The Big Fish Eat the Little Ones

Here is an anecdote that has been on my mind for some time. If you know anything about Oakland University, you will probably know that it is the home of the only Chick - Fil- A in Michigan. This is one of those facts that is deemed "fun" in nature. In its quirkiness, it has become almost a novelty selling point by university officials, as though you come for the Chick - Fil - A, but stay for the academics. The sandwiches are apparently delicious, how unique they can be as compared to the rest of the chicken based restaurants is difficult for me to fathom, but I'm told they are good. And by good, I mean that their food is good, because I have been told many times, by many others, that they, Chick - Fil - A, are bad. They are bad because every year their organization gives money to other, "non-profit" organizations that actively discriminate and persecute members of the LGBT community.

This is where the story starts: the information gets out and members of the LGBT community begin to take action. They petition, they protest, they ask for a boycott, they ask the administration to discontinue the company's presence on the campus as it is personally and deeply threatening to them. They make a good deal of noise, that apparently fell on deaf ears. The administration asked questions, but in their own haplessly annoyed way, the way that seems to wink at the perpetrator, letting them know they're really on their side. The campus dinning services on the other hand, claims to have taken action. And to their credit they did, they issued a survey, an attempt to poll the students on whether or not Chick - Fil - A should be on campus. It seems to me that such an important decision being made on the premises of a progressive institution should not be merely left up to a vote, especially since votes do not solve ethical dilemmas, but just prove they are in fact, dilemmas (I.E. we could have all held a vote on slavery and regardless of conclusion, would have still had a civil war). Beside this, the survey was downright tactical, I remember one question in particular: "are you aware that Chick - Fil - A is staffed by students of Oakland University?". Whether the answer is yes or no it does not yield whether or not you like Chick - Fil - A or not, it is just a shameless way of telling you sympathetic facts that might dissuade you of any bad it is doing because it is also doing good. This puts the University Dinning Services clearly on the side of the restaurant. To be honest, I think the members of the LGBT community would have just rather have been told to "fuck off".

To my knowledge, the restaurant still stands at the university, as a pillar for their inability to make any move that might be deemed, in the most remote way, as controversial.

This is not a rant, there is a point here. The point is, that the Google empire knows more about me than most of my family members do, but we are incredulous when we hear the government is collecting our data. My point, is that I think we need to start reassessing who Big Brother really is. I'm not trying to be cliche here, I'm not just going to aimlessly talk about the flawed system I am fortunate enough to be apart of. No. I only want to rail against what I truly feel helpless against.

For example; take the way we vote. We vote both politically and with our dollar, but in both sense of the word, I feel as though I carry no value. Despite my refusing to shop at Wal-Mart or BP or Chick - Fil - A, there are still floods of people who rush to these institutions and cast their vote every single day. On the flip side, the incentive of receiving my insignificant vote does not seem like it pushes the politician to do what I elected him to do. Meaning this, Chick - Fil - A is always going to win because people are always going to go there and the powers that are supposed to stop it have no incentive to stop it. So what do I do?

In order to live in modern society, we have to buy into a system. This system is incredibly indifferent to us, it doesn't matter how careful you buy and it doesn't matter how often you buy, at the end of the day you will always buy. In order to use the internet and talk on the phone and send letters and emails and texts, we have to share our data, our identity, with the rest of the world. We are like children playing with sharp toys, but we're worse because we recognize the toys are sharp and we're still outraged when they are taken away from us. I don't think anyone would know what to do with pure privacy, because no one would be listening.

Again, not a rant. A request. I want the NSA to take all of my data; my phone calls, my emails, my bank statements, my texts, my diaries, my receipts, my random book annotations, my grocery lists, my love notes, my birthday cards, my bathroom stall carvings, I want them to assemble it all in a bin and label it "to do". Then I want them to go through and read it, have to read it, the president and congress and the CEO of Chick - Fil - A should be forced to read every single one of these "to do" files.

Then they will have to pay attention to us, not necessarily to what we're saying, but to the fact that what we say, says a lot more about us than they are even willing to pay attention to.

