The ego

Humility isn't about destroying the ego but about making it more subservient to our needs. 

Today more than ever, people will fight with a fervor fed by the courage of anonymity on social media platforms. This is because the ego cannot take a hit by admitting we might be wrong. We have liberalized knowledge with alternative facts to suit our needs. 

We say things with confidence as a substitute for understanding topics. 

Researching gender variance over the years taught me this very well. People will create scripts for themselves and lock them into place without too much questioning. This goes for some gender variant people as well as their haters. 

We can apply this phenomenon to almost any area of human affairs.

Truth becomes of less importance than carrying a simple narrative in our heads which serves our purpose. Either that or complete disinterest in digging further.

The earth is flat and that's all there is to it. Just make sure to say it with confidence.

Light

Being kind doesn't take much effort even if we assess that not everyone deserves it from us. 

Sometimes we see behaviour or body language that makes us recoil from someone but then we don't know what is going in inside their head. 

If we are in a good place there is no point in matching their energy and sometimes a smile will disarm what we have determined to be sourness. 

Life isn't easy but we can bring light into the dark crevices with our positive energy.

Tribal

We humans do things in reverse. We want to know who we are by checking off boxes to see if we belong. This is because we are social animals in search of a tribe. 

This is all well and good but there can be a dark side to this approach. If we seek identity through comparison we risk forcing ourselves into schemas that end up being antithetical to identity and individuality. 

In other words we could end up in a cult. 

At the highest levels, finding  commonality is obvious. We are humans with certain basic tenets which govern our existence. However the more we drill into the details the more difficult it becomes to shoehorn ourselves into neat tribal groupings. 

We do this not because it feels perfect but because not belonging feels infinitely more scary. It is the way humans have behaved for millennia 

As I have aged, the concept of being in a pack has appealed to me less and less. Therefore I stay at a higher level and remain in areas which unite us through our common humanity; the themes which elevate our best qualities.

After that, a personal identity can be found through our introspection rather than via seeing what someone else does.

Full maturity beckons.

Grievances

David Brooks says we live in an abnormal time and he is right.

The problem is that the structure we had built since the advent of the industrial revolution has crumbled. That world had spawned an entire ecosystem which had impacted every facet of life. 

You could argue that it peaked in the 1950's when a large middle class benefited from a system that ran like a well-oiled machine. Even people who worked in blue collar factories could raise families mainly on a single salary. 

There was a social order created which demanded expectation but also provided predictable safety. 

By the early 2000's the destruction was all but assured. The financial crisis of 2008 and COVID made sure to punctuate that the model we had known was over. Every aspect of life has been put into question and is being reimagined in a world of extreme wealth disparity. 

The tonic we need according to Brooks is a return to kindness, fairness and moral clarity. We took an off ramp towards individualism and never found our way back to trying to help each other. 

Social media became a breeding ground for toxic stupidity that we are now trying to cleanse from our collective consciousness. It turns out that stupid people are baked in whether we like it or not and they're not afraid to use it.

As Trumpism and the culture of perennial grievance fades away, we will need to find our way back to each other because we have little choice.

No magic fix

The reason that transitions can sometimes feel dissatisfying is because life in general can feel that way. 

We hit speed bumps constantly and may think that treating our dysphoria was going to solve everything else. 

Far from it. 

Living authentically doesn't fix everything in your life. It just helps you with an unresolved and important piece which was left unattended.

Grace

Ben Sasse is a former republican senator who at age 54 is dying of pancreatic cancer. It started in the pancreas but has spread to his entire body and is now at stage 4. He is receiving hospice type care with possibly not more than a few months to live. 

I watched an interview with him lately conducted by The New York Times and what struck me was his demeanor and composure. This man had come to terms with his mortality in an impressive way. 

There was undeniable peace and acceptance there which cannot be faked.

Sasse had been a moderate who had faced attack from both sides of the aisle. No doubt this makes him even more impressive since it shows conviction carries more weight with him than partisan allegiance. 

Unsurprisingly he wasn't MAGA.

He sat there answering questions with sometimes self-effacing humor; the bloodied blotches on his face the result of the harsh medication he takes to reduce the size of his tumors. 

We are offered grace and dignity in our most challenging life moments and if we choose to accept it, it can radiate from our very pores; bloodied or otherwise.

Santa Rosa

 

Miscalculation

Empires crumble largely by their own hand. They overextend themselves with a hubris fed from the fumes of their own self-satisfaction; their own exceptionalism. 

The American right wing placed its bets on a man who would help them end wokeism and return the country to some mythical Valhalla where segregated drinking fountains were the order of the day. 

It was a massive miscalculation. 

The Trump crime family will be looting the treasury on their way out the door and even likely avoid prosecution for their crimes. In their wake will be left millions of disenfranchised Americans whose lives will have been made much worse in the process. 

For much of the rest of the world America is now a pariah nation full of stupid people which is difficult to argue with. 77 million voted for a malevolent moron and almost 90 million couldn't be bothered to vote at all.

George Carlin used to joke about thinking of the stupidest person you know and then realize that half of humanity is even stupider than that.

I earnestly wish he had been completely wrong.

Gutting

The overturning of the Civil rights voting act of 1965 which was signed into law by Lyndon Johnson is a victory for the extreme right. 

The proof is that any minority voting districts in the south will immediately be redrawn. Such is the level of giddiness in the deep red parts of the US. 

The 6 to 3 decision led by the extremists on the supreme court is another massive blow that Trumpism and project 2025 will have dealt to a country already deeply in trouble and deeply divided. 

The impact on the November elections could be significant and yet at the same time public frustration boils as the affordability crisis continues to take victims.

White rage over having lost political power over decades, will only make things worse than they already are.

Not easy by a long shot

Trans rage is real and it can be fed through many sources of frustration. 

First there is gender dysphoria itself, then social and family rejection, followed closely by discrimination and violence and health care inadequacy. 

Internalized transphobia then adds another layer which can lead some people to the tipping point of suicidality. 

Recently I watched a documentary on Tubi about the drag performers of the mid 20th century. Teri Noel who medically transitioned long ago was seen being interviewed and when the topic of her decision came up her expression became emotional, a bit sullen and more pensive. 

She had ended up married to a man who never knew her past but you could tell her life had been far from easy despite blending in perfectly as a woman. 

Those pre-transition glory shots of hers as Terry Noel clad in feathers and boas concealed an internal struggle. Yes, she eventually ended up living largely in stealth but it still occupied a very big chunk of her psychology to make it all work. 

Not even close to being easy but then whose life is?

Binary brain

Conservatives think in simple binary terms.

There is black and white, good and evil and the greys between them are willed into non-existence to facilitate their world view. 

I can use conjecture by saying that keeping things clean and neat clears their palette of ambiguity. It eliminates the possible guilt of having labeled something incorrectly. The lack of nuance makes it easier to dismiss and discriminate. 

No need to complicate further.