thewillowness

[thewillowness]

For too long, the COVID-19 debate has been falsely framed as a moral conflict that pitted those who care about people (lockdown supporters) against those who care about the stock market (lockdown opponents). Well, if you look at America today, the stock market is doing just fine, but people are not. They are suffering, angry, confused, and—perhaps most of all—scared.

https://fee.org/articles/france-rules-out-economic-lockdown-despite-surge-in-covid-19-cases-says-collateral-damage-too-severe/

[thewillowness]

I made about $23 in 10 days. That’ll take care of my phone bill.

[thewillowness]

Generation C

According to many sociologists, babies born in 2012 and later are called Generation Alpha. They are children of the Generation Y, or the Millennials. 

Many are anticipating an increase in childbirth starting in November or December of 2020. They will be the “Corona babies,” born of couples who are likely having more sex now because of “stay home” orders and resulting boredom. 

This may be the beginning of a new generation, the Generation C. 

If the Millennials were the digital natives, the Generation C might become the virtual natives. Their parents’ deeply ingrained fear of another viral outbreak would likely to keep these children socially isolated, but as digital natives, they may not see that as entirely harmful to their children. 

A series of likely post-COVID-19 regulatory and legislative trend would encourage smaller class sizes in schools, move toward remote and home-based learning as the primary modality of instruction while schools meeting for selected activities such as physical education and social events. 

The Generation C kids will be raised overprotected by paranoid parents, who will not spare expenses on high-tech health tracking and surveillance technologies. If the “helicopter parents” of the previous generation were crazy enough, the Millennial parents of the Gen C kids will take it to the next level: 24/7 AI-powered monitoring of their children. Raised in this kind of environment, the Generation C will become adults not knowing little else. It will be a dream come true for authoritarian despots everywhere who are in their quest for obedient sheep incapable of questioning. 

More alarmingly, this generation may not have experiences that shaped the childhood of all previous generations: neighborhood play parties, trick-or-treating, unstructured and largely unsupervised play time at parks, teenage initiation to the market economy by way of hanging out at malls, etc. The Generation C will not have an organic community at all but just a network of atomized individuals connected only by the mediation of the technologies. This level of atomization will wipe out whatever that remains of our civic life while giving total control over our private lives to the ICT corporate behemoths (Big Data) and the Big Government. The world of dystopian novels might as well be the realities by the time the Generation C reaches their teen years in 2034 -- just as much of the Generation X enters their 60s and 70s.    

[thewillowness]

Hope versus paranoia

I was aware of the spread of the China Wuhan virus SARS-CoV-2 since it was reported on East Asian news outlets. Weeks before most Americans understood the implication of this virus, I began taking precautions such as increased handwashing. Around the same time, most people around me were oblivious to it. 

I self-isolated myself for two weeks in February, after I shared a ride with a traveller who just arrived at the airport via San Francisco, being aware that SFO is a major gateway to the Americas from China, Korea, and Japan. At that point, very few Americans knew what was coming. 

But I have never indulged in paranoia. 

These days, it is mostly the leftists, progressives and Democrats, long self-appointed champions of “science” and secular humanism, who are acting irrationally and in a state of collective paranoia.

The mass media isn’t helping by reporting every new “study” and “scientific finding” without vetting its veracity. 

Many of the “studies” are often taken from MedRxiv, which isn’t really meant for public consumption but rather for scientists to be able to reproduce experiments and review their findings. Papers uploaded to MedRxiv are NOT peer-reviewed, which means there are many that have not been reproduced in multiple laboratories and thus are inconclusive. Inevitably many of these papers are questionable at best, and some of them will end up being debunked. In other words, they are largely to be regarded as anecdotal.

For example, there was a study that came out from China that asserted that people can ride in a bus and catch SARS-CoV-2 by merely sitting 4.5 metres away from an infected patient. Later this study was challenged by many scientists, as it failed to explain why other passengers, sitting closer to that infected patient, including two sitting right behind them and one next to them, were tested negative. The bus was not a controlled lab experiment, thus there was no way to ascertain the other passengers did not contract the virus before the bus ride or thereafter. 

