Imbolc and the Birthday Moon
Sunday gratefuls: Shadow. Potty trained. To the outdoors! Sit and down, making progress. Shadow Mountain under 18 inches of white Snow. Vince. Salaam. Dog watcher. Democracy under Threat. Paul, in Camden. Mark and the desert. Mary and Oz. My son and Seoah, in the former Joseon Dynasty. Lodgepoles with unloaded Branches. Aspen’s gray-green against the Snow. My right hip and back.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: No poop in the house this morning
Week Kavannah: Netzach
One brief shining: Snow once more high on the Trees, soft, undulating, imitating the Rub al’Kahli, the empty quarter on the Saudi peninsula, where Bedouins rode camels, eating dates off Palms at an Oasis, while here the tall monarchs of the Forest, the Moose, use their long legs to find food even in a white desert
Got up this morning, picked up my hearing aid from the night stand. I’d left it there, forgetting to take it out to its charger. After letting Shadow outside, I looked for it. Where did I leave it. It needs to charge for the Ancient Brothers conversation at 8.
Imagine my surprise after searching upstairs and down, high and low, to find it where I automatically put it, behind my ear. Routine. Who says aging isn’t funny?
Firing the Joint Chiefs, military advisors to the President. Now the three-star Generals who run the Judge Advocates in the Navy, Army, and Air Force. Because they tie the hands of soldiers trying to win wars, Hegsteth says. Calling them jagoffs. Oh. And 8% cuts to the military over each of the next five years. Do the math. Using military bases and gitmo for detaining immigrants. This administration wants to bend the military, make it serve partisan politics. And to act in this country.
Add that to Trump’s coziness with Putin and J.D.’s embrace of the German Far Right. Whaaa. There may be an overall playbook at work here, but it looks like something simpler, whatever they used to do, we’ll do the opposite.
This must feel revolutionary to the MAGA base. It’s not. It’s reactionary in both a literal and figurative way. It’s not making America great again, it’s making America a different country, yet not a better one, just one defined by greed, naked self-interest, and diminution of the other.
Just a moment: Conversation. Communication. Interaction. Topic of an Ancient Brothers’ morning. Is the screen captivity of Millenials, Gen Z, Gen alpha a plague on human interaction? Or, is it a new form of being human on a crowded planet. Let’s bracket the insidious software of Tik Tok, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Not because their manipulation of the human mind isn’t real, effective, and pervasive, but because I want to find the communication possibilities wherever they are.
Conversation in 3-D most would consider the gold standard. Neuroatypicals may be an exception. Conversation on the phone or on a service like zoom might come next. Then, e-mail. Texts. These are mediums where your message has no software filtering, magnification, or distortion.
After these more transparent communications come what I would define as social media. Especially the four mentioned earlier. Even these can be used for communication, especially for wide dispersal of a message. The difference is in the software that encourages liking, uppolling, changes of who sees and receives your messages and whose messages you receive and see.
There is in them a capitalist hand that wants profit, not better communication. What matters is the stickiness of the platform. Eyeballs. Length of time on the site. It seems obvious to me that serious and deep interpersonal communication in such an environment has more challenges, invisible levers, and problematics.
How does all this effect culture? The ability to form deep and meaningful friendships, find love? I just don’t know. Much more to learn here.
