Metablog

Everyone would write using the IPA. No more standard spelling. Spelling would change along with pronunciation, and so vary by region and country. No more of this stupid kanji crap, or every other word being completely irregular and impossible to know how to pronounce without a dictionary. “Know”. “How”. QED.

Ehh. Maybe.

My life doesn’t particularly suck—well, kind of, but—but the world does. Poverty. War. Global warming. Peak Oil and the energy crisis. Bowling alone, and the disintegration of community. Sexism. Homophobia. Racism. Sundown towns. Prison. The Drug Wars. The entire fucking justice system. The past eight years in the US. “Education.” Information overload. Healthcare in the US. Misunderstanding of mental illness, and discrimination against the mentally ill. The brokenness of democracy, representative or otherwise. Corruption. Terrible city planning in the past 30 years. [Update: List of woes expanded. Feel free to suggest your own.]

It’s pretty normal for these things to be a little depressing. But what about when they get really depressing? What about when when you’re suicidally depressed (probably not primarily due to the above-mentioned ills), and all these issues are just weighing you down? What do you do? Stop reading the news, stop following all of it? Put yourself in a cocoon and lead your own little life and don’t worry about the bigger picture? Try to forget, as much as possible, that there’s anything out there to worry about? But then, are you somehow deserting a duty to be socially involved? (After all, millions of people in the US doing just that are often given a big share of blame, perhaps deservedly, for the pitiful condition of politics here.) Are you putting yourself at risk of being personally harmed for not following these issues? What if something happens where then it really would make sense for you to move to Canada, if you really thought about it? (In my case, it’d be Spain or the Netherlands, but same diff.)

I’m afraid to stop reading about all this stuff, and afraid to keep reading. Afraid, perhaps, that without the higher narrative provided by politics, my life would completely lack any narrative, and without narrative, who am I? Actually, though, I think using the word “identity” (i.e. “who am I?”) to refer to the concept usually referred to by it is silly. It’s an awful way to describe what it describes. But then, “purpose”—what am I doing here?—, which describes the same thing, is still bad, though closer. I think I would need to understand a lot more psychology a lot better to precisely describe what it is that narrative provides one’s life that is so necessary for well-being. That is, to describe what “purpose” and “identity” really mean, without using vague, ne’er-defined terms.

God I hate living.

On a brighter note, I’m planning to ask someone out early next week. We’ve flirted a little so far, so I’m kind of hopeful, but I’m not even sure she’s single, so I’ll need lots of luck. I’m trying to decide whether to cut my hair in the meantime.

Little Nemo is destroying the clownfish! (Link in Spanish. Muy gracioso español.)