I was thinking earlier, during my shower, about how women are always conformists.
Hmm, rather, I thought of how few women are really non-conformists. Even the women who pretend to be non-conformists usually accomplish this shakily through ostentatious displays of physical brashness. Very few women non-conform in spirit. Women don’t non-conform when it comes to true non-conformity. Lady Gaga probably thinks she’s a non-conformist. I think she’s full of crap. Implicit in her boldness is the unspoken goal of generating a commercially cool vibe which ultimately is contagiously conformist. Madonna, Rosanne Barr, all of them, they think they are so bold and trailblazing but it’s the same garbage with them all. I’m sorry, but wearing outlandish clothes or making crude jokes doesn’t not make women non-conformist. The female approach to non-conformity is cosmetic and too dramatic.
Because it all comes down to the bare essence of non-conformity.
While I’m on the subject, most men are not non-conformists either. Once again, I hate to break the news to them, but tattooed sleeves, penis piercings or dyed hair do not make you non-conformists except in your own scattered minds.
The problem is that non-conformity becomes a conscious exertion in itself, and becomes self-conscious. It’s a vicious cycle. All these clowns with tattoos and wild clothes are still conforming to their own subculture. Even subcultures, which pretend to thumb their nose at convention, are still a bunch of conformist sheep. Ever been to a punk concert or an artsy event? Everyone looks unusual as contrasted with Main Street, but within the realm of their deviant subculture, they are radical conformists. They are not bold. They are followers. Lame! I’ve had it with toy non-conformists. I hate the way they traipse around like trailblazers but they are nothing but attention whores. This covers most women who wouldn’t know the first thing about being non-conformists.
See, it’s an evolutionary remnant primed in our genders. Conformity is the safest route to survival. Conformity is composed and erected of the safe and predictable repetition of habits and mores which define our civilization; the female’s role perpetuates the safe havens of society that ultimately subsist on conformity. A woman who fails to conform endangers her progeny and breeding opportunities; a man who fails to conform endangers his ability to allow women to conform. A woman’s urge to conform is elementally ingrained in her psyche whereas a man’s is “second-hand” in that it is designed to enable the conformity of the other stability-enhancing gender.
This is why women are conformists. This is why they are afraid to think outside the box. This is why maybe only 3% of men are able to rouse a piercing sense of non-conformity. While the rest prance around in bizarre clothing or body art and listen to unusual music and call themselves non-conformist. But at heart, they are conformists. We believe that if we fail to conform to broader society’s dictum’s, we are non-conformist. This is wrong. If you conform to anything, you are a conformist. Even if you conform to a bunch of non-conformists. It’s the double-negative principle. Two non-conformists make one conformist.
To be a true non-conformist, you must depart absolutely from all human convenience. Your outrage and your desire can have a basis in absolutely nothing anyone normal can relate to. In fact, you must be crazy. Te be non-conformist is to truly be batshit insane. My point is that there are very few functioning non-conformists. Most people channel their non-conformity into slivered channels of expertise and specialization which is where major revolution occurs. Cultural evolution is inspired by non-conformity, but those who instigate it are most likely conformist in other aspects of their life. Non-conformity does not need to wear a visible badge or coat of arms to be sincere.
Non-conformity can lurk in your soul and exert its upheaval at the most inopportune times. Non-conformity is a void. You see?
Just as religious folks say evil is the absence of good, I believe non-conformity is the absence of conformity.
It is not an active progression. It is a recession. Those who can achieve non-conformity truly do not embark as much as they withdraw.
There is a plateau, a something which can be called an “average concept of happiness” (A.C.H.) in this society. The A.C.H. is an embarrassingly simple idea. Why bother detailing what it is. It is self-explanatory.
As with most population statistical dispersals, the A.C.H. extends along a data curve that is shaped like a bell, and the most common (average) concepts of happiness, as they are observed throughout the human population, if plotted on the curve, would visually congregate at the center of the bell, thus raising the incidence of such concepts to the highest peak of the land since they are shared by so many subjects. As concepts of happiness dwindle in numerical representation, they travel further away from the pinnacle of the bell in a sinking sweep in coincidence with their shrinking representation across the population, and at the far reaches of the curve exist the badlands, the remote waystations, the socially alienated outcasts whose sense of “happiness,” rather than bringing happiness, only brings further estrangement from A.C.H. culture. For not only are you separated from others by the peculiar individuality of your unique concept of happiness, you are also distanced by those A.C.H. that you despise. It’s as if your existence is the antithesis to the bell’s crescendo.
In other words, not only are you excommunicated from the A.C.H. circles by your unusual conceptual happiness triggers, you are also excluded by the active dislike you share of those A.C.H.’s. If A was an A.C.H. and you hated it, you would find that you are further disowned by society as opposed to what you would experience if you merely neutral to A.
