Greg Proffit Writing

Tag: culture

What Do You Like & Why Do You Like It?

Photo by George Pagan III on Unsplash

# 85 on my 99 Life Tips–A List is: Know why you like what you like. Learn to identify the feeling of liking something before you have the words to tell yourself you like it. That resonance, that connection, that is your home.

This one has been staring at me for a couple of days. I know what I mean by the tip I offered months ago when I created my list and posted it, but this one captures so much.

What you like defines you

Why do you like that? Why don’t you like this? Can your likes change—become weaker (?), or stronger? If they can change, did the thing formerly liked change? Or did the former “Like-er” change? Important stuff.

We all start in infancy as blank slates. Yes, I know, the argument of nature vs. nurture. Sure, sure. Still… I have no Grateful Dead genes that make me resonate to that frequency, nor any Russian genes I’m aware of that make the slow, deliberated, painstakingly detailed accounts of Dostoevsky so appealing and full of life and truth to me.

So, as for the accumulation of culture—which is really a fancy word for group or social liking of a thing—I’m on the nurture side of that debate. We like what we like because we get exposed to it by someone who convinces us that people like us like stuff like this. There’s a kind of peer pressure to like most of the things we choose.

[That, and the size of the menu in proportion to the size of our appetites, and whether we find good entrements (palate cleansers) between samplings.]

There are also degrees of liking a thing. You may wear the tee-shirt, but not kill bats on stage and drink their blood. (You can look up the old Ozzy Osbourne legend somewhere… Google it.)

So, Greg, you’re 300 words in and haven’t told me a damn thing about why I like some stuff and not other stuff.

True, dear reader, we are halfway down a proper electronic page and I cannot tell you what to like. I can, however, urge this—Don’t let anyone else tell you either!

We all got our first likes because someone pushed sweet mashed pears into our baby mouths before they spooned in disgusting pureed lima beans. Someone played Mozart, or Miles Davis or Metallica before Beethoven, Benny Goodman, or Bad Company.

We first gain likes and tastes from the people around us who expose us to them and usually because they like them too. (Maybe not with babyhood pears, but you catch my drift).

Here’s the rub

At some point, earlier or later, I don’t know, you will want to pay attention to whether or not you’d like Led Zeppelin at all if that delectable girl in the yellow overalls didn’t look so good wearing that logo emblazoned across her beautiful… t-shirt (what did you think I was going to type?)

My mom was a member of the Columbia Records club. This was back when dinosaurs roamed North America and people still had turntables on which to extract sound from round plastic platters. She got several albums a month, and she used to sit dreamily and play one album called Go To Heaven by a band of long-haired men, standing in a cloud on the cover, wearing cheesy looking, white, polyester-velveteen Lawrence Welk suits.

Alabama Getaway and Don’t Ease Me In off that record sounded like countrified crapola to my 13-year-old ears. Hearing it made me gag and flee the premises, long before I got to hear Lost Sailor and Saint of Circumstance.

I couldn’t stand it! Yuck! 13-year-olds ought not be judged too harshly for underdeveloped anything. Puberty makes for a cloudy filter.

But I did like her Fleetwood Mac, and Rickie Lee Jones, and Little Feat albums. I even liked Jimmy Buffett, and I wanted to like Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young because they had the coolest album cover. (You know the antique looking, sepia-toned album where they’re posed with a dog, and Crosby cradles a shotgun, and Neil is draped with bandoleers and a pistol, and a guitar is lying on the ground — Deja Vu—and it looks like Matthew Brady took the photograph right after the battle of Antietam or something).

God, I loved the look of that album cover because I was crazy for all kinds of Civil War stuff. That picture was so cool! Who cared about hippies floating in white John Travolta suits in a cloud!?

But the music, Jeez! My misanthropic mom would get drunk, put on Teach Your Children and slur, “Hunnneee, jusss lishen to theesh wordzz. Thish iss evertheeen I wanna shay to you kidzz.”

OMG!! Please No! — Likes can change

I hated C,S,N,Y then. Association, ya know?

Though, I LOVE their music now. Different association… ya know?

The same reason I now love all things Grateful Dead. I had to grow into it. Then it grew into me.

So, sometimes early exposure doesn’t take root. Germination takes longer. Circumstances change, and then, bam! You hear something, or see something, or taste it, and it’s like tasting and seeing and hearing home. Like gathering up fragments of self that complete you. I know, weird.

But, they say there’s no accounting for taste. And truly there isn’t. If you will put on your Indiana Jones hat and do some personal archeology to dig up the reasons you’ve buried and kept your own personal treasures, you’ll learn a hella lot about yourself.

Fact is, your likes and loves will tell you more about yourself than your dislikes.

Shove over, I’ve invited God in

Probably shouldn’t drag God into a story already crowded with Jimmy Buffett, my drunk mom, Rickie Lee Jones, and bandoleers, but I see [Him] as defined (bad word, I don’t think [He] can be defined adequately, else the whole God idea shrinks, but it’s the best word we’ve got) by what [He] likes, immeasurably more than by what [He] dislikes. Just like you and me are defined more by what we like and allow in than by what we hate and keep out.