Another study that alarmed the public into a panic frenzy was the finding that SARS-CoV-2 can survive on various surfaces for up to 10 days. Of course, this was done in a carefully controlled laboratory setting not taking into account a wide range of real-life scenarios: several objects were placed inside a sealed metal tube and the virus was sprayed into the tube using a nebulizer. It does not take into account how these surfaces’ exposure to elements (rain, dust, pollutants, sunlight, humidity, temperature, etc.) could sufficiently damage the exterior of the virus to render it inactive. Note that the virus was detected does not always mean the active virus capable of infecting people. 

In the same spirit of fear, some media outlets are now suggesting that merely taking a walk outside can make you die from COVID-19 (or, in a more ominous way, “it might kill others!”). Again, the key is viral load and infectious dose. In order for you to get actually sick from COVID-19 or any other viral disease, there has to be above-the-threshold level of viral load. 

The accepted definition of “close contact” is when two people are in a closed indoor space, within 2 metres or 6 feet, for more than 30 minutes (or some define as 60 minutes). In other words, the probability of anyone getting COVID-19 from just taking a walk in the outdoors or even from shopping at a supermarket is next to zero. Public transit, maybe, if you are riding a crowded bus for 30 minutes or longer. Rational response is to take calculated risks, not to cower at every “news” that comes out of the news media and opportunistic politicians of both major parties.

This saga makes me think a lot deeper lately about theology and cosmology in general. Why are conservatives -- many of them conservative or Evangelical Christians -- seemingly less concerned about the outbreak while the liberals (both secular/non-religious ones and mainline Protestants) are so obsessed with coronaphobia. 

The former camp mainly looks toward the future with a sense of hope and faith. Their faith seems larger than life. Despite all the bad news they are willing to and able to believe in something greater than life and death. 

The latter, being secular humanists, the life “here and now” is the only thing they have. The best they can believe in is science, at the time when even scientists don’t have any consensus, and the idol of almighty government. Maybe that the Communist Party of China has unwittingly succeeded in spreading socialism to America with this virus. Liberals have now abandoned all the pretence of standing up for civil liberties, and now are calling for a massive authoritarian government action and the kind of collectivism that is inimical to everything America once stood for. No doubt this will only make socialism even more popular in the United States. The future U.S. administration probably won’t stand up to the authoritarian regimes such as Xi Jinping’s empire of “socialism with Chinese characteristics,” and as a result the international standard for human rights will deteriorate. 

[thewillowness]

Hivemind question

A few weeks ago, Amanda Jette Knox (author of Love Lives Here, which is a highly recommended book) announced on Twitter that her teenage child Alexis -- the formerly trans person that is the focus of her 2019 book -- is now non-binary.

Sure enough, some conservatives and anti-trans activists came out of the woodwork now claiming that Alexis had a “regret” over their young gender transition, using this as a fodder for their political campaigns. To them someone going from “a boy” to “a trans woman” to non-binary is a case of “desistance” and even a prelude to “detransition.”

But personally, I have encountered in recent years more than a few individuals who have gone from being trans to being non-binary. Especially those under age 30 this phenomenon appears fairly widespread. The they/them pronoun seems pretty much default in the young queer community these days. It is not like they (plural) had regrets; it is more that they’re evolving and expanding as they discover more about themselves and accept themselves in a deeper and more meaningful way. 

My prediction is that over the next couple of decades everyone will become non-binary by default, thus making the entire concept of gender as a near-absolute social construct largely obsolete. 

Here’s my hivemind question: Is this a common theme where you live? Is the focus shifting from “trans acceptance” in the context of the binary gender scheme to a total, categorical abolition of gender itself? Is a growing number of formerly trans individuals, sometimes after years and decades post-transition, reidentifying themselves as non-binary? Am I the only one who is noticing this?

[thewillowness]

Open book versus bank vault

Sometimes I come across individuals who proudly proclaim, “I’m an open book!” as if that’s a good thing. 

I have learned never to trust such people. If they are gossiping and badmouthing others, behind their back, in front of you (I don’t care if they think they’re “just sharing” or even “venting” it doesn’t matter), then you can pretty much be sure they are badmouthing about you someplace else, behind your back.

