oldwaysofknowing

[oldwaysofknowing]

have you ever had an animal show up frequently in your life?

for me, about every year itʻs a different animal that shows up-- to teach me something, i tend to think.

a couple of years ago, the animal i kept seeing everywhere (and by that i mean this animal kept popping up in real life, in random thought, in the media i consumed, etc-- kind of like seeing the same angel number over and over and thinking, ʻhey. maybe that shit means something?ʻ) was bees. last year, it was frogs. both of these were animals toward whom i felt indifferent, but i started observing them more closely once i realized how recurrent they suddenly were. i took what message i wanted from them, tried to emulate them that year, + then move on to the next one. 2025ʻs animal has brought me full circle back to 2006, to memories of when my elementary school class went on a field trip to a nature reserve. there was a lady with a hawk + the special hawk glove, we probably hiked a little bit, identified plants + such. i donʻt remember, to be honest; that was a rough season of life for me, so iʻve unfortunately blocked out a lot of even the good memories. but one thing that remains is my childhood affection for bats. this seems to be the creature comfort for 2025, and it couldnʻt have been confirmed in a sillier way: in trying to log back into this tumblr account after several weeks away, i accidentally logged into an old one of mine, + wouldnʻt you know it? the profile picture for that old account was also-- am i coming in clear? it was also a bat. wild.

anyway, i loved bats, never understood why they had such a negative public image, + i think on that field trip we also got to go inside a bat cave, + i remembered feeling some of my first waves of female-toward-female disgust when most of the girls in my grade screeched at the mere thought of being around bats, let alone actually going in to experience it.

disdain for stupidity starts early when youʻre surrounded by it 24/7. all girls are taught that acting unintelligent + miming a need for protection makes them more endearing.

female bats, + in fact, all animals except humans, are completely the opposite: like every other creature on earth, bats live in a way that boosts their survival chances. even down to mama bats being able to hear + sniff out their one baby among the hordes of millions of bat pups clinging to the wall. amidst the cacophony of the cave's interior, female bats can locate their own young down to a radius of mere inches.

more fun facts about bats:

vampire bats produce a chemical in their saliva that encourages blood to keep flowing, so doctors are currently studying that as a possible anticoagulant. 2) desert ecosystems are almost entirely dependent on bats because bats pollinate desert flowers in a way no other creature can-- and in fact some desert plants have specifically evolved to suit bats. 3) bats could be the saviors of the forests: they can replenish deforested tree populations within 2-3 yrs just by their droppings simply falling to the forest floor. 4) as usual, humans are dicks because weʻre the main threat to bat populations. anyone who spray-paints on or eats bats need to get lobotomies so they canʻt procreate.

anyway. check yes or no if you want more bat content. we need to talk about beautiful things more.

[oldwaysofknowing]

Being forced into society is ruining everybody's lives.

There are a ton of problems with community living. There's also a shocking lack of research into how being forced to live around others might be detrimental to our health (mental or otherwise). If you do an internet search right now with something like "negative effects of living around other people," all you'll find are articles about how self-isolation leads to depression, how friendship is one of the keys to happiness, and so on. The internet seems to be bought and sold by extroverts.

So, since no one else is addressing it, I'll get the ball rolling: Living around other people fucking SUCKS.

Because according to the subliminal-not-so-subliminal rules of living around others, you owe something to everyone else. That's 8.2 billion people whose feelings you're supposed to consider before making any statement or taking any action. Ever.

Before you skim past what I just said, read it again. And if you're still so conditioned as to think it's normal to owe your life to people who aren't you, I invite you to slow down and consider the contrast to how it once was:

Humans once lived miles away from each other, with vast spaces in between us. We went days, weeks, months without seeing another human being. Though families/clans/what have you traveled together for safety in numbers, that is still not a society. And it's definitely not society as we're enduring it today.

