Warning: My apologies upfront to those who may feel I’m making a VERY poor analogy in this blog entry that appears to be drawing similarities between one of the most heinous acts of the 20th century with our current epidemic. I must insist that I’m not trying to equate our current situation with the tragic events from World War II, but I am trying to strike a chord of relevance and contrast of the violence manifested upon a people due to their religious beliefs back then and that a kind of intellectual holocaust has been waged against the American mind over the past 50 years. It is not meant to be implied that the Nazis’ attempt to exterminate a people is in any way equal to our current moment, where the situation surrounding a pandemic is requiring people to self-isolate and take precautions to protect others’ lives. By using such an egregious moment out of history, I meant to provoke the idea of the futility of trying to perceive a new day when it seems that all hope is lost. Out of my experiences, I cannot see another time in the last 100 years that affected humanity as deeply as the carnage of World War II. Let me reiterate: I am not suffering at the direct hand of madmen; I’m trying to say below that I feel imprisoned in the straightjacket of a society bent on manifesting the horrors of stupidity and that I cannot see what life might look like on the other side. 

I cannot find my intention at this time of great uncertainty other than living without contracting COVID-19. There are no plans about life away from home as we do not know how we’ll recapture the social order of being in public. While I could direct my attention to returning to what was, that would be foolish as that modality of existence is now extinct. Those not understanding this rupture, in reality, are currently increasing the envelope that COVID-19 inhabits and are putting at risk large swaths of society. Should a vaccine arrive in the next six months, I do not believe that by the time humanity embarks on new journeys into our world, they’ll be going about their travels as they had in 2019. I admit that I have no real basis for making this type of supposition beyond my weak understanding of history and how events have played out over the course of time.

For those who are unaware of the term “phenomenology,” the best description I’ve found is from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which states: “Phenomenology is the study of structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view. The central structure of an experience is its intentionality; it is being directed toward something, as it is an experience of or about some object.” An example of how this relates to life after our current pandemic might be something like this: you cannot know how and when you might be in Italy again after global travel restrictions are lifted, and even when they are, will you be able to visit St. Peter’s in the same way as before, or eat in a crowded restaurant? It’s easy to assume that we’ll return to what we’ve known, but there is no good reason to think that will in any way be possible. So, even if you should be able to visit Rome, you may be having an experience that is miles away from what it had been. This shift will change the nature of expectations, and the previous laissez-faire travel attitude could be a relic of another age.

It’s a given that life could just return to its treadmill existence should a bulletproof vaccine show up that can be manufactured quickly, but there is some likelihood that this will never happen. In that situation, I’m curious, once we start experiencing our altered future, how will we start to rewrite the narrative of what our trajectory is? How will our intention find its footing?

The person I’d most like to talk to about this would be a concentration camp survivor. After witnessing so much barbarism, death, loss of hope, and resigning themselves to the idea that they’d likely die in such a cruel place, what was the adjustment to “normal” life like after the camps were liberated? While I can in no way equate our situation to the insane environment of the Nazi death camps, I will take the chance to be just stupid enough to draw some very weak parallels. The barbarism practiced against the Jewish people of Europe in World War II, I’ll try to equate to the stupidity of our media-saturated, undereducated masses that must be endured by many. Death comes in the form of the disease of violence, racism, lack of social safety net, poverty, and illness that ravage people unable to afford an escape. The loss of hope is all around us, and yet we apparently do not have the needed momentum required to demand real leadership, nor do we have the knowledge to know what that might look like. Finally, I’ve nearly accepted that our jingoistic banality will smother me with its brand of wretched anti-intellectualism as it tries to suffocate the thinking out of people. Without a dream of freedom, both intellectual and movement-wise, I feel that many in our society are prisoners of their situation.

