John Wise

Negativland asked us back in 1987: “Is there any escape from noise?” Today, I’m rephrasing that with the question: “Is there any escape from gaslighting?” There’s an escalating cacophony heading to an unknown crescendo as the wobbling wheels of America’s sanity are being ground away. In a country no longer unified by any kind of idealism, we are polarized into corners of seething hatred where Americans resent one another. The media machine on both sides feeds the trough of extremism, and where they fail to fill it to the brim, social media is there to add the missing nutrients of intolerance so we may gorge on the gruel of disdain.

There will be no protest songs that bring us together, no angry, disaffected youth movements that will stir the cultural sense of compromise, and no fiery political charge that will unite the sides. This moment in American history appears to be heading to the proverbial 8th-grade playground where two boys are going to have to face off until both sides have hurt one another adequately or the other is beaten down. I only come to this conclusion as I can find nothing to suggest the two sides can find a compromise or that an inflection point is near at hand that would ratchet down our hate-laden rhetoric.

Regarding the sides of this standoff, one is afraid of creeping cultural diversity, of their access to weapons being controlled, and of taxes being expropriated to support ideas, gender identities, immigrants, and races they do not find worthy. The other side is afraid of the people seemingly desiring a move back into the cave that I just described. Of course, I don’t mean literally that they want to move us back to the cave, but there is no going back to the idealized mythological time they have in their minds where manufacturing jobs were plentiful and well paid, neighborhoods were white, and school shootings were never a thing. After years of being promised that they could have just that, they still hold on to a fragment of hope that it is possible, not realizing that the country they live in has moved on.

With the pandemic raging, people working from home, learning to cook, and fear of some nebulous mob, there are those who are joining the idea that maybe life outside the metropolitan island of conformity could offer refuge from what ails society. The thought that one could escape to some idyllic farm environment found in Montana is a folly that promises to destroy what the people who already live there love about it. Population growth arrives with services and infrastructure that accompany the new arrivals as capitalism moves in to take advantage of the needs of people so they may part with their dollars in order for our form of economy to function.

Joseph Heller might have bellowed that we are living in a Catch-22, while August Strindberg could have recognized the madness as part of the inferno meant to subjugate us in our own personal hell.  Finding a representation of normal is a peculiar hunt relying on our egos floundering in the delusion that they might wrest control out of the chaos of nature. I am likely disillusioned by my own perception of events, believing I have the insight into some unfolding catastrophe that is nothing more than my very own madness stuck between the rock and a hard place of being me. Maybe everyone else is quite normal, but my view was long ago biased by the truth I believe I can see through my filter of disorder.

When reason vacates its chair and the void is filled with the voices of anguish and uncertainty, society heads for the exit, and culture collapses. We fail to thrive where fear about the future compels us to act in our own best interest instead of the collective. The old saying, “You reap what you sow,” is never more true than when confronted with the imminent demise of civility and you begin wishing that society had been unified in an effort greater than the individual’s own well-being. Greed due to excess foments insanity, where without real purpose, aside from the selfish, the instinct of the lemming to hurl one’s self from the cliff becomes a collective calling. The antidote people must look for is to find greater meaning in life. Sadly, this has often meant that we must descend into war so we are confronted with the worst imaginable reality that makes us appreciate what we let slip away.

This brings us full circle to my title, Gaslighting, as it’s this slipping away of sanity that the incessant aggravated hostility of our media and wealth culture has been delivering. Enchanted by dystopian dreams that empower base instincts, we come to believe that the elixir to cleanse the soul will be found in fire. But it is only the fire of the mind that fuels our success and builds futures where life is improving. Progress is no longer of interest to a large segment of the American people who are now trapped in their own ruin due to the lunacy that is largely invisible to dulled minds.

Thirty-five days that’s how long I lasted in the outside world during the ongoing pandemic known euphemistically as 2020, otherwise referred to as COVID-19. September 24th was the day I began trying to explore an old routine, but I’m not proving very receptive to the half-measures I’m forced to witness, so I’m pulling the plug. From my limited purview, it appears that we are willingly running into behaviors that are counterintuitive to the fact that the virus that shut down the global economy is surging. Wear masks? Only when it’s convenient. Social distance? Whatever, let me crowd your space. Ventilate the space? But it’s cold outside. Hospitals are filling up! Fake news.

