Worldwide Localization

What is far away, the mysterious unknown exciting, has a natural allure. Having been denied the freedom to pursue this urge in geographical terms by the pandemic, the vast swath of humanity has been forced to instead stay, and engage, local. 

Professor Malhi at Oxford is one of those many. He recently wrote an essay about his shift to studying the nature of his English surrounding instead of distant tropical rain forests. So many have similarly obliged, in various creative and intellectual ways, and I think the experience has been revelatory. 

It almost feels like the world has reached a level of global entanglement that is just too much. Like we stretched the elastic of ourselves until it could stretch no more, and now we're furling back into a more relatable size. 

I don't say this solely because the pandemic is distinctly of the time, its spread and reactions and aura exclusive to the Internet Age. I think it's been relatively clear that a point of satiation had been reached even before, but culminating, now. 

All the major political trends point to a rupture. Resurgent nationalism. Economic largess and inequality. Impending climate doom. The technological coup of society. The origin and facilitator of these widespread turmoils is clearly the modern lifestyle.

The obviousness of what's happening hit me when I read this article that explained how global health is no longer, and will never again be, centralized and dominated by the U.S. Power is dispersed, the world more equal and accessible than ever before, trudging through a radical newness. The paradigms of the 20th century are failing. 

I am realizing the value of local, less sprawled living, and from what I can tell I am not alone. Life is so much easier and more in depth this way. There ends up being greater connection with the world around you. Focusing on the details, which takes time and familiarity and a smaller sample size, is the best way to truly know something. 

And people are in sore need of connection these days. It's now evident that grand notions of global linkage don't really bring us closer together ideologically, and definitely don't alleviate our loneliness. We yearn for tangible bonds to the ground underfoot, the matter we can touch, hear, see and smell. 

 

Without mooring, without embedding an anchor in the seabed, we drift in a chaotic haze, isolated and unable to escape meaninglessness.

I think a smaller, more personal world is a necessary reaction to unprecedented globalization. I think it will not only help on an individual social level but on a planetary scale. It's so consuming to live the way we have. We all know we need to use fewer resources for long-term survival. The Swedes, even before the pandemic, were flying noticeably less for this very purpose. 

Maybe, with greater appreciation for what's directly around us, we could start along the path the world needs to go on. Isn't the air rife with possibility?

Change and Loss

I've talked with my sister recently about the human tendency to bestow meaning in the things surrounding us, animate or not. It seems a natural way to navigate through the complex world. We create placeholders to orient life amidst chaos. 

When through unrelenting, inevitable change, the familiar surroundings leave our lives, it feels like part of our very being is lost. It hurts so bad when the manifestations of our memories and identity are taken away. Sometimes the deep meaning these symbols of our creation have goes unrecognized until the weight of loss begins its heavy tug. Left hollow, lost, confused, our shape-shifting nature is unveiled as a series of layers that can never be ordered in the same way again.

I maintain that the worst part of death is how the absence gradually becomes normal. The presence is no longer present. It is forever a thing of the past. The tragedy is not only that which is gone, but so too that which is left behind by the living; the slivers and chunks of a fragile self that is buried with the dead. 

One of the defining themes characterizing my entrance into adulthood has been the loss of what once was. Aging is tangible now, and I have lived long enough for it to show me its mighty grip. Coming to terms with the ultimate reality is, in a way, what adulthood seems to essentially mean. 

As much as change makes the bad better, it takes what is good, too. Therein lies the trouble. It's a cruel setup that the greater something is, the more devastating, the more piercing its demise and disappearance will be. Even what is inside, protected by mass, mental barricade, and the shadows of the soul, is not exempt.

The highest challenge we the conscious face, the most insurmountable, crippling monster bearing down on every waking moment, is reckoning with change. For change is life and life is change, and refuting its authority is a losing, self-destructive war of attrition. 

To find peace is to accept change. It is a clear yet unbelievable taxing, emotional journey that seems to require the stuff of gritty fortitude and caring embrace. Loss makes me want to hate the unjust world, to lash out in a futile tantrum that forces the hands of time backwards so that I don't have to ever deal with it. I guess accepting it all means filing those reactions away and, instead of ruminating on the loss of what was, welcoming the creation of what is. And having faith that what is, and what will be, is worth a damn. 

Lastly, a song I heard again after many years: Dust in the Wind by Kansas

2.17.21

A grey haze shines tepidly into my room from between drawn blinds. It's still cold, wet, murky out there. Only the occasional rushing car or blaring siren breaks the silence. My apartment is at a total standstill. The water pipes dry, the wiring electron-free. As if the world outside is going by and I'm stuck, trapped. 

