Recently, I found myself in another fight on facebook. It would seem that I have a gift for pissing people off. Here is the post I commented on:
Willy the Spy:
If you constantly complain about the town you live in, yet have the means (money) to move somewhere else, maybe you should consider doing so. Unless you secretly enjoy looking down on the community around you since it gives you a greatly needed sense of superiority...
--
OK, now I didn't know it at the time, but he was referring to college professors who live in small towns, specifically Mt Pleasant, and then complain from their ivory towers about the "lack of culture." But I was referring to St. Louis, where I am currently living, because that is where my family has lived and will always live, so I commented:
Whinger the Ginger:
--
and my point was that she was stung by what I said so she assumed that I was stung by what she said. The only thing I was thinking was "what an idiot." Because she was making these huge assumptions about me and then ranting about all this bullshit when she didn't even know what I was talking about in the first place. Instead of engaging that kind of stupidity, I just egged her on until she felt stupid, and then sent her a little fake apology to.. I don't know.. make myself feel better, I guess. The thing is everything I say at this point is a rationalization because I don't want to feel like I was intellectually beaten. I was making silly little snide remarks and she was being a colossal bitch. I think that I feel inferior to her because my best friends think she is the smartest person they know.. but to me she is an educated idiot.
I realized tonight that we mock the people we hate when we feel inferior to them because it is pathetic to pick on someone who is less than you. Everything that she said to me could be equally applied to her with the "intellectually superiority" and "still flailing at me with half-baked insults." I hate how vocal people like this are. And the problem has become that I feel shitty not because I was wrong, or because she was right, but because I got in a fight with someone.. anyone. Last week it was something very similar with another girl over music taste. Oh well, one day at a time.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Fading Anger
It is strange how quickly the anger a resentment wanes after all this time. I've been living home now for about a month, and I have run into many people I haven't seen in over five years. Some of these people were very mean to me in high school, and now they are all the friendliest people you'd ever talk to--I'd never have thought they were the same fucks that gave me a hard time growing up.
Not that I'm not reserved against some of these people, but I have a hard time remaining so seething about these things when they seem to have moved past it. It is hard to be mad at someone who has been stuck in the month after graduation for eight years. I say the month after because that is the point at which most high school graduates finish receiving their celebratory money and have to start working. Many of those graduates tried to go to college, but like baby sea turtles, only a small fraction make it out to sea. That in itself is pathetic, and I shouldn't be mad at people that I pity.
It is such a strange feeling; I'm sure these people haven't changed THAT much, and yet everything is different. I don't feel like I have changed that much either, but little by little, I have over a long period of time. What I thought was important as a teenager is no longer important--which leads me to believe that what I find important now will seem irrelevant in ten more years.
I find most things boring anyways. Everything anyone says to me always sounds like old news. Because I believe in practicing good pragmatics, I always placate and accommodate people. Some call this enabling, and in many ways I enable people's bad habits, but it beats having no one to talk to all of the time instead of just most of the time.
Not that I'm not reserved against some of these people, but I have a hard time remaining so seething about these things when they seem to have moved past it. It is hard to be mad at someone who has been stuck in the month after graduation for eight years. I say the month after because that is the point at which most high school graduates finish receiving their celebratory money and have to start working. Many of those graduates tried to go to college, but like baby sea turtles, only a small fraction make it out to sea. That in itself is pathetic, and I shouldn't be mad at people that I pity.
It is such a strange feeling; I'm sure these people haven't changed THAT much, and yet everything is different. I don't feel like I have changed that much either, but little by little, I have over a long period of time. What I thought was important as a teenager is no longer important--which leads me to believe that what I find important now will seem irrelevant in ten more years.
I find most things boring anyways. Everything anyone says to me always sounds like old news. Because I believe in practicing good pragmatics, I always placate and accommodate people. Some call this enabling, and in many ways I enable people's bad habits, but it beats having no one to talk to all of the time instead of just most of the time.
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Facebook Flamewars
I was told not to inject any more misery into the world, but I simply couldn't resist this time. There was a certain person on my Facebook friends list who posted their weekly top 3 from last.fm. I recognized two of the three bands as indie rock bands. I made the comment that there must be a hipster/indie kit that kids can send away for--which in return opened up, as my aunt would say, a can of worms, which ended in many sensitive people flaming me and one girl saying that I was a waste of existence. It's funny because at one point I was unfriended by the original person, and couldn't respond to the comments being made towards me.