I could never understand the predominant series of A.C.H’s. It was always a puzzlement to me. I could never get the hang of it. Even when I was young, my friends liked A. A was “happiness” for everyone but I couldn’t help but really like B, at A’s expense. I always thought A was pointless and boring; B was where the fun was. B was interesting and edgy.
The same dynamic continues to this day. A dominates and defines the modern happiness paradigm but I’m stuck with a strange devotion to B that I will not surrender. No one gives a crap about B. B gets shortchanged. It doesn’t have any admirers or hordes of followers and it suffers by inattention. B is fringe and hard to find and all the followers of A mock those who follow B and act as if they are superior to B-aficionados. Simply because of A’s popularity, which all B followers realize means absolutely nothing. Popularity, in fact, is something to be defeated and refuted. “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public,” we proclaim. It’s a no-win dead-end situation for those who prefer B. If alterations to one’s tastes could help them learn to love A, perhaps there would be hope. But if we are honest with ourselves, we can never like A because it is blatantly stupid. We cannot lower ourselves to that level.
I spied a link to an inspirational blog post on my Facebook wall this morning. Entitled 15 Things You Should Give Up To Be Happy, the smartly phrased post presents a reverse twist on the majority of inspirational cybersermons by offering wisdom in the form of a negative life strategy rather than the obligatory positive one (ie, normally would be 15 Things You Should Do To Be Happy). This struck me as a bit unconventional, so I took a look.
I couldn’t disagree with the points. I usually find inspirational “lists” sophomoric and predictable and often intellectually lazy, but this post by a blogger named Dana behind the blog “Purposefairy” offered some insightful cursory examination of the human emotional detritus that can accumulate over years of modern maturation and transform blissful existence into one of self-induced torment and bitterness. A summary of the 15 points:
1. GIVE UP YOUR NEED TO ALWAYS BE RIGHT 2. GIVE UP YOUR NEED FOR CONTROL 3. GIVE UP ON BLAME 4. GIVE UP YOUR SELF-DEFEATING SELF-TALK 5. GIVE UP YOUR LIMITING BELIEFS 6. GIVE UP COMPLAINING 7. GIVE UP THE LUXURY OF CRITICISM 8. GIVE UP YOUR NEED TO IMPRESS OTHERS 9. GIVE UP YOUR RESISTANCE TO CHANGE 10. GIVE UP LABELS 11. GIVE UP ON YOUR FEARS 12. GIVE UP YOUR EXCUSES 13. GIVE UP THE PAST 14. GIVE UP ATTACHMENT 15. GIVE UP LIVING YOUR LIFE TO OTHER PEOPLE’S EXPECTATIONS
Not to toot my horn (because I enjoy doing so), but I feel I’ve come close to mastering many of these personal bullet points. I’ve done so implicitly without an external moral yardstick or map. I’ve arrived at such an evolutionary point over many years of trial and error, pain and excuse, loss and refutation. I’m nowhere near “perfect” and I have’t scaled the 15 peaks listed (just read this blog!!), but I believe my state of achievement has come much closer than most other stress-ridden, modern rat-raced lunatics rushing to live the lemming death march that modern capitalist society can mesmerize with. It seems that if we are to have any inclination toward the peace of mind and Zen reticence explained by such a life-view as outlined in the 15 “happiness” strategies, we are essentially disqualifying ourselves from partaking in the hollow values and artificial fancifulness of modern, materialistic man.
There is one common denominator present in these 15 strategies to varying degrees. Each of these represent a common facet of our human character whose level of immersion dictates the depths of our willingness to steep in each of these unfavorable personality essences.
It is the Ego. Or its unhealthy ascendance in our life.
On the heels of the Purposefairy post, I thought a lot of the Ego today. In fact, I think of the Ego a lot. I often wonder what the Ego is. Is it unhealthy, is it healthy, at what point does it become destructive, how does it manipulate our behavior. There are many definitions of Ego and an equal number of attempts to isolate it in the human personality culture as we would attempt to isolate a microbe in a microscopic culture. I’ve considered the Ego from many angles! Today another perspective of the Ego occurred to me, one against which to measure its affect and nature of distortion in our human personality.
Firstly, I’m sure most people have no difficulty concurring that we all have an Ego. This is not a question. The possession of an Ego is inherent to having an upper-level human consciousness. If we have a sense of “I” that can be described in a third person narrative concept, we have an Ego.
But how do we define the Ego?
Simply stated, the Ego is our ability/drive/hunger/motivation to impress ourselves.
That is all the Ego represents. It is our capability to impress ourselves. The egotistical appetite of an individual is qualified by the extent that person will traverse in order to impress themselves (ie, serve the Ego). Ultimately, I don’t believe the Ego has anything to do with others. The Ego is entirely self-serving and if it draws others into its Circle of Vanity, it is only as a source of reflection.