 

Everything had stopped the previous morning. Lights, fridge, stove, heater. The faucets, with their drip drip drip of still-liquid water, gave my ears something to hear, until that too stopped. Then the real solitude began. It seeped into the imagination, nipping the heels of the cold that pushed against my walls like the ocean does to a steamer, searching, prying for any way in. 

 

It was truly frigid outside. Two days earlier, when I had power, I walked a few blocks on the icy sidewalks. It was around noon. Within minutes my ears were piercingly cold---and I was bearing a beanie. I've never felt those temperatures this far south. I scurried inside to take advantage of the few hours of artificial warmth I had left. 

I began making preparations that day. I filled the bathtub with water. Charged the devices. There was plenty of food because I had moved in just the day before, and my parents bought a load of groceries for me (God bless 'em). But once the utilities shut off, everything seemed sparse. 

I watched my battery life tick away with each use. I felt the air becoming colder by the hour. When I moved my food from the fridge to the balcony, I realized the apartment was fast reaching equilibrium with the outside. At least the food wouldn't spoil. 

I walked into the black hallway outside my apartment door in search of a warm, lit place. Noises echoed through the dark corridors like in a horror movie. A stray laugh, footsteps, sounds my mind conjured up. I barely knew which direction to go in this unfamiliar building. I stumbled around with my phone flashlight, searching for affinity. 

Luckily, I didn't have to go far. The downstairs lobby of the building had power and heat and water. It reminded me of an airport gate. Everyone huddled around the outlets, glued to screens, strangers gathered in modern solidarity. I thought, if this were a movie, these would be the cast of characters the protagonist now must survive with. Luckily, life isn't really so. 

 

In the lobby and my muted apartment, I found lots of time to think. After all, the internet does reach a point of repetitiveness after some time. The only book I had with me was dense philosophy, which didn't really suit my mood. I wrote. I wondered what people in olden days did to keep their active, searching minds stimulated (I can't bring myself to believe their minds were that different from ours). 

I tried to keep note of my thoughts on the circumstances. At times it was scary, funny, annoying, disheartening, eye-opening. It was boring. It kept me on my toes. 

Soon enough, though, I realized this was the world testing me. Seeing if I had the grit and elasticity to trek on even when there was no flicker of light to walk towards. I had to prove myself, to the omniscient and to myself. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~

I was greeted with a slap of cold breeze from the vent and a beeping alarm system at 7:20pm on 2.17.21. A full 35 hours after power went down. I told my mom I felt, in that moment, like a King.

The Alone

There's something alluring about the solitary, introverted character. Yes the independence and freedom, the most radical and obvious of reasons, but so too the mystery of selfhood and pride to defy the crushing universe single-handed.

These are the romantic lonely. Those more connected to themselves than the outside world. Unplugged but tuned in. 

Haruki Murakami seems to simultaneously get the appeal and contribute to it. These types are his bread and butter protagonist, from what of his canon I've read. His stories are emotional at core, very powerful, but the writing is crisp and simple, muted to reflect his stories' inhabitants. The melancholy draws you in, as does the riveting hope for a deserved ending that sometimes comes, sometimes not; for the most part, you are left in a confused state eerily similar in its odd absurdness to the real world. 

The humanity he explores often teeter on the edge of dreamlike and damnable--a challenge to the motif of vicious anger offering instead a resigned, internal reaction to the urbanized, globalized, stratified world. 

I think Murakami's perspective is necessarily created in a Japanese culture where this individual is more common, more a prominent member of society, active in art, than elsewhere. 

This article updated in Jan 2019 says "over a quarter" of people in the US live by themselves. In Japan, this rate has trended downward since the 1980s, with 34.5% in single-person households in 2015. The National Institute of Population and Social Security Research estimates this will hit 40% in 2040. 

 

Artistic expressions of hitorigurashi (living alone in Japanese) seem to create this unique melancholy, a down, bittersweet tone like that in lo-fi beats. It fits in nicely to the depression vibes that Soundcloud rap rides on. 

 

I've only read short stories by Murakami. They feed off the fleeting energy of nostalgia. My friend told me he got 1Q84 recently; turns out it's 928 pages long! I wonder it if tries to sustain the same aura as the short stories for the long haul. Wild that someone can publish both a behemoth like that and thin snippets like After the Quake.

On true isolation: Winter's watch 

On long books: In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust is 4,215 pages

Becoming accustomed to Liberties

I think it is nearly impossible for people like myself, the lucky few born and raised in and lifelong residents of nations with robust civil liberties, to understand what it is like to live somewhere without these entrenched rights. 

