Demanding Validation for Delusions
I was giving a tour for a group of people on Black history, and there was an older white gentleman who approached me and asked about money dealings in the Black community. Despite having given him an answer, he insisted that there was money within the Black community that was being improperly used. At the end of the tour, I stuck around for questions, and he began discussing Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell, praising them for having “done the work.” He asked me if I agreed that Black people need to stop making excuses and “do the work,” and I said, “If you truly believe that, then you are clearly an older white man talking to a younger Black woman about things you refuse to understand.” His wife and family laughed but he persisted, and I kept repeating, “No, you are simply wrong,” and this would have continued longer had his son-in-law not finally held him firmly, and said, “She is communicating that she is done talking about this. Thank you for the tour.” The older man was communicating to me that I was required to validate his delusions about the Black experience, and he was unwilling to budge at all until I satisfied his request. Regrettably, this man is not alone, because the entire United States is full people running around demanding that everyone validate delusions that have already proven untrue.
The biggest gain from the multiple crises that began in 2020 has been the heightened awareness of how so many people demanded control of the narrative to sustain the unsustainable. The 24/7 demand for income was wearing everybody out, but those who employed service workers were unwilling to relinquish their demand for growth. Housing was becoming increasingly unaffordable based on the hoarding of “income property,” but landlords were unwilling to lower rates, insisting that exhausted people meet ever-rising rents. Schools were increasingly monetized with punitive methodology, and students were strained to the brink, but politicians refused to even consider shutting down schools to address any issues, pushing children and college students ever into despair while demanding to teach lies. Nothing was working, but instead of acknowledging that nothing was working, so many people demanded everyone else to keep striving to return to the “euphoria” of 2019. Regardless of the “choice” to get vaccinated, the real problem now is that people who choose not to be vaccinated feel entitled to force everyone else to enable aggressive behavior, which was never supposed to be a “right.”
So many people see the world as a nonstop party that is required to entertain them, and the problem with all of the escalating, irrational behavior is that nobody goes to a party alone. By definition, a party involves more than one person. Therefore, people are not only behaving erratically and irrationally, but they are demanding validation of that behavior, and refusing to take, “No” for an answer. At the same time, toxic people take zero responsibility for failing to empower and support us. These people fail to realize that if they cannot engage without extraction, people will stop viewing them as safe, and society cannot continue engaging with such attitudes and remain healthy, so we are all suffering the consequences. Only recently — meaning the last six months — have people finally realized that the problem is not us, but those who demand that we validate delusions that deprive people of resources and autonomy while destroying ourselves. The jury is still out on whether society is disengaging from the nonsense quickly enough and/or in time to salvage the remaining socioecosystem.
The biggest problem that I can see is that delusional people have no new ideas, but insist on validating old ideas that 1) no longer work or 2) never worked, but were validated due to hierarchical power structures. While they sit around complaining about the lack of “fun” in their lives, they lack the self-reflection to understand that people make reality what it is, and they are responsible for the deterioration of their own lives. What do “Squid Game,” “Hunger Games,” “Running Man,” and “The Most Dangerous Game” have in common, other than the plots? Every one of those situations involves the premise of stupid wealthy people who can figure out nothing better to do than cause further destruction when life fails to “satisfy” them anymore. Politicians and the moneyed elite are so dumb that they cannot fathom a world where maybe stealing all the resources from everyone was a bad idea, and perhaps they should divest themselves of excess. What are their stupid ideas for everybody? “Start a business.” “Get a job.” “Buy a home.” “Go travel.” All of those ideas are stupid because they make sure that none of those ideas work for anyone but them: start a business — so they can steal, buy, or monopolize the good or service; get a job — so they can exploit whoever is dumb enough to trust them; buy a home — so they can con people into predatory loans before building infrastructure to bulldoze that home; go travel — so they can buy the property, the service workers, the food, and the energy rights and increase their holdings, getting rich from everyone doing “self-care.”
