Nov 10

 I picked up quite a bit last evening, nausea and feelings of ill faded, and I came up. It feels... amazing.. when it all drops away. Like coming out from under a terrible all encompassing cloud.

But I know that just like the weather, it can change in a moment. Clouds clear. Clouds roll in. So it goes.

Today I am feeling somewhat better, but hovering within spitting distance of suddenly feeling like shit. A delicate balance. It's tricky to know exactly what to do. Rest. Be active. Eat. Don't eat. Sleep. Guess wrong and you'll be in for shit.

My life.

I've had a slow developing realisation in the last few years that the extent of people with issues is not just limited to a few. Or a bigger minority. But is secretly, the majority. Of course, define "issues". As pondered over before, perhaps it's less of a realisation for me - that a lot of people are nuts - , and more of a sign of the times instead. Everyone has gone slightly mad. Or perhaps its both - I have better insight AND people have become more crazy. Hard to say.

Nevertheless. Everywhere I look, when I look properly, and take time - you can't see this at a superficial level - and talk with people, you realise so many people are fucked in the head. From the major dysfunctions that spill out, mental health problems, to the lesser more secret issues, the drives the emotions, trauma, incapability of being truthful with themselves, insecurity and on and on.

And so you start to realise, huh, this is quite widespread.

Today. It's coalesced into an even stronger conclusion in my head. This isn't widespread. This is universal. Everytime I dig, even a little, I find it. The mental health battle. The screaming fear of abandonment. Or twisting mood swinging effects of trauma, or fucky upbringing, self loathing. Whatever it is.

It's always there. Everyone is just to some extent or another just pulling shit together.

Perhaps I have a self selecting group of people I know and more importantly, take time to get to know a bit better. Perhaps all I am really seeing is an echo chamber of a sort of my own making.

Always possible.

It doesn't quite feel like that though. I certainly know the kind of people I can bump into and make friends with can have a certain shape. I am aware of it. But I have a wide circle of people from all kinds of backgrounds and places in life. Not just the brooding types. And without fail, even the from the outside people with their shit together, are no such thing. They are a mess internally. Just patching through one day to the next.

There is another realisation that then follows this line of thought.

If this is universal, or as close to be as makes no odds. Is this actually the hidden secret to the human experience. Not that we're all flawed. Far heavier. We're all to one extent or another super fucked in the head. Is it possible our world is too much for our monkey brains to process, we adapt, we cope, of course. But. We are all in entirely over our heads. Struggling to keep a head above water. Putting a good face on it. From a distance, it's all cool. But look closer, a walking bag of neuroses, dysfunctions, irrationality. Three racoons in a trench coat trying to pass themselves off as what they imagine a human should be.

Is that it. We have this ideal of what a human is. We all agree. Yeah. That is what it is. And the secret is. None of us measure up to it. It's an impossible thing, bereft of the complications and howling hypocrisies that encompass an individual. But like a secret shame, we don't talk about it. Perhaps some of us do. Put our craziness on our sleeves, own it. But the majority do not discuss the demons that stalk them.

It's. An interesting thought. That everyone is deeply fucked. A facade of normality. And the.. odd.. interactions you see. The twists this way and that. Are the underlying demons, the chaos that sometimes rises to the surface.

Going back to the theory of mind and the many voices. Is there more chaos out there than supposed. That illusion of consistency that can be carried off at a distance. Is there an argument there that the whole thing is a lot less stable than - I had - imagined. I supposed a certain level of consistency there. But that's an assumption. Maybe it's way less consistent. Measuring this from person to person would be useful data.

It also makes me consider it in evolutionary terms. How it's possible that our brains have developed into a bit of a dead end. A dark alleyway painted with pyschoses and dysfunctions. It's not meant to go this far. Our brain, our capacity to think. It's meant to figure out how to get a coconut out of a tree. That's it. Not fall into an abyss of existential horror, or fears and pulls of social peer pressure and expectation. Of that coconut solving ability gone rampant, trying to solve or pattern match everything, and going slowly, quietly, utterly bonkers.