Now that I’ve drawn such a repulsive analogy from what was truly a period of horror compared to our own vapid time of pandemic ignorance, I can admit that I do not have the ability to see beyond the barbed wire of modern propaganda and cannot imagine what life might be like in a post-Boomer liberated land where selfishness and hate have ruled for too long. So, my first-person view of the future is stunted. It’s as though as this coronavirus struck us, it threw us in a kind of weak prison camp or maybe it just woke us up to the fact that many have been there all along. It didn’t occur to me that this is where many around me might be living as Caroline and I had the ability, desire, and means to venture out of routines into 952 days of travel over the past 20 years. That’s 214 times we left the Phoenix area to go out and do something other than being at home. Our vacation time per year was averaging 48 days. Without the distraction of television, interest in professional sports, or the lives of celebrities, we easily afforded ourselves a filter that made our lives look charmed in our view. Little did we know or quite realize that other people’s treadmills now appear like this self-isolation routine to us.

Sure, they had gym memberships, episodes of their favorite series, season tickets to whatever team they professed their love for, and bars in which to drown the sorrows that come from an unrealized life that is a product of the larger product that informs them as to what their lifestyle is supposed to be. Now they are without their life-support systems just as we are cut off from travel, but instead of lamenting how dearly we’d enjoy a trip to the Oregon coast right about now, we are on other adventures that involve our hobbies, our minds, and our culinary curiosities. But out of my curiosity, I’m trying to map our path to where we might be headed six months or a year from now, just as I’d map our travels, sometimes 18 months into the future.

I can’t see out more than a few weeks at best right now. Maybe if we had leadership in America, there could be something to hang a hat on and hope that our collective efforts might produce the kind of result that will allow us to even have a future. At this time, our tomorrows are clouded by a moribund stupidity that has calcified a recalcitrant man and body of government into stasis. While out here in the woods of curiosity, I become the pariah, the wolf, the untamed beast that is a danger to the soft, petulant horde that holds up its bravado with a clenched hand clinging to a gun that lends the idiot strength of force instead of force of mind.

We are at a profound turning point, and we don’t know it yet. The collective delusion of seeking out a return of yesterday is part of the old windbag’s song of making something great again when what was never returned due to humanity always having to face the new day. Our psychosis and fear of the future are blocking the people of America from embracing the necessary change that is inevitable. Just as the Nazis terrorized people of Jewish ancestry and stole not only their dignity but their hope for a better day, our greed, fear, and selfishness have stolen America’s dream for a better tomorrow. Sadly, there is likely no force aside from Martians that could possibly defeat our bulwark of dim-witted, incoherent, feeblemindedness unless we find it within.

How has my life come to this? I’m talking about my recent interest in Chinese YouTube phenom Li Ziqi. She’s one part Martha Stewart, one part silent pop star, maybe a small bit MacGyver, and at least in front of the camera, she’s all about aesthetics. Li rides horses, kills and butchers her own goats and chickens, spins wool, felts cotton she planted and harvested to make comforters for her mom, grows soybeans that she makes into soy sauce, picks all foods fresh from her farm and from the local mountains where she stocks up on flowers, ginseng, mushrooms, and other elements she requires to make the traditional Chinese craft or food she’s working on. With nearly no dialogue and a lot of soft-focus with just the right depth of field to bring our attention to the most beautiful part of what’s being framed, this powerhouse of a YouTube star has about 2.5 million more subscribers than Joe Rogan.

Li Ziqi came to my attention first from my wife Caroline, but of course, when she was telling me of her, I was listening with half an ear, if that. Then, somehow, as though YouTube heard Caroline better than I did, it suggested Li Ziqi as something I might be interested in. For days, I would see the thumbnail and wonder why. Finally, it worked on me, and I clicked it. Now I’m watching an episode every other day and have to admit it’s become a guilty pleasure. Why guilty?

Li’s is a fantasy world that removes the viewer from any concerns about modern issues or strife found in everyday life. There are few machines, lots of wood and bamboo tools, wood ovens and stoves, and comprehensive knowledge of all things that might be required to live in this natural setting while looking gorgeous and making everything look so easy. Just then, she breaks out the guitar and shows us that she can also play it and sing to boot. As far as her life out in the southern mountains of China is concerned, she’s the ruler of the domain, but that’s not all; she produces and edits her own videos and has an online shop where you can buy all types of things from the life of Li Ziqi, also spelled Liziqi.

