Gil Can Run!A blog on Running and all the crap that runs through my head while doing it

Mar 11th E-mail Scams and still working

I’ve been keeping up my running, and I’m still working on my super-secret project and trying to get it completed, so I’ve been ignoring all of you, and I fully apologize.
On the running front, I’ve actually been super consistent over the last 3 months or so. The Hoka One One Arahi 2s are working to perfection and apart from some normal aches and pains, I’ve been feeling great and am almost back to my pre-ankle issue pace. Anyway, I decided to update you all today because someone’s been trying to scam me.
So there’s this newer email scam of people trying to say that they have a hacked your computer through an unnamed porn site and have a video of you masturbating and will publish it to all your friends and ruin your social life, if you don’t pay them a ridiculous sum of money in bitcoin. Few funny things here, one I don’t visit porn sites, yay me! I don’t know if the people in porn videos are being exploited or not, I’m not going to contribute to that possibility given that most people trafficked in this world are trafficked for sex work, much of which ends up getting videoed. Second thing, let’s say I did, why am I going to care? They grossly over-estimate my ability to just give some stranger on the internet $2000 worth of bitcoin. More than that, while I wouldn’t want something like that circulating around at the same time it’s nothing to be ashamed of. I wonder how much money that person, or those people have made off of people who were shamed into sending them money. I can’t imagine they wouldn’t be trying it if it wasn’t successful. Look, I’m pretty simple and plain about things, but we really do need to stop shaming people about sex. It’s stupid and silly to think that just because we’re so into judging people for what they do to themselves or other consenting adults, some other asshole gets to make tons of money scamming people just based on those people’s shame.The first time I saw one of these emails a few weeks ago I just ignored it. This is the third time I’ve gotten one of them, and I’m just angry now. I even responded to the person sending, told them to have fun. What a ridiculous and lazy scam. And it would be completely unsuccessful if we, as a society, stopped attaching shame to any and all forms of physical sexual pleasure.
So I have no shame here and neither should any of you!
OK, rant over.

Have fun, keep running, and remember; if Gil can run then so can you!

Oct 5th What’s going on?