Too often, their mouths move faster than their brains. So it becomes a very common occurrence that they are actually saying things that they don’t really mean seriously -- hence it would appear as though they are saying one thing one day and a completely opposite thing the next day. Sure, I understand some people have to vocalize their thinking, even I do this often, but I don’t do that when other people are around! It confuses people and it will reflect very badly on you if you’re being perceived as liars or flakes.

Another thing is that the World War II-era slogan, “Loose Lips Sink The Ships,” is often true. Secrets leak and confidentiality is broken even unintentionally, causing some serious harms to others, while also creating both legal and ethical issues. If you see someone in a position of trust and mandated confidentiality -- such as counselors, “life coaches,” attorneys, members of clergy, healthcare professionals, financial service professionals -- acting like they’re “an open book,” run away from them as fast as you can. If they cannot control their mouths that’s a bad news if you are their client. You need a bank vault, not an open book.

[thewillowness]

Unfortunate side effect of news

Most people are led to believe that the mission of news outlets is to inform the populace on things that are happening. In reality, the very nature of journalism makes it so that people inevitably get a very distorted picture.

One of the elements of newsworthiness is unusual-ness. If something that happens commonly and often, that’s not news and won’t be in the newspaper or the evening newscast. 

It is a news if a 5-year-old dies from COVID-19. Media outlets would write extensively on the case: who this kid was, who their parents were, where they lived, and on and on. They would get quotes from hospital officials, public health officials, community leaders and elected politicians. The media will run photos of the deceased child over and over, to fan the flame of panic, alarm, and fear.   

It is NOT a news, however, if a 75-year-old in a nursing home dies from COVID-19. It would be, at best, a mention of the nursing home and a “75-year-old died” statement. Honestly, we don’t read about the vast majority of the deceased in nursing home and hospital settings, because it’s not “newsworthy” by the professional standard of journalism, which includes (among others) novelty, out-of-the-ordinariness, and whether a celebrity or public figure is involved.  

News highlights the unusual. That’s why you read about a freak accident on the other side of the world, but you might not read about a car theft in your own neighborhood. 

Especially in this age of social media trends and algorithm, the more clickbait-y the story is the more exposure it gets. Unfortunately, the cash-strapped news business cannot resist the lure of clickbaits, and they unnecessarily sensationalize and editorialize their headlines so people would click and share. 

Don’t count on the news to be informed. Develop media literacy. Scrutinize the sources. This is critical for your own mental health.  

Bored? Learn the basics of journalism for free at Alison and even earn a diploma recognized by Ireland. (Not an affiliate link. I don’t get paid for this, but I highly recommend this course -- I’ve learned a lot of new things that I didn’t 25 years ago.)

[thewillowness]

There are (at least) two sides to every story.

Twenty-five years ago I was in a community college taking the Journalism 101 class. It was in the mid-1990s, when the discipline of journalism was increasingly absorbed into the greater field of media and communications. By the time I was considering going to a “J school,” many universities were scrapping their journalism department in favor of communications or media studies department. The World Wide Web was still in its infancy, only a few news outlets were seriously investing in the Internet. But the change was afoot.

A quarter century later, newsrooms across America have been downsized. News cycles are ever shorter, and everything is driven by clickbait-y headlines as journalists are now under a constant pressure to produce stories that get their employers the most Web traffic and social media engagement.

Good journalism is hard to come by. Even the “investigative” journalism these days are more of an “advocacy journalism,” written with a preconceived political agenda, for a pre-determined audience demographic. 

I still know and believe that there are always at least two sides to every story. 

I make a conscious effort to get my news from multiple sources, both left-leaning ones and conservative ones. 

Lately I am really disturbed by how people can see an entirely different world depending on what media they’re listening to. This is particularly true when it comes to the coverage of COVID-19 in recent weeks and months. The left-leaning media have one set of narratives, while the conservative media have another. They rarely intersect or overlap. No wonder why we as society cannot disagree on controversial matters with civility or intelligent discourse. It is always this smearing and slander of the other side.

The left is using their favorite thought-terminating cliche in this, too: Godwin’s Law, also known as Reductio Ad Hitlerum. Anyone who does not wholeheartedly buy into the left’s doomsday paranoid hysteria is now called “science denier,” as though they’re a moral equivalent of Holocaust Deniers and Climate Change Deniers.

