hopelesshappiness.com

We had a choice - a baby step forward or a step back. We chose to take two (maybe three) steps back. And we, as a whole, deserve what it will bring. And as a whole we will suffer, but unfortunately the underprivileged individual will suffer to a much greater extent, and this unequal distribution of suffering (that is inversely proportional to wealth and power) will allow the privileged to continue to mistake substance for essence while the underprivileged will (at best) merely continue to flounder. And even though the underprivileged contributed significantly to this outcome, individually they do not deserve it.

June 8, 2024 [annotated]:

From a voter’s perspective, below are characteristics of today's political landscape loosely organized from left to right:

1. Narrow, exclusive, insular, condescending.
2. --- ---
3. Stodgy, conventional, predictable, opportunistic.
4. Libertarian, rhetorical, nationalistic, arbitrary.
5. Divisive, authoritarian, imperious, intolerant.

[Associated affiliation:

1. Democrats.
2. Progressives.
3. Moderates.
4. Conservatives.
5. Republicans.]

[These are actual, active characteristics; not what anyone professes to be. Additionally. Either republicans are more adept (than democrats) at hiding their true character from their constituents or their constituents are much easier to deceive, whereas democrats and their constituents are equally adept at alienating the majority of Americans.]

From the presumption that ‘for the people’ is ‘by the people’ to the misguided belief that we can and should time travel to a misremembered past, over the last 60 years our leaders have consistently delivered injudicious, bureaucratic preservation to a majority of Americans.

[The democrats are destructively presumptuous and the republicans are destructively delusional.]

This majority of Americans have fallen through a hole between condescending and stodgy. Other countries have managed to fill that hole, but in our ignorance, for varying reasons, we have not only NOT taken care of our own but in many cases deny them as a part of us.

[This majority of Americans could be rescued by a progressive agenda. And in a sense, I am saying that a majority of Americans are in actuality progressive, (regardless of vociferous claims to the contrary).]

It is not only the obvious; anyone less wealthy and/or less powerful is (to varying degrees) lost. And it is apparent that the American Dream, paired with any combination of choices we are given in today’s political landscape, no longer works for anyone who is lost.

[The only combination of choices we have today is republican or democrat. Economically, there are some conservatives and some moderates still with some power, but what progressives there are have no significant influence.]

Many of these lost Americans don’t realize and/or won’t admit that they are lost. Many of these lost Americans believe they have more influence, more say-so, than what they do. Many of these lost Americans are still optimistic, still hopeful, still susceptible. Most of these lost Americans pick their path from the choices given, often based on a single (often emotional) characteristic. Many of these lost Americans don’t know that there can and should be additional options between condescending and stodgy; options more complementary with the American Dream. Things like

[A progressive agenda]:

• Understanding, expressive, equitable, reciprocal.
• Helpful, considerate, compassionate, respectful.

[Economic considerations prohibit equitable and reciprocal, and discourage other progressive characteristics.]

[A progressive leader is a caretaker, a custodian, a curator, a watchdog. Today our leaders are none of these things.]

[The democrats have been working off the theory that if you treat someone like an adult, like an intelligent, rational thinker who is capable of doing the math, then they will react in kind. The republicans have been working off the theory that emotion, specifically fear, is a much stronger motivation. Guess what?]

Taxidermy: “the art of preparing and preserving and stuffing and mounting in lifelike form.”

Today our political system is the hunter, our leaders are the taxidermists busy preparing, preserving, stuffing and mounting, and the American Dream is the head mounted on the wall.

[…and we are left with sadness.]

This week I was invited to contribute to the evaluation process for the dean of the medical school where I work as an unnoticeable cog in an entanglement of bureaucratic machinations. There were more than 20 questions asking for a rating of very ineffective, ineffective, neutral, effective, or very effective. Because of the wide (and widening) gap between us and my inability to see results of his daily actions, I responded ‘neutral’ to all but 5 of the questions:

1. Encouraging a culture of excellence - very ineffective.
2. Improving opportunities for members of other underrepresented groups - ineffective.
3. Leading with integrity - very ineffective.
4. Treating staff with respect - very ineffective.
5. Promoting a discrimination- free environment and inclusive environment - very ineffective.

According to multiple accessible internet sources, the top 10% in U.S. income pull in upwards of $160,000. In this past year, the dean made $910,000 putting him in the top 1%. To my evaluation, I added the following comments:

“According to public records released in January 2024, in the Fall of 2023 I received a 3% pay increase. The dean of the medical school received a 4% increase. One might look and think that the increases are comparable, but if I would have received the dean’s dollars, my increase would have been 75.6%. The dean went from making 18.9 times more than me to making 19.1 times more, which again sounds close but again if I would have received the dean’s dollars (and he in turn mine) the dean would have gone from making 18.9 times more than me to making 10.8 times more than me. The issue of course is the growing income gap. To entertain the thought that the dean is 19 times more deserving or more capable or more entitled than I am would require a different conversation; a conversation about available opportunities and available to whom and who makes the rules and bias and bureaucracy and convention and certainty and division. This Fall (2024) I again received a 3% increase. I look forward to January when I will be able to again compare percentages and dollars and see how much the income gap has widened; not that it will come to anything.”

It is ludicrous to even ask the question, much less believe that excellence, opportunity, integrity, respect, or equity could come from or be brought about by one so mired in entitlement.

Entitlement:

1. If I have good things come my way, I deserve them.
2. If you have good things come your way, you are lucky.
3. If I have bad things come my way, it is due to circumstance beyond my control.
4. If you have bad things come your way, you made your bed - and you deserve your punishment.

In this country our system of justice in practice, is and always has been a system of entitlement, applying #3 to favored factions and #4 to those not like us. And the yardstick for those not like us has become wealth and/or power. Yet because we equate justice with entitlement, we are justified in our belief, our assertion that a wealthy, powerful overlord could bring about excellence, opportunity, integrity, respect, or equity.

