It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
- Jiddu Krishnamurti
It’s been supremely hard to put a post together. There’s nothing to say but free Palestine. End wars. Stop fascism. Never in my life has this Krishnamurti quote been more accurate. At every turn, well intentioned people are telling me that my political stances are affecting my mental health, that I should stay grateful and retain perspective. And the most high-vibe, conscious response I can muster is “fuck off and die.” I have no interest in being well-adjusted to this society. Every day I seem to be one more step at odds.
It feels like everything is falling apart. It’s not that I don’t have hope for the future, it’s that I think “hope” itself is silly and maybe even nefarious. I don’t “hope” society goes anywhere in particular, just like when my son is having a tantrum I don’t “hope” it ends, I simply wait for it to end. I know it will change. I know it will return to peace. It’s just energy rattling through the material realm and it’s so scary and hard to watch. And that’s all that’s happening to society—it’s having a tantrum, and, like my son after a tantrum, the peace after it ends will be full of awareness, grief, loving, and presence. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t fight, scream, and rage, it just means that our fight is part of a natural process. Nothing is going wrong. That’s why Palestinians call the dead martyrs.
Today, I’m writing to you about what remains when it all falls apart, because it is falling apart. Today, I’m writing you about how disintegration is dis-integration—the end of integration, and also the precursor to a new sort of integration. Today, I’m writing you about how the concept of family is melting along with society, and what that means for you and your loved ones. And finally, I’m writing you today about how you should follow your gut even when your gut is clearly batshit crazy.
Aliens in the Outfield
Earlier this year, we were going to move to Ojai. We found a great spot, kind of a dream. But something didn’t feel right. The landlord was a very famous UFO researcher and influencer. The kind of UFOlogist that focuses on the government and military side of things. It was out in the farmland beside the mountains and did feel like the type of place an alien might visit. Marley was proper scared of the whole vibe.
I tried a bit to push and see how serious she was and when it came time to sign the lease, it just didn’t feel right for either of us. Marley said it was about the aliens.
Someone had mentioned pesticides in Ojai were an issue on this side of town. I looked up the address and found it was surrounded in pesticide spraying farms.
I’m sure it would have been OK—people live out there and in all sorts of places. But if I don’t have a job calling for me in Ojai, I don’t need to be living in a cloud of pesticide with a 6 month old baby and my family.
What started as my guffawing at aliens being an issue, ended with real environmental concerns.
I’ve started to realize, in general and in partnership, that the source of the skepticism about a certain decision doesn’t matter. Your instinct—or gut— may seem outlandish, you may be tempted to rationalize why it’s wrong, but if you feel it, it’s right. Time will prove it right. And if it doesn’t, your instinct will tell you again, and you can act on that then.
I know this isn’t isolated to me, but my spidey senses are going off in a greater sense. Many people are talking about capitalism’s death rattle—that last gurgle of air before someone dies. People are noticing the environment’s getting angrier and more confused. People are noticing that right wing extremism is on the rise globally. People are noticing that societal connections and institutions seems to be getting pretty tenuous. Our financial debt as a country is comedically high. Our material debt to the Earth is comedically high (We take so many resources, we don’t repay the soil).
It’s worth noting here Tchaikovsky’s famous rule about storytelling: “If you introduce a gun into the story, someone must use it.” To that end, it’s worth noting, nuclear bombs have been introduced into the human story. We’ve used them before, they will be used again. And when we do, there will be large swaths of the public justifying their use. And this will be the case until the bitter end of our civilization.
My spidey senses are going off and it’s about all of these things and none of these things. Things are clearly disintegrating at a higher rate than normal. First Trump’s election put everything in perspective. Then Covid. Then George Floyd. Then Palestine. It has been a fucking battering of a decade. Obviously a lot of other things happened but these were my milestones; the things that really made me realize that the way things were headed was going to be a messy messy mess. And I’m not ignorant to the fact that the past was even more fucked up, whether the Holocaust or slavery or environmental decimation or colonization. The difference now is it is televised, and “the people” that have power don’t care, and “the people” that do care are noticing how limited their power is. Blocking traffic on the bridge is fine, dismantling the bridge is great.
While part of me is kind of waiting for “clearer signs,” I also don’t know what those signs are or how they could be clearer. I don’t know what more I need to see to know that Western civilization is death rattling.
Today, I had the realization that if the people I really align with all feel it, and I feel it—which is mostly true—then it’s real. Together, we make society.
Even more alarming, people I don’t necessarily align with seem to be feeling it too.
I believe this alignment is the death rattle itself. There is nothing more to wait for. If I wait for larger “indisputable “signs, then I will have entered popular consensus territory and popular consensus is turning every day over to fascism as the only way to fend off societal collapse. My friends and I long to divest financially, emotionally, spiritually, and physically from that timeline. Like an unwell, down-and-out friend who you have tried everything to help and they are starting to impinge on your own health and happiness—you’ve kind of got to let the sickness burn out how it will and just watch the show with compassion.
