My father chose his big ideas over me and my mother. And the thing is, my dad was always fucked over by big ideas. It's what got him taking part in genocide, and then he went in the complete opposite direction and became Marxist to make up for it, and then when things got bad he ultimately chose to detach from us because he could not stop worrying about the direction of the country.
And this is not to say that I don't like ideas. I do. But in healthy doses, and with a more tolerant attitude. I see parts of my father in myself and it frightens me, especially when I see one of his good friends, who always had political discussions with my dad but was able to take things in stride and able to have a life outside of ideas - and he's still doing fine now, and my dad is in the fucking ground. You know? That's my experience.
And the other thing is, the way I work through ideas is by writing fiction. A lot of what I write is extremely idea-centric. For me that's a more holistic way of expressing myself than I could ever put down in a written discussion like this.
Part of my career goal is to be diplomatic. I don't look for truth and I actually don't even try to figure out how to make the best democratic society. My goal is to just keep things together, mend the stitches. Other people are free to search for truth and debate about democracy. But my life if I join the Foreign Service won't be happy and calm in the sense where I could sleep all the time, it would be filled with action, as cliched as that sounds. And I would be discussing things that matter to the post, but it would be on a much less meta scale than discussions we've been having. And I would be writing. And honestly, I would be plenty happy with that.
no subject
And this is not to say that I don't like ideas. I do. But in healthy doses, and with a more tolerant attitude. I see parts of my father in myself and it frightens me, especially when I see one of his good friends, who always had political discussions with my dad but was able to take things in stride and able to have a life outside of ideas - and he's still doing fine now, and my dad is in the fucking ground. You know? That's my experience.
And the other thing is, the way I work through ideas is by writing fiction. A lot of what I write is extremely idea-centric. For me that's a more holistic way of expressing myself than I could ever put down in a written discussion like this.
Part of my career goal is to be diplomatic. I don't look for truth and I actually don't even try to figure out how to make the best democratic society. My goal is to just keep things together, mend the stitches. Other people are free to search for truth and debate about democracy. But my life if I join the Foreign Service won't be happy and calm in the sense where I could sleep all the time, it would be filled with action, as cliched as that sounds. And I would be discussing things that matter to the post, but it would be on a much less meta scale than discussions we've been having. And I would be writing. And honestly, I would be plenty happy with that.