4/10 thoughts

From El Hombre Invisible

Apr 11, 2023

My choice of freedom over routine “American Freedom” (I feel the need for a Trade Mark) was 4 years ago weird and was at worst suicidal. If emotionally the position failed to empower me but forced me to be an inner man objecting and an outer man man selling the income felt like ripping people off. Long ago after Tecnica went out of business for being stupidly PC by ditching the anti-Sandanista government of Nicaragua for the 4 Frontline States sustaining the ANC, I took a temp gig with the Sierra Club vendor for Fundraising. We did not recycle and high pressure fundraising was required. I spoke with the spouse of a $10,000 donor who had FAILED to return the pledge the Club needed. I was exceptionally sensitive in my call and not astonished that after medical problems from Open Heart Surgery arose the Sierra Club request was on back burner.

Management needed $10,000 and knew the donor had the dough. “Call her back. Explain how urgent this money is for going forward.”

“Her husband nearly died. The Club is very important to them. They need a few weeks to write the check,” I said.

As a sales professional since 17 and now 33 I expected the response. “Call her. Ask her to just give card number and tell her the donation is crucial right now.”

I quit. This then 1990.

In 2020 just 6 months prior to Covid trapped in the 2nd company going out of business in 3 years I half believed - at 63 after all - that I had become the Fool. I trashed my self rather harshly for my freedom. I dove deep into my career path looking I suppose for my tremendous error. Why did no situation work out? How did the situation arise that my resume netted yawns? Who need I network with to have a job paying more than dog shit wages? Where in the stormy sea could my boat find a port in the storm? Asking only workman’s wages I tried to get a job for 6 months and got no answers. Then working a convention in March 2020 one week later Shut Down and full tilt insanity.

Insanity so great, so unexpected, so profound I halted beating myself up. Everything I had anticipated since childhood science fiction novels, studies of world history, studies in philosophy, studies in the thought of outsiders was so much more exact and accurate than conventional thinking. DADA and Surrealism my old friends in their blasting and bombarding of the post WW-1 world into post-war global thought were profound with insight. And building from this foundation of freedom I found myself high on a hill surveying fog all around.

Masking, isolation, fear, vaccination, the four idiocies were in command and remain in command. Fog then.

Thick fog now for 3 years. All around me the people I know see daylight.

Ironicially just prior to the Pandemic my wife, my friend from Facebook, and I attended Rhinoceros by Ionescu performed by American Conservatory Theater.In Ionesco’s 1950 absurdist dark comedy, set in a small French town, the Rhino starts showing up and stampeding about, first one then another, eventually becoming a thundering herd. The townsfolk are terrified yet fascinated, and one by one they succumb to group-think and turn into rhinos themselves. When written, the play was an allegory about gullibility to Fascism and Nazism before and during World War II.

BERENGER: And you consider all this natural?

DUDARD: What could be more natural than a rhinoceros?

BERENGER: Yes, but for a man to turn into a rhinoceros is abnormal beyond question.

DUDARD: Well, of course, that's a matter of opinion ...

BERENGER: It is beyond question, absolutely beyond question!

DUDARD: You seem very sure of yourself. Who can say where the normal stops and the abnormal begins? Can you personally define these conceptions of normality and abnormality? Nobody has solved this problem yet, either medically or philosophically. You ought to know that.

BERENGER: The problem may not be resolved philosophically -- but in practice it's simple. They may prove there's no such thing as movement ... and then you start walking ... [he starts walking up and down the room] ... and you go on walking, and you say to yourself, like Galileo, 'E pur si muove' ...

DUDARD: You're getting things all mixed up! Don't confuse the issue. In Galileo's case it was the opposite: theoretic and scientific thought proving itself superior to mass opinion and dogmatism.

BERENGER: [quite lost] What does all that mean? Mass opinion, dogmatism -- they're just words! I may be mixing everything up in my head but you're losing yours. You don't know what's normal and what isn't any more. I couldn't care less about Galileo ... I don't give a damn about Galileo.

DUDARD: You brought him up in the first place and raised the whole question, saying that practice always had the last word. Maybe it does, but only when it proceeds from theory! The history of thought and science proves that.

BERENGER: [more and more furious] It doesn't prove anything of the sort! It's all gibberish, utter lunacy!

DUDARD: There again we need to define exactly what we mean by lunacy ...

BERENGER: Lunacy is lunacy and that's all there is to it! Everybody knows what lunacy is. And what about the rhinoceroses -- are they practice or are they theory?”