Fast forward: Camps became villages, villages became townships, townships became cities. Industrial Revolution, blah blah blah. What we're left with is a batshit crazy number of people forced to live together and get along because...?

It used to be you lived and died with your inner circle. If you wanted to be social, you left your house. Now, everybody's life belongs to everybody else.

Except the way they've taken your life in this universe is by domesticating the generations before you, then making basic necessities so unaffordable that they can corral you into living in a city with hundreds, thousands, millions of strangers, who deep down don't want anymore to do with you than you don't want with them. But you try to make the best of it because you have no other options, so you go to Target, blow money to make your apartment/house (pen) look pretty, turn on your streaming service, and try to turn off the fact that you're stressed as fuck, overstimulated as fuck, worked hard as fuck, and that there's seemingly no end in sight.

Except get this: Even once you have a place of your own, it's not your own. You either owe someone for it, are forced to share it with others, or both. Nowadays we only experience the illusion that any of us have a place to ourselves. Humanity used to have peace and quiet in spades; now our sanity is as thin as the walls between us.

With the right to privacy gone and society becoming more and more emotionally interdependent, our health is plummeting from getting no true aloneness. Even when we're alone, the noises created by others negate the feeling of true separation. The constant sound of other peoples' existence... the constant anxiety that any brief peace we find will soon end... It's enough to drive you out of your mind.

Here are statements from real human beings who are also bowing under the weight of living in a society:

"…there were times I would just sit in my car and cry because it was the only place I could go that was quiet."

"I ended up in a straight up abusive situation with a former housemate...as they felt entitled to every ounce of my time and energy while also thinking they could treat me like garbage."

It's no wonder we're at war all the time: the love of money and the modern inability to be able to ignore each other. That's one of the skills we've lost, one of the things we now suck at the most, being able to ignore each other. And how can we be good at it? We've been conditioned in the other direction for so long, taught to fake our way through interactions rather than honestly disagreeing or ignoring.

Once upon a time, you might've only seen another person once a week, passing each other on your buggies. A tip of the hat, a smile, maybe a polite word, and that would've been it. Now, we're not only navigating basic human interaction, but we're expected to know about, care about, and participate in overblown, overthought, social propaganda practices such as "the female gaze," "microaggression," religion, political correctness... We've created a collective consciousness. And we have only to look at basically any dangerous uprising throughout history-- think of the throngs that showed up to chant in support of Hitler's plans to "bring people together in harmony"-- to see where this is heading.

It's enough to paralyze you. And doesn't that sound a little too similar to sitting in your apartment building, which you share with a hundred strangers, tuning out your own emotions, needs, desires, life, to the newest "Most Watched" show on Netflix?

One of my good friends is a guy with what many people would call a "cold" mindset. Picture the rage of George Carlin coupled with the stoicism of Marcus Aurelius, and you've got an image you can go by. Despite this (actually, because of this), he has a great sense of humor about life. Once he laughs off a problem or a person, he's truly done with it. No matter that we're living in an age when every one of his words and actions is being micro-scrutinized. Unless he's truly made a mistake (that's an important caveat) or unless something affects him (or his inner circle) personally, he doesn't give a flying fuck.

I once heard him say something, and though it wasn't directed at me, his words have been changing my life:

"Why do I have to like you?"

I believe the silence with which most people would answer this question is evidence enough of how unsustainable it is as a basis for social behavior and societal construction. I plan on writing a second part to this essay which will focus on this question and how it ties into the problem of societal living.

As for me, if you haven't guessed, I've said, "Fuck being part of society" already. As much as I can right now, at least. And you can too.

But I'm telling you: If you think like this as well, and if you want to start living it, you're gonna make some enemies, and you'll also have to make some sacrifices. For one, you'll have to unplug. Completely. Unplug from the power source and stop downloading what everybody else is about. Get as far away from society as you can get, somewhere where you can remember what you are about. What was it you thought, again? What was it you wanted from your life? Go out there and remember.

And for the love of god, stay away from me.

Resources:

[oldwaysofknowing]

Let's do an easy one today. The 30-page rule, everybody.

Simply put, it's this: If a book does not succeed in capturing my interest within the first 30 pages, I do not read that book.

I actively practice this, and I swear by it. Developing this parameter has 100% been influenced by my being a writer. At this point, I've spent years worth of hours of my life poring over words. After so much time spent alone together, I know my voice and my voice knows me. I've developed it into something with which I feel comfortable communicating even my deepest thoughts with the whole world, if they happen to be listening. And I think, because of this, I find myself losing patience for storytellers who don't tell stories like I would. For whom the spinning of their yarn comes out very different from how I would spin it.

This is just reason one. Reason two for why I don't force down more than 30 unattractive pages is equally as complex but faster stated than the first: I don't have the time for books I'm only kinda liking. I have an endless book list and probably always will, so we gotta keep this train moving. No stopping at mediocre stations.

As usual, try it out for yourself before you take my word for it, or don't. I don't really care. I just know this ritual works for me, so maybe it'll serve someone else out there and save them precious reading time, too.

[oldwaysofknowing]

Jeff Goldblum has found the key, and you can too.

What indefinable quality do individuals like Jeff Goldblum, Keanu Reeves, and probably someone you've met in your own life, have that makes them so captivating?

The thread that unites them: they are charismatic. But if you're like me, you've had the meaning of that word all fucked up: what charisma literally means is presence.

Jeff and Keanu intrigue us because no matter when we get a glimpse of them—whether playing fictional characters in a film or just being themselves—they are always undeniably in the moment.

You can see it in the way they conduct themselves. How their body language betrays their active listening, their absolute investment in whatever someone is saying to them. You can almost feel a physical rhythm in the cadences in which the two men speak (though they speak differently) because both choose to spend their words on sentiments that are meaningful to them. Because of this, their words end up having an intrinsically confident quality that others find attractive.

Their attraction-- their foundation for confidence-- is due to their undying interest in life and living. Those who are interested in life are captivating for everyone else to watch. I liken it to scales falling off our eyes: when we find someone who hasn't fallen out of love with life, we recognize them right away.

It's the feeling you get when you get your first smile from a stranger in a day. There you were, going about your day, unaware of anyone and assuming, likewise, that no one was aware of you... until that person smiled. Because for you, it was a confirmation of your existence. You may appreciate that, you may not. Some of us admire people who live present, and we hope to one day take a swig from the same metaphorical elixir of joy (if we haven't already-- if you have, I'm sure both Jeff Goldblum and Keanu Reeves would say you've earned a gold star). But if we're honest, it's too easy to feel confused by or resentful about how easy it seems to be for some people to be present while some remain prisoners in their own heads.

Be that as it may, to the individual who smiled, your reaction hardly matters. At the end of the day, what they did was not for you. It was merely an acknowledgment of the life going on around them.

This brings up an important point: charisma (which I incorrectly thought meant having the ability to draw people to you) is not the goal. The goal is presence. To be an active participant in your own life. Any charisma or attractiveness is merely a byproduct.

This is how individuals like Jeff Goldblum and Keanu Reeves can be not everyone's cup of tea and feel just fine about it: because they know that's not their purpose. Their purpose is to drink fully from life, and in so doing, they will go through life being fully themselves. Their lack of need for our approval draws us to them yet more. The circle of admiration remains unbroken.

So, the next time you think yourself into an existential rabbit hole trying to figure out who you are and what "it" all means, maybe turn your attention (your full attention, of course) to these words from Mr. Goldblum:

“I feel like I’m a late bloomer. I’m having a bit of a growth spurt... I find myself kind of wildly at the peak of my appetite in my interest and passion about it, so if that allows me to be a little interesting to anybody else of all persuasions, fine and dandy." -Jeff Goldblum, Chicago Tribune

References:

The fascination of Jeff Goldblum - North

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