Thank you for this piece. "Looking back on those years ... it feels like a totally different life to me. How could I have ever lived that way? How could the world have ever felt like that?" Probably nothing you've written has resonated with me as much as this. In my experience, surrounding oneself with passionate, caring people who give a damn is the best antidote to surrender; it re-calibrates one's perspective and makes the old horrors seem more awful in retrospect, which is a kind of trauma in itself. When you re-interpret your personal past, you think, how did I ever allow this to go on? That personal truth-telling process is a microcosm of what you're experiencing as you read our collective history. It's scary how easily we can adapt and get used to being surrounded by abuse.
I am with you -- many people are. I wrote a long essay about the role or riots in the history of democracy last year (https://aeon.co/essays/the-history-of-riot-shows-the-importance-of-democratic-tumult), and one of the things that stuck with me from the research are the years of riots and unrest in early-1800s England in the effort to increase access to the vote, which at the time was given to at most 2% of the population (wealthy landed classes). It took decades and it took fight, but they eventually succeeded.
What gives me pause is looking at all that deep history and thinking about how the root of these problems has never died back enough to foster true thriving, but maybe we're only just starting to see the fuller picture, and have the tools to share it with one another.
Thank you for sharing some of your past with us. Too many of us have experienced abuse; it shouldn’t be that way.
I appreciate your message of hope. The reality, though, that many many thousands of people will die shitty deaths after leading shitty lives makes the victories still seem like losses. Many of us will be among those who do not make it. As insignificant as any one of us is in the grand scheme of the universe, it still pains us — at least definitely me — to be an anonymous casualty.
Jared, you are one eloquent and concisely descriptive writer! Wow. I love reading your work because you neither mince words nor do you add words unnecessarily. The end result is sublime reading that is to the point. At least to the degree that I can let go of my own trauma - however temporary. One good thing to come out of these trying times of fascism in all it's ugliness is I am very, very grateful for the kind understanding people I do come across. Too stumble upon kind and understanding folks is so crucial for my mental well-being. It seems to enlarge my world and all the possibilities, thereby creating some distance from my traumas.
More and more, I realize that the last four years, in particular, but probably back to 2001, has been traumatic for America. Among those traumas is the strain of cognitive dissonance as we've tried to square the circle of the American myths with the breakdown of power. What you write about the nigh-insurmountable effort to change things is a gravity-well of nihilism I'm having a hard time escaping.
OMG i so badly needed this today. Thank you Jared. Hang in.
Thank you for this piece. "Looking back on those years ... it feels like a totally different life to me. How could I have ever lived that way? How could the world have ever felt like that?" Probably nothing you've written has resonated with me as much as this. In my experience, surrounding oneself with passionate, caring people who give a damn is the best antidote to surrender; it re-calibrates one's perspective and makes the old horrors seem more awful in retrospect, which is a kind of trauma in itself. When you re-interpret your personal past, you think, how did I ever allow this to go on? That personal truth-telling process is a microcosm of what you're experiencing as you read our collective history. It's scary how easily we can adapt and get used to being surrounded by abuse.
I am grateful for the deep intellectual and emotional work that you are doing. I have so much to learn. Thank you for taking the laboring oar.
I am with you -- many people are. I wrote a long essay about the role or riots in the history of democracy last year (https://aeon.co/essays/the-history-of-riot-shows-the-importance-of-democratic-tumult), and one of the things that stuck with me from the research are the years of riots and unrest in early-1800s England in the effort to increase access to the vote, which at the time was given to at most 2% of the population (wealthy landed classes). It took decades and it took fight, but they eventually succeeded.
What gives me pause is looking at all that deep history and thinking about how the root of these problems has never died back enough to foster true thriving, but maybe we're only just starting to see the fuller picture, and have the tools to share it with one another.
Thank you for sharing some of your past with us. Too many of us have experienced abuse; it shouldn’t be that way.
I appreciate your message of hope. The reality, though, that many many thousands of people will die shitty deaths after leading shitty lives makes the victories still seem like losses. Many of us will be among those who do not make it. As insignificant as any one of us is in the grand scheme of the universe, it still pains us — at least definitely me — to be an anonymous casualty.
Jared, you are one eloquent and concisely descriptive writer! Wow. I love reading your work because you neither mince words nor do you add words unnecessarily. The end result is sublime reading that is to the point. At least to the degree that I can let go of my own trauma - however temporary. One good thing to come out of these trying times of fascism in all it's ugliness is I am very, very grateful for the kind understanding people I do come across. Too stumble upon kind and understanding folks is so crucial for my mental well-being. It seems to enlarge my world and all the possibilities, thereby creating some distance from my traumas.
More and more, I realize that the last four years, in particular, but probably back to 2001, has been traumatic for America. Among those traumas is the strain of cognitive dissonance as we've tried to square the circle of the American myths with the breakdown of power. What you write about the nigh-insurmountable effort to change things is a gravity-well of nihilism I'm having a hard time escaping.
You're a wonder and I'm so thankful for you. Mining the depths looking for gold with you...