 

The option to defy the established order, whether religious or political or artistic or historical, is inseparable from our national identity. The existence of that option is our defining characteristic; it is who we are. Imagining ourselves without that option is an exercise in fiction, for it is to imagine a wholly different human being. 

 

I can't begin to describe the ways in which this right influences my life. Everywhere I turn I see others, and thereby myself, taking a stance in the multiverse of ideas. You can make a show like Good Omens that spits on Abrahamic mythology, you can dive deep enough to drown in UFO conspiracies, you can make fun of the most powerful people around, and no one will stop you. There is no grand, overarching force to keep you in check. To reasonable extents, and sometimes even unreasonable (e.g. hate speech cesspools on 4chan), we can get away with thinking and saying whatever we want. 

 

I know this isn't news, and it's all extremely obvious because it's kind of the whole point of "liberal" countries. I just think here, within one of the countries that values free speech, we forget how novel our experience is. 

 

Not only is granting these expansive liberties to the common man a new development in human history, but it's still rare today. I read the news and see a place like Myanmar where millions have been dominated for generations by misinformation, civil war, and a military stranglehold. I watch Putin's Palace (Дворец Путина), the viral film uncovering rampant corruption, and then see the man who made it get nearly three years in a prison camp for his disobedience. 

 

The Human Freedom Index, published by the Cato Institute, uses a measure based on "personal, civil, and economic freedom," to rank countries by respect for human dignity. Their 2020 report found that 15% of people live in the top quartile of countries, while 34% live in the bottom quartile. (The datasets they have online are really extensive, if you want to explore the details more.) Out of 210 countries analyzed by Freedom House for political rights and civil liberties, only 84 were considered "free." 

None of this is to say that progress isn't being made, or that "free" countries truly respect every individual's rights, or that things are necessarily better for everyone in certain parts of the world compared to others. 

I'm not sure what exactly I'm trying to say. But when I think of the North Korean woman born into a cold bubble as far from me in every respect as the Moon, I imagine, futile as it may seem, what I would be like if I was her. And this painful mental exercise affirms in me that she, like me, deserves to take her own stance in the multiverse of ideas. For everyone to have that option, when I think about it, is really the highest of high ideals we should be striving for.

TV Addiction

You cannot examine your own behaviors impartially. The fog of bias is far too thick to ever dissipate. There are countless studies to back this up, I'm sure, but I think any reasonable adult would find personal experience enough of a dataset to prove the point. 

It's especially difficult to accurately judge how much time you spend doing things. Time being an elusive force (see previous posts) withstanding, I find it impossible to line up my expectations with realities on this front. With nothing is this more true than with the temporal void that is TV. 

TV is so addictive. When on, it's this glowing orb of bright light and shifting colors that your eyes instinctively gravitate towards. I catch myself fixated on the screen when my dad watches in the kitchen like my cats on a bird flying by. I'll walk into the room and, before I know it, I'm watching a pharmaceutical drug ad or those incessant, sarcastic, self-righteous CNN anchors supposedly "reporting" the "news." It's like Gollum with the Ring. 

And when the TV is off, it's dark and foreboding, just waiting for you to bring it to life, to open the endless portal. When I get into the habit of watching TV, which for me can happen from literally one sitting, it's almost like it beckons me. 

TV addiction used to be a major talking point in culture. It was the tool degrading society, ruining the children. The great evil. David Foster Wallace talked about this many times, including his own addiction to it. (That interview I linked, by the way, is fantastic. I listened to it with my mom while driving through Arkansas. Worth the full listen.) Infinite Jest rides heavily on the topic of addictive entertainment, among other things. Don DeLillo writes in the same vein. 

Now, with smartphones, TV seems relatively benign. Nobody thinks of it as the menace it was in the 90s. A stationary bulk can't really compete with the ubiquitous handheld. But I think it's just been repackaged into a different form. We're basically watching TV on our laptops and phones, but it's more interactive and has more options. Reading Nature on a screen is one thing, but how much more time are we spending on TV derivatives (YouTube, TikTok) if we're being honest. I realize I feel the same infuriating, frightening beckon from my phone as I do the TV. I think we understate the role TV has as the granddaddy of our digital crisis, and we overlook the dangers it still poses today.

 

When I succumb to the pressure and watch, I enter a time capsule that takes focused effort to escape. And when I exit, I have no conception of how much time I was in. Thirty minutes is the same as two hours in there. Life slips away unconsciously. It scares me. 

The habit is so easy to make and so, so hard to break. Screens are constantly everywhere, and we know they're made to addict us. And, at least for me, TV is like any other addiction; it just ends up making me feel bad in the end.

