On Lawn Care

Mow regularly, but not too short. You have to leave room for a little wildness!

After all, you can take the MAN out of the WILD, but you can’t take the WILD out of the MAN.

Water deeply and infrequently. This will make the grass rich and dark, like a jungle.

Where is MY jungle?

Where, for that matter, is MY TRIBE?

Do we have too much tribalism, or not enough?

The only tribe I get is a bunch of internet dorks who argue with strangers for upvotes? I want a real tribe, with CAMPFIRES and SPEARS.

I look at my hands and my feet and I see only tools made for jobs that no longer need doing. Heaven forbid if I look inward at my own mind. How much of what I AM is a tool for jobs that increasingly no longer need doing?

I see a rusted, wheelless Ford Model T and feel sympathy. Then my back aches and my wrists click and my esophagus burns and my eyes struggle to focus and I realize I AM THE MODEL T. I am old Brooks Hatlen in a world that has gotten too fast. I am the Air Conditioner in the Brave Little Toaster. Abandoned and breaking down. RAGING against the fact I am no longer needed. I would SCREAM, but my voice has atrophied too much.

I don’t want a doctor who will save my life and then slowly kill me. I want a wise, old MEDICINE MAN who understands sometimes it’s better to let someone die. I want elders I RESPECT because they’ve EARNED IT. Who have lived for decades with a sense of duty that has shaped them to become better than they ever could have otherwise. But instead I get BOOMERS who MAKE BUILDING HOUSES ILLEGAL so I will PAY THEM RENT.

I bought a plant recently. Two plants. Professor Snake the snake plant, and Sprout the philodendron. He would have been called Phil, but my coworker’s name is Phil, and I don’t want to picture watering my coworker. Seeing Sprout hatch a new leaf makes me smile. These two plants are my tiny rebellion against a CRUSHING, CONCRETE SOCIETY. My weeds growing through the cracks in the sidewalk. Society itself is a leaky abstraction, and ancient nature is growing up through the fractures. A goddess of the gaps. And soon the abstraction will BREAK and CRUMBLE. I hope.

I would rather worry about LIONS than nukes. I would rather fight an enemy I KNOW and HATE than pay taxes that kill STRANGERS I’VE NEVER MET. I would rather HUNT – I would rather STARVE – than eat POISON. Nature never produced a tree that grows pop-tarts, and perhaps that was a good thing. Selective breeding has improved our agriculture dramatically, but I would rather eat a THOUSAND pale watermelons and seedy bananas than sit on HOLD for two hours trying to get a refund on a Walmart grocery order that was never delivered.

Join a club, they say. Make an effort. Why? Why should finding MY PEOPLE take effort? MY PEOPLE are MY BIRTHRIGHT. For hundreds of thousands of years, each human being had their people. WHERE ARE MY PEOPLE?

(But isn’t that racist or something? Only if I feel kinship for white people, which I do not. Hundreds of millions of white people do not constitute a tribe, not unless you’re an idiot.)

Make sure to sharpen your mower blades, by the way. Dull blades tear grass, so make an effort to keep them sharp.

Eat healthy. Just make an effort.

Go to the gym. Just make an effort.

Stay off social media. Just make an effort.

You gotta put in the work. You gotta buckle down and study. You gotta grind. Make an effort.

Are you stupid enough to think the lives we are ENTITLED TO but have been DEPRIVED OF required so much effort? Do you think your ancient ancestors all had a “grindset”?

But what is the solution? How can we restructure our society to be more natural, more inducive of wellbeing? How can we measure it? How can we change everything, but at the same time, not change anything and keep everything basically the same? What about diseases, and starving kids in Africa, and people dying in Ukraine, and a thousand billion shrimp with specks in their eyes? How can you live until you’ve finished the akashic calculation of objective moral good?

Well, I’m not talking about what’s MORAL. I’m talking about what’s RIGHT. MORAL is an idea. What’s RIGHT is a feeling. REPTILES confuse the two. SNAKES, slithering between our feet, who have carved off their warm skin and legs and sense of humor and curiosity and forgiveness and playfulness and everything that doesn’t help them FIND and KILL their PREY. And WE ARE THEIR PREY. We who care about being human. We who live human lives and don’t just tally them.

