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stories are the bones of everything

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default state of hate

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I often don’t sleep well. This morning I woke up at zero dark thirty because nightmares. They vary, and they are unimportant. Often I cannot return to slumber, as was the case this morning. I find myself surfing, or thinking through a plot twist, or trying to write. This morning it was surfing.

The electronic crumbs people leave often take me to places I would rather not go. This morning, I found myself reading a rant that began, “Shut up cuckold” and continued, “We want our country to be white.” Let’s explore that idea, as reprehensible as it is, for a moment.

What would change for this particular person in a country that was racially homogeneous? Would his personal problems go away? Of course not. The psychology of racism is pretty simple: blame all your life’s problems on a group that you aren’t part of. Racism gives small-minded, often perceptually disenfranchised people an excuse for why they aren’t doing anything great with their own existence. Some people inherit racism from their family, but a lot of them pick up the banner later in life.

It fascinates me when people blame the problems in their life on anyone but themself. The kind of weak-minded thinking that believes life would be utopia if only (insert external factors) is the kind of weak-minded thinking that makes a place worse, not better. There is no science to support racial superiority of any kind. Thankfully, we are all individuals. Special snowflakes, if you will.

Scientists tell us that diversity makes us smarter. We become better at problem-solving the more diverse we become. Being exposed to, and being open to considering, people who aren’t like you, offers many opportunities to grow and changes the way you think, often in positive ways. The most successful organizations are also the most diverse, which is why a default state of hate is a stupid way to live. It’s also why racists have increasingly been pushed to the fringes of society (where they belong).

When you encounter someone who thinks that a particular group doesn’t contribute as much as their own, remind them that:

  • All of us originated in the same place, Africa
  • The ancient Egyptians first came up with surgery and concrete, which was then refined by an Englishman and again by a Frenchman
  • The Arabs invented mathematics
  • The wheel comes from Mesopotamia
  • The compass comes from China
  • The Germans came up with the concept of the automobile
  • An Italian invented the telescope
  • Two American brothers came up with the airplane

If you know someone who lives in a default state of hate, remind them of that. Tell them they belong on the fringes unless they are willing to see the world through a wider-angle lens.

All of us are stronger than some of us. Exceptional tribalism is exceptionally stupid.

Photo by marksdk

Circle of control

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“We control our reasoned choice and all acts that depend on that moral will. What’s not under our control are the body and any of its parts, our possessions, parents, siblings, children, or country—anything with which we might associate.”
—Epictetus, Discourses

I am in my mid-40s at the time I am writing this. My body is failing. That’s not to say the expiration date is near, but merely that I am hyperaware of the amount of wear and tear I have put on the machine. Military service in two different branches and a mobile lifestyle have taken a toll. I do not control my body’s reaction to this excessive wear and tear, but I do control my mind, and how it responds.

Our mind is the only thing, ultimately, that we do have control over, if we are fortunate enough to have a healthy brain. The lesson for myself, and anyone who chooses to read these words, is this: stop worrying about externality. Make choices that will keep your brain as healthy as possible. Let go of things you have zero influence over. News. Elections. The health of your national currency. What someone else thinks of you. It’s all quite irrelevant.

If you choose to engage with people on social media, remember that you don’t control what they think, and should therefore not become invested in those who have a different opinion than you. Express yourself, move on, and let go.

It was very icy this morning when I left the house, and even though I have all wheel drive, I found myself unable to make turns. Instead, I was sliding in straight lines across sheets of ice. I could easily have wrecked my expensive automobile. I realized that I couldn’t control the ice, or the way my car responded to it. Instead of getting upset, I crept home as slowly and carefully as I could. I made it safely, and for that I am grateful.

If I hadn’t, and had wrecked my car, I would focused on seeing the positives. My automobile has been great in the five years I’ve had it, but I am not attached to it. It’s just a tool that gets me where I want to go. My body is the exact same thing. A tool that gets my mind where I’d like it to go. In the realization of this, I am cognizant that I should try to take care of my car and my body, but that eventually, they will both fail me.

