may honesty suck at hunting but can create weapons to help the hunt or facilitate forms of leisure or other services that are enjoyed between the hunts are also provided an equal portion of food and so have the resources they need to keep providing those services to the group. All individuals can develop their talents due to the cooperation and acknowledged interdependence of the group members.

Imagine now that a different group exists with a different philosophy: the one who makes the kill eats it and the other members of the group get nothing and go hungry, at least for the day. Going without food, however, they may not have sufficient energy to hunt so well the following day, or to provide any other services to the group, for that matter. This serves no one, even the successful hunter of yesterday, as starving individuals in the group may gang up on the successful hunter. If they have the energy, that is. And if they don’t, or even begin dying due to starvation, the group that as a whole once gave all members safety in numbers, the portion of the group that provided services other than hunting as well as the portion of the group that would assist in the hunt despite not making the kill — they will no longer be able to provide the cooperative support. In either case, the successful hunter may initially shine bright, enjoying one or even several kills, but his success will burn out fast. The support system that he had took for granted would be ripped out from under him because he didn’t want to share the resource — the food — he saw as his own. He failed to recognize how he benefited from the group. He didn’t want to be forced by the group to give “hand outs.” And now, due to that greed, he suffers with the rest.

Which group would you want to be a part of? Which group is sustainable? Which system appears rational and which appears suicidal?

About an Archetypal Girl.

It’s a traditional story. An archetypal story, and I’ve encountered manifestations of it twice this week.

Girl meets boy. They get in a relationship. Boy abuses girl. Girl makes excuses for him and for maintaining the relationship, such as that she’s afraid he’ll abuse her even more if she tries to leave — but this later reveals itself to be merely a justification, an empty one, because:

Girl finally escapes boy. And then girl goes back to boy.

Is this an existential continuity error? A glitch in the goddamned matrix?

Repepitition breeds familiarity, offering comfort through it’s predictability and, in some cases, the illusion of control. This is why certain people gravitate towards abusive relationships: they were in that kind of relationship with their caregivers, it was all they ever knew, and the familiarity and predictability of those patterns in a relationship offer some false sense of security.

It’s like the relationship equivalent of having that annoying but catchy song stuck in your head, playing on repeat, stuck on a loop no matter how much you try to banish it.

So I get that much. Or at least, I think I do.

Other people, so far as I can tell, have not had an abusive childhood, however, and yet still get stuck in abusive relationships. I’m still perplexed as to how those patterns get started.

In any case, we have AA, NA, even SA. They even have support groups for alien abducteee. Can’t we have a similar group for people in an addictive relationship with a total asshole?

His Lies.

It doesn’t matter if you chant it mantra-style and it doesn’t make a lick of difference how bloody confident you are as you say it.

It doesn’t matter if you rally up the biggest crowd in the world, a troop of hopelessly-entranced apes who believe it with a fervor typically reserved for the religious and echo your cherished falsehoods along with you like a chorus of willing zombies.

Faith doesn’t dictate the nature of objective reality and you can’t reach the truth by means of popular vote. And alternative facts, by their very nature, apply exclusively to their corresponding alternative realities — not this one.

You, dear sir, are a narrow-minded, ego-obsessed, chronic liar. And I hope to see you pay the consequences.