So yesterday a friend said to me, “You haven’t been updating in a while.” I know, I feel bad about that, I’m sorry everyone. Apart from actually writing, and I mean writing a lot, I’ve also just been off my game. Ran most of the Summer, ran most of the last two years injured, but I’m finally starting to come out of that, then I have to work on my conditioning and get the miles back up. Changing shoes was a nightmare overall, but I’m glad I stuck by my guns and told New Balance to shove it with their support of someone who is just disgusting.
I was going to run today, but a lightning storm this morning preempted that. As we know, I just don’t run in lightning, and nobody should. I know some of you do, and I beg you not to, there’s no point, it is just needlessly endangering yourself. If you can hear thunder, if you can see lightning, you are close enough to be in danger. I did run yesterday, slowly getting back to it after so much intermittent training.
On top of the injury, there’s just been the constant injury of this disgusting joke of a government in the United States, and in Italy. I had to have a conversation with my mother the other day about what vaccines I recieved as a child, in case there’s an outbreak of something here in Italy, I know if I’m safe or not. The only vaccine of the really important ones I think I haven’t had would be the BCG vaccine for TB. Which I may talk to a doctor about at this point, because shit. The Italian government now doesn’t require vaccines for school children! Are you fucking kidding me?
So while the Italian government is fucking over immigrants and killing or otherwise irreparably harming children with ridiculous policies, they’re doing nothing to actually fix any of the real problems Italy faces.
A friend of mine and I were just talking about the horrible inefficiency of the Italian Postal Service or Poste Italiane. I sent my ballot back to the US for the November elections, it’s been 10 days, I have not even seen the tracking number call up as being put into the system on the Poste website. That’s €8,40 worth of postage, and 10 days and as far as I know the letter, it’s just a plain letter envelope and two pieces of paper, has not moved from the location which I left it, having paid my postage.
It seems like a silly thing, but this is a basic need for a civilization, to be able to securely send things over distance and trust it will arrive. It’s why in the US they put the Post Office in the Constitution, it’s that important. If you can’t get something this basic right, how are you going to manage anything else. Americans who complain about the USPS have no idea how good that system is, and how good they really have it, they’ve never dealt with international post offices.
Other things the Italian government could focus on that would actually help, corruption. The company that runs the Bari Nord trains, the one that had that horrible accident two years ago where 23 people died, they’re “under investigation” but still that track where the accident occured, it’s closed. It has been closed for two years. The people are suffering, there’s no indication it will be fixed anytime soon. This idea that private industry somehow works better when it comes to stuff like this is just ridiculous. All it does is encourage corruption, and just doing the bare minimum in the name of profits.
Get rid of all this corrupt nonsense maybe? Nationalize the railroads, get everything up to speed, working again, expand the lines so you don’t have to take a bus anywhere south of Lecce. There are very few train tracks going through Puglia, a tourism hotspot, and they make it damned near impossible to get around! It’s insane. They’re throwing money out the window by not modernizing the infrastructure. Why, beacuse the corrupt business owners just pocket as much of the money for improvements as they can.
Maybe instead of decrying immigration they could change the racist policies in place meant to harm the immigrants, or the policies which create the immigrants in the first place by shitting over their homeland and propping up figurehead leaders that allow the West to strip their lands of all the wealth, leaving the people nothing but to either move or starve.
