I made my kid a pile of waffles. Like the biggest pile of waffles I’ve ever made him.
I only ate like six of them myself.
I watched the latest episode of Survivor. It was an episode where the contestants are given cash to bid on food items. After all of yesterday’s exhaustion, I missed seeing it live and discussing it with fans on Discord. Another casualty of the election.
Later in the day I saw a post on Bluesky that led me to the following.
A gaming and culture journalist was discussing how she was detaching from the Democratic Party to help improve her local community and brought up several historical examples of groups that do good outside of the political parties, including mutual aid organizations, churches, etcetera. She was promoting the spirit of getting active and involved locally. She also brought up the Black Panthers, which would send most Fox News viewers pearl clutching, but so it goes.
One of the replies to the idea of connecting with community instead of dialing into digital channels to mainline national politics was from a person who wrote this:
“I’m happy for people who are able to do something like this, but a lot of folks live in places that are hostile to them, or just have completely disinterested neighbors in the suburbs who live comfortably and aren’t willing to help others in any meaningful way. A lot of people get left behind.”
So this sentiment has stuck with me, because it’s on its face somewhat relatable but also something that can lead to an alienating mantra. “We’re all alone here.”
In trying to use this blog to trace “how we got here,” I have to consider the snapshot of 2008 to 2024 and how millennials grew up to interact with their own neighbors. In many cases, we grew up and we didn’t learn to do that at all. I imagine the issue is even more pronounced with Gen Z.
Whatever the Original Poster* was saying about their own life, the idea that “I can’t find solidarity in a physical community because I am hated for my identity and everyone’s material conditions makes them prefer isolation to interacting with me” can be a poisonous internalization that harms our self-fulfillment.
I guess what it makes me think of are the times when I have to go out and bring the garbage bins out or bring them back in and I’m just listening to a podcast or video in my earbud. If I come across a neighbor, I pull my earbud out and I’ll exchange the briefest of pleasantries, but I’m usually eager to just get back to my podcast already.
I mean, don’t get me wrong, my podcast is objectively more interesting than whatever drywall project my neighbor’s got going on, but….you know.
In the spirit of yesterday’s post, maybe I should try something different here. Because I don’t think we’re going to get through this if we all assume we are, each of us, alone together.
*Full disclosure: The Original Poster seems to court a lot of controversy on their social media platforms, often espousing a lot of that alienating social justice rhetoric that feeds into a perseuction complex against their gender expression and neurodivergence. They may be a plant by an intelligence agency or a right-wing troll masquerading as the Most Annoying Leftist Ever. But I dunno, for the sake of this post, let’s just take the Original Poster at their word.