It is funny how music is more sacred to some people than philosophical or religious issues. If you insult someone's music, you can be sure that they will take it more personally than if you were to make fun of their prophet. And that was more or less the reaction that I got. Flamed by several like-minded individuals and banned from responding.
You see, I'm used to people disliking my music. I've heard nasty remarks made about it since I started listening to it. This is why I don't try to share my music with people, and I don't care to hear what other people are listening to. I know for a fact that my music isn't accessible to the standard issue American because I have put a medley of tracks I enjoy on the jukebox at last call to drive everyone out--and it works. That doesn't mean that I like shitty music anymore than it means that the majority of people don't like good music.
It's not my fault that I hold myself, and those around me, to a higher intellectual standard, and don't think that it is particularly conducive to happiness to constantly be living in the past. "I should have been born in the '70s, '60s..." blah blah blah. That isn't happiness, it is deluded and I have every right to burst that bubble as you have to annoy me with it. So if it pisses you off, that is your problem, not mine.
This, of course, is a rationalization because the only casualty on my side in a "war" like that is my pride. Since I had a million and a half good retorts to the kiddies, and wasn't allowed to voice them, I have to dwell on them. But I should be used to this kind of reaction by now. After all, people are sensitive about their music because they believe that who they are is defined by what they listen to. They also deny it too.. which in turn reinforces their tendency to be defensive about insults towards what they listen to.
Further, eclectic listeners are like people who are friends to everyone. A friend to all is a friend to none. You simply can not trust them. Same thing with music. A person who likes everything has no taste, and therefore has an unreliable opinion. All opinions are unreliable.. really. That's why they are called opinions. What annoys me is that I'm wasn't criticizing her as a person.. simply pointing out that people who listen to indie music like Bob Dylan and the Beatles because the former genre is a derivative of the latter artists. What's more, people think that being informed makes one judgmental. If you are following along, you can kind of see how a slam against the music is a slam against the person because the music is a de facto personality. When I point that out, because I have seen it over and over and over again, I'm the enemy.
People don't like to have their existences invalidated. Hense the reason that the last comment was explicitly, "[Whinger the Ginger] is the biggest waste of existence..." because without anything clever to say, they are left with only the obvious. Actually what insulted me the most was the crack some kid made about my T-shirts. He was most likely projecting, but what he said was something along the lines of me going to Goodwill to get ironic T-shirts.. like most indie/hipsters are known to do. I don't know why this comment bothered me at all, but mostly it had something to do with the fact that all of my t-shirts say something funny. They don't necessarily say something ironic. Perhaps one does. It says "Sarcasm: Just one of my many talents" which I'll admit is ironic. The rest of my shirts say something like "Hope is for Sissies," "Everybody Lies," and "Normal's Overrated" which aren't ironic at all.. and I didn't get them at Goodwill, I got them for donating to the House charities. This is why I think he was either projecting, or trying to do what I do.. predict people by their cliches.
Obviously the fact that I blog about this at all demonstrates how insecure I feel about the situation. I usually don't mean for people to get so upset by what I say. But like I said, you can't comment on someone's music without them flipping a lid. Music is the new religion. Even though I feel the need to rationalize the situation so that I don't feel so much like a turd--flexing my intellectual muscles to humiliate others--I am reminded how much of a pest Socrates was for caring about truth over politeness. Being nice is overrated, and when I see the truth about a person I will sacrifice the friendship for the truth. Interestingly, most friends are friends because of the lies, not the truths they tell each other. That is probably because most friendships in 21st century America are based on what one person can get out of another person, and the fear of being cut off keeps people smiling and lying through gritted teeth. Ha. Now whose project....
It is funny how music is more sacred to some people than philosophical or religious issues. If you insult someone's music, you can be sure that they will take it more personally than if you were to make fun of their prophet. And that was more or less the reaction that I got. Flamed by several like-minded individuals and banned from responding.
You see, I'm used to people disliking my music. I've heard nasty remarks made about it since I started listening to it. This is why I don't try to share my music with people, and I don't care to hear what other people are listening to. I know for a fact that my music isn't accessible to the standard issue American because I have put a medley of tracks I enjoy on the jukebox at last call to drive everyone out--and it works. That doesn't mean that I like shitty music anymore than it means that the majority of people don't like good music.