Then there’s the bullshit in the US, and how the people haven’t literally taken over the floor of the Senate to stop them from doing anything is beyond me! What will it take for the people around the world to finally have enough and decide to just shut this whole thing down until we can sort out everyone’s bullshit? If the people who should know better and represent us, and good sense aren’t, then we need to stop them. Just like this whole “Amazon will pay $15/hr” thing. But then he’s going to take the middle manager and supervisor bonuses away. Bezos is literally the richest man in the world, and he can more than afford to pay people a living wage, and still give the bonuses. This is just bullshit, he’s fucking bullshit.
But this is the way the world works, they’ll tell you to hate that you have to pay taxes, but they don’t show you how much money your labor really makes, and how much the owners take from YOUR value. They’re taking way more than the lion’s share of the value of your labor, giving you a pittance, and then telling you the reason you don’t get paid more is because taxes are too high? The hell they are, the average CEO in the US is making $318 for every $1 the average worker is making. Taxes aren’t your problem! The fundamentals people, organize, get your shit together, get out there and fight for just some basic decency! Demand decency! From that orange sack of flesh in the White House, to the CEO of your company, from everywhere, DECENCY should be the rallying cry and we needed to get this all together yesterday!

Have fun, keep running, and remember; if Gil can run then so can you!

Jul 22nd The US for the Summer

Hey everyone, yeah I’ve been horrible, it has been like 2 months, what he fuck is up with that? Right now, the rain is fucking pouring down, I need to sleep and I’m hating life. I mean I have said this before, I love most of my family, but when I’m here I have so much bullshit to put up with. That my car was destroyed a couple weeks before I got back here makes it so much worse.
Anyway, I’ve actually signed up for some races and even a marathon. So I’ve been training to not be awful, I’m figuring to go for 5 hours again, like my first marathon. It’s going to be difficult, but today I did 20 miles. OK, just under 20 miles. It was ok, I walked a lot at the end, it was not a great day for running.
So that project I said I was working on, the rough draft is done. So from there I have a lot of editing it to. That’s the really hard part I think, but I’ve gone this far, I may as well continue and get the damned thing done. I’ve also started accumulating the gear I need to do proper voiceover work again and perhaps a proper twitch stream. But those things will wait until I’m back in Italy. Which brings me to the reason I’m writing.
I’m homesick, like really homesick. There has been so much going on in Trani this summer and so many people have been posting all the awesome things happening and I’m missing it. It’s brutal. In a couple weeks, Sting and Shaggy are playing a free concert, literally .25 miles from my apartment and I won’t be there.
Just under two months until I get back, and hopefully this move I made will work out for the best. I will hope I have the time to do all the amazing things I’m planning and do it all well. I’d also like to try and get back to the Maratona Delle Cattedrale and go for a sub 3:45. The Hokas seem to be doing well for me. My ankles are feeling better, I’d have more mobility if I stretched properly, or at all.
Anyway, I need to get to bed. I have to wake up and drive my mom to work, so I have a car tomorrow to get things to make my mom’s house a little better. As I plan to not return next summer for any appreciable time, I want to get everything as well set as I can this summer.
Also, a new tattoo may be coming soon. That will be fun.
Oh, one more thing (totally Columbo of me), seems a bunch of my friends from a while ago seem to have forgotten who the fuck I am. I haven’t changed who I am at all, so knock off the bullshit.

