Today, I’ll (try to) keep things brief.  I’d like to share with you a parable that’s something of a north star in my life:

One morning, you awake to discover that the bend in the river near where you live is absolutely *silly* with babies.  All kinds.  You’re perplexed, but leap immediately into action, alongside several of your close friends (who also hate to see babies struggling in the slow eddy).  You fish baby after baby out of the blue-green water, placing them on the shore and unsure of what to do with all these babies.  Where did they come from?  Is it your job to get them to somewhere else?  That seems crazy and unfair.  You did your part.  The babies aren’t in the river anymore; so you just keep fishing, dying, and tossing shoreward.  

Your friends, less baby-friendly, only have about a week’s worth of baby fishing in them.  The first one leaves, very reasonably, to check on his dying mother.  The second, less reasonably, says they read on the internet that 100% of all murderers used to be babies, and that they won’t have anything to do with ‘your agenda.’  The third, fourth, and fifth who leave give no excuse, but steadily turn their attention elsewhere–either to other issues or totally inwards for some well-earned, congratulatory navel-gazing.  

And so you’re alone, feverish and sweaty even though you’re waist deep in cold, flowing water.  You’re losing feeling in your fingers.  The low, moaning drone of babies gurgling in the stream haunts you when you’re not fishing them out.  You can’t live your life just passing by this every day.  You lose your job over it, because there just aren’t enough hours, but no one is going to pay you to fish these babies out of the river.  You ‘volunteer.’  Then suddenly there’s *more* babies.  They come down the way in passels and in clutches, like little tumorous masses of mewling.  They aren’t even wearing diapers.  

That’s how they find you:  slumped from exhaustion, cradling all the river-babies you alone couldn’t help, and angry at *yourself* for failing at what you feel to be your essential calling.  

Now, you made a noble existence, for as long as you could, doing the “right” thing.  Without you, those babies would’ve been without any recourse except to drown or be dragged further down into harsher rapids.  You should be proud, somewhat, except for the fact that you’re kind of an idiot.  

“WHAT?!?!  SIR!  I’LL HAVE YOU KNOW I’M SAINT SUSAN OF THE RIVER BABIES AND I WILL NOT HAVE MY GOOD WORKS ANALYZED BY THE LIKES OF YOU!”

1. You’re pretty touchy there, Hypothetical Susan and…
2. You could’ve done a lot more with a lot less effort if you thought about the whole system and not just the symptoms of that system.  

“…wut?”

Yeah, exactly.  You saw babies in the river.  You reactionarily jumped into action, fishing those babies out day in and day out–and I applaud you–but the babies still roll, and in greater numbers.  All because someone, somewhere knows someone, somewhere will fish them out.  You’d have been a damn sight better served to hike your happy ass up the river and see who is throwing babies in.  They aren’t arriving there spontaneously.  This isn’t their natural habitat.  99.99% of the time, whatever problem you’re looking at (River Babies or Homelessness or Gun Violence or Addiction) is the *symptom* and not the *system*.  

Marching up the river, you can easily see that it’s Hypothetical Donald, tossing babies in the river to make room for his summer home.  In all fairness, he’s actually taking them out of the hospital where they’re born–because he knows a hospital who loses all its babies to the river won’t be around very long.  Hypothetical Donald, despite his morbid awfulness, is aware that dismantling the system is the only path to victory.  Taking one afternoon, making a little walk upstream, and punching your Hypothetical villain right in the frick-frackin’ face would be the most efficient, expedient, and satisfying conclusion to the journey.  

No babies in the river; no asshole upstream.  And that’s it.

Now, no one is going to come along 1000 years from now and write this parable in red letters between a bunch of magic I did (but, man, I do have this *one* card trick…).  Quite frankly, you’re probably thinking:  “Well, duh, of course that’s how I’d handle it.”

But you’re wrong.  The life you lead is artificially limited by the assholes throwing babies in the river so you never notice the proverbial forest you’re standing in because you’re too busy keeping one of several trees from falling on your nest egg at any given moment.  

So, when you see homelessness, I encourage you to help as you are able–but I encourage you more to think long and hard about how and why that person is in the street.  Moreover, consider that if his great-great grandad had done the same thing, it would’ve been called “homesteading” and he’d have been “free” to protect the corner of the world he took with lethal force.  The great, expansive cattle-ranches-cum-factory-farms out west?  The names on them are soaked in blood–and not just bovine.  

When you hear about a mass shooting, we leap immediately to the weapon itself and ignore that the human capacity for malice is what’s growing more troublingly.  We like to pretend people disproportionately target schools because of some underlying, transcendent, quasi-divine “evil,” and neglect the fact that the modern school system is just where most people are most miserable.  I’d be just as upset to discover mass hammer-slaying incidents have become common–or else the violent slice-n-dice knife culture of Scotland made the leap across the pond.  Until the underlying system is better, any tool in any hand is just as likely to be a weapon.  

And (for fuck’s sake) when you see thousands of homeless, strung out on opiates, you can thank the fact that pharmaceuticals research and production is cornered wholly by the baseless depravity of corporate socialism (a total oxymoron) and “profit margins” are antithetical to the common good.  Just ask Big Tobacco…or big Gambling…or big Booze…shit, actually just ask anyone who ever made a billion dollars.  

Thus, I’ll ask you:  Do you want to spend your life thanklessly fishing someone else’s mess out of the river by your home or would you rather root out the essential brokenness and demand action?  

I know where I stand, but it means putting in the intellectual work necessary to discern what is really from what is purported to be.  My fear of late is that capacity has been irreparably damaged.  I implore you to prove me wrong.  

Do good; Be well,

–The Strangest