Bemoaning
I feel so acutely my personal responsibility. Then I shirk it.
I spend a lot of my time arguing that chance is a much bigger factor in people's lives than personal responsibility. People can do everything right, never smoke and still get lung cancer. People can do everything right and still just end up in the right place at the wrong time. People can do everything wrong and succeed. Down to the start and the only thing I took away from the Biology class I narrowly succeeded in- Darwinism is often misrepresented. DNA is the greatest game of roulette from which there are never winners. You're going to have some protein fuck up something, whether that develops into a perceptible hindrance is all chance. You could also get something that makes life easier for you, but that doesn't mean, down to the essence of what is survivable about you, there is nothing wrong with you. And that's fine. That's perfect and an equalizing concept. Humanity, unlike all other forms of life, seems at least, to have most successfully developed social ties. Ties that increase the likelihood that someone who is born with a variance that would have meant they could not genetically compete in places where there is food or water scarcity, places that are inhospitable to life, can be assisted in making lives there. It's charming and beautiful and the only good thing about us. We could make things easier on each other, and we can make things easier on almost everything else on the planet, save viruses and "harmful" bacteria. Fuck those guys.
So I spend a lot of my time arguing that we've abused this power. That all the chance we can recognize and manipulate is being qualified as individual exceptionalism. People succeed because they are just better. Their families are rich because they were meant to be. They handled their own shit. People are mentally ill because there is something defective with them and only them as individuals. We get to systemically marginalize and create barriers for random others instead of creating easier paths. The chance of falling into one of these roads of hoops and booby-traps can do irreparable damage to a human being and by extension all of us suffer just a little more- because life is holistic.
This does not apply to myself. I like to think it does sometimes. But, the fact that I argue about it and try to put people less fortunate than myself and my friends into a more palatable perspective, but don't do a lot to actively help myself is pretty shitty.
I don't know if it was something I read or I listened to, but there was a guy talking about putting his life on the line and afterwards, when he survived, it was seen as something incredibly heroic. He put it into his own perspective after some reflection, and had concluded, that perhaps it was, but in another way he had been trying to find a way to kill himself for so long, he saw this as a good opportunity to be allowed to die. This is the selfish area I rest in.
I've been spending a lot of time desperately wanting to help other people, but finding it hard to find a starting point or the energy...and then comparing myself to the people who can. It's so easy to excuse all the people who can't. To make relative all the suffering. I just suck. I don't think I'm writing this so much to get sympathy or plead for someone to intervene, because some one kind of has tried. I have been spending a good deal of time lately finding new ways and new areas to extract more and more blood from myself. Unsatisfied with the accidents that are happening with an alarming frequency that might just take care of the whole situation for me. I find the practice unreasonable. Unconscionable. And I hold my arms just so, and sometimes I get a shock when I look at all the stupid lines. It's sad that I'm so juvenile and sadder still that stylistically there is no consistent pattern. As an artist, I should at least be making a pretty game of this.
And beyond this acknowledgement that this is dumb and entirely something of my own making and something I should be able to easily avoid or manage, I think all the things you shouldn't say. Like when anti-abortion activists complain about how many people there are out there so desperate for a child. People unable to conceive who take personal offense that someone could hope to avoid creating life within themselves. They're both products of chance. Both have options for personal responsibility. One could have used a condom, could have used birth control, and just happened to be one of the less than 1% for which all preventative measures fail. Or they could have done none of that, and still, there's no reason to despise them if they feel they can't or don't want to have children, and opt for abortion. On the other end, it's possible they've been trying forever, they went through IVF, and finally settled on adoption, but bureaucracy sucks. Either way I think the conclusion from anyone on the outside should be compassion. And, incompatibly, perhaps hypocritically?, the only thing I cannot find compassion for is a complete lack of compassion.