It’s been 229 days or seven months, two weeks, and one day since Caroline and I first entered our own self-imposed isolation. Caroline started going back to the office a couple of days a week on the same day I put myself into the coffee shop, where I’d often write early in the day. Fortunately, the days have turned cooler, and I can return to the table on my balcony where masks, ventilation, and distancing are not of any concern. As we enter these chillier, shorter days leading us to a new year, I can’t help but think of Steinbeck’s “The Winter of Our Discontent” and how our own intellectual corruption will make for a bleak landscape ahead. Sadly, we have no unifying voice of reason in a world where reason has been eschewed for feelings and intuitions delivered by charlatans capitalizing on being influencers with the hope of striking Adsense dollars. And so, modified self-isolation will drag on.

We’ll still head out for vacation as long as the country doesn’t shut down, but our version of taking a holiday is to do so on a cold, wet coast in lodging removed from mass gatherings while avoiding restaurants. We hope to remain safe and maybe even more isolated than we find ourselves at home. One of the goals while out and about is to stroll no less than 110 miles along the Oregon coast by foot, weather permitting. I have a good idea that we’ll encounter a good amount of defiant belligerence as many on the rural coast of Oregon are not only conservative but resentful of those they think are trying to influence them with their liberal thinking. That should be kept to a minimum as it’s our intention to visit the quietest beaches and trails in a landscape that we feel good about not wearing masks in, hence our minimizing shopping and shunning restaurants. There is one caveat I can’t help but mention: We are painfully aware that this will limit our financial contribution to a region hit hard without the tourism that helps it survive, but I’m not willing to subject Caroline nor I to situations where my anger might boil over at those with something to prove about their own will to stupidity.

And so it is in the city where I live; the risk of angering potential customers while also trying to integrate the suggested rules for operating safely is balanced by the need for money, but not mine. Rather than have one more source of frustration, I pull back and withdraw. My only sense of defeat arrives with the incredulity of witnessing this will to stupidity. Schopenhauer would certainly find disappointment that 200 years after writing “The World as Will and Representation,” humanity still hadn’t learned to appreciate the opportunity to find themselves, but instead, we’re too busy defining a caricature using tropes, artifacts, and jingoistic posturing.

There is music in my life, but it plays less and less of a role as I easily tire of what I’ve listened to before. From what I’ve heard from the streaming services, they serve a demographic and not cultural curiosity. On occasion, I find something that resonates with me, but liking it on YouTube or buying it on iTunes doesn’t lead me into corners that would deliver serendipitous feel-good sounds of a surprising nature. Take Luna from Ukraine and her song “Lilac Paradise,” which you can find by searching for Луна – Сиреневый Рай on YouTube, but how am I living in Arizona supposed to know that? Another Ukrainian artist to look for is Avoure – click here to listen to Aura.

There are an estimated 100 million songs that are floating around our earth, and the algorithms want to feed me Ariana Grande and Bruce Springsteen while I come across Polnalubvi singing about comets in her song “Кометы.” Where does one search for “songs like this” on the internet? Why isn’t this Russian treasure in heavy rotation on American airwaves? What about some other Russian music, such as Rasster and their catchy track “Sad.” Click here to listen to that track.

New to me this year was The Blaze, hailing from France. What a beautiful song about love.

Adi Lukovac died back in 2006, only 36 years old, due to a fatal car accident, but to many Bosniaks, the man is a hero who lives on in his music. I learned of Adi during a conversation on Colin Benders’ Discord channel, where I ran into a guy from Bosnia who I started talking to about our encounter with the music of Haris Džinović and specifically a song that had become an earworm titled, “Muštuluk” and Nera Stipičević and her song “Centar Svita,” both linked below. I was asked if I’d heard of Adi, which I hadn’t, but now I own the album titled Remake, which is a part of my listening repertoire.

