The on the ground realism and emotional valence of this piece of writing got to me in a way so very many things don't these days. Congratulations.
On that note, I'd like to point out The closer you get to anything that's true, the more complex and fuzzy the logic becomes. The more gordian The knot. The less any of our Well-Developed acid tests will stand up to the horrors of reality as it exists.
I say this as someone who has been called too goddamn woke. Can you tell Mikey
The world today reminds me of a pointillist painting. Viewed from across the room, it makes sense, but walk closer, closer and suddenly the sense is shattered and the pieces become smaller and smaller, less connected, then fully unconnected and I wonder what/how I ever saw it as an image. Or like Newtonian physics which works just fine on big things, on human scale things, but as we look closer, closer, suddenly we cross a line and quantum mechanics takes over, and anybody who says they understand what's going on at that level is just a terrified liar.
Coherence in all things requires continuity, a middle-ground that provides a pathway one can use to go from one end to the other, or to make it all the way around the circle. But we've lost the middle, the political moderate, as the ends moved further and further apart, until the middle finally snapped like over-stretched elastic. Both sides are driven and tormented by solastalgia, feeling that they are still right where they've always been, but the world they remember has disappeared. The problem we face is that the two sides mourn the disappearance of two different world visions, unreconcilable world visions. So, attempting reconciliation drives us into cognitive dissonance, as we try to grasp, comprehend, acknowledge the validity of those two vanished worlds. Pointillist paintings and Newtonian physics both fall apart when we get too close. This piece comes right up to the edge and lets us ponder what might be down there in the abyss.
The thing about being a writer.. you spend all your time dreaming up the darkest most evil shit humans are capable of, how they might think, what they might do to each other. Especially when you're writing villains. Not to mention looking at every situation and spinning up every worst case outcome you can muster. It helps to get offline and touch the grass and remember that these characters are the minority.. or I hope they are.
The on the ground realism and emotional valence of this piece of writing got to me in a way so very many things don't these days. Congratulations.
On that note, I'd like to point out The closer you get to anything that's true, the more complex and fuzzy the logic becomes. The more gordian The knot. The less any of our Well-Developed acid tests will stand up to the horrors of reality as it exists.
I say this as someone who has been called too goddamn woke. Can you tell Mikey
The world today reminds me of a pointillist painting. Viewed from across the room, it makes sense, but walk closer, closer and suddenly the sense is shattered and the pieces become smaller and smaller, less connected, then fully unconnected and I wonder what/how I ever saw it as an image. Or like Newtonian physics which works just fine on big things, on human scale things, but as we look closer, closer, suddenly we cross a line and quantum mechanics takes over, and anybody who says they understand what's going on at that level is just a terrified liar.
Coherence in all things requires continuity, a middle-ground that provides a pathway one can use to go from one end to the other, or to make it all the way around the circle. But we've lost the middle, the political moderate, as the ends moved further and further apart, until the middle finally snapped like over-stretched elastic. Both sides are driven and tormented by solastalgia, feeling that they are still right where they've always been, but the world they remember has disappeared. The problem we face is that the two sides mourn the disappearance of two different world visions, unreconcilable world visions. So, attempting reconciliation drives us into cognitive dissonance, as we try to grasp, comprehend, acknowledge the validity of those two vanished worlds. Pointillist paintings and Newtonian physics both fall apart when we get too close. This piece comes right up to the edge and lets us ponder what might be down there in the abyss.
The thing about being a writer.. you spend all your time dreaming up the darkest most evil shit humans are capable of, how they might think, what they might do to each other. Especially when you're writing villains. Not to mention looking at every situation and spinning up every worst case outcome you can muster. It helps to get offline and touch the grass and remember that these characters are the minority.. or I hope they are.