Have fun, keep running, and remember; if Gil Can Run, then so can you!

May 9th Checking in

Hey everyone, I’ve gotten back into the running groove for the most part. There is a reason for my absence though. Without giving up too much, firstly, this year has been a challenge so far. My energies have been elsewhere, you will find out about that when the time is right.
It’s almost time to pack up life and head back to the US for a few months as well, which is just, it’s not as exciting as it should be. It’s odd, my of my students dream of being able to visit anywhere in the US, I get to travel when I can afford it, and it’s more a source of dread for me at this point. Yes, I want to see my friends, and most of my family, but the fact is the people I don’t want to deal with, those I have to deal with because of their proximity, well it causes me no end of stress.
I had been doing good with getting that under control and putting those anxieties out of my mind, but the last couple of days it has been pretty bad. Who wants to deal with that? I think next Summer I will not be going back to the US for any sizeable amount of time. Maybe just a couple of weeks at the end of August. It has been almost 3 years now and no one has visited me, I have been back to the US 4, going on 5 times. People need to start making plans, that’s all.
Speaking of plans, things aren’t necessarily going to change here, but as I said my energies are elsewhere, and if I can manage to make it work, things will become very different. I don’t expect to knock it out of the park with my first at bat, but I think I have something going that I can definitely work with, I just have to be patient. Hopefully, once the heavy lifting with this project is complete I will be able to give you guys the attention you deserve, all 90 of you.

Have fun, keep running and remember; If Gil can run then so can you!

Mar 7th Keep it Movin’

I’ve been doing really well. Watching what I’m eating, going out and running no matter what. My ankle still isn’t improving, and today I went a little faster and definitely am feeling it. I am down 3.7 kg (8 lbs) over the past three weeks though. So I’m getting the job done. I’m still pretty upset with myself for giving me this big a task to do at this point. Just have to keep making progress is all.
More craziness happening in the world, can’t even tackle all that. But I watched Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure the other day, and why can’t people just be excellent to each other? Why is this so hard? I don’t think I’ll ever understand that. But either way, I’m keeping this one short today. I have much to do, and little time to do it in. Lots on my mind and lots of things to sort out.
So just go out today and do your best to be excellent to the people you see. Not just the people you know, but everyone. A smile can mean everything to a stranger. A kind word or just saying hello, can make all the difference in the world.

Have fun, keep running, and remember; if Gil can run then so can you!

Feb 26th A week back at it

So I’ve been sticking with it, my ankle hasn’t gotten worse, hasn’t gotten any better, but not worse. Today I had my best 5 miles since I got back to it. I had time after to get showered, get dressed, get to the store and stop at the pharmacy to weigh myself. I’ve been staying strict to filling out the food diary, and not snacking. Got myself a pineapple and some kiwis and whipped up a lovely fruit salad. All this, and I’m already down 2 kg (about 4.4 lbs). If I keep this up I’ll be back in fighting shape by the middle of April.
I’m not going to stay long and write much tonight. I just finished dinner and it’s past 11pm. I haven’t even washed the dishes yet and I just can’t sleep with a sink full of dishes, it just does not happen. So, I actually just did that before I even finished this.
That’s the thing. I didn’t like that the dishes weren’t washed, so I changed it. I don’t like that I’m putting on weight again, so I’m changing it. I’m not hoping things will change, I’m not wishing things would change, I’m not praying things would change. I’m taking matters into my own hands. It’s the only thing that will ever work. Complaining about it won’t help, the only thing is to work to make a change.
Some people think I’m an “extremist” or a “radical”, but the truth of the matter is, I see what is wrong, and I know I need to act to change it. Things need to change, and there are some points-of-view which are useless to helping. Because there are philosophies out there to intentionally cause harm, and we don’t need that. So let’s ignore those people, and certainly let’s not vote for them.