Which, as all things do, brings me back to focus on myself. Similar to the argument of people who want babies not being able to make them is the argument that there are people who just want to live and you're just trying to fucking throw yours away. And I have a familiar answer to that, though less plausible. There are a lot of babies who need homes, and there should be an easy way to put them in loving ones where they are wanted. If I could find a way to transfer my life to someone who could give it a loving home, I completely would. I both do and do not know why I am like this, but I go through all the arguments all the time. I chastise myself all the time. I consider: "this is all temporary", "what about all the people who care about you", "what about the people who want to live", "there are people suffering much more than you", and "how can you be so selfish?" It should all be chance, but it's all personal responsibility. I should be able to find a way to manage. I should be able to find a way to manage my meds. I should find purpose. I could create purpose. I could help all the people who are not in a position of privilege to consider just fucking off because there's no way they can imagine a world in which they're ever happy or comfortable with themselves. It's a huge fucking luxury to get to sit around and be self-aware. I don't know why I'm writing this, really. I think, mostly, because I don't think a lot of people will read it...and I feel bad I keep lying about the shit on my arms, and now my neck and my stomach because it's fucking humiliating. I think, maybe, I'm trying to make the case that a small degree of self-loathing might be good for people. Not where I am. And I certainly don't want anyone to hate themselves, really...but, just wanting to be better. A little. To be something else, just a little. Enough to have compassion. Enough to make that one of the things that keeps you alive- not to just hang out and judge people for not succeeding, but to try to understand there was a card game and the house won, but if you can give them a few of your chips without going bankrupt that should be something you're inclined to do...and if you can't you shouldn't be so hard on yourself...but if you ever get to the point that you can, you shouldn't forget that no one gets anywhere on their own, and you shouldn't make the people who were in the place you were in suffer because you feel you suffered.
It's sort of the thing I am holding onto...beyond the fact that I'm so shitty it would be just the most obnoxious thing to stop before being less so...even if it's still what I'm inclined to do, and edge toward, and go...
Barring the ability to be sympathetic, compassionate, or even in tiny ways helpful to yourself, others and society as a whole- perhaps...as I am hoping to, as that guy felt comfortable with, you could just fuck off in a way that saves a ton of other people. Like, if you're a Koch brother, please at least check the organ donor box.
I spend a lot of my time arguing that chance is a much bigger factor in people's lives than personal responsibility. People can do everything right, never smoke and still get lung cancer. People can do everything right and still just end up in the right place at the wrong time. People can do everything wrong and succeed. Down to the start and the only thing I took away from the Biology class I narrowly succeeded in- Darwinism is often misrepresented. DNA is the greatest game of roulette from which there are never winners. You're going to have some protein fuck up something, whether that develops into a perceptible hindrance is all chance. You could also get something that makes life easier for you, but that doesn't mean, down to the essence of what is survivable about you, there is nothing wrong with you. And that's fine. That's perfect and an equalizing concept. Humanity, unlike all other forms of life, seems at least, to have most successfully developed social ties. Ties that increase the likelihood that someone who is born with a variance that would have meant they could not genetically compete in places where there is food or water scarcity, places that are inhospitable to life, can be assisted in making lives there. It's charming and beautiful and the only good thing about us. We could make things easier on each other, and we can make things easier on almost everything else on the planet, save viruses and "harmful" bacteria. Fuck those guys.
So I spend a lot of my time arguing that we've abused this power. That all the chance we can recognize and manipulate is being qualified as individual exceptionalism. People succeed because they are just better. Their families are rich because they were meant to be. They handled their own shit. People are mentally ill because there is something defective with them and only them as individuals. We get to systemically marginalize and create barriers for random others instead of creating easier paths. The chance of falling into one of these roads of hoops and booby-traps can do irreparable damage to a human being and by extension all of us suffer just a little more- because life is holistic.
This does not apply to myself. I like to think it does sometimes. But, the fact that I argue about it and try to put people less fortunate than myself and my friends into a more palatable perspective, but don't do a lot to actively help myself is pretty shitty.
I don't know if it was something I read or I listened to, but there was a guy talking about putting his life on the line and afterwards, when he survived, it was seen as something incredibly heroic. He put it into his own perspective after some reflection, and had concluded, that perhaps it was, but in another way he had been trying to find a way to kill himself for so long, he saw this as a good opportunity to be allowed to die. This is the selfish area I rest in.