Here’s the problem with this: The Holocaust was a historic fact that happened in the past, with plenty of objective documentations and evidences. The science of SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19, is still a developing field in which researches are still being verified and peer reviewed. Unlike the Holocaust, the best the scientists can say now is that we really don’t know the whole picture yet. 

Contrary to what the left thinks of “science” (as their secular humanist religion), real science is not about believing in the predominant narrative pushed by doctors and experts on TV, hand-picked by liberal politicians. It is about rigorously discovering the facts and truth through scientific methods, which are then carefully scrutinized, vetted, reproduced, and then peer reviewed. Everything scientists do in their laboratories and studies are second-, third-, fourth-, and fifth-guessed by other scientists. Even then, any established theory is bound to be revised, built upon, or debunked any time in the future. 

The conservatives and libertarians, too, have their own share of this problem. Not everything is a sinister conspiracy by the Liberal/Socialist Elite. Sure, the Democrats have done much damage to America’s constitutional system as well as the economy. But there’s nothing inherently wrong about exercising the best practice in protecting our own health. While I fully support the message and efforts by the protesters this week at several state capitols, I don’t think this optic is helping. Like some of the far-left career protesters, they seem to go out protesting for protesting’s sake, forgetting the larger strategy for getting things done. And please put your TRUMP 2020 banners away. This isn’t about Trump, this isn’t about owning the Democrats. This is about the non-partisan issue that affects us all.  

I saw a few social media posts by leftists decrying that these right-wing protesters “lack empathy.” I disagree. 

Their empathy is with millions of working-class Americans who have lost their jobs. Their empathy is with victims of domestic violence whose safety is now in jeopardy because of this “stay home order.” Their empathy is with America’s small business owners who create about a half of all U.S. jobs -- and now are struggling to pay their creditors, vendors and landlords. 

There are two or more sides to everything that happens under the sun. They are asking for a sensible, workable solution to balance these competing interests, without burning the whole country to the ground and forcing our children and grandchildren to pay for the massive debt and inflation created by the bailout and stimulus packages.

Their empathy is with the future generation of Americans who think this authoritarian, top-down police state is somehow acceptable.

Many on the left today are Millennials and Gen Zers, who have no memories of America before 9/11. They do not remember the days when anyone could get a driver’s license on the spot for a few dollars with minimal documentation, even without a Social Security Number. They don’t know that in America, one could just walk into a bank branch with that brand new driver’s license, open an account, and walk away with a checkbook (at least in theory no SSN was required for non-interest-bearing accounts such as checking accounts, and often banks near university campuses were used to open accounts without SSN because they were accustomed to dealing with lots of foreign students -- KYC wasn’t a thing until 2001, and in fact, when the proposal surfaced in 1999, there was a wide-spread opposition to it). They don’t know the days when anyone could get on an airplane, even buy a ticket with cash at the check-in counter using a fake name and no ID, and travel anywhere within the U.S. 

The same Millennials and Gen Zers do not remember the terror of communism, and they are oblivious to the rise of the Chinese communist empire, which is now leveraging its new superpower status to export its own dream of authoritarian, totalitarian society around the world. 

The left has conveniently forgotten Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, and Julian Assange -- once venerated by the Occupy movement as heroes.

Stop mocking and jeering at those who you disagree with. Take a good, honest look at what they are saying and why. And make your own critical, informed opinions. 

Unfortunately, journalism today isn’t helping people do that.  

[thewillowness]

I’m done with the progressives and liberals.

I was very involved in leftist activism. Occupy Wall Street, immigrant rights movement, labor activism, racial justice, queer liberation, you name it, I was part of it. Since 2002, I have more or less supported the Democratic candidates and progressive policy causes. 

But now I’m done. I’m disgusted.

I remember the uncertain days and weeks following 9/11 and Bush’s “War on Terror.” We were afraid of potential martial law, expansion of domestic surveillance, crack down on immigrants, and increased racial and religious (by “religious” we specifically meant Muslims and maybe Sikhs) profiling.

I remember the anti-war and pro-civil liberties demonstrations and campaigns. I remember the solidarity acts with marginalized immigrants, especially the undocumented ones and those of the Middle Eastern and Central Asian heritage.

