Who Am I

and Why Should Anyone Care?

The Sun Still Rises, Margot Potter Studios Copyright 2024

Note: It’s Tuesday, so there is an essay ahead. As always, consume what looks appetizing and don’t worry about what doesn’t. We’re all busy, overwhelmed, and doing our best to focus on what matters most. Take care of you in the way that works best for your overall happacity. You can opt out of emails and stay subscribed by changing your preferences on Substack or you can unsubscribe with a click of a button below.

Hello, Friend,

A random woman popped in my feed under a note here yesterday and asked, “Who are you and why should anyone care?”

When I replied with a bit of cheek she told me to “Fuck off.”

Having become well acquainted with Delete, Block, Exhale in my many years on social media, I bid her adieu. People are feeling a lot of feelings right now and looking for places to express them. I do not allow people to abuse me. I don’t do online drama, especially not with the current external drama.

I did think about her question, though. Who am I and why should anyone care?

“Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.” Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot

Who are any of us, really? We’re just a bunch of atoms temporarily assembled in a meat suit with a brain. We are made of the dust of stars. None of us will live forever. Most of us will be forgotten. None of the people who just took power will live forever. All of them, like all of us, will die, eventually, and most of them will be swept into the dustbin of history. These people are miserable, and I think many of their voters are too. Furious when they lose, furious when they win. Always looking for someone to blame for their misery, instead of looking in the mirror. They are bullies and narcissists, insecure and unhappy people who find no joy in life no matter how much they have. Celebrating racism, sexism, homophobia, and Xenophobia. Reveling in rape talk and ultra-violence, living in a frantic neo-Fascist wet dream.

Can you imagine having more money that anyone could spend in countless lifetimes and it still not being enough?

It boggles the mind.

“Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.” Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot

I take some comfort in the knowledge that these people are stuck with each other. When they talk about deleting the rest of us and hiding in their bunkers, I imagine what sort of fucked up game of Survivor they will play in there. I wonder how miserable a group of sociopaths will be with only each other and without art, music, literature, film, theater, without sunshine, bird songs, oceans, without compassion, humor, joy, or hope. AI will be cold comfort, because once it has no creative humans to copy, it will continue to devolve. With no one left to worship them, how will they function? Narcissists need constant attention and reassurance. They won’t find it in each other. If they destroy the world or turn it into a dystopian slave state, what hellscape will be left? Will they jump into their cock rockets and head off to Mars? Will they burrow in their bunkers or luxuriate in their ocean utopias? How will that work out for them?

Is our only hope that they eat each other before they consume the rest of us?

Who are they and why should anyone care?

The truth is, none of us are more important, more special, more deserving, more worthy…and knowing that makes them furious. They are miserable people with too much money and too much power and too much greed and too little empathy. They cannot live in a world where we all get a place at the table, so they want try to destroy that world.

Our Robber Barons, Bernhard Gillam 1882 Library of Congress Public Domain

Who am I and why does anyone care?

I’m a lady who lives on a farm with her six weird (and weirdly wonderful) little dogs and her patient husband. I’m a writer, an artist, and a performer. I’m a wife, mother, friend, and confidante. I’m a human having a human experience. I’m a believer in the power of kindness and everyday magic, in inclusivity and equity, and the incontrovertible truth that our diversity is our greatest strength. I am made of star dust and grit, glitter and paint blobs, nonsense and frippery, and unshakable hope. I’m tenacious and curious and determined. I am not any more special or deserving or worthy than anyone else. But I understand something that the power grabbers do not understand. I understand that love is the only thing that is real and that no matter how hard they try to destroy it they will fail and, more importantly, they will never, ever know it.

"We rise and fall and light from dying embers, remembrances that hope and love last longer. And love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love cannot be killed or swept aside... Now fill the world with music, love and pride." Lin Manuel-Miranda

(As always these essays include links to deeper dive articles you can read to explore the topics discussed further.)