Getting Into the ‘Why’ of Things

Why we don’t want to, and why we have to

So, here are a few scenarios, tell me which sounds more appealing.

A: Oh man, I should really get my health under control! I guess I’ll start with a simple workout program, try to list out my eating habits and see how my macros are, see what better options I can swap in to increase my protein intake and reduce the sodium, try to limit myself to one coffee a day, maybe introduce some days when I go no-sugar? What else… Take more stairs, walk more, do stretch breaks during my workday, and definitely start biking to work. 

B: Oh man, I should really get my health under control! I guess I’ll buy a bunch of these cookies n’ cream protein bars and have them instead of desserts. More protein and less sugar, it should work!

What do you think? A or B? 

Let’s try another one. 

A: Hmmm, my financial state really isn’t where I’d want it to be… I should try to strategize a little. Maybe I can track my monthly expenses for a few months and see if there are any that seem superfluous, go through all my subscriptions and see if I still want them… I could also call my insurance to see if they can get me a better deal, possibly get a more affordable phone plan, come up with some savings goals and ways to track them, talk to my supervisor at work about potential professional growth opportunities, maybe even get a new degree or certificate if it would make me eligible for a better paid position? Maybe they would even be willing to cover the cost? 

B: Hmmm, my financial state really isn’t where I’d want it to be… I should try to strategize a little. Like… invest 1000$ in crypto! A buddy told me it’s a surefire win!

How about it? Do you have a favorite? 

Ok ok, one more. 

A: Wow, our country’s political life sure is getting dark! It feels like opportunities for regular people are slipping away more and more, and our rights are being eroded in really concerning ways…. I don’t even understand what all the pundits are saying. I should find the time to do a bit of serious reading on the new policies that are being proposed, figure out how those would get adopted, and seek out to join some local grassroots organizations that already do this sort of work so I have a community to lean on and we can do some local lobbying… I should also look for some alternative news sources because I feel the regular media are just not telling us the whole story. And I definitely need to read up on the history of some of these issues. You can’t really oppose something if you’re not informed…

B: Wow, our country’s political life sure is getting dark! Things could definitely change for the worse. Gotta make sure I vote for the less sucky candidate! They won’t do as many bad things as the other guy at least. 

Hmm? One of those sounds like a bunch of great ideas that would be an incredible pain in the ass to actually apply, right? And the other is maybe not perfect, but at least simple and possibly achievable. 

Obviously none of us particularly want to do the Hard Stuff in life. This is partially biological in nature - large mammals, especially those higher up the food chain, are mostly built to conserve energy. So this whole ‘hustle every day’ mentality that we have let them shove us into instead of giving us a normal network of social supports that lets us live and work at a more sustainable pace is already driving us all up the wall. 

Seeing as we have atomized society right down to the individual unit, we’re in a position where most people really have no one to rely on but themselves. Parents expect children to leave home early, people move away easily for college or work, most of the ‘third spaces’ outside of work and home where you might have socialized and made friends are gone. 

Add to this that fewer people want relationships, and that we have lost some of our socializing chops during the pandemic, and you have a whole lot of people who have to handle every single aspect of their life on their own, while their work is demanding ever more of their time for ever lesser rewards. 

We are a family with one kid, so as far as families with children go, it’s the easiest option. Plus I have spent the last three years out of the workforce, only rejoining it recently. And still it’s pretty taxing to get everything done that needs doing. For people who are single, or couples with both partners working full time, those who have two or more kids, those who are disabled or live with a chronic illness, those who live far from decent shops and services, those who have aging, ailing parents to take care of… How much harder must it be to keep juggling all those balls in the air.

In stark contrast with the topic, here is a thing of beauty.

So this is not me criticizing us for not doing more. I get it. The whole system is set up to keep us too busy to lift our heads, and it’s working as advertised.

But the trick is, we have a lot of serious problems. And serious problems usually don’t have simple solutions. 

There is a reason why humans as a species seem to gravitate towards tyrants. The drive to build a system based on equality and democracy requires vast amounts of effort - first to philosophically conceive the idea that even if you have access to power, you should share it with others. This does not seem to come naturally to all of us. Least of all those who are either born into power or seek it of their own accord. 