It’s the opposite of the way evangelical Christians think of God and themselves. These define themselves by what they oppose, what they’re against, what they resist and are afraid of. They never crack open Song of Songs, the most beautiful ode to physical, sexual love ever written (“kisses sweeter than wine”). It just sits there unread and unappreciated in their bibles. They conveniently forget Noah got drunk (after preserving humanity), David committed adultery—and murder (and was still called a man after God’s own heart), Jesus turned water into about a hundred gallons of wine at a wedding, and Peter denied Jesus (but Jesus restored him again over fish tacos on the beach).

They forget God loved everybody, EVERYBODY so much, [He] paid the ultimate price to win us back. I don’t imagine [He’s] trying to keep anyone out on technicalities like who they love. [He’d] prefer to outfit us all in white suits, invite us to stand in a cloud, and Go To Heaven. Or maybe my God is just bigger and more full of Grace and Mercy than yours. I dunno. Or maybe I’m wrong. But I’d rather be wrong believing in God as revealed Love. Maybe you’re unflawed, and you’re loved for your perfection. That doesn’t apply to me. But because God loves flawed me as much as [He] does, my only response is to trust [Him.] That is what faith is all about, after all. The heart’s response to a God showing and proving [His] Love.

If you’re curious about my brackets around masculine pronouns in reference to God, it’s because of my uncertainty of how to think of God and gender. I think of God as Father, the only real Father I’ve ever known. But God is called El Shaddai in the Hebrew scriptures, too, which means “the Breasted One”, or nurse. I love that image—of God being the source of life and growth and sustenance, of comfort, and warmth, and security, the way a nursing mother is to her infant child. You are welcome to your own images. I am convinced in my heart that my brackets aren’t offensive to [Him], or Him. End of disclaimer.

Back to the topic at hand—Here’s an unlimited credit card

Learn to identify what you like, on your own terms. Evaluate your preferences to see if you picked them up as the price of admission to some tribe or other, or thinking they’d be the key to some girl’s heart.

What do you like, the real you? Imagine you have an unlimited credit card. Your preferences and tastes are the only ones you need consult. You start with an empty iPod, empty media shelves, and an unfurnished home—no pictures on the walls, nothing in the pantry, fridge, wine cellar, or liquor cabinet. What’s parked in the driveway? What do you get? What do you like? Not—what does your wife, husband, lover like? No. What do you like?

Go ahead, you have my full permission to fill your life with as many of those things you can. On the way, you’ll answer the question: Why do you like that? It may be this simple. You just do! It resonates. And it scratches the persistent itch, uncovers the empty spot, and fills up the void. Because it caresses your heart; and sings you, rocks you, swaddles you, envelops you, whispers you—home.

It may as simple as the idea enshrined by Mick Jagger—

“I know it’s only Rock n’ Roll, but I like it… yes I do!”
~ Rolling Stones: It’s Only Rock n’ Roll

Mick likes Rock n’ Roll, and that like defines Mick. What defines you? What do you like?

One day, I’ll invite you over to my own imaginary bare-floored, yoga-pillowed pad where we can have church listening for the whisper of God, blasting my collection of studio and live Dead performances on my megawatt stereo system, while we drink Napa Valley wine and Russel’’s Reserve and Grok out on all my Van Gogh and Monet and Mondrian paintings. Or maybe we’ll “ooh and aahhh” over my library of thousands of volumes of curated literature, housing everything from Brené Brown to Zane Grey.

You’ll like it. Or at least I will.

What did you ask? Oh, yeah, that Aerosmith you hear coming from the other room? Oh, that’s just my girlfriend rocking out on the sounds she likes. She calls mine alternately “Grandpa” or “Sleepy” music. If you prefer the Demon of Screamin’ to my sleepy tunes, you are welcome to plug in your headphones. To each his own. I can’t tell you what to like, I can only ask you to tell me, why do you like it?

July 15, 2021
You Cannot Lie To A Tree and Other Truths I Learned By Reading Fiction

What a beauty. Listen closely, you can hear it’s trying to say something. (Adobe Stock Image: licensed to Author)

It occurred to me this morning that you cannot lie to a tree. Please allow me the attempt to explain.

Since beginning The Overstory, by Richard Powers, trees have become my heroes among creation. I know that seems strange, but my fascination has only grown as I marvel at their presence on this planet and I ponder what they are up to. As one of the characters in the book might say, ”What they do?”

The more I learn about them, and even as I try to share what I’m learning, the more I realize that my learning is taking me backwards so that I can properly start at zero. My preconceptions have to be shattered and laid aside. They are obstacles. I am like a guitar student coming to a Master. ”I’d like to learn to play guitar,” I say. ”Show me what you can do,” says he. I begin to strum through chords I’ve learned, pleased to show off a few rudimentary elements. ”Stop!” he shouts, before I complete 4 bars. ”This is not guitar! We will need to unlearn these mistakes before we can begin.”