In the mean time, I’m focused on what’s really important – the choices I’m making, the habits I am forming, and the ideas I am exploring. Those are the only things that will matter when my existence is drawing to its close.

My circle of control is what’s happening inside my head. That’s the place that matters most, and what I do there will influence everything else. The same applies to you.

Self-control and externality

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“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”

― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

To my friends who may be worried about the future. You have more power than you know. The incoming orange president has only the power you are willing to give him. Be not afraid but rather draw your tribe closer around you and remember that whatever happens you are the only one in charge of your mind. Donald J. Trump once said that “what separates the winners from the losers is how a person reacts to each new twist of fate.” He’s exactly right, even if he isn’t approaching life from a stoic point of view.

You are in charge of yourself and that’s enough to make of life exactly what you want to make of it. No one but you is in control of your own operating system.

The world you inhabit isn’t about anyone you don’t choose to include in it. This may sound complicated, but it is only as complicated as you make it. Even if you’re incarcerated, you are in control of your mind, and that’s the part of you where reality happens.

The ancient Greeks who came up with the philosophy of Stoicism didn’t know as much as we do about the nature of the universe. They might have known more than we 21st century denizens know about living the good life. They believed in understanding and then facing the obstacles life threw at them. Epictetus, one of the most prominent Stoics, was born a slave. He believed that everything good in our lives starts within ourselves. In his way of seeing the world, nothing external can make us feel anything, and it is only what we tell ourselves about the world around us that results in our emotional reactions.

For my readers, many of whom are also my friends, I give you these principles to contemplate:

  1. Acknowledge that all emotions come from within
  2. Find someone you respect, and use them to stay honest
  3. Understand that failure is the path to growth and later triumphs
  4. Read with purpose
  5. Learn to be brutally honest, starting with yourself
  6. Understand what you spend most of your time doing, and understand what value is returned
  7. Use that knowledge to avoid procrastination
  8. Be present in the present
  9. Remember that time is the most valuable finite resource you have

Source of this list

In 2017, I intend to write weekly on this website about the Stoic philosophy, and what I’m learning from exploring it. I hope you will join me. Let’s grow together as we explore the wisdom of the past to exert the self-control that is fundamental to growth and success in life.

That pesky little Constitution

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Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag – if they do, there must be consequences – perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)

Flags. Those symbols of what we think we are and what we’d like everyone around us to be. There are lots of problems with president elect Trump telling us that burning the flag should be a crime. First, the Supreme Court has already decided that burning the U.S. flag is not a crime. It is a form of legally protected free speech. Google United States v. Eichman. It is also illegal to use loss of citizenship as a form of criminal punishment.

Flags are not people. They represent ideas. Ideas cannot be burned, so burning a symbol is merely expressing dissatisfaction with the idea or ideas that symbol currently represents. In this case, the U.S. flag currently represents Donald J. Trump. Therefore what Trump is saying is that it should be illegal to protest the upcoming rule of Donald J. Trump.

Human rights matter. Flags do not. But don’t for one second think that Trump as President of these United States will let that pesky Constitution get in the way of promoting his brand or exercising the power less than half the people of this country have voted to give him. Trump is dangerous precisely because

I’m not going to burn any flags, but I do want to say something to Trump. No thank you. I’m not interested in being led by those who grab pussy nonconsensually. From my perspective, that’s much more offensive than burning a flag that was probably not even manufactured in the USA.

I’m actively against everything you stand for. You don’t have any legal authority to change the law. That’s the job of Congress. I suggest that instead of wasting your time on Twitter, you start planning all the ways you will keep this country from devolving into civil war.

People burning flags is the very least of your problems. Get off Twitter, shut your mouth, and start listening to the people burning the flags. By doing that, there’s a slim chance you can make America great for the first time in history.

Othered

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You’ll have to take it on faith when I tell you that I understand how a coward thinks. I used to get beat up after school. Not because I was a coward. Mostly, I think, it happened because words matter.