Then once we have all agreed on the idea, you need to establish it in such a way that it reflects your idea in reality. Quite a few first attempts at democracy and equality had some…… glaring omissions, shall we say. Ancient Greeks had this great idea of sharing power and everyone being represented, good on them! They got there really early. Except their idea of ‘everyone’ was, like….. everyone except the women. Or the slaves. Or the foreigners. Or the children. So…… not quite everyone, then. 

The next few stabs at democracy, including the one our current governments are built on, had the same issue. ‘Everyone’ meant, like, Only The Dudes. This was still a step forward from all the power being with Just One Dude, so I’m not knocking it, it was a work in progress. But this tendency of the ruling group to say ‘EVERYONE!’ when they really only mean themselves is something to keep an eye out because we are still doing it today. 

Even if you manage to cobble together a system that sort of tries to include everyone, as we have today (ignoring the many systems that ensure continued inequality which are baked in under the hood of our democracy and insufficiently acknowledged in spite of all our talk of minorities and minority rights), you have to maintain eternal vigilance on the side of the population, making sure the elected officials aren’t extending their power and that of their friends beyond what was initially agreed, and papering it over with fancy florid Harvard-educated language to confuse you. This is a huge amount of work and it literally cannot ever end. Because naturally those who gravitate towards power are also those most likely to abuse it.

All of this is, as we are currently noting, a massive pain in the ass.

So we don’t do it.

What that means, though, is that the system starts to fail people in more and more ways, which brings us to the situation that has historically often arisen from such conditions - a tilt towards authoritarian populism.

(NB - I accept that the term ‘populism’ is slippery and hard to define. I am using it to describe a political movement that promises to bring power back to the common people by way of destroying the elites and the existing establishment, but offers to do so by virtue of one shining figure who is going to ‘go into the hornet’s nest and bring it down from the inside’, except of course that person ends up becoming Queen Hornet instead. Trump is a good example, Argentina’s Javier Milei is another. I can think of a few more but don’t want to make it weird or lose ‘the game’ according to Godwin’s Law.)

A young lad on Insta by the name of @willz.talks said something the other day which seemed so simple and fundamental yet I couldn’t remember hearing it spelled out so clearly before, though doubtless we have all been going over it from a thousand different angles in the wake of the recent election and its inevitable tragic outcome. He said something to the effect of:

“Fascism is what happens when the left doesn’t address the working class issues created by the contradictions of capitalism”.

I keep going back to it.

It explains everything.

It isn’t just that our society is what it is, or that the 99% have been steadily losing ground in pretty much all areas, or that everything feels like it’s being constantly eroded, and every thing of value is being sucked up through a giant straw up towards Jeff Musk or whoever is the bloated fat cat du jour. It’s not just that they are becoming increasingly grotesque as they can now talk down at us through the social media they own and share their bizarre ‘Oh Wow, I Guess Being Rich Doesn’t Mean You’re Smart After All’ brand thoughts while slurping up all droplets of remaining value from a drying-up world.

It’s that our political establishment is literally refusing to acknowledge any problem actually exists.

In stark contrast with the topic, here is a calming image of my tiny fish hiding in some floating Vallisneria

Willz went on to say that, since the left has staunchly refused to name the problems we face in society, the right has taken the opportunity to name them for itself. Of course the ‘problems’ the right has decided to paint as responsible for our crisis are The Wrong Ones. But that is par for the course - the right doesn’t really care about anything beyond controlling the narrative. The left also cares about nothing except controlling the narrative, by the way. But paradoxically, though the left promotes itself as The Party Of The Intelligentsia, the right is in fact way practically smarter and does a wildly better job of controlling the narrative.

The narrative, as per the right: “Listen here!! We are in big trouble and things are really bad!!! The people are hurting! Everything sucks!! But never fear, here are the solutions. They are good, and simple, and you will understand them. Here goes. Our problems are immigration, China, and the stupid left wing with their identity politics bullshit which is destroying the family or something. Here come the solutions! Immigration - easy, we kick them out! China - easy, we’ll charge them tariffs! Leftist bullshit - easy, we’ll force traditional values back onto women! Done, done, and done!!”

