Friday morning random

* I dunno but it seemed like my tweetstream overnight got full of people who were just angry, angry about stuff, ranging from the refugee issue (which I think is complicated and I don't have the energy to comment on) to personal issues to things like how different groups* are represented in the media. And I admit that I suppose there are lots of things out there that are upsetting, and, as someone once said, "If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention," you know what?

(*Not Muslims. Other groups.)

I'm tired. I just can't any more. I can't deal with people screaming at each other and instead of saying "I disagree with you and here are the reasons why" or "I think the data you are using are incorrect, here are the data I have" they are screaming STUPID and WRONG and BAD and even EVIL at people who disagree with them.



It's fine to disagree, but can we disagree on terms or on principles or on plans instead of resorting to insulting one another? 'Cos that's just a playground fight and it doesn't really solve anything.

A long time ago I saw something Incurable Insomniac (I don't even know if she still blogs; for a while the blog was password protected) said, and I liked it, and I think it's still true:

"Not being heard is one of humanity's greatest problems. It always has been. That's why everyone is so crazy. Loud car stereos, loud ring tones, yelling, shouting, bad behavior--even Twitter and Facebook. HEAR ME! I MATTER! I HURT! I'M AFRAID!"

I think increasingly people are afraid they are not being heard and they are escalating the "loudness"

And I just can't any more. I don't like being around loud angry people even if I might agree with one side of them.


* I really want to just say "All of you can go slug it out" and wander off and do my own thing.

I want to give in to what I once called Holiday Brain or Christmas Brain - where you only think about Christmassy things like gifts and decorations and making special foods and doing things with people you love.

And you know - last night I watched most of a movie on the Hallmark Movie Channel. It was about a blended family (a widow and a widower who married, and their kids learning to live with each other). And as is typical of these types of movies, the conflicts are lower key and less nasty than real world conflicts are - the tweenish girl was "mean" to her stepmother but not really all that very mean, and at the end she called her stepmother "Mom" (after swearing she would not) and hugged her and told her she loved her. And I know, I know - these movies are every bit as much a fantasy as the pretty clean rooms are in decorating magazines, or the perfect romance of the swashbuckling rogue who wants to turn good and the young heiress who fears she will have to marry a man who bores her, or.....well, really anything in those kinds of entertainments.

But I admit, there is something almost akin to the Golden Era mysteries, where things are put right at the end about these types of stories: there's a family redemption, in the end people realize they DO love each other and are willing to commit to the hard work of working to love one another (and loving other people IS hard work. I don't care what anyone else says. I know I am pretty unloveable some times, and so are other people). And, I don't know. I think for me it shows another path, one other than the screaming Jerry Springerish one, or the "walk away and just go it alone" one. Maybe I'm too much an idealist still, but I like some things - some stories, some movies - that show people being *better* than we actually are, and as we experience that entertainment, we feel like, "Maybe this is something I should aspire to." (Maybe, actually, that's also part of the attraction of the superhero movies: that the world is worth saving after all, and we would like to try to be one of the ones to do that)

The funny thing is, I think in August or March a movie like that, I'd flip right past it. But the hook of Christmastime - and the fact that it's drawing in on Christmastime now - makes me interested in it and makes me watch.

*And kind of the flip side of "families learning to commit to the hard work of loving each other" - I ran across this story about the so-called "last true hermit" - a guy who essentially edited himself out of the modern world. He did wind up getting arrested and going to prison because he stole food and other items (watches, so he knew the time, propane tanks, so he could cook) from camps and summer houses.

I admit I know the story is written to be this way, but you wind up being a little sympathetic for the guy. (It's also suggested he's on the Asperger's spectrum, which would make living around people more challenging for him - and probably made prison hellish).

But I will say there have been times where I think about that. No, not living under a tarp in the woods, but doing something like getting one of those little teardrop trailers (there are a few that supposedly my car could pull, and they even have a toilet and shower in them!) or buying a very large plot of land in some remote area and putting up a little cabin. And just RUNNING when people get to be too much. And yeah, I admit, indoor plumbing is pretty important to me and I'm not sure how I could live happily for very long without it (then again: if you had a composting toilet and a decent well, and if you were not working full time - therefore, had the time for stuff like hauling water and chopping wood)

But I admit that's kind of the cognitive dissonance I face in this life: part of me wants to go out and TRY TO MAKE THINGS BETTER and LOVE PEOPLE AND MAYBE SHOW THEM THAT GOD LOVES THEM TOO. But another part of me just gets exhausted by people, their problems, and their squabbles, and wants to run away and hide and have enough time and energy to do things like read Proust and draw trees.

* And also: a lot has been made of the whole "safe spaces" thing on college campuses. And yeah, I see the ridicule for people wanting the entire world to be a safe space, because there's no way that that's possible. And yet, at the same time: don't we all have places or things we retreat to for a while, when the world gets to be too much? I mean, Camp David exists. There was a "Fortress of Solitude" for Superman (at least in the movies). One of my circles of friends jokes a lot about "blanket forts" even as we recognize we do have to go out into the world and be adults and do the hard things. I'm not sure there's anything so awful about once in a while retreating to a blanket fort (or the equivalent). The problem comes when you want to be there all the time.

I think that's actually the crux of my frustration with the people who ridicule adults who like cartoons or comic books or superhero movies or coloring books or Harry Potter or whatever....for many of us, it's not a REPLACEMENT for dealing with real life; it's a short escape from it. (And I would argue it's a healthier escape than drinking mass quantities is)

I dunno. I think of the line from a movie I watched years ago ("The Cup" - it was about Buddhist novice monks wanting to watch the World Cup) and in it, one of the wiser older monks made the comment:

"Can we cover the earth with leather so it is soft wherever we go?" and one of the young monks responds that no, that is not possible. The older monk then asks, "What can we do?" and the response is "We can wear leather sandals" - in other words, we can go out into the world but take responsibility for our own comfort (or that's how I saw it). And while some of the college students in question may want to cover the whole world with leather (after all, college students are *awfully* young, and sometimes young people don't have it all figured out yet), I guess I tend to see the joking about blanket forts or sitting down to a coloring book in the evening after a day of going to work and running errands as being kind of like wearing sandals but going out into the hard and sharp world.

It's a balance. I suspect the problem is too many of us forget how to keep a balance.