The Big Chill

One of my most peculiar traits is a profound political conservatism combined with an absolute openness not to the politics of the 1960’s, but to the idealistic sense that the world could be changed for the better.  The hippies put poor Vietnamese in cages, broke their families apart, killed many of them in hunger and disease and outright execution, and reversed the land redistribution that had already been done in the South.  Their open embrace of Communist propaganda, which they framed idealism, made the world a much, much worse place.  To this day they refuse to admit this.

But the idea that society can be made less gray, that authenticity matters, that love is important, that all of us need to feel free to be ourselves, all of that I agree with.

The attractive thing about this set of friends is that they can argue, joke, and vent, and still be forgiven, still be a part of the whole thing.

This is what I want to create.  This is the feeling I want more people to have.  This is a feeling I want to have.  Part of my solitude is my recalcitrance and lack of trust.  In old pictures of me I looked suspicious when I was 3 years old.  Part of it is my uniqueness, or relative uniqueness.  All the people who embrace the same social radicalism I do also embrace the politics.  I can’t do that.  Hippy chicks and me don’t get along.

But part of it is our society.  We are atomized.  We live by clocks and routines, and thus social unnaturalness and dishonesty come easily too.  This can and should be changed.  Again, I am going to do what little I can do.  When I have some success, I will post it.  It seems at this exact moment I need to keep a focus on resolving my inner troubles.