It matters not a whit that those three are NOT the actual problems, nor that not one of those “solutions” makes any sense or has any chance of working. Who cares. By the time everyone figures out that part, it will be much too late. And many people will legitimately never figure it out, instead blaming the future failures on other random circumstances. The important thing is that these things sound recognizable, are concrete and easy to conceptualize, and they sound simple and doable. (They’re not. But they sound that way).

And presto - narrative controlled.

The narrative, as per the left: “Umm ok look, you may think the issue we have is the terrible economic inequality we created, which is inflated by all the complex mechanisms we have put in place in order to allow corporations to privatize all their profits while socializing all their losses… as in, whenever they’re raking in billions we just smile about how well the economy is doing even though all that cash is going into the pockets of, like, five people (I guess they are The Economy) while you are paying 9$ for a thing of butter because ‘inflation’……. and whenever they royally fuck up we just use your tax money to bail them out, ‘because they’re too big to fail’…. but you’re not…. you’re definitely not too big to fail, you can fail all you like, that’s your personal problem….. and also we have made this amazing money laundering scheme whereas we take more of your taxpayer money and we send it to other countries to help them fight wars we kinda started for them…… but in fact all that money comes back to us in terms of profits of weapons sales, but when I say ‘us’ I don’t mean us including you, the people, but specifically us - those same five super rich people who are, in fact, The Economy….. where was I…. oh my that was a very long sentence, I got confused…….

Anyway, it’s not that!! You may think that part is the issue but it is absolutely not! The real issue is that poor people are stupid and hate you! And they’re evil! And they’re coming for your rights, boo! Anyway, vote for us or something!”

Big fucking surprise we lost.

In stark contrast with the topic, here is my shrimp Lemon having a good time chilling among some Java moss.

So, yeah. What do we do? How do we get out?

We need to get into the ‘why’ of EVERYTHING. And that is hard. We can’t follow our instincts, because this stuff is way too convoluted for instincts, and instinct is influenced by personal biases, and we all tend towards confirmation bias. So that’s out.

We can’t follow the legacy media because…. well, come on. You get it.

We can’t follow what school taught us because we’re right in the middle of intimately understanding exactly what the term ‘revisionist history’ actually means. Like, they’re revising it as it is happening.

So what the heck? Is there anything?

There is, but you’re not gonna like it.

You have to become a little mole and dig, dig, dig. You have to find lots of different sources and look for where they overlap, look at the language they use to spot their inherent biases (‘Arabs chanting vile antisemitic slurs clashed with Israelis chanting anti-Arab slogans’, ‘Innocent Israeli children as young as 19 who serve in the IDF vs Young Palestinian lady Hind Rajab, 6 years old’ etc). You have to follow individuals and independent publications and be on the lookout to see if they cite their sources and whether those sources seem reliable. Whether they’re jumping to conclusions. Whether their rhetoric sounds balanced or enflamed. Whether those stories get retracted a few days/weeks later.

You have to look for accounts of witnesses while remembering witnesses are people too and can also misrepresent things, willfully or otherwise. You have to dig into historical records (while being mindful of their sources and the possibility of editing/redaction) and see if things seem to match up with what is being quoted. If there are statistical sources you have to go look at them. You have to see the context of the study and the actual terms used. You have to verify for yourself how the data is being interpreted. You have to hone your logical reasoning and watch out for logical fallacies. There are SO MANY and we all fall into them from time to time, I promise you.

Logical fallacies are actually fascinating, I should write about them at some point.

Anyway.

Anyway yeah, it’s gonna be really, really hard. It’s gonna be ‘making all your food from scratch including growing all your own vegetables’ levels hard. It’s gonna be ‘sticking to a gym routine and nutrition plan that will make you fit enough to qualify for local semi-professional sports events in a sport you have never tried before’ levels hard. You won’t have the time, you won’t know where to start, you will second-guess yourself a lot. You will have an incredible number of unbelievably frustrating conversations.

But if you see an easier way…… you tell me.