The feminine Ego feeds on the masculine lust and virile awe it inspires through the display of clothing and cosmetics and secondary sex characteristics and facial beauty; the male Ego feeds on accomplishments and possessions and monetary status and power. The Ego’s only aim is to impress oneself. If your desire to impress yourself is null or muted, your ego’s role in your life is sublimated. If you have an overriding need to impress yourself, your ego is bloated and hungry and is gluttonous for affirmation.
The Zen-like level of existence as outlined in many of the 15 points, if honed and practiced, overcomes the Ego by disregarding its presence and by absolutely integrating such an instinctual response into one’s persona.
The key to happiness is shedding the Ego’s goal of impressing yourself in favor of a positively self-accepting declaration that you are impressed with yourself in an immutable and stoic manner. The Ego is a tool you have no need for. It is a wasteful accessory that only hastens descent into civilized purgatory.
Please observe the exhibit. I’ll add notes after the graphic.
What precipitated this exchange is that a photo of Adam Levine performing on stage was tagged with one of my Facebook friends. She is the one who responds in the first 2 posts. It’s very important to note that this entire Facebook exchange is strictly women. The textual conversation among them is insightful for gives us a glimpse into the female mind during its mysterious consideration of men and their appeal while illuminating how delusional women can be about their own motives and expressions.
Actually, the point I’m seeking to make has nothing to do with Adam Levine or his presumed douchebaggery with the ladies.
Rather, I have discovered that women’s reactions to men are generally knee-jerk in nature and lacking sincere thoughtfulness. I’ve also come to the conclusion that “douchebag” and “creep” are actually two sides of the same coin. Both are concepts women default to instinctively in order to escape clearly enunciating or examining their gut reactions to men. It represents a lazy tendency on the part of women to not “own” their appraisal of men.
I believe douchebag is a derogatory catch-all term women use to “describe” men they would potentially have sex with; creep is a derogatory catch-all term women use to describe men they would not have sex with. Why do women seem groomed in today’s culture to refrain from speaking in glowing terms about a man? Is it some kind of “reverse peer pressure” that prevents them from heaping lavish praise on any man? Even men they like are still called douchebags. Men they call creeps are easier to dismiss.
Women are at liberty to speak effusively of, and gush over, food, celebrities or house furnishings. When it comes to human men, they clam up into “depersonalization” mode by barking out trite reflexive condemnations and since the terms are popular and young women are notoriously lacking creativity, creep and douchebag are currently the generally accepted terms of choice. Usage of these descriptors allows women to avoid dealing with men in real time and on genuinely human terms. Women are the biggest depersonalizers in the gender wars.
A female is more likely to lavish praise on a pasta dish than on a stranger she finds attractive when speaking to her girlfriends. A young woman will personalize food or a dog over a man. Creep and douchebag are the default signalling terms females use to create communion with our females equally unable to relate to men as humans. This is another function of the traditional marriage arrangement. To squeeze nearly non-existent humanity out of women.
A majority of my participation in the American workforce has been through the entertainment industry.
That said, here is a brief summary of the predominant Employee Archetypes I’ve observed during my illustrious and unprofitable career. Understanding that my observations are limited to the entertainment industry, I won’t presume to speak to other industries, however I do believe these archetypes are common to the vast span of the American workforce, and mass culture, by extension.
The Petulant Lazy Child:
This employee’s motivations for working involve everything except working. They are the prima donna, the self-involved and overly entitled spoiled “worker” who expects to reap all the rewards extended by the job while exerting the minimal exertion toward fulfilling a disciplined work ethic. These people are the “all glory, no sweat” types. They are lazy and unresponsive to normal requests and only spring into action when they are exposed to management-level examination. In other words, they typically need to be “snitched” out via email mass mailings in order to motivate them to do something they would not do for your lowly ass. There is no inherent sense of discipline or self-motivation…everything must be triggered externally with this archetype. Shame is their most powerful motivator because it degrades their vanity. Don’t expect them to do a job right for sake of doing it right. They will do the job right if enough high level management is copied to shame them into compliance.
The Minion Sycophant:
This employee is not high-ranking. Yet, their power disproportionately rewards them undue respect. The key to their success and corporate advancement lies in their “ability” to align themselves with a high-ranking Demon from whom they leech power and danger; the Minion Sycophant ingeniously sieves the distasteful but powerful habits of his Demon master through his own insignificant position in order to strike fear in others, a fear that only garners strength from the powerful Demon master. The point is that the Minion Sycophant, in and of himself, is a powerless travesty. However, when linked with his master, he finds himself channeling the dark powers of the beyond and is additionally able to wield power he would normally never arouse on his own. If you have balls, the Minion Sycophant is not threatening for if you are to put them in their place, there will be minimal repercussions as their master is too concerned with the workings of their own dark reign instead of that of their lowly minion. Dishonor among thieves.