It's not my fault that I hold myself, and those around me, to a higher intellectual standard, and don't think that it is particularly conducive to happiness to constantly be living in the past. "I should have been born in the '70s, '60s..." blah blah blah. That isn't happiness, it is deluded and I have every right to burst that bubble as you have to annoy me with it. So if it pisses you off, that is your problem, not mine.
This, of course, is a rationalization because the only casualty on my side in a "war" like that is my pride. Since I had a million and a half good retorts to the kiddies, and wasn't allowed to voice them, I have to dwell on them. But I should be used to this kind of reaction by now. After all, people are sensitive about their music because they believe that who they are is defined by what they listen to. They also deny it too.. which in turn reinforces their tendency to be defensive about insults towards what they listen to.
Further, eclectic listeners are like people who are friends to everyone. A friend to all is a friend to none. You simply can not trust them. Same thing with music. A person who likes everything has no taste, and therefore has an unreliable opinion. All opinions are unreliable.. really. That's why they are called opinions. What annoys me is that I'm wasn't criticizing her as a person.. simply pointing out that people who listen to indie music like Bob Dylan and the Beatles because the former genre is a derivative of the latter artists. What's more, people think that being informed makes one judgmental. If you are following along, you can kind of see how a slam against the music is a slam against the person because the music is a de facto personality. When I point that out, because I have seen it over and over and over again, I'm the enemy.
People don't like to have their existences invalidated. Hense the reason that the last comment was explicitly, "[Whinger the Ginger] is the biggest waste of existence..." because without anything clever to say, they are left with only the obvious. Actually what insulted me the most was the crack some kid made about my T-shirts. He was most likely projecting, but what he said was something along the lines of me going to Goodwill to get ironic T-shirts.. like most indie/hipsters are known to do. I don't know why this comment bothered me at all, but mostly it had something to do with the fact that all of my t-shirts say something funny. They don't necessarily say something ironic. Perhaps one does. It says "Sarcasm: Just one of my many talents" which I'll admit is ironic. The rest of my shirts say something like "Hope is for Sissies," "Everybody Lies," and "Normal's Overrated" which aren't ironic at all.. and I didn't get them at Goodwill, I got them for donating to the House charities. This is why I think he was either projecting, or trying to do what I do.. predict people by their cliches.
Obviously the fact that I blog about this at all demonstrates how insecure I feel about the situation. I usually don't mean for people to get so upset by what I say. But like I said, you can't comment on someone's music without them flipping a lid. Music is the new religion. Even though I feel the need to rationalize the situation so that I don't feel so much like a turd--flexing my intellectual muscles to humiliate others--I am reminded how much of a pest Socrates was for caring about truth over politeness. Being nice is overrated, and when I see the truth about a person I will sacrifice the friendship for the truth. Interestingly, most friends are friends because of the lies, not the truths they tell each other. That is probably because most friendships in 21st century America are based on what one person can get out of another person, and the fear of being cut off keeps people smiling and lying through gritted teeth. Ha. Now whose project....
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Life in the Middle
I recently moved back home to live with my parents for the summer. I did this for several reasons, namely to finish my Master's Thesis on red-headedness, but it is never as simply as that. Good ol' uncertainty showed up at my door as usually, and now I find myself at an unexpected crossroads. It is not simply funny the way life is in a constant state of change; it is in many ways unnerving that we can adapt to such shifts in direction.
It looks as though my prolonged childhood may come to an abrupt end if I accept a job somewhere. I think it is a wonderful opportunity, but I'm nervous about what this will mean for many of the sandcastles that I have built over the last eight years. Hopefully, I will find a way to utilize everything that I have learned and focus it on this position. Regardless of what I chose to do, another change is coming, like a wave of storms on a hot summer day.
One of the things I have enjoyed most about being home is my parents' garden. They have put a lot of effort into making it look very nice, but making it more than just ornamental. My dad built this white picket fence in the back yard to give the yard that classic country look, and at the same time, built smaller wire fences to keep the rabbits from eating the leaf vegetables. That's another pretty incredible thing about my parents' yard, it is a safe-haven for many different kinds of animals that aren't found throughout this small town. There are four wild rabbits that live around the yard, plus several different species of birds. I'm learning to identify the different songs. I know the cardinal, mourning dove and sparrows but that is pretty much it. I've been calling to them, and sometimes it works. I've had a couple bird dive-bomb me. It was pretty funny now that I think about it, but at the time it was startling to see the bird take flight so quickly and the suddenly change course when it realized that it was chasing something that isn't a bird. Ha.
