Sometimes I make grand declarations: “Fundamentally, I am a cynical optimist.” Imagine that accompanied by a sweeping gesture. But it’s not true, of course. Fundamentally, I ride the tides of the media I’m absorbing on a given day, and whether I’ve remembered to take my meds or not.

(A cynical optimist believes that the world is gradually improving over time, but that human beings are selfish above all else. I do believe both of those things. However, like most ideological posturing, at core it’s probably just my way of signaling a certain set of sympathies.)

“You are what you eat.” I am what I consume, information and images included. And so are you, meaning that I’m feeding you right now, if we stretch the metaphor a bit. The phrase “media diet” is kinda played out by now, but you know what I mean.

Does this seem disjointed?

Photo by Dave Bonta.

Photo by Dave Bonta.

Well, it is disjointed. That’s how I read nowadays so it’s also how I write. I came back to this browser tab after detouring through Facebook and Slack. It’s okay, I suppose. The ideas are still here. Or at least I don’t know about the ideas that have been sacrificed.

“To the days beyond this one which are still perfect” — that which is unborn is unspoiled. It’s easy to expect so much of the days that haven’t come yet. But I worry, too. I’m sure Y Combinator and everyone who hates Y Combinator will find a way to make their basic income experiment contentious, for example.

Here in the US, those of us in the Blue Tribe are increasingly frightened by Trump as the election trundles onward like some perverse version of Manifest Destiny where meme magic conquers every plot of land and the fucking alt right gets to decide who can sharecrop.

So the days beyond this one are not only perfect — the possibility also exists that they’re horrific. And we’d obsessed with both dialectical futures.