Have fun, keep running, and remember; if Gil can run then so can you!

Feb 22nd Inexcusable

It is, completely inexcusable. It’s been over 2 months since I’ve updated anyone. That’s depression and anxiety for you, plus being sick twice. I haven’t been running really, not since the new year, maybe 10 miles the whole month of January, I’ve done a bit more in February. I’ve decided I just have to keep moving until I can get my hands on some shoes that work for me. It’s hard sticking to principles. My ankle still hurts, I’m still refusing to buy brands which support fascists. I’ve been reading up on Hoka, given they are likely my next shoe. The Deckers company seems pretty serious about eliminating human, animal and environmental abuses from their supply chain, so I feel pretty good about that.
So I’ve been doing 5 miles a day when I can since Sunday. I put on a lot of weight in the past few months, so it’s been slow going. An extra 25 lbs (12 kg) makes it much more difficult. I’ve been making entries in my food diary again, keep track the best I can. I’ve also almost completely eliminated alcohol and have just finished the last of my Fanta. Saturday night I finish my chocolate and then it’s just fruits for dessert. Until I get myself where I need to be and healthy again. I’ve had a couple times in the past few years where I’ve put on a little weight and then had to take it off again, but not this bad. But I’m not too upset about it, because today was my 4th 5 mile run in 5 days and it was my fastest. Once I get the weight off, I’ll start focusing on other things.
Gun control “debate” is on again. Looks like the kids might win this one, finally. We hope. But who knows. People are trying to parse words, post-modernist semantic argument bullshit. I had someone try to ask me my definition of “semi-automatic” so I just ripped it from the dictionary, because I don’t have time for that mess, when I say semi-automatic, I know what I mean, and any sensible person knows what I mean, there’s no reason to “define” it so if I get one word out of place, they can claim I don’t know what I’m talking about. Like when I use the word gun instead of “firearm”. For me to use the correct term all the time, when you obviously know what I’m talking about would mean I’d have to give a shit about guns beyond the fact that 30,000 people a year are dying in the United States alone because they are so ubiquitous.
Look, I get it, it’s you’re “freedom”, but you can be just as free with a revolver, shotgun, or bolt-action rifle. But that’s the thing, again freedom. You’re still free to won whatever you want. Your idea of what “freedom” is, is the problem here. I’ve said this a million times, freedom doesn’t come from a government, an army, a nation, other people, freedom comes from inside of you. I can act freely anywhere in the world. I may have to face consequences for my free actions. That is the way of the world. The consequences can change in different parts of the world based off someone’s arbitrary rules. But I’m free to act in concert with my conscience, my morality, my ethics, all the time. I understand the slippy slope here, of “well then people can do whatever they want and some people want to do horrible things.” Yep, and they do, and if they get caught, they face the consequences. That’s the way it goes, sometimes you have to take the bad with the good. You need to find those people and try and figure out how to get them to change their mind about what is moral, ethical, what will give them a clean conscience. But that’s all.
So let me be clear about what I mean. I am free, I can do what I want, when I want and I don’t care what the government I live under states about it. If I wanted to go to Tehran, stand in the middle of the city, drop my pants and wipe my ass with a picture of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei I am 100% free to do that. I can travel to Tehran, I can get a picture of the Ayatollah, I can drop my pants, I can wipe my ass. I am free to do these things. Now, will the government of Iran throw me in jail? Probably. They might kill me, I don’t know and it doesn’t matter. If that’s something I really wanted to do, I’m 100% free to do it. Do I think that’s worth doing? Do I think it needs to be done? No, I think the Ayatollah is an idiot, but I don’t really care that much. I wouldn’t do something like that. But it illustrates my point. If you’re not willing to face the consequences for something, it doesn’t mean you’re not free to do it. It means you either think it’s not worth it, or you’re scared. Simple as that.
So when you say you don’t want to be limited in only being able to buy certain types of guns, what you’re really saying is you either don’t think it’s worth the consequences (which you don’t even know what they are) to own one without government approval, or you’re scared of the possible consequences (once again, you don’t know what those would be) for owning one. Either way, no one is limiting your freedom. They’re simply making you choose between what you ostensibly want to do, and consequences for doing it. The fact is, right now the consequence of you being able to buy firearms without so much as background check in most places in the United States is 30,000+ deaths per year. 13,000 murders. More than drunken driving accidents. The consequence of there being almost 1 privately owned firearm for every man, woman, and child in the Unites States is 3.2 deaths per every 100,000 citizens. What the people who want to seriously limit the way in which you purchase a weapon, possibly the types of weapons you can buy, and that you need to pass certain criteria of fitness to own said weapons is that they no longer wish to face the consequences, and that the onus should be on those who wish to express this freedom to face consequences.
You are still free, you can freely buy any gun you want. Go ahead, but be prepared, if you slip, if something happens and you get caught, you’d have to face consequences. You know, instead of someone-you-don’t-even-know’s kids, or concert-goers, or movie-goers, or church-goers, or just some guy walking down the street, or some guy who got pulled over for a busted tail-light, or you know, some kid playing with mom and dad’s Glock unattended. Whatever. You’d have to face consequences, instead of them. That’s what this is at this point. You need to accept that unfettered access, and in so many places it really is, simply does not work. Any argument against localized gun control is only an argument for nation-wide regulations. Because you can drive to a state where it’s easy, or a city where it’s easy. Go to a gun show, and express your freedom, and then express your violence all over your area of choice. So something needs to be done nationally, and then if you really want a semi-automatic (I really think that’s a sensible and logical cut-off), then you can find a way to get one and get around the system and then hope you never get caught with it. Because you don’t need it for any reason.