I know it is a little pretentious of me, but I've been reading Walden while I sit out in my parents' garden. I recently read the secret garden, and after reading that I have just become very attached to this secluded outdoors feeling. It's interesting because I am outside, in nature, but it isn't nature.. really. It is a garden, a carefully controlled area of land made to imitate nature in many ways, but is still contrived, unnatural. This isn't a bad thing, but it is just interesting to consider this type of enjoyment from camping, in which the civilized is removed and juxtaposed against nature in a contrived way. The two are chiral. Mirror images of one another. The same, but opposite. Like the right had is to the left hand, gardening and camping are so similarly related.
I do enjoy it here, living in St. Louis. They call it the "Middle of the Mitten", because the lower peninsula of Michigan resembles a mitten, but really it is the middle of nowhere. And to prove it, there are three maximum security prisons at the edge of town, with nothing but miles and miles of farmlands. The town isn't as rundown as it used to be, and in fact you wouldn't be able to tell anymore that there was a recession around here. Many of the shops in the downtown area have grown, so instead of having a lot of little shops, there are a few thriving bigger shops. I don't know much about business, but in a small town, that seems like a better idea. More money distributed among fewer sources means more money for everyone.. or something. Either that or the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Sounds like a dialectic problem to me.
Either way, the town seems to be standing up on it's shaky legs. Many of the derelict buildings have been removed, and replaced with either nice park area, or expansions to the succeeding businesses. It was sad two years ago when the local grocery store closed, but it has reopened and seems to be doing much better than it had when it closed in '08. There are two bars in town that seem to be doing quite well for themselves. One is the local hangout for people 21 and over. It really is more like a high school/family reunion in there every night. I've been in there a couple of times since I've been home, and I'll probably go there a couple more times.. but hopefully I won't find myself there too much.
It looks as though my prolonged childhood may come to an abrupt end if I accept a job somewhere. I think it is a wonderful opportunity, but I'm nervous about what this will mean for many of the sandcastles that I have built over the last eight years. Hopefully, I will find a way to utilize everything that I have learned and focus it on this position. Regardless of what I chose to do, another change is coming, like a wave of storms on a hot summer day.
One of the things I have enjoyed most about being home is my parents' garden. They have put a lot of effort into making it look very nice, but making it more than just ornamental. My dad built this white picket fence in the back yard to give the yard that classic country look, and at the same time, built smaller wire fences to keep the rabbits from eating the leaf vegetables. That's another pretty incredible thing about my parents' yard, it is a safe-haven for many different kinds of animals that aren't found throughout this small town. There are four wild rabbits that live around the yard, plus several different species of birds. I'm learning to identify the different songs. I know the cardinal, mourning dove and sparrows but that is pretty much it. I've been calling to them, and sometimes it works. I've had a couple bird dive-bomb me. It was pretty funny now that I think about it, but at the time it was startling to see the bird take flight so quickly and the suddenly change course when it realized that it was chasing something that isn't a bird. Ha.
I know it is a little pretentious of me, but I've been reading Walden while I sit out in my parents' garden. I recently read the secret garden, and after reading that I have just become very attached to this secluded outdoors feeling. It's interesting because I am outside, in nature, but it isn't nature.. really. It is a garden, a carefully controlled area of land made to imitate nature in many ways, but is still contrived, unnatural. This isn't a bad thing, but it is just interesting to consider this type of enjoyment from camping, in which the civilized is removed and juxtaposed against nature in a contrived way. The two are chiral. Mirror images of one another. The same, but opposite. Like the right had is to the left hand, gardening and camping are so similarly related.
I do enjoy it here, living in St. Louis. They call it the "Middle of the Mitten", because the lower peninsula of Michigan resembles a mitten, but really it is the middle of nowhere. And to prove it, there are three maximum security prisons at the edge of town, with nothing but miles and miles of farmlands. The town isn't as rundown as it used to be, and in fact you wouldn't be able to tell anymore that there was a recession around here. Many of the shops in the downtown area have grown, so instead of having a lot of little shops, there are a few thriving bigger shops. I don't know much about business, but in a small town, that seems like a better idea. More money distributed among fewer sources means more money for everyone.. or something. Either that or the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Sounds like a dialectic problem to me.