I remember several among many, the demands of the Occupy Movement were to stop NDAA (which provided for indefinite detention of “terror suspects”), to close Guantanamo, and to limit the growth of police state apparatus. 

I remember the week after the election of President Donald J. Trump. Leftist protestors and Antifa were out on the street, genuinely fearing the specter of dictatorship and fascist imperial presidency in the authoritarian, strongman character of Donald Trump and his fanatic fans.

It has been on its face, despite many contradictions, that the leftists’ consensus was to unabashedly support civil liberties, right to privacy, and right to one’s bodily autonomy; and to oppose the overreach of police powers.

Until COVID-19 arrived on America’s shores.

COVID-19 initially hit the progressive strongholds of King County, Washington and San Francisco Bay Area -- the kind of places where elected politicians routinely spoke up against the carceral-police state and authoritarianism.

Yet, it was the progressives and liberals in those cities who were literally begging their mayors and governors for martial law. They were demanding for “lockdown.” Never mind that such a draconian measure would disproportionately harm the people on the lowest end of economic scale, those with disabilities, people experiencing houselessness, and those who struggle with mental health issues and/or domestic violence. 

They were begging their local officials to “enforce the lockdown.” Some of them were even calling the cops and snitching on their neighbors and strangers they saw outside.

They were suddenly addicted to the doomsday porn fed to them hourly by mainstream media, Democratic politicians, and leftist social media -- and they ate it up. They were absorbed with collective and individual fear. 

Such fear, in a time of crisis, tests the true nature of a person. The leftists failed that test. 

The ugliest nature of the left, usually hidden beneath their slogans and political correctness, has suddenly came out to the fore. 

They accused people who were merely going out on their daily business of being “irresponsible” and even “murderers.” They cried foul at individuals responsibly enjoying sunny spring days outdoors, calling them “narcissists” and “selfish.” They publicly mocked and doxxed people of sincere religious faith who simply needed their spiritual fortification and consolation in their church communities. 

COVID-19 turned the leftist discourse into an orgy of grievance, jealousy, public shaming, intolerance, self-righteousness, ad hominem attacks, thought-policing, thought-terminating cliche, and hatred. Yes, these were always there all along. But aside from the most obvious SJW trolls on social media, these were pretty well-hidden beneath political theories and activist jargons. 

Where were the Antifa when their Democratic governors and mayors declared what amounts to a de facto martial law lite? Or, maybe things could’ve been different if it was President Trump who did it -- then maybe their progressive elected officials might have taken him to court? Where is ACLU? Crickets. 

The leftists that I know talk all day about freedom and rights, but that seems to be only for certain identity groups like queer folks and people of color, not universal freedom and universal rights. And they fundamentally misunderstand the nature of rights; they think rights are granted to them by the government.

If the leftists think “public health” is a sufficient reason to all but suspend the constitution, there’s no hope. I am rather glad that Bernie Sanders is now history. 

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo received cheers and applauses from the liberals when he said he would rather “save one life” and destroy the economy than letting one person die of COVID-19 to save jobs and businesses. 

While this makes a great feel-good soundbite and it might even sound like that Talmudic sage who famously said, “save a life and you save the world,” it actually makes no ethical or moral sense. If Cuomo really believes what he said, then New York State should as well ban all automobiles -- including ambulances and fire trucks -- because someone might accidentally get killed in a traffic accident.  

And perhaps the worst fallout of this fiasco is that the leftists, their politicians, and their favorite media have managed to transform our culture in a very bad way in such a short time. Now we have a zeitgeist of mutual suspicion, sticking our noses into everyone else’s lives, and fear of everyday activities that we once took for granted. Yes, the leftists have turned their “free hugs” into “social distancing.” At the same time, the news outlets are feeding fuel to this frenzy by reporting this politician or that celebrity figure “tested positive for coronavirus.” Whatever happened to medical privacy laws (HIPAA) and journalistic ethics? Suddenly everything’s everyone’s business. I think the effect of this will be felt for many years to come, long after we’ve built herd immunity. 

I’m done with this shit. After four years of calling Donald Trump a fascist (and eight years of calling George W. Bush a fascist), they’ve become Coronafascists.  