To take it very far. Have we in fact just slowly evolved into a monkey with massive psychological problems that could result in a species wipe. Started as a strength. More coconuts. Ends in a puddle of existential dread and suicidal ideation.

I think no matter the outer reaches of those implications, it gets very theoretical, the whole much ore practical here and now of, no, everyone is nuts to one degree or another could well be bang on the money. If what I am seeing holds true further afield.

That important question of whether this is normal, or just due to unusual environmental factors at the moment ( the pandemic, the crisis in society ), is key to understanding whether this is a fundamental part of who we are, or, just a fundamental part of our reaction to stress. Perhaps we're all just fucked over because it's been a real tough few years, decade, 21st century.

Either way, it doesn't really matter. The symptoms are with us at the moment I think - no matter the cause.

I am slowly, at pains, searching for someone who isn't nuts at the moment. Or several people who aren't nuts. Just so I can disprove the universal nuts thing and push it back to crazy people being merely in the scope of majority, or large minority. So far I am at a zero score however for non crazy people. Which. Uh huh. Outside of the echo chamber possibility, is rather telling.

When you're trying to determine the count of something, the proportion of one thing to another, if all you have is just one thing after counting a lot. It tends to give you a good hint about the overall final count. In a bag of mixed balls, some red, some blue, if after pulling 30 from the bag, they are so far all red. Well. That starts to tell you something.

Uh huh.

If true, everyone is fucky as all hell. 

Ok. Cool. Nice. Great. What do you do with that information ?

Gain a deeper insight into reliability. Or rather unreliability. Perspective on the scale of brokenness. If everyone is broken to some extent. It tends to move the measuring posts around somewhat. Better understanding that absolutely anyone can break - and start exhibiting obvious signs of being fucked. There should be no surprises when someone suddenly breaks down. Jumps off a bridge. Whatever it is. All it really means - if was a surprise to you. Is you didn't know them well enough. 

But it also has implications for dealing with life. How to live a life. If life itself is something of a mind fuck, not a 2.4 children, hollywood stroll through suburban utopia, but is instead a landscape pocked with craters of fuckery, that everyone stumbles through, it means you should wear better shoes. If we are unprepared for the reality of demons kicking at our door. If we are lulled into believing its all peace and light, and the path is sweet and true, and some problems come along, or perhaps we have personally failed because we couldnt seem to get that path, if we always believe we are failing compared to the standard, except, the reality is a harsh blizzard that scours your skin from your bones. Uh huh. Dressing for summer in flip flops is going to be a shit choice against the ice. Perhaps knowing reality is fucky. And understanding the need to tie yourself to the mast in a storm. And that is normal is an important part of putting your life, where you are, the goals you have set into perspective.

In short.

It is easy for the person that lives in the sun, in green fields, gentle breezes, to plan and make a lovely home, a spot of beauty, surrounded by bountiful gardens and idyllic vistas. Easy.

For the person slogging through swamps and the wilds, beset at times by storms as well as sunny days, floods, and terrorizing ghosts. The capability of building such a perfect place is ridiculous.

We have an idea that the world is more like the former. That it is our own personal failings that prevent us from getting there.

But what if the world we are in is actually the latter. We are all bonkers.

To be clear. I am not talking about the physical world, or the head winds of late stage capitalism, or shit like that.

I am talking about metaphysically. The things in your own head. Your personality. Desires. Drives. Urges. The dark. The light. All of it.

We think of normality as being this well rounded peaceful happy place in the sun.

I don't think it is. I think we all live in storm wracked seas, and willfully believe it isn't so.

For sure there are times when the seas calm, the sun comes out, and stability comes along. But even then. Beneath the surface. Stalk all the insecurities. Worries. Immaturities. Whatever poison someone has.

I suspect this is it.

We are all squirly. Fucked in the head. Beset by demons of one form or another. We normalize it. We rationalise it. We even categorise some of it as being of a certain personality.

But we don't recognise it is the universal chaos in all of us. All of us are malfunctioning 3lb lumps of bacon. It's doing its best. But boy. Is making bacon think really hard and fraught with "bugs".