Sunday Thought Kernels #1

Half-baked thoughts swimming in my head not yet ready for an essay

Hello All, sorry if you’re out there feeling the Sunday Scaries. I’d like do my first issue of “Thought Kernels,” a listing of half-formed thoughts that are not quite “fit for print.” Some of them might show up in a later essay, some of them might never be seen again. They are not necessarily my “positions” on anything, just…kernels.

I plan on doing this as often as I remember, and will try to share links when appropriate. Again, these thoughts are undercooked and provisional, I make no guarantees that they are defensible or even logical. Read at your own risk!

1. I’m usually skeptical of anything that gives off even a single whiff of early 2010s “Silicon Valley, VC, startup, Toms’ Shoes” -type vibes, but I must admit I’m a little curious about DAOs, especially as some are now purchasing actual physical land and organizing around shared narratives. I think the tarp we had covering the gaping existential maw of meaninglessness in our world is now fully cast off and taken to the wind. The cry-bullies have gotten everything they wanted, namely the deconstruction of any and all social institutions. In their place we have erected…nothing.
   
   Not all bad news considering I’m pretty sure we never had any actual “stuff” there in the first place, but institutions are nonetheless monuments to our attempts at meaning-making. They may be nothing more than totems of blood, relics, and speeches, but they rose high enough at times to convince us they were something more. We need new totems, and this time we have to do it without the “shortcut” of believing they stem from divine right. We are already the divine right just by being alive. We must be intentional about our construction of new cathedrals and then, as soon as the last brick is set down, we must forget that it was just humans that built it.
   

2. More schizoposting, less editing. I feel like too many of my essays get whittled down to the point of being flimsy and bloodless. Like a jock in high school art class trying to carve a human face into a bar of soap, eventually Brody’s just gonna punch a hole where the nose is supposed to be. I do like going back and adding links (it’s almost my favorite part), but the more I read and change my words, the more I suck the cocksureness out of them. They make my points flaccid and weak, more scrutable and therefore more vulnerable to outside attack. I’m mistaken when I think that people find clarity more enjoyable than sensuousness. I have to be more epileptic, I have to keep my mouth open during the seizure and not bite my tongue, I must trust my audience to understand what I have said or what I failed to say. Almost all of the “well-structured” essays that are ever going to exist have already been written, and those that haven’t been will be better served by a stronger writer than me. If I hope to have any effect on the world, it will only be through channeling the words of the divine in fits and spasms.
   
   

   

   Artistic rendering of my readers’ faces when they read my schizoposting

3. Read an amazing essay on Substack that had a segment on Nietzsche’s The Genealogy of Morals, particularly about the limiting force of naming things, i.e. the nobles were beyond reproach because they were called “noble.” I have been searching for this essay for days (originally thought it was somewhere in N.S. Lyons’ incredible piece which you should read as soon as you are able:

   The Reality War

   But unless I’m missing something that’s right in front of my face, it’s not there. It’s entirely possible it’s not on Substack or maybe not even a written piece at all (this possibility is the most terrifying). If it rings any bells for anyone, please comment below.
   

4. It is near impossible to find meaning in a culture that has almost completely revealed itself to be nothing more than a power game. People speak in hyperbole so often now that they convince themselves that their hyperbole is simple declaration of fact. We said “believe all women” because almost every decent person could sense that there was a severe deficit in the credulity of women’s testimony about their own assaults. It simply was not safe to live in a world where men could have their way with women and then simply deny it and walk free. The hashtag of #TakeALittleMoreTimetoListentoWomen just wouldn’t have done it; a murmur in the Land of Shouts.
   
   The only way to “scream” on Twitter is to take things as far as they can possibly go, and so: #BelieveAllWomen. The people who took issue with this were tendentious and litigious and unserious people. If you were “in the know,” then you “knew” that, yes, of course women are humans and so of course all humans are capable of deception and manipulation, but that wasn’t the POINT. The point was that things needed to change and men needed to stop doing that thing where they run their finger up a woman’s thigh every time a conversation about a promotion comes up
   
   …except then we sort of forgot that it was hyperbole. People lost the thread and began taking ludicrous moral positions to defend people based on their genitalia and pronouns, the evidence be damned.
   
