Before I close my eyes I fantasize I'm living well then I wake and realize I'm just a prisoner in hell.
Well, it's been a year since I began writing on this website. The most fitting thing to write would be a self-critical summation of my own progress and an interrogation of my worries. It's an unfortunate fact that humans have an infinite capacity for drawing up infinite plans and only a finite timespan to accomplish a fraction of them, if any.
I don't recall when I began my reading list but I can safely safe that I've done very little this year to chip away at it, although at least a couple items have been removed. Unfortunately, I've written very little prose this year, most of my attempts relegated to a passionate few days with my typewriter that I was never able to replicate; from embarassment of my output, and a personal weakness in continuing despite it. Further, I've effectively given up on my attempt to study for my CCNA and I worry it'll strain my relationship with a good friend. As far as programming, I've yet to pick up that book on Ruby in earnest. My sophomoric experimation with philosophy has produced little more than a fraction of fragments weaved between the sporadic attentions of my diary. Even my engagement with Marxism has slowed to little more than a crawl. I'm politically capable of little more than barroom talk, of explanations for how we've been walked into this mess by ruling classes, but with no way out of that demon's jaws.
This month I've been rather mobile, there's a local game store that I've been attending every week for board games. I've been slowly running out of savings so I haven't been going to the bar or drinking as much, with the exception of my most recent Miller High Life bender that left me with a 2 day hangover. Thankfully I've made a few friends in this new town so despite battling with my insecurities I wouldn't say this month has been totally unproductive. Sadly, a friend that I made is moving for a couple months for work so when I went to play board games this last week I had to improvise and force myself to make new friends. It worked out. Other than that, I've been playing a lot of Harvest Moon on Snes9x, the emulator I've used since I was a kid. I married Maria, she won my heart with the church organ.
I finished watching Berserk at the recommendation of a friend, it was that friend who gave me the impetus to join a dating app again in an attempt to make myself less lonely, which I think only calcified my suspicion that the profit motive is culpable in poisoning romantic pursuit. I developed a particular fondness for Griffith, likely to the disappointment of anyone familiar with the series. Intelligent, attractive, exceedingly ambitious with a charisma capable of keeping up with it, he's everything I wish I could make myself. He also represents my own fears, that the cost of political ambition for those of common stock is dungeoning yourself to torture and psychological ruin once a sufficiently disastrous mistake has been made.
Like everyone else I struggle with the difficulties of figuring where to place your priorities in life and why. As I watch our president play a game of chicken with the global economy with Republicans, as well as the torrential downpour of anti-LGBT laws in many states, not to mention our climate currently suspended in the air with a net made of dental floss, I'm cognizant of the fact that politically and socially we're barreling headfirst into complete collapse and that the question on most minds is simply, when?
I must admit of a certain apocalyptic bent in my own thinking, I myself have dreamt up visions of an endless dark age or perhaps a return to the middle ages, which I sometimes see as far more likey than crucial changes in how we organize production. Yet, I find it difficult to drum up the strength to continue my studies in Marxism over anything else that can occupy my time, which I find strange, because the thing I fear most about economic collapse is a Left unprepared to make good use of those political openings, since the consequence would likely be more and more people pushed towards support for an open, unmasked fascism, the consequences of which would be unquantifiable traumatic experiences that would linger as haunting ghosts in blood and dirt.
As for my motivations in wanting to study Marxism, that's something I've been thinking about more and more as I've been driven further away from it. The largest I think would be the fear of Death, the Absolute Lord, which would be brought to me by my political enemies. That might seem a strange motivation, but truly the fear of death is the beginning of wisdom, if one chooses not to fear God. The second I can think of is rather strange, but it relates to what Hegel calls the unity of being-for-itself and being-for-another, which, when analyzed by phenomenological observation, prove to be the same thing. It's easy to think that becoming a Marxist is simply an exercise in being-for-itself, a concern for my own personal safety and a desire to find a way out of the nightmare of the 21st century, but that broad of a stroke would wave off my capacity for being-for-another, where I find myself concerned with not only my family, but everyone who's brutalized by the society we live in, in their own multifaceted ways. From the trans woman who has to endure outright dehumanization, to retail workers forced to endure bitter humiliation, to everyone struggling with our fucked up medical system, left impotent and frustrated by the sheer cost. I'm not so naive to think that life is ever truly easy, or that communism is some kind of return to paradise, but I do think that a future devoid of dramatic political and economic shifts towards socialism is a future worse for our species as a whole, as well as every other species we happen to share the planet with, and I don't think that's a selfish concern for anyone to hold.
I try to have a healthy blend of optimism and pessimism, the pessimist in me lives every day knowing that as a historically transient being I'm lined up for traumatic events that I don't even know about yet, and the optimist in me at least dreams of a better world where the crisis of the 21st century becomes as much of a distant memory as any other century in history. One little thing that I'd like to mention regarding my interest in Marxism, is that although I still maintain a predominant interest in Maoism, I've lost my fidelty to the Gonzaloist interpretation of that theoretical development. We're going through a lot right now, but if you've bothered to read this then I thank you kindly for your patience and gentle ear.