the meaning of life, and priorities
Dec. 28th, 2016 07:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chhotiiThe outcome of the election has had me thinking a lot about my priorities, at very deep level, starting from "what is the meaning of life?" first principles. Before I finished writing the thesis, there was not much not much such questioning. It was all "What am I doing with my life?-- Dunno! But whatever it is, is it probable that finishing the thesis would be helpful? Especially since I'm ALMOST DONE." (Many months of "almost done".) "OK, I'll just finish this up and then figure it out." Thus, for months, only things which passed these filters were on my to-do list: 1) Does doing X help me finish my thesis? 2) Will anything be stupidly on fire if I don't do X before I finish my thesis? 3) Will doing X help re-charge my mental batteries so I can write my thesis? I did make a small amount of time to volunteer for Clinton, because the outcome of the election was so much more important than my thesis; but only a small amount of time, because no matter how much I did, the outcome of the election was out of my hands, whereas it was totally in my hands to get my thesis done or not.
Once the shocking outcome of the election became apparent, it was hard to see the point of continuing... anything. What is the significance of the work I do, compared to the fact that we are destroying the planet we live on, and the world is run by big babies who take no responsibility for fixing things? You would hope that understanding the relationships between sleep, health, and cognition would inform policy, and how people live their lives. Otherwise... so what? What fucking difference does it make? But science has much more important, scarier, more urgent, and clearer things to say about carbon emission and what that's doing to our world, and that's being ignored. People are still insanely anti-science. What the hell have I been doing with my life? Beyond the basics of keeping myself and my family alive, I've spent a lot of my time, effort, and money trying to do something about the world's most pressing problem, the environment. I've done political activism on behalf of pro-environment candidates. I've donated sick amounts of money to pro-environment candidates. I paid for solar panels before the technology was mature enough to make it really worthwhile for my own bottom line. And so the fuck what? Trump is going to drive the world off a cliff, and all the pathetic and expensive effort I've put into being on the side of trying to turn the wheel over the years is all for naught.
The only shred of hope I have is that maybe the election of Trump will be an enormous electric jolt of a wake-up call to all reasonable people, and there will be a huge backlash. Before the election there was probably a lot of complacency. People didn't like Trump but they didn't bother coming out to vote against him, because they didn't imagine that he would actually win. The Democratic Party took a whole lot of people for granted. Nominating Hillary was the ultimate in not listening to people, and taking people for granted. Hopefully that will stop. People may have cared about issues but they weren't out there doing anything about them, not when they had any competing priorities like cleaning the kitchen floor and flossing the cat, because none of it seemed all that urgent and anyway policy-minded grown-ups like Hillary Clinton would be running the world, figuring it all out. Hopefully, perhaps, complacency has been replaced by a tsunami of outrage. I hope, I pray, that the outrage and the energy is now all on the side of the anti-Trump people, sufficient to overcome the biases such as gerrymandering and the disenfranchising of minority voters and the fake news and the general dorkiness of the Democratic party, and that in 2018 we will get a Congress that has the balls to impeach Trump and a candidate in 2020 who can beat Pense. If so, maybe there's hope that we can turn things around, maybe before driving the Earth's environment off the cliff.
For this to happen, there has to be a lot of activism and soon. So much protesting that the attention-deficit press has to notice, hey, displeasure with Trump is ongoing. So much protesting that our continuing to exist is not mistaken for acquiescence. People who did not vote for Hillary (and we do need the support and participation of people who did not vote for Hillary) will only think that there's something worth getting out and voting for if they see us stand up and say: This is not OK, this is not OK, this is still not OK. Plus, in addition to making a lot of noise, we need to be quietly working on things at the local level, rather than expecting that they will be improved top-down by the federal government. Quietly, under the radar, at the local level, there's so much we can do to protect the environment, build a carbon-free economy, and work on diversity, inclusion, education, etc., etc., etc.
Thus, activism is my #1 priority now. I've joined 350 Mass to work on climate/energy at the local level, and-- since they believe in synergy with other movements-- through them I hope to find out about many other ways to be involved.
So, activism is my #1 priority but can't take over my life completely because I have other responsibilities, i.e. Sophia. Sophia absolutely needs me, as long as she is legally a child. So as long as that is the case, Sophia is my #0 priority, my emergency-level priority. Corollary to that, let's say priority 0', is that if Sophia needs me, I have to do a certain amount of self-maintenance, and taking care of my affairs. Enough paying attention to my job to keep my employer pleased, and enough attention to the house that it doesn't turn into a money-pit. Paying the bills. Laundry, shopping, cooking, dishes, going to the dentist, and some exercise, so I don't fall apart. (I've been really bad about this last item lately.) Etc., etc., etc. (a whole lot of etc.)
