Philosophy...

Reading just gets you in trouble. No wonder everyone wants books banned. You read them and then get new ideas and try and be better and then someone calls you dumb, or at least you think that's what they are doing but since they are only speaking in meme you aren't exactly sure what their point is, and someone else starts in on psy-ops and how we're all sheep and you're like...okay, fine, whatever, I'm burning that book. You win. 

So let me back up...

Just finished How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question by Michael Schur. He's the guy who created The Good Place television show. And basically this is sort of that in book form. In that it's like the sampler platter of moral philosophers and their movements. I've read a few on my own and read other people explaining them as well. The whole understand this and you will know how to live feeling. 

Of course the problem is that they all disagree with each other so you end up just kind of spinning your wheels. (Chidi on The Good Place) And the other problem is that sometimes there really aren't good answers no matter what path you try and follow (the whole theme of The Good Place) So what do you do?

It was a good book. Interesting overview of a lot of different schools of thought. Very funny and a good thought provoker. It also led me to renewing my commitment to trying to mellow the fuck out. 

I realized that I probably needed to renew that commitment when I watched the State of the Union address and President Biden gave his four things we can all agree on ending. I think it was four? Anyway, his SURELY these are bipartisan things and we can all agree portion. And I thought, well, dude, you've now made them things we cannot agree on because you said them. Rain is wet is not something we can all agree on if you say it. Tucker Carlson will have a whole "Is rain actually wet, I'm just asking a question." segment ready to go and we will all be arguing...IT'S WET! JUST TOUCH IT! to I've been to the OCEAN, that's WET. This isn't even CLOSE to wet. 

I rolled my eyes and gave a tsch to the President of the United States of America for daring to insinuate that we could possibly be a United States of America over ANYTHING.

So...that makes me part of the problem doesn't it? 

I hate being part of the problem.

But then it gets complicated because there are real, actual, differences between sides of the aisle right now that I am NEVER going to find common ground over. So what should I do?

Which brings us to one of my guiding principles, do the best you can with what you have. 

I mean, it's that simple. We can only do the best we can, do the most good possible, with what we have.

For me that means doing what we do with charitable giving (technically that's doing good with what Brent has but it counts!), and also that means that if I know something that I think is important to share I need to make sure I share it. If I think I can do good by opening my mouth then keeping my mouth closed shouldn't be my choice. 

You all know I go back and forth with this all the time. The benefit:pain ratio. And what I tend to come to is the realization that I need to do what feels right to me and if it does good then great, if it doesn't then at least I know I tried and hopefully I didn't cause harm. 

Which leads us back up to that opening paragraph and burning the damn book. 

One of my conservative friends posted a mini screed against masking this morning. Basically that he saw someone out walking by themselves wearing a mask. There was a whole other chunk in there about fear and mandates and won't someone think of the children but I thought, You know what? I can address this part about the guy out by himself. I've talked about this before. To this friend and a few other friends who posted about people in cars by themselves wearing their masks and why would they do that?

BUT...I know what happens when I post on this person's page. I might be one of 4 liberal friends he has and I'm pretty sure he's got over a thousand Facebook friends. Anytime I've posted something that disagreed with him I've been savaged by his friends. Or at least they've tried, bless their hearts. And to be perfectly fair it happens to him on my page where he is one of probably 30 (I grew up religious and my family still is) conservatives amongst my few hundred friends. So generally when he posts something I just read it and walk away. The benefit does not outweigh the pain. 

If we were talking one on one we might reach some sort of understanding or at least a stopping point but when other people come in and start to add their two cents it's too much. And they always come. I envision a large group of his friends like the cartoon with the bulldog walking and the little dog jumping all around him, "Want to chase some cars, Spike?" just trying really hard to impress him and let him know they think he's the greatest. (Again, to be fair, he feels the same about my friends, he has told me he thinks they just agree with me on my page to be nice, umm...no they agree with me because they are all EXTRAORDINARILY brilliant.)

BUT...I had just finished that book. And one of my workouts today was preparation for a cleansing ceremony in the Mayan tradition and I'm supposed to think about things I want to change and improve on before the next workout and the actual ceremony (super interesting, sounds weird writing about it, but it's super interesting). So I've got my, hey, you, do the most good you can with what you have and right now the most good you can do is explain that there is nothing wrong or even all that weird about that guy. Even if you get push back, it's okay. You might not. You might actually make someone think, you know what? You're right. I don't know and it's not hurting me at all so why do I even care? And why have I made this whole thing about political lines and divisions anyway? Maybe it's time to see it for what it was, and start to move past! And then there would be a The More You Know shooting star rainbow and the world would...

Not work that way. The discussion between us was not super productive, a little bit of goal post moving and whataboutism. But I'm still thinking, do the best you can with what you have, remind him that for some of us this whole it's not a big deal attitude is actually really hurtful. And then the friends show up...and like I said, one called me stupid (I think, again meme that was one of those that is supposed to make you think it's deep and profound but actually means something ENTIRELY different if you know anything about well anything) and another who let me know the whole Covid thing has been a psy-ops creation for control and IT WORKED.

I sent him a private message saying I'm out. And that was that. 

So did I do any good? Who knows. One of the times I braved the space that is his page I ended up with a friend request from one of his few liberal friends who is just lovely and I'm glad to have her in my digital life and so I'm grateful for that. Maybe one of the three others saw my post and thought, well, at least I'm not the only one to think that. And maybe one of his conservative friends might read it and think, Hey, maybe I'm a little quick to judge someone in a mask just like some people in masks have been a little quick to judge me.

Maybe. 

Or maybe I need to figure out how to burn a digital book.