I haven’t written here in a long time because I’ve just been too upset.

I’m usually very wary of people. I find them to be so often mean and hurtful in ways that are inexplicable to me that I am afraid of becoming engaged with them. I don’t know how to navigate other people’s neuroses, which I’m just not equipped to comprehend. Sometimes people can be so quick to judgment that even a simple awkwardness, not knowing the right thing to say or neglecting to acknowledge something they said, is reason enough for them to develop a grudge that morphs almost instantaneously into hatred. Other times they are delighted by cruelty and find it highly amusing, even a reason to bond. It’s all very mystifying to me.

Then there’s this kind of dance that people do, that is so opaque to me I can only discern its outline through a fog. It’s a behavior that’s usually ascribed to teenage girls, but I think that’s only because they haven’t mastered it well enough at a young age to engage in it seamlessly. As far as I can tell, it works something like this: it’s considered perfectly normal among adults to be snide and manipulative, and as long as you play the game by being cagey in return, without any outward appearance of actual emotion or giving any sign that you actually were hurt, then the game goes on without any ripples or disruptions. But responding to snideness with good humor or forbearance is a breach: the person who was trying to zing you will be affronted that her barb seems to have missed its mark, and will escalate with further, more pointed barbs.

At this point, I don’t know what someone like me could possibly do. Being manipulative and catty is something that is completely outside of my skill set. Even if I decided to play the game I would be completely unable to. Talking to the person directly is impossible because the whole purpose of the game is to maintain deniability by remaining cagey, so the person would just deny that she was doing anything, and would immediately bring out the big guns, calling you paranoid and accusing you of harboring some kind of grudge or resentment in the face of her obvious innocence.

So I did the only thing I could do, and the worst possible thing I could do: nothing. She became so incensed at my refusal to engage in her game of under-the-radar petty attacks that she attacked me in a big way, but a way that still preserved her deniability, since no one could easily see what she did but me. It hurt me so fiercely that I screamed in pain. Game over. When someone breaks the surface of perceived normality in a painful situation by publicly announcing the depth of their pain, they instantly become beyond the pale. A pariah. A nutter. Not to mention the one at fault, rather than being recognized as the victim of a vicious kind of cruelty. What follows is full-fledged, open bullying by an angry mob.

In my previous post, now over a month old, I was wondering about the reasons why seemingly nice people support hateful and damaging public policies. And in many blog posts over time, I’ve wondered about other similar motivations, because so much of what people do seems strangely — to me– mean spirited. But now I wonder no more. Rather than being bewildered by instances of cruelty and indifference, all one has to do is accept those as the norm. If one simply adopts the premise that human beings are consistently self interested, callous, and indifferent — and very often cruel, frequently for no reason at all — then all of human history and all interpersonal relationships are no longer puzzling. Sure, sometimes people do kind things, but that’s usually a temporary and fleeting state of events, and is generally done out of convenience, or the desire to appear noble, even if only to oneself, or a sense of dutifulness, at best. Or, more often, as a calculated means of achieving some selfish end.

I don’t remember any specific instance, but surely many of us have had the experience as children of standing around the playground minding our own business only to have some sweaty faced kid come up to us and yell something right in our face, like, “Why are you so weird?” and then run off laughing gleefully. We’re left stung and bewildered, but only if that behavior was unexpected. If it’s the norm, then it should come as no particular surprise. Not that it doesn’t sting anyway, but if you know to expect it it’s no longer bewildering.

In a world where neighbors murder one another with machetes or machine guns in the name of civil war, dictators casually order the slaughter of thousands, or millions, and billions more are left to subsist in the most wretched poverty while others swill champagne in opulent mansions, the ordinary, petty cruelty that exists among schoolchildren or co-workers or “friends” should not be in any way surprising. It’s downright unremarkable.

So, mystery solved. Carry on.

I made these last month when I was visiting my parents. I make them up as I go along. And I made the pillow at the bottom last week. It’s really small, about four and a half inches wide I think:

I want to get back to writing this blog, but I’ve been too tired lately. I have chronic fatigue, and sometimes I can’t even think. Then when I get to feeling better I’ve lost all momentum and direction, and find that it’s not just that I’m too tired to think, but that sometimes I don’t even know what I think.

I’m feeling discouraged about the prospect that things will get better, that society will become more equitable, less harsh, and more humane somehow, so I don’t know what to say about it. Should we just all get drunk and throw in the towel? (Actually I’ve been to tired to drink. It just makes me feel more tired.) There seems to be so much confusion even among well-meaning people, not only as to what to do exactly to help improve conditions for our fellow humans, but even in grasping how things really stand. And that makes me feel confused too, because I wonder if the things that seem clear to me are only misperceptions. I’m arrogant enough that I usually don’t think I’m wrong, but sometimes I have pangs of doubt.

It seems clear to me that the people in power are self-interested, and that everything they do is designed to further their own power and wealth. I’m almost embarrassed to write it out because it seems so painfully obvious. Yet so many seem so hopeful that a change in government administration will make a difference. The Democratic majority in congress has not even been able to make a dent in the war effort that the overwhelming majority of Americans oppose. And people seem confused by that. Yet no one in government, Republican or Democrat, nor the mainstream media, has said why this war was started in the first place and why that continues to be a problem. (Someone has, I’m sure, but it hasn’t gotten much notice.)

The war against Iraq was waged to expand the US empire and its control over the region and its resources. That goal has never changed, and it’s what the Republican administration is referring to when it talks of “winning.” Until that goal is acknowledged, and abandoned, there is no possibility that things will start to improve. Yet well-meaning people worry about what will happen in Iraq if the US withdraws. That’s the wrong worry. First the US government needs to stop waging its own self-interested war against Iraq, then the discussion of how to proceed in the best interests of the people in the region can begin. And the US government has no place in that discussion, since it can be expected to just continue to pursue its own agenda.

I’m not a strong believer in the notion that Democrats and Republicans in government are exactly the same. Yes, they both are interested in supporting the interests of the wealthy and powerful, but while the Republicans are shameless in that pursuit and will lie and invent whatever excuses they think their constituency will swallow, the Democrats can sometimes be pressured into doing the right thing by overwhelming public pressure. Yet not much if any pressure is being applied because the well-meaning majority doesn’t seem to know what it wants, let alone how to ask for it. We can’t even get it together to demand something so urgently needed as universal access to health care. What hope is there that the public will demand the truth about the war in Iraq and a fair and humane end to it?

I’d sort of given up on blogging for a while, except for writing about Green Day, which, y’know, is my guilty pleasure, but I kind of miss it, and even though I’m not any more sure than I was when I more or less stopped writing that I have anything to say, I figure what the hell.

I had this notion that I would try to refocus on poverty and economic inequality, but I’m not sure that my head is in it, or that I’m ever not too exhausted and bleary-headed to read up on things and put together a thoughtful post. I guess I’ll just continue to post about whatever random crap floats through my head, whether it’s about my personal life or politics or culture or whatever else. It’s looking very much like the blog will be more of the same. If anything I think there may be even more navel-gazing than before, if I’m reading my crystal ball correctly.