oh, god. another blog about blogging.
Unfortunately, meta is all I feel right now, and as I said the other day, you’re stuck with me.
This is (or used to be) a political blog, and it’s been a rather odd one in that I don’t blog much about politics anymore. It’s not all job-hunting and Guild Wars; I’ve been trying to put a name to what it is I’ve been feeling lately in a political sense. It’s a feeling that many would call “alienation”, but for me, that doesn’t quite get to the heart of it.
It’s more like the knowledge that A) there is no place for me along the continuum and B) it doesn’t appear likely that one will be created. It could be that because I recently reread the Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Shea and the late Robert Anton Wilson, my head is full of crazy ideas.1 Or maybe I’m teetering on the edge of crankery.
If so, I must be the only rationalist capitalist traditionalist crank I know. All I know for sure is that in a political environment driven primarily by “feelings” — and those are driven not only by those for whom emotion is the only faculty they possess or use on a regular basis2 but by those who, if asked, would readily claim to be “rationalists” possessed of greater enlightenment than most3 — the rationalist will sound like a crazy man.
It is really hard to suppress bitterness in that environment.
07.24.2008 @ 19:36
Actually, I believe the term you’re looking for is ‘anomie.’
And it is a rational reaction to the current political landscape, given what we can project our Lordships will impose on us next and what little effective, rational resaponse we can expect from our fellow oppressed.
Though they are crudely drawn compared to the Illuminatus!, it is heartening to go back and re-read things like The Stars My Destination, The Sheep Look Up, or Stand on Zanzibar and Shockwave Rider…they tend to return lead to the ol’ mental pencil.
Cor!
07.24.2008 @ 21:03
Nope - because it is not I that lacks purpose or ideals.