From an early age we are all taught the simple joys of social interaction, beginning with the most rudimentary exchanges. Such "verbal niceties" make up the first step in learning how to venture out of our respective shells and begin exploring (one hopes) our enchanting social environment: Hello, how are you? I am fine, thanks. Do you like school? Yes, I like school, especially recess. I have a sister. I have a pet iguana. I can ride a bike. I'm not afraid of the dark. Is pizza your favorite food? Mine is ice cream. My favorite show is Sesame Street. Do you have any goldfish? etc. etc. And, as this pattern continues, presumably, we learn to associate fun and adventure with such glib, unself-conscious banter, and gradually, so the theory goes, we become more at ease with these harmless little banal conversations that recur so frequently - minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, every time we turn around, it seems. Because it's normal to be chatty and to use our vocal cords to good effect, to observe, to opine, to share information with our peers. Ah, who is there so cold of heart as to not enjoy the sound of innocent, guileless jibber-jabber in hallways, on playgrounds, at shopping malls? So then, naturally, irrevocably, as day follows night, at some point during this gestation period of youth, we come to learn that this basic ritual of human correspondence known as small talk - this wonderful, bountiful, inescapable prelude to serious dialogue - is, in fact, the easiest thing on earth to master, the most direct way of establishing much-needed contact with persons of whatever social station who happen to be standing or loitering nearby. Any fool can make small talk and I use that word advisedly (see blog title). America runs on small talk because America is full of extroverts and the easiest thing for an extrovert to do is make small talk: Hi. Hello. Nice weather we're having. Don't you think? Supposed to rain next week. Didya see that story in the paper about the missing cat caught in the storm pipe? Oh yeah, that was funny. Here it's only March and I can't wait for football