I've been spending a lot of time desperately wanting to help other people, but finding it hard to find a starting point or the energy...and then comparing myself to the people who can. It's so easy to excuse all the people who can't. To make relative all the suffering. I just suck. I don't think I'm writing this so much to get sympathy or plead for someone to intervene, because some one kind of has tried. I have been spending a good deal of time lately finding new ways and new areas to extract more and more blood from myself. Unsatisfied with the accidents that are happening with an alarming frequency that might just take care of the whole situation for me. I find the practice unreasonable. Unconscionable. And I hold my arms just so, and sometimes I get a shock when I look at all the stupid lines. It's sad that I'm so juvenile and sadder still that stylistically there is no consistent pattern. As an artist, I should at least be making a pretty game of this.
And beyond this acknowledgement that this is dumb and entirely something of my own making and something I should be able to easily avoid or manage, I think all the things you shouldn't say. Like when anti-abortion activists complain about how many people there are out there so desperate for a child. People unable to conceive who take personal offense that someone could hope to avoid creating life within themselves. They're both products of chance. Both have options for personal responsibility. One could have used a condom, could have used birth control, and just happened to be one of the less than 1% for which all preventative measures fail. Or they could have done none of that, and still, there's no reason to despise them if they feel they can't or don't want to have children, and opt for abortion. On the other end, it's possible they've been trying forever, they went through IVF, and finally settled on adoption, but bureaucracy sucks. Either way I think the conclusion from anyone on the outside should be compassion. And, incompatibly, perhaps hypocritically?, the only thing I cannot find compassion for is a complete lack of compassion.
Which, as all things do, brings me back to focus on myself. Similar to the argument of people who want babies not being able to make them is the argument that there are people who just want to live and you're just trying to fucking throw yours away. And I have a familiar answer to that, though less plausible. There are a lot of babies who need homes, and there should be an easy way to put them in loving ones where they are wanted. If I could find a way to transfer my life to someone who could give it a loving home, I completely would. I both do and do not know why I am like this, but I go through all the arguments all the time. I chastise myself all the time. I consider: "this is all temporary", "what about all the people who care about you", "what about the people who want to live", "there are people suffering much more than you", and "how can you be so selfish?" It should all be chance, but it's all personal responsibility. I should be able to find a way to manage. I should be able to find a way to manage my meds. I should find purpose. I could create purpose. I could help all the people who are not in a position of privilege to consider just fucking off because there's no way they can imagine a world in which they're ever happy or comfortable with themselves. It's a huge fucking luxury to get to sit around and be self-aware. I don't know why I'm writing this, really. I think, mostly, because I don't think a lot of people will read it...and I feel bad I keep lying about the shit on my arms, and now my neck and my stomach because it's fucking humiliating. I think, maybe, I'm trying to make the case that a small degree of self-loathing might be good for people. Not where I am. And I certainly don't want anyone to hate themselves, really...but, just wanting to be better. A little. To be something else, just a little. Enough to have compassion. Enough to make that one of the things that keeps you alive- not to just hang out and judge people for not succeeding, but to try to understand there was a card game and the house won, but if you can give them a few of your chips without going bankrupt that should be something you're inclined to do...and if you can't you shouldn't be so hard on yourself...but if you ever get to the point that you can, you shouldn't forget that no one gets anywhere on their own, and you shouldn't make the people who were in the place you were in suffer because you feel you suffered.
It's sort of the thing I am holding onto...beyond the fact that I'm so shitty it would be just the most obnoxious thing to stop before being less so...even if it's still what I'm inclined to do, and edge toward, and go...
Barring the ability to be sympathetic, compassionate, or even in tiny ways helpful to yourself, others and society as a whole- perhaps...as I am hoping to, as that guy felt comfortable with, you could just fuck off in a way that saves a ton of other people. Like, if you're a Koch brother, please at least check the organ donor box.
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