Have fun, keep running, and remember; if Gil can run then so can you!

Dec 10th What’s in a name

So I’ve just been doing a mile a day basically. Today I managed about 1.25, my ankle is very sore and my legs are not feeling good either. It has not been fun, as far as running goes that’s for sure. It didn’t help that my watch wasn’t picking up the satellite today and that my headphones have decided to stop working in one ear. Certainly things have not been getting easier. Someone mentioned I seem to carry a lot of weight around with me. I mentioned I may be too appropriately named.
I think I’ve discussed that before, St. Christopher being a story akin to Hercules, Atlas, etc. I try and help others who I see trying to take that weight on themselves, but they never want to listen. So this gets me thinking about Conspiracy Theorists again. I know I’m not easy about it, but I see so many otherwise intelligent and well-meaning people wasting their time, efforts, causing me and others unnecessary anxiety, hurting their own goals by wasting time and wasting energy on this nonsense. I get it though. I get it, because there was a time I fell into the conspiracy theory hole. When I was a teenager, when I thought I had a good handle on things, when I thought there was this thing we call control.
The problem is, you look out on the world, and you see all this pain and suffering and you can’t reconcile it without some sort of evil force behind it. There has to be something more than a made-up value system. So you look so hard for it. You look everywhere you can, and you find whatever adheres to your own ideas of how the world works and what you think the evil should look like. Just as our Gods all too often appear to have a will which matches the things we wish the world to be, often our Devils adhere to the same principle.
But we want a greater meaning to our suffering, or the suffering of others. It’s normal and natural, and why because the nature of the horrible things people do to people, do to animals, do to the planet in the name of wealth. So you look for people who tell you, it’s not really the money, it’s the power, it’s this deep conspiracy of these types of people. They twist the names and meanings of things, or they don’t, they let you twist it because you are desperately searching for that great evil, and then just let it go. The Earth is flat, vaccines cause diseases, man didn’t land on the moon, aliens visit us, the media is out to get “so-and-so”, airplanes are equipped with chemical dispersal devices to make you sick, control your mind. It’s all a load of bullshit. Like all good bullshit, there is sometimes a grain of truth to it. Yes, airplanes are used in agriculture, at low altitude, to put down fertilizers and other chemical agents, not all bug sprays are safe. Yes, sometimes a live vaccine can cause complications, it’s rare but it happens. The fact is, dispersing chemicals at 35,000-50,000 feet in order to damage people on the ground is about as effective as spraying your Windex bottle at your mirror from the other side of your apartment. But let’s not bother with science. There’s a conspiracy here! People are out to get you.
And that’s the thing, if you can personify it, you can get a better purchase to try and combat these things. You can maybe gain control. That’s what I wanted. I wanted to try and get control, to get ahead of these things, to find a way to “bring them down.” But there isn’t any way to do it. You could literally kill every single “person” you think is involved in whatever conspiracy, Or at least jail and ensure those people have no phones, no way to contact others, each and every person in the intelligence community, media, military, politics, pharmaceuticals, whatever area or industry you think has a conspiracy, you can get all other people, from the CEOs, Leaders, Middle Managers, down to the damned Janitors, you can take them all, put them into little isolated cells, even just let them sit there and never even feed them. Other people (assuming the system itself remains) will merely slot right in and continue doing exactly what the “conspirators” were doing previously. Not because it’s a conspiracy, but that’s simply how the system works.
How do I know this? Look at history, look at all the times we have claimed to cut off the “head of the beast”, the shit always rises to the top again, doesn’t it? Because the system never changes. We change the name, we change the lexis of how we speak about it, but the system always remains. And people will do unspeakable things in order to find themselves at the forefront of that system. People will manipulate others into thinking they are fighting the system, where those people are merely serving it by harming others just so that person in “control” can have just a little more.  The problem isn’t even really “capitalism” the problem is profit. The problem is the same regardless of the socio-economic controls you put on, communism will have the same problems overall, because someone will manipulate to gain control of the system, for their own profit.
We need to go back to a more primitive way of life on a micro-level, with people growing, building, working for themselves. We can mitigate that with a progressive macro philosophy, where we go out and discover and explore like we are supposed to. I firmly believe both ways are the way forward. We need a comprehensive system which is fundamentally different from everything else which has come before, we need it much sooner rather than later, and that is all. If there is a conspiracy here or there, that is not the problem, that is a symptom of the disease. Stop wasting time on it. Focus on what we need to do to survive now. Finding a new way to live which works. By buying into conspiracy you are only serving the system, in attacking a symptom, not the disease.

Have fun, keep running, and remember; if Gil can run then so can you!

