Monday, September 5th 2022

Ed asks if this is a joke. He has made a rather remarkable video about how British conservative politics are doing what British conservative politics do. They are causing as much environmental damage as possible. The only reason for doing this is to line their own pockets with money. I understand the question of whether this is a joke. It’s just so cruel and horrific to understand and look at and the talking heads themselves are so mind-numbingly difficult to listen to, I don’t see any humor in this.

People here are no different. That picture I posted from a bicyclist’s Instagram yesterday came from another ironically conservative minded person. They just don’t see anything wrong with this.

In the video, Ed uses the word narcissism. When I heard that, I didn’t really believe it was part of the argument. He was referring to the narcissism of the new potential prime minister. I thought that was moving away from the point and attacking the man but now that I am reflecting on it, this is probably one of the keys to all of this.

What is narcissism?

Narcissistic personality disorder — one of several types of personality disorders — is a mental condition in which people have an inflated sense of their own importance, a deep need for excessive attention and admiration, troubled relationships, and a lack of empathy for others.

Bingo. This is literally everyone I hate in the world. This is a perfect description of almost everybody I write negatively about in this blog. Everyone who catches my attention as being brain breakingly selfish and insane fits this description. My ex-girlfriend lives for this description. My chicken neighbors especially the wife, the skinhead cop, the medical bureaucrat and pretty much every double-talking popularist are all completely a perfect fit for this description. The self congratulatory nature of the government of this country and even more so for the Russians.

Is there a cure for narcissism?

There is no cure, but therapy can help. The goal is to build up the person’s poor self-esteem and have more realistic expectations of others. Treatment usually centers on talk therapy. Sometimes people call this psychotherapy.

Wait. Something’s not right here. How can all of this self loving come from poor self-esteem? What is this bullshit about realistic expectations of others? Something is wrong here. I mean that doesn’t make sense. I think I better dig deeper.

Can narcissism go away?

The reality is that narcissists are very resistant to change, so the true question you must ask yourself is whether you can live like this indefinitely. Focus on your own dreams. Instead of losing yourself in the narcissist’s delusions, focus on the things you want for yourself.

Okay. I think I’m kind of in quicksand here. This makes some sense except when you have narcissists in positions of power and most importantly, when they are damaging ecologically and robbing you of your opportunity to at least enjoy a clean natural environment. I’m talking about pollution causing people and their narcissism. That’s the thing. Having someone who believes they are the be all and end all of the world is fine until they start getting their hands on resources and start destroying the planet to fulfill their narcissistic needs. That’s the difference. Simply avoiding them becomes impossible because they take the whole planet with them.

I’m not satisfied with any of this. There has to be another question.

Narcissism leading to ecological crisis

Now you’re talking. Take a look at how much time has been spent trying to unravel this exact problem. People have been scratching their heads over how we are so completely blind in the service of our own egos.

This article explores the relationship between environmental crisis, narcissism and the work of grief. In the first section, we provide an overview of the way narcissism has re-emerged in recent scholarship within cultural geography and environmental psychology. Developing and in part challenging the normative focus on selfish, self-destructive consumption that we identify as a major strand in the literature, we draw out themes of daunting loss.

Ok.

Sustainable development: a narcissistic strategy to cope with the environmental crisis?

This article analyzes the institutionalization of the discourse of sustainable development (SD) for more than three decades and its development as a symbolic structure that influences subjectivity and social practices in this century. Embracing an interdisciplinary approach, it focuses on a debate between psychoanalysis, attentive to the ways in wich discontent is manifested, and the ideas of risk society and reflexive modernization, from social risk theory.

I think what he’s trying to say is that it is necessary to find a way to make people believe that being conservative with one’s use of resources makes you look sexy on Instagram.

This movement already exists and I have found quite a few content makers that focus on minimalism, tiny houses, environmentally friendly or off-grid living. I don’t become attracted to this sexually per se but if they are making slick videos towards this end, this would be the point of it. How do you make environmentalism sexy? How do we take the concept of this corporatized, well resourced and moneyed view of the human being that we see on Instagram and somehow change this to a more environmentally friendly view?