Okay, so this wasn’t from this year; it’s from the months after we returned from Europe, and in cruising through some random videos, I came across Kollective Turmstrasse and their song, “Sorry I Am Late.” I recognized the filming location as the spot near Kotbusser Tor in Berlin, where I was shopping at Schneidersladen Eurorack synth shop. The song is a jam and on my rotation list. While not new, it’s likely new to you, and the video has a great John Water’s vibe regarding the characters.

Then there’s Sevdaliza who is a Dutch/ Iranian artist who just came to my attention thanks to a friend who’s been listening to her also. There’s a new track out called “Rhode,” but I’ll stick with the above link.

This is the Haris Džinović song I mentioned above.

And this is a seriously poor copy of Nera’s “Centar Svita” which I’d like to point out we first heard at a streetside basketball game in Split, Croatia. This is now our Croatian summer ice cream song 🙂

This is the top side of a 1st generation Microsoft Surface Book before I removed all the stickers. Shortly after taking delivery of this computer that started going everywhere, I went, Caroline nicknamed it Marlene after Marlene Dietrich because she said I was treating it like it was some precious diva that was more important to me than her. Of course, she was pulling my leg, but the name stuck. Today, I had to say goodbye to Marlene.

In getting ready to write this homage to the greatest portable computing device I’ve ever owned. I was wondering how long I had been carrying it around and was surprised to find that it was delivered back on October 28th, 2015, and now here I am, exactly five years later to the day, and I boxed it up and shipped it off, never to see it again. You see, the battery in the top half started expanding and distorting the screen. After contacting Microsoft about my options (if I had any), I was informed that, while Marlene is way out of warranty and that there is no repairing it, I can exchange it for a relatively small charge for a refurbished replacement unit. Score.

I suppose a valid question would be, “Why not upgrade to the Surface Book 3?” The answer would be that, like the one above that cost me $2,900 5 years ago, the newest model would cost about the same. The way I see it is that over the previous 1,827 days I’ve owned this computer it turns out that I was spending $1.59 a day for the use of it, not bad at all. But I wanted this computer to last forever, and in “dog years,” it did live a very long life. This particular model was still satisfying all of my mobile needs which are primarily photographic and writing. The replacement Surface Book is only costing me $599 and I have the hope that it will give me a couple more years of use before the specifications start to feel aged. By then, the Surface Book 4 should be out, and with any luck, we’ll see a significantly faster CPU, even better battery life, maybe a bump in resolution, and lower latency with the pen device.

My attachment to this computer is peculiar, with a nostalgia I’m almost uncomfortable with, as I’ve never missed a computer in my life. Maybe it has to do with how much intimacy I’ve dumped into this one, with tens of thousands of photos and countless memories assembled into hundreds of blog entries. But other computers have processed and been responsible for lending experiences to memories, too. On the other hand, the replacements always represented advancements that were going to allow me to extend what I wanted to accomplish as where Marlene was still a perfect companion. In any case, it has been boxed up with a special lithium battery safe package Microsoft sent to me, and it’s on its way to El Paso, Texas. Now I have to await notice they’ve received it and the last approval before the replacement Surface Book is shipped to me. Tragically, I honestly feel a bit crippled being without it tonight. While I have an old Samsung notebook we bought a year or two before the Surface Book, which I was recently able to update to Windows 10, it has a spinning hard drive and a 1920×1080 resolution screen that has the whole thing feeling like it’s out of the stone age.

So, we’re out before the break of dawn, and Caroline is talking about a story she was reading regarding the placebo effect. In particular, she referenced how in a study about the efficacy of the antidepressant Paxil, the placebo was more successful. This leads us to talk about some of the people we know who suffer from depression, and that triggered memories of an article I read the evening before regarding Hannah Arendt and her writings about loneliness being a catalyst for accepting totalitarianism. Then, after making the leap from the placebo effect to totalitarianism, where do you go? To consumerism and choice, obviously.

The idea that loneliness has a connection to fascism was novel to me, but looking at our current political and social situation, it makes perfect sense. Who are the most dissatisfied among our population? The disenfranchised have not found economic relevance in an environment that rewards intellect more than brawn and manual labor. That situation often limits the scope of social contacts and potential partners extending a malaise deeply into our private lives, denying us rewarding, close relationships, and consequently delivering loneliness. What I’m implying is that after buying the big truck, fast car, or pricey motorcycle, the attention the person was looking for doesn’t arrive in a meaningful way. The grandiose television, amazing gaming console, pool, jacuzzi, or other accouterments fail to bring in those who might share in the investment of luxury. Maybe tattoos, piercings, particular clothing, or hairstyles will lure others who care about these attributes and bring sympathetic people into our orbit. Probably not. This person is developing external attributes and superficial, often antiquated traits from a different age.

