zeitgeist’s blog

   I have a lot of rage.  Lots of us do.  Its something that, as a man, I am at continual odds with.  I think all men have that primal rage that lives in side them, and I think as men, we let that rage become groundwater under our psyche.  We deal with it different ways.  We try and control things around us, to keep ourselves safe, we delve into machismo to compensate for our perceived weaknesses.
   Most of all, we objectify women.  Its rampant in our culture and in our society and at the end of the day it boils down to rage. We overtly or subtly want to take that which we covet most and distance them.  As I have written before it boils down to the dichotomy of love and fear/hate.  Our response to those that make us weak is to make them weaker or to distance ourselves.  Drown a woman out in our own masculinity and over-emphasizing the feminine to make her a thing, because things can't hurt us the way people can.
   Our lifelong dreams of controlling our own destiny and blazing our own path ultimately shattered by the love of another person who suddenly plays a part in that destiny. There are those who never learn to overcome and evolve emotionally beyond the selfish power-hungry and conquering nature to truly enjoin with another person.  Who can blame someone truly for not wanting to have a former life left dead in the name of a new, uncertain, and all more painful set of losses that will come with love?  (because at the end of it, truly, someone will leave the other, everybody dies)

   This is our evolution.  We are evolving emotionally and spiritually, we become more tolerant of those around us and more open to the sophisticated higher callings that are so often the antithesis of our primal urges.  Like lungs in the first fish that climbed out of the water our ability to love, forgive, reason, and rationalize is struggling to breathe its breath, our bodies still aching and clawing to revert back to a place of solitude and power, for control. 

   So they find ways to exploit and use you by manipulating this base.  Retail chains call on us to horde and gather and build our power base.  The military recruits with constant themes of power destiny.  Women objectify themselves for attention.   Base is Daniel Plainview, sitting in his mansion next to a corpse and alone in the world, having destroyed all those things that threatened the beast within him dead or gone. 
   To all of you who take every day to strive to break free of that darkness every day then I am happy to call you my friends, that in the bustle and manipulation of our society that we reach out and find the moments for us to breathe openly, to center, and to anchor yourself to something higher, there is no greater journey in our lives. 

   I remember being in college and struggling with the simple questions of both "Why do bad things happen to good people" and "what makes people inherently bad or good".   Nobody ever told me that those were going to be the eternal questions of my lifetime, though it makes sense, all the great philosophers were trying to answer that ultimate "who are we and where are we" question. 

  I was disturbed by the thoughts of ordinary men capable of evil and what we could do to the world.  I've been having a lot of discussions with my therapist about our human nature and why we do the things we do.  So when I sat down today to look at vox and re-read the posts on the American Dream I started to think about human nature again.   If you haven't read about  The Standford Prison Experiments  then you ought to. I spent a lot of time wondering why ordinary Germans would be persuaded to do the atrocities of the Nazi regime before it and trying to find those answers in the writing of Rawls, Mill, Kierkegaard, and other modern philosophical writing.

   But I think the real question, and the question that scares me the most isn't why people can do those things but "could I do those things".  How much of us is changeable based on environment.  Are morals, beliefs, and identity truly a shiny hard coating on the core of something far darker that we must struggle with.  How much of who I am is something I have to work at being and how much am I hiding. What truly lies within my soul?

  And while I could easily reference some overused cliche I think that we are all much less in control or "good" as we'd like to think we are.  That at our core maybe we are bad people struggling not to do bad things to each other.  That with each emotion and action we take in life there is a dichotomy of balance, that the person we love the most is also the person that makes us the most exposed, so we hate them the most.  Our parents who raise us and nuture us are those we push hard back against, reject and despise in many ways while we still love and cherish them at the same time. 

Those things that we love or adore are the things we want to bring down the most, the things we want to control, objectify and destroy.  And while that may be as creepy to read as it is to type, I think we all have that inside ourselves.

(this post is all over the map, its more of a process post than it is me trying to wow with outrageous insight)

I admit that I’ve bought in to the lefty media machine.  That doesn’t mean the media is liberal (its not) but there is a liberal media and I’ve bought in.  I listen to Thom Hartmann nearly every day, when we get in the car I am usually dialed into Air America, and I read a TON of lefty websites and media. 

  And without getting into liberal vs conservative, I am worried that while progressives preach against various forms of politics of fear about terrorism and national security they are preaching their own fear lines to move people.   I can’t deny that just like Rush and Hannity that the Maddows and Malloys have an agenda they are pushing.  And because of that, I wonder about the commentators they bring on their shows.

There is no denying the fact checking of the right that happens by liberal media, SOMEONE has to unspin the lies and cover ups that mainstream media won’t cover.  The continual dissemination of inaccurate statements in the form of bullet point soundbites really does manipulate our culture and its important to hear, read, or speak about the underlying and often times far more complex and important truths.

