The Illusion of Choice

That's our modern condition. I just watched a Facebook spot about the fact that almost all eyeglasses and their delivery systems are owned by the single company Luxxotica, and read in the paper how Monsanto and Bayer are merging. We all know this is how things are going in the giant world of conglomerates. It's the kind of cultural thing that people feel helpless about it and even when "Adam Ruins Everything" tells us the facts, we tend to kind of file that away and keep going as usual. Extrapolate that to climate change, politics, and you can make your own list of the ones you choose to live uneasily with. I have to buy glasses.

Boy that has an effect on our psyches, though. I'm reading what is for me a heartbreaking book, the new novel Barkskins by Annie Proulx, which is a book so well written I can only hope to understand its structure and the expertise she has applied to literary fiction. It's character after character through hundreds of years, and we watch development work through their lands and lives and see how helpless they are to prevent losing what they treasure, how they participate it for smaller reasons of their own. I think we accept that as a condition of our human lives now...instead of things getting better and better, we will lose piece by piece until we are left with nothing. Maybe that's just age talking. I've seen some sad situations lately that underscore why people say things like love is all that matters.

There's very little else you have control over but a slice of your emotions, and choosing love is a pretty good adaptation to that if you can hold onto that illusion. I let my cynicism loose on love, having tried on lots of forms of it and come up lacking in skill and expertise to keep that glamour drawn over that hard reality. Honesty always forces me down into realism and I see romantic thinking and wishfulness underneath, and to me it looks quite thin. Not that I think you shouldn't keep working on it. It really is all that matters, because bringing love to the human situations is the best we can do to get through them. Giving up on that doesn't give us much in the salvage pile.

I admire people who can form a solid partnership and draw strength from it. Must be such a comfort. I see it kind of like religion, something that feels real and makes you feel strong, strong enough to keep going and keep trying and rest easy when there is nothing else to try. You hold the person's hand and get some peace and safety there. You promise each other, and hope you can keep the promises. Everyone should have that comfort, because life is hard, but alas. Lots of us don't.

I like to say your cynicism won't protect you. My cynicism does me no favors, but if anything is my religion, it's honesty, and I can't seem to get my cynicism out of my honest calculations. So my trust is compromised. I don't feel as safe as I'd like and I hardly trust anyone...really deep down. I trust people who are really honest with me, who are humble enough to not be prone to drawing the glamour veil over whatever is between us. I trust hard workers who speak directly and look within before they cast about for blame. I do have such people in my life, thank goodness. I have others who work toward that. Then there are plenty who don't get it and don't want to and don't want me to bring it up. Be positive! Assume the best!

Sometimes, I suppose, honesty is not the best policy. Maybe it's the base of a slightly rose-colored version of the concept or impulse or thought and maybe the cheery exterior is helpful. This is getting a little too theoretical to check for fact...what exactly am I talking about? I'm afraid to say.

Unleashing my cynicism isn't going to get my community through the hard times we're in. All of my artisan communities are having problems with our realities...maybe not huge problems, maybe mostly our normal problems: attacking our leaders, losing perspective, letting our selfish sides out, saying things without thinking of the possible effects, hurting each other, trusting the wrong people. Trying to keep the love spread over it all when the glamour has some spiky nails poking through is a constant effort. OCF just went through another huge upheaval which is how decisions seem to have to be made in the age of Facebook and too many people to fit in a room. It gets ugly but a few key people always know what to say...and lots of people are still able to listen. Love for each other can certainly be a deep and real emotion.

Obviously the TV and music offerings of our day have given us some terrible examples of how to behave and how to treat each other, with the glorification of the thug culture and "getting mine" and we all see every day ways that well-meaning, good souls are taken advantage of, crushed, and ruined, by desperate, blind predators who have no idea why or what they are doing, thrashing through their pain. I don't think it has ever been different really, but when the population was smaller and we didn't have media so entertainment-oriented, it was less obvious and in our faces. We could live in our illusions and get away with it. It's harder now to do that. I was walking home last night after dark and passed a few people...no one scary, though I've had the habit of crossing the street to avoid passing large men as a rule. Last night I didn't, so I took a closer look at the dark shapes and worked with gut feelings, and everyone was cool. People were walking their dogs, exercising, smoking, or just going somewhere like I was. Some were afraid of me, with my backpack, bag of bread, roll of posterboard falling out of my open pack. I looked awkward, and I actually tripped on the sidewalk and fell on my face, cursing loudly. Damn fucking sidewalk. I guess I wasn't lifting my feet enough. The worst aspect of it was no one came to help me. I didn't need it, and there wasn't anyone close enough anyway, but I thought that if they heard my loud cursing and saw my confusing load of stuff, they wouldn't come near me. They would back away, because I would look like a drunk or someone else who could be dangerous. I felt that loneliness of having pain that no one cared about.

I got some scrapes and bruises but am fine and made it home, but I did remind myself that the universe likes to send me lessons (how I draw my glamour veil) and here was one about judgement and stereotyping. Everyone who falls down deserves a helping hand. The poor woman who was arrested behind the Tuesday Market had spent her morning desperately weeping, spreading her damp clothing and towels out on the rock walls in her cubby, and she deserved better than to have her belongings put into black plastic bags and hauled away. Who knows if she will recover any of them, or need to? Maybe that's what people on the street expect now, but what I expected was that some of the people who watched this happen might gather them up and put them back into her pack and save them for her...I wanted to do that myself. No one did. I saw another person spend the day doing personal grooming of all kinds, trying to hide herself by the same wall and pretend she had privacy, in the privacy of her black hoody and pants. A hundred people saw her and ignored her, and she ignored all of us. My gut drew me so strongly to give her something, money, food, a word, something...but I did not. We exchanged a glance or two, hers suspicious and defiant (I imagined), mine full of dismay and indecision. I didn't want to invade the little privacy she was trying so hard to create.

I told myself to be careful, to be cautious, to keep working and not take on things that were not my business. Down the street at the federal courthouse were hundreds of people not being cautious, speaking out and supporting our kids who are working for climate change repair. I know people are working for homeless advocacy too. I know lots of people are working hard for exactly what I want: less judgement, more justice, finding safety and privacy for those who can't buy it for themselves, helping. Giving the comfort of a hand and a partner to those who don't get that, aren't successful at arranging that for themselves.

So I have a lot of work to do. We discussed how to be a good partner at the Task Force yesterday, and it helped a little, and we worked together very well to take some steps together as a membership to articulate our position and protect our needs. I'll keep the veil over my cynicism but it hasn't alleviated in the least. The set up has been deliberate and the deal is laid out, and it's not like we have any real power when millions of dollars are on the table. We have the illusion of choice. We're going to make the most of it.

We're going to assume the best, and step our way carefully into the inevitable and keep doing what we can to use our own crayons to color it good for us. I can't tell you all will be well, that it will be what you want. No one knows exactly how these downtown developments will play out in detail, but they will play out. It will be "what the community wants". Let's just hope that it isn't all what the development community wants. Let's keep working and bringing in our people and putting forward our vision of what our alternative community wants, too. We are an important cog in the wheel. There's no way to stop the train, but we can keep helping to draw the map, and keep working on ourselves and our friends and neighbors to make the best choices we can. Whether we like it or not, we are all in this together, and it is where we are. Fear less, love more.