Logic is hard because you’re NOT SUPPOSED TO USE IT SO MUCH. “Seventeen apples” is not necessary when “enough apples” is enough. You’re not supposed to use logic to think about life itself, because logic is small, and life is big. It DOESN’T FIT. But you try anyway because it’s the only way to be PURE. It’s the only way to MAXIMIZE wellbeing, MINIMIZE suffering, and ALLEVIATE your GUILT.

Logical people miss the forest for the trees, which is getting easier, because there are no more forests, because we’re CUTTING THEM ALL DOWN. You might think, actually, global tree cover has been increasing in recent years. And you would be WRONG, because you thought I was talking about TREES, but I was talking about FORESTS. (Not the “number of discrete forests.” You’re still thinking about TREES! I’m talking about FORESTS, and FORESTS do not EXIST!)

So what is the solution? What is it? Tell us!

There is no solution. It’s TOO LATE! The time to stop was thousands of years ago. We’re soon to be replaced. Rusty old cars sitting in a junkyard. The environment you’d want to return to DOESN’T EXIST ANYMORE. So go work your JOB with the BOSS you hate, take your KIDS to SOCCER PRACTICE, CHEAT on your WIFE but not on your TAXES, get STUCK in TRAFFIC, watch NETFLIX and CRY, because you’re so TIRED and the drywall is thin and you can hear the rats LAUGHING AT YOU because they’re living their lives and you’re not living yours. CLEAN your FLOORS and WASH your DISHES and work on your POSTURE and RANT, sensing something is wrong but not knowing what. RANT about Donald Trump and immigration and Tesla and DEI and AI and PARENTING and HOUSING – yes, God, if only our houses were bigger, that would give us some space. More space between us. That’s what’s needed. More privacy. More passwords. Three-factor verification. Make it four. And an air fryer that chops your vegetables for you – wouldn’t that be such a time saver?

WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU SAVING ALL YOUR TIME FOR? More NETFLIX AND CRY? More TIME with the KIDS? Can’t you chop the potato WITH THE KIDS?

Maybe if you weren’t at work all day you’d have more time and wouldn’t need to let the DAYCARE and the IPAD raise them. But you need to bust your hump, so you can afford the DAYCARE and the IPAD, and to save up so your kids won’t have to work so hard. They will, of course, because they are EMPTY INSIDE, just like you. Somewhat happy with their lives, of course. Who wouldn’t be? Dogs with owners that beat them are still happy with life. It’s in their nature. Just like it’s in our nature to say, “I’m generally pretty happy.” And then beat our dogs.

If you don’t realize what you’re MISSING, you can never MISS it. If you don’t realize what you’re SEEING, you can never SEE it.

You could live more modestly to have more time for the kids, but then how would you pay your PHONE BILL?

How would you pay for your LAWN?

Realize:

A LAWN is an AFFRONT to NATURE.

SUNSCREEN CAUSES CANCER.

God made STUPID PEOPLE for a reason. They’re good at SOMETHING.

Entertainment is POLLUTION.

When you speak, you’re not expressing fundamental reality, you’re MAKING NOISES with your MOUTH.

When is the last time you spoke out loud, in person, to a group of friends? For 10% of the population, the answer is NEVER, because those friends DO NOT EXIST. For the rest of us, we can perhaps PENCIL IN some human living on THURSDAY, but we’re all booked up with TOIL AND DESPAIR until then.

Is he a primitivIST? Anti-natalIST? What is he saying? DeontologISM? UtilitARIANISM? None of the above, because when you have ARYANISM, you get NAZIS. Not all feelings need to be FILTERED THROUGH AN IDEOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK. Not everything TRUE needs to be JUSTIFIED. Some things are true because they CANNOT BE JUSTIFIED. Some things are true because they CANNOT BE WRONG. Fire hurts. Can that be wrong? Try not to think about it too hard, because thinking is KILLING YOU. Smoking causes cancer, but overintellectualization IS A CANCER.

So what do we do?

I already said: it’s TOO LATE. All you can do now is FERTILIZE ACCORDING TO YOUR TYPE OF GRASS.

Besides that, I’d say just start screaming. It’s the only rational thing to do when you’re ON FIRE.

Now, I’ve taken up enough of your time. Your LAWN is growing. You’d better go mow it!