Detachment

I'm still having a hard time understanding how you can put everyone in the world in the same society, and now it seems you are having difficulties with the concept yourself. That's all society is, you know, a concept. The people are real, but society is just a figure of speech. You can't see it, it has no address, no telephone number, and no board of directors. I think most sociologists would require that the people in a society should have more in common than just being human but, since it's your society, I suppose you can include anybody in it that you want.

When I claim that I am not a member of any society, that doesn't mean somebody can't arbitrarily put me in one for the purposes of his study model. I guess what I really mean is that, while I may be in somebody's society, I am not of it. I think the word I have been looking for is "detachment". They say you can choose your friends, but not your relatives. You can't really resign from your family, but you can move far enough away from them that they don't bother you anymore. That distance may or may not be measured in miles, it might be just an emotional detachment. You are still there among them, but you no longer consider yourself to be one of them. I never had that issue with my family, but I think the same concept can be applied to society, any society.

I heard a lot of racist talk when I lived in Chicago, but I mostly just blew it off. There were some racial jokes that I considered worth repeating, but they weren't mean jokes, they mostly made fun of the way Whites and Blacks relate to each other. I'm sure I repeated as many Bohack and Pollock jokes as I did Black jokes, so I was an equal opportunity joke teller. I doubt that I understood the meaning of detachment in those days, but I must have had an intuitive ability to practice it because, looking back on it now, that's what I was doing. It sounds like you didn't develop that ability until later in life, if ever, because you say that you identified with the Whites you knew, even though you didn't like their attitude towards the Blacks. It would have been  difficult, if not impossible, to renounce your Whiteness and become a member of the Black community, but you could have detached yourself from the racism and the people who were expressing it.

I don't know what to think about those Planned Parenthood movies. Of course that stuff can be faked but, just because it can be faked, doesn't mean that it was faked. I was more interested in the organization itself. My ilk says that it's just an abortion mill, while your ilk says that it is a provider of women's health care services and that abortion is only a small part of what they do. In Michigan, we have the State Health Department for that, but I'm not sure about the abortion part. Maybe they would refer a woman to an abortionist if that's what she needed, but I don't think they perform abortions on their own premises. They do give out free birth control, and I think they still pay for surgical sterilization of both men and women. I suppose it's not the same in all states, so maybe there is a need for Planned Parenthood in some jurisdictions. I still believe that, if the government wants to do something, they should do it with their own facilities and personnel. When they use a third party like this, it makes it harder to hold anybody accountable.

Another fake shutdown? Ho-hum! An increase in interest rates can only benefit me because I have about a fourth of my money in interest bearing accounts. The rest of it is in the stock market, which probably will take a hit, but only a temporary one. It would be a good buying opportunity for some people, but my portfolio has rode out these little upsets before, and I have no plans to rebalance it. One thing good is that, while they are arguing about something like this, they are leaving my guns and cigarettes alone.