A professor of mine in college liked to say, “There are two kinds of people: the people who divide everything into two things and the people who don't.” Reputedly one of the best teachers on campus, I could not find my way to his appeal and yet I remember him saying this division thing, the thing that first made me dislike him.
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I just started listening to a book called How To Work With (Almost) Anyone which got big thumbs up from people I admire for their sense of what's going on in our world and how to make your life better, Seth Godin, Brenee Brown, and Scott Galloway. I don’t quite get their enthusiasm yet, since essentially the book recommends you find somebody at work you want to have a valuable relationship with and ask each other five open-ended questions. But I suspect it is most worthwhile in practice. Anyway, the author points out that there are basically two modes of organizational improvement. You either look at the problems and work to fix them or you try to build on and highlight the things that work.
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Currently, I find that I'm always trying to make sense of the now of the now—my need for coffee, my loneliness, my joy, the particulars of being trapped in this aging body—and the everything of everything, how, for instance, everyone is connected but no one knows how to talk to each other, or that an obvious climate crisis demonstrates the internal vacuity and immaturity among our leaders (and their followers, myself included), or how to parse my confusion about whether now really is an especially important time in the life-cycle of everything or whether it just feels that way because that's how it feels when you get older and try to write something like this, something meant to tilt at both sides of all divides.
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Before and after today a few hundred years ago is an easy day to see as an inflection point, from “I the King” to “We the People.” I struggle, now, to see how we will see beyond our disgust and fear of one another. (More on this tomorrow.) The problem with “We,” it turns out, is not that the mob makes bad decisions but that it cannot get beyond wanting to stomp on some sub-group, a “they.” (If getting rid of one “they” or another would solve the problem, then perhaps you could make the case for a final stomping of some kind and call that a solution.) In the meantime, the fear and disgust break the process: politicians are purchased, legislation is weak, and judges are cultivated to be blind to anything save the interest of the vested.
Domestic tranquility . . . common defence . . . general welfare . . . blessings . . . liberty. A house divided stands against itself.
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Meanwhile, I am listening to a Bon Iver song over and over. It is called Holocene. It is cryptic and beautiful and may have nothing to do with the above except that even a one-time acceptance of our lackings would go a long way to reuniting America with its impossible purpose, to form a more perfect union.
Someway, baby, it's part of me, apart from me.
You're laying waste to Halloween
You fucked it friend,
It's on its head,
It struck the street
You're in Milwaukee, off your feet
... and at once I knew I was not magnificent