After The Great Experiment

A brief letter

Life’s been a bit wild and beautiful for me lately, thus the reduced frequency of my essays at the moment. I guess we could add ‘busy’ in that as well, though being a bit too busy has been much of my default for the last few years.

I’m trying to change that, really. I’m notorious among my friends and family for over-extending, taking on too much, and especially for starting really big projects without really thinking enough on how much those projects will require.

I’ll not bore you too much with what I’ve committed myself to. They’re all interesting things, and beautiful, and maybe also a lot of work. It’s been quite difficult to include other things which balance them out, unfortunately. I’ve been far from regular at the gym, for instance, and despite the fact that almost all COVID regulations have fallen away here, I’ve not yet begun to try to have a social life again.

I’ll write about that last bit sometime, especially about how it was to arrive to a completely new country just three months before it shut down completely. My husband noted wryly that I was about to see the faces of people with whom I’d been regularly interacting for two years for the very first time, and he was right. The cashiers and clerks at the local market where I buy my groceries, my gym trainer, and particularly all those people you see regularly in public spaces suddenly revealed themselves.

As had I, I guess. Many of them finally know what I look like beyond the hair, eyes, body frame and clothing. It’s been a surprising and subtle experience to suddenly meet a person’s smile that you’ve never seen before, and you realise maybe they had been smiling at you for years but you could never see. Likewise for them, I imagine, to realise that gruff looking altogether serious appearing American dude was actually giving them goofy grins and wanted to be their friend.

That was really the dumbest human experiment civilization has ever come up with and I hope we never try that again.

Along with the unmasking I’m giving a lot of time to considering what sorts of compensatory habits I accumulated which I no longer need and definitely don’t want. I’m sure we’re all doing this. I’ve heard of and met many people who suddenly are struggling to end an alcohol habit they’d never had before COVID. Some of the male writers that I follow have talked quite openly about trying to undo pornography habits. Women have written about trying to regain their self-esteem and detach from social media visions of the ideal body with which they never struggled before the great experiment started.

For me, the two habits in particular have been smoking and video games. They say addictions are always compensations for some sort of lack, and I definitely know that the video games were my way of compensating for very little social life. The constant engagement of a game is active, unlike the passive experience of binge-watching Netflix series (something I very rarely do, and televisions have never been a feature of my adult life), so it leads to the sense of active engagement with others. Of course, you’re only engaging with pixels, regardless if those pixels are controlled by others.

Especially since I left social media, not having a significant social existence beyond my now-husband and my family here has been quite difficult. Hanging in a cafe or a park for hours was always my way of making new friends, and that’s not been possible when everyone’s forced to hide from each other or when those spaces were off-limits because of government policy.

Smoking is related to this. I’ve smoked cigarettes (not marijuana—I really don’t have the right personality for that stuff) since I was 23, and the times I’ve smoked the most have always been the times I’ve been most isolated. I’m not one of those sorts who smoke more around people, but rather who smokes more when there are no people around. That is, like video games it’s related to a lack of connection to really-existing (not virtual) humans. Being first an immigrant and then also arriving in a country right when it all shut down really was an unfortunate situation.

That’s over though, and now I’m watching these compensatory habits start to fade. I’m guessing it’s like this for many, many other people. Some are probably just now beginning to note how they changed and begin to change again, some are likely in full denial that anything isolation caused was negative. It’s hardly a time for judgment, of course, though I will say I’ve got very, very little patience for anyone who’d love to put us all back into confinement and fear again.

Something else for which I have very little patience is a narrative that had arisen early during the experiment on account of a think piece from one of those think-piece journals about male friendship. I’ll not cite the article (though you likely encountered it), but only its primary argument, which was that men were “suddenly” realising they needed real and authentic friendships on account of the lockdowns. The logic went that men had previously settled for surface friendships involving hanging out together, going fishing, hunting, playing pool or darts, or doing other characteristically male activities with other men.

Such friendships, according to the thinking people, were obviously not authentic.

Among the problems with this framing is the idea that casually being with someone else is somehow less authentic than engaged discourse about emotions, etc. Of course, such discourse can be done electronically and over long distances, whereas casually being with someone cannot. Obviously, the underlying premise of such an analysis is that real friendship and relationship transcends—and really doesn’t even need—the physical body, while bodies being together is a more primitive and inferior kind of relating.

Such a framing is of course perfect for the virtuals and the urbanites, those who in many other ways see themselves as having risen above the inferior and unnecessary reality of flesh and presence. That it was directed as a condemnation of men is the more interesting part of this for me, that we’re too stupid to have realised our bodies are just sacks of meat.

What’s instructive here is that men actually tend to struggle more often with virtual addictions such as pornography and video games. As I mentioned above, addictions are usually compensations for something otherwise lacking (connection, for example). So on the one hand, men are stupid for wanting to hang out in casual ways with their male friends, and on the other hand they’re too stupid to interface with virtual representations in a non-obsessive way.

Or, maybe it’s not a matter of stupidity at all, but rather than men do best when they are connected in casual ways with other men. When that’s lacking in their lives or not possible, then they are likely to use other things to get themselves through that lack, compensatory things that—just like a drug addiction—have the unfortunate but inevitable consequence of isolating them further.

I don’t like that anyone discussing such things gets labeled as a ‘men’s rights activist’ or a misogynist. It’s particularly frustrating that hearing someone looking at differences in men and women in a deep, compassionate, and curious way is so rare. I’ll be reviewing a book soon that does such a thing, though: What Do Men Want? by Nina Power.

On another note, my husband and I have planned a honeymoon for next month, a two-week road trip through several countries. Our ultimate destination is Croatia, as my sister has traveled there twice and constantly raves about it. Travel has always been a really significant part of my life, and it was one of those many things taken away from us during the great experiment. Now I can travel again, and will, and as often as I can.

Until then, I’ve a few projects to finish. My publisher was very kind to allow me an extension on delivery of the manuscript on account of my wedding. I’m also editing books by two other writers to be released this year, and currently teaching my course, Being Pagan. I’ve also promised several book reviews (including of Nina Power’s book and also Gordon White’s latest, Ani.Mystic). And I published another essay at Another World on nationalism which I’ll post here tomorrow for paid supporters (it’s also paywalled at Another World, which is why it can’t be a free essay here, sorry).

And PS, the photo that begins this letter is from the Freyley, or Freya’s Rocks, an ancient Celtic and then later Frankish ritual site. I’ve more photos which I will post soon and plan to make another Druid Journal from there (I filmed one last their as well). It’s a haunting and deeply magical place, and is only about 7 kilometers from my home. I don’t go there nearly enough, which is one of those other things I intend to change.

Hope you’re all well! More soon,

—Rhyd