Foucault and Insanity

It takes considerable effort to read Madness and Civilization by Michel Foucault. A friend and I have been working through it since summertime. We're a bit over halfway done as of now.  

 

The writing is incredibly complex, for one. Each sentence is structurally creativity, rife with references to other ideas and sophisticated vocabulary. The sheer quantity of scholarly research needed to write this book is almost unimaginable; obscure citations range from 18th century German doctors, priests in post-Enlightenment Paris, even ancient Latin sources. How he organized and collected this information is beyond me.  

 

The content itself is a dive into Europe's evolving relationship with insanity after the Enlightenment (approx. 17th century). The way Foucault approaches historiography adds another dimension to the book. He circles an argument with a wide arc before rushing to the core, like water down a drain. So at first you're bombarded with diverse snippets of source material that builds to the main point. It's inverse to conventional argument design (thesis then evidence), and it requires focus even when you don't really know the significance of what you're reading.

 

The overarching story Foucault is trying to tell, from what I understand so far, is that of the insurmountable conflict between logic and insanity. After the Scientific Revolution, madness came to be seen as an inexplicable phenomenon in direct contradiction to the methodical, precise, deducible nature of the world. On one hand, it was seen as the externalization of internal urges and spirits, but on the other an unnatural entity, for nature is logical and ordered, while the paradigms of madness, "melancholia," "mania," "hysteria," and "hypochondria," were not so. An aberration. 

 

The reaction to these insane realities that should not, could not, exist alongside the contemporary worldview, was distrust and fear. Gone were the days when madmen were an accepted part of life, a common sighting in urban centers, a regular part of the breadth of humanity. Now, these conditions threatened the understanding of a rational world. They needed to be removed. Placed out of sight out of mind. Thus, the creation of asylums.  

 

The crime of insanity became moral. The depraved existence of madmen, corrupted and vulnerable individuals, defied the modern God, the laws of science. For they are illogical, irrational. And the world is apparently not so. 

 

It's clear that this is the origin of the present mass prison system in the U.S. We use the same rationale today, and we continue to view mental illness as a nonconformity fundamentally criminal. We have yet to break from this mindset. Just look at the statistics; our jails basically function as wards for mental health patients. I could only find older data, but numbers suggest something from 15-75% of all prisoners have mental health issues.

 

I think this book shows how fragile our moral and intellectual foundations are, which seem to come from a place of arrogance. This negative outgrowth of the Enlightenment is often ignored, but it is real. The broad disillusionment increasingly common among all social strata must be a manifestation of this. We think we know how things work, and when something doesn't fit into our established framework, we feel threatened, compelled to remove it from sight. It's unsustainable. It's actually a tragedy for everyone involved. Rigidity makes the world a more bland, incomplete place. We have the same approach towards many things that don't fit neatly into our quantifiable structures, like spirituality and drugs. If we really wanted truth, we would be more open-minded.

The Arrow of Time

There's this term, "The Arrow of Time," that refers to the way time is unidirectional, always pointed to future from past. This simple fact is maybe the defining trait of life itself. So we wonder, quite naturally, if it could be different. Whether the nature of the arrow is necessarily fixed. 

 

I've been reading a book about the concept called From Eternity to Here by a Caltech physicist named Sean Carroll (he actually was one of my friend's professors). His writing is dense and hard to follow at times, unsurprisingly, but it's made me think of time in a different way; as a dimension, a coordinate in 4-D spacetime. That in itself is challenging enough to conceptualize, much less moving on to understand singularities or closed timelike curves. 

 

One insight that has especially stood out is how we orient ourselves in time. Carroll says we use the Big Bang to create temporal asymmetry the way we use Earth to do the same for space. Out in dark matter, all directions are symmetrical, equally filled with nothing. On Earth we recognize up and down because the planet is our reference point. The Big Bang serves as a similar reference point for time, clarifying the distinction between the low entropy past and higher entropy future.

 

I found Tenet, the newest Christopher Nolan movie, to be no help at all in this mindbending exploration. The concepts and budget he toyed with made for cool scenes but the logic, lost in an opaque, convoluted storyline, the mumbling dialogue, the total intentional confusion injected into the soul of the entire project, made for a personally unfruitful watch. I also found it neck-deep in the worst of action movie tropes; one man responsible for stopping the end of the world, he must choose between saving everything or saving his love, a doe-eyed attractive woman who lacks any defining trait besides those innocent and vulnerable optics. It somehow managed to not make any sense and be numbingly predictable at the same time. I do like Nolan's other movies, though. 