Dec 5th All these years…

So I’ve been keeping up with my club running streak and put in 5k this morning. Next week and the week after are going to be really difficult, and I started out too fast today and now my ankle is really sore. But that’s neither here nor there, I need to stay focused and on task.
To that end, I really have to start working to break out of this depression. I can’t decide if it’s because I haven’t had a drink in over 3 weeks now, or if having a drink would make it worse? But I noticed something while I was sleeping that I have never noticed before. My dreams are more vivid, more bizarre, and way more disturbing when I am depressed. I don’t know how I have never noticed this before, and I don’t read up on symptomatic expressions of things. I’m not a doctor, I just know how things go for me and how my body acts and reacts, and that’s that. But after last night’s weirdness, I realized that whenever I feel like this is when my dreams are at their most distressing.
I don’t know if other people feel that way too, but it was a very interesting observation. Like my mind is working harder to try and escape its own prison. I can’t just rely on running to mitigate these things, like now with my achilles still in pain every day, what if something happened and I couldn’t run anymore? I’ve been trying to diversify my activities. Yoga, video games, funny TV, movies, video, things I enjoy. They do not create the same conditions.
At least now I recognize another indicator of trouble, really off-the-wall dreams/nightmares. The more things I can identify the better chance I have of mitigating and alleviating this issue. It’s been a long process, and it’s been a long time since I’ve been this down for this long. It’s been since just before my birthday really, and it has nothing to do with the birthday itself. In a time keeping system centered on a solitary planet orbiting its star, which even gets that timing wrong (hence why we have leap years and leap seconds) I’m not particularly concerned about “age”. I think I’m just truly tired, I’ve been battling personally, professionally, so much this past year or so. I think it has just caught up with me. People who witness me work think everything I do is effortless. I think I’ve discussed this before. I make things look easy. But that is so far from the truth. It’s a constant swirling torrent of doubt and worry, study and work. One thing is for sure the work is never done until it is done. At that time I’m sure I will wish for 5 more minutes, 5 more hours, 5 more days, 5 more months, 5 more years of worry, of doubt, of struggle.
That’s why I try to stay positive even when my mind is attacking itself. Because when it’s done it’s done, and so we have to our best to make the most out of every moment. That’s why I talk about treating people better. Everyone should have a chance to make the most of every moment they have. People’s ability to make the most of things shouldn’t be hindered or inhibited by artificial systems of resource distribution and the lies created therein, that some people are deserving of more based on whatever convenient criteria those who have the most determine will solidify their grip on their supposed wealth.
And that’s the thing. Life is hard enough to be a modern human being without people piling on and deeming some “deserve it”. This is why if fight as I do, as long as I have the strength to handle my personal battles. I can only ever imagine how much worse it is for someone who didn’t have the advantages I’ve had in life and yet have the same inherent disadvantages. Even when I was very young I recognized how lucky I was, even as bad things were happening to and/or around me. I’ve always had that basic empathy, to understand that the world is not mine, and there are things happening outside of my view that makes what I am going through absolute child’s play to someone else. If you cannot understand that, or if you do not want to understand that, then you need to search for your empathy. You are at fault, and it will lead you to faulty philosophies and ideas. If your ideas about how the world should work place the blame of the problems onto other people based on pure prejudice and judgement of how you think “other people” act and think, then you are at fault. The only time blame can be assigned to other people is when you can demonstrate that their actions have caused injury to society at large.
Case study: Trickle-Down Economics, or “Supply-Side” as people like to call them. It simply does not work, the wealthy hold onto their tax breaks, the poor pay more and get poorer. It causes an injury. The people who support and enforce this regime are under the assumption that the poor are to blame for their lot in life, due to laziness, irresponsible behavior, things like that. Even though you can see the stagnation in the economy, the increase in debt, the increase in pain and suffering among the vulnerable, people still continue to enforce this faulty ideology on others. People who support trickle-down are wrong, we have the statistics which show them to be wrong, and we have the empathy to reach out and see the suffering of people caused by it, to know that it is wrong. If it worked, it would not increase suffering at all.
This is a problem in general with the United States though, and the rest of the world to a point. But I have used this example before. Back in the days of the Dust Bowl, and other more minor but still troubling droughts, there would be travelling holy men, the people who became the pastors in mega-churches today, their ancestors. They would go from town to town promising that it would rain. They would seduce the women in the town (seriously, there’s a great description of that in John Steinbeck’s “Grapes of Wrath), they would take as much money as the town would give, promising they could make it rain. They’d have a huge event at the town’s expense, and when the time came and it didn’t rain, they’d tell the townspeople that it was their lack of faith, it was their sinful ways which caused the rain not to work, God didn’t abandon them, they failed God. Why we allow these people to continue to treat us this way I will never understand. We need to change.

Have fun, keep running, and remember; if Gil can run then so can you!