Beyond the gigantic body of knowledge one would need for this kind of existence, I’m enchanted by her grace and movement in every task she tackles in each five to fifteen-minute ambient adventure into rural bliss. It’s art and movie magic to sell an idea that slows the world down and offers us an enhanced peek into a version of life that might only exist in fairy tales. While I don’t feel I’m the right target market, I find this to be similar to when I was 17 years old and listening to Brian Eno for the first time as I discovered a musical alternative universe. If I had to guess how long I’d remain interested? I’d venture to say I could watch another 20 episodes before redundancy sets in, but until then, I’ll sit back, lower my heart rate, and enjoy the quiet sophistication and cinematic hand that alters reality to bring me into Li Ziqi’s imagination.

Far too many people I encounter in person or on various electronic platforms are wanting to believe that much of their reality is fake. Reality, even when manipulated by propaganda, is still your reality regardless if you believe your filter of perception allows you to peer behind the veneer of the sham. It’s not a fake reality; it is your interpretation of the time you are living in, but that doesn’t disqualify its legitimacy. The news may be weaponized to accomplish a certain goal, but so was our education, and from the first time we entered school, we were exposed to a program that was nudging us into a particular paradigm, just like the media are pushing certain agendas too. Your parents might have taught you about a tradition of holidays and religious observations they believed was best for their child’s 3-year-old mind, while others might see this brand of indoctrination as fake. None of this is wrong, though, as it’s the basis of culture that the people of a shared land have certain ideas in common. Just because humanity might still be collectively ignorant doesn’t make our culture fake or evil, but it does leave a lot of room for improvement.

Your clothes portray an image of a style that can be used to create influence or make oneself appealing in finding a mate. Those clothes don’t represent the body underneath or the mind inside your head, so in some respect, they represent a fake version of the person. A car cannot reflect the character you have or give an example of how you’ll raise children, though many will use the appeal of the car’s styling to insinuate that it somehow tells others what type of person they are. This is posturing behind a brand, tire type, and the vehicle’s color that has nothing to do with this person. It is a facade, an act of camouflage; it is fakery masquerading as meaning. The same goes for team loyalty: nobody gets more credibility because they stand behind their local sports franchise. They are being used as tools to generate lots of income for local taxes, team owners, players, marketers, clothing and shoe manufacturers. For your loyalty, you’ll be invited to join the chant of celebration and feel good about yourself and your deep connection to a favorite player. I posit that this pride is a fake manufactured commercial exercise used to grease the wheels of commerce.

We dress ourselves in the words of television; we play in the worlds of Pacman and zombies while often eschewing books. We dress in provocation in order to drag our mating rituals into the grocery store, and we pull in every bit of conspiracy nonsense to arm us in our fight against boredom when we sit down with people at dinner or in the bar so we have something that draws attention to our sad lives. We cultivate this inanity for years, becoming caricatures of reasonable people, and then blame science, truth, and facts for being hostile to our deranged view of the world. When people live in a cartoon world formed by Walter White and Clay Morrow or play in a universe with Alex Mason and then turn to Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity with a dessert of Honey Boo Boo and the Kardashians before exclaiming they own some kind of insight on deciphering the larger picture of reality, I’m left aghast that we are supposed to take any of this seriously.

When we as a nation run out of artifice to decorate ourselves with, we turn to intellectual cultural cannibalism. Through all the banality and anger we consume, we intuitively understand there’s nothing deeper to explore inside our own souls, and so we must find a new enemy. We are making ourselves the enemy; we are the other, the foreigner; we become the hated opposition; we are daring to be sociopaths. From the very shores of America, we are finding an adversary as we flail about trying to establish another bogeyman. The United States tried to maintain this type of conflict in our war against communism and leftists for 50 years after World War II. When that strategy lost its fangs, we turned against the Muslims. As that ran its course, we started throwing all manner of things at the wall to see what would stick. Hillary is the problem, George Soros is the evilest, DACA recipients and the invading horde of Mexicans are the root cause of all of our problems; wait, it’s the Mainstream Media Elites with Fake News, or is it Obamagate? Maybe the enemy is hiding in the swamp of Washington D.C., or could it be the radicals of Antifa? Ah, COVID-19 is our new global enemy, or could it be aliens from another universe, so we’d better get building a Space Force for future combat? No, no, no, the Deep State, er, um, I mean the Jews, or is it Jeff Bezos ripping off the Post Office that’s the problem? I know, it all started with fake moon landings, vaccines that poisoned us, and the Liberal University System, right? This week, let’s blame #BlackLivesMatter, and next week if COVID gets out of hand, let’s blame infected Antifa agents working for Soros and Hillary for infiltrating a political rally in Tulsa during the fake “Plandemic.”