The truth being said, I had only supported the Democrats and the progressives in general insofar as they were for civil liberties, immigrant rights, and abolition of the carceral-police state. Personally, I have always been a Libertarian (though I do reject anarcho-capitalism) and on many issues I tend to agree more with Republicans.      

[thewillowness]

Theory of mind, empathy, and my autistic experience

This is something I was trying to put it down in writing for some time, but I could not because even I wasn’t quite sure about what I’ve been trying to say. 

The honest admission is this: When I see other people, I see objects. I do not instinctively perceive of them as living human beings with feelings, thoughts, or their life stories. 

Sure, on the purely intellectual level, I am aware that this isn’t the case. But that was something I had to teach myself. Over more than four decades, I tried to make sense of human experience. This led me to my curiosity toward theology, philosophy, linguistics, political theories, and anthropology. After all, I am an outsider looking in and everything (neurotypical) humans do come across as utterly foreign to me. 

As a little child, contrary to popular misconception about autistic kids, I was rather extroverted. I would approach total strangers and strike up conversations. I enjoyed playing with my neighbor kids. But nobody really quite understood me, so my extroversion and curiosity were severely punished. I became a total introvert by age 11. I learned to be ashamed of myself and to mask. 

I had no natural capacity for empathy or consideration for others. I remember how my mother was exasperated every day. 

In my first grade days, there was a girl in my class that I sort of liked. One day during recess, I found one of her original artwork in her notebook, in her desk in the classroom. I decided to cut it up into small pieces, as if I was turning it into a jigsaw puzzle, and left the pieces on her desk and went home, proud of my genius. 

Next morning, that girl was upset, wailing and crying. I had absolutely no clue what was going on, or why she was crying. The teacher asked the entire class who did this to her, and a few kids snitched. 

At that point I did not have even a slightest idea that what I did was wrong. I did not give a rat’s ass about anyone else’s feeling, as I could not even understand that other people had feelings. My range of emotions was and is quite limited (this is something I am guessing right now, based on what I read, as I honestly don’t know). The only way I knew how to interact with people was to learn what input causes what kind of output, as though they’re machines with buttons to push. I’ve learned rather early on how to manipulate people, but I could never relate to human emotions. After all, my brain perceives them as mere objects that are either beneficial/useful to me or an obstacle/enemy to be eliminated.

Honestly, I am quite surprised how I did not turn out to become a monster, a mass murderer, or a terrorist. 

Anyway, the teacher (who did not know I was autistic) handled the incident rather sensibly. He told me what I did was awful, but in a way I could understand: that the girl’s original artwork was the only one in existence anywhere in the world, thus it was irreplaceable once it was destroyed. No appeal to emotions or guilt. Pure logic. 

It was only after I began learning about fundamentalist Christianity that I began developing a sense of morality and ethics. 

At age 15 I was baptized and joined a fundamentalist Baptist church. 

Yet, even in church, I experienced a lot of frustration. Christians would often speak of how Jesus loves them, that they have some kind of “personal relationship” with Christ, and that they literally feel and experience God in prayer and worship. I desperately wanted that sort of experience, maybe hoping that experiencing God might turn me “normal” and save me from being such a monster.

Some time ago, I have read about something called “Theory of Mind” and how autistic people do not have it. In interpersonal relationship, the lack of “theory of mind” manifests in a way that I have just described my childhood experience. On a spiritual level, it manifests in a way that autistic people cannot relate to the idea of God as a personal being with capacity for love or other human-like emotions (and by extension, the inability to experience spirituality). 

For me, God has been more of the universal law or logical force that creates and sustains the universe. This might explain why, after a few years of frustration in Baptist churches, I turned to the “Word-Faith” faction of Pentecostal/Charismatic churches by the time I was 18 years old; later drawn to the highly intellectual and ritual-driven tradition of Judaism (though ultimately I decided against converting); and in recent years, highly influenced by New Thought theology. 

Anyways, I have given up on masking some time ago as I became aware of how sizable the autistic community actually is (1 to 2 percent of world population; if 1.5 percent of the U.S. residents are autistic, this makes us a significant minority group at par with Chinese-Americans and Native Americans/Alaska Natives).

But honestly, I cannot relate to people, let alone “feel connected” (whatever that means) to them. 