Dec 3rd Busy Times

Work has picked up significantly. But I’ve been keeping up with my run streak, even if my ankle is back to the level of pain it was before I took my break. I’ve just been plodding along most days, just getting a mile or so in. I am fine with doing that for as long as I have to for now, it’s ok. Did a little more than a mile today, originally I wanted to do at least 5, but I was just sore and tired in the morning.
I was going to talk about people who don’t pay attention, but I realized they don’t pay attention, so it doesn’t matter. People who think they’re the arbiter of what is what, that they have secret knowledge that other people don’t. I have no time for that mess. Otherwise intelligent and good people wasted with their head up their own ass. I don’t have time for it. This world doesn’t have time for it.
As I get older, as I see the pattern repeating itself, I ask myself if it is truly worth the effort expended. Is there hope left, I ask myself? My heart says yes, but in my head I’m pretty sure we will just keep on pretty much this same trajectory, with a few course corrections until the world’s demise at our hands. Simply because the “most powerful nation on Earth” lacks any and all humility or sense. Not just the politicians, the people, the politicians are a reflection of the people. Don’t mistake my lack of patience for a lack of humility. People just piss me off because while I’m well aware I’m an idiot, they all think they’re smart. Again this idea that they hold some secret knowledge.
Like I stated the other day, truly strip away everything, really see how deep your conditioning goes. How even your supposed “awakening” is just more bullshit. You’re no less a commodity than anyone else, and if you don’t think you’re buying into the system when you spout your nonsense about different conspiracies, even if the conspiracy ends up being true at some point or some level, you’re a bigger fool than I can put into words. There are so many feedback loops to the way things are, and I’ve yet met another person who said “Sure I’m a giant hypocrite, but so is everyone else.” Everyone seems to exclude themselves from the “full of shit” class. I don’t understand how others don’t see it. But that’s the way it is. Constant self-doubt, self-criticism, re-examining, re-adjusting, yet moving forward with the best possible information you can, all the while knowing you’re probably wrong about the whole thing. That’s the only way to be. Once you learn something, then know that you know it, but be prepared that it may be wrong after all. But here’s the thing, with virtually everything we argue about, everyone’s wrong. The problem is there are things we do know, and people intentionally cast doubt on that in order to further their own agendas, but whatever.
I’m going to keep on this. Take everything away, ask yourself what you truly need, and how you truly feel about all other people having those things. Ask yourself how you feel about other beings having those things, not just human. Ask yourself how you want to interact with the world, as yourself how you want to be interacted with understanding that you have no control over that. There’s a great video I saw of this woman who encountered what looked to be a brown bear in the somewhat wilderness, and she was “talking” to it asking it to leave her kayak alone, then proceeded to pepper spray the bear. The bear then goes to the kayak and destroys it while she yells and screams. It’s by far one of the most annoying things I’ve ever seen. First the woman’s voice is truly irritating, secondly who does she think she is telling a bear what to do. Third, if she hadn’t done something in the kayak (I’m going to guess she ate in it and ended up dropping food in there) to make the bear interested it would have left it alone. Fourth, why did she interact with the bear? There was clearly some sort of construction there, surely she had some sort of edifice to protect herself from the bear. Let the bear be, I’ll bet if she had just stayed inside and let the bear go about its business it would have left the kayak alone, bears generally don’t want to mess with humans. Unless of course, there was food in the kayak.
But that’s what people do, they yell at you like you’re the bear, but you’re not a bear. But they think they can control you, like you are an animal, because they see other people as being “controlled” by someone else, when in reality we’re all merely a product of the collective, unyielding conditioning. What they don’t understand is that they are just as controlled. They think they are above it, they think they are in the Matrix and have taken whatever fucking pill it was that “Neo” took. But none of that is true, they’re still just as conditioned, because they refuse to look at themselves, even the ways in which they do look at themselves, aren’t anything meaningful. I don’t know everyone, I’m making general statements based on my own experience. There are ways in which my conditioning alters my behavior that I am sure I, myself, am not aware of. It’s ok. It’s ok to not know, it’s ok to not be in control. Stop thinking it’s not ok. Yes, it’s also not ok for people to treat other people shitty, it’s not ok to be racist, classist, sexist, it’s not ok to be shitty in these ways. It’s not ok to think you’re better than anyone. Even the people who are shitty, even the people you know are dead wrong. You’re still not better than they are.

Have fun, keep running, and remember; if Gil can run then so can you!