i, wrobot

People born into a culture of alienation, fear, or repression express their humynity in bizarre ways.
Displacement behaviors, misplaced aggression...compensating for inner pains they're only hazily aware of, if at all. You know the words - commitment-phobe, pathological liar, eating disorder, anger issues, control issues, addictive personality, abuser, energy vampire, suicidal, cutter, anhedonist...and on and on and on...
If a dysfunctional culture's institutions of socialization are strong enough, suppressed trauma can stay deeply buried. Fifty years ago, our cultural institutions were much stronger. The growth of freedom since then is a beautiful thing...but also destabilizing and occasionally terrifying.
Men are still taught to direct their aggression outward, and women inward. Of course, women are becoming more like men. There may be good in that; there certainly is bad.
And me?
When i was young, i would have laughed at the notion that i had any "displacement behaviors". I was the happiest person in the world, and you couldn't have told me otherwise. If you'd suggested that i were afraid or insecure, i'd have laughed. If you'd told me i was touch- or sex-deprived, i might have agreed, but assured you that my day was coming. Ah, the power of positive thinking...or rationalization and denial, for you can make a compelling case that my entire life was one walking displacement behavior. An alienation intimacy-deprived identity crisis gone steroidal, melding seamlessly with a savior complex.
Having long pursued the path of self-awareness, it's rare when any new realization startles me. But yesterday i stepped into a biggie.
I've never told someone they're hurting me.
Not in all contexts, mind you! In less intimate relationships, even family, i've made such declarations. But in romance, this society's most intimate arena, i've never told someone they're hurting me.
Astounding.
Mind you, it's not like i've been disconnected from my pain. In many ways, i've been more in touch than most. But that's on an impersonal level...understanding how as a baby and child, this culture of fear (and circumcision) crippled my capacity to trust. Then, from adolescence, how being unfucked and untouched for months or years will damage anyone irreparably. And finally, how an almost total lack of daily, unconditional communal nurturing turns all of us into hollowed-out caricatures of humyn beings.
I've never told a lover she's hurting me.
The reasons are myriad. My pathologically-happy teenage transformation. Then as a young adult, i began a process of collecting ever-larger perspectives that make one realize how most of the things we all get upset about, are nonsense. I became one of the "strong ones", a rock of reliability. I don't wish to disparage those qualities out of hand; they've made me who i am, and there is good in them. Somewhere along my quixotic path, i also began to embody asimov's First Law of Robotics, the one that prohibits allowing any humyn to come to harm. Not that i imagined myself some sort of robot...but when i read those words, they subconsciously affirmed something in me. That trait melded with my feminism, which longed to make right (or make amends) for the thousands of years of incomprehensibly brutal dehumynization of wimyn, and created in me a very giving attitude in matters of the heart. It made me content, even eager, to take more than my share of sacrifice or hurt. Yet i also became (never by choice) more loner than lothario. My singular ways have pushed me far enough from the mainstream, that i've had only three deeply intimate romances. All of which has contributed to me never...
...tell a lover she's hurting me.
And i know that's not even the right way to say it! It's better to say "I'm hurt when such and such blah blah..." Heck, i'm fairly sure i figured that one out even before it made its way into popular consciousness. But i realized this week that when someone's actions are hurting you, it can feel insincere to deflect the blame off them. Even if you realize that blame isn't appropriate or productive, it still can be HARD to not shout, "You're hurting me!!"
It turns out that i, like everyone else, have spent much of my life as little more than a robot, emotionally. If you're not out in the street once a day, screaming your outrage to the moon or dog or postal carrier, then part of you isn't quite alive.
You're hurting me!
Not you, reader. Like everyone, you're doing your best.
I wish i could tell you that's enough.
But if we're going to save this playful, loving species of ours, we're all probably going to have to start doing better than our best.
That's not unrealistic, is it?
I love you all.

