Go back to the farm league, boy.
The joy that sparked the smile that sparked the hope that sparked the man that sparked the people that sparked the revolution into joy joy joy for everyone.
I have to officially accept the possibility that you have no idea what you think you're arguing insofar as you're operating on some interpretation of my words that I have not foreseen.
Other than that, I still don't understand what the hell your problem is.
The joy that sparked the smile that sparked the hope that sparked the man that sparked the people that sparked the revolution into joy joy joy for everyone.
This was a telling point. I'm left with a split response.
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Holding my own line: I'm wondering then why change the issue in response to grim reality.
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Attempting to interpret a possible divergence between us: Actually, I'm referring more to the idea that if I think, I'm apparently bound to be a Joe Scarborough caricature against conventional liberalism.
I'm erasing here a huge bit on 9/11 because I think I can use a slightly less charged example; it could be that WTC, for instance, is too polarized for you.
I had not seen my father for a while; while we argued much in my childhood we bear no long-term hostilities. He just prefers to live on his boat two hundred fifty miles away, and doesn't stick his head out much. But he came up to see me one day and before he even said hello, he sort of slumped in the doorway and said, "I owe you an apology."
I couldn't imagine for what. Nothing of late had happened.
"You used to say some things I didn't like," he explained. Then he got vague and downright sheepish. "Corporations. Executives. I didn't really think ...."
Essentially, what he was apologizing for was a very fundamental and formative fight we had throughout my childhood in which he despised my more communal principles on the grounds that he perceived them as reactionary and phantasmic.
He really didn't believe that people generally behaved that way.
And it had been such a period that I had long forgotten any notions of demanding an apology. I had neutralized those chapters through repeated examination, and had long ago put them on the shelf.
I should have felt great. I don't jump on the frontrunner, the odds-on favorite. I admit to a certain degree of distrust of convention. And because of this, I don't "win" certain causes very often.
And on that day, I flat-out won. Total and complete victory in what turns out to have been a vitally defining episode of my childhood.
It should have felt
great. (I haven't any psychologists in my immediate circle, but that would be an odd episode to investigate ....)
But it didn't. In fact my father that day learned something about me that is irrelevant to the chapter in general, except that knowing he learned that small factoid brought a measure of personal satisfaction that actually felt warmer than "winning" a 28-year (okay, 23, since it probably didn't start until I hit school) argument that we'd long ago stopped devoting any energy to.
"Winning",
Wes, involved a very grim reality. Lots of people lost tons of money to thieves. People saw their savings and retirements wiped out. Energy infrastructure--perhaps the most vital in any society--nearly came apart. Before that my father had seen his throat figuratively cut by his business partner. And all along he ideal of family and society was confounded by reality.
So in the end, my "victory" comes at the expense of my father's mental health, his basis for relating to the world; how many dollars, and how many ruined lives?
Now ... should I stop to pat myself on the back for "winning" like I never really could? Or perhaps as this post might, by some acceptable psychological theories, be attempting to do?
There were more important things going on. I mean, it's well enough for some, such as a starving musician I know, to obtain some spiritual satisfaction watching a friend of ours enter poverty for the first time. But for him it wasn't the satisfaction of seeing our friend's world fall apart. For him it was the spiritual aspect of his friend suddenly coming to understand him more. The joke is that about a third of what the newly-poor friend found odd about the starving musician suddenly became perfectly explicable to him as soon as he didn't have money. And it gave a couple of my friends a newfound appreciation for each other.
And just as I take comfort in strengthening my association with my father after all these years, so too do my friends take comfort in their newfound perspectives.
But none of those comforts means there's any joy in being remotely accurate in one's assessment of grim reality.
If you don't bring any joy to Mudville, how do you expect it to ever get there?
So ... let's import it from Cleveland?
It's simple. You find your own fucking joy OR YOU SUFFER.
This is where I get really disappointed with your standards,
Wes. The American Buddha attitude problem was annoying back around 1992, and was obsolete by 2000. Get in the twenty-first century, or something superficial like that.
Suffer if you must brother, but I choose joy. I fight when it's time to fight.
Again, your standards. As with the last, it seems you've leapt from the particular to the general, cast my life according to a chosen archetype based on that leap, and have taken up that cause. While I certainly respect your right to be an opinionated fuck, I just wonder why you have to invent that one.
Do you wonder why there are so few deep conversations around here,
Wes? The phrase "
you become part of the problem" springs to mind.
Go back, read the conversation, and then try to explain to me what you were thinking when you decided to address the problem of joyless Mudville.
It's real simple,
Wes. If I bet five bucks on the Marlins and they win, yes, I can take joy n being right. On the other hand, if I say to someone, "Bad shit is going to happen and people are going to suffer," I don't take joy in being correct.
You've leapt from a very particular discussion back to a general principle of joy. Were the discussion you inserted yourself into of a different context, there are conditions whereby I would agree with you. But in taking a very particular facet of this discussion, applying it as a generalism, and pursuing the results of that equation, you're inventing your own problem to object to.
Don't make me map it out for you,
Wes.
Oh, and go fuck yourself, ASS.
Pretentious cock.
See? You're even unable to explain the basis of your profanity.
Look, I stated my case, boy. I told you where I found you disappointing. I realize eye-for-eye, tit-for-tat is the most important thing to you, but really,
Wesmorris, perhaps you should stop trying to pretend you're intelligent and just stick to the asshole-provocateur role. You play it
so damn well.
So get off your holier-than-thou coward's routine. The best way to bring joy to Mudville has
nothing to do with supreme and willful apathy.
That's your own choice, boy. Get over yourself and buy a clue.