Either way, the town seems to be standing up on it's shaky legs. Many of the derelict buildings have been removed, and replaced with either nice park area, or expansions to the succeeding businesses. It was sad two years ago when the local grocery store closed, but it has reopened and seems to be doing much better than it had when it closed in '08. There are two bars in town that seem to be doing quite well for themselves. One is the local hangout for people 21 and over. It really is more like a high school/family reunion in there every night. I've been in there a couple of times since I've been home, and I'll probably go there a couple more times.. but hopefully I won't find myself there too much.
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Producer/Consumer
I think the reason I have been filled with so much angst lately is because I find myself torn between my producer/consumer identity. While everyone is a consumer, myself included, not everyone is a producer. Producers need to consume because they do not possess a photosynthetic power, although there is a healthy equivalent in the transformative power of their consumption. I feel as though I straddle the line between consumer and producer because while I produce a great many material objects (i.e record/publish music, write novels, short stories, etc), I limit the dissemination on the one hand, and privately publish on the other. Maso-cannibal consumption. People assume it is worthless because I give it away for free, but really I give it away so it won't become a commercial commodity. Also, everything I produce tends to be filtered through, or reprised of consumer objects such as movies, books, "popular" music, etc.
You see, it sounds like I'm trying to rationalize being different, and by the same token, being special or "better than everyone." I'm a snob, which (I guess) is unfavorable in the professional atmosphere. I've been told that what I need is to be in a place with "more interesting people." It just makes me "feel bad" because I don't know why I expect so much out of people, out of myself, and then condemn them for their fallibility. Why do I expect so much out of people/myself? Why am I so unforgiving?
What does this have to do with Producer/Consumer... well, it just seems that the producer hates the consumer, and therefore the producer in me hates the consumer in me as well as the consumer in everyone else. Why does the producer have to hate the consumer though? What is the purpose of it? In a world of non-sustainability it would seem that the producers have every right to hate the consumers for it is the consumers' non-return of production that causes entropy and finally extinction. But it isn't the end of the world, just the end of us...although the universe will meet a similar end.
You see, it sounds like I'm trying to rationalize being different, and by the same token, being special or "better than everyone." I'm a snob, which (I guess) is unfavorable in the professional atmosphere. I've been told that what I need is to be in a place with "more interesting people." It just makes me "feel bad" because I don't know why I expect so much out of people, out of myself, and then condemn them for their fallibility. Why do I expect so much out of people/myself? Why am I so unforgiving?
What does this have to do with Producer/Consumer... well, it just seems that the producer hates the consumer, and therefore the producer in me hates the consumer in me as well as the consumer in everyone else. Why does the producer have to hate the consumer though? What is the purpose of it? In a world of non-sustainability it would seem that the producers have every right to hate the consumers for it is the consumers' non-return of production that causes entropy and finally extinction. But it isn't the end of the world, just the end of us...although the universe will meet a similar end.
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Culture
I've developed something of a pet peeve when people say they like [such and such a place] because it has Culture. Now I write Culture with a capital "C" because it is being treated like a proper noun as well as some sort of dignified concept. Middle class white people are pathetic when they talk about Culture as though it is something to be achieved, acquired, or obtained. It's like going to a European country and buying a bunch of souvenirs to place on display for all your friends come over to watch the game qualifies as "having Culture."
It's easy to spot a phony in Michigan because all you have to say is "I love Ann Arbor, it has so much Culture," and if they agree you know they are just another standard issue, middle-class yuppie. People used to drink coffee, now they drink tea. It used to be a validating life experience to backpack through Europe, now it's going to Australia. Once everyone wants to study abroad in Australia, some will want to avoid the cliche and head somewhere else and absorb the ideas and practices into their blank-slate middle class identity.
Equally annoying are those who pigeonhole people who are (for lack of better expression) alternative. I don't mean the hipster neo-beats who wish they lived in the '60s, but people who just don't follow commercialized mainstream. Now, I know there are a lot of people who think that they aren't mainstream, and don't think they fall into the category, so I'll do my best to elucidate. If you look at a person and think, "hippie" or "goth" or "artsy," you are an idiot. Why? Because this is pigeonholing, forcing someone into an idealized identity which is the same as profiling.