My Family (Feels Like) It’s Falling Apart Too
On the phone with my mom the other day I heard her say something I’ve heard before, “You don’t choose your family.” I think she intended this to make me feel better about some family drama, but my immediate thought was, “Yes, you do.”
That’s why chosen families are such a big part of our generation. We have come to take our modern—Hallmark—conception of family for granted.
Here’s a quick overview on the history and state of families in the West off the top of my head:
We used to be farmers and small communities that relied on one another, had very little luxury, and mostly stayed in one place for most of our lives. Our families were always around and our activities and behaviors were inextricably tied to one another.
Transportation made it that it became common to take long journeys—by boat or train, far away from family. We left knowing we may never see them again or even talk to them except for some letters that may or may not make it to them. Now families were commonly separated into various geographical places and people had lives and jobs that their family really had no part in.
Transportation speed increased again with planes and communication increased with phones so now people could visit one another without upending their whole lives or going on treacherous journeys. They could also keep in touch immediately without leaving the phone booth. Family “closeness” was rekindled a bit even though geographically many families were still separated.
Now everything is lightning fast. Now, no matter where we are on Earth, our moms can text us the first thing that comes to their mind and it will notify us immediately. It’s almost like telepathy.
But does this new state of affairs seem healthy or natural? Is it normal for family who has very little impact or influence on my daily life to text, call, or email and expect me to operate my life like some sort of switchboard operator at a crowded hotel? Should I be constantly fielding questions about my activities, my state of being, my plans, and so on? Is that healthy?
Messages from family arrive like intrusive thoughts. I read them and wonder: why am I reading this? Can I unsubscribe? What does this person want?
I’m not intending to be cold or dramatic. I love my family. I think they’re fun and nice and wish a million blessings upon everyone— they haven’t done anything gruesome or unforgivable to me. But the idea of talking all the time and planning expensive, resource intensive trips every year to come together and play-act like it’s our childhood house again feels perverted.
I feel bad writing this. Like these feelings mean I’m a bad son, father, or brother. But boy does it feel worse playing along. I’m re-aligning to the possibility that hanging around with all these negative feelings would be the thing that makes me a bad son or brother. Who knows? It’s all painful. But I feel in such good company as so many of my peers are working through similar upheavals.
Recently, and in a way that melds the two parts of this post—the end of society and the disintegration of family—I told my sister I wanted to share some land in upstate New York or Asheville to pool our resources and energies. She told me that her and I couldn’t even decide on a place to AirBnb vacation together, how the hell was my farm plan supposed to work? How the hell was I supposed to be a good land partner when I couldn’t even be relied on to make it on time to dinner or to come to Thanksgiving!
Going to an Airbnb for no reason other than escaping daily life is unwell. Offering to upend your immediately family and pool all of your time and resources in service of mutual support financially, environmentally, and personally, feels quite healthy. But my dream is considered crazy, and trying to live inside a Hallmark card is not. And this is what we mean when we say it’s not healthy to be well adjusted to a sick society. If general consensus says it’s healthy, it’s probably not.
Baby boomers are now in their last couple decades of life on earth. And in that time, they are going to use (read, burn through needlessly) an insane amount of resources on their way out. They’re going to burn through their savings (remember for the average working household in the US it’s $1,200 but for baby boomers it’s $200,000). And that money spent will result in not only less money for their kids, but continued environmental destruction—the same kind they knowingly/unknowingly dedicated their lives to perpetuating. Baby boomers are the generation that coined the term “shrink” to describe psychologists because they feel that going to therapy shrinks your brain. Reminder that a psychologist’s job can be summarized as helping people understand how and why their actions affect the people around them. They pathologized empathy.
I’m becoming a prepper, but not the canning, gun-toting kind. I’m the kind of prepper that needs people who can hold my anger and grief and joy and desires and pleasure and sensitivities and soul. I need people who are committed to peace. To destroying the parts of themselves that hurt others and the Earth. I want my new community to squeeze from me the poisons of patriarchy, capitalism, colonialism, and racism.
The type of safety we are going to need in the following decades will have very little to do with money—though the very richest people will probably do fine (in the material realm). The type of safety we’re going to need as the Earth get’s hotter, dirtier, full of more war and less efficient, is the same type of safety we’ve always needed. Love.
I love you, have a good week.
On this post in particular, I’m interested in your thoughts. Do you have hope? Do you align with the death rattle? What’s going on in your mind? Are we frogs in boiling water? What does the next decade hold? Am I going through a mental health crisis? Wrong answers only.
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My Spidey Senses are Going Off