I opened a Dreamwidth tab a while ago with something in mind to write/vent/lament about, but then I went through my Reading Page for a while as a means of finding calm and not being super self-centered. In the time since I did so, I think my perspective on what I was going to talk about has shifted a bit, and I'm glad for it.
At first, I was going to try to explain one of my friendships and the way in which it has thinned over the past couple of years, quite painfully. However, in talking to![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
toxictsukino about it and just thinking and then watching some ![[youtube.com profile]](https://youtube.com/favicon.ico)
ContraPoints, I think I have settled on a different part of the problem that requires less deep context and less possible oversharing of someone else's business even where it relates to me.
The thing is, I feel like even if my friend that I miss and ache for in a lot of ways has dealt badly with certain relationship adjustments in the past, I don't think it is my friend's present or intent. If anything, I feel guilty because I feel like this friend has developed a higher standard of respecting other people's lives as their own business than I have. For me, everything must take place within a context, and in general (while secrets and certain personal disclosures and stuff are extremely important and notable exceptions), I tend to subscribe to an axiom of what happened to me belongs to me. If it involved another person, my perception and developed understanding of them and what they were doing at the time is a part of that narrative.
And that's the thing, if anything, I feel sort of bleedy about when it comes to this friend of mine. I feel like she has reached such a point of the sanctity of other people's business and lives that she cannot discuss the context of anything that is happening, anything that bothers her, or any of the reasons why she cannot really communicate with me in any deeper way. I understand that she is telling the truth. I understand that she is trying to do the right thing. But it is frightening. It feels like having the line to the buoy that holds up interpersonal communication cut.
I think about the terrible attitudes that seem so pervasive and even alluring to people: right-wing, entitled, callous fanaticism. And I don't think any of them have a leg to stand on as far as philosophy or morality or anything else, to be clear. However, one of the things that is often pointed out in think-pieces that try to help us understand people with violent or cruel ideologies that are developing contemporaneously to those people who are, like, not having those kinds of thoughts is that these people (usually boys) grew up with a narrative.
That narrative promised them a lot of things they haven't gotten and may not ever get.
The narrative promised them a loving female sexual partner for being a generally okay guy and doing the right thing, particularly when it felt difficult.
The narrative promised them a secure job if they went to college.
It promised them home ownership. It promised them community. It promised them financial success and neat consumer goods. It promised them a lot things...
And we can pick apart the specific promises and specific expectations all day long and how they're shitty things to believe. But not ALL of them are unreasonable desires mixed into the wicked brew that intoxicates these people. Some of them are very basic human needs that our society has made it harder and harder to meet. The Alt-Right Meme Boys have assigned the locus of their problems incorrectly and then developed perfect irony-armor in order to deflect any suggestion, critique, or analysis of the fact that some of what likely drew them into that place were very normal, human longings that a lot of us aren't getting. They want it to be too late to reach them, in a way. I like Kylo Ren | Ben Solo and tend to think the 1-to-1 comparison between him and these types of people is a lazy analysis of the story, but if there is anything that stands out like a sore thumb as a parallel, it might be that. They are ANGRY and HURT and do not WANT there to be a way back most of the time.
And all of that is just an analysis of our present sorry state of affairs. However, I bring it up with relation to how I feel sad about certain things in my own life: the loss or lessening or changing of certain relationships, the feeling that certain things that seemed very possible two or three years ago now seem like I am eternally too old or too late to reach them, and so on. That series of promises alluded to is comforting not only because the end prizes of those promises are nice things to have but because they provide a narrative or a context through which to live one's life.
We are the protagonist of our own story, and for a lot of us it feels like there was a plot but that someone or something took that plot away from us. And you know, I feel that, too. And in a way, I know that the whole hope or concept of a narrative guiding my life isn't coherent even in terms of any metaphysical or cosmological meaning one can give life. It doesn't work like that, even if there is such a thing as fate or destiny, on the ground level. You don't get to play a role where you already know the script. It just does not happen. And yet, looking at other people's lives, sometimes it seems like it does. We tell ourselves stories about other people's lives while we live our own. And it hurts and stings right now because I feel a lot like I have forever missed the next prompt where I get a new plot point, a new branch on the timeline or whatever. I feel stuck and like the context that I used to relate to the world for years has been destroyed, wasted on a foolish, empty series of small daydreams.