Middle-class Americans, no matter how hard they try to be unique, genuine, or authentic, will always fail because they don't have their own identities. I include myself in this, for no matter how hard I try to escape, I am still constructing my own identity. The difference is that I understand the dynamic fluidity and plurality of my identity. I know it isn't simple enough to just label me as something because I fit in and fall out of so many different identities simultaneously. Many people do, but there is this 2-dimensionality about most people that is centered around how much shit they've consumed. It is like the plumage on a very tacky, very irritating bird.
If you have too much shit, you're a tool. Not enough and you're a creeper.
Then there is this "alternative" mainstream that has spouted out of the growing popularity in being hipster. A hipster is a person that is too good for the mainstream, listens to indie music, dresses in a mismatched and "worn" style. Thick glasses and Beatles haircuts are also watermarks of these types of people. Beards on the men, short(er) hair on the girls. They like movies like Juno, Nick and Norah's infinite playlist, 500 Days of Summer, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Royal Tenanbaums. They used to like Donnie Darko, but that's not cool anymore because everyone has seen that. They also like David Sedaris and Chuck Palahniuk. They are still consumers, buying their identity and their beliefs through the movies they watch, music they listen to, and clothes they wear. They don't watch TV though, or at least they pride themselves on the fact that they don't own a TV or "never watch TV."
There are exceptions of course, depending on how much gravity one has with their particular group, but the only thing that individualism gets you is alienated. Still, middle-class Americans really believe that they are individuals and that they "are their own person." They are practically cookie-cutter replicas of one another. Even I have a doppelganger! But I don't go around telling people how much Culture I have, and I resent when people say I have Class. Being clean cut, or knowing the customs of countries other than one's own does not make them cultured, nor classy. Pretentious acts of showing off by doing things "the European way" or whatever is not sophisticated, it's annoying. It cheapens what really can be constituted as other cultures by absorbing cultural manifestations into the middle-class. It's neo-imperialism, instead of squashing out the minorities cultures, they decorate themselves from a cultural salad bar. That does not make them citizens of the world.. it makes the full of shit.
It's not that I'm against souvenirs, or travel for that matter, but I am against these things as a means of social currency that can be used to increase one's social value. The search for "Culture" is a fool's errand, and no matter what kind of "cultural collage" that you build while constructing your identity doesn't make you any different from anyone else. In fact, it makes you the same, cliche, standard issue, middle-class asshole that you think you're better than.
It's easy to spot a phony in Michigan because all you have to say is "I love Ann Arbor, it has so much Culture," and if they agree you know they are just another standard issue, middle-class yuppie. People used to drink coffee, now they drink tea. It used to be a validating life experience to backpack through Europe, now it's going to Australia. Once everyone wants to study abroad in Australia, some will want to avoid the cliche and head somewhere else and absorb the ideas and practices into their blank-slate middle class identity.
Equally annoying are those who pigeonhole people who are (for lack of better expression) alternative. I don't mean the hipster neo-beats who wish they lived in the '60s, but people who just don't follow commercialized mainstream. Now, I know there are a lot of people who think that they aren't mainstream, and don't think they fall into the category, so I'll do my best to elucidate. If you look at a person and think, "hippie" or "goth" or "artsy," you are an idiot. Why? Because this is pigeonholing, forcing someone into an idealized identity which is the same as profiling.
Middle-class Americans, no matter how hard they try to be unique, genuine, or authentic, will always fail because they don't have their own identities. I include myself in this, for no matter how hard I try to escape, I am still constructing my own identity. The difference is that I understand the dynamic fluidity and plurality of my identity. I know it isn't simple enough to just label me as something because I fit in and fall out of so many different identities simultaneously. Many people do, but there is this 2-dimensionality about most people that is centered around how much shit they've consumed. It is like the plumage on a very tacky, very irritating bird.
If you have too much shit, you're a tool. Not enough and you're a creeper.
Then there is this "alternative" mainstream that has spouted out of the growing popularity in being hipster. A hipster is a person that is too good for the mainstream, listens to indie music, dresses in a mismatched and "worn" style. Thick glasses and Beatles haircuts are also watermarks of these types of people. Beards on the men, short(er) hair on the girls. They like movies like Juno, Nick and Norah's infinite playlist, 500 Days of Summer, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Royal Tenanbaums. They used to like Donnie Darko, but that's not cool anymore because everyone has seen that. They also like David Sedaris and Chuck Palahniuk. They are still consumers, buying their identity and their beliefs through the movies they watch, music they listen to, and clothes they wear. They don't watch TV though, or at least they pride themselves on the fact that they don't own a TV or "never watch TV."
