Got another needle in the eye today.
My eye doctor, Doctor McKay, is trying a new drug on my eyes. Something called something like “Aleal”. He wants to see if it works better than the previous drug at reducing the swelling in my eyes.
As far as I can tell, the vision in my left eye is still way shittier than the vision in my right eye. But we shall see.
I didn’t even know I had this appointment today until around noon, when Julian told me of his plans to take me there today.
Thus I learned of it not only by surprise but by implication. I had to actually say, “so what you’re saying is I have another appointment today. ” to get the info.
I’d appreciate more warning next time, Julian. You can’t assume that just because you know about it, I know it too.
You know me, I’m clueless. And I know that my appointments are written down on the calendar so I don’t bother remembering them myself.
Please warn me in the future. And that means actually telling me that I have an appointment soon. I shouldn’t have to deduce it.
Anyhow, it of course hurt like fuck. In fact, it hurt more than it ever had before, I think because Doctor McKay didn’t quite nail the “straight in and out” insertion that I know from my insulin days is the best, least painful way to do an injection.
So in addition to the usual pain spike there was a bit of burning after and the needle was actually in my freaking eyeball for like an extra second.
Whatever. The pain is brief, if intense, so I can handle it. I can feel the spot where the needle went in but there’s no pain, just a slight strand of cold, presumably from where the freezing agent got into the injection site.
Oh sure, NOW the stuff fucking works.
Wait, I remember what I wanted to talk about : paranoia.
It started with this YouTube short. [1]
It features an intergenerational conversation where a Millennial or Gen Z is quizzing a Gen X type like myself about how our parents just let us go play in the neighborhood with no supervision and had no idea where we were and what we were doing until we came home around sunset.
In the skit, the Gen X’er says, “I don’t know, I guess we were just tougher and more street smart or things weren’t as bad back then whatever. ”
No, my Gen X bro, the only thing that changed is that parents became way, way more paranoid. And that started with us.
We raised our Millennial kids to believe that the world was awash in desperate perverts just looking for a chance to abduct and murder them.
And then we complained about how kids don’t play outside any more.
And it’s all bullshit. Random child abduction is an incredibly rare crime. Your kid is way more likely to get in a car crash or contract a disease than to ever be at risk for being snatched by some dude in a van.
It’s the same kind of ubiquitous paranoia that leads to women feeling unsafe on the streets and imagining the worst when some guy just happens to walk behind them.
It’s all incredibly unhealthy, on both a personal and a societal level, and it leads to so much baseless pain, fear, and suffering, and yet I know there’s nothing I can do about it.
It’s nearly impossible to fight something everyone believes, even if it’s delusional. It’s a truth that is far too hard to face for most people, so it’s just weirdos like me who can see the truth beyond the social illusion and realize it’s all bullshit.
I mean, imagine being a parent faced with the truth that you have been denying your child all kinds of freedom and healthy growth for no good reason.
And the same goes for women. Imagine knowing that you’ve suffered fear and anxiety based on threats that do not exist.
And that knowledge flies in the face of what everybody else believes.
So this pervasive and perverse paranoia probably ain’t going anywhere.
I mean, the real, safe world is so much less exciting.
More after the break.
More about paranoia
The paranoia of which I speak is much more than a mere sociological anomaly.
Actual, real world policy decisions are based on this communal myth of a far more dangerous and exciting world.
It all revolves around making people feel better about their normal, boring, ordinary lives without them having to do anything.
If the world is filled with criminals after your stuff, it makes every single completely ordinary moment spent safe at home becomes a triumph over the forces of evil who would gladly slit your throat in the night.
Not to mention how this belief implicitly enhances the value of your possessions. This is very important because it forestalls those uncomfortable and confusing feelings where you can’t remember why you spent so much money on these things in the first place.
Turns out getting them was a lot more fun than having them.
It’s like how shitting on unemployed people makes people feel like they are somehow noble and rugged and self-reliant just for having a job exactly like 90 percent plus of the rest of the population.
And all without having to do or change or sacrifice anything at all.
Turns out there’s a lot of money to be made in making people feel special for being just like everybody else.
It’s like we are all part of this cult of paranoia that uses this sense of pervasive threat to conceal the thudding dullness of our ordinary lives.
If people truly opened their eyes and looked outside their lives to the much larger world outside their front doors, they might become discontent with their servitude and start to question the very valuations upon which modern life is based.
Like… if acquiring stuff has no meaning and adds no lasting value to our lives, what then? What do we do with all that money that demands to be spent? Spending money is seen as the primary way of acquiring happiness and so if we can’t make ourselves happy via consumerist means, what else is there?
Spirituality, of course. But modern society does a very poor choice of leading us there.
What we all truly need is a path to meaning and getting in touch with our true values.
But who’s going to sell us that?
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.
[[1]] I know, normally I would embed the video, but some videos just do not let you do that for some reason. Pisses me off. [[1]