I’m getting quite a workout here this morning. How about we go exactly to the source. What happens when you go on Instagram to look for environmentally friendly images?

Environmental conservation: 

That link is for a Google search but this group was a screenshot of some of the images that came from the Instagram search. I guess this is our problem, isn’t it

? We have been taught to believe that a particular type of image is sexy and a more environmentally friendly view just doesn’t match up.

I mean, the people in these pictures to me seem friendly. Kindness would also be a word that comes to mind. Regular people. Normal people. Simple ideas and some solid hard work. But there is no way that flaunted sexuality is a part of these images. Dominance and power don’t make it into this line of thought. It’s not hard, it’s soft. I guess a picture is worth a thousand words. 

One other thing that I saw in these pictures by the way is that they keep using my old logo for practical English. “The world is in your hands” was how I presented my English classes. The idea being but if they had the power to truly speak well, this would somehow improve their lives. I guess that’s part of the irony too. Local narcissist don’t speak logically, they just let the pictures speak for themselves.

Forgive me if I pull myself out of this rabbit hole. I feel like I have made my point somehow. I don’t think I have found the words to completely nailed down my idea but I think I have somehow montaged a thought but at least make some sense.

Or maybe this is the entire point. To be so narcissistic as to lose all common sense creates a different sort of mathematics. Perhaps I do need pictures. Okay, let’s try some math:

narcissistic conservative leaders = environmental catastophe

***

Okay just one more. Is Vladimir Putin a maniacal narcissist?

Yes.

***

It’s 7:30 on Monday morning and I’m not sure I have anything at all to do today. There is some possibility that Ghenna will come by to do some jobs that I am not going to do myself. This requires opening the gate and hobbling around on crutches a little bit. I need to call the gas company. I am not on any kind of City gas so it gets delivered in tanks. I use very little natural gas and I have a reference for the last time I called them but I really only need maybe three deliveries a year if that. It’s not expensive at all. I get a little bit of a discount but even if I didn’t, it would amount to about $25 a year. If I wanted to challenge my off grid status, I have a wood stove that I could cook on. I rely on the gas stove because of its convenience. My wood oven is not very effective or efficient. This is not to say there is no charm in cooking or baking in the oven I have. You just end up burning a massive amount of wood.

I do spend a lot of time tinkering with the garden. I think a lot about what sorts of things I want to plant and what kind of infrastructure needs to be in place for them to be successful. Waging a war against the drought is making me crazy. Sitting on the couch yesterday with my ex partner, a really unhappy part of our conversation was that there’s just no way to do Russian normal in this Garden any more. Whatever she thinks should be done it’s just not going to be possible in our current conditions. Nor do I want it. We’re going to have to go to uncharted Territory whether she likes it or not.

I also don’t want to remodel the house but there are certain things that can be done to make the place a little better for the winters. For example, my current plan is to build a platform for the floor in the warm room. I am a floor person and I prefer to live and work at floor level. This as opposed to furniture dwellers I guess. I don’t want to overstate this. Sometimes I want to sit in a chair and sometimes I don’t. But I like being on the floor.

In the winter however, this is a massive problem. As kind as the current floor setup is during the warm Summers, it is absolutely brutal in the winter. Basically I have hardwood floors that are painted but not sealed. This means there is air flow coming up from underneath the house. In the summer the warm air goes up and is chased by cool air that is naturally occurring. This is extremely similar to thermal cooling which is where you dig a huge trench and bury a pipe that draws outside air and holds it underground to cool it before pumping it through the house. I’m not arguing with this at all. But in the winter, the last thing you want is that cold air coming up through the floor ruining all of the effort you make to heat the place.