The Mute Manager:
This employee has a managerial title which implies they must coordinate and manage personnel in the most efficient, wide-scale manner appropriate. It also connotes that said employee has proportional social skills required for managing people who are friendly and antagonistic, lazy and hard-working, and all other manners of contrasting aptitudes. Most managers in modern corporations have not had a hand in shaping their department. Due to mergers, full-scale upheavals and restructuring, they are commonly thrust into positions in which they inherited their department and thus, have not had a hand in shaping the personnel structure of the department they now head. Consequently, their subordinates frequently clash with their own values and work habits. This requires most modern managers, if they desire success, to simultaneously have impeccable people skills and standards of communication. The Mute Manager finds himself increasingly populating managerial roles today. Unfortunately, the Mute Manager has little ability to communicate efficiently with his underlings. Communicating is often misconstrued as “talking” or “verbalizing.” Hogwash. Communication merely means the ability to convey meanings quickly and efficiently. Communication is anticipating the questions and doubts your reports will have, and your holistic awareness of all possible questions and doubts are precisely measured and addressed before they even arise in your employees. Communication is predicting their doubts and addressing them before they even arise in their minds. This can be called psychic, but it is a simple human skill which most managers do not have. Consequently, most managers are bonus hounds. They seek to do only what is necessary in order to reward themselves and will gladly and criminally destroy any pre-existing corporate structure in order to achieve these monetary ends. This frequently means their communication is pathetic and may assert its absence as vanity and inconsideration. Which it is.
The Bonus Hound:
By definition, the Bonus Hound is a of managerial and higher ranking. The Bonus Hound does all he can to portray the profitable image that he cares about the company but implicit is the unspoken falsity that he has found a way to wrap his own fastidious avarice in the do-goody-rah-rah-plastic spirit of the entity by convincing everyone that they must do a better job for the team but the team’s performance is only measured in the short-termed attainments necessary to earn a modern bonus which is invariably contingent on self-imposed goals which generally do not exceed a Quarter in the future or directly benefit the company. It’s all smoke and mirrors. Anyone who can talk a good game can twist the truth sufficiently that they can convince idiots that something as trivial as measuring Widget A in suggested finite units will lead to an increase in the company profit over the next 3 months. Whether this is accurate or not is questionable, but selling your own managerial goals is all it takes and your BS wins if you do a good job. The ultimate test of managerial skill is not intelligence; it is suggestibility which is further emboldened by a captive audience, and most managers do not become such in a void. The captive audience is pre-established! A good manager throws his subordinates onto the great corporate altar of self-sacrifice and they flood forward like lemmings and the only one who benefits is the manager,because eventually, most of them will be the victims of a headcount reduction, which is most likely an ancillary bonus goal for another inconsequential moronic talking manager-head looking to get an extra juicy Quarter-end check.
Time for a brief, kind, and gentle work story. Instead of bashing, berating, and flagellating, I’d like to mention subject “X.”
See, the company I worked for once bought out a smaller company because we were globally voracious and greedy and gluttonous. That’s the nature of the modern corporation.
So we bought out this smaller firm and of course we absorbed all the secretly unwilling employees who had been enjoying their small mom and pop existence.
Most people preternaturally prefer the mom and pop existence when it comes to their own personal work life. It’s a very selfish drive, because these same people then turn around and lust after the corporate, Walmart-ized price structure of globalism. Inexpensive luxuries come at a price but most people do not realize nor care that the ability to buy 500 rolls of paper towels for $3.99 comes with a hefty price tag on the back end. We don’t think of the back end unless it’s toilet paper we are buying at a super discount. Who wants to pay top price for Charmin when there is a brood of 6 loud, shitting people at home?
So we inherited a few hundred resentful employees and with good reason. Some acted like children, some were quietly resentful but did their job, and some were genuinely nice because they realized the deepest human truth, which is that each soul you come in contact with on a daily basis is not the ingrained splinter remnant of the big bad corporate machine, but a singular human who lives his own miniscule existence above all. Such people are able to displace all resentment or disgust anywhere but on those who were not responsible for their plight.
Subject X was gracious.
Subject X was a class act. Amiable, intelligent…two character occurrences which naturally differentiated him from everyone I have to work with. A middle-aged, over the hill breath of fresh air. He came by to shake hands and offered a hug which kinda freaked me out in the context of my jaded, artificial showbiz environs. The only time people hug there is at happy hour or strange random socially unforeseen situations (OHHHHHHH MYYYYYYYYYYYY GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOODDDDDDDDD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) when they peck cheeks. Strange people don’t walk into your office as they leave forever and offer scant embraces. It was weird, but it happened. X sent an email to his closest acquaintances and direct co-workers and thanked every one for their help, and assistance. I would have derived much more succor from this if he hadn’t also included my manager. However, this goodbye was primarily a political move (a parcel of the “burn no bridges” toolset) in case he decided his new life didn’t fit right.
A needy man is not a man.
In fact, he alluded once to returning back to “real life” once he discovered he didn’t like the new life. I asked him, “Is this [show biz/entertainment] really “life?” He laughed and said it was in the respect he was used to it and knew it.
This is when it occurred to me, a strange horrible truth that robbed my sleep.