At first, I was going to try to explain one of my friendships and the way in which it has thinned over the past couple of years, quite painfully. However, in talking to
toxictsukino about it and just thinking and then watching some The thing is, I feel like even if my friend that I miss and ache for in a lot of ways has dealt badly with certain relationship adjustments in the past, I don't think it is my friend's present or intent. If anything, I feel guilty because I feel like this friend has developed a higher standard of respecting other people's lives as their own business than I have. For me, everything must take place within a context, and in general (while secrets and certain personal disclosures and stuff are extremely important and notable exceptions), I tend to subscribe to an axiom of what happened to me belongs to me. If it involved another person, my perception and developed understanding of them and what they were doing at the time is a part of that narrative.
And that's the thing, if anything, I feel sort of bleedy about when it comes to this friend of mine. I feel like she has reached such a point of the sanctity of other people's business and lives that she cannot discuss the context of anything that is happening, anything that bothers her, or any of the reasons why she cannot really communicate with me in any deeper way. I understand that she is telling the truth. I understand that she is trying to do the right thing. But it is frightening. It feels like having the line to the buoy that holds up interpersonal communication cut.
I think about the terrible attitudes that seem so pervasive and even alluring to people: right-wing, entitled, callous fanaticism. And I don't think any of them have a leg to stand on as far as philosophy or morality or anything else, to be clear. However, one of the things that is often pointed out in think-pieces that try to help us understand people with violent or cruel ideologies that are developing contemporaneously to those people who are, like, not having those kinds of thoughts is that these people (usually boys) grew up with a narrative.
That narrative promised them a lot of things they haven't gotten and may not ever get.
The narrative promised them a loving female sexual partner for being a generally okay guy and doing the right thing, particularly when it felt difficult.
The narrative promised them a secure job if they went to college.
It promised them home ownership. It promised them community. It promised them financial success and neat consumer goods. It promised them a lot things...
And we can pick apart the specific promises and specific expectations all day long and how they're shitty things to believe. But not ALL of them are unreasonable desires mixed into the wicked brew that intoxicates these people. Some of them are very basic human needs that our society has made it harder and harder to meet. The Alt-Right Meme Boys have assigned the locus of their problems incorrectly and then developed perfect irony-armor in order to deflect any suggestion, critique, or analysis of the fact that some of what likely drew them into that place were very normal, human longings that a lot of us aren't getting. They want it to be too late to reach them, in a way. I like Kylo Ren | Ben Solo and tend to think the 1-to-1 comparison between him and these types of people is a lazy analysis of the story, but if there is anything that stands out like a sore thumb as a parallel, it might be that. They are ANGRY and HURT and do not WANT there to be a way back most of the time.
And all of that is just an analysis of our present sorry state of affairs. However, I bring it up with relation to how I feel sad about certain things in my own life: the loss or lessening or changing of certain relationships, the feeling that certain things that seemed very possible two or three years ago now seem like I am eternally too old or too late to reach them, and so on. That series of promises alluded to is comforting not only because the end prizes of those promises are nice things to have but because they provide a narrative or a context through which to live one's life.
We are the protagonist of our own story, and for a lot of us it feels like there was a plot but that someone or something took that plot away from us. And you know, I feel that, too. And in a way, I know that the whole hope or concept of a narrative guiding my life isn't coherent even in terms of any metaphysical or cosmological meaning one can give life. It doesn't work like that, even if there is such a thing as fate or destiny, on the ground level. You don't get to play a role where you already know the script. It just does not happen. And yet, looking at other people's lives, sometimes it seems like it does. We tell ourselves stories about other people's lives while we live our own. And it hurts and stings right now because I feel a lot like I have forever missed the next prompt where I get a new plot point, a new branch on the timeline or whatever. I feel stuck and like the context that I used to relate to the world for years has been destroyed, wasted on a foolish, empty series of small daydreams.
