There’s an electric fan on my desk. I use it very often.
I get warm, even in winter.
You turn it on by pushing down a button.
It makes a click when you push it.
But if you don’t push down all the way, the fan still activates.
The click I associated with the fan was not actually required to turn it on.
What an odd thing to regard.
So much like a betrayal,
The sensation of something was not linked to its purpose.
So aggravating, so mysteriously endearing.
My theory makes it less so.
You see, to connect anything to anything is a bizarre game.
Thereby the source of my frustration over being wrong about
the purpose and result of the button click
Isn’t so much about feeling foolish
as much as it is an insult
to the part of me
that knows that enjoying the clicking of the button was already kind of lame to do.
I smiled at my desk fan for its involuntary deception.
I knew that part of the blame belonged to me,
Part of it upon who made the device.
For the button not needing to be clicked, but only pressed, to serve its function.
I knew this quality of the button
was either some kind of quality that makes the product easier to manufacture,
Or perhaps designing it any other way would have been a waste.
It is not clear what is a function
or what is a missing feature,
or what it is a choice made against your convenience,
or just someone exploiting a process for their own sake.
That’s the game we play,
always not quite trying to do thing an elegant way
so that our dreams don’t require too much effort
to become sustainable and viable.
If you push down your finger on the button,
or invent some item that could clamp itself to the fan and the button,
You could keep the fan on without the click happening,
Leaving my finger right there,
I feel a warm sensation, an electric motivation,
Not quite just feeling the blade move because of me.
It has something to do with proud irrelevance.
Knowing that the button needs only a press and not a click,
I felt as though I was the one who achieved what it was meant to do.
and also, I was defying what it was manufactured for.
It’s when we feel properly useless,
or improperly useful
that we are secure in what we do.
Of course, I am not secure with how the world is,
or with anyone else’s way of telling me what I did was wrong.
Are you feeling electric?
Are you a fan of this post?
Do you understand, that the reason why people are so proud of themselves for trying to change the world,
is because they feel as though they have the right balance of “purpose fulfillment” and “destiny defiance”?
It’s hard to change anyone who feels like they are both a changer and stabilizer of the world they live in.
By holding the button on the deskfan, and releasing softly, I could control so easily whether it was on or off. It was like I was operating the machine like a car.
But I needed the button to click if I wanted to walk elsewhere.
The plastic needed to pass a certain place,
For me to relinquish control of the fan, and increase ability to use the fan.
If I were to invent an item to clamp down the fan just enough,
I would be proud of myself for claiming power,
To do something I already could with the fan’s original functions.
It would be my effort, allowing the desk fan to operate,
It would also only be a silly attempt to alter the function of the device.
What is something done by you, or what is happening not according to you?
How can we give anything purpose if it involves changing something?
Inside these two questions
Is what makes us feel electric, like somehow the valency of what we do is properly active.
The electrons of what your actions are desired to feel properly placed both in and outside you.
as they move so vigorously.
This is what makes us human, and what animals don’t have- knowing that things people do are never purely attached to them.
If your mind is a little bit blown right now, I want to tell you how much I love you for it.
Because I know it isn’t just me trying to do the thing I want to do.
To make the world a better place, for real,
by letting you see the mechanics behind unusual, uncuttable pride in one’s loose grip on the lives of other people.
Everyone wishes for people to serve each other more than hurt each other.
People become very proud of their minor reinventions of
“being nice” they know are not too radical.
And that fair self-congratulation motivates so very much burning hatred.
The deepest forms of positive personal growth-
the powerful ability to navigate possibilities,
and the power to feel dignified despite errors,
as well as the ability to bend others’ fate despite your weakness,
becomes what others despise most.
That’s the answer to “why is there so much hate in the world”.
People feeling really fucking cool, for the ability to make shit happen and hold their heads up high,
and those people get told they’re worthless,
when they already know they cause others to suffer,
just like everyone else does.
That’s what makes us such a horribly dangerous badass.
The ability to feel stably strong.
People become so very disgustingly strong, don’t they?
Even those whom you hate the most.
Confronting these individuals who we know are just like us but not,
we try and get just the right amount of justice against them.
That whimsical and soft revenge against poorly functioning kindness
is at the heart of the behaviors you adore as well as despise.
The essence of civil outcry
is the essence of brutal shunning
is the essence of a street scuffle
is the essence of a violent outrage.
The insulting of one’s strength to change the future and be proud of themselves is what causes people to become fucked up.
People try to hold down the button of unlikely, non-vain kindness with the right balance of force and gentleness, using tools they had to conjure to get by, or that they made with the desire to surpass the unkindness they suffered.
People crave people being better to other people, and to satisfy that craving in controversial ways produces massive self-worth that does so much hurt.
People feel so amazingly and unnecessarily good at being unusually decent, and when someone is an indecent type of decent, fingers get broken.
And those broken fingers do indeed warp the world into potentially becoming somewhat more good at fostering kindness and dignity.
So cultural warfare takes place, someone wanting the monopoly on humble feeling ambition,
which others despise so fully.
This is my answer to cultural warfare.
The decent already feel as though they’re powerfully but properly indecent.
And others get off real hard on seeing others do that
in a way they find pleasing.
Seeing that will to be decently indecent, you can navigate someone’s bizarre dignity,
and change them without them knowing.
Of course, doing that is why people are so proud in their cultures.
Navigation of the freakish dignity of others is what makes a person ultra mega secure in themselves,
and it’s something I would like to make less poorly tamed and self-congratulating.
If people knew this game they were playing, “being nice” would barely even be something to argue about.
We’d be left with preferences about how to act, what to do, what to say, how to be,
but still be on the same page about how to be nice.
Those with the strongest desire to make humans kinder would stop stumbling like baby deer,
crying for the day when world peace comes,
and actually know how to influence others to not being an asshole.
I myself have a decent power to cut through human belligerence, which is indeed not as vile as I once believed.
And if others could inherit my ability to walk through a social space, without being too proud,
I’m confident things would be more dignified here on Earth.
I can see when people are being the weird exceptions to “just be civil, just be kind”.
The genius in all of us socially competent adults
knows that all connections made are egregious.
I want to make a less ugly world,
through the power of my own genius attempt
at validating the genius in others,
who knows nothing is quite connected to anything,
but connecting things is necessary for anything to happen.
Humanity becoming more civil is not necessary,
but it is possible,
and I want to help give birth to that dream.
I can feel it in you.
That’s what you want.
I want you to have it.
You only need to see people see themselves as the proper and reasonable exploiter
of the fucked up tradition of connecting anything to anyone.
Then we can finally cool off together,
the button of “how to be kind” finally pushed instead of pressed so awkwardly.
The Found Emotion (Invoke Yourself) 