There are exceptions of course, depending on how much gravity one has with their particular group, but the only thing that individualism gets you is alienated. Still, middle-class Americans really believe that they are individuals and that they "are their own person." They are practically cookie-cutter replicas of one another. Even I have a doppelganger! But I don't go around telling people how much Culture I have, and I resent when people say I have Class. Being clean cut, or knowing the customs of countries other than one's own does not make them cultured, nor classy. Pretentious acts of showing off by doing things "the European way" or whatever is not sophisticated, it's annoying. It cheapens what really can be constituted as other cultures by absorbing cultural manifestations into the middle-class. It's neo-imperialism, instead of squashing out the minorities cultures, they decorate themselves from a cultural salad bar. That does not make them citizens of the world.. it makes the full of shit.
It's not that I'm against souvenirs, or travel for that matter, but I am against these things as a means of social currency that can be used to increase one's social value. The search for "Culture" is a fool's errand, and no matter what kind of "cultural collage" that you build while constructing your identity doesn't make you any different from anyone else. In fact, it makes you the same, cliche, standard issue, middle-class asshole that you think you're better than.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
@College
Here we are at the tip of a new semester. For us here at Central Michigan University, we are entering Spring semester 2010. Lucky us. This is my sixteenth semester as a student. I evidently spent the the majority of the first decade of the twenty-first century in college learning how to be an obedient middle-class consumer. The joke is on them, however, since I went above and beyond the requirements of the BS program, got my Master's degree and am now bound for a Doctorate degree. My inner elitist is beaming because I feel as though I slipped through the proverbial cracks in the system to a more elucidated understanding of reality as it actually exists. It's like I've awoken from the Matrix. But I know this is a feeling that even freshmen feel after their first semester of any humanities class that is firmly rooted in socialist/Marxist thought.
I have to feign interest in this class I am currently enrolled in called Cultural Pluralism in Literature for Children and Young Adults. There are four men in the class, and about thirty women, including a professor who looks like she could be a fourth grade teacher or elementary school librarian. I guess that is the point. Most people have this misconception that Literature for children is a field for women and elementary school educators. This mentality is correlated to another that subverts the euro-masculine epistemology for another epistemology that preaches equality but instead has its own built in marginalization and discrimination. They call this "multiculturalism." The contradiction is that multiculturalism has built into a hierarchy of cultures, and places "Western culture" at the bottom while saying that all "Other" cultures marginalized by Western culture deserve the spotlight or at least the kind of attention that Westerners gave themselves over the course of their history.
Of course it is complicated because of the reclamation process that is undergoing by every marginalized culture at once. Because this uprising consists of several cultures at once, attacking a multifaceted dominant culture, a dichotomy is created out of the abstracted opposing cultures. There are several problematic implications here, namely that the specificity and uniqueness of particular cultures is lost on both sides of the dichotomy. This makes the task of those promoting "cultural sensitivity" tedious to the point of futile. With this realized, the only reason to maintain such a position is for the sake of vanity. It is my hope that those bleeding heart idealists don't realize the contradiction in being completely reactionary from traditional Western values. Remember: not all progress is regress.
The next step is to determine what is so plural about cultural plurality. My hypothesis is that it is a fluid, dynamic of domination and repression between different alliances of people brought together by various factors such as family, need, etc. The key is to control what matters most to each particular alliance of people in order to control the choices each alliance, or society, will make.
I have to feign interest in this class I am currently enrolled in called Cultural Pluralism in Literature for Children and Young Adults. There are four men in the class, and about thirty women, including a professor who looks like she could be a fourth grade teacher or elementary school librarian. I guess that is the point. Most people have this misconception that Literature for children is a field for women and elementary school educators. This mentality is correlated to another that subverts the euro-masculine epistemology for another epistemology that preaches equality but instead has its own built in marginalization and discrimination. They call this "multiculturalism." The contradiction is that multiculturalism has built into a hierarchy of cultures, and places "Western culture" at the bottom while saying that all "Other" cultures marginalized by Western culture deserve the spotlight or at least the kind of attention that Westerners gave themselves over the course of their history.