It is not always (or even frequently) a bad thing to ask a ludicrous question. All questions (should) encourage thoughtful pause and lead to more considered, reasonable action. However, to ask a ludicrous question in a formal context that creates opportunity for statistical analysis is to believe in and/or work to assert its validity and to encourage status quo.

• Power cannot hear truthfulness.
• Power cannot see beyond their own blindered reality.
• Power cannot feel the pain of subservience.
• Power cannot taste or smell the zest, the spice, the tang, the piquancy of uncertainty.
• And though I strive and I work and I plead and I struggle, I cannot bring power to its senses.

The worst part is when I cannot move; pinned in place like a still-living butterfly on a mounting board. Almost as bad is when I can flap a wing and dream of flight and then I become aware that I am still encased, the glass mere microns from the tips of my wings. It is a struggle to struggle, but it is sad to not. I am overcome by weariness. Not like before, younger days, when I grew tired from activity; but more a weariness of the soul, a weariness from the realization that despite all that bouncing and hopping and thinking and planning and dreaming and believing, I have always been trapped - enclosed - encased. But in those younger days, in all my activity, I was smaller and the glass was unseeable - imponderable - invisible. Today it is right here - conspicuous - obtrusive.

Is it more important to seek Justice, or is it more important to heed injustice? To heed is to pay close attention to, to give it its due regard, to make peace with, to respect. This thought behind forbearance is its greater potential for reason and propriety. As much as I dislike it, injustice always has been and, (I believe, at least in my lifetime), always will be an unavoidable superhighway running through, around, under, and over varying segments and factions of Humanity. So it makes some sense to try and reason with it. By definition injustice is wrong, yet in this country we defend it and we perpetuate it daily. By definition justice includes “equitable distribution of resources and participation in decision-making,” yet in this country justice has come to mean entitlement. By definition entitlement is an injudicious assumption. By our definition equity is rhetorical bombast.

So if I respect injustice I am excusing it, I am giving in, I am adding to its credibility. But to seek Justice is perceived as scorn, rejection, or disregard by the proponents of injustice, and I am perceived as not taking its proponents seriously. And because it is injustice and because on some level to some degree its proponents know it is wrong, to add my disdain onto that is to add fuel to their fire creating further division. Today this is the nature of our country's politics where one side is justified in their mushrooming injustice and the other side is okay maintaining status quo by not walking their talk. And until someone or some faction or some thing comes to enough power and is not afraid to see actual Justice through, we will continue to be divided, and we will continue to spew word vomit that defends and/or perpetuates.

Back to my original question. If I seek Justice I am widening the divide and encouraging injustice. If I heed injustice I am justifying and substantiating and maintaining. So instead of working together for justice, rising above our natural tendencies toward power and division, almost all of us have accepted and many of us have embraced an inevitability of injustice and we temper the disappointment by recharacterizing justice as entitlement, giving us a self-righteous path forward.

Regarding this interplay between justice and injustice, my most egregious mistake is thinking I can find justice. If I were able to heed personal injustice AND somehow seek and make inroads toward more widespread, equitable justice for all, (that sounds familiar), then perhaps I would be less inclined to pretend that entitlement is justice. To do this, I must first understand the difference between entitlement and justice.

Entitlement:

1. If i have good things come my way, i deserve them.
2. If you have good things come your way, you are lucky.
3. If I have bad things come my way, it is due to circumstance beyond my control.
4. If you have bad things come your way, you made your bed - and you deserve your punishment.

Interesting to note here that in this country our system of justice in practice, is and always has been a system of entitlement, applying #3 to favored factions and #4 to those not like us.

A better path toward Justice:

1. If we have good things come our way, we consider ourselves lucky and we share the wealth.
2. If we have bad things come our way, we listen closely, and we learn to better influence circumstance.

There is a huge difference between ‘I' and ‘we’. ‘I’ has considerable difficulty contextualizing ‘we’ whereas (in theory) ‘we’ intuitively understands that ‘I’ is the same as ‘we’. Unfortunately, we are not the theoretical ‘we’ - we are a bunch of human ‘I's’ pretending to be a ‘we’.

Seeking personal justice will invariably lead me to entitlement and that will invariably detract from seeking widespread, equitable justice for all so I must consciously and actively separate the two by realizing that because I am human I will forever struggle to put ‘we’ before ‘I’. And now I am back to finding someone or some faction or some thing to take power and lead us toward Justice. But today's political and economic facts will maintain entitlement and today's power will not let go. I previously said my most egregious mistake is thinking I can find justice. I should qualify that by saying my most egregious mistake is thinking I can find personal justice.

I learn and I think and I write to invoke magic; to transform reality from its immensity into a malleable, manageable handful. I expend effort to untangle knots and to conjure mistakes that add meaning and definition to my reality. When I am lazy, (which is more often than is justified), I call upon pretense and bureaucracy and convention and certainty and Netflix to make reality disappear. When I am discouraged, I summon darkness for additional contrast so I am better able to see a light. When I am actively hopeful, I cast heavy shadows to keep me grounded. When I am angry, I ask sadness and reason to temper that anger so my reality does not morph into something more monstrous. When I am smug or intolerant, I unmask my insolence to find my insignificance cowering in the corner. When I am feeling put upon, I allow Indulgence and passion to run free, within reason. When I am afraid, I plead with discipline to balance inconsequence and impertinence. When I am in agreement, I invite uncertainty to ask questions. When I am sad, I listen. When I am lost I look to Beauty, Truth, and Wisdom to lead me back; though Wisdom is hard to keep up with and Beauty is hard to look at and Truth whispers in my ear that I am still lost.