There is no life we truly know. There is not. We can never know life other than what is reflected back to us in the knowledge of others.
Our own knowledge is fake and self-enclosed. If a person grew up in a shell and never knew anyone else, what could we infer of their existence?
Wait.
Doesn’t this describe each one of us? We don’t now anyone except ourselves. We don’t know what we are even portraying. We are masques.
Except X.
I believe he understood
Intrinsically, there is nothing that differentiates you, me, him, except a dose of self-knowledge.
Without self-knowledge, you are just Them. This is why I mock those who express individuality through tattoos, i-Phones, blogs, pimped rides…you’re all living out a misplaced individualism through extraneous motifs.
The only way to fully be you is through estrangement. Never share an emotion. Be an island.
You are an illusion. Your definition is only a meaningless dictionary entry.
I tend to frame almost everything in terms of sex. I’m not fixated with sex, but sometimes the structural march of ebbs and flows in life remind me of the typical dome-shaped rising and falling crescendo that outlines the sex act. For instance, a 3-day music/food/arts festival like Coachella mimics sexual intercourse if you think about it. Like I do.
Friday is the foreplay. You’re fresh, smell good, and you’re ready to get it on.
Saturday is the orgasm. It is the penultimate form of release of all the tension and titillation Friday promised and prepared you for.
Sunday is the drawn out, lackadaisical, leisurely, refractory let down that visits after you’ve exhausted your stamina and energy.
Sunday was not so much a let down as much as it as a cooling down period. It was a day to behold the exhaustion and excitement of the previous two days and prepare through idle retrospection. Did she like it?
This is obvious in my dearth of Sunday photographs and recordings. Sunday was a day of DJ performances and lots of bands we weren’t too keen on or that we’d never heard of.
We arrived at the Empire Polo Grounds about noon and instantly dived into the porta potties, so to speak. This is the thing about porta potties. I don’t mind outhouses as a long as I’m only practicing #1. The moment you need to affix any portion of your body to the outhouse surfaces is when the fun is over. I have this strategy for avoiding having to take a dump in them. Especially on really hot days, of which Coachella had 3. First, I refrain from ingesting fiber early in the morning or the afternoon because my digestive system has short turnaround. If I eat something sufficiently fibrous, I will typically need to expel it within 6-8 hours. So at music festivals, I usually stick to pizza or rice and other solidifying carbs. The stuff that plugs you up. I don’t mind being plugged up when outhouses are my only bathroom choice. It works well for me. On Saturday, I made some questionable dietary moves, however. I ate a roasted corn on the cobb in the afternoon and a wedge of watermelon before that. I ate nothing else so I presumed I would not be attacked by those fiber triggers any time soon, and indeed, I didn’t need to practice # 2 the rest of Saturday.
Sunday morning when I awoke and drank some coffee, I had the largest morning dump of the trip in the hotel and I was reasonably certain I had evacuated all remnants of stubborn corn kernels and watermelon flesh in that movement. Unfortunately, I was dismayed to note that my stomach began gurgling in the afternoon shortly after we arrived at the festival. Oh oh. Then I released some gas (known in some circles as a “fart”) and was more dismayed to note that there was a “heavy presence” behind that gas waiting to jet out my bowels.
Boo!
OK, when you gotta go, you gotta go. I steered us to the nearest outhouse farm (I call each group of porta potties this…they are scattered in bunches all over the festival grounds). I found a convenient one that wasn’t riddled with vomit or misfired shit and sat down and let the cascade of day-old fiber detritus flee my butt. It was a large movement but I didn’t look because I just wanted to get the hell out of that literal shithole. I finished, wiped, and jammed. No reading the newspaper in Coachella outhouses for me! I wiped too fast however, because I noticed that the rest of the day my butt was in a mild state of burn…I had done a sloppy wiping job in my haste. Haste leaves waste! Sigh. Nothing a good shower wouldn’t hurt, but that wouldn’t be for a long while. The entire hot Sunday afternoon I walked around with irritated butt cheeks.
Burdened of my pulp backlog, I skipped forth anew into the meat of the festival. Sunday was mainly populated by DJ acts and a lot of bands I’d never heard of. We killed time at the Gobi, Sahara and Mojave stages where most of the DJ’s perform. The stages were packed. We walked around some more, rested in the shade, ate some non-fibrous food, and drank bottles of water in seconds.
Sunday was a kicked back kind of day. It was the beginning of the end, the nature of my photos says it all. Here I am in silent, shady repose.
In fact, the nature and volume of my Sunday photography speaks precisely of my state of mind that sunny day. My sense of photography was lazy and it dwindled. I didn’t feel like doing anything, quite frankly. I took 3 photographs all day.
