I don’t do a ton of social media and never have. I’ve specially gotten off of Facebook, but apparently the rest of the world is not there as I see Meta setting g new quarterly earnings records. I keep an eye on Instagram but never post (not sure how that adds to Meta’s pocketbook). Snapchat is how my kids and I stay in touch. From what I can tell, that strongman, Anatoly and whoever publishes all those pimple-popping videos seem to benefit from my need to eliminate the red counters on the bottom of my Snapchat feed. But LinkedIn is not really social media, though it is a networking app. I do not pay for the premium services (though I did try them once for a hot second), so whatever LinkedIn makes from me is some form of eyeball counting thing. The same desperate need to wipe out the red counters drives my LinkedIn reading. Presumably I’m reading important business tidbits, but that seems less and less the case.
While there are very few things in life that seem creepier or crawlier than social media, that is not the reason for my title today. Instead, the title is about a post I noticed on LinkedIn. It was a graphic of Donald Trump shining a flashlight onto a dark wall that was covered in cockroaches. I can think of many ways to associate Trump and cockroaches, but this LinkedIn post took a surprising angle. It suggested that the Donald Trump craziness of the past 100 days has exposed the true weakness of our modern world. The two statistics it quoted were the 82% rise in the price of gold and the 17% fall in the price of oil. The implication was that the existence and use of fiat currency is a sham and that the scarcity of oil is a lie.
This picture was a way of saying that the real value in the disruption wrought by Donald Trump’s rampage across the financial landscape is that it has exposed our system for the weakness it holds. There is no suggestion that Trump necessarily knew he would find cockroaches in the dark, but that his wrecking ball approach to the presidency has been a boon to nihilists that simply don’t believe in the status quo. I have often wondered who enjoys horror movies and why. There must be a place down deep in the recesses of some people’s soul that wants to see the world come to an end. That would explain the vast array of post-apocalyptic movies ranging from Planet of the Apes to Mad Max. There have been 10 and 5 of each respectively, which says a lot about their popularity.
While I hate horror movies (Zombies and psycho killers don’t do it for me), I have always been drawn to the post-apocalyptic genre for some reason. I like to think it is less about the destruction of the world as we know it and more about the hope imbedded in the rebuilding challenge, that draws me to them. I’m willing to acknowledge a few cockroaches in the dark, but I do not feel like I am surrounded by them and want to tear down my world to rid myself of creepy crawlies I suspect might be lurking out there in the dark. To the extent there are creepy crawlies, I especially want the integrity of my home and my way of life to shield me from them. Who wants to live with the fear that our walls are filled with swarming termites and that the worms will crawl in and out and play Pinochle on our snout? Apparently some people do. They see demons in their sleep and find their skin crawling.
People are all wired differently. Some twitch and worry about every little thing. They tend never to find much peace. Others are oblivious and go through life with a smile that declares that ignorance is, indeed, bliss. Most of us fit somewhere in the middle of that range and we have our moments of terror and tranquility but are not immobilized by either. We mostly adapt as a means of coping and we accept the world in all its imperfection either as an acceptable stage for life or even the basis for the beauty and wonder of life. We are here but for the briefest of moments and as much as many of us strive to have a positive impact, we are mostly all just holding up a small candle in the dark. And that candle is not there to find cockroaches, but to light our way for the few brief moments of existence.
It is astounding to me that there are people out there who so need to justify their support for Trump and his MAGA ways, that they can dream up these justifications for what he is doing every day to the world that so many of us inhabit and admire. I look around me every day in abject wonder at the magnificence of nature snd equally at the amazing accomplishments of modern man. I know that indigenous people were better stewards of the earth than modern man, but when I look at a skyscraper or a busy airport, I am in awe of man’s ability to transcend the bonds of earth and feel that there is as much beauty in that achievement as there is in a waterfall or rainbow. I feel there is room for both appreciations and that the contrast makes the two particularly poignant on a simultaneous basis.
It is said that we cannot live without insects and that their presence at the base of the food chain is what makes higher life forms viable. And we all know, whether we choose to think about it at every moment or not, that microbial “insects” cover us constantly inside and out, and even make us function better by their presence. But I respect and appreciate man’s wish to rid himself of pests that infect and lessen the quality of his life. I don’t use Roundup to kill weeds, but I see lots of value in applying vinegar to make my surroundings more pleasant. I’m not sure I find much contradiction in that, but rather a degree of balance.
I will probably still keep an eye on LinkedIn, but I am now more convinced than ever that every form of social media, including LinkedIn, must be taken for what it is, a martial for spreading views and perspectives that are no more than representations of just how broadly (and I believe distortedly) our world can be seen. We all have our creepy crawlie moments and we all have things we would like to change in our world, but I choose to live amongst it all, swatting the occasional bug, but knowing that’s just part of the price of living this wonderful life we have been given.