i was born and raised in california. i left a year ago for the midwest.
the situation in california is depressing. and im not talking about human poop or homeless people. im talking about jobs, culture and general lifestyle. california is filled with lots of very ugly urban wasteland. its filled with lots and lots of very disadvantaged people, hordes upon hordes of people who might not be homeless but are involved in crime and smoke meth and shoot up heroin. there is broken glass on every other sidewalk. its basically legal for people to steal things as long as its less than a thousand dollars, in that the penalty is so small that it might as well be legal. im just rattling off my lifes truth, my memories.
but worst of all is the grey dread everywhere. people in california do not think for themselves. they are so career oriented and so entangled in the bureaucratic system of formal societal infrastructure that basic common sense is dying a brutal death and you can feel this when you are amidst it. i always felt anxious because its a society resting completely on its laurels. there is nothing propelling it forward besides the momentum created by the previous generation of single minded, abrasive intellectual mavericks who raged against convention and dogma. now california is the embodiment of convention and dogma. its largest companies have transitioned over the past ten years from pioneers to custodians of entrenched power and market dominance.
i could feel this when i was a small boy growing up in the san francisco bay area. my peers seemed super petty and intellectually average. easily pulled into dogmatic, fuzzy ideas. most of them anyway. when i imagine the country now being the result of my generation growing up and using their dollars and tweets as their votes, it all lines up.
the situation in california is depressing. and im not talking about human poop or homeless people. im talking about jobs, culture and general lifestyle. california is filled with lots of very ugly urban wasteland. its filled with lots and lots of very disadvantaged people, hordes upon hordes of people who might not be homeless but are involved in crime and smoke meth and shoot up heroin. there is broken glass on every other sidewalk. its basically legal for people to steal things as long as its less than a thousand dollars, in that the penalty is so small that it might as well be legal. im just rattling off my lifes truth, my memories.
but worst of all is the grey dread everywhere. people in california do not think for themselves. they are so career oriented and so entangled in the bureaucratic system of formal societal infrastructure that basic common sense is dying a brutal death and you can feel this when you are amidst it. i always felt anxious because its a society resting completely on its laurels. there is nothing propelling it forward besides the momentum created by the previous generation of single minded, abrasive intellectual mavericks who raged against convention and dogma. now california is the embodiment of convention and dogma. its largest companies have transitioned over the past ten years from pioneers to custodians of entrenched power and market dominance.
i could feel this when i was a small boy growing up in the san francisco bay area. my peers seemed super petty and intellectually average. easily pulled into dogmatic, fuzzy ideas. most of them anyway. when i imagine the country now being the result of my generation growing up and using their dollars and tweets as their votes, it all lines up.