Thanks for Listening,
Kyle

Writing Through Life

It's been awhile since I've written anything in this space. I started this whole endeavor so I could have a place to be brutally honest with myself as well as work on my writing ability. This past week in a half, I started a new job and I haven't had much time or energy to write anything. That being said, I couldn't stop thinking about writing, not in a pretentious way, like a "I can't stop thinking about writing because I do it and it's something cool and different that I do, look at me" kind of way, but rather in a "I need to fucking do this" kind of way. At work I keep wishing I had more to write, I think I'm going to start teaching myself how to write copy, at home I offer to help my girlfriend's siblings out with their papers. When it first hit me, that I need to write, and this past week in a half it really hit me, the first solitary moment in time when it hit me was when my little brother messaged me on Facebook with this, the blog he created. I was speechless, mostly because it is so apparently inspired from what I did here, but also because it's good, it's insightful and it has opened a window into my little brother Mike's life that I wish I could of had when I was younger. But this inspiration is not without context, this is coming from an area of great conflict for me.

When I was younger I played a lot of video games, entire summers would go by and I would hardly see the light of day. My games of choice were role playing games, mostly fantasy ones, because I loved any game with a good upgrade and because I loved being a different person in a different world. I'm sure any novice student of Psychology reading this is pining to tell me it was to escape, a means of getting away from the real world with locker room bullies and maybe I liked upgrades because I was crippling self conscious of my own abilities. This is probably true on some "sub level" somewhere in my inner psyche, but all I can say is that I thought they were fun. My cousin or my best friend and I would sit there for hours on end playing this massive game that wasn't about beating, but just about playing, about being in a world unlike your own. 

My brother has a very different gaming experience, one that is enveloped in the world of online gaming. When he plugs in, he is entering a world not unlike his own, but one full of his friends, his family (my uncle and my cousin are avid gamers) and a level of comfort that probably only exists in places he deems safe (ie not school). I think he said it best when he said: "it gives me and a lot of other people a place where they can fit in, where you don't have to be judged upon what you look like (unless you're camping in halo, no one likes a camper)". I never thought of them in this way, I only saw my brother sitting in front of a TV screen looking really concerning. It would make me nervous, it still does. It's not that I misunderstand and it's not even really about the video games, it is about his slipping grades and the fact that he doesn't seem to be able to pull away from it in order to take care of his day to day mundane tasks.

Then he shows me this blog. It is genius in a way that I was never capable of seeing in my brother before. The posts are very relevant, he is able to deal truth to himself and others fairly; he knows he needs to play less, but he wishes people could see it more of a balance issue than one of abstinence. He posted a piece on pushing your limits, but never getting lost in the conundrum of trying to be better than others. He posted an incredibly brave piece about the use of the word gay as an insult, something too few high school kids ever actually talk about. Even the title of the blog itself, the double meaning makes my English major blood rush with pride: Gaming through Lives, lives meaning lives in a game or life itself as we live it. What an accurate and fun way to portray what he's actually doing with what people perceive him to be doing. 

I guess what hits me after seeing this, is that my brother looks up to me. He sees me doing something that I love and it speaks to him in such a way that he is inspired to start a blog himself. I realized that I have to write because every day I am inspired by people I look up to doing what they love. I want my brother to get his homework done, to turn his grades around and still game, to be the exception to people's expectation of gamers everywhere. I want my brother to keep writing too, but mostly, I want my brother to game as hard as he can and school noobs and buy upgrades and fight demons and play In the Arms of the Angels over his headset whenever he kills another player's dog in COD. I want my brother to game through life in the most deliberate way he can because I know my brother wants me to write in the most deliberate way I can, which is why I need to write. I hope I can continue to do that for him.

Thanks for Listening,

Make sure you check out his blog too!

Kyle

With an Audience in Mind

This polar vortex has taken quite the toll on my finances, from what I understand, it has taken a toll on yours too. The roads this winter have cost estimates of over a million dollars in car repairs including flat tires, there have been numerous cases of expensive and in some cases irreversible damages to homes, not to mention record freezing temperatures that have taken more than enough stray animal and human lives to deem it a tragedy. If you combine the very tangible and frustrating effects of the winter on your finances with the far more intangible effects the lack of sun, stressful driving conditions and general cold weather has on your psyche you have a recipe for regional hatred. Though this polar vortex is not the first time I've come into contact with people hating on the mitten, but the rise in off hand comments and facebook outbursts have driven me to be far mar reflective on the matter. Why do so many people I know consider this state to be a trap? One that so many are willing to escape by all means short of  gnawing their leg off and even some who might be willing to do even that.

