https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNp_m8FpDjw&t=115s
The learning disabled and emotionally unstable live their lives in a perpetual state of apology. The truth is that that I usually issue a couple dozen every month at least and have friends who get irritated with my British-like compunction to apologize at every little thing. It may strike some here as hard to believe, but it's a tic I've learned. Whatever I am online, in daily life, "just assume it's your fault. It usually is." If I seem like the type who doesn't apologize, it's because I'm usually in a state of having done something over the course of the day to necessitate apologies. And there are many, many people over the course of daily life who demand it without context or wondering if they ought to examine their own role in the interaction. Better to just assume it's me and move on before they decide to end the friendship over yet another misunderstanding, no matter how trivial. It's happened many times. Maybe it was my fault. Sometimes I know it isn't and apologize anyway, which usually backfires calamitously because then I lose it at them because I apologized and they assume they got confirmation it's my fault and don't apologize in return. Fuck my life...
Women wonder why men have so much trouble apologizing when they've lived the answer for the entirety of human history. Those who apologize more often are statistically proven to have far higher levels of depression, and why? Because the voice that everything's their fault only grows stronger with every apology. And even when the voice lies, which is usually, it's always there, and only results in the experience that either we who often apologize are just so wretched that we get so many things wrong, or that we are suffering a series of humiliations and have to continually abase our pride because nobody seems to approve of us, respect us, or appreciate us, because taking pride in our lives is a privilege for someone else, and that leads us to one of two conclusions: either fortune perpetually favors them at our expense, or the fortunate really are better than the rest of us: smarter, more virtuous, stronger.
That last idea goes back to human history's beginnings. You read it in Gilgamesh and the Mahabharata, Homer and Sophocles, even in Shakespeare. Perhaps only the Bible posits otherwise among ancient books. In human history's beginnings the high born deserve everything, they are born high because the cosmos ordained them better than us, and the rest of us don't even deserve mention.
And of course, you see that point of view manifest every day in the Republican party. Some Republicans believe only those born high deserve to be high, other Republicans at least think high station is merited by hard work, but how did we ever think the Republican party would arrive at any other place but to be led by the person who's been our lowest-life public figure for 40 years?
To a large extent, I blame myself for the many missteps over the course of my life. I don't know if it's true, but I'd certainly prefer to think I'm not a slave to biochemistry. But the the truth is that in this era in the history of science, people of my generation will never know what among the mentally ill is within their own control. And besides, we're living in an age when you can apologize all you want, people are sick of accepting apologies. We still demand apologies, but we demand them so we have opportunity to refuse them.
I don't just mean metoo or the much larger world of social justice, and I don't just mean Trumpland, and I don't think I just mean the internet. I mean that history has begun a cycling into a period of furious vengeance. It's here, and it won't go away until global warming begins its decline. If our problems are due to systemic injustice, as so many leftists allege, then the ultimate injustices are perpetrated over time. We think we have individual agency, but we're all slaves to ideas that cycle back and forth into discourse, with ever new disguises to beguile millions. The way we now define 'privilege and equality' is exactly how the world used to define 'class', 'national self-determination', and 'faith.' The way we now use 'liberty' is the way we used to use 'nation and folk,' and 'the divine right of kings' and 'papal infallibiliy.' One is the banner of turning the world upside down, the other is the banner of keeping things exactly as they are, but neither ever get what they want, and century after century, old/new moral absolutes court mass death. The world is so much bigger than us all, and the ultimate sin is to think we understand it when we may not even understand it any better than people 500 years ago - our technological toys may be better and we have more rights and abilities for now, but at least they didn't destroy the planet. If there's a god, he is clearly about to punish us for the hubris of our priorities, and while we're all focused on guns and police and everything less than the planet itself, he is preparing to make billions of us burn and drown. And even those of us whom the planet spares will then have to withstand the wars of instability that come next.
My whole life, I've watched all sorts of people get ahead while I could only walk my life backward. I've watched peers put their own advancement over their communities. I've watched people complain about their lack of privileges relative to me: people who can sustain relationships, hold jobs, be responsible for families and pets, hold their sanity together from day to day. And I have done the best I know how to be penitent for my own mistakes, which are many, and not hurt people, at which I sometimes think I'm abysmal. Perhaps eternal melancholia's what a person as miserable as I deserves, but all the same I know I've done my best to not hurt others. Maybe it's one my own dizzying flavors of insanity, but I can't help wondering if a time and place that has let my prayers for a life to take pride in go so unanswered has much time left, or if that's exactly what the world merits.
I'm sorry for saying such a disturbing self-centered thought out loud.
Happy New Year.
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