Writing is hard for me right now. There are many topics I want to dive into, but some difficulties are taking my attention right now. When those happen, for me, the now ever-present sense of the world as wrong, off-kilter, false, and surreal becomes harder to manage.
I’ve used the films The Stepford Wives and Invasion of the Body Snatchers as metaphors for the way world seems, and they’re still the closest descriptions of how I perceive society right now.
Other people see it, too, and while it’s not enough, it’s some comfort. Writer Tessa Lena is among them.
I see it everywhere. The standards are in the toilet. Nobody has the energy to care. The delivery people don’t look you in the eye, they just throw the stuff on the floor and hurry off. Younger cashiers also often don’t look you in the eye and don’t respond to greetings. Packages get destroyed, stolen, and lost. Tracking doesn’t work. Censorship algorithms are a black box that you can’t argue with. Asking people to think is perceived as an arrogant insult or a personal attack. Thinking is, in fact, “snotty.” And have you seen those “stay away” damaged teens on the train with empty, mentally challenged eyes where, I personally would think twice before I say anything that may piss them off because I am not sure what they may do in response? They have been damaged perhaps irreparably, they are not there. Can’t reach. So many people you just can’t reach.
All this is a result of accumulated, and now acutely visible, physical and spiritual poison.
I recommend the whole essay. Those who watch Disaffected or who read this Substack will recognize a fellow “noticer.”
Thank you for helping me feel just a little less crazy and alone, Tessa.
You make the plot of "The Stepford Wives" sound like a bad thing.
OK, living with women that submissive and brainless would get to be a bore after a while. And, yes, doing that to women would be a crime against humanity. But, in view of the fact that they were previously feminists, you have to have a heart of stone not to see the attraction.
No one who has read Chinua Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart” would fail to recognize this situation:
“Does the white man understand our custom about land?”
“How can he when he does not even speak our tongue? But he says that our customs are bad; and our own brothers who have taken up his religion also say that our customs are bad. How do you think we can fight when our own brothers have turned against us? The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart.”