This is how it is with trees. To borrow a concept once more from the book,

”You can’t see what you don’t understand. But what you think you already understand, you’ll fail to notice.”
The Overstory, p. 439. From Adam Appich, a character who is a psych professor.

Thinking you understand trees, you don’t see them. I mean, you see the shapes, but you don’t see them. It’s the same with the people you race each morning to get to work. You see them just enough to avoid hitting their cars when you change lanes. But you don’t have time to see the people. You don’t have time to look. You understand them. They are going to work just like you are. Knowing that tidbit is enough to stop the quest for any deeper enlightenment.

You see trees about as much as you see people in these cars. (Adobe Stock Image: licensed to Author)

A weird thought that just wouldn’t go away

I was thinking on these things when I realized that you cannot lie to a tree. I know, that’s a weird thought to have. But you cannot lie to a tree in the same way that you cannot lie to God. Lies will not impact either one. They will remain unmoved, unbent, unbowed, unswayed. The wind will move a tree more than your lies will. Go ahead and try to prove me wrong.

Which of your lies will either impact or impress a tree? (Adobe Stock Image: licensed to Author)

I find that so satisfactory to contemplate. You can senselessly cut down a tree. Or you can treat it like a cash crop. You can scorch it with acid rain and blight. You can foolishly clear out the undergrowth that makes up its nutrient bed. But you cannot lie to a tree. In every conceivable way, a tree is above you. It is unmoved. It is unflappable. A tree is nothing but living, breathing, branching, spreading, sharing truth. No liars need apply.

Juxtapose that with what we call civilization. On the one hand, a forest is a collection of beings so willing to give and receive truth from one another that they become one thing. A Douglas Fir cannot fool an Aspen that it is something else. The Aspen does not pretend to be a Maple. The Oak has leaves that sample and absorb the off-gassed, chemical condensates of its neighbors, and shares with them in turn. Every tree in the wood shares carbon with every other tree underground through the mycelia of their root structures, assisted by fungi, the most un-heralded, unseen, world-class mediators and facilitators of the planet. The network of sharing is so complete, so entwined, that the forest becomes an organism in its own right. Trees have nothing to gain from pretentious self-centeredness. They have everything to gain from being exactly what they are.

This collection of varieties alone proves the social superiority of trees to humans. There is no murder, no isms, no inequality…makes ya think. (Adobe Stock Image: licensed to Author)

The veneer of civilization and culture is sophisticated fabrication

By contrast, human civilization is hardly anything but lies. Lies that appear in facebook posts, instagram stories, and snaps. Tweeted lies. Spoken lies. Documented lies. How rare to find someone not trying to be more than they are, or not trying to be someone else – or wishing they were. We drive cars we can’t afford to pretend we have more money. We mortgage our lives to dwell in houses that are shoddily and hastily built; they have no architectural finesse, or aesthetic beauty, or soul whatsoever. They do fit neatly on the 3rd of an acre lot sandwiched between two neighbors you smile and wave at, but whose names you do not know. But for God’s sake can they just please keep their lawn mowed?

No, human culture is a polished veneer of appearances. Its strength is not deep connection, but deep deception. You are more deeply committed to your favorite celebrity (who you will never meet) than to your neighbor. We cannot share life the way trees do because we cannot be trusted to share equally. I wish I had the talent to paint in words the absurdity of the tree-equivalent of Elon Musk, or Marc Zuckerburg, or any one of the despicable Kardashians.

This? This is the height of human civilization? Please! Give me a forest! (Adobe Stock Image: licensed to Author)

Here’s a thought: If you picture the canopy of trees in a forest having an average height that represents their individual net worth, the average height would be 88* feet tall. The Elon Musk tree would tower 23,525,920** feet above the average height of the forest. That’s a large number. Correction. It’s an obscene number. It is twenty-three million, five-hundred twenty-five thousand, nine-hundred twenty-three feet above the eighty-eight foot ceiling of the forest average. In other words 800 Mt. Everests stacked on one another, or 800 times higher than the cruising altitude of a commercial jet.

See anything sticking 23 million feet above this? No? Didn’t think so. (Adobe Stock Image: licensed to Author)

That Elon tree aberration is 4455.66 miles above the average tree. That’s a mutation! (That is farther than the distance from New York, New York to Anchorage, Alaska). The Bezos, Zuckerburg, and Buffett trees would also tower way above the ”average height” canopy. Can you even imagine what that would look like from space?

[This deserves a WaitButWhy illustration from Tim Urban. Like the ones in this excellent piece on AI. (C’mon Tim, discover trees!)]

Trees aren’t greedy – They’re more honorable than people

No tree would be so ashamedly greedy. Humans have no such limitations on either shame or greed. Trees are way more honorable than people. Trees exist to scrub poison out of the atmosphere, turn it into biomass and energy, and give it back in the form of life to everything else on the planet. The immorally rich exist to squeeze life out of everyone ”beneath” them, use them for their own ends, and excrete the poison of selfishness with its envy, lust, and competition, all while being loved and praised and enamored for doing so. Talk about insanity writ large…

You will live your entire life and maybe know one or at most two other people. I mean really know them. But you will be coldly calculating to make sure you get as much as you give in every transaction with everyone else. You will cultivate a persona for work, for your kids, for your spouse. Then you will put on a face for the public at large. You will go to church and put on a religious face for the members, and for God. While there, you will have the uneasy feeling that God sees through your piety. He sees beneath the veneer. The degree to which you allow Him to see, will be the degree to which you experience the unfathomable bliss of love undeserved.

