“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…”

By Emma Lazarus (1883 manuscript) – https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/haventohome/images/hh0041s.jpg Library of Congress, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17155055

Internalizing this Emma Lazarus poem, famously inscribed on the Statue of Liberty, is less about altruism and compassion, and more about plain common sense (you know, not being a dumbass).

Crapping on immigrants and migrants in America is among the more moronic forms of dehumanization in a veritable smorgasbord of fake problems that rightwing nationalists keep frothing on about.

For starters, without immigrants this economy would crash and burn, eventually becoming a backwater, lower middle-income, plantation republic. Hell, that’s how it started, despite all the brute advantages it had from colonialism, genocide, and slavery. It needed immigrants to become an industrial superpower.

Immigrants pay taxes without representation and contribute more into the system than they take out. They are not eligible for the vast majority of social security and welfare benefits, while still paying into it. Immigrants are less likely to break the law and more likely to stay working longer hours, than Americans with birthright privilege. We, as citizens, benefit immensely from this unequal arrangement.

This only works if America allows for the open, competitive, free exchange of people and capital. America needs to embrace humanism and not dumber, baser instincts like religious nationalism.

More importantly, it needs to continue being a desirable place for immigrants and migrants. Else this economy is dead. All your racist parents, grandparents, uncles, and aunts are increasingly being taken care off by immigrants and migrants who are willing to put up with crap wages. All the roofing crews in my neighborhood are staffed solely with hard working dudes from Central and South America. I’m pretty sure Liam, Tyler, and Cody from vanilla ‘burb highway town America aren’t applying to be fruit pickers any time soon.

Health, construction, agriculture, retail services, hospitality…entire sectors would collapse without migrant and immigrant labor.

In short, xenophobia is dehumanizing and downright idiotic. Stop it. Get a life. Do something productive rather than demonizing people who keep your economy of excess running.

Stop romanticizing “the masses” and protect individualism. It might be our only bulwark against autocrats.

Countries colored with green have cultures that are more individualistic than the world average. Countries colored in red have relatively collectivistic cultures. Reference:
Beugelsdijk, S., & Welzel, C. (2018). Dimensions and dynamics of national culture: Synthesizing Hofstede with Inglehart. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 49(10), 1469-1505.

I used to be one of those people who romanticized “the people” and valorized “the masses”.

Now I’m feeling a little different.

I’ve experienced a couple of decades of various masses in various countries increasingly choose nationalism, religious fundamentalism, chauvinism, xenophobia, autocracy, and brute naked majoritarianism when making political choices. All while whipping themselves up into a frothy hysteria just because they’re depressed, miserable, and need someone to blame.

Progressive collectivist ideals have failed to stem the tide of obscurantism and fear that the masses of the world are subjecting themselves to. It takes too long to get a message of social cooperation across the rising cacophony of rightwing fear mongering that appeals to our baser, easier to access emotions. Currently I fear the only bulwark against this rising fascism and misogyny across the globe is the rise of individualism that has, ironically enough, undermined leftist ideals of collectivism.

I don’t think the collective needs as much protection as leaders would have you believe. We are a social species and always will be. Even in this current age of mass disconnection due to digital alienation, people seek community any which way they can access it. We will never lose the social and we will never abandon the collective…for the simple reason that it is impossible to do so.

Humanity doesn’t need to fear individualism. On the contrary, I daresay we should cherish and nurture it. We already know that the individual needs the collective, but it’s important to understand the converse is equally true. The collective needs us to be individuals.

We don’t need saviors, prophets, or great men.

We just need each other as rational, individual beings.

Home is where the heart is…

My heart belongs to the place my family chooses to call home.

Above all, it will be with my family, progeny prioritized to embrace their fundamental right to liberty.

Disavowing the classists and dogmatists, the puritans and supremacists, the fearmongering gatekeepers and guilded misery seekers.

We are a social species;

Therefore,

Long live the individual.

I failed you, dear Gertrude.

I’m so sorry. I will do right by Genevieve.

Went out like a soldier, Gertrude did.

Fought of a stronger, larger, more brutal adversary and protected the younger one…before her bodyguard realized his fuck up and saved her.

Lived a couple more days to enjoy some treats.

Then – just when her subjects thought she’d make it – died like a warrior queen by her throne.

Valhalla currently welcomes a clucking martyr with full grandeur.

*

*

*

And yes, we know.

We don’t deserve the richness of life around us.

Making amends will have to be 24/7 from here on out.

RIP Gertrude, Warrior Queen.

The water tables are so low at Minneopa State Park…

That even tough as nails invasive species like Asian carp don’t make it.

The raccoons be feasting.

This new (supposed) anthropocene era we’re entering feels different…morphing into a world where egomaniacal conquerer species might be found wanting, while grittier survivor species might thrive.

Pay no heed to my word salad btw. There is almost zero scientific thought behind this garbled mess I’m spouting. I’m just fucking around with semantics to sound smart when in reality I increasingly feel like a dumbass.

So let me leave you with what I’m feeling right now.

Climate disaster is real…but life always goes on.

And raccoons are cool as fuck.

Abiogenesis. Is. It.

https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Origin_of_life_stages.svg#mw-jump-to-license

Albeit, very scary to comprehend actually.

It provides a remarkably simple biochemical answer to The Question.

Well. One of them at least.

Ha!

You see, LUCA might be how we have defined the first of us.

The originator.

To all life on earth.

Then we (obviously) ask ourselves…

How did LUCA come to be?

Equally excitingly.

Can it be recreated in a lab?

And if it can.

Should it?

*

*

*

(My mind is blown just comprehending the fact that we’re reconstituted stardust…so wtf do I know?)

Ego and Anger – my two worst addictions.

But it’s always time to fight the good fight.

No experience – now lifelong and ongoing – has brought forth my numerous shortcomings with as much brutal honesty as parenting has

My dumb rage and my mindless id.

How do I get rid of my addictions to ego and anger?

These very peculiar conditions of our species?

I am so done with them.

I don’t want to be a raging egomaniac any more.

(Fact is, I’m finally just getting smart enough to realize that I don’t know shit.)

Off late, on my daily walks with my bestie Molly, I’ve been reflecting on the various ways in which I might have been a piece of shit to people in the past. Especially my loved ones.

I know there have been many moments in the past when I was an asshole, a bully, or just…you know, a dick.

Age brings wisdom.

Sadly wisdom is not a time machine.

Now, like any other human, I too occasionally wallow in the different ways I might have been wronged in my life.

But I don’t really focus as much on the ways I have wronged others now, do I? I’m realizing that doing this intentionally can be a helpful exercise in humility. My acid tongue and fuck-you personality feel embarrassing now in real time.

Realizing that I can be a bit of a dick sometimes helps in tempering that raging id.

Embers of the past will always burn.

Traumas of a bygone era nurture it.

Is this the irony of resiliency?

Parenting Gyaan – Haiku 2

24/7

Eternity and Beyond

So take many breaks.

Parenting Gyaan – Haiku 3

Whine whine…whine whine WHINE!!!

You want some cheese with that whine?

(Well…with fruit…why not?)