What the world chases after

The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche did not measure success by the conventional standards of the world. 

Financial wealth or societal validation were not part of his reflection. Instead, he defined it as the overcoming of one's inner chaos which could be achieved through embracing adversity. This was a catalyst for personal growth which would accompany the creation of a unique sense of purpose as well as an incorruptible value system. 

The world often looks at success through a faulty prism and many of the characters we laud with having achieved it, are deeply flawed and perturbed individuals with narcissistic qualities. 

Those people who reflect deeply and weigh the morality and consequences of their life decisions are less likely to succeed by the metrics of a world that values knee-jerk action. However they often tend to personify the best qualities of humanity which include empathy and charity. 

We want to seek internal balance and in so doing must necessarily abandon much of what the world values and chases after.

Typiquement Montréal

 

                                             Rue Laurier

From the wrong angle

Back when I was thinking about magic bullet theories regarding what factors (outside of deliberate choice) made people gender variant, I didn't fully realize that I was attacking the issue from the wrong angle. 

Instead I should have focused on what stops them from being that way. In other words, I should have focused more on the fabricated rules that prevented a natural spectrum from being both visible and viable. 

I was operating from the wrong coordinate system that I had been raised under which was tainted with bias and artificial structure. 

The human condition is naturally full of variants which if left alone surface and thrive naturally provided the person isn't traumatized. The problem is that society doesn't appreciate wild cards spoiling the models they want everyone to subscribe to. 

The ingredients which go into making a human being are so varied and complex at every level of development, that it is entirely expected that the process would produce great variability; one that we see replicated everywhere in organic systems. 

Instead of welcoming this entirely natural diversity of outcome, most societies (with the notable exception of many native cultures) simply rejected them. They forced people to comply and stigmatized and traumatized them for not obeying the rules. 

Therefore when conservatives talk about an epidemic of gayness or transness they are really referring to a loss of control of the rules they favour. They don't want the natural variants exposed and call them unnatural when the opposite is true. 

Regrettably until we educate ourselves the baseline of many if not most humans is inadvertent stupidity; one which emphasizes both a lack of critical thinking and unquestioning conformity as a baseline operating system. Today people openly trumpet their idiocy with gusto and even pride.

It is our own responsibility to fix that.

Falling behind

The Trump regime is now only barely able to gaslight a decreasing part of its own population. Everyone else in the world has moved on. 

Europe, Mexico and Canada for example are making other arrangements but the tough talk is what the regime is going with as they bargain that it will look good at home.  This despite the horrid polling. The US is also gambling that the bond market won't crash as world confidence in their country declines by the day. 

This is massive hubris that is entirely unwarranted 

China for its part has seen astronomical progress over the last 40 years and is now seeing the fruits of investment in technology and its workforce. The country has lifted a huge chunk of its population out of poverty and threatens to show the world what looking after your people looks like. 

No the Chinese aren't perfect on human rights but then most countries have skeletons in their closets. 

As the western world figures out how to mitigate the consequences of Neoliberal policies, the selling of more socialist approaches is becoming more palatable even in the US with its DSA candidates. 

This is because people are getting fed up of falling behind.

Desire

My desire to want to slap people in public has waned dramatically which is very good news for me. 

However, it's not because society in general is getting better behaved, but because I am learning to, better than ever, tune them out and live internally in peace.

To belong

One of the challenges we have as human beings is to find our community. We need a clan to belong to which can bring security but also potentially present us with a trap. 

In order to belong we need to define ourselves as being members and sometimes shoehorn ourselves into a model that may not feel quite right. 

This is human nature in spades. 

My instinct has always told me to be wary of groupthink precisely because the draw to belong can potentially cloud our judgement. It's wonderful to feel part of something bigger than ourselves but that invariably comes with some warning stickers 

We love labels and categories so we can fit in with the flipside being that they can serve as criteria for exclusion and even banishment.

Life and fairness

No one can imagine my life perfectly and there are many other lives I cannot relate to. All we can do is empathize by virtue of our humanity. 

My empathy is very strong for people who suffer in quiet dignity. There is something very noble in that while knowing that life doesn’t appear to be entirely fair. 

The saying goes that "God gives us what we can handle" which I don't really subscribe to. I prefer to think of it as different experiences bring out different strengths and qualities in us.

Maybe next time

Sometimes I have to stop myself from approaching another transgender person. I am tempted and then think twice because they may not appreciate such a random approach. 

This afternoon it was at my closest thrift shop where I noted that one of the employees (she about the age of my kids) was clearly trans. I took note but then carried on browsing. 

She had grown out her hair which was neatly gathered inside a large adorned clip. A little rouge on the cheeks was all I saw in the way of makeup. 

What always stays with me is how people just mind their own business. Whether they noticed she was trans or not didn't matter but then the majority of the browsers there weren't much beyond 30. 

I resisted saying hello but who knows for the next time.

Disarming ferocity

Anger is one of the unavoidable but necessary emotions we need to access and process to heal trauma or issues of repression. It's likely been bottled up for a long time and needs somewhere to go. 

There are always consequences to repression and that is one of them. 

This anger needs to be mitigated and released out of the body. Otherwise it sits there waiting to burst out at inopportune times. It can even scare us with its volatility. 

Remaking our lives in a significant way often requires we deal with suppressed anger which is often nested in the frustration of unattained life possibilities or potential. We get to a threshold where it must be dealt with because it's not sustainable to live with it long term. 

Once past the stage where it is mostly dissipated we can still be angry when required which is good for us but just not with disarming and disproportionate ferocity.

Scare tactics

FOX News is working overtime to scaremonger over Dr. Abdul El-Sayed's recent victory in his Michigan primary. The words communism and socialism are never far from the tongue and you can tell they are deeply worried. 

If El-Sayed is anything like Mamdani he is going to win the election and then work hard to deliver for his constituents forcing the propaganda machine at FOX to invent new scare tactics including tying him to the scary Hasan Piker. 

The current economic environment in the US only works for the wealthy. The rest struggle to get by with buying power that has been steadily declining since 1980 after adjusting for inflation. 

It's why the middle class is gone. 

Trumpism is likely going to get the boot in November and Trump himself might be lucky to make it all the way through his term. He looks more and more like shit everyday. 

Centrists democrats who have long been partly bought off by special interests are worried this new breed of politicians will blow their cover. 

If these democratic socialists (that for us Canadians are just plain old Liberals) stick to their game plan of helping the average citizen it will destroy not only the far right but the centrists who were sure they were the good guys.

Muslim democratic socialists! Run for your lives!

For Pete's sake get a grip.

Davina

I don't like it when some transgender people become overly ontological in defining themselves. It can invariably turn apologetic. 

Davina is someone I happened to catch on Soft White Underbelly and over the course of the interview proceeded to explain her take on her own identity. 

"I am a biological male who has had FFS and am on hormones. I am not a woman but always wanted to be" she says in a deep baritone. 

Okay, but then this could be a great number of transgender people who don't feel compelled to stress their genetic origins. 

One of the reasons I have deliberately strayed away from getting hung up on manhood and womanhood semantics is that both definitions contain a healthy dose of societal definition. Depending on which culture and era one is born in the expectations and obligations can change significantly. 

It's also become a trap for gender criticals to deny rights to transgender people based on the "you're not a real woman" argument. 

Consider two people with exactly the same path taken in terms of medical approach. One emphasizes their biology while the other one their womanhood and yet they are both transgender individuals on precisely the same regimen. 

The one who acknowledges biology might be lauded by the right wing for being "sensible" while the other is considered delusional. 

Both say they are living their truth and I would have argument with neither because the label doesn't necessarily impact their day to day.