People who react to experience not spontaneously, but rather by first considering how the reaction might “play” for them—or in the case of our crusading intellectuals, how they might use it in the prosecution of their pet sociocultural narratives—and what its corresponding value will be, worry the hell out of me because interposing anything that is arbitrary between reality and our awareness of reality, which is to say, preconditioning our consciousness, is an ego defense that makes me wonder what’s wrong with them that they don’t want revealed through inadequate, inappropriate or inept behavior. I put them in the psychodynamic category that contains socio- and psychopaths, junkies maddened by desperation and rabid ideologues of all denominations.
Archive for the ‘ego’ Category.
Egos today are like those huge balloons floating bland-faced and with absurd solemnity above the crowds in Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, except the balloons are tethered to the reality of tow-trucks navigating a complex course through congested streets.
Whatever happened to harmonic dissonance? People seem oblivious to their not even having tried to merit the lofty attributes their egos require them to ascribe to themselves.
Two people are talking about wine, jazz. Postmodernism and cinema with striking knowledgeability. One is actually sophisticated and the other is a phony. How do we tell which is which? The phony regards his lore as a possession and is always compelled to uphold and defend its validity. The true sophisticate thinks of learning as discovery; he often changes his opinion and is absolutely the antithesis of egocentric.
People who lack intelligence but consider themselves to be “players” self-identify by flagrantly accentuating their sexual characteristics, as though a fabulous distinction accrued to them by virtue of possessing the primary appendages of the species.
Political correctness is not about acceptance of the other, tolerance, affirmative action, doing the right thing or any other cultural or social issue. It’s a moral salve for the consciences of people who refuse to endure the strictures on behavior of a personal moral code. Imagine a woman who breaks her arm and goes to work as a municipal plasterer instead of seeing a doctor, on the grounds that “confining my limb to a plaster cast infringes on my individual freedom.” The more unbearable her pain becomes, the more civic wall-space she slathers with her featureless goo, crippled but convinced that she is beautifying the city.
Values are principles that control behavior. They derive from a twin pair of evolutionary imperatives: the self-assertive need to achieve goals that are measurable, promoting the self-esteem necessary to continue achieving goals; and the self-protective need to assert oneself without fatally antagonizing other people asserting themselves. Convictions, on the other hand, are intellectual formulations of values as they relate to the fundamental aspects of external reality at a given time. Here’s the tricky part: The fundamentals of external reality (i.e., circumstances) are always in the process of altering as time persists. Maladapted people hang on to their obsolete convictions with the ferocity of a downing man clinging for his life to an anvil. Well-adjusted people know that dropping old convictions and adopting new ones as circumstances mandate is the only way their values can be preserved. Soi brave, mon enfant!
Despite appearances, most people’s behavior is not irrational; it’s neurotic, i.e., dysfunctional in rational ways. But because we imagine that certain people—most of them, in fact–are irrational, we solicitously counter their bizarreness with our light-wand of rationality, to no avail, because their maladjustment is spawned not in the intellectual faculty but in the awful chaotic swirl of modern life. I think we ought to reverse the terms of the process and purposely act irrationally in order to snap such people out of their neuroses. The next time you run into that smarmy little self-deprecator who works down the hall, ask, “Why did you dye your hair blue?” and instantly leave the room. The baffled neurotic, imploding with uncertainty and doubt, will then take a couple of baby steps along the path to eventual normalcy by hastening to find a mirror so he can verify his hair color, then wondering why you might have spoken so strangely. (Point #1: Your insanity acts like a cattle prod, shocking his malady into the open.) The second time you see the patient, offer this assurance: “I don’t blame you for killing your wife. Your secret is safe with me”; and then go away again. After this encounter, the subject will begin to objectify his thinking as he tries to figure out what in the hell your problem is. (Point #2: Objectification is the sine qua non of emotional salubrity.) Keep this going, and the day will come when you two collide at the water cooler and the former human ant colony says, “You don’t play badminton, do you? I just took it up and it looks like I’ve got a real talent for it!”
The mainstream media act collectively, though not in concert. Its practitioners don’t need to conspire. They all hail from the same general background (the higher ranges of the middle-class), went to the same schools when those schools were being radicalized, practically form an age brigade, and cover a lot of stories indicating that the poor don’t live as comfortably as the wealthy. Corporately they consider the left to be the center and the right as the domain of Nazi boobs and pinheads. What is not apparent is why they feel compelled to demolish the values of the social class that brought them into a safe and good existence, promoted their idealism, and funded their miseducation. You’d think they’d offer those values to the hallowed disadvantaged whose incentive to improve has been eradicated by the media’s insistence that the government needs to rescue them. Do you think the journalists feel they don’t deserve their good fortune because they did nothing to earn it? Self-disgust would certainly account for the irrational fury of their denunciations.
