I went to work. There I was miserable, putting a lot of effort into standing upright. The dizziness hit about five times - when I put my head down, when I moved my head too fast. I also got into it with one of the cooks. Try to help and she got angry. People seem to have far less of a sense of humor nowadays.
During group "therapy" the counselor gave me something to think about - concerning 1984. He said he didn't buy it because people want just power for itself. It came to me that there is no one person wanting power. There is the Party. Organizations do want power and keep power for its own sake. The Death of Stalin makes this point, if it is for laughs, The people only serve the monster of the apparatus. It has been too long since I read Thomas Hobbes, but it seems to me that he made the same point.
However, I am not sure the idea that people do not seek power for the sake of power hold up very well. You have to get around Nietzsche's Will to Power. Maybe Freud, too. I can, and have, argued with both. Power in the sense of survival is what I get from Nietzsche; I can go for that. We want our environment and its contents not to destroy us. Still, it may be that Americans, if not much of the developed world, do not equate attaining political power is the way of ensuring one's safety in the world. Where grabbing and holding and exerting power was a defense to physical destruction for Stalin, Augustus, Alexander, Peter the Great, Ivan the Terrible, Richard III, Elizabeth Tudor, or Louis XIV. My counter-examples would be Cesare Borgia, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, Nicholas II of Russia, and Trotsky. Democracy spreads power amongst the people. At least, American democracy did; the Weimar Republic is the counter-example. Democratic politicians need not worry about being executed by their opponents - so long as democratic norms hold. What a democratic people need fear is a single person overthrowing the democratic government. The autocrat sees the people as a threat to his power. The other threat being other would-be autocrats thinking they can do a better job as autocrat. No, I think the counselor underestimates the potency of power as a life goal.
We watched a short video about dopamine and putting off our desires. I think this was not news to me, and a job I am already doing well. Putting off gratification I knew how to do when I was young - having to save money to do anything has that kind of effect. Part of my depression was looking around at what others had and wondered why I put off acquiring more, and then realizing that I had gone too far to have what my friends had. Nowadays, I am back to putting off gratification. Writing will do that to you. Draft, revise, revise, revise, revise is not a recipe for instant gratification. No one asks me about my motivations, no one asks about my writing, while it seems many make assumptions that I have certain pathological orientations. I should be more amused by the disparity between reality and their assumptions, only they worry me with their projections. It seems to me those making their assumptions are far more perverse than I ever tried to be.
When sex becomes a spectacle (Engelsberg ideas). I knew guys who bragged about the numbers of women they knew. I was always more interested in the experience. By the way, you who make their assumptions about my possible pathologies - I think you are more interested in exerting power over those weaker than you, and I find that the worst sort of experience. I would rather drive a Bugatti than a Ford. But I think the article makes me out of step with my times.
These cultural strands proved just as influential as technology in pornography’s domination of public discourse. In the response to Bonnie Blue’s pursuit of notoriety, we witness the exhaustion of moral frameworks. There is little condemnation – few voices raised about ‘good’ or what is right or wrong. Multiple columnists, sensing something troubling about her project, scramble instead to identify harm and desperately seek to assign her victim status, but she refuses that narrative. Others search for feminist meaning, but she denies them that interpretation, too.
What remains is sex as pure spectacle – a performance stripped of the privacy that once made it intimate, the relationship that once made it meaningful, and the mystery that once made it erotic. We have arrived at Reagan’s nightmare, but through a path he never anticipated: through the complete triumph of publicity culture itself. The bedroom has become a broadcast studio, and what was once private has transformed into the ultimate public performance.
I do not see the word mentioned in the article, so I will: where is the humanity in all of this? No wonder people are willing to marry their AI chatbots.
After group, I put in my first app for a new apartment. People had made the recommendation and the price tempted me. Going inside, my heart sunk. It looked like a nursing home. I do not care to be around old people. Death is on my mind enough. The real problem I did not see until I left the place. There is a childcare place across the street. This did not show up when I looked on Google Maps, nor did I see it when I got off the bus. Crossing Walnut Street without getting hit occupied all my thoughts. When I got home, I called and told them to disregard my app.
I talked to my sister yesterday. She thinks I should get a trailer or find a place like a senior center. I do not like the trailer idea - they devalue too quickly. Although I am alone, I do not feel lonely. There is plenty for me to do without me feeling like I am overwhelmed. Dating seems silly at my age, with these annoying health issues, and little money. There is also the issue of my memory - I cannot get past romantic failings - and that death looms for me and whoever I might get attached to. No, I would prefer younger people. Dr. Johnson said something to the effect that was how to stay alive.
Back home, I napped for an hour before going west to Payless for dinner items. Only problem was I had no appetite when I got home.
I worked on my new alt-history story and worked on my email. I did submit a story on Thursday, but none yesterday. Then I went back to bed. I woke around 11 and could not get back to sleep. Back to writing and listening to YouTube videos.
Today, the alarm went off at 6 pm and I decided to sleep in. I started working on this post an hour ago.
I should do laundry. No, must do laundry.
And clean up a little around this place.
I have paid a little attention to the news. Trump keeps blundering his way. The Republicans want to make themselves the only power in the country. They think they have God on their side. That we seem to be a people of low intelligence and a high need for coddling, they might succeed. May the Good Lord take pity on us.
Welcome to American politics without norms (Los Angeles Times)
Until this video, I thought I had never visited Vermillion County, Indiana. Wrong. Turns out I was there in 1972, on the way back from St. Louis, my mother stopped in Dana to see the Ernie Pyle memorial.
I do not see any reason for going back. Although, this video might describe much of Indiana.
Oh, yeah, I quit my job this morning.
I stick with this - sweaty and oh, so human:
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