Our enemies are NOT any of these external fake issues; our enemy is nobody else but ourselves. This dwelling in the swamp of ignorance so we may be titillated by our own superior “knowledge” of being part of the enlightened who see the real truth as a caustic elixir causing madness in society, hungry for hate. “Somebody or something else outside of me is responsible for my unhappiness and fear; there’s no way that it could be the way I’m choosing to see reality,” could be a popular refrain.

This sad and tragic juncture where humanity stands after having invented the greatest means of knowledge distribution ever created must be attributed to the hangover wrought from our diet of spoonfed nonsense that a previous generation seemingly needed. Intellectual junk food is not a viable alternative to a rigorous diet of the exploration of the knowledge that’s been shared by our ancestors and contemporaries who’ve made the investment in trying to understand the complexities of how things work.

At war now with ourselves and those in our proximity, we become social justice warriors railing against systems of intelligence instead of fighting the real enemy called greed and deep financial power. Maybe, just maybe, the artifice of control is starting to crack, but populism aligned with anti-intellectualism will lead to a kind of flash mob rule where the angriest faction takes control of a corner or a neighborhood. Humanity has always required leaders, mentors, teachers, mothers, fathers, or shamans to help guide the group. Headless and mindless, we become a school of fish swimming in circles, waiting for the sharks to feast on those at the periphery. We are starting to act like herring, and I’m afraid that the group dynamic propagated by temporary fads led by influencers hungry to move on to the next popular subject is only adding to the rounding up of others wanting to join a larger school to amplify the strength of herd stupidity.

I’m not saying that individuals coming together to foment change is a bad thing; it is the ONLY thing that can break the chains of subservience to economic, social, educational, law enforcement, and other unfair means of control. Protest is the best way for a populace to exercise its own power to build new structures. The caveat is that it is still up to the individual and, subsequently, mentors of all forms to make it imperative for the person to pick up the mantle of learning. Critical thinking and cooperation have carried us Americans far, but still, there is much room for us to do better.

On another fast this week, day three, as a matter of fact. No, it is not a water fast; it’s the modified fasting diet called Prolon. I’ve done it before with great results in helping normalize my blood glucose and lose weight. But there’s a small problem.

By the time I finish the fast I’m dreaming about what my first culinary indulgence is going to be. As a matter of fact, I’m deeply craving it once I figure out what it’ll be. This is when my efforts are about to go off the rails, and what I have accomplished is tossed to the side. While I’m down over 20 pounds since I started these fasts, I should be down another 18 except I keep bouncing back like a yo-yo. The exhilarating thrill of food exploration following the fast has me diving into a path where my stomach needs a little bit of everything in order to find satiety. This unhealthy mentality that somehow a magic combination of particular food choices is going to satisfy having been deprived for so long is a serious bout of idiocy. So, this time, I’m doing things a little bit differently.

I’m going to try being conscientious about my choices, and just as I have very limited choices on this week of fasting, I hope I’ll be able to restrict myself to a fixed diet where I have to stick to what’s on the plan instead of giving into what I desire and following the spontaneity script I know so well. I’ll employ the same thinking that gets me through the week, where my caloric intake is restricted to about 800 calories a day, which comes mainly from two 8oz portions of soup.