A classroom for a better way

Go to the woods. The trees will release pheromones to bribe you into carrying pollen for them, or maybe just to get you to stand nearby and breathe for a while. But go there and tell them your stories, and show them your curated life with its glamorous photos of the vacation that will take you ten times longer to pay for than the time you spent enjoying it. Show them your checkbook register, or your stock portfolio.

I’m just here to learn. I have a feeling there’s so much you can teach me. I hope I’m not too late; for your kind, or for mine. (Adobe Stock Image: licensed to Author)

Go to the woods and look. See if you can spot a tree trying to seduce its neighbor. See if you find one trying to impress. Find one that is hustling its neighbor, or conning it. Especially, look for the trees trying to oppress and exploit and abuse and use their surrounding, neighbor trees. You know, the ”hard-working” trees just trying to climb the ladder and get ahead.

You won’t find any. No, they just stand still, wave in the breeze, reach and stretch, and branch, and take in what’s there, and give back to everything around them, and practice being invisible.

The Takeaway: I learned these truths by reading fiction

You cannot lie to a tree. But you can lie to yourself and to others. You can tell yourself there’s nothing to learn here. Trees aren’t people, you say. No, thank God, they’re not. I learned all these things about trees, their essential truths, their fundamental importance, and the dire emergency they truly face, by reading a work of fiction. That’s the power that fiction has to reveal truth and change lives!

NOTE:

*The dataset for tree heights found the average height was 87.6 feet (88′).

** Elon Musk’s net worth is approx. $185B, the average American net worth is the whopping, $692K (which seems very high). 185B/692K=267,341 (this is how many times more Musk’s net worth is than the avg. If $692K = 88’, then $185B = 88 x 267,341 = 23,526,008’ (the height of the Musk tree) 23,526,008 – 88 = 23,525,920’ (The height in feet of Musk’s tree above the canopy average height)

April 14, 2021
Thoughts on Covid Response — Culture Impacts Results

Screenshot of the Johns Hopkins University global data map, indicating cases per 100,000

The Covid-19 pandemic has been both a global morality play and a world-wide laboratory for observation of social behaviors. For the most part, countries and cultures steeped in cooperation and interdependence have responded better than those based more on individualism. By any metric, western countries, particularly the United States, show far more positive results and deaths when factored for population, than many Eastern, Asian countries. India is the outlier in terms of its rates of infection and deaths. One could hope they share a culture that values life and where the cultural impacts behavior in a positive way, to preserve it. That’s not always the case. Though it is the case that culture impacts results.

Raw Statistics

Statistical analyses of raw numbers like the ones linked above measure effects, not causes. There are not likely to be any studies broken down by political party or religious affiliation. If there were, they might prove illuminating. Not that politics or religions create disease. They don’t. They are not the primary cause. But once started, a viral disease spreads, or is mitigated, by the actions of the people where it is present. And people act on what they believe. Persons in the hardest hit countries, with the United States firmly ensconced in the top (bottom) position, either do not believe the virus is serious, or they don’t believe it’s up to them to do anything to help stop it.

The surest proof of belief is action. If you believe a chair will hold your weight, you demonstrate that belief by sitting on it. All actions (and I include inactions as a type of negative action), are the effects of some type of belief. If I do X, I believe I will achieve Y. Or conversely, if I refrain from doing X, I believe it will prevent Y. Any modifications made to behavior on account of Covid have come from belief in their necessity and efficacy. Those who have not believed it was serious (at least to themselves) have ridiculed the warnings and spurned the recommendations. This has happened to a statistically significant degree in Western countries and cultures contrasted with non-Western.

Is American Culture A Selfish Killer?

The Soviet Union collapsed because its brand of Communism failed. What does the unspeakably poor Covid record of the United States say about our culture and government? Is American culture a selfish killer? Or is that an un-Patriotic question? Maybe that is an unfair comparison. Maybe it’s not relevant. But something in the fabric of Western culture (in general), and the United States (in particular) has been the cause of the atrocious global rankings. Some will comfort themselves with the notion that the US shows so poorly because we test so thoroughly. Some will say we are more honest and open with our results. (No one from New York or Florida, though). These views may be accurate. If so, I stand corrected. There is no evidence to suggest these scenarios are true. And it doesn’t negate the fact that many (including many state governors) believe liberty and economics are more valuable than health and life.

Origination is not as important as Elimination

To bring this back to my opening, a pandemic starts however and wherever it starts. Knowing how and where this virus started provides zero useful information to stop it. Humans are hard-wired to assign blame, but sometimes fingering the culprit is not as important as limiting the damage. Once started, people are alternately praiseworthy or blameworthy for their actions to limit the spread. Here again, the culture impacts on results.