When none of our consumption works to alleviate the pain of being so different than others, we fall deeper into feeling we are alone. We start to question our own value and begin the descent into crushing loneliness. Over time, we grow increasingly afraid of others and the potential for rejection. This then got me thinking about how we accumulate all this stuff and are still unhappy. Worse, though, is when we enter into a relationship and still find we are dissatisfied or lonely, though now we attribute it to depression and that with some medications, we’ll be just fine. We do not identify the underlying cause of our mental illness and instead sink further into fear and isolation.

By this time, we are well conditioned to believe that part of the malaise is related to not having exactly the car we want, maybe the television isn’t big enough, we aren’t married to the most beautiful, sexy, or strong enough person. So we go shopping as if it’s the elixir that will soothe our wounds and fix our problems. If my truck was higher, the motorcycle louder, the caliber of the gun larger, or maybe a 15″ subwoofer would make the TV give me the experience I need to find happiness. None of this can work because, at the core, we are lonely.

My belief is that we are lacking intimacy. Not the kind of intimacy found when nestled in the embrace of sex but the intimacy known to those who have come to a greater understanding of others, their spouse, and themselves. In this regard, sex is irrelevant. Good sex is like good food; tomorrow, you’ll need more, but that hamburger is never going to offer you a satisfying life, nor will sex. Intimacy is the primary path to living a good life, and again, I don’t mean sexual intimacy.

I’ve been trying to understand myself for more than 40 years now. I’m curious about the path my wife is on and how we figuratively and literally travel through life together, trying to discover the things we share experientially. Along the way, we’ve had numerous people compliment us on what a cute couple we are, but what are they really acknowledging? They are witnessing our intimacy as we appear to them as a symbiotic couple. How is it that they can pick up on our comfort with each other? I’m certain that, like us recognizing people who are together but not really together, as in they are obviously a couple but not in an intellectually intimate way, they are seeing something in how we relate and smile at one another that speaks volumes about our nature. That nature only slowly came to us the further we have gone trying to know ourselves and each other, and that has only happened due to our deep-rooted curiosity to continuously seek knowledge.

Learning really difficult stuff, be it emotional or educational, followed by introspective thinking about how you encountered it, will have you questioning what your blocks are and why you might feel you are stumbling. If you are looking primarily for sex in a relationship, you might easily find that, but unless you are exploring and learning together, real intimacy will not be built. When trying to understand and relate to others, we encounter introspective thinking, questioning how and why we feel or respond to each other in the way we do. At the point we engage with this inner dialog, we can choose to see progress in getting to know ourselves better, or we can externalize our failures of relating to someone or something by blaming others. It is not that the author of a philosophical book is difficult to understand it is that we do not have the tools honed for comprehending the writing. Learning to play an instrument is hard for everyone, and progress is often slow, but confronting your own weakness can lead to greater mastery over time; why should your personal relationships with others or yourself be different?

Then there’s the conflict with too much choice. As a society, we feed the neurosis that something better is just around the corner. With a marketplace mentality, if a husband or wife isn’t satisfying our deeper needs, it must be because we didn’t find the right one, or maybe we are driving the wrong car or living in too small a home in the wrong neighborhood. So we go shopping for something or someone new to fill the void of what is ultimately loneliness. Never do the advertisements tell the viewer to invest in themselves by reading a book or spend some time alone in nature questioning why they believe what they think they believe. Your happiness is not a six-pack of beer with your buddies while watching others participate in life; not to imply that for the well-adjusted, this wouldn’t contribute to their happiness, but in many situations, I’d say that is only one small part of a well-balanced life that is exploring intimacy.

