On Demoralization
While nature provides some atmospheric feedback
I started writing this morning because I got up too early, and read all of the content that was worth reading before 4:40 am, and I remembered telling my wife "remind me that I often feel better after writing, than reading" a few weeks ago. Not a lot has changed in the weeks since my last missive; Boeing has had a few more accidents, the US junta is edging the entire world closer to global conflict - in short, things continue apace.
On April 8th, the solar eclipse that transected the US in the afternoon briefly synchronized the nation and focused millions of eyes and minds on a singular event that was occurring. Any who witnessed it and didn’t feel a slight sense of awe or unease at the unnatural dusk light that cast shadows is either lying or missing a piece of their soul.
At 15:26 local time, the maximum in my area, I was unable to hear the highway a mile to my east. The birds got quiet and the nighttime frogs started singing. I was still casting a faint shadow on the ground. My daughters and I took turns passing around the single pair of eclipse glasses we had. My wife wasn’t there - thanks to our oligarchic paradise, she has the pleasure of needing to work, and had to do so. However, the store saw it fit to let their employees see a once-in-a-lifetime event, thankfully.
CERN still stands, so they did not create a micro black hole. I had envisioned a scenario wherein they did create one, and the multi-kiloton explosion that happened as it evaporated was going to be used by the US junta to launch a nuclear attack on Moscow. I’m pleased that did not occur. Having been born in the 1970’s and raised in the 1980’s, the nuclear fear doesn’t ever really go away. It’s really easy to bring it back.
My day today will consist of mostly the same activities that I have been going about since being sent home from the office for the flu 4 years ago. There’s seasonal variation (e.g. school season, spring is planting season), etc. , but for the most part everything in my life that isn’t creative or professional hasn’t really changed since then.
From 6:30-15:00, I will solve technical mysteries and maintain software as fast and as accurately as humanly possible. I will end the day with more work than when I started it. Then I will drive for an hour taking my youngest daughter home from school, as the school bus system in our district has been entirely unreliable and kids who live 7 or 8 miles from the school are looking at transit times measured in hours on some days.
16:00-17:00 is take care of the plants and animals, try to put some time in on construction projects. At 17:00, I will cook my family dinner, and clean the mess up afterwards. By 20:30, I’ll probably fallen asleep out of boredom. My wife gets done with work at 21:00, and by 22:00, the day is over. Repeat.
Note that there isn’t a note of suffering in any of that, but it is also devoid of satisfaction an a sense of looking forward to things. There are multiple factors behind that. The events of 2020 played a distinct role, changing the entire character of discourse in our society, and shattering the real social networks I had been building up over two decades of living in an area, and having kids in school.
Track and Field team? Yeah, that’s not happening - neither is the school robotics team. Heck, let’s just keep the kids home the rest of the year. On June 14th of that year, we went up to “the lake” (Lake George, NY) to try to get some time outside in the sun.
At least the outdoors are open again now. However, the feverish money printing that allowed for the profligate spending of the post-COVID “stimulus” is starting to sting a little now, as many predicted it would. US dollars don’t quite spend they way they did in 2018 anymore. All of this has the effect of limiting ones options.
But I keep going. Kid Rock has a song about this, and I don’t know why I keep going, but I do. I can’t not. I have tried to lower my own expectations of myself to be more in line with the generalized decline of standards we’re going through, but the damage it does to my psyche when I succeed in doing so is too great. Part of it is that I still want to leave a better world for my own kids, and show them how to rise above this.
Still, in the literal dark hours, before the sun comes up and the miracle of metabolism changes the caffeine in my coffee into psychoactive compounds, I lose the forest in trees and it gets hard to pick myself up and throw myself back into the routine. But I do.
And as I wrote that, a flash of lightning lit the room. As I went to the window to see what the flash was, thunder rolled across the darkened landscape. I could not have punctuated the previous paragraph more appropriately!
My art has suffered greatly. I have not composed a note of music since 2021. I haven’t wanted to. My muse has always been connected to zeitgeist, it seems. I want to compose again, I still love listening to music - but I just can’t push myself into the act of spending hours working on it. The time just doesn’t seem to be there anymore, and this makes me sad.
So, I broke the pattern a little. I bought some chickens. Which meant I needed to build a chicken coop. Plus, the birds are pretty fun to watch and I apparently can add “chicken whisperer” to my animal talents, as they seem to have taken well to me. I caught myself watching them, smiling and enjoying myself for like 10 minutes. I even took 2 in to the house to “show and tell” with the rest of my family for my 2 best behaved birds. Who knows what this will yield in the long-term, but I have something to do and it makes me smile.
The old human touch is missing. I’ll admit it - I got so much energy from “the crowd”! When I participated in group activity (e.g. robotics competitions, marathons, etc.) , the spirit of the event is what I was after. Weed is cool, but pales before this feeling. When I finished my first festival-type half-marathon, I literally had tears in my eyes as I crossed the line from the high. I would not have gotten this from just going out and running 13.1 miles on my own. I know this, because I’ve done it - I tried! I miss that energy.
And during the eclipse on the 8th - I could sense it again for a moment. The talking head on the news sensed it too, as he mentioned it. My wife could feel it, and my kids could too, even if they couldn’t put their fingers on it. Just a little, and just for a moment - but it was there.
The good guys don’t win every battle. The forces of malice won a great victory in 2020, the effects of which will ripple through society for a saeculum. In a fight, when your opponent has you off balance and on your back foot, the move just might be to roll out and take the fight to the ground, thus regaining the initiative. Maybe you’re just a better grappler than a boxer.
(Lightning flashes again - this time a flood of torrential rain comes down)
That’s better than a flashing “12:00” on the microwave, so here we go! And it seems (and I give thanks) that I may have more than one muse to ask for inspiration. It doesn’t hurt to talk to God/Jesus or whatever lesser deity you have sworn allegiance to. Even if you think these things mere fairy tales or terrifying egregores, try it. Just remember, much as in the stock market, one should always be critical of advice being given, and attempt to discern why one is being given advice. Which is why you should probably start with one who says he will protect you, not eat you.
I have never been more convinced there is a psycho-spiritual war happening. The more the narrative of materialistic atheisim is pushed, the more I think the opposite must be true. This heuristic saved my life in 2021 during the great medical experiment. But I will say this - the dark one moves openly in the world now. He used to hide in the shadows, as recently as my teenaged years. I can see his influence everywhere.
Don’t give him the pleasure of an easy victory. Don’t be a tool for darkness. It’s a corny old line from a mediocre TV show, but as Rumpelstiltskin says,
And the “magic” being thrown around nowadays is some potent stuff. Read Jung and learn to meme if you’d like to understand how it all comes together, but suffice to say, magic isn’t dead, we are practically drowning in it! Hypnosis and word-magic, to be specific. We talk about NPC’s and “software updates”, but do not call enchanting and spellcasting by it’s name for reasons unknown.
When I reach the bottom of my personal “doom loop” - I remember that there are forces that are feverishly trying to defeat me. Billions spent on a propaganda program to make me hopeless. If defeating my sense of hope is so important to them, well …
Let’s go out and be great.