Of course it is complicated because of the reclamation process that is undergoing by every marginalized culture at once. Because this uprising consists of several cultures at once, attacking a multifaceted dominant culture, a dichotomy is created out of the abstracted opposing cultures. There are several problematic implications here, namely that the specificity and uniqueness of particular cultures is lost on both sides of the dichotomy. This makes the task of those promoting "cultural sensitivity" tedious to the point of futile. With this realized, the only reason to maintain such a position is for the sake of vanity. It is my hope that those bleeding heart idealists don't realize the contradiction in being completely reactionary from traditional Western values. Remember: not all progress is regress.
The next step is to determine what is so plural about cultural plurality. My hypothesis is that it is a fluid, dynamic of domination and repression between different alliances of people brought together by various factors such as family, need, etc. The key is to control what matters most to each particular alliance of people in order to control the choices each alliance, or society, will make.
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and I get chastised by my mother for embarrassing her by putting down St. Louis, MI.
--
Private Rachelle
--this person graduated from the same high school, and is best friends with a family I also consider my best friends.
Whinger the Ginger:
--It may sound snide, but I thought it was an honest question
Private Rachelle
Private Rachelle
--
Stop. I want to say for the record that at this point I was not on the defense because she doesn't know what she is talking about. I wasn't about to say that to her, that I am a broke ass, that I was so poor recently that I had to move back in with my parents, but only because my entire savings and credit was wiped out by living with people much like who she is describing; "you act just like all those brats that come up here from the burbs and act like you're doing the town a favor by living here, even though you hate it, cause theyre too lazy, too mediocre, and too cowardly to actually try to be the people they think they are." The thing is.. I like Mt Pleasant, too. I was talking about St Louis. For a country bumpkin like myself, I can find a lot to do in a place like Mt Pleasant. Where she is dead wrong though is that I don't have any money. I have nothing to my name but a bunch of college debt. So instead of of defending myself.. I deflected:
Whinger the Ginger:
Private Rachelle
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I don't know why, but this one pissed me off because she said my mind was second rate. Now if my ego wasn't first rate like she said then I probably would have just laughed it off. But again, she is wrong, I have spent more time with her than she realizes, and I can read her posts on Facebook because we have all the same friends... in fact.. when my friend lived with her for three years in the last decade he would come over and tell me how horrible it was to live with her because she was such a slob. But she is an annoying vocal political leftist who grew up poor and studied marxism in college, making her a college-educated poor person who holds a grudge towards people from the suburbs for being who they were raised to be. I should have said that.. instead I just said
Whinger the Ginger:
Private Rachelle
Whinger the Ginger:
Private Rachelle
Whinger the Ginger:
Private Rachelle
Whinger the Ginger:
Private Rachelle
Whinger the Ginger:
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Later that evening, I was sitting in my garden going over the events of that scuffle, and I was brooding, obsessing because I felt like she was just a fat idiot, and yet I didn't want to get back into it with her--because then she really would be right about me being a bitter child. So instead I thought about all the things that I could say that placate her own ego and sent her this message:
I'm sorry for the things I said to you earlier. You were right, it stung when you said my mind was second rate. I was being presumptuous, self-righteous, petulant, unscrupulous brat. I need to be more discrete on facebook. I am often insecure about my writing, and it hit a nerve when you told me I'm a mediocre writer. So, I just want to let you know that I'm sorry we had words, and I deserved everything you said to me.
And I know I could be happier somewhere else, and have the means to move on, but like you said, I'm lazy and mediocre, and it is easier to simply act superior than everyone else around me. I should just suck it up. I just had a bad night at the River Rock last night, and was feeling belligerent when I woke up this morning. I know I probably didn't even phase you, but I don't like embarrassing myself on other people's profile pages, so for everything, I apologize. It was my fault.
Whinger the Ginger
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And shortly after this appeared on the conversation:
Willy the Spy
--She didn't say anything to me, but that may be as good as it gets. Now the asterisk I wrote refers to this:
*FROM WIKIPEDIA:
Psychological projection or projection bias (including Freudian Projection) is the unconscious act of denial of a person's own attributes, thoughts, and emotions, which are then ascribed to the outside world, such as to the weather, the government, a tool, or to other people. Thus, it involves imagining or projecting that others have those feelings.
Denial: you'd hit a lot closer to home if you sounded like you had the first clue what I do with my life.
Attribution: you're just coming off like the bitter child that you so clearly are. it's clear who's stung here, [whinger].