The West could have learned from the pandemic. Citizens could have been made aware of shared, mutual dependencies. From the outset, political leaders could have promoted the literally life-altering message of self-sacrifice for the greater good. Instead, it has been the vehicle in an all-out race pitting lunatic-liberty against life. A difficulty for many to embrace these concepts may hinge on their unwillingness to take any responsibility for their role in spreading a virus they don’t feel responsible for starting in the first place. Since they did not personally start it, they absolve themselves of any responsibility to slow its spread. I don’t know if that’s true. I suppose another possibility is that a lot of people in Western civilizations really just don’t give a damn about each other, acting out the belief that people aren’t all that important, except as tools for making money.

April 9, 2021
Independent Thought & Individualism – Myths of a Kind

Looks easy but may be the hardest thing of all for any of us to do…Think for ourselves.

Is it possible that the most difficult thing for a human is to have an independent thought?

It has been said that everyone is the unconscious exponent of some dead philosopher or other. In other words, we’re all drinking somebody’s Kool-Aid. Every idea you have has been borrowed. Every belief inculcated. From birth, each new idea is absorbed brick by brick from the people around you. This continues on into school, high school, college, books you choose, media you consume.

If true, then what we Americans like to think of as individualism is just a certain species of social confirmation theory. In other words, we reinforce (and are reinforced by) the ideas we and our adoptive tribe subscribe to. In too many ways we are automatons, conditioned to thinking, saying, and doing what we’ve been reinforced by our preferred social group to think, say, and do. (In the military for instance, independent thought is not a value, it is rebellion.) What would your friends think, or your ”followers” if you happen to voice an idea outside the accepted orthodoxy of your circle? So you don’t. You want to be accepted. You want to fit. You want to belong.

To push that idea further, that means there are no true individuals in the classical sense; that being who is truly independent, non-reliant, un-attached, un-molded, un-shaped and unique.

Certainly not you if you’re reading this. You’re dependent on someone even for the ability to read. Somebody else, long ago, turned these squiggles into a language that you were taught to speak and read. Your brain sees the squiggles and with no effort on your part, converts the shapes to meaning. You didn’t do ANY of that for yourself.

And the squiggles appear on magical virtual paper in front of your eyes. They aren’t carved in stone, or painted onto papyrus, or inscribed on vellum, or scratched into bark. Unless you developed the technology to display abstract language on a screen using only ones and zeroes, some silicon, glass, and light supplied by electricity. You are dependent on those who did. You are this moment dependent upon those who keep the electricity flowing to your device of choice for reading this. Mic drop.

It is very difficult to escape ethnocentrism. We believe the culture we are born into is the best one. This is probably not unique to Americans, but it may afflict us to a worse degree. America’s greatest export by volume, is our culture, or at least the pop-Art aspects of it. But is one’s birth culture really the ”best” one? Or is it merely familiar?

But wait, Americans aren’t satisfied with being simply American, are we? You need a jersey to wear. Red, or blue for you? And you need a code to follow. We divide along dogma and credo down to the granular level. And be mindful not to step on the cracks of separation, or you’ll get labeled, ”other”.

It fascinates me that in Japanese there is no word for ”individualism”. A deeper dive removes some surprise since they have a culture shaped by Shintoism with its profound veneration and appreciation for ancestors. A Japanese citizen is not too proud to acknowledge the help they’ve received to become what they have become. To think they’d done so on their own would be a sacrilege.

In America, individualism is a religion in its own right. I am more convinced than ever, that it is a form of cult-like psychosis. There is a willful denial of the interwoven, inter-dependent nature of our lives. What a particularly Orwellian brand of ”group-think”, in which the adherents ludicrously claim ”individualism”, while parroting the same words, wearing the same clothes, supporting the same issues, flying the same flags. Oh, right, individuals…I see.

I find ironic humor in the fact that so many professors of independence and individualism make their claims via the megaphone of billion-member social networking platforms. Kinda belies the claim, doesn’t it?

Americans have arrived at a cultural, social, and political inflection point at which we must determine if we are flexible enough to allow for a plurality of viewpoints. Are we going to continue to splinter and fragment? Are we going to wage the RL version of Battle Royale against one another? Is your group so sure of its righteousness that it is willing to go to war with a differing group? Even a war of words using the weapons of vilification, condescension, and ridicule is counter-productive and mutually destructive. Are you that certain you can do without them?

The idea of America is quite literally coming apart at the seams. I’m not unique in believing this house is too divided to stand. Can we recover? Maybe. If we’re willing to embrace the ideals that the country was founded upon. If we adamantly reject all disinformation from whatever the source. If we hold crooked and lying politicians on both sides accountable. If we look more for similarities than for differences in one another.

I think in the next few decades, not just in America, but globally, it will take all of us, working together, pulling together, mutually dependent, and mutually benefitting to stay alive on this planet and help it recover before we go extinct ourselves.

This planet we ride on can do just fine without any of us, and it will recover speedily once we are gone. It doesn’t need us. Consider that.