 

I'm not sure where all this thinking about time and reality has left me. I think it might be limited as just a mental exercise, a stirring not disruptive or imminent enough to spill over the levee separating daily life from the lake of my thoughts. Which is fine. I don't expect every endeavor to bear juicy revelations that turn my world.

 

Nevertheless, time ceaselessly marches on. The only thing to do is embrace it. I can be grateful for the good, like my new job, and thankful for what once was so, like Playboi Carti's vibe. I don't think any other response is appropriate.

 

 

The Civil War

As we reel from a traumatic, tumultuous year in American history, I find myself wondering, in accordance with millions of others, how it is we reached this point. What led us here. What is this, this incompetence and polarity and gridlock, a manifestation of. Is there reason for hope, pragmatically speaking. And I've found, in my brief and superficial explorations, that the answers lie in history. Specifically, the Civil War. 

 

The connection crystalized in an essay in Foreign Affairs magazine by David Blight, a Yale Professor of American History, called "The Reconstruction of America." He reminds us of the result of the unfinished Reconstruction, the curtailed rebuilding and integration of the South after the Civil War; the issues that caused the war itself, the driving forces of our great schism, were never resolved. These questions, in particular:

"Who is an American? What is equality, and how should it be established and protected? What is the proper relationship between states and the federal government? What is the role of government in shaping society? Is federalism a strength or weakness?"

It's clear that these are the exact disagreements plaguing us today. How little rhetoric has fundamentally changed in 150 years; how distant we remain from solving these hard questions. They stubbornly persist at the core of our national dysfunction, generation after generation.

Realizing the conserved nature of our foundational American debates has given me angst and idealism. Frustration at the failure to implement lasting reform during Reconstruction that could have ended, or at least mitigated, the extreme geographic disparities in governance and social structures that persevere today, the squandering of a raw, leveled slate by our worst president, Andrew Johnson, that could have birthed a more united nation. Optimism at the potential for improvement that we've embraced, time and time again, despite resistance and the lingering of root questions, that have raised millions from destitution, oppression, poverty and hopelessness. We somehow live in a reality of both, a confusing history we're still reckoning with, still unsure of.

One thing I do know is that I need to learn more about both the run-up to the war and the aftermath. Therein, I think, are the keys to unlocking our doors to a brighter future. Better understanding the ramifications of decisions made then, and how we can move towards ending our monumental disputes, should be an enlightening process.

Bicycles

Like so many others this past year, I've had the pleasure of cycling more than ever before. I found myself fiending for outdoor activity after coming back to the sunshine from a dreary land. A simple, engaging way to bask in the love that is warm temperature. So I got on my bike. Over and over and over again. 

 

I've been riding two to four times a week since March. At first my routes were short, familiar outings on the shaded streets I grew up on. Then they became longer. I strayed farther from home to parts of town I hardly visit. I wandered neighborhoods where I don't know a single resident. Sometimes alone, sometimes with company, I learned of creekbeds to follow for winding miles, hilltops with serene, uninhibited views, parks and taco spots and strange murals (Andrew Yang and Kobe are a duo I never would have expected). The excursions became day-trips; explorations into unknown folds of the place I've known for my whole brief life. 

 

For most of the year I rode an old mountain bike that was passed to me from my dad almost a decade ago. Earlier this month, my parents gifted me a sleek city bike. It's gorgeous. Deep blue frame, white-rimmed 700cc wheels, brown leather seats and grips. It has no gears (single-speed) so it's lightweight and minimalist. The design is both classic and modern. I can fly on that thing.

 

Now I cruise around town with a contagiously laid-back ambiance, each pedal a beat of my soaring wings, each moment more liberating, more enjoyable, than slower or faster transit could ever offer. Maybe it's because I'm fully out there; the asphalt is inches away, it's imperfections physically impactful on my body; the wind in my wavy hair, uncut for months now; the sun on my exposed forearms; the hot closeness of rumbling cars giving way to the quiet openness of a residential backstreet. It makes me feel present. 

 

Anyways, this feeling I get on my bike reminded me of an essay called The Wheels of Freedom: Bicycles in China by Fred Strebeigh. He describes how people in China were banned from talking about the Tiananmen Square Protests in the aftermath, but while cycling they could and would because the state couldn't monitor people's conversations while they were biking. Bicycles gave individuals personal space. A dose of sanctity that helped them go on with daily life.

 

I know China has changed dramatically since 1991, when the essay was published. The sea of bicycles has given way to four-wheeled traffic jams and cutting-edge public transit. The surveillance state wields expansive new technologies. But I think, when I read this, I see how millions of others have felt the same overflowing vibrancy I find on my bike. It's cool to recognize that connection across time and space.