On its own

It fell. Gravity. Weight. Collapse.

Same with lies and hypocrisy. Hand-me-down and revised version as the Like new norm of “untruth”.

One day, all on their own (weight), they collapse. Like a Ponzi scheme. Like Enron (among its mission statements: “respect” and “integrity”). Like 2008’s derivative packaging (S&P at 666 bottoms). Like Theranos (Steve Jobs re-incarnated).

Social media in contrast thrives on Network Effect, regardless of content ( by nature, it tilts more towards visual, short, crisp, and cryptic sound bites ).

Should we go Luddite on it? Pack up and go off the grid?

Even nature has its short-fall (or a tree falls). So we bid for time. We do time. Serve time. Scroll the feeds. Waiting for the Uber ride.

Waiting for the last ride, ” a motorized Trinkle between the crematorium curtains”, (courtesy of “Sense of an Ending” by Julian Barnes). Of course, we are entitled to feel morbid. Trees fell. Buildings collapsed (Turkey). And women returned to water haul in Kabul.

The world I have come to know has constantly changed: from one minute to the next e.g. the Challenger burst out in flames on live TV, the burning monk in front of my eyes at the intersection of Le Van Duyet and Phan Dinh Phung, or the planting of “triumphant” SVN flag on top of the Capitol (cathartic Iwo Jima) 2 years ago.

Vietnam, the victor, is meanwhile moving its economy to be more aligned with its nearest neighbor, itself had aligned its economy more toward Capitalism (“black or white cat, as long as it catches the mice”). Meanwhile, the US SOP still very much reflects Fordism after the automobile inventor (“you can buy any model-T you want, as long as it’s black”).

This year is the year of the Cat (Rabbit in China). Yet it seems as if it’s always been the year of the Dog, who wags its tail. A shot was heard over there. A shootdown of a balloon over here. How dare you!

Playbook at the ready. Inventory and supply chain under control. Re-shore chips manufacturing. Recode our IP. Leave the spies in place. The post-war cost-accounting Dept never fully factored in the long-term effect and hidden cost of post-war recovery (humanitarian donation, volunteer hours and labor, time to heal if ever to integrate back into society).

People who are hot-blooded. Trigger happy and wanderlust. Take a hike. Hit the trail. Work it all out of your system. But think hard and twice about the countable and uncountable cost of going to war. Young men/women are thrust into playing God.

Shoot’m (anything that moves). Demonize them. Divinize yourself. Please come back. But never in one piece. And know the place for the first time. And to find out, the enemy is you. This applies to both sides. Since veterans often times turn against themselves when it’s no longer clear-cut who the enemy was.

It takes much longer to rebuild what’s been destroyed. Same with multi-generational hypocrisy e.g. KKK family rituals, embedded in our current culture, where lies get rewarded, and truth sneered (let’s go hunting! oh, here is a jogger, a n***** who doesn’t belong in our neighborhood, a new face sitting on OUR lunch counter).

But then, all on their own (weight of sin) they fall. Rome, Munich, Enron, Ponzi, Madoff…. the list goes on. Yet we still are gullible. Self-delusional and self-deceived. That’s why it takes dying (to bad habits) to live and stay sane in an insane society.

At times, I wish to crawl back into the cave and live off-grid. Off-road, Off social media, and off hearing/reading about people’s parading their supposedly shameful posts shamelessly. Theatre of the absurd. Gong show was recast as fashion show. Criss-crossing and circulating the red carpet, with wrong name tags on their chests. Until, on their own, in front of the mirror, when suddenly they come to know themselves for the first time.