Brilliantly mundane. I couldn’t even get off my burning butt to take decent photographs. We didn’t set out to watch any specific bands on Sunday. We flitted in and out of random musical acts. We wandered to the Outdoor stage late in the afternoon to watch the band “Wild Flag” perform. We arrived early and stood near the front but behind the VIP section. The band was alright. I liked them more than my son did. They had a nice driving girl rock sound which was just fine on this hot, lazy Sunday afternoon. The lead singer spent some time jiving with the audience and she made the funny joke of the weekend. She was speaking of the scorching weather and said she thought today would be a nice day to be a hologram. I was one of those people who laughed loud at this allusion to Tupac’s holographic performance which was to take place during Dr. Dre & Snoop Dogg’s nighttime performance (something my son and I had absolutely no interest in staying to watch). I thought she was funny and kinda goofy. What guy wouldn’t dig a goofy, nerdy girl rocker? I took some video, but even by my standards, it was of poor quality and I was too far away. I spent too much time studying the VIP section and wondering if the extra few hundred bucks was worth it. You get to sit in a pen that is isolated from the prole crowd but it’s kinda soulless as well. You are a little too insulated from the crowd’s electricity.
This frame of a video I took of the VIP section explains the isolated nature of paying a lot to have your own space at a music festival.
We left that performance and killed some more time. Amazing how time flies when you’re doing nothing but walking around in circles, laying in the shade, eating, listening to random bits of music. Before we knew it, we were back on the grass area by some food stands where we could be privy to several different bands playing simultaneously as darkness fell. As had happened the previous days, one of the bands I heard caught my ear. It was a loud thumping rave sound coming from the main stage. I fumbled with my program and pulled out my little flashlight. “Justice” was playing. I’d never heard of Justice but their sound of high energy eletro-thrashy mania lulled me in that direction like a snake trailing the piped piper. Justice, as I learned, is a French electronic duo characterized by a marriage of guitar and turntable, and a brilliant lit white cross motif adorns their stages. As we neared the stage, the beat enveloped me and the electricity of their music and the immense partying crowd energized me again. What a fantastic way to end the festival. I would have liked to have danced but my butt burned and I was tired plus I felt funny dancing in front of my son. Still, it was a great band discovery, even for Sunday.
This was an intensely great show. It was an awesome way to end the weekend. After Justice finished, my son and me were ready to head home. While we walked to the exit, the performance still rang our ears. People were beginning to arrive for the Dr. Dre/Snoop Dogg concert. I don’t like rap and this was not the way I personally would have wished to end Coachella. Luckily my son feels the same way. Outside the gates and all the way back to the car, scattered groups of people were trying to get us to give up our bracelets but that’s nearly impossible. Coachella security rules state that the bracelet must worn tightly (one-fingered clearance) and cannot be taken off during the 3 days. You’re sleeping, showering, eating, with that bracelet for the full time. If it’s too loose, you don’t get in. The people trying to get in for the rap performance were a considerably different breed than the normal concert-goers we’d seen for 3 days. These people were largely thuggish, a lot of my people. One Mexican guy walked up to us with his hand hidden behind his back in a menacing manner and asked if we were leaving and I lied. I told him we were coming back for “the big show” and he said OK. The dirt road back was dark and there was no festival security to speak of whatsoever. I was actually feeling a little scared being that my son was with me. These were some shady people waiting to rid us of our clasping bracelets. I was waiting for someone to pull out a meat cleaver and chop my arm off…this would be the only way to get the bracelet off a wrist without destroying it (the bracelet, that is).
My favorite moment of the scary Sunday night ghetto escape from Coachella was the Asian girl who was standing in the dark and asked if I could give her my bracelet if I was leaving. I showed her and said “it’s on too tight.” To which she instantly responded, “Oh, that’s OK, I know how to get them off.” I shook my head and continued walking. I wondered what my response would have been if she had said instead, “Oh that’s OK, I know how to get you off.”
We might have had to find a way to unfasten this cuff…
Robin Hanson posted something titled “Stories Are Like Religion” in which he examines the (my crude paraphrasing here) elevating nature of fantasy and make-believe.
At our core, we are an escapist species, and I would venture to guess the only species capable of “unreality.” Unreality is the source of great industry and wealth and those who learn to market their vision of unreality become so wealthy that their lives essentially mimic unreality for the rest of us who never fostered such skills. The problem with most of us is that we regurgitate reality because we chase a reality we only know of. Unreality is frightening, erratic, and undependable, and for some people, contrary to their goals and values.
The first paragraph of Hanson’s post struck my eye for a specific reason having nothing to do with unreality (or the “story” as he terms it).
Small children (age 4-6) who were exposed to a large number of children’s books and films had a significantly stronger ability to read the mental and emotional states of other people. … The more absorbed subjects were in the story, the more empathy they felt, and the more empathy they felt, the more likely the subjects were to help when the experimenter “accidentally” dropped a handful of pens… Reading narrative fiction … fosters empathic growth and prosocial behavior.
The bold letters are my own.
