Sorry to be a downer, but. . . .

It seems like everyone’s nervous systems are shot. Sometimes I think it is the war, or having just moved to a new state, or having young children, or some issue with my relationship, or with my time management that makes me feel so shot. Or maybe it’s the newest mass shooting in Maine—maybe the IDF should go in and kill the shooter’s family and all his friends, then this won’t happen again. And it is, it’s all of those things.

But I talk to very mentally agile friends and family, and they are at their limit too. People are tired and confused regardless of spiritual practice, financial situation, family situation, health, and marital status.

Of course, when we speak to one another, we tend to put on our strong faces. Most people don’t wanna be downers. Most people don’t want to complain, and most people aren’t even sure what they should complain about. Everyone right now is comparing themselves to war torn countries.

Complaining even feels harder than usual.

The invisible hand of capitalism has somehow turned into the silent mouth in the sky whispering: “Be grateful for what you have.” No matter who you are, when you talk to friends who are complaining about their issues, you usually try and offer some level of reassurance that it’s okay, or it will be okay, or it’s all normal. But lately it feels abnormal, it doesn’t feel like it’s going to be okay.

We are going into another war now, thousands of miles away. It’s incredibly demoralizing. But it also reminds me, as these situations often do, that nobody knows what they are doing and never did. The teachers, the experts, the generals, the presidents, they’re all just putting on their strong faces and inside they’re the same jumble of suffering and childish joy that we all are. We’ve been polarized once again.

I guess in a sense it’s re-moralizing because I feel more strong in my beliefs and intentions.

The Devil Gives You Only One Option

I’ve been having suicidal thoughts. Not like actually, don’t go calling 411 or whatever. But I’ve been at the limit of my understanding of what to do. I’ve been understanding why people off themselves. I’ve been thinking a lot about Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and how if I saw what they saw, both in the eyes of the people they talk to (and those that work for them) and also if I felt what it was like to have all that money and still be empty, I’d probably want to go to Mars too. I would. Get me the fuck out of here. Invite in the meteor, we’re a lost cause. Let the universe use our carbon for something beautiful and strong.

And I know this cynical train of thought is a trap too, it’s part of the issue. Whatever happened to making the Kingdom of God on Earth? The Christians clearly aren’t going to bring that about. The Jews clearly aren’t going to bring that about. The Muslims clearly aren’t going to bring that about. If we were all Buddhist or Hindu maybe it would happen, but it’s nearly impossible to reach enlightenment once you’ve been raised in a Judeo-Christian society. Maybe I should give Scientology a chance. . . . Tom Cruise seems happy-ish.

I was talking to a Zionist friend who was explaining all the reasons we should be bombing children. And I said: “Don’t you think that Hamas wanted this? Don’t you know they wanted the whole world to see Israel bomb children, they wanted to pull the Zionist hawks out of their not-so-hiding so that their cause would be at the forefront of the globe’s attention? Don’t you think they knew Israel’s response would inspire a rise in global anti-semitism?” He said, “Yes.”

And I said, “Well, I’m no military tacticition, but I think giving your enemy exactly what they want is a pretty bad tactic.”

He kept saying things like, “What are the other options?”

I gave a couple: “I don’t know, drop a million roses onto Gaza. Imagine the press about Israel then. Hamas would be pissed and almost immediatly lose at least the PR war if not both wars.”

Options, options, options. What are the options?

God doesn’t force your hand, the devil does.

There are always options.

“What’s your solution!?” They ask.

No one person has the answer or solution, that’s the first disingenuous trap you should never fall for in politics (and spirituality). No president, no scientist, no influencer, no writer, no shaman can solve any problem alone. Answers come in the form of community. Anytime someone forces you to have a solution to some global problem, the only answer is, “I look forward to working together to find one.”

And this is where I am with my personal life: there is no therapist, life coach, nanny, men’s group, drug, girl, purchase, or schedule that will save me from this loneliness and this suffering.

The only solution is community. And community used to be the default, you were born into it. But now community, at-least in my corner of the earth, has been blasted to bits with the shrapnel of industrial and “civilized” society.

We no longer borrow our neighbor’s bread maker for the one time we make bread a year. Instead, we buy a whole bread-maker made by strangers in a foreign country, it costs 20 hours of our work at minimum wage, autonomous Bezos cars deliver it, and it sits in our garage for most of the year. Bezos pockets some middleman money and everyone else loses. Because the anxiety and fear of rejection that occurs with the thought of knocking on a neighbor’s door is paralyzing. And maybe some of you live in neighborhoods where this is the sort of thing that happens (I kind of do actually), but I almost guarantee there is another part of your life that is unsupported by community.

Do your neighbors call the police when you’re breaking down and screaming in the front lawn and throwing plates because your mother died, or do they come slip a pillow beneath your head and bring you tea?

Nostalgia

I’m nostalgic for a past I never experienced and that probably never existed. These dreams of tribal community aren’t real. I only have to read something like Sapiens to know that tribal life is varied and not all marshmallows and tickles. Lots of murder and horror and abusive power in tribal life.

So what am I longing for exactly? I’m looking to rely on people in a real way. I want to rely on my friends for food and them rely on me. I want to be interconnected with their needs rather than just making it up because I’m bored: “Do you want to hang out?” What if we had to hang out? I’m looking for some responsibility to the collective that doesn’t have to be mustered out of the blue.

So now I’m nostalgic for the future. I’m trying to figure out what community looks like in a capitalist hellscape. If I died, apart from the sadness of my loss, very few people would suffer any real consequences. People would be sad, but no one would fill my place because I don’t play a vital role.

I don’t feel intimately connected to my friends and family and I badly know I should be. It’s a sense memory rather than a historical memory. I know I should be, I know some part of me once was, I know some part of me still is.

I even feel lonely writing to you. Typing alone in my living room at 1am. Recording my podcast version of this article alone in my basement. You’ll listen alone too and probably never tell me you listened or what you think of all this. But I wish you would. I wish you were here with your hand on my knee, comforting me as I open up into the vast nothingness of the “internet community.”

I scatter around the Leave a Comment buttons in my articles hoping someone will say something beyond “good job,” or “yes.” But everyone is too tired and busy and I understand. I don’t listen to podcasts or read many Substacks. I’m so honored you take the time to read or listen to me. And for those of you that do write me, thank you I love you. (I love you even if you don’t write me).

It feels like there is too much content to go deep with any single piece of the internet. Too many stories. What was once a tribal, local sense of community and reliance has been scattered into a trillion bits and bytes. There are no stakes anymore, just the buying and selling of opinions.

Subscribe to my Substack. Pay me a few hundred pennies a month for my thoughts. Sign up for my coaching package. Can’t afford it? Sign up for my video course. It’s the normalization of panhandling; begging dressed up as industriousness. We are struggling.

I was planning on ending this article on a positive note but I seem to have lost my way. I was going to say something about Thich Nhat Hanh, something about transforming suffering into joy, something about deep deep breaths all the time, about blessings in every step, something about incense, about slowing down, about sex, about true love, about resisting shame, about tuning into your nervous system and what it needs moment to moment. But I’m tired now, so the ending is instead about the importance of rest.

We are clearly not in control of this ship anymore. Don’t give up, but also rest up, because eventually you’ll be called to act in a manner in which you never expected and that you’re completely unprepared for.

I love you thanks for reading.

Josh