I’ve worked out a meal plan for the first 19 days of what Caroline and I will be eating following this fast. Well, Caroline will continue skipping breakfasts five days a week as she’s been doing her own fast regimen of not eating for 18 hours and then getting lunch and dinner between 12:00 and 6:00 p.m. She makes an exception on weekends when I make a scrambled egg fry with whatever random things I can toss in to clear stuff out of the fridge. While it’s taken me a long time to come around to portion control, I’m finally able to satisfy myself with a 6-8oz piece of meat instead of the 16-28oz behemoth steaks I was eating 20 years ago. I’ve also mostly given up eating on a large plate as when it’s mostly empty, I feel cheated, so we now use 8-inch plates or a bowl that holds about eight fluid ounces worth of food.

I believe this is only now possible after becoming so accustomed to eating at home, as we have for the last 95 days. While we could return to restaurants, I do not want to be in an enclosed space with others who might be sick with COVID and not know it yet. Another effect of this self-isolation is that we appreciate the amount of money we are saving from not eating out 2 or 3 times a week. For example on a typical day for breakfast, my granola and soy milk costs $2.00. Lunch of pork chops and butternut squash costs around $4.00 per person. Dinner can cost between $3.50 each for Corona beans with chermoula to about $7.00 each for spaghetti squash with arrabbiata sauce and some ground beef. We’ll spend around $50 for two dishes from a nearby Italian place with iced teas and tip or maybe only $40 at a Mexican joint, but if we were spending $120 a week on three meals at restaurants, well, that’s about what we’d spend on 30 meals at home. The value equation of convenience and indulgence grows increasingly more difficult to convince me that eating out is any kind of bargain at all. Finally, me being a numbers guy, if we have a net savings of about $90 a week by not eating out, that’s nearly $5,000 a year we can use on hobbies and travel.

Why is any of this rather mundane subject being posted here on my blog anyway? I needed to make this note to myself, so my focus was tasked today with not only making this meal plan but also trying to sear into my mind that this will be part of trying to get below 200 pounds; I’m only about 18 pounds away. I tend to remember things better after committing them to paper, be it the electronic or dead trees type. There’s another reason, too: someday in the future, as some A.I. is looking back at our entry into the digital age, there just might be some nuggets of perspective that will help others understand a few more details of who we were.

Image credit: quickmeme.com

We passed our 90th day in self-isolation with no end in sight. A month ago, the resolve of many a U.S. Governor waned under the pressure that orders to stay at home were likely unconstitutional and that people were having too difficult a time being cooped up, so the dogs of viral warfare were unleashed. Exactly one month ago, I wrote here on my blog that after 60 days, Arizona had 12,674 cases of people infected with COVID-19, and now, 30 days later, we have reached 34,600 cases, an increase of 21,986 people. Deaths from the virus have nearly doubled in this intervening month, having climbed from 624 to 1,189.

This year, we’ve learned about the “Karens.” My mother was named Karen and was a Karen before she died. She wasn’t always a Karen, but with a couple of years left in Obama’s presidency and her feasting on conspiracy and propaganda, she moved from being the noun Karen to the adjective Karen. When Trump was elected, she started to weaponize this trait, and if she were alive today, I’m certain my toxic mother, who was not a Karen in the 1970s through the 1990s, would be a coughing, bludgeoning tool of Kareness I would want to sacrifice on the pyre of needed change. COVID-Karen’s have become a thing as white, privileged women have taken to flaunting their indignation that others are even wearing masks. This type of Karen is pissed that anyone wants to control their right to be in public and go about their life regardless of some fakey “plandemic” that has been orchestrated to control the sheeple on the Global Elite’s behalf.

For nearly three weeks since the death of George Floyd, the police have been using rubber bullets to de-escalate the tension that is a response to their brutality. They are using tear gas and flashbangs for crowd control. They set up a phalanx of stormtroopers dressed for battle to keep the peace. Yet these actions appear to be nothing more than the demand for submission.

To be an American this year requires you to give up your will to survive and accept the need to live or maybe die with COVID-19. You must be considerate and make room for a generation of heartless citizens who only see their own needs and their will to exercise the immediacy of rights to satisfy their wants. And you must submit to the authority of the state with its right to decide on your life and death if you become a nuisance. To think, this is all in an effort to bring us around to normal.

