It all sounds like really down the rabbit hole stuff to me. The world, undoubtedly, is in a terrible mess. But explanations, such as your paper offered, are not going to help. They just increase the social tensions.
I had my fourth Covid jab yesterday. Free, painless, no teeth have fallen out, IQ has not (apparently) dropped.
If I was still in the USA, I’d be very worried at the rising tide of Republican conservatism. A tide that threatens to overthrow American democracy as you and I have always known it. We even have bits of it here in New Zealand. People who want to swarm into under attended local boards and get onto them with the explicitly stated goal of making the system ungovernable.
All these motions to resist the governance of the democratic states will, IHMO, simply result in a conversion that ushers in authoritarian states much as when Mussolini rose to power with Fascism. Then choice did truly disappear. Santis and/or Trump at the top of an U.S. authoritarian pyramid of consolidated power? I don’t think I want to be there.
Democracy is a terrible system. But, as Winston Churchill said, it is the best one we’ve got.
Consider your options to continue being the edgy, art-centered, always wants to see the alternate POV person that you are. And consider your chances of being able to do that under any authoritarian government.
American democracy is a fucking mess with unbridled Capitalism simply and insidiously running away, year by year, with more and more of the wealth.
But balance and Capitalism can work together – if the system is structured to be intentional about it. And if the public culture supports a balance between egalitarian and Capitalistic notions.
Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway and Iceland have such systems. Rather than going off to Palm Springs, I think you should take six months and go and immerse yourself in Nordic culture.
Trying to appreciate what’s possible from within the silo of Americana is like looking through a telescope backwards.
America is insular and inward looking. I know – I lived there most of my life.
I’ve read that only 13% of Americans have passports.
As a typical American looking out, it is easy to imagine that America is the center jewel of all existence. And that all the other poor struggling countries are just ‘pretending’ to be real places.
Read some books, Buddy. Get out of the silo in an effort to break your American hypnosis. Go sit in European cafes and coffee shops and philosophize with folks there. You have the money, you have the intelligence. Break out of your increasingly personal ‘fortress mentality’ in which you constantly imagine ‘they’ are closing in on your freedoms.
Simply shed your patterns and ego defenses and go and intentionally re-invent yourself. Trust yourself to survive. Trust yourself to drop your assumptions and trust that you will be able to see the truth when it is standing in front of you.
I’ve jumped ship several times in this life and re-invented myself. And each time I ended up better off than I was. You can either hunker down like a hedgehog or you can fly like a bird. Either way, the experiences you’ll have will largely be the product of the courage you bring to the table. And for fuck’s sake – you’ve got nothing to lose. None of us, NONE, are getting out of here alive. So there’s nothing really to survive and protect against.
Travel. And wherever you are, look up the expats there. They are all new and from other places. They want to talk and socialize, they want to discuss politics, they want to feel a sense of flexible, moveable community. Go Salsa across Europe – you have the skills.
Stop sending me fucking paranoid missives from down at the bottom of some American silo. I’ve been there and I’ve been many places and I don’t believe they are anything other than local cultural illusions.
When you’ve sat in Olso, Lisbon, Copenhagen or Amsterdam for six months, send me a note and I’ll come and join you for a few beers and we can talk about how the world looks then. And I guarantee you that America will look FAR DIFFERENT looking in from the outside than it does looking out from the inside.
Many years ago, you came to my apartment in Long Beach when I was on the brink of turning my life upside down. You told me a story about the “Sword of no sword” and in those days you were a pirate – the way you lived. I loved your courage and your example. You said then that one of the reasons you liked me was that “I owned myself”.
Well, let me return the favor (and I mean this sincerely). Break the molds you are in, my friend. They are not serving you. They are just driving you further into America-centric silos of distrust. Meditate on the fact that you have nothing to lose. You have money, you have time, you have health and all you need to do is rip off the bandages and defenses and go out on a mind-freeing walkabout outside of America.
I absolutely stone-cold promise you that you will scare the fuck out of yourself and feel alive like you have probably not felt in a long time.
Fondly,
Dennis