I have seasonal allergies. My body responds to pollen as a pathogen. It attacks it as harmful and invasive. Pollen is certainly not a pathogen. It is the substance of fecundity and life. There is something wrong with me, not the pollen, or the trees, and other flora producing it.

Just because this stuff attacks me, doesn’t mean its bad and I should attack it. It’s doing its job, the problem is mine.

In our melting pot society, different cultures and ideas have always melded and blended, and coalesced and cooperated. Our cross-pollination is what makes us unique among the roster of nations. Differences of opinion, experience, history, and perspective should not be treated as pathogens! They shouldn’t be attacked, but embraced, understood, mined for truth, and winnowed for better ideas.

The differences between us are the pollen of a society fertilized and pregnant with possibility. If you’re allergic, it’s likely there is something wrong with you.

Americans by nature are allergic to concepts that challenge “rugged individualism”, but we can grow up now. It’s ok. There’s plenty of Kleenex to go around.

And we might as well start with the idea that none of us is really all that independent. None of us is really as individualistic as we might puff ourselves up to be. Lean in. Here’s a tissue.

March 31, 2021
Culture Wars?

In light of the politically driven Culture Wars in the US, I googled ”how many cultures are in America?”

I found an interesting article in business insider, claiming 11 different US ”nations” with territorial borders and unique cultural and political affinities.

On a site called Inter Exchange that promotes cultural interchange for expats and students, I found the following article listing 10 Things to Know About US Culture.

There are a number of other returns to my query that run along the same lines. They universally declare that cultural diversity and plurality is a characteristic of life in the United States.

That doesn’t begin to touch the innumerable sub-cultures that exist in America.

These are legitimate cultures in the sense of shared values, experiences, practices, beliefs, and norms. Some of them even have their own shared languages, art, rituals, and ceremonies.

These are facts.

No intelligent person would dispute them.

I cannot remember the last time someone forced me against my will to adopt their cultural norms, or join their culture.

I have been unsuccessful forcing people to join my preferred sub-culture: DeadHead.

And even less successful forcing them into my preferred sub-sub-culture: Christian DeadHead.

Have you been the victim of Cultural Coercion?

If so, how did it happen? Can you share how you were made to become part of a group, speak a language, appreciate the art, or literature, or music, or eat the food and drink the kool-aid of that group who made you join against your will?

If no Culture has thus far successfully forced your membership, are you participating in a war against some other Culture trying to force them to join yours?

I think the Culture Wars are just as stupid and just as failed as the Drug Wars.

I’m a conscientious objector, myself.

March 20, 2021
Un-Social Media

Be careful how you Brand

This past Tuesday, Twitter banned me for a week. I was scrolling along when I came across a tweet expressing outrage over Lauren Boebert. The freshman Congressperson from CO set off an alarm when passing through the newly installed magnetometer on her way to the House Chamber. She then refused to allow Capital Police to search her bag. I read about her refusal, thought about the context of the January 6th attack at the Capital, became ”righteously indignant” and I tweeted a reply, ”Throw her skank ass out!”

Within minutes, an information screen appeared notifying me that I had broken Twitter’s rules against ”harassment”. I chuckled inwardly that my 5 words had somehow triggered a response from Twitter’s harassment algorithm. I’d seen much worse. But sure enough, my account was to be limited to read-only or Direct Messaging my followers (which I do not do on any social media platform). I was in the penalty box.

I’d like to say I rationalized my sophomoric tweet because I had knowledge of Boebert’s past criminal record. I knew of her boast that she would carry her Glock around the Capital. And in her first week in Congress, she had live-tweeted Nancy Pelosi’s movements during the siege of the Capital. Knowing these things prompted my off-the-cuff tweet. I was justified, right? But we humans confabulate rationalizations for everything we say or do. The fact that I had reasons, doesn’t make what I tweeted acceptable. The scary thing is, it was purely spontaneous. I didn’t think. I typed. My words appeared on the screen. I didn’t give a moment’s hesitation to consider the implications of my tweet. It was snarky. It was pithy. I waited for the likes and retweets to roll in….

I become a different person when using social media than I am in face-to-face or telephone conversations in real life. My hypothesis is that I am not alone in that behavior, but that doesn’t excuse mine. I would never have said those words to Ms. Boebert in person, no matter how disgusted I feel about her politics and actions. That’s not how I speak to people in the real world. And in RL, I don’t feel compelled to ”like”, reply to, comment on, or repeat everything I hear.

Imagine a gathering at your kid’s __________(football game, school play, music recital). You park your car, climb out, and make your way to the venue, other parents and students streaming in the same direction. You are aware of faint snippets of unintelligible conversation floating to you in the air. There’s laughter, there’s a murmuring hum of voices below the threshold of comprehension. As the crowd begins to congregate, compressing and concentrating nearer the ticket booth, the conversations become clearer. You feel a compulsion to join in. You want to be recognized. You have a voice, and you’re determined to speak up and comment. A stranger nearby says to her companion, ”Hey, let’s go to Chili’s after this.” You lean in and crow, ”Ooh…I really like that place, don’t you love their margaritas?” Then, pleased with yourself, you turn around and begin to yell to those behind you, ”They’re going to Chili’s after the game! THIS!” pointing and gesturing at them for all to see. You are so happy to be participating. You can feel the rush of dopamine. But within seconds, several others overhear and begin to shout you down, ”Chili’s? Oh hell no! It sucks!”, ”What kind of a loser eats at Chili’s?” Soon, a heated argument breaks out. Tempers flare. Harsh words are exchanged. You feel deflated, confused, ashamed. Crazy, right?