When presented with limited choices, we must choose and often accept that we cannot keep sampling an infinite supply of possibilities. If we are cognizant of this equation, we can recognize that we must find compromise with those around us instead of just moving on with the idea that someone new will fill our emptiness. As a poor example, when we stay at a hotel and open the soap and shampoo that have been left for us, we typically don’t question it and instead just use it. Compare this to when we are at the store and need to choose between 100 different brands and types of shampoo.

As children, before our egos kicked in, we tried using language to the best of our limited ability while others were nudging us to make ourselves better understood. We worked hard to master the inner and outer dialog of communication so we could fit in with our friends and family. We thrived in that community with affirmation that we were relating to and honoring them. And then something happened. We change and are afraid that our inner turmoil is unique to ourselves and embarrassing should anyone else know our uncertainty. Instead of talking and sharing with others, we internalize the struggle and start making consumption bargains with ourselves this or that will bring us back into balance, but that doesn’t ultimately work. It is at this point, that we should be brought into deeper, more contemplative thinking, study, and conversation. The inability to alleviate the awkwardness and guilt of becoming a human in discovery is a crime against humanity and sets a potentially life-long path into ruination and self-abuse. Not having the vehicle of sharing and finding intimacy leads us down the most unhealthy of paths. This is where loneliness really starts to thrive.

While not one for casual bragging about making discoveries or stating predictions, I’m about to go out on a limb with a radical theory of what is afflicting the American character at this time and what we’ll do to fix our situation. First, we are seeing the effect of nearly 70 years of a malignant disease that has been metastasizing right in front of our faces. I’m calling it Television Effectuated Retrograde Dementia Syndrome or TERDS. Second, the television as we’ve known it is going away.

This box of banality must go away; the big question, though, is when? Somewhere in the future, people will look back at the primitivism of those who voluntarily watched decades of the rubbish broadcast to the masses. They will ask, “How and why did you waste so much of your precious mind only to suffer from TERDS?”

Just as we recognize the great harm from smoking, lead in everyday products, asbestos in building supplies, and toxic pesticides in the food chain, society will recognize the profoundly damaging effect that television is having on culture, education, and social cohesion. A large part of this awareness will arise as others discover what I’m putting forth today: society is seeing the effect of what, at its scientific base, is best described as Type 4 Diabetes. We learned that a poor diet and steady consumption of nutritionally compromised fast food mixed with a sedentary lifestyle leads to metabolic syndrome, which is the precursor to Type 2 Diabetes. Just as detrimental, the constant feeding on broadcast television creates its own intellectual metabolic syndrome, a.k.a. Type 4 Diabetes, which will lead people to TERDS.

In the mid-1980s, Joshua Meyrowitz, author of “No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior,” posed the question of why we are allowing the uncontrolled experiment of electronic media to destroy our sense of place. Then, by the second decade of the 21st century, the entire globe began witnessing what a diet of television had created. Denial of our reality had pundits blaming our malaise on social media and upon the shoulders of a younger generation. The truth is that the ills afflicting the diseased American populace are a psychic catastrophe unfolding with potentially horrible consequences. The long tail of Baby Boomers’ excess consumption of junk food TV is now lashing the sensibility of everyone it ensnares. It is time to put the beast to sleep; it is time to shut down this medium, which is nothing more than a moroseness drug trade bent on making a profit at any cost.

Reading, conversation, storytelling, exercise, exploration, discovery, and a broad diversity of sensorial inputs are necessary for good mental hygiene. Repetitive use of low-grade mental trash inhibits curiosity and the desire for broad-spectrum stimulation.

Like cigarettes, where smoking a couple a week might only have negligible damaging effects, occasional television watching could be similar. The problem here is that, like cigarettes where the consumer is quickly smoking a pack a day, the TV viewer ends up watching hours per day. This acts as a strangulation device, cutting off the user’s ability to comprehend different points of view outside of the spectrum of their conditioning. Hence, their loyalty to brands, celebrities, teams, programs, and products to the exclusion of new stimuli.

Oxygen-rich verbal exchange with others, even when it occurs through media such as books, art, and music that requires attentive listening or wandering in nature, is an elixir that lubricates the senses to bloom and facilitates the pollination of the mind. For stronger, healthier minds and ridding society of TERDS, it is time to kill your TV.