Pissing away the Future

So here's the deal. Climate change is a thing, its a big thing and by thing I mean problem. Now by problem I don't mean, "oh we're gonna have to have some really uncomfortable discussions." I mean the world as we know it is changing at a frankly alarming pace and if we don't, as a species, do something drastic about it with a fucking quickness a horrific number of people are going to die. It might not seem like it but I hate to soapbox about this, and not just because I think humanity could probably benefit from a bit of a pruning. I hate to get into the climate change thing because talking about it is largely a meaningless proposition for someone like me. Either you agree with me that its a problem and are taking steps in your own life to do what you think can help, you don't care either way and just want to get on with your business, or you think all this "climate" nonsense is just a conspiracy to control the populace or what the fuck ever. If you fall into that last category, by the way, we can't hang anymore and I sincerely hope you die in a painful and culturally scarring fashion, that others may learn from your failing.

The reason I feel the rather rare desire to approach this topic is because of something said on The Nightly Show last week. Usually, I really enjoy Larry Wilmore, he's witty and direct. But to see him flipping shit to the people trying to come up with solutions to a problem that has been plaguing California (not to mention huge swathes of the rest of the fucking planet) for years, a problem that even more of us are staring down the barrel of, pissed me pretty badly off. All water is recycled. Water treatment is a colossal part of the world we live in and people have been doing it in one way or another for a very fucking long time. Some people feel icky about the prospect of drinking water that used to have shit in it and to some extent that makes sense. Unfortunately for these folks pretty much all water has had shit in it. A goodly amount of it has probably been piss. Odds are you drank a little formerly-piss water today even. That's why filtration systems exist, so that by the time you drink it, your water doesn't bear any meaningful resemblance to the piss (or commercial waste, or industrial run off) that it used to be.

I'm hitting this one pretty hard but its not just water. A while back the U.N. suggested people start phasing insects into their diet to prevent against possible insecurity in the food supply. Of course it was kinda laughed off, but livestock is hard to raise, and costly, and if something goes wrong (like the world smolders and livestock becomes too resource intensive to keep alive) a huge number of people are going to be fucked. We can't afford to laugh off solutions at this point, no matter how icky it makes us feel. There are problems amassing in the world, too many to face down and certainly too many to ignore, and its not just irresponsible to keep calm and carry on, its self destructive. 

The Downward Spiral is My Favorite Carnival Ride

I've written about my anger issues before, and I've written about depression both in personal and general senses. Recently, its become important to me to note how these things interact and what its like when they do.

First let me say, if you have rage+depression issues, I'm sorry. You're probably fucked. I'm sure there are extensive medication and therapy cocktails that might pull some people out but I've no faith in them. I've yet to see any theory of anger management that seems even vaguely effective and, while I'm sure that many people are helped by modern depression treatments, I find that depression has too many sharp edges that don't take to softening.

The trouble with being a rage addicted depressive is that the cycle never really ends. You get depressed, so you get sensitive, then something happens (usually something meaningless) and you flip the fuck out. When all the face-kicking and abyssal glossolalia has passed you're left feeling (rightly) like a colossal, diseased dick; so your depression gets worse because now you have a reason to hate yourself. As the depression gets worse you get more sensitive and less able to completely describe how you feel or what you are thinking, making you more likely to get mad again and continue the cycle.

Now for the bad news. Nothing you are capable of doing about it yourself will make it any better. Once again, therapy/medication have the potential to save a few of us, but I've yet to see any good works be done. If you try to mitigate your rage the people around you will likely be unable to fully let go of the fact that you are prone to spectacular bouts of aggression. Most people have difficulty distinguishing between you trying to let go of your anger so it doesn't poison you and you being a fucking psychotic. Worse, other people trying to tell you that everything is okay or that they don't blame you will only reinforce the underlying depressive force behind the anger.

I think about killing myself the same way most people think about ordering dinner. I think about assaulting others as at worst an interesting way to spend a day. I've spent my whole life trying to find a way to handle this. I've tried giving in and letting my imbalance run me, I've tried fighting it, I've tried distance and detachment. I've even tried seeking help. The most I can offer is this, surround yourself with forgiving people who love you and want to see you get better and keep fighting. I have to hope that this gets better, I'm sure I've seen it happen somewhere. Probably.

Close to Home

Suicide is a tricky issue, to say the least. It would be misleading to say I support it, but I certainly understand the draw. The most troublesome aspect of suicide in the modern day, as far as I can see, lies in the fact that it is fundamentally tied to depression. Now, I'm going to say something a bit contentious and probably kinda hurtful. The reason depression makes the subject of suicide even more twisted is that it is essentially impossible for someone who doesn't suffer from depression to empathize with someone who does. I'm not saying they can't or shouldn't try, that is an entirely different question. I am however saying that without feeling the absolute hopelessness and emptiness that can effect a deeply depressed person you can't have a frame of reference; its completely singular.

To some extent this extends to pretty much every variety of mental disorder, but I'm not here to go there today. I am here to say that calling a suicide cowardly or selfish or demonizing it at all demonstrates how deeply one can fail to understand the problem. Suicide is a solution. We can talk about it being a permanent solution to temporary problems all day. That isn't the point. The point is that it is, in fact, a solution. And when you can't feel hope, or joy, or really anything; the whole world is a problem and any solution at all starts to look promising. That said, for many depressives (myself included) the problem isn't temporary, sometimes it isn't even intermittent. Its just something that sits in your heart and deadens every experience you have. Imagine you have a fat man that hates you tied to your neck, all he does is sit on your chest and tell you how worthless you are and how futile everything is. Now imagine you believe him implicitly, you don't have to like him, or approve of his presence at all, but you can't help but agree. There's no hope, there's no future, there is only this agonizing emptiness. Forever. There is no cowardice in the choice because to those who choose it it's a rational conclusion to a problem. There is no selfishness in it because either you genuinely believe no one will care or you feel like everyone else will be better off without you dragging them down. 

To me, that's always been the worst bit, not just feeling, knowing, in my twisted little head that my depression isn't just hurting me. Knowing that if I just had done with it, the people I care about wouldn't have to suffer through my pain anymore, they'd be free. So when some asshole "news" cunt calls a great man with a tragic history a coward, or a couple of fucking subhuman troglodytes torment a woman going through what is, hopefully, the worst pain she'll ever have to experience, we all lose. They kill the discussion. They hurt the wounded. We are fucking better than this. People protect the weak and wounded, they are part of the community. Monsters hurt people and prey on those who ought to be protected. We need to learn to make the distinction.