"The Humans Who Went Extinct"

(Why Neanderthals Died Out and We Survived)
-by clive finlayson
2009
How would you like to meet a humynoid species bigger-brained, sturdier of build, and more enduring than our own?
Yikes!
Say hello, neanderthals.
Clive is a professor, museum director, and evolutionary ecologist, and the greatest accomplishment of his wonderful book is deflating a goodly portion of humyn arrogance. We have long fancied ourselves the pinnacle of life, more awesome than any creature ever, an unstoppable force of nature. Even when we talk about the unfolding planetary ecological apocalypse we've caused, there's an unspoken element of perverse pride for many. Come on, you know it's true.
We be the baddest of the bad, dad?
Well, no. Oh to be sure, we dominate this planet like no species ever before, but the image of us as irresistible conquistadors from time immemorial is horse hockey, sayeth clive. He rolls out a compelling case, painting a picture of primate prehistory which is far less monolithic and inevitable than the one to which we cling. And the archaeological/ecological evidence supports him. He shows a world in which many humynoid species and sub-species lived concurrently...and all too often died out, not because they weren't successful, but sometimes because they were too successful, such that they couldn't survive the immense changes of the past hundred thousand years, as ice ages came and went. He shows us how technologies and art arose, then died out, then arose again (and again and again?), with neanderthals, proto-ancestors, and ancestors not conquering each other, but probably just copying each other. We eradicated the neanderthals? Not bloody likely. And we now have proof that other hominids survived as recently as four thousand years ago. The 300,000 years that neanderthals roamed makes our 100,000 a bit puny...
Much of this is about the difference between conservatives and innovators. Conservatives are beautifully adapted, while innovators live on the edge, in a more scrambling, tenuous existence. But even with that, there's nothing inevitable about innovators surviving when you understand how grand ecological change can be. It happened to be us who survived, but it could have gone any one of a thousand other ways (including of course, no primate survival at all). Clive embraces the theory that our brain growth is an offshoot of the complicated social behaviors needed for group hunting. Much of his argument focuses on our development as meat-eaters...perhaps too much so, for as he admits, meat-eating habits survive in the archaeological record far more profusely than other behaviors. Most of the later middle chapters get bogged down in detail, so if your patience wanes, reading the first few chapters and the last will provide all the big-picture understanding you might want.
A fantastic, necessary read.

termiNation

I never expected i'd review the Terminator franchise, as the sequels seemed resolutely determined to break no new ground. And each iteration goes one step further in exposing the flaw at the heart of the franchise - the concept that humanity is "like, totally special and soooooo worth saving", a conceit that's embarrassing coming out of the mouth of anyone over fourteen. But having finally seen the TV series, a change of mind is merited.
THE TERMINATOR (1984)
A frankensteinian vision that taps into our paranoia over the potential for our genius creations to outsmart and destroy us, the film is a stunning synthesis of acting, dialogue, and visuals that grasp you from the first second and never let go. As close to cinematic perfection as one can expect.
TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY (1991)
Writer/director james cameron, schwarzenegger, and linda hamilton (BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, HILL STREET BLUES) return. This one vies for a top-five spot on the list of greatest sequels ever...which is all the more amazing, as the plot is largely a recycle of the original. This should have been the franchise's "Return of the Jedi"...but the brilliance is again unrelenting, and it touches the heartstrings better than the original.
TERMINATOR 3: RISE OF THE MACHINES (2003)
Great acting (yay, claire danes!), competent writing, and dandy visuals, but...for what?
TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES (2008-2009)
This one had failure written all over it. How do you move a franchise this profoundly visual to the small screen? Why even try?? Yet, with episodes on PTSD and a terminator's befriending a wheelchair-bound library aide, this one goes where no other sequel has gone - new ground. One or two clunkers aside, it is stupefying that it got cancelled. Well done, lena headey (GAME OF THRONES), summer glau (FIREFLY), and thomas dekker (HEROES).
TERMINATOR SALVATION (2009)
So meandering, i look at the trailer and swear i've never seen the film, even though i KNOW i have. Yes mr. bale, you should have played the terminator.
TERMINATOR GENESYS (2015)
Truly not bad. It might have even been good, had they not cast a piece of wood as kyle reese. I cried for emilia clarke (GAME OF THRONES, ME BEFORE YOU), having to act off this meathead-lite.
TERMINATOR 6 (2019)
Original star hamilton (the series "...was perfect with two films...but there will always be those who will try to milk the cow") is slated to return! Moo tu, linda?