Hatred is the magma erupting from a personal volcano fueled by the hater’s irate frustration at not being able to resolve his own emotional difficulties; the target of the hatred is therefore merely a surrogate of the hater’s fractured ego. But hatred does serve a beneficial purpose: it lets us know that we should stay the hell away from such incensed creeps.
There are actually people who resent children for being free of the responsibilities that impinge upon their own (the adults’) ego-satisfaction and pleasure-getting. In fact there are adults who hate children for this.
Endlessly repeated assertion of the alcoholic on the mend: “I used to spill more than most people drink.” As a badge of honor, this is pathetic. But it indicates that pride is still kicking and for that reason reclamation is still a possibility.
Ambitions of the Young. I: Listening to some young people talk about their “plans”—to become rock stars, movie stars, CEOs, media magnates, big-bucks athletes, television celebrities—I am reminded of those late-night infomercials which purport to show you how to make millions and millions of dollars in a matter of hours: “First you buy downtown Cincinnati….” The target audience doesn’t know enough to grasp the flagrant absurdities of palaver like this, because they’ve never considered what their dreams entail. “I didn’t want to ‘be a writer,’” said William Faulkner. “I wanted to write.”
Ambitions of the Young. II: Never encourage a young person to pursue a calling for which he or she clearly lacks the talent to succeed; be crushing in your honesty, if that’s what it takes to rein the young person in—it’s better for you to hurt their feelings now than for them to derail and possibly demolish their existence.
For the last thirty years, the chief fear of the American people, according to U.S. News and World Report, is the fear of being thrust suddenly into a room full of strangers. I call that an all-you-can-eat buffet.
The Baby Boomers were our first generation to wreck a whole ethos because of perceived parental overkill. First they were required to work for their allowance at the abusive rate of half an hour a week. Later on they had to do some homework. They were even forced to come downstairs and intermingle with the family on Thanksgiving. What with the TV and stereo blasting away in perpetuity, the message just didn’t get through that after adolescence they would be expected to take the reins and fund their own existence. Ultimately their folks refused to buy a Stingray for them on the occasion of their extrusion from high school, and that broke the camel’s back. They hit the road in high dudgeon, only to discover that Dad kept the allowance coming anyway. For the first time in their lives, the Babes were faced with making strategic decisions. They opted to spend their money purchasing 80% of the world’s drug supply. Everything after that was a psychedelic pisshaze with vagrant bouts of sexual activity and sloganeering attended by wine, incense and fingernails-on-the-blackboard music until they woke up in college, still siphoning their parents’ bucks yet acknowledging that the old farts had steered them right all along: the better the grades they made, the more money they would earn to finance their ongoing self-indulgence crusade. Additionally they were pleased to learn that they had Changed the World, a source of immense pride and distinction which they duly acknowledged by still wearing their hair long, growing mutton chops and ‘staches, and not wearing anything special to class. Viva la revolucion.
A distrustful person only imagines that he distrusts others. What he knows—but won’t confront, and thus doesn’t know that he knows—is that he doesn’t trust himself to manage the complications that develop during relationships. The imaginary faux-distrust of which he is aware, therefore, is a protective device allowing him to slip-slide around on the surface of things.
Carrying a grudge is tantamount to feeding your soul into a cheese shredder, not to mention that you’re aggravating and perpetuating the injury inflicted by your victimizer. I am sure that if he knew how you’ve unmanned yourself, he’d laugh his ass off. Is that what you wanted to happen when you swore your vengeance?
Conversation and Interpretation:
Jack: “Morning, William. How’s it going?” (By saying “William” instead of “Bill” I’m magnifying your ego, hoping you’ll relax whatever reservations you have about me.)
Bill: “Been better, Jack. I still haven’t lost that cold.” (I know you flattered me but I still need some coddling.)
Jack: “Sorry to hear it.” (I don’t give a fuck how you feel, I’ve got my own troubles. What are you, a baby?)
Bill: “Been hunting yet this season?” (You’re right. I need to get my masculinity on the table.)
Jack: “Got me a doe down at Willow Branch is all” (In case you ever wondered if I got enough balls to break the law.)
Bill: “Skinned her on the spot, did you? (That’s what a real man would do.)
Jack: “Well Moloson was there and you know how he is. He likes to do all that for you.” (Moloson is the best hunter in three damn counties and he let me tag along with him last week if I cleaned the truck up when we got back. How you like them apples, assblossom?)
Bill: “They got anything good on the menu this morning?” (I’ve had enough of this crap. You’ve already taken up more of my time than you deserve, you little gas-pumping, best-friend’s-wife-humping moron)
Having sex without ardently affirming the rhapsodic beauty of the other person’s self, yearningly joining your whole sensibility with the other as well as your genitals, is like slam-banging down the street in just the chassis of a car; though perhaps, getting your rocks off, you don’t particularly mind how foolish and self-involved you might appear to bystanders. Of course I’d never deny the pleasure, for what’s its worth, of the little electric jitter that is what you have at the end if sex is all you’re after.