Are we the Deathstar?

A friend reached out last week for a catchup.
Let’s call her Cassie.

Cassie’s been having a tough time. Her job hunt has been going on for a while and a few days ago she received a rejection she wasn’t expecting. When she asked the recruiter for feedback she was told the client had found her submission to be “lazy” and “sloppy”. Whew! Those two words sent her into a days long tailspin. And honestly, how could it not?

(epic fury)

She’d worked hard on her presentation and couldn’t at all fathom the response. I tried to be constructive and asked if there had been any change in her approach, any lesson she could take away from the experience. Accountability, right?

(170 children dead)

Laziness and sloppiness are a privilege. Cassie does not resemble those qualities in the least nor has she lived a life that would allow her that level of grace. Always in the pursuit of perfection, always working herself to the bone, she persists because time has confirmed what the aunties foretold. That she would have to work twice as hard to be considered half as good. I know a lot of people like Cassie.

These days though, it seems that excellence is overrated. The country is being run by C students (at best). And to the C’s get degrees chorus, I see you. But what about—

(iran refuses cease fire)

Oh dear god I can barely think straight much less write due to the information assault. Or is it misinformation? You can’t tell what’s real but you can sense that something is missing. Facts change according to your algorithm and AI tells us our eyes are lying.

But that’s the point, isn’t it?
To bury us under this deluge of metastasizing misery.
To keep us disoriented.
It’s not the bug, it’s the feature.

But what to tell Cassie?

All the things we’re taught to say and believe in times like these of course:

Breathe. Rest. Fight.

The more I think about it though, maybe laziness is the answer.

When the titans of the world have consolidated power and institutions cannot be trusted to intervene and no morality exists strong enough to muddy the waters of the titans’ collective decisions, what other than our absolute collective refusal can stop this madness?

(american troops return home in boxes)

We should all be lazy.