Technically, I have four fireplaces in my house. I have what you might call a Russian fireplace, it has a name but frankly I don’t know it. And it is a big brick box, about a meter and a half high and a meter and a half deep, kind of a brick cube really, that surrounds a small hearth. There’s also a place to store firewood built-in. The way it works is you build a fire which allows radiant heat to get absorbed in all of the masonry and then when the fire dissipates, the heat remains within the brickwork and warms the room for several hours. As long as the temperature is above zero centigrade, freezing, it’s really not so bad. It’s rather comfortable because my bed butts up against this stove and it makes it a very nice place to be in the winter. If it goes below freezing, I have a little electrical help.

But this particular type of stove can very much be improved upon. For example, it is possible to break into the side of the firebox and put a tube that takes the heated air directly from the fire from the firebox and create a circle before heading back to the masonry block and eventually up the chimney. By putting more masonry around this tube, you add more heating space and you can actually make a bed on top of that instead of what I have. This would double or triple the amount of radiating warmth and also diminish the amount of floor space for cooling. Ria has one of these in her house and it is profoundly warm and comfortable there. Ria is a smart woman. Nobody’s ever going to argue with that.

I’ve never really dove into this idea. I can see it as being a project that wouldn’t take too long to put together. My only question would be about how much damage we would be causing to the room and whether or not we would be forced to rip up the floor. Probably we would. It’s not a concrete floor so you would probably need to build a pedestal and a new foundation in order to do this. Still, it’s a pretty good idea.

My current idea is simply to build a platform about 10 or 12 CM above the floor and fill it with spray foam insulation. This would not exactly give me a warm floor but it would give me a floor that doesn’t have cold air blowing up from underneath it. I don’t know that this would work but I think it would at least allow a comfortable place for me to be while I’m in here. And really, I’m going to be spending a lot of time in here. This is going to be both where I sleep and my office because it is unrealistic and a waste of money to even try to heat my office in the winter.

I have been thinking about putting in new windows. This is another one of these requests that gets bogged down here. Ghenna tells me there is a local builder who is pretty good about making new windows. I don’t know what his prices would be to rebuild some of the windows that I have. Basically it’s a very old school setup with interior and exterior hinged glass. In the summertime, I like everything wide open. I don’t have too much problem with insects except for flies in August and mosquitoes all summer. But if you close the windows at dusk this minimizes the mosquitoes. I have one mosquito screen on one window but as I’ve been saying, I’m not sure whether it works to keep the bugs out or the ones that are already here in. I’m actually pretty happy with just closing the windows. Perhaps this is old school Russian thinking. It costs the least money and is yet the most effective.

I also have an option of buying prefabricated windows. People call these plastic windows. I’m sure they are more energy efficient. My current plan is to wait until I finally get my conversation with the local guy. I have one window that is pretty much finished and needs to be replaced but perhaps I would like to rebuild at least two and perhaps all my windows depending on the price and what comes from it. The minimalist idea is simply to get a couple of tubes of silicone caulking and seal up the crap I have as well as I can.

What did I do last year? I just lived here. I didn’t do anything except hang some blankets instead of drapes over the windows and keep them closed all the time. This probably got 80% of the job done. I also only heated this one room. This saved a lot of wood and a lot of electricity. My electric bill went up from basically nothing to about $35 a month. That’s a pretty reasonable number for the winter by everybody’s standards. 

Part of the problem with all of this planning and dreaming is that I don’t remember really suffering so much. I mean, you just kind of move around and do things when you get really cold. There were some really brutal days that were well below zero. But you know, I don’t know who people think they are or what we are supposed to be but in those cases, I just sort of layer up like an Eskimo. I have several pairs of warm athletic pants that I can wear under my jeans and two or three sweaters under a top coat. It’s really not all that uncomfortable. You get used to it. You wear a warm hat. Light fire. Move around. Eat something warm or drink hot tea.

The genuine problem is that this place has been here for 50 years and people used to live out here all year just fine. The neighbors just cut down an orchard that has been here for a long time. They used to be the kind of people who were considered ambitious or Rich. I guess this is where the grandmother gets her assholishness. They managed to acquire a bigger chunk of land they had more food than they needed. They were probably party members.

