Recently I have been asked if I am doing ok, or just ok in general. I give them a funny look and think what an odd thing to ask. I want to ask why are you not ok? Because all things considered I feel that I am doing great. I do not apologize that at times my satire shows through the mask that I wear in order to be accepted or is required of me to be something I am not all the time. Often when I am being asked this question I can’t help but think of the rant of Howard Beale on the TV show Network
I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.' Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first, you've got to get mad. You've got to say, 'I'm a HUMAN BEING, God damn it! My life has VALUE!' So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, 'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'm NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!' I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!... You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first, get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: "I'm AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'm NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!"
Just when I started to live life to its fullest, traveling the world, going to various conventions, and making genuine connections with people, everything was flipped on its head, and one of the slogans became, "The new normal, now, not forever."
I have been waiting almost two years now to return to Japan only to still be waiting with no sign of being able to go any time soon. In the meantime, I have watched many of my favorite places close down along with talk of tearing down the iconic capsule tower. In the back of my mind, I keep thinking please, please don’t close any more places before I return and know the magic one more time. I look forward to the day when I do get to return and walk down the streets of Akihabara and Ginza and hopefully know the magic I found in Kyoto once before.
After twenty some odd years of waging a peace action/war on terrorism Afganastain was left to its own fate which turned out to be a disgrace and this generation’s Vietnam. When I asked a few people what their opinion on the matter was they didn’t have one because they weren’t even alive in 2001. To many, it was just another day of news. I couldn’t help but feel like I was the only one who cared or remembered. Everyone keeps on working like the sacrifices and money spent in the last two decades meant nothing. Making sense of everything is hard if not impossible almost like the soldiers on the beaches of Dunkirk during World War II. One minute in combat waiting for ships to carry them back to England under fire and the next back in England like the war was distant and removed let alone relatable.
Covid - 19 messed with everyone mentally and emotionally. The world shut down and everyone went into isolation and socially distanced from one another to prevent the spread of something that we didn’t entirely understand. People literally wared over toilet paper causing it to become a scarce commodity. People and friends didn’t want you coming over, and there was nowhere to go as every business was closed or closed to gatherings. For many, this period of time was extremely lonely and left people with their thoughts and their identity whatever was good or bad. Two years later have we started to see things become somewhat normal other than people getting sick and worrying how they are going to pay their bills when they are not allowed to work for ten days
Several other side effects that were unexpected by Covid were the Great Resignation and the disruption in the Supply Chain. The Great Resignation has been proved to be an interesting dilemma for a lot of people. There just isn’t the quality workforce there once was. For a lot of individuals, they simply aren’t going to take the conditions that there were subjected to. For a multitude of reasons people have said enough is enough and have gone out and sought better for themselves, better treatment, better conditions, better benefits. I am often reminded of the “silent majority.” Only now, rather than people being silent about things they are taking action if it is no action. When I think of the idea of slavery I think of slavery of classes, and of capital. I sell my time in the form of unskilled labor at 8 hours a day and sleep 6 hours a day.
I did the math and I calculated it takes me 10 hours amount from the time I get out of bed to get to work and punch the time clock. When you consider all the other things we do and have to do it’s no wonder we go a little MAD. If you have debt you are surely not free, as you can account how long it will take you to pay things off in how much of your time you will have to spend. I saw a meme that said exactly that, that new hand back isn’t $150.00 it’s 10 hours of your time.
So in just three paragraphs, I have laid the groundwork for reasons not to be alright. Japan and the magic of life being put out and replaced with the daily grind. An endless cycle of war against someone and someones. A new normal now, not forever. Inflation, along with the great resignation and downward sticky wages. If the madness going on in the world wasn’t enough the amount of political correctness going is beyond me. Another meme said “Stop trying to cancel historical events/people just because they aren’t moral according to today’s standards. History much not be forgotten. Whether the act committed was good or bad, there is always a valuable lesson to be learned. The only way to prevent history from repeating itself is to be informed of the past.”
I find myself constantly having to make sense of the insensible. I am constantly left wondering where I fit in and where I want to fit in. I have said this to many people, there are many things I will never know and experience here because we don’t have the culture to support them. A basic example of the madness that no one speaks of is transportation in my hometown.
My town is one of those places where you absolutely have to have a vehicle in order to get to and from work as the footprint of the town stretches from one extreme to the other roughly a distance of ten miles. Easily this footprint would be lessened to between three and five miles. If you look at the size of Walmarts they could easily be much smaller if instead of making them one floor you made them several high. Public transportation does not offer reasonable hours for people to get to and from work. Many of the shifts start before the buses run and the shifts end long after the buses have stopped running. Why would I spend a lifetime trying to fix the problem when I could just so somewhere else where the problem is already fixed.
In close to all this madness I am reminded of the new blockbuster movie “Don’t look up.” I think it’s an amazing movie and very well done. When a comet is on a collision course for earth the motto is don’t lookup. There are a few who have acknowledged the truth but there is nothing they can do about it. In the end, this select group of people ends up coming together for a dinner simply living out their life enjoying their life to the best of their ability. This is a happy ending to not being able to change things and not allowing the madness to get to us, for people like John in the book Brave new world it’s quite the opposite.
I leave with a message that echoes from history
We are marching in a compact group along a precipitous and difficult path, firmly holding each other by the hand. We are surrounded on all sides by enemies and are under their almost constant fire. we have combined voluntarily, precisely for the purpose of fighting the enemy, and not to retreat into the adjacent marsh, the inhabitants of which, from the very outset, have reproached us with having separated ourselves into an exclusive group and with having chosen the path of struggle instead of the path of conciliation. And now several among us begin to cry out: let us go into this marsh! And when we begin to shame them, they retort; how conservative you are! are you not ashamed to deny us the right to invite you to take a better road! Oh yes, gentlemen! you are free not only to invite us but to go yourselves, wherever you will, even into the marsh. In fact, we think that the marsh is your proper place, and we are prepared to render you every assistance to get there. Only let go of your hands, don’t clutch at us, and don’t besmirch the grand word “freedom”; for we too are “free” to go where we please, free not only to fight against the marsh but also against those who are turning towards the marsh. V.I.Lenin What is To Be Done
There are many laters to life, as there are many layers to individuals. Each person is unique to their experience and understanding of life. This argument is only the Macro level, we forget there is the micro, where the greatest accomplishment for some people is being brave enough to get up every day and face the unknown being their own hero to their own story.