Community and unplugging.

Closing shift tonight, went pretty alright since it was my turn to be the one in charge, I have a lot better time when I don't have to go along with the idiot whims of another manager, one manager specifically anyway, I wish my boss wouldn't pair us up at night. But tonight and tomorrow I am free of his fell influence. The job is a lot more fun when I am in charge.

Took a lot of doing to get me to write tonight, I got home and just didn't want to look at a screen so I unplugged and read books instead, my current series is The Laundry Files by Charles Stross. It's eldritch horror by way of stifling British bureaucracy, it's surprisingly fun and I like it.

But what it means is I haven't read the news, haven't really paid attention to Facebook or Twitter, and just couldn't find it in me to think too hard, and thus research, any other topic.

It is interesting just how easy it is to remove yourself from the world, simply not looking at a computer screen during the day is enough to lose all idea of what is going on outside your own personal circle. It is easy to understand how people might not know about the current state of politics with that in mind, or even to understand how a possibly reasonable person might still consider voting for Trump if all they use to make their decisions is the occasional newspaper headline or whatever catches their eye on the TV news channels while they are channel surfing. It takes little effort to remain ignorant.

I know there are a lot of people who advocate unplugging and focusing on oneself, and the practice has its benefits once in a while, but as a lifestyle it doesn't fly with me, humans are pretty social creatures for the most part, and it doesn't take a lot of effort to bond with your friends and family and perhaps your close neighbors, the problem is the human community is not just those people, Portland is a city of some three million people in the metro area, the country is more like 350 million, we belong to those communities too and things happen all the time that effect them, we cannot afford to willfully act like low information people when the community we belong to is so high information. To take Trump as an example, myself and immediate circle of friends are all white and while none of us are rich, we are also all poor enough that we pay no taxes but can still have a nice thing once in a while, a Trump presidency will not harm the majority of us, if we were to remain focused on the immediate and to be disconnected constantly, we would likely not have much of a problem with either candidate, but we don't belong to just our immediate community, we belong to a whole country, and while we might not know anyone personally who would be negatively effected by a Trump presidency, being connected means we know for a fact what it might do to other people.

By all means, disconnect once in a while, unplug and recharge if you need it, but come back and find out what is going on, being informed is the only way this community we call a country can ever work.