everything's comin' up neurosis

I've been awash in mental illness the past two years.
Not my own (though i have been touched by minor depression and PTSD).
No, i've been coping with the mental illness of others...a parade of close associations with very unbalanced folk . Moreso than at any time in my life, by far.
But when talking about mental illness, i have a different understanding. In this culture of fear, alienation, and touch deprivation, mental illness is the norm. You never have, and never will, meet a humyn untouched by some form of depression. Every one of us is, to some degree, a sociopath. Even the medical/psychiatric establishment fails to grasp the fullness of this. I was recently reading a study about how stress affects sleep patterns. The baseline comparisons assume the existence of sleepers who experience no abnormal levels of stress.
I assure you, such people are mythological as unicorns.
Science's inability to grasp the fullness of this means that most of our clinical understandings of "normal" humyn behavior are a little (or a lot) off. We are all damaged...but most of us manage to rationalize or deny it, for what other choice is there?
Many, however, stumble over that line where we're able to control or hide how broken we are. And when we slip, we often go FAR.
It started with a tree-trimming client, who lived alone. I worked for her several days a week for a couple of years, eventually doing all sorts of handiwork. I became her largest source of humyn contact, something we all need to keep us sane...but this culture makes us all so damaged and needy, that the very thing we require to live (love and unconditional support) is corrupted. As a result, the obvious cure for loneliness can be a pill as poisonous as staying alone. In our last year, i became more and more aware of a bipolar disorder in her. There were weeks when she was a joy to be around, but other times a darkness would descend. She would become paranoid and condemning. Some days, i knew that nothing i'd do would be right. I abided it, because i knew how much less caring and understanding my replacement might be...but those of you who have known such people, will probably understand what i mean when i talk of stomach-hollowing stress.
Then i had an almost-romance with a womyn who had PTSD (and was well-aware of it). Her mother, sister, and the love of her life (and his replacement) had all died within a few years of each other. Even though she was aware of her condition, she couldn't control it, of course. Fortunately (or tragically?) i held back from consummating our intimacy. I feared her demons, and knew we didn't have deep compatibility. Yet even with that, she became unhinged and wrathful, so much that i feared she might try to hurt me, or worse. One night there was a fire across the canal, and i awoke with a nightmare, fearing she had set my home ablaze.
After that, my first (temporary) home in CA was with an obsessive/compulsive, bipolar live-in landlord. The first condition can be tolerable or even amusing, but in conjunction with the second, it's a horror show. You quickly learn that it's not the outbursts that kill you, it's the holding one's breath, knowing an outburst could come any moment. I lived like that for three months, in a shared situation where i couldn't even retreat to the privacy of my own room. I wanted to stay in touch with him after i got out, to be a support and friend...but my own wounds are too raw, my walls too thin.
A month after i arrived in San Francisco, i became entangled with an open mic MC who has anger issues, compounded by paranoia. I became a demon to him, someone who was perhaps responsible for everything that was wrong in his life. The most irrational hatred could pour out of him...and again, i wanted to be a support and friend, because i understand what he's going through far better than most, and underneath it he's brilliant and well-meaning. But i couldn't escape the terror over what he might be capable of, and how his outbursts shredded me, so my only goal became to extricate myself with my life intact. Hopefully, i've done so.
My point in sharing all this isn't "boo-hoo for me". My point is that these people are US...and though most of us may fancy that there's a huge gulf between such obviously damaged people and ourselves, i assure you that's not the case. With just a few unexpected turns, you could find your life spinning into darknesses you can neither comprehend nor control. Or maybe NOT you personally! Maybe your own walls are so impenetrable that you'll never fall prey to such "weakness" (i was like that for a long time myself). But if that's the case, i submit that you have no idea what dehumynizing price you've paid to stay "healthy".
We're all sick in one way or another. What else could we be? We're products of a sick society.
A century or two from now (on the unlikely chance that humyns are still around), we may finally understand how we existed so cut off from the love and security we need to live.
Keep pushing toward that day.
In the meantime, do your best to fill everyone around you with forgiveness and love.
Especially yourself.
I love you all.