   

   

   
   Stuff like this bothers more than just the “manners-minders” out there who demand strict definitions; the ones who say things like “what exactly do you mean when you say genocide? By my count, only 998 people have been massacred. A shame, for certain, but…genocide?” This kind of thing begins to bother even people who could be considered “non-psychotic.” These are the people who generally resist the impulse to jump into each and every political squabble because they have better things to do, and often only speak up when they feel something is so far off their radar of normal that they feel like they have to say something. These folks, blissfully unaware of the rules and levels of the fray they are casually entering, are usually quite shocked when labeled violent transphobic bigots when all they’ve said is that something feels a little weird about photos like this.
   
   These folks aren’t Ben Shapiro-types looking to joust over the meaning of the word “autogynephilia.” These people don’t need specificity or certainty about the genus/species definitions of every single uttered thing. All they ask is to have just a little bit of assurance that certain words do have meanings and that some things are beyond the reach of the ideologically-insane to tinker with. All they say back to edicts like “believe all women” is this: “I just don’t think it’s a sensible position to take.” The response to this: “fuck you, you sexist, transphobic, and racist fuck who is propagating a white colonial agenda of patriarchy and anti-blackness.” Does that sound like hyperbole, too? I wish it was.
   
   Alright, alright, you convinced me. I’ll do it. I’ll support “#BelieveAllWomen.” I can’t promise to believe it, but I’ll absolutely say it. I’ll especially try to slip in “believe all women” at work events so that I that I can stay under the radar of the all-seeing eye. Yes, absolutely. Watch this - “Believe all women. Even my crazy ex-wife Brenda who is trying to steal my kids from me by claiming that I have an “addiction to hookers.” First of all, she wasn’t a hooker she is my girlfriend, and just because she’s 25 and pretty does not mean she is a hooker, alright Brenda?! But you know what? My bitch of an ex-wife is indeed a woman, and I do believe all women, and so yes - I will relinquish my paternal rights and turn myself in for solicitation. And also I would like to formally apologize for referring to them as hookers, as they are indeed sex workers and they have rights.”
   

5. Almost started to see skyrocketing gas prices as a separate, dangling phenomenon instead of directly tied into the master plan of keeping us all at home, quiet, fat, and docile, with our eyes affixed indefinitely to a “work happy hour on zoom.” That Devon is a wild one - I can’t believe he/they had a bottle of CUCUMBER margarita at home just for the occasion! I’d go over to partake myself, but…well…Devon lives two miles away and that drive is more expensive than a bottle of the stuff itself.
   

6. I’m reading A Revolution of the Mind by MV Perry. I recently became acquainted with MV on Twitter and am intrigued by their CV and experiences. I’m going to do a review of the book once I finish it sometime this month. It’s available on Amazon, and without giving any spoilers for my review, I’ll at least say: “I think it’s worth reading.” (Also the book takes place in Chicago and lists a lot of L stops. Reading about the Red Line for a Chicagoan produces a burst of saccharine, dopaminergic body tingles on par with a nerd reading a reference to their favorite obscure 80s arcade game in Ready Player One).
   

7. As someone emerging from a leftist background, I sometimes believe that I’d feel more at home surrounded by rightoids and Evangelicals: “I might disagree with them but at least they don’t torture you with their opinions all the fucking time. I should move to somewhere in like…I don’t know - Florida? Arizona maybe? I don’t know just anywhere other than Chicago. I mean this place is a sinking ship and I gotta find land.” Twitter has been a good reminder of how insufferable people on the right can be as well. Constant - CONSTANT - whining about how the “MSM isn’t doing this story of black on black crime that happened in Atlanta last night” or tired refrains of “The reason why Trump is impervious to attack from the left is because…”. Much like the fits and tantrums from the left, I find myself hating people who say things I agree with, simply because they’re taking what might be a strong opinion and weakening it by being so needy and undignified about it.
   

8. Been watching a lot of Berserk, this show has a lot (a lot) of amazing things to say about masculinity and the marriage of the masculine to the feminine. It also has a powerful way of talking about finding/making meaning and why finding others on the same road as you is really the most important gift you can be given. Just sad that I discovered it less than a year after the author unexpectedly died and the story was left unfinished. I know his team plans to bring it to a close but of course that always places an asterisk* next to it.
   
   

   

   Me, posing in mirror do my best impression of character “Guts” from Berserk. (Actually awesome sketch by u/cota_2004)

9. I think I need one amazing piece to bring the house down and give me the circulation I need to bring in lots of new subscribers. But when that happens, will I be ready for that pressure? Is there anything I could possibly do to ready myself for that?
   

10. If you have it in you, please subscribe, like my posts, comment on them, share them. I love you.

Sorry that most of you are reading this on Monday. I got distracted and forgot to press “Publish”

Have a great week,

H.P. de V