That level of interaction in the real world is NOT social. It’s not normal. It’s not desirable. It is intrusive, distracting, unproductive, and weird! It is socially destructive. That scene would violate every social norm hardcoded into a human from birth. But, tell me that fictional scene doesn’t play out on twitter and facebook every day.

Social media apps and platforms make us different. Anonymity allows you to be as crass and contemptuous, as ugly, mean-spirited, and vile as you can summon the nerve and the wit to produce. Dish it out and take it. Be quick though…someone else is going to beat you with the perfect zinger!

With the ban on my account implemented, I still had access to scroll though the feed of tweets, but I could neither like them, reply to them, nor retweet them. No interaction. No following of new clever people. No liking their *Chef’ Kiss* rebuttals in 280 characters or less. I instantly and irrationally felt ISOLATED. I felt invisible (and not in a good way). I was going to fall so far behind that in a week’s time there would be no possibility of ever…catching…up. I inwardly chuckled at my pathetic predicament, realizing how absurd it was to feel that way over tweeting snarkitudes with complete strangers, for God’s sake. I have a measly 250 Twitter followers. So…none…in the Twitterverse.

Only a small handful of my followers know me in real life, and when we get together, we don’t gather with pocketfuls of heart stickers to plaster all over each other.

Like I said, I’m different in real life than I am on social media. You probably are too.

BUT NOT EVERYONE IS DIFFERENT…

Many use social media to ”brand” themselves. They want to be popular; to be ”influencers”. They carefully integrate their digital, virtual selves with their real life selves (which makes one wonder just how ”real” they are). This behavior is one thing if you’re selling a product, or a reality tv show, but what if you’re an elected official? What if you’re a politician using the power of social media to make incivility and outright hostility your brand? The United States is living through the consequence of that sad result right now.

We can observe what happens when politicians of either persuasion carefully curate their statements to stay ”On Brand”. This enables them to build a tribe of fiercely loyal supporters and followers; ones who will share a near vicarious identification. But a politician who builds loyalty by being an attack dog against the other party can never be conciliatory or compromising without risking the loss of those same followers who will only support the attack dog. And a politician who creates a following based upon the least common denominators of race, creed, or religion can never be a success as a statesmen able to unite disparate portions of the electorate around the greatest common denominators of humanity, dignity, citizenship, and a shared planet.

This is an unintended, serious consequence of the ubiquity of social media, and its adoption as the preferred means of communication by political figures. Politicians feel pressure to align their real life demeanor with their social media persona in a way that a normal citizen like me, doesn’t.

A hardline, anti-otherside social media presence will not jive with a patient, openminded, tolerant, conciliatory RL personality. If my hunch is true, it goes a long way towards explaining the very recent deterioration of political discourse in our era. Politicians are too often protecting and projecting the social media version of themselves, which may be the worst version of themselves. Every public figure knows they are one tweet, video upload, or facebook post away from having their RL self plastered all over the SocialMediaVerse. If they are known for being mean to the other side on Twitter, heaven forbid they should fist-bump with them in the real world.

It’s one thing for a non-public, non-elected person to be a jerk on social media. It’s quite another to have to live up to that expected ”jerk-ness” on the floor of the House, or in a debate, or during an interview. To be sure, many members of both parties are doing a fine job being consistently uncivil in RL as they are on social media platforms. I’m saying that’s not a good thing. And the possibility always exists for 280 character tweets, or out of context facebook posts, or instagram stories to become embedded with more ”meaning” to the audience of indoctrinated followers than the politician intended. Those tweets may just radicalize. The hate-soaked, loaded words may flip a switch in the hearer that creates responses and behaviors that is not exactly civilized. This is just another way in which social media may actually be making us all less ”social”.

So, these concerns and my twitter jail time have me thinking about some bigger questions…

Healthy social interaction requires healthy boundaries with healthy restraints. The threshold from individual to social is the moment another person enters the picture. Most people exercise the degree of self-censure and self-restraint deemed appropriate by social customs and norms, given the context. Less restraint out with friends drinking beer at a hockey game than when gathered with family around the Thanksgiving table. Absent mental illness or gross neglect, most people grow up acquiring basic social norms that have been passed from generation to generation. These norms allow society to achieve cooperation; thereby handing off the baton of education, culture, behavior, identity, innovation, and government to one another and to each successive generation.

When an individual breaks the norms, the group responds to censure that individual, either rehabilitating him, ostracizing him, or punishing him with expulsion in one form or another.

Behaviors that are bad for the group are bad by definition.

