someone once asked me

...Is my blog relevant? I was kinda stuck for the appropriate answer. There are so many levels relevancy is working on, and so many levels bloggers are blogging on, and was this blogger blogging to what personal scale? And applying such effort to which level of relevancy? And how close to potential? Oh! What a mess.

I sort of answered... with this visual aid. (At right.) But that point was probably lost, such things tending to make people revert to cursing the powers that be. I was pointing to one of the fundamentally relevant issues of human history in case real relevancy was the aspiration behind that question. Bloggers have this free-for-all going, this medium where they can claim to be vital and escape any feeling of responsibility for the way things play out on our pale blue dot. My interest, in case you can't tell from my sidebar, is in truth telling, for the specific purpose of, not to be trite, saving all sentient beings... some silly vow I made. (Don't get me started on the difference between the common conception of vowing as distinct from the real nature of making a vow. Hint: A vow can't be taken.) So I spend varying amounts of energy, depending on the levels of truth telling propensities, on various people. There is a cosmos of approaches to this fundamentally relevant subject, and I go with the ones equipped to make a dent in it if their thrust can be aimed at it.

The fact that I'm female tends to confuse them generally. I'm imparting stuff that usually comes from men. The cognitive dissonance of this coming from one we are conditioned to believe doesn't walk this realm wins every time -- is resolved by rooting through one's store of default assumptions to find the one that best fits the need to resolve the dissonance, not, mind you, having anything to do with the matter at hand. Most usually it has to do with my attention being compared to a crush, or my geographical location tending to lump me in with dingbats, or that I'm a bitter harridan from remaining single and childless, or any variation on those themes. Which all means I must strive to improve my communication. Their chances of catching my wave are narrowed if I don't speak their lingo, so to say. It's more than the words, but lingo is more than words.

Another fundamentally relevant, an even more fundamentally relevant, issue is the looming global catastrophe, but, since it cannot really be addressed while fascists slaughter the helpless stewards of profit-laden resources, the two can't really be separated on our hierarchy of priority. And I'm having to interject now that fascism could be a great tool for solving this problem, if it is solvable at all. If the treasury-looting, vampire capitalist plutocrats want to turn their capital-extracting toils to monopolizing alternative energy and building environmentally friendly infrastructure, does the freedom of the individual matter as much? Violently opposed to oppression as I am, a great many sentient beings might benefit hugely from an appropriately directed fascist approach, and live more comfortably than they do now.

Part of why authoritarian power structures continually emerge, continually rise to taint utopian movements, is because so many humans are either incapable of critical thinking, or so loath to engage in it as to render them incapable. It never doesn't pay to remember this fact. Newt Gingrich never disappoints when you want clarification on this concept.

I don't know if you're wondering why I led with an illustration of synapses, but it was in answer to my friend's question. Is my blog relevant? The short answer is: No. The full answer is: You have the impulse to truth needed to make most of what you say valuable, and if you lose the preoccupation with yourself, your synapses will start growing in new and more productive ways -- your brain will reconfigure itself toward ultimate relevancy.

Too many of us dyed-in-the-wool Americans believe restoring election integrity is THE fundamental issue crucial to everything else, that there is no hope to make a better world while criminals can and do rig our elections with the impunity seen in the last several of them. That assumes we will vote for the people who can and will address the matters of fundamental relevance, who can and will manifest positive intent. We won't, whether or not we are given a chance... at least not in time.

Halting the felons in charge is the most urgent matter of all, because none of the problems of planetary significance can be effectively addressed until that is accomplished. You want to be the useful kind of relevant? Make your thrust about this. Not forgetting that the ability to become felons in charge must also be snatched from anyone else's grasp as well. Finding the right people who will address the fundamentally relevant issues is but a whisker behind in priority for the synaptic growth running of the Relevance Cup, Grade I Stakes Race. I haven't found anyone who is not wasting time we do not have, perfused with excuses not to perform, displaying the full and dizzying array of cop-outs available to all intelligent people, functioning so much like neon-brained thoroughbreds balking, bolting, bucking, rearing, biting, stamping, shying from the starting gate... only even less amenable to the most concerted urging. You're not going to die getting into the gate. You're only going to have a chance to save the world once you're out the other side, truly racing to grow the synapses sufficient to saving the world. How does this compare to the absolutely no chance you have right now?

Pfeh. Who cares if your work will end up sufficient to the task?

It's certainly insufficient if you never embark on it at all, and there is no time for your nonsense.