“Prosocial” behavior was interesting to me because I believe I am one of those former 4 to 6 year olds who surrounded himself with nothing but books. I even tried to craft some rudimentary books by folding paper and stapling the folds while my childish yarns graced the irregular pages. I can attest to this in that I consider myself a master interpreter of human motives and emotions. Some people mistakenly call this intuition. I don’t like the word intuition because it seems to connote magic or psychic powers. I don’t believe in this stuff, but I do believe many people have intuition in the respect that they understand people so well that they can anticipate behavior before it happens. I consider myself one of this group. And if I had to ascribe my “skill” to anything, based on this paragraph, the early immersion in books fits.
The part that initially scared me was the “prosocial” thing. I can even allow for a great deal of empathy on my part…to a fault.
But prosocial?
Prosocial is not what it seems. Let it be known that I did not open up Wikipedia or Google to find the objective definition of prosocial. I’m going with the flow, with my instincts. “Prosocial” does not connote that you favor a social life. In fact, prosocial is the antithesis to “anti-social” personality disorder which is entirely different than what it connotes. In fact, people always make the mistaken assumption that if you don’t like to talk to people, you are antisocial. This is false. It means you are “asocial” but not antisocial. Antisocial is a personality disorder characterized by risky and criminal behavior. These people might very well love crowds and talking. But clinically, they are antisocial. Conversely, I believe the prosocial moniker does not imply you adore the social life. Prosocial is not about being a social butterfly.
Rather, I thought of it differently in my own context of life.
I am prosocial in that I understand and comprehend the social dynamics of humans. Do I enjoy or relish it? Fuck no!
I don’t like being around people, I don’t like talking, and I’m bothered by everything incisively human. But I get them. Unlike the normal Aspy or pathological sociophobic person, I fully understand how people work, how they tick, and why tick like they do. I am prosocial because I embrace your behavior as an artifact of civilization. This is what reading a lot at 4-6 years of age opened my eyes to, and made me see the rest of my life. I know a lot of people who love “socializing” but they are not prosocial.
So once in a while you try something a little “different” and you pay the price.
For instance, I always go in the same train car when I take the Red Line. There is a method to my madness, a reason for choosing the same car time after time.
But this morning there was this really short brown dude (he was shorter and browner than me) who came and stood in my platform vicinity as the train begin to approach. We were kind of oddball twins but in a bad way. We accentuated the unfavorable traits in each other because of our general similarity. I don’t like to be near other guys who have my dimensions and coloring. Especially when there are lots of non-Hispanics around. It’s like we are living out all the physical archetypes unfamiliar Whites hold dear. Me and another short, brown guy stand out in a Bobbsey brown Twins manner and I don’t like drawing attention to myself. So I avoid short brown guys when I’m around non-Mexicans. In East LA, every other person is short and brown so I blend in and there is no problem at all. At least I don’t stand out. No problem then, comprende? I am a man of many hang-ups. Let’s shake on that and move on.
Anyways, this morning there was that short brown guy trying to board the train at the same door I was about to which would be conspicuously comical to all those annoying professional early morning White commuters on the Red Line. Annoyed that my style was being cramped, I walked away from him but he was one of those really hyperactive guys and he kept pacing as the train approached like a dog going crazy after you get home in the evening. The only thing this dude didn’t do was chase his tail but he kept approaching me and leaving. I couldn’t plan my escape! I moved further away until I reached the point I knew I would not be anywhere this train car entrance. We would enter separate cars without the slightest hint of ever having been conjoined twins waddling around after each other. No one would notice me because I was by myself.
The train pulled up and I ran into an atypical car for me. I usually don’t board at this car. It’s not me. Still, I needed to distance myself from the brown guy. The car I boarded was quite crowded. Not what I would choose. There were no seats open and very little standing room. I quickly leaned on the center pole that stands directly in front of the doors.
OH MY GOD.
The odor blasted me immediately! It was the worst, sour, digestive slop stench in the world. I was positive someone had puked in this car. A fresh steaming pile of vomit was close by. I glanced around looking to see if there was an area people seemed to be skirting which would be the dead giveaway of a puke puddle. People generally avoid puke, but there were no obvious clearings in this car. Yet, the area around the pole where I stood smelled like putrid vomit, the worst sour, stale, rotten puked cheese odor in the world. I literally came close to gagging. I looked around and could barely contain my disgust. I held my breath and tried to breathe through my mouth. Most of those in the car were professional white collar types. Straight out of their designer showers. Spic and span, these folks. No one would smell like vomit. Ah, the only person in my vicinity which might explain this stench was a short, shiny, brown man standing by the door. He had a rolling suitcase that was old and worn, just like his clothes.
I instantly pegged him as the odor generator. It had to be him. Something he had in that old suitcase. He was dark brown, he was shiny, he was shorter than me, and he was fat. Poor sucker. Sad. But he was very shiny.