Ethical behavior cannot exist in any meaningful way if there are not at least two people present. If it takes two to tango, it takes two to…Ethics? Ethic? An individual alone on the earth cannot practice ethical behavior. He certainly cannot sin against his neighbor. Certainly, the concept of Morality introduces a discussion of how one conducts himself towards God, but even the Bible teaches, ”how can you love God whom you have not seen when you don’t love your brother whom you have seen.”

An aside: I find it interesting to recall the Genesis story, that Adam, having been created before Eve, spends an indeterminate amount of time alone before succumbing to the operation that brought the second human being forth. As head gardener, he takes care of the flora. As Zoologist in residence, he names all the animals. As the Priest, the Congregant, and the Worshipper, he walks with God in the cool of the day. But there is no record of him having sinned. And this, despite the recorded declaration that both the tree of life and the tree of knowledge were present in the garden. One might derive from this cautionary tale that it takes at least two to sin against God. In fact, the NT concept of ‘faith’ is a transliteration of Hebrew and Greek words that combined connote much more the idea of ”total dependence upon”, than merely ”mental acquiescence in”.

Until Eve appeared, Adam was completely dependent upon God for communion and companionship and all the fruits derived therefrom. It was God who said, ”It is not good for man to be alone.” and thus initiated a search for a help meet for Adam that culminated with Adam naming the animals (thus beating Aristotle in forming the system of classification of EVERYTHING that defines Western thought), and finally, when no suitable help was found, to Eve herself being formed from Adam and presented to him.

Adam’s percentage of dependence upon God and attention to God lowered from one hundred per cent to some lesser unknowable percentage. We may surmise that it was this opportunity for co-dependence that created the context for temptation to act against the will of God and his command not to eat of the tree of knowledge, or in other words to become ‘self-reliant’, believing themselves capable of acting independently of God and that such action would produce a better outcome for themselves than continued dependence would produce.

The NT has a simple, terrible, concentrated warning. ”Whatever is not of faith is sin”. The essence of sin is to act as if there is no God. To act independently of God. Alone in the world, Adam was keenly aware of his dependence. He was no less dependent once Eve arrived, he was just less aware of it.

Without a doubt, individual expedience and utility are essential to survival. A solitary figure, alone in the world, doesn’t have the ability to sin against anyone and he doesn’t have to consult anyone’s interests but his own. He can howl at the moon, He can urinate outdoors, and not wash his hands. He can hunt and kill for the shear bloodlust and sport and adrenaline rush of it. Hell, he can go so far as to refrain from wearing a mask (since there’s no one else he might infect). But throw another person into the mix and that unrestrained individuality becomes destructive to the group, whether that group is a marriage, a family, a tribe, a company, or a state.

As an individual matures, one hopes he learns to cooperate. He learns to harness his individuality for the communal, collective good. If he doesn’t so mature, he is free to be a recluse. But he isn’t free to interfere in the freedoms of all other persons.

It is the presence of another human that is the contextual genesis of morality and ethics. Ethical behavior is that which tends to the increase in overall good to the group in very general terms. It being obvious that in a group of two, one being a selfish millionaire, the other being a broke and destitute homeless person, if the millionaire becomes a billionaire while the homeless person remains broke, the aggregate ”wealth” of the group has grown, while the aggregate ”goodness” has not increased, and has even diminished.

A primary role of society is to sort out for itself what is ”good”, and to promote that ”goodness” to all members. The means, adoption, cultivation, and enjoyment of that goodness is what we call civilization. The format and means for advancing civilization is what we call politics. It is just here that philosophers have historically played their most important role. By thinking through and sharing their ideas of ethics, aesthetics, and politics, they serve to civilize us. The basic tenet of social and therefore civil intelligence is to project oneself beyond oneself appropriately at every occasion of interaction and social intercourse. This takes a strength of will and of character far greater than succumbing to the baser tendencies of Nietzsche’s übermensch, or superman, whom Nietzsche lauded as the epitome of human-ness, a being who would be ethically impelled to exert as much dominance as his strengths, gifts, and resources allowed. I reject the ”super-man”.

It takes no special strength of will, no special insight, and no special skill to consult my own happiness at all times and act as selfishly as my might allows. But to restrain those impulses in the pursuit of lifting up another, of relieving another’s suffering, of elevating the shared corporate ”goodness”, those are skills to be practiced for a lifetime. To cultivate a wider perspective, to walk in another’s shoes, to see with their eyes, to put oneself in their place: in short, to love thy neighbor as thyself; that is a purpose worthy of a human being.

It is no accident that the first word of the United States Constitution is the word, ”We”.

I’m glad for my Twitter ban. Having my hand slapped and being told to behave like a good boy is the perfect opportunity to step back, think about who I really am, and realize that I’m a different person, projecting a different persona on Twitter. Who have I been doing that for? For ME…not for We. It made me feel better about myself to exercise what I considered clever snarkiness on Twitter. And realizing that now…mid ban…makes me reject that Un-Social self.

That’s not who I am, nor is it who I want to be. Thanks to Twitter, I have the chance to pause and consider. I have the chance to exercise restraint and contribute only that which is positive to the conversation. I have the chance to be social.

January 17, 2021