I had so many to choose from, and I loved that.

I love that fact still.

The coward’s way is the ability to stop listening. To filter out the voices that disagree. The ones that offer another perspective.

The ones that are smarter than I am. They are better at othering than I am.

It’s all scalable. I’m not, by any measure, the smartest one. I hope only to be among those found, by the measure of history, to be one of the ones most able to listen.

I probably won’t matter enough for history to notice, but that’s most of us. That’s the 99%. I love them, and I wouldn’t mind being relegated into their tribe.

I was only human.

It is why I unblocked every single person I’d ever blocked recently. We all have a voice, and I want to take every one I have the time for into consideration. If this is a popularity contest, and it is, then I need to figure out how a spray tan man took the highest office in the land. Then I need to figure out how to end his reign.

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. And everything else that has been observed by the weak who refused to give away their power.

Be the change you want to see in the world. Refuse to filter out that with which you cannot stomach. You will grow stronger. As a coward who wishes to grow into some other state of being, I can tell you from long experience that scars are not shame. Wear them proudly.

Write down the names of your enemies. Burn them in effigy. Join your tribe with that of another and rejoice. The weak ones always win when they band together and make demands.

We can do that. If we overcome the fear.

I will not allow my weakness to be my master. Not should you. Study your enemies. Invite them into you house. Tell your tribe to keep their knives sharpened and their eyes and ears always open.

We win because we are legion and they are cowards more craven than we.

I will fight. Will you be my tribe?

I won’t other you. I won’t let them other you. I won’t take your humanity away just because we’re different. You can be my tribe, if you learn to listen.

Tear down the wall, or just refuse them the power to build it.

Make America great again

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The world isn’t ending no matter how you voted. Trump is going to be the next President. Barring acts of god or other forces beyond our collective control.

#MAGA

By the way, America was never great.

It has had moments of self-awareness, and little flashes of excellence, but America can’t be made great again, because it never has been great.

Pick any moment in the history of this country, from the start up until the present, and you will find stains on the pages.

Think we were great because of the founders? Half of them were slave owners. Black people were worth 3/5ths of a white person during that time and they could be bought and sold. Not great. The founders took the land they built this country on from people who already lived on it. We call them native Americans today, and early Americans abuse the ancestors of today’s native Americans horribly.

Maybe you think we were great when we saved Europe from Hitler during World War II. You’d be wrong, because while we were busy doing that admittedly righteous thing, we were still segregated at home. We built concentration camps for Japanese-Americans because of paranoia. Not so great.

But America defeated communism you say? That’s what makes us great! Not so much. One could argue that communism isn’t such a bad concept, but I won’t go there. I’ll just remind you that   we fought a lot of dirty wars to do what we did to bring down the Berlin wall in the late 80’s. Take a moment to research how many dirty wars the CIA has funded only to cast aside the fighters it recruited for political convenience. Google the Hmong, or Iran Contra, or just “the worst things the CIA has done.” American government has a long history of installing and funding atrocious, despotic governments and making friends with bad people. Remember Saddam Hussein? He was once a great friend to America. Before he became a great enemy to our great country that has never really been great for any sustained period of time.

Maybe you think America was great more recently. Let’s say you think it was great after slavery and segregation and all the secretly funded dirty wars. We finally made some progress on human rights and immediately started massive spying programs that break our laws. The NSA collects data on all Americans and possibly all the world for all I know. I know for certain that our so-called great nation is spying on world leaders and governments while keeping many secrets of its own from us. That doesn’t seem so great to me.

America was never great. It only has the potential to be great in the future. That’s the real challenge of a Trump presidency. Admitting that the starting point of his entire campaign is a lie. I don’t think he’s up to the challenge. I’ll be watching and commenting the whole way, as he attempts to make America something is has never been. Again.

Next time someone tells you we’re going to make America great again, I hope you’ll call them on it. We can make America great for the first time, but we need to start from an honest place to do so.