a Sunday Sermon, of a sort.

Not going into great detail, but a small event in my life got me to questioning myself again.  Just a little thing, but when I start ‘feeling’ hesitation about something, I start asking myself “why?”,,,   Being an INTJ, we live in our own heads a great deal (and very good reason why I live alone on a hill in the sticks of Eastern KY,,,) so tend to be more in tune with what our thinks are, not necessarily our ‘feelz’ but our thinks.(actually,,, being an INTJ, we have VERY strong emotions, and thats part of why we are the way we are, desiring logic over feelz and to keep our ‘rages’ in check.  And when someone has an emotional dump in our presence, we typically feel like someone just projectile vomited all over us,,,)  Granted, we are also pretty good at lying to ourselves (thinking brain justifying feeling brains desires), but thats part of why I moved out here: to learn how to spot the lies,,,

My hesitation is real.   And it’s not all financial, though that is a HUGE part of it.  

But, it all comes down to desires,,,

What I am hesitant on is not desirable to me, and I can ponder how it can be applied across skill sets until the sun burns out, it still won’t be desirable to me.  And the more I explore that, the firmer that belief becomes.  (actually, the harder I think about it , the more resistant I get,,,  And this is not a life or death choice, so I will likely acquiesce to the desires.)

No need to go any further with that thinking right now. On to the thoughts that drove me to open this post.

——— 

Experiences generate emotions. Emotions generate values. Values generate narratives of meaning.

(Everything is F*cked, Mark Manson, page 187, second paragraph.)

May be a bit simplistic, but operationally, it explains much about the state of the world today.   We have at least two generations of people that have been on the receiving end of VAST Abundance, lacking for little to nothing of importance EXCEPT a positive moral foundation.   I say positive, but maybe I should say negative,,,  I mean that from an engineers point of view about positive/negative feedback loops.  A ‘negative’ moral code would apply brakes when things start getting out of bounds, where a positive one would keep feeding the beast: much like we see in this ‘if it feels good’ moral foundation the western world exists in.   This goes back to commentary from Dirtroadlivin’ in this post.

  Experiences generate emotions:  how many of the younger generation have experienced TRUE poverty in this country?   And I am talking ‘dirt floors, hand to mouth subsistence, gleaning the coal chunks off the railroad to keep warm’ sort of living?   NONE, and I can say that with high confidence.   Even the ‘dirt poor’ of Appalachia can’t make that claim (at least, none since the late sixties and they ain’t young’uns anymore.)(side note, this area was one of the last to start getting assistance like the inner cities have been seeing since LBJ.). Well, the intensity of living that ‘hand to mouth’ existence would generate very strong feelings, and those would in turn become HARD Values.  But when the emotions are fluffy, soft and not so intense, such as we get when those low down are given a hand up (not completely true, but that was the selling point before the corruption really dug its talons in.) then the values will be soft and fluffy as well.   Narratives of Meaning become soft and malleable, and,,,

Here we are.

Now, I can say that my generation could be pointed at and told we have much the same issues, yet I would like to point out that many of my generation were sort of ‘self raised’, with the occasional Peach Switch re-alignment process applied; Da hands you his pocket knife and tells you to go cut that switch, you KNOW your ass is in for ‘fun’.  And I can bet a majority of men my age can recall the sound of a belt clearing 7 loops of Da’s wranglers,,,  And our parents were, for the most part, raised from that ‘dirt poor generation’, especially if they were from Appalachia or other hill country parts of the lower 48.   We could have been absolute terrors, but so far, every example of ‘my generation’ that hasn’t been the far left side of the bell curve (every generation has those, and the polar opposites.) has shown HARD values, damn near written in stone type values.   We learned them by BEING them, and yeah, we had a shit-ton of fun, but we also figured out what worked (US,,,  There was no other way to get what we wanted.)

But Values generate MEANING, and hard values will make hard meanings, that are resistant to change, where soft fluffy values generate very malleable meanings.    

That may be a good thing with all the trials forthcoming, being able to adapt on the fly so to speak, but personally, I want hard values as a foundation of my existence, not the shifting sands of ‘whatever’. 

———

I just re-read what I’ve written, and realize that I am likely channeling my grandpa,,,,  LOL.  (he was a civil engineer, and tough as nails when it came to “how things work”, but rather socially retarded at the same time,,,  Grandma was the socially knowledgable and was the lubricant that kept him and the world from killing each other.)

but, the trees are blooming, I saw violets blooming near the end of my drive, and its nice out, right NOW, and I really should put this damned laptop up and get back to LIVING a life,,,  Not dwelling on coulda’s, shoulda’s and wanna’s,,,

y’all take care, and talk atcha tomorrow.