The Nausea

I gaze out over the Facebook news feed and it appears to me as a spinning centrifuge. I wonder if I should attempt to jump on and join, but I recoil with apprehension, contemplating the possibility of missing the platform and flailing out into the black void of social death, however real that possibility may be.

As I gaze on the social centrifuge spins faster until the landing platform blurs beyond view and the possibility of joining becomes even more doubtful as my social position becomes less and less relevant. Less and less I understand the motion of the revolutions.

That's okay. As I remember, I grow very dizzy standing on that machinery.

Out In The Yorba Linda Hills

The wind is kicking up in waves; I'm sitting out in the backyard, swaying softly like a sprig of seaweed on the ocean floor, listening to the windchimes and the roaring leaves, the leaves sparkling as they tremble in the sun.

I have BBQ and Blue Moon in my stomach. All is well; I'm just a creature sitting happily sedated amidst the Orange County trench in this windy sea.

A plane drones overhead. A spider scurries over glistening tiles. Dogs bark, children laugh, crows call in the distance. It feels good to just experience for once. I've spent so much time analyzing, buckling under the sorrowful data.

Two hours earlier we were walking a trail in the Yorba Linda hills, treated to a view of Carbon Canyon. There's beauty in the landscape, and then my wandering, rapturous gaze meets the affluent housing strips.

Manufactured mansion after manufactured mansion, all painted and shaped slightly differently to feign diversity. Some are slapped with halfhearted attempts at ornamentation, such as Greek columns and Spanish shingles. Beveled glass and water fountains greet sloppily parked Hummers and Mercedes cars, and starkly conformed backyards contain basketball and tennis courts, cabanas, mounted TVs (as if this is necessary), and statue-lined swimming pools. I realize this is the manufactured American Dream. This is the manufactured high rollers' paradise for sale to whoever can afford to live the dreams they've seen on MTV.

Endless loops, spiraling upwards, propel the wealth ever higher. As the mansion becomes mass manufactured, the truly opulent must concentrate even more wealth into outperforming the newly rich buyers. It is in this way that more and more wealth is concentrated upwards, into further absurdly cosmetic excesses.

Meanwhile, the poor lay piled in the valley in trailer homes, the windows facing each other, blinds drawn for lack of a view. The gutters route the dog and horse manure to the cesspool below.

I try to be friendly on the trail. With these thoughts swirling in my head, I would be a direct enemy of all the uniformly white people I pass. My hair is long and my sunglasses and hat speak of me as some sort of deviant. I smile and say "good morning," and they strain smiles back, understandably. My mother, who is with me, eases them with her white suburban appearance. She smiles and laughs and greets them and talks about dogs. Thank goodness for that. I couldn't shake the feeling that I simply wasn't supposed to be there. Which is sad.

Oh well. You could go mad following these thoughts down their dimly lit avenues. It is impossible to tell what went on in these people's minds for sure. I could read the houses, the accumulations of mass produced cosmetic wealth, and come up with reasonable conclusions based on the state of the economy. But it is impossible to tell what these people are thinking. How they would justify themselves.

Best to stick to my Blue Moon, my BBQ, my softly sedated sway. Stop thinking so much. Just continue to do what I think I should be doing.

This Lovely Gauntlet

Listen to your fellow man when he's in pain.

Even when you despise him.

Suffering can be very honest.

Modern Problems

This is a civilization increasingly employing the following methodology:

To become powerful, one must continually consume resources, while extracting the value out of those resources and procuring them for oneself. Then, the waste product that comes out of that utilization has to be passed on to someone else. Eventually, the passage of these materials systemitize into a reliable highway. The direction of the goods of value travels in the direction of the powerful, accumulating at greater centers of gravity, while the direction of the waste travels in the direction of the powerless, accumulating at those depositories. This methodology permeates every aspect of our predominantly commercial culture. The middle, the transitioning agents intent on leaving the powerless to join the powerful (or vice versa) travel back and forth this highway, serving as a midpoint of tension. As the middle deteriorates, the string between the two overburdened extremes frays and eventually snaps, bringing ruin to the entire system. And so the soot-covered masses of powerless rise to re-establish equilibrium.

The timing is very bad. A problem solving system is on the verge of collapse at the very point in time when we should be concentrating our efforts in solving some very serious problems: namely climate change and the rapid depletion of key resources, such as oil and sustainable fresh water sources. This is at a time when the population has reached all new peaks.

Alas, at a crucial turning point in human evolution, when it comes the time to sink or swim, we have people busying themselves with the attempt to repeal a considerably conservative body of much-needed health care reform. These same people, in their infinite wisdom, see it fit to carefully deconstruct the very society they claim to be so proud of. These are people that fancy themselves reformers, but would more aptly be named "deformers."

This strange, destructive brand of reactive conservatism is fermenting all over the world, at a time when it has become very important to rethink our entire strategy for comfortably sustaining ourselves on this planet.

This is the point in the survival horror story when the fear-crazed nutjobs scream at the top of their lungs that everyone must remain in their shelters, when indicators all around them tell them to stride boldly outside and keep moving, to search for new methods. The heroes urge everyone to be brave and move on. Finally, the brave leave, finding rescue, and the fearful stay to be overtaken by natural disintegrating forces. Or demons, or something.

Hopefully in our case the fearful let the brave leave at least, which is not currently happening.

Anyways. Apocalypse this, apocalypse that. I'm sure these are common sentiments when global tensions are on the rise. But when is the end? This ugly recession spread a great wave of suffering, suffering that still continues today; but the powerful resumed their ways. Does there have to be a collapse? Or can we spend several decades in slow decline to rock bottom, where we can rebuild?

These are trying times, sure. But this is a strange, vague, airborne threat that many don't yet see. Our civilization is far too complicated today. It is much more difficult to chart problems, inefficiencies, even evil. With all of our theories of metacognition, relativism, and linguistic constructs, we have to ask, who is saying what? Who is speaking the truth?

Well at this point one might say this is where conviction comes in. Listen to the resonance. How do your beliefs ring with reality? Do you hear harmonies? Dissonance?

The words of Pink Floyd empathized with those waiting in "quiet desperation." Quiet desperation. Now that is a phrase that remains highly resonant with me at least.

A Wonderful Environment for the Creation of Intellectual Works

I've acquired the strange habit of writing odd things in the workplace to make it look like I'm extra busy.

I'm sure they'd be calling in the psychologists upon seeing handiwork such as this:

Modular dark rooms are completely rearrangeable and relocatable. If you need to change locations, your dark room can easily come with you. If you need the dark room to destroy the light, be sure to calibrate it in order to claim souls from the lost. You can reap the benefits of the unfortunate if you know how to set the right controls. Install wealth traps if you wish to capture that which doesn’t belong to you.

Conveyor belts that can be used to transfer the innocent to your open fangs can also be implemented. We offer a limited-time offer as well, the installation of a cheat shield for 50% off. With our cheat shield you can debase as much humanity as you can hope to grab, and then watch as they become alienated to themselves, without even being convicted by the government for your morally reprehensible behavior.