I don't feel like I have time, energy, attention, or money for anything past priorities 0, 0', and 1.
I have a lot more to say about what follows from that; but, not now.
Once the shocking outcome of the election became apparent, it was hard to see the point of continuing... anything. What is the significance of the work I do, compared to the fact that we are destroying the planet we live on, and the world is run by big babies who take no responsibility for fixing things? You would hope that understanding the relationships between sleep, health, and cognition would inform policy, and how people live their lives. Otherwise... so what? What fucking difference does it make? But science has much more important, scarier, more urgent, and clearer things to say about carbon emission and what that's doing to our world, and that's being ignored. People are still insanely anti-science. What the hell have I been doing with my life? Beyond the basics of keeping myself and my family alive, I've spent a lot of my time, effort, and money trying to do something about the world's most pressing problem, the environment. I've done political activism on behalf of pro-environment candidates. I've donated sick amounts of money to pro-environment candidates. I paid for solar panels before the technology was mature enough to make it really worthwhile for my own bottom line. And so the fuck what? Trump is going to drive the world off a cliff, and all the pathetic and expensive effort I've put into being on the side of trying to turn the wheel over the years is all for naught.
The only shred of hope I have is that maybe the election of Trump will be an enormous electric jolt of a wake-up call to all reasonable people, and there will be a huge backlash. Before the election there was probably a lot of complacency. People didn't like Trump but they didn't bother coming out to vote against him, because they didn't imagine that he would actually win. The Democratic Party took a whole lot of people for granted. Nominating Hillary was the ultimate in not listening to people, and taking people for granted. Hopefully that will stop. People may have cared about issues but they weren't out there doing anything about them, not when they had any competing priorities like cleaning the kitchen floor and flossing the cat, because none of it seemed all that urgent and anyway policy-minded grown-ups like Hillary Clinton would be running the world, figuring it all out. Hopefully, perhaps, complacency has been replaced by a tsunami of outrage. I hope, I pray, that the outrage and the energy is now all on the side of the anti-Trump people, sufficient to overcome the biases such as gerrymandering and the disenfranchising of minority voters and the fake news and the general dorkiness of the Democratic party, and that in 2018 we will get a Congress that has the balls to impeach Trump and a candidate in 2020 who can beat Pense. If so, maybe there's hope that we can turn things around, maybe before driving the Earth's environment off the cliff.
For this to happen, there has to be a lot of activism and soon. So much protesting that the attention-deficit press has to notice, hey, displeasure with Trump is ongoing. So much protesting that our continuing to exist is not mistaken for acquiescence. People who did not vote for Hillary (and we do need the support and participation of people who did not vote for Hillary) will only think that there's something worth getting out and voting for if they see us stand up and say: This is not OK, this is not OK, this is still not OK. Plus, in addition to making a lot of noise, we need to be quietly working on things at the local level, rather than expecting that they will be improved top-down by the federal government. Quietly, under the radar, at the local level, there's so much we can do to protect the environment, build a carbon-free economy, and work on diversity, inclusion, education, etc., etc., etc.
Thus, activism is my #1 priority now. I've joined 350 Mass to work on climate/energy at the local level, and-- since they believe in synergy with other movements-- through them I hope to find out about many other ways to be involved.
So, activism is my #1 priority but can't take over my life completely because I have other responsibilities, i.e. Sophia. Sophia absolutely needs me, as long as she is legally a child. So as long as that is the case, Sophia is my #0 priority, my emergency-level priority. Corollary to that, let's say priority 0', is that if Sophia needs me, I have to do a certain amount of self-maintenance, and taking care of my affairs. Enough paying attention to my job to keep my employer pleased, and enough attention to the house that it doesn't turn into a money-pit. Paying the bills. Laundry, shopping, cooking, dishes, going to the dentist, and some exercise, so I don't fall apart. (I've been really bad about this last item lately.) Etc., etc., etc. (a whole lot of etc.)
I don't feel like I have time, energy, attention, or money for anything past priorities 0, 0', and 1.
I have a lot more to say about what follows from that; but, not now.
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no subject
Date: 2016-12-29 04:39 pm (UTC)Yep. This, entirely.
no subject
Date: 2017-01-11 04:01 am (UTC)As always, the number one priority is passing the genes along.
But as for activism, a form that would be particularly useful right now is for the Democrats to start paying a lot more attention to the states that are not "deep blue". As the chair of the Missouri Democratic party noted, there were plenty of working-class whites in the Obama coalition -- where did they go in 2016? If the Democrats start listening to the battle ground voters, they'll be able to recapture power and do a lot of good.