Meanwhile, those who are suffering from the consequences of the delusions of stupidity are surrounded by enablers who also cannot see any other way to exist. BIPOCQ being fully self-empowered so that we can avoid toxic people who see us as batteries? “No way, we deserve to exploit you because you failed to stop us.” Instead of fulfilling all the efforts to stop the problems that currently exist, people come up with stupid, disproven reasons why nothing can change, which merely translates to a fear of change. The pain caused during these global crises has been more than many have felt in a lifetime, but those who demand the delusions keep forcing everyone to play along, keeping us mired in frustration, eventually dulling our own nerves. The efforts to explain why the delusions will no longer solve any problems fall on deaf ears, and those who might have been useful to solve problems now look for ways to avoid doing anything other than hiding or masking any pain that they might experience, including their own.
I liken the situation to a parent taking a phone call with two children playing in the background. The parent turns to listen better, and all of a sudden, a child screams and starts crying. The parent turns around and sees one child screaming and crying, the other playing quietly alone. After soothing the child, the parent returns to the phone call, but once again, the same child screams and starts crying, while the other child plays quietly alone. This time, the crying child moves to another room, not even wanting to talk to the parent, and hoping that playtime will finally be peaceful. The parent feels slighted by this behavior, but returns to the phone call. Out of nowhere, the same child screams and starts crying, but this time, the parent sees the other child playing quietly alone, smirking and panting. Even seeing this, the parent returns to the phone call.
One might argue that the “parent” is the government, but after all the failed relief and disaster efforts in the past two years, the “parent” is clearly an apathetic public who demands to be distracted at all times. The distraction could be media, personal lives, consumption, or recreation, but the cold-hearted truth is that too many people are looking for someone else to see the problems and address them, which is why there are countless nonprofits begging for resources from people who love attention. The “crying, screaming child” is the collection of unprotected people who keep providing more information to the apathetic public, and never getting any solid relief or empowerment to keep our lives to ourselves without harassment. The “sociopathic child” is the government and private entities: they know all the ways to behave to avoid suspicion, but they are constantly inflicting pain on people who have been desperate to avoid them. In the past, there have been independent communities, people found ways to create vibrant communities, networks were built, but every time marginalized communities have found a sustainable way to exist, we are immediately harassed into participation in the dominant narrative. No one wants to admit that we cannot share the blame when people want to ignore the pain.
The dominant narrative has been used as a tool to keep BIPOCQ in place because its enablers “found” us. They feel entitled to keep us there until they feel ready to release us from its tenets, which is why all the relief efforts have failed. In the minds of the delusional, BIPOCQ should remain as disenfranchised as we were when strangers chained us and forced us into compliance. To them, we are stupid, ugly, loud trash that they feel entitled to control, like children who need to patiently wait until monsters come to their senses. So many people are pleading for redemption after enabling the dominant narrative, but almost none of those people have done any restorative work that acknowledges and amends the pain that was caused. At this point, expecting “patience” to address historic wrongs is racial hatred with the message, “I am entitled to extract and exploit from you until I feel ready to grant you autonomy. You should do your level best to convince me that I should be done with extraction and exploitation.” There are so many stipulations about how BIPOCQ can demonstrate how we are ready to manage our own autonomy, but those who live in delusions fail to realize that they have never been forced to demonstrate any reason why they deserve to have their insecurities assuaged. All of these people fail to realize that they are the problem, not people refusing to go along with their delusions.
Things are going to get worse because so many people would rather remain thoughtless and distracted than face the realities of the problems that exist. The environment is equally tired of the delusions, which is why catastrophes are starting to increase in both size and frequency — still wrapping my brain around the fact that the ocean caught on fire this year. What is the endgame? No one knows, but there are a lot of people with control and resources who are desperate to contain the dominant narrative and quell the violence that is being incited. Buying the media to sing one’s praises does not indicate intelligence, just excessive wealth. That older man who wants to believe that Black folks need to “do the work” just wants to return to the phone call, but he will soon find out that nobody wants to talk to him.