What I’m trying to say is that I’m learning that no matter how irritated I might be by small inconveniences, or even big ones, sometimes not doing anything turns out to be just fine.

On the couch with my ex partner yesterday, I tried to put into perspective all the things that she thinks can happen and exactly how much material and expense to do the sorts of things we want to do. We don’t have decent land to plant in. We either over fertilize or we have to bring in our own topsoil one way or another. For the raised boxes, this is a given. But in her mind, she was thinking we would just continue doing this everywhere.

Then I took out the calculator and I showed her exactly how many square meters we have to work with here. When I said that I was ready to buy 20 more trees, she thought that was ridiculous. She wanted to know what we needed with all of that fruit. She had just spent an hour processing sunflower seeds and my guess is she was now completely against farm work. You could see the disappointment on her face staring at this mass of sunflower seeds that were economically almost worthless and how much time she had spent harvesting them. The woman had given up the ghost for agriculture.

The point is that you don’t have to care so much. You don’t have to sell the fruit and we don’t need so much. Honestly, if there are people in the village who need money from selling food, you can let them come in and pick the orchard. There’s not really enough land to be commercial here and it’s done. And even if we don’t go that route, just let the fruit fall. Let it become a part of the ecosystem. Don’t worry about it too much. Just take what you need, give gifts. But aside from the fruit, we get shade, soil stability and a habitat for many creatures such as birds. We get all of the beauty especially in the springtime and then in the fall, whether it’s a good year or a bad year, we get fresh fruit. 

Possibly we get one more thing from this; a return to something like our genuine natural habitat.

Look, I’m just saying that I don’t have any fuzzy belief system saying I am some kind of ethereal alien to this planet. I’m not made in the image of some all seeing universal white guy with a beard with magical powers to cause pain and grief to others. I’m saying we are herbivores. We have hands that are very good at pulling grass, picking berries and fruit and bringing it to our mouth to grind without teeth. As an animal, we are particularly well suited to fruit, nuts and berries. Frankly, I think beans are healthy for me and beans are definitely the future the more we go dry. But other than squash or perennial greens such as what I already have naturally occurring, I can’t see investing in annuals anymore. 

I mean, I like hanging out in the garden and sometimes I like gardening itself. But most of the time, it’s so much work for so little reward and oftentimes, everything is just fine when you don’t do anything. 

Maybe this is the real problem with the world. People love dreaming and planning but doing the actual physical labor is completely something different. I was hacking on narcissistic conservative leaders before, but I don’t see any of them on the factory floor 8 to 10 hours a day. It’s one thing to sit at the head of the table and go blah blah blah, it’s another thing to physically have to do the work to realize these bullshit dreams. It’s one thing to get a fat check in an envelope, it’s quite another thing to pay for that fat check with your own blood sweat and tears.

Yeah, I think perennials are the way to go. A couple of tubes of silicone caulking. Maybe build a couple of boxes and spray some foam insulation inside of them. Get my leg fixed. I think I’ll be fine.

***

You know, it’s funny where your mind goes sometimes. I should just go to see a doctor. There are a couple of reasons why I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to get snared into the medical system and be obliged to sit and be poked, infected with every disease in the room and sit around being yelled at by obnoxious nurses and told what schedule I have to live in by overbearing doctors. You suffer an unbelievable loss of freedom submitting to the medical profession. Maybe on television doctors are kind. Maybe in the states, they are pacified by the insurance companies and obligated by the drug companies as to what they give you. But here, you just get more dictatorship. They don’t need to tell you what they’re thinking or why. You don’t get second opinions unless you fight for them. And in the case of that one obnoxious bureaucrat in Minsk, they can just decide they don’t like you and then do everything possible to ruin your life. Just for the drama of it.

But I’ve been thinking about this narcissism business. I’ve been thinking of how we have developed such a strong sense of self entitlement, white entitlement or whatever narcissistic terms apply to the vicious and maniacally selfish animals that we are. But now I was thinking much deeper than that.

