We live in a constant stream of attention-seeking shared impressions of the world around us. This flow will increasingly become more difficult to bear. The world will not improve much in the short term or long. Some make the choice to defer their suffering to the “light” of internal narratives, some stand strong and bear the weight of the external pressures as some sort of test of their internal mettle, and some humbly acknowledge their inconsistency and accept what a rational mind can know and make choices based on this knowledge.

We see terrible things every day. There are awful things happening. Things that not only are terrible in themselves, but things that augur terrible things to come. These happenings come and do not stop, and they will not stop. They are relentless and they promise relentlessness for the rest of our lives.

Some of us step outside this grief. Some look to alternative explanations, easily disproven by facts, logic, and examples in history. Those that do so must take these same discordant lessons from reality, reasoning, and lessons, and discard them too; this leads to a whole worldview supported only by propaganda and those who believe in it.

Maybe it’s to protect oneself. Maybe it’s to protect what one wishes to be true. Humans are nothing if not believers. To an extreme fault.

In any case, these individuals stand outside this stream of external pressures and relent to the internal ones, striving for self-consistency over a rational worldview. A self-centered universe containing orbits of other selves in delusion.

In other cases, some bear up, take this stream of shit as it comes, take it as another event in a series of universal indifferent events, and thank their lives, as terrible witness, to continue and prove that one more day is just one more day. They have no control over what is happening in the world, and thus conclude that they should have little response. It is internal strength that matters. To bend is to break.

This is also a sort of delusion. This pursuit is inevitably more solitary, as internal strength cannot rely on the strength of another. But this is another form of universe-making. This is using wisdom as a weapon against life. 

Truth seeking is painful. Some know that inward strength can lie, that nothing is truly indifferent if one has a reaction to it. That they can be wrong and to investigate where the cracks in knowledge lead to difficult illumination.

Some see and know and worry and grieve. Some allow themselves moments of escape without escapism, and moments of strength without indifference. And in a sense of duty, pass along the word of terror, the images of fascism, and the impending facts of doom to others.

These, the ones who care, help to create the pressure that we’re all standing in. They want to help or to inform or to warn, so they do what humans do. Communicate. Their indifference to indifference and their bowing to reality help create the information flow that we’re all reacting to.

Poorly or otherwise.