What is normal? Our normal is being more concerned about our stuff than our lives. How many times have I heard someone explaining their gun ownership with the exclamation that if someone were to break into their home, they’d kill that person trying to steal their stuff? Most burglaries occur when the homeowner is NOT there. How many times a year do we hear about a homeowner killing someone while committing the crime of breaking and entering? During our mass shootings, there are always those people who brag that had they been there, “The shooter would have been wasted after I emptied my 9mm in his dumb ass.” For the most part, I hear those who are going to protect their stuff, and that is what’s at the heart of gun ownership as far as I’m concerned. We are more tightly connected to our things than we are to our own lives. I think this might be a generational concern as our recent demonstrations are putting on display that there is now a large part of America that cares more about life than the shit they amassed. While those on the sidelines are more concerned about looted and destroyed stuff than the lives that are at stake.

Maybe these 90+ days that reasonable people are taking seriously are offering them the opportunity to be reflective and take inventory of what’s really important. To the generation that was born towards the end of World War II, debt, homes, boats, cars, guns, TVs, and more stuff represented the pinnacle of having attained the American dream. For a new generation burdened with crippling debt, who can’t afford homeownership, don’t want a car that will contribute to harming the environment, don’t watch TV, and know that their possession of a gun will be the license for the police to shoot them, we are witnessing the clash of cultures where “Old” America is giving way to “New” America. Except, “Old-thinking” America hates blacks, gays, trans people, immigrants, environmental protection, electric cars, debt forgiveness, and health care for those not sacrificing for it, and they are not alone as they’ve already poisoned enough of their children that we have a young intolerant generation of people who think just like the old-fashioned idiots afraid of change.

Is it that simple to only be a generational gap, or is there something larger at work? I’m sensing that the shift is one where the driving force behind American life had been in the exercise of economic liberties and that the movement of the civil liberties activities during the 60s now needs a full embrace. The people of that generation planted the seed, but their parents’ influence on what it meant to be an American was so ingrained that soon after the Civil Rights Bill was signed, the war had been won, and things normalized. Fifty years later, life is now too expensive to participate in for many young people who cannot afford health insurance, renting an apartment on their own, vacation, transportation, and even new clothes. Look at the generation on the street today; they often shop at Dollar Stores and the Salvation Army, use bicycles, go on staycations, and turn to alternative health, as traditional healthcare can only saddle them with more debt. So what does a disenfranchised American have to look forward to in this age they can’t afford to participate in? At a minimum, they need their civil liberties, and they need them now. The idea that there’s a price to pay if you are gay, trans, black, Hispanic, hipster, or counter-culturalist is a tragedy in a country that brags so loudly about being the melting pot when, for many, that’s a farce.

I posit that the powers-that-be are in some small way, or maybe they are fully aware of this cultural shift and recognize that by shutting down our economy, they nearly showed their empty hand that the economic game can be put on pause while the civil responsibility to one another was placed front and center. Were the 60 days of Pandora’s Box being open enough to wake the realization that money is simply something noted as a ledger entry and that during a global health crisis things could change in an instant?

The genie is being shoved back into its bottle, and it is only with the continued efforts of demonstrators that the much-needed social change can happen. Lucky for those of us desiring these changes that, the police are using more brutality to try to win the hearts and minds of constituents who want to see a return to their ideas of racist order. Lucky for us that, governors are opening their states to more death, sickness, and pain, as suffering is the harbinger of more change. Lucky us that the government, big media, and extremist pundits are still spewing disinformation as it will help evolve decentralized citizen-based initiatives that will either marginalize or totally disenfranchise the hate machine. Unlucky us that this will disrupt our comfort but that’s the price required to be paid when change couldn’t be embraced by a controlling culture lost in their own blind greed.

I expect that in another 30 days, I’ll be updating my blog with news about our self-isolation, but other than that, I have no idea what direction our rudderless country is currently going.