A couple of stops later, a pair of seats vacated and I ran to them. Here I could keep an eye on the shiny fellow and the odor was somewhat weaker. I continued to hold my breath. The brown shiny dude had to be it. He was keeping sour food or a dead body in his luggage. He had really old, worn clothes. Something about him looked slightly unkempt and unclean. I think it was his shiny complexion. His clothes weren’t torn or filthy, but they looked like they’d been through the washer a few times. He had that gross-looking very dark, brown skin that glimmers through a sheen of porous oil. The brown glistens because of the shine. I see people like this and right away they exude a sense of filth. Why is this? They may have come right out of the shower, but the way they look instantly qualifies them as being stinky and unsanitary. It’s that shiny dark brown skin, just like this man on the train with the suitcase. Dark shiny skin evokes disgust in me. Why is this? Is it a confluence of merged experiences from my past painting the present? Shiny, oily skin is never good, but perhaps on a dark complexion, it even seems worse, more oily.
I can still smell the puke. I feel sickeningly revolted thinking of it now, many hours later. An odor stays in your mind long after it’s exited the stage. It’s like a phantom limb, but it’s a smell, the smell of sour milk puke still lingering in your nostrils.
Finally, the guy roused as the train neared the Vermont/Beverly station. When the doors slid open, he turned and walked out, rolling his suitcase with the dead body behind him. I couldn’t help but check him out. I check out hot chicks and disgusting, oily men. I’m an equal opportunity leerer. He was wearing faded black shoes and unfresh khaki trousers. Since they were khaki’s, I was able to note that in the bull’s eye of his ass and descending halfway the length of his right mid-thigh was a stain of brownish wettish moistness. It was not a dead body after all. It looked fresh. The guy had shit his pants. What was that all about? Homeless people take craps in public. Why would someone literally shit in their pants and board a train with a suitcase? What could this have been all about? Did he try to let out a sly fart and lost his gamble? This was a big stain. If he lost the gamble, evidently he just gave up all self-respect and let it all out. I’ve lost “gambles” as well, but usually I’ll clamp up the flood in time to avoid soaking my pants in shit. Perhaps a stain finds its way onto my underwear, but at least my pants are not seared in an uncontrollable shit stain. Maybe the shiny brown guy just had no more fucks to give.
I thought later that I was casting some cruel aspersions, but hey, I admit I’m short and brown. At least I’m not shiny. I’m more of a matte finish. I’m better.
Steve Sailer devoted a few posts recently to the tendency of American corporations to stop at nothing in order to continue fueling the perpetuation of undocumented and illegal immigration into the United States. The post’s commenting sequels displayed the understandable inclination to analyze the specific evolving economic and cultural phenomena that corporations instigate in order to maintain the immigration surplus status quo. The points raised by commenters were solid. The mechanics of illegal immigration of Third Worlders into the United States does indeed benefit global corporations. There is no denying such an assertion. I believe the menace is so vast that it transcends the micro-analysis of the economics involved, and in fact, transcends the problem of illegal immigration. Speaking in grand concepts confuses and alienates people. But really, the 21st Century corporation is in fact a grand and confusing concept. Of course it favors unfettered immigration.
The most elemental, basic underpinning of the modern global corporation that we must be mindful of is that such organizations neither respect nor submit to any entity except themselves. In every corporation’s boardroom directive there is the implicit understanding that OUR organization is singularly the “world leader,” or at the very least, the market leader. All actions and expressions expressed as a “member” while on the clock are expected to purely espouse the favored opinion of your organization’s goals and behavior. To state otherwise to be subversive.
Corporations do not align themselves with Republics or Democracies or Regimes or Monarchies. They are aligned only with themselves and their stockholders. Corporations are not jingoistic. They are there to serve one master, and that master is not you or your electoral vote. You are nothing but a seedy pawn whose soul is free to be infiltrated by the corporate lie. The only promise the corporation will make is that you will like their product better than the others (once you pay for it). Advertisement is groomed to elicit your unspoken promise but they can offer nothing more.
Corporations do not care about your quality of life insofar as you are able to sign on the dotted line. The signature is their blood, and their cohorts, the banking institutions, will see to it that the corporations are covered and that signatures have redeemable value. They don’t care if you or your peers are involved in manufacture of the product. They just want you to consume it blindly; the way into every consumer’s heart is with the sticker price.
I work in a corporation where the unspoken goal propounded in all slogans and publicity is a massive, amorphous global consuming culture. They don’t say it in so many words, but that is the implicit goal of global corporations. Corporations know exactly what they need: a genuinely global consumer base. Immigration restriction cements national boundaries instead of dissolving them. Global corporations can only prosper if nationalism is extinguished. I foresee a day in about 200 or 300 years when our planet will be one big never-ending cornucopia of Walmartian shopping aisles, and the equalization of populations across global borders will result in a spectacularly mediocre and homogeneous undifferentiated population, which is the consumer base that corporations can feast off.
So yes, we can detail the micro-analytic social and economic mechanics of why corporations encourage immigration today; this is the how. The why is their map.
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