Getting caught in the rain

There's no such thing as bad weather, there's only the desperate lashing out of a dying political system.

When I was a kid I had a newspaper route. It was out in the country so it was something like 30 houses, but maybe a 6-7 km route. For a couple years I’d have to go do that before going to school every morning. I think it was during the paper route mornings that I first discovered the secret trick of what to do when you get caught in the rain, without cover, or a raincoat. You tell yourself: “this is how it’s supposed to feel. I’m getting caught in the rain. I am going to get completely drenched, and I’m going to have to change my clothes when I get home before I go out again and go to school.”

Same thing about freezing, or being too hot. “It’s supposed to feel like this”. “It’s really cold and it makes sense that I should feel like this. My physical surroundings impact my body, I have a bodily reaction to my environment. It’s not a morally weighted experience. It doesn't “hurt”. I am just “cold”. It’s supposed to feel like this”.

If you do this, your teeth stop chattering. Your muscles relax. The “pain” stops. Because it’s self imposed, its your own body creating the “painful” sensation in reaction to your environment, not the environment.

Same thing if you are having a so-called “bad trip” on psychedelics of any kind: “I have taken a psychedelic drug. It’s supposed to feel like this. All weird and wobbly and scary. I’m supposed to be scared. There’s nothing weird or strange about how I feel scared, it makes sense that I should be feeling like this: I have taken a psychedelic drug”.

The story you're telling yourself about who you are doesn't fit with your external surroundings and sense experience. You’re getting contradictory evidence. The story you're telling yourself is “I’m always dry”, and the reason getting caught in the rain without a coat sucks, is because the rain isn't respecting the story you're telling yourself. The only options you have are: changing the weather to fit your story, or, learning to improvise storytelling based on feedback: changing the story to fit the weather. Narrative adaption on the fly. Learning to take a punch is not the same as inviting it or wanting to get beat up. Being in this mindset of solipsism and rejection of the world is worse than being drenched or beaten up. The pain you feel is not from the world, it’s a product of your body rejecting the world, fighting against the world.

At my day job, there is a TV running 24/7 in the staff room. It just runs these weird internal advertisements for the place’s own brand, with little videos of low production value daytime TV adds. It’s basically just visual white noise, that only management and insane middle aged women working make-work office jobs get excited about, as a weird kind of pseudo-motherly activity of playing with dolls. Lately they’ve started a new run of little adds proclaiming how inclusive and “loving” the brand is. “A place for everyone”. And there’s a little video reel of two androgynous men, in a bed, kissing. With all the mkultra hypnosis bells and whistles, white sheets, lighting, smiling faces in slow motion. Classic tv advertisement.

I’ve been thinking lately about how much it must suck to be in school right now. I didn't have a great time in school, and I skipped half the classes in high school because I could get away with it and not get in trouble, because I wasn’t living with my parents. And it was before smartphones. People were only just using laptops. Even then I thought every day was like getting teeth pulled. Constantly being talked down to, was my big complaint. I can’t stand being spoken down to. It doesn’t fit the story I’m telling myself about who I am: I’m the sort of guy you never talk down to.

How do you cope with living in the present propagandized world of constant media hyper-stimulation of flashing lights and small electronic jolts in your fingertips every five seconds, everywhere, provoking a bodily reaction of fear and anxiety, tricking your biology into adopting a pain-fear-anxiety response, so that you are more susceptible to manipulation and nudging and mkultra control of the masses? Where everyone is fucking insane after having been put through two years of literal mkultra-isolation-and-brainwashing?

“oh right, It’s supposed to feel like this. I’m being propagandized. There’s nothing weird or strange about how this is making me feel. There’s nothing wrong with me, there’s nothing sick or dangerous about this. I’m not in immediate physical danger, that’s just the way my body interprets the flashing lights. I’m just being prodded with an electrical rod. It’s supposed to feel like this. It would be crazy if I didn't have this reaction. My reaction of being sad and anxious and upset is normal and reasonable. I’m being propagandized. I’m getting caught in the rain, and thus, I’m getting wet.”

It’s not quite “just closing your eyes and thinking of England”. It’s not quite “just letting it happen”. It’s not just “not fighting it”. It’s more like, opening your eyes as much as possible, taking it all in, and learning to integrate input on the fly. It’s learning to take a punch. It’s the same as learning how to be funny: Yes-and. Agree and amplify. React. The story doesn’t end with “the story you’re telling yourself about who you are”. The story begins there.

One morning I will never forget, after finishing my paper route, I went home and then I still had to bike to school in the next town over. It was windy, and I hated biking in strong wind. Nothing worse. It was so windy that when I got to a stretch that was completely flat with no trees around, just running by fields, I felt like I was barely moving forward at all, that despite using a tool that was specifically engineered to increase the speed and efficiency of human travel, I would be moving faster if I got off the bike and just walked against the wind. It got me so mad that I started yelling angrily at the wind.