awhile

It has been awhile since I wrote something here. For the remainder of the month and most days of December I want to write something here.

We survived another election and I will say this has been the most eventful election I have lived through thus far. I am interested to see what if anything will change. Truthfully, I am pessimistic. Either this administration will be ineffectual or we will witness one of most vast changes in culture and politics of the last few centuries, something like a modern renaissance. I expect online culture will die or possibly become tamer as these cultural and political changes come into fruition there will no longer be a need to wax philosophical about these things and they will no longer be niche counter culture online movements. Many of the people that found an identity and a place of belonging will be despondent in the post Trump period. It will be interesting to see what they move onto or return to once this second term is over. Where will they go? What will they believe in?

Mostly nothing happens in the world. Nothing happens at all and then a bunch of things happen all at once. This is all of human history and it is kind of sobering how idle we are as a species. It’s amazing how long one can go without hearing or learning anything that is new. I think that was the draw of social media in the beginning, the opportunity to hear and learn new ideas or share them. This is why I suspect being online is dying in a way because we have sort of come to the end of new ideas. Everything has been said at this point. For the perpetually curious and for those that need and enjoy combing through a continuous flow of rare and curated ideas I sense there will be a return to libraries and reading books and sourcing physical materials will be the new hobby of those that once enjoyed the posts of niche intellectual influencers of the various forums and twitter.

This is the issue with anything developing a following. Followers cheapen ideas or movements. Of course you WANT followers etc but they mostly just water down or cheapen your idea when they relay it. Like Lindyman in his early days of posting was interesting and presented new concepts because of this he developed a following which of course afforded him some level of “stardom” as a micro celebrity on social media. A writing gig, a book etc BUT many if not all of the main concepts he presented also become memes as they filtered through his followers and with them he became a meme. This is true for so many things and I may not be articulating it properly but the phenomena of followers cheapening the idea or the art is fascinating.

I have mentioned on twitter that much of what we understand as geopolitics is largely based on gambles and bets. I was thinking today that the existence of shills in the media and various academic institutions is a direct affirmation of this. A shill is a decoy for a gambler. The stakes are high people are actually gambling real monies and they are gambling for power. Thus it makes sense they’d hire, protect and place shills to persuade the public to act in the interest of their bet. I have been working my way through Roald Dahls television series Tales of the Unexpected. Many of the episodes are about bets or gambling and the personal or cosmic fallout due to this. Gambling never interested in me. I don’t need to make a bet to be motivated to win. Life is not a gamble, it is a carefully curated painstakingly planned and prepared for quest. All bets are off when it comes to peace and purpose.