Living Under A Rock

Finding an escape from the drama of a consumer society.

The other night Scott and Marc came by and we whisky drinking fellows had a fine evening of conversation and food. Scott is an interesting guy who has lived all around the world. He’s also the chair of his Homeowner Association in affluent West Los Angeles, and man does he have drama. We spitballed a number of scenarios in which he might outdo and outsmart a particularly prickly and obstinate neighbors who are sabotaging his every policy decision in defiance of reason and common sense. As a Stoic, I found it tough to get involved. I wanted him to win because he was right. I also wanted him to take the path of least resistance. But I think most of all I wanted him to punch somebody in the face. We drunk a toast to our fictional enforcer Eddie Malcontento.

Honor Duty & Instant Karma
The tension between honor and duty is the subtext of the latest John Wick film. It is, by the way, a capstone to a revolution in fight choreography. John Wick has done to action movies what Saving Private Ryan has done for war movies. It is next level in its execution and style. JW4 is a masterpiece. But the tension between honor and duty is something I gather most of us Peasants don’t experience.

In the news is the intrigue behind the fact of the Twitter Files juxtaposed with the additional fact that journalists still use Twitter. Now we have Substack Notes. It feels like Hogwarts. Matt Taibbi has, with Bari Weiss and Michael Shellenberger become the three most impressive journalists of our time. Taibbi and Shellenberger have identified a number of government institutions plying their disinformation trade on social media platforms in defiance of the public trust and the First Amendment. What happens between now and the next presidential election will have repercussions for a generation, sez me. But from my position as a data engineer whose stock in trade is business intelligence, and public writing, I see complicity in the design of social media platforms. For me the story is old. These companies rely on the business model of discovering and selling drama. Same as Hollywood with the primary distinction being that Hollywood exploits professional actors and social media exploits the peasants. You are the product.

The ability for social media to draw millions of people into the game of posing, busking and stunting in front of smartphone cameras for YouTube and TikTok fame is extraordinary. I fuel my hunger for the lowest common denominator by consuming fail videos and fight videos. To me there’s something satisfying in seeing idiots pay the price for their idiocy. When their frenzied feelings and dumb ideas take them into the realm of instant karma, I feel that there is a sense of justice in nature. But I know there are airbags, insurance and aggregated monetization on the other side of the equation. Even in my hunger, I am guilty. I am evading both honor and duty. Even as a Stoic wanting to ever increase my peace of mind and wisdom, I am hiding away from confrontation.

Every month I go on a Zillow safari. No matter where I dream of settling in my retirement, I want high bandwidth internet service. Maybe Hill Country Texas. Maybe the Georgia or South Carolina coast. Maybe the outskirts of Denver. I want to be away from Zombie Apocalypse. I want to survive the Collapse. I am constantly on edge when I watch the prices of the stock market go down and the prices in the supermarkets go up. My peace of mind is key but I’m only halfway there. I still want that bandwidth.

When I think about the scope of what can go wrong with AI and social media and government censorship and Hollywood depravity and the constant stream of Florida Man mischief and mayhem, I want to go live under a rock. I didn’t know that it was San Diego State that fell to UCONN until after it was over. I’m suffering the burden of being bombarded with bullshit. I filed my taxes and got my return in the beginning of February. I’m still getting emails about tax day. I read. I write. And yet the state of this place makes me want to hide away. Can you feel it? That gnawing understanding that the corruption and stupidity are inevitable?

Middle Class Morality
Here’s what I think is going on with Scott’s neighbors, the TikTok crash dummies, and the journalists on Twitter. I think they’re all playing on the same manic seesaw. They run up and down the narrow gap of the national Overton Window and try to legislate morality onto each other. They are recycling trash drama, they’re telling the lies their audiences want to hear and undermining respect. They are selling politics as the only solution to the problems of humanity. We, out of habit and fear, decide to listen as if there were nowhere else to go. We are addicted to the fights and fails of our national citizenship. We are engaged, nay wedded, to the drama created by all media. We call it culture. We call it politics. We call it society. We default to it as if it were civilization. It clearly is not. It is shot through with holes. It’s as consistent as a damp cracker.

What is that rock I want to live under? Easter Sunday made me think it might be some form of Orthodox Christianity. I know there are some folks out there who have such a church. I wouldn’t know where to find it. I wonder if they are so inviting and full of love as the Bishop I witnessed this year who made sure that his sermon was inclusive of ‘indigenous Palestinian Christians’ whom he claimed to be direct descendants of those who kept Christianity alive in the centuries before it claimed Rome and Constantinople. I smelled seductive fishy smells. Yet Christianity has much to recommend it.

Perhaps the rock of science. Perhaps the rock of law. I am drawn to the Logos. I am drawn to principles and virtuous axioms. And yet I know that music is in fact the irresistible force that passes through immovable objects. Music that is off-beat and swings in polyrhythms, that riffs off traditions and improvises its way forward. Yet it’s so damned difficult for me to produce music, let alone do so in collaboration with other. I don’t want to be a consumer. That makes it somebody else’s rock under which I have no control.

The more I address my frustration the more likely I am to contradict myself in parts invisible to myself. I guess I must finally engage the enemy. Eventually I must engage the suck. I have no rocks to live under but my own will which occasionally shits itself. So shall it be written, so shall it be done. Until I am old, feeble and limp, shall I limp. I can’t even say if I will limp forward. I may limp in circles until I trip over the rut of my own orbit. Squirrel!

The Truth is In Here Somewhere
The scrubbers at the UFC as well as the whitewashers at the White House have a grip on that which we call social media today. They have business models of concealment. I was tempted to intercede aloud in the tradition of St. John’s Episcopal Cathedral on behalf of “The Deceived”, but I didn’t. I don’t think it was an accurate enough description. Either way, it was impossible for me to find the video of Adasanya’s knockout punches as they finished off the middleweight champion over the weekend. I must trust the evidence of things unseen. I don’t need karma to be instant, but I want to see the world working where I am able to look. The behavior of my neighbors is insufficient. I don’t want to see their children falling off their skateboards. I want to see Federal goon squads disassembled, but I don’t get to see exactly who they are. It’s all pay per view. How many years before their dealings become plain?

The Stoic says we don’t need all that socially sourced and externally mediated truth. We must rationalize that the Universe makes sense and that fools will constantly defy its order. Our consolation is to make ourselves one with that order. Yet we are so small and the universe so massive. It should be enough to order ourselves away from the foolishness we can discern. So perhaps the prayer should be for those without discernment. They say God protects children and fools. Just what we need.

Patience is what we need. Patience. The patience of the wise. So let me limp around my small circle of wisdom and defend its rut as a ward against foolishness. That’s better than a rock. It almost sounds like an honorable duty.