My first experience where I truly became cognizant of this phenomenon is when my very first girlfriend moved to New York to go to college. This might seem kind of late in the game to be aware that others might not possess the same sentiments towards their location as me, but having lived such a happy and relatively easy life I didn't find much cause to think of these things. Anyway, she would constantly go off on how she needed to get away from the Midwest, away from Michigan, away from this mundane culture. I would be nothing, but obediently supportive. Many of our mutual friends seemed frustrated because to them it seemed like she was touting that she was better than us simply because she moved to a cooler state (NYC). Even today I know that is not true, that she did feel a calling to exist in a fast paced setting and she in no way was condemning those who did not feel such a calling. Although she usually wrote them off as jealous, which I also do not think is correct because this was different, as I said before these people did not have the calling to move. No, it was her attack on the very culture of Michigan that hurt them. This idea that because our state and where we grew up is so much a part of us, we are also our state, we comprise it and therefore we are all Michigan as Michigan is all of us.

Today, I meet numerous people with this "get out" mentality. I can see how Michigan might feel like a trap. The hand shape that seems to be held up in response to your hopes and dreams, the fortress of massive lakes surrounding it leaving you only one congested exit and once out you find yourself in the Midwest region's flat and elusively short, but actually fairly substantial territory. Most people I know want to flock to the coasts like migratory birds fleeing the harsh cold of a culture-less land. They want beaches, interesting and attractive people, art, life. In my mind I see them wanting adventure or a journey. This of course makes me sound like I'm much older than they and know all of their hopes and aspirations as though I've been right where they were at and gotten through it all. Not true, but I have been on journeys and adventures. This again sounds like I know better them, which seems like I'm rushing to the point, let me back up:

My problem has always been pornography, it's an addiction I've struggled with for some time. I have no qualms in saying this because it is the secret of it all that makes it so difficult to rid myself of it. Anyway, I've made great strides in grappling with this addiction over the past few years. I've had a very tumultuous as well as triumphant journey and have found a deeper sense of self awareness and love than I could have thought possible. When I first began my journey I was spending most of my day wasting away in font of a computer screen and though I still struggle at times, through the action of myself and my friends I have it under control. This is the true problem, my inability to talk about it prevented me from even acknowledging it, and the true problem is not acknowledging the true problem.

Connecting the dots: if you feel a calling to move to another state with culture and fun and better weather, you feel that your problem is that you sit wasting away in a state that you feel truly displaced in. Then move. But first acknowledge your problem: talk about it with a friend or write it down. Acknowledge that maybe a change of setting is only going to give you the temporary alleviation of pain the way a vacation does, that maybe your location has nothing to do with your unhappiness at all, but your inability to recognize deep down why you are unhappy and that the tools you have to fix it do not vary from state to state, but come from within and can be accessed regardless of where you are. Again, I'm not trying to make a claim like I know better because I certainly don't. All I know, yes know because I have been there, is that acknowledging and truly seeing what is holding you back in life is the only way to take the necessary steps to getting over it.

This is ordinarily the point in which I would be done. But while I wrote this I can't help, but think of a conversation I had with a friend of mine who asked me if I had a particular audience in mind when I wrote these types of things. I do, I have in mind that I'm writing to a lot of people who are a lot like me circumstantially and so I assume they take similar things away from what I have to say. But just in case, I think a disclaimer is necessary here, if nowhere else. Disclaimer: I am a suburban, white, male individual with a slight, but very basic grasp on my own reality. I am in no way responsible if you find yourself in very different living circumstances than me and your application of what might appear to be advice does not drastically change the circumstances in which you live. Similarly if you are an individual who finds himself in the same circumstantially alike life as me and do not feel the acknowledgment of your problems has made any lasting difference in your life and you really think you should have just moved to California when you had the chance, this is also not my fault, [insert generic dad advice regarding trusting and listening to others here]. 

Thanks for Listening,

Kyle