Frankly, I read too much. I don’t mean that in the way many would think… what I mean is, I read and then find myself trying to digest too much, of the world’s problems, mostly. I understand why people pick a cause and seemingly ignore all others because it is freaking exhausting.
Here’s an example.
Trying to argue in the debate on transgenderism while then having to take into account the biological science, the psychological development of children, the ongoing battles in feminism and homosexuality, the science and history of opinion and how that comes to play in a modern world where everyone’s opinions are strengthened by those who agree and cause increasing polarity between them and those who don’t, taking into account morality and moral relativism, the ongoing debate about mandating morality and having government favour a particular moral stance or viewpoint, the true development of each individual’s moral perspectives and therefore the understanding of background, the inevitable discussion about socio-economic status and people’s genuine access to opportunity, the notion of white privilege, the notion of racism, the notion of mandating laws about offence or offending people’s sensibilities and again the issue of moral superiority, the neverending question about those who have and those who have not and the machinations involved behind closed doors about what can be done about it all, the need to trust in the goodness of humanity despite overwhelming evidence of people’s greed and lack of foresight of belief in integrity, the need to trust in goodness at all when those believed in have made so many errors, even inside my own church, the notion of belief, the power of persuasion versus hard core belief, the history of all of it and the myths that have been bandied around as fact, sifting through truth and lies, the source of those truths and lies, whether they be the media, the education sector, the government, the lobbyists, the nature of journalism and the need to tell the truth versus the need to sell or send a particular message, positive or negative, the need for people to have the capacity to discern between fact and fiction, the need for education that creates those types of people, the need for true objectivity and the uphill battle in finding it because people are humans with experiences, ideas, backgrounds and subjectivity is the fallback position for anyone, however objective they believe themselves to be, the importance of history and how often that importance and how often the history itself is ignored and therefore doomed to repeat, the importance of the ideological and philosophical history, the debate surrounding whether or not truth even exists, the difference between truth and perspective of truth and the different means by which one finds it, the power of fiction to deliver and discover truth, the power of media to create platforms for truth and perspective, the ever changing landscape of how people see and learn and teach and speak, the inevitable debate about useless entertainment and its ability to distract from what is real, countered by the importance of culture in the progression of society and humanity, the sheer age of the medium of story and the way in which people seem programmed to respond to narrative, in whatever form.
I have to stop there because this will go on forever and at some point it will likely force me to plunge myself off the tracks altogether.
This is my brain. I’ve tried to say to myself again and again, pick something, anything, and then run with that, then lather, rinse, repeat.
But fatigue, physical, mental and emotional, are very, very real. And the reality also exists that none of the above exist without the others and in and of themselves, there already exists an immensity of literature and continuing schools of thought and discussion. The tapestry is so damn huge and unfortunately only metaphorical because trying to envision it all, trying to digest it all, trying to do so without feeling like you’re drowning in thought might be aided by an honest to goodness piece of something that maps all this shit out. Something to grab on to.
There is an actual throbbing in my right, frontal lobe at this very minute.
And now all I want to do is laugh.
I am a person with problems, much like everyone else, some real, some illusory, many, many which I feel don’t even begin to compare with those of the vast majority of the world, despite my childish cling to a notion of ‘difference’.
Thinking about this shit weighs a ton. But what a luxury I have, to have the time and means to think about it at all.
My daily 'battle' in this regard will always be the attempts to pick something and try to do something about it, granted I make the time. My life is what it is and I constantly try to figure out what more to do with it, but at the same time, I’ll be damned if I don’t try to squeeze every possible bit of meaning and offering I can out of each and every second because that is just how I am and I would never want to be any different.
Anyway, where to from here? The pot bubbles and I do plan to serve up some of the resulting stew. For now, at least, this place remains as it always has - a means by which to sort and share.
A nice thing to have, really.