[thewillowness]

The year 2020 is here.

CW: mental health, discrimination, survival

I have not been writing much for the past several months. 

For the most part, I have been kind of just existing. Nothing really helped me to get motivated to do anything. 

The year 2019 has been a very tough year for me. It would be a lie if I said everything just went well. It was a year of disappointment, disillusionment, betrayal and depression. The time and the world just passed by me while I slept and sleep-walked through most of 2019. 

At the end of the year, though, I have come to realize that I’ve wasted the last 20 to 22 years on activities that really didn’t matter. I was constantly sidetracked into whatever the activities and interests that at the time seemed good to me. And for most of these years I was barely trying to survive another day. I did not have a normal childhood, but I did not even have an adulthood to speak of. Suddenly I realized I was not very far off from being called a “senior citizen” (I know this is a bit of an exaggeration but I felt like it). 

In order to survive, I had to be a chameleon. I sold myself out and compromised my values and beliefs. Soon, I lost my values and beliefs, no longer sure what they were. From that point on, I latched onto all kinds of different ideologies and fads and causes. 

25 years ago, I was a Pentecostal/Charismatic Christian who was pretty gullible, inexperienced in life, and naive -- but at least I was happy, ambitious, curious, carefree, and hopeful for future. I was attending three or four church services every Sunday. I had a few good friends both in and outside church, spent quite a lot of time at the Campus Student Center engaged in various student activities (among others, I was the editor of the college newspaper, as well as one of the founding members of the campus Christian club), and I was in a long-distance relationship with sight on marriage. I was well-read, intelligent, and a quick learner. Those were the happiest days in my life, to be honest. 

Now I feel like I’m just a shell of my old self -- deeply unhappy, suspicious, resentful, depressed, pessimistic, and paranoid -- in spite of the “conventional wisdom” of this world that a “freedom from religion,” progressive politics, and sexual liberation were a path to happiness.     

I was constantly tired of not being taken seriously and being an outsider looking in. I was trying to fit in, and I was masking my autism and chronic mental health conditions. Even with my best efforts, I know most people are barely tolerating me and strangers kind of look at me as though I’m a creep, freak, crazy, or worse. So why bother?

Finally, in 2019, I was just done with all this charade. 

I was tired of all the uncompensated mental labor to make myself “acceptable” -- and not make others “uncomfortable.” I was tired of playing along with people whose values I do not share. I was tired of colluding with oppressive, racist, xenophobic, classist, ableist, cisheteronormative behaviors and being a useful idiot for the sake of respectability points. I was done with listening to well-meaning but ignorant, privileged people who think self-improvement is salvation. 

And I am done with trying to be “normal,” whatever that means. 

Then I had a period of introspection. 

Maybe being “weird” and “crazy” is the asset. I’ve long thought of my own mental illness as a kind of minefield -- I feared my own inner “demons” because I knew how they’d go entirely out of control (on the first day of my elementary school I threw myself into traffic of a busy major road in front of the school and shut down the traffic, for example). For too many years I longed to be “normal” in order to be accepted and respected. 

I have come to a conclusion that being autistic is not a negative thing or something to be ashamed of. Like Greta Thunberg, autism can provide one with unique and exceptional abilities and make contributions to the world in a way no one else can. 

The idea is to make a “landmine” into a “goldmine.” 

This is where I am so far.  

[thewillowness]

Delusion and reality

About a year ago, I feel like all of sudden I lost self-delusion. I look into a mirror and I see an unattractive, ugly, obese monster. No wonder why people dislike me. 

For many years that wasn’t how I saw myself in a mirror. I sincerely thought I was healthy, youthful, and attractive. 

Heck I was even a model for photographers. Of course, it’s easy to forget that professional photographers edit heavily. 

Just because people don’t tell me in my face that I look disgusting, the delusion persisted, all while I knew nothing about how to keep myself clean and healthy (that’s one of the common problems with autism, some “experts” say). 

But now I am deeply unhappy. 

Do I choose between delusional and happy, or be realistic but constantly unhappy and cynical about everything? 

It is like that famous scene in the movie “Matrix.” A red pill, or a blue pill? 

I’m not exactly happy about being “free” from self-delusion, to be honest.