I remember working physical jobs when I was younger. I don’t really remember myself as being a lazy person when it came to work. I was the first one to pick up a shovel or a pic. I would sometimes come early to work and just start pounding away when we were digging trenches or something like that. Even when it was my gig, I never sat around staring at plans. I always stood in the trenches next to the guys doing what needed to be done.

But what I remember about this time was that there never was any fairness in the pay scale. When you work for people, though you do the actual labor, you get a microscopic amount of the profits back to you. I don’t know what the contract might be worth, let’s say we’re going to build something for $1,000 and it requires two people to help to get the job done in 2 days. The workers might get 10%. Maybe 20. But the boss gets all that money just for getting the contract. This intensifies when you get to the corporate level because all of the people wearing suits get a cut of your money every time. And they always make more than you do.

What is the lesson that this teaches us? It’s an obvious answer. It means that you either work for yourself or you look for a job where you can wear a suit. And this is all well and good as a decision. It’s pretty smart to have figured this out. But what the hell happens to the world when nobody wants to do the work because everybody’s busy trying to be the boss? What happens to all the resources in the world when suddenly we need to feed all of these bloody suits who don’t ever get out of their chair?

I’ll tell you something else I learned from digging and pounding nails. I don’t ever remember being a part of any kind of community or even feeling that way. I never felt like anything but disposable meat. I don’t remember having a voice or having anyone concerned about my life. I don’t remember feeling a part of any kind of community, not with the company and certainly not whatever region I was building in. I’m not saying anything unique. We all know that this is the way the world is. This was how the West was won. Throw in all of those disposable men to make their best efforts to build the road and then the bureaucrats come in and take it from them. Nothing new in this thought.

The bitter pill though is it’s never sustainable. There is nothing sustainable about it. There’s nothing lasting. There’s no end to the misery. It’s birth to grave. You never get out of it. And even in situations like my own right now where I’ve managed to create for myself at least the potential for a little economic freedom, a little genuine and metaphorical fresh air, I get to be crippled by a medical community that just refused to give me care. And if I’m looking at the whole situation, possibly even set my entire thing up so that this would happen to me. I’m not speaking shit. I’m not dreaming.

I did not intend to write anti-russian propaganda. That isn’t the point of what I’m talking about right now. But I have a link that might be interesting to look at. What it is is one of these pro military propaganda arguments. I’m sure everyone in the world would be familiar with this but Americans would understand this to be one of those “be all you can be” advertisements to get people to join the army. Tom Cruise in Top Gun. Join the Navy and see the world. This is nothing new and every country in the world sends this out to touch some sense of burgeoning adolescent testosterone and make people want to go be murderers for their government. The only difference with this one is that there are subtitles beneath that are a bit more cynical but also truthful about life in the Russian army.

https://youtu.be/dNgKGL8lQck

If it’s important to you to understand the Russian dialogue, it of course does not match the subtitles but it goes something like this:

This is the first day of your new life. Whatever was yesterday no longer has any meaning. Nobody is worried about who you were before. Who you are now is all that is important. What means something is if you are capable. This question can be left unanswered but if you can, you will sleep calmly afterwards. You will find out the limits of your abilities. From the hell of your limitations, you will be prepared to break yourself till exhaustion. Every day here hardens your fat and resolve. You have made the decision yourself. The commanders here are only to show you your enemy.

Because without enemies, there is no fight. And without a fight, there is no victory.

But in reality, your most important enemy is your former self. Your assignment, find your enemy, catch him and become better than him. And never retreat. This is when you become a winner. This is why tomorrow is the first day of your new life.

If you will forgive me, I have to go throw up.

***

It’s 7:15 and I am at the end of a genuine take it easy day. I am not healthy but I did everything I could to make myself comfortable today. I did a little workout, I ate some very simple but warming meals. I’m dressed really warmly and I even managed to deal with Ghenna today. He showed up on his bicycle, picked up my two-pronged cultivator and made the lower gardens look like somebody is here to take care of them. And he turned over the compost pile. Was there some residual thoughts in his head about being drunk and stupid last weekend pissing me off? It’s hard to say. But today he was sober as a judge, held back any personal forwardness on his side and executed his work like he meant what he was doing. I overpaid him and I got a fist bump. Just one but it was a good one.