  And while I could go on about soundbite media, what scares me isn’t the fact checking but the prophesizing of the future thats been happening more and more over the past few months.  I’ll be the first to admit I truly do believe we are heading into a depression if historical trends are accurate, but how do I know I am not being manipulated the same way Rush’s ditto heads are. 

  That with every economist Thom Hartmann has on his show he has 3 commercials for how I should be out buying gold because of the tanking economy.  That I should FEAR losing my house, job, income and should pay these other people to safeguard my future.

   That at the same time I am also asked to sign up for an exlusive cruise of the Caribbean with your favorite Air America radio hosts I am being told that there is a mad powerhungry man who will stop at nothing before he drops bombs on Iran and starts another war.    The message of the facts is in lock step with the commerical interests of the company presenting them.  Fear your future without this or that information or having this service or product.  As we fall apart we must turn to this new pool of commercialism and fear.

   There was a time when while we were unspinning stories we were also sharing fantastic things going ..s being made, stories of hope and progress.  No longer are we holding up the people that are the heroes, we’re too focused on the villans and being manipulated in any possible way.  That includes fear.

   So instead of worrying about the next terrorist attack I end up worrying about China recalling debts and making me move back in with my parents because the dollar is the new peso.  I worry about what world my children will live in if we don’t balance the Supreme Court.  I worry about who is listening to my calls and if my food is going to kill me because the government and FDA is corrupt. 

   I am tired of fear.  And both sides are fear mongering, herding both sets of cattle towards some middle. 

   Its funny what causes us to feel.  I'd dealt with a rather large amount of trauma in my teenage years (surgeries, hospitals, etc etc) and probably more so than most men built myself a tidy little castle to hold my emotions in.  I got really good at focusing on people around me and even now most people who know me would tell you one of my greatest strengths is my ability to read people.  I was doing pretty damn good too at being the everyday guy with no problems with the big shoulders and the can-do attitude....

   Then I read "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy.

   I look back on myself as the contents of a can.  Not a bit of space left, eloquently jammed together and when turned over and shook nothing comes out.  You could jam me against nearly anything and I would hold together, the internal tension gripping onto the sides with abandon.  I like to think "The Road" was the utensil you shove up into the can to knock it all loose.  After that it comes pouring out.

   I couldn't tell you what about the book did it, and I have tried but no central theme does the overall suffering those words caused me justice.  Loss, despair, desperation, mortality, nihilism, all packed into each little page.  I think I cried from page 10 on.  Each time I picked it up the tears would stream down my face eventually during my session.  I didn't stop reading it though.  I wanted to feel it, it was cathartic.  I'd been sad, but I'd never GRIEVED it until I read through the grieving of father and son in that novel.  If you asked me straight out if I liked the book I'd tell you I hated it, I'd be embarrassed at what it did to me and the shame that it took something like that to break me open.

   I have since neatly packed myself away...well mostly.  And I say mostly because having felt that made me ask the question "why can't I feel".  Why do I keep myself in an endless state of mediocrity to avoid the highs and lows and slow suffering life throws at us.  Because in reading those words was like seeing in color for the first time in a long time; a total Oz moment where you recognize the beauty and depth of even the most painful and extreme.

   Now I am searching for that authenticity.  I am searching and working to break a cycle, a habit, and a lifestyle predicated on safe over experience.   The road less travelled and all of that. 

Some people can point to moments in their lives where they had been woken up.  Some evangelicals find it in being born again, some people experience extreme loss around them, others extreme trauma.  And while I'd always tell you that "I've almost died, and I can tell you I know what life is about" I've since realized that "knowing" and "feeling it" are two different things. 

And part of why I am blogging, why I am starting this dialogue, is to stop window shopping through life, and share that drive with those who want to be part of that.

  I'd been blogging on another site for some time and just felt it was time to start fresh. I have read several vox sites and always enjoyed the content and the community.

Why zeitgeist?  Well zeitgeist is (according to its Wiki online)"Zeitgeist" refers to the ethos of a select group of people, that express a particular world view which is prevalent at a particular period of socio-cultural progression.  I thought that pretty much described what a blog was.  Its my little moment in time.  I also can't help but admit that nothing in here is really original, that so much of what we think, see, hear, and process is everyday person collective stuff.

   And if you want to know why you'll read my blog, I really don't know.  I'm not really bringing my established neighborhood from my old posting grounds and am just really looking for a fresh start with coincides with some new experiences in my life.   Like most people it will bounce between the political, the humorous, the whimsical, and the innocuous. 

If you read it, thanks, leave some comments, I love reading blogs and look forward to reading yours.

-Z