I'm Major Jackson and this is the slowdown.

I'm Major Jackson and this is the slowdown. Today, I long to call out of work and to attend a movie matinee. I had the temptation to simply email my colleagues and ask who's in the work will be here. I wanted to encourage delinquency. Last

week someone made a remark about a political topic that was so infuriating, I wanted to shout them down,

which is the mode of our current zeitgeist.

Doing so would likely have cost me my position in the regard of my peers.

Instead, I attempted to reason with them, hoping they would be open to being persuaded into a different perspective, because,

I've been told, that's how a rational society behaves. Not too long ago, I had a

staggering thought that only the mega-rich, I mean so rich, is

hidden away, should pay taxes.

But of course that would not be fair.

I imagine everyone has experienced feelings of having to suppress unpopular opinions

and to toe the line.

While I am a strong advocate of individual freedom. Our social contract pressures us to conform to a set

of perspectives and rules that is for the betterment of all. Then again, I wonder how much of our authentic selves are lost in

the belief that we are stronger collectively when we adhere this way to a set of civic virtues that may not fully align with our worldview.

Is there a part of us that wishes to express something different?

How might we look within and no longer seek social affirmation?

Today's poem hilariously and subtly bespeaks the allusion and cost of communal existence and belonging.

I tune my body and my brain to the music of the land by Natalie Shapiro.

An important part of becoming any actor is showing up to a room full of people who look more or less like you, all auditioning for the same bit part.

I guess some find this threatening and or a source of destabilization, but for me,

my everyday activities already leave me so threatened and destabilize that it's hard to imagine a throng of look-alikes

...