After that, I made myself a meal and then got off my feet. I am really not feeling very healthy. I haven’t had any cardio in a month. Not being able to move or even going to the extreme amount of pain that I’m feeling right now has been more than annoying. The actual wound that I have been trying to take care of looks amazing. It’s not quite better but it looks wonderful for what’s there and is turning the corner on getting to completion. For this, I am very grateful.

As for the rest of it, I am exploring alternative possibilities. One has to be creative in the solution of their problems to be successful. This is true no matter what your line of business is. For me, the situation is absolutely bittersweet. In one way of looking at it, I managed to take care of all of the important business that needed to be taken care of before experiencing failure. Yes of course, I had help and I have to say only good things about my ex partner. We brought in the sunflowers and the corn and she brought in all of the bean trestles and put them in the barn. The field and the gardens are a very sad site right now. But, we got what we got and the job got done at the end.

As for what’s coming up, I’ve talked enough about that. I shared my vision with Ghenna, not that I count him as a serious advisor but he still rather liked my ideas. On the one hand, he is very agreeable to everything that leads to more work and more money. But I also think that we understand each other on the level of ecology genuinely.

I mentioned to him about perhaps picking up 20 more fruit trees and a bunch of berry bushes. I told him where I thought we could put them and that I was aware of the difficulty we are having right now. Our habitat is currently damaged very badly and absolutely nobody here is lifting any fingers to make it better. They don’t do anything and they refuse to even be aware of the reality of it. Maybe they’re just not allowed. The oil business might have a heavy hand in that regard.

I also mentioned to him how antagonistic my ex partner was at the thought of caring for so many trees. She had just finished taking sunflower seeds out of the flowers and I think she had come to a true understanding of what agricultural work is like. I’m sure she was dreaming of being at her computer safe and warm and having a plan of what to buy at the supermarket. I don’t blame her for this thinking, I just see what I see.

But my ideas brought genuine smiles this morning. If nothing else, we have shade. We need shade. Shade and we sequester water. We let the land grow back and become what it could be. There’s also a habitat for birds. And then there’s the fact that I’m not really into doing this for commerce. If we have a lot of apples, this never hurts anybody. There’s no such thing as too much food. And if nothing else, there are all kinds of people in this village and locally who could definitely use the money. We could just let them come and take away the apples, take what we need and even let them keep the money. Who does that hurt? He agreed that there were indeed plenty of people who would love such a deal,

There’s a thing about respecting one another. You can be talking to a glad-hander but you can press their honesty and have it mean something. I am not trying to tell anyone that I’m better than them but I have no problem telling my man who he is when he’s drinking and when he’s not. It’s not my trying to be anything special, I just tell the truth as I see it and if I’m speaking to another who has the pragmatism bone, nobody ever argues with the truth.

I told him that he was a genuine soldier today. He worked like a man who meant it. I started telling him that in his current state of readiness, he would be helpful in the war. But then I had to catch myself. When he was in the army, he was definitely fighting on the side of the Russians. I mean, he was in the missile command. That’s right, military secrets, some of those nukes that the Russians used to store on the territory of the Republic of Belarus were right around here in this neighborhood. Publicly, they were taken away by the Russians with the independence of Belarus. Y’all can believe what you want. Anyway, I thought for a moment and then mentioned he could also fight on the Ukrainian side against the Russians and would probably strike fear in the hearts of the conscripts. That was good for the biggest laugh of all.

Ghenna was a captain in the service. It’s funny how the world works out. I have no doubt this is the truth. He has too much resolve to have been a common soldier. He lives how he lives but you can see the discipline when he’s sober. As he was getting on his bicycle, I saluted him and called him by his rank. I’ll never know if the respect is mutual.