On being chalant

Written by Tamás Deme on Thu Nov 14 2024. Updated on Fri Nov 15 2024.

This is going to be different. At least "here", on this iteration ^[1] of my blog. I've written posts like this before, but the last time that has happened was truly more than a decade ago. And those posts were password protected, and I had no one to give the password to. I thought of writing this post a few weeks ago, but it took me a bit of time to actually get started - I guess the events of last week helped me a little with motivation.

This is probably not going to be deep, but I am partially writing this for myself so that it is out there. It is also most certainly going to be a rambling mess, apologies about that in advance.

Anyway #

"Chalant" is not really a word. It's a back-formation from "nonchalant" which means indifferent, or detached. All this to say that I want to explicitly state: I am very much the opposite of that. Might not be very cool (although I have some hope that's changing), but I care. And probably too much, about everything. I get excited about things, and I would like to have big emotions about said things (working on that actively). I need to remember that logically breaking down my feelings is not the same as feeling them. I am doing this for myself and for those who also want to be like this, ideally in growing numbers. The wikipedia editors fixing the 9374th typo, the Leslie Knope types who actually make Mondays happen, the random dude cataloging the types of metals trains wheels are made of... all of you. I have spent some time mulling over which one thing I value most, and I think I settled on curiosity over humor. A lack of curiosity is a weakness, and I want to surround myself with curious people.

Send me the thing. Tell me about that show, or rant about the book. I have resigned to accept the fact that I will never catch up with my pop-culture consumption lists - nevertheless let me add it to my list. I care about you and therefore I care about what you care about. And hopefully that thing might concern something or someone that is important to me, or someone inbetween this circle-of-caring around us, hopefully causing a self-improving loop.

With that being said #

One of my favorite quotes is the following:

The first step in solving a problem is recognizing there is one.

Yeah we knew things were not going well. But the results of the elections seems to indicate there's a requirement to do a fundamental reevaluation of strategy. How to talk about our values, and how to get information to people in a simple to understand way. Same show as the quote above, "If liberals are so fuckin' smart, how come they lose so goddamn always?". Simple hope is easy and cheap, reality and actual solutions are complex. We need to work on that. After all this, I am not as despairing as I expected myself to be over what's going down in the world from last week... to these past years. Mostly because I think we now have some clarity we didn't before. Simultaneously after more than a decade, Hungary seems be on the precipice of something. I don't think it's the "bugfix" we are waiting for, but at least it might be finally throwing a different error than before. Progress.

I refuse to believe that most people are evil and chose this. Some are. Uninformed / disinformed yes, but when basic needs are not met it's easy to talk down from a point of privilege. Similarly to this country, I can't fault the people of villages who grew up watching the one national tv channel and the one newspaper. It's different in the US and here in some aspects - here it's almost impossible to reach a lot of these people via traditional media -, but either way: the messaging is our problem to solve.

It's going to be bad though. Probably really bad. But these systems are inherently weak, and will fail. Prepare for that. Might be too strong to call this hope, but let's go with a possibility.

But wait, there's more #

Now for maybe the least fun part.

I just said I refuse to believe most people are evil. But at the same time, some are. There are levels of indifference, cruelty, hate and more that I see that I just don't know how to tackle anymore. And what hurts me most is that there seems to be a layer of people above them - a magnitude more in count -, who are aware, but tolerate it, even if they don't actively participate. But at this point I can't really explain it in any other way other than just a profound display of selfishness. And I wish I knew where I saw this first, but I don't know how to explain to you that you should care about other people. ^[2] It affects me, it affects you. If not this thing then the thing after.

Quoting a fun tiktok I saw yesterday to close this out:

Do not lose hope. But as an Eastern-European I am here to remind you: when things are bad, they can get worse. And when they get worse, they still can get worse than before. And how bad can things get? You never know. There is no bottom.

Finally, some random shots into the sky #

We need more nuance. And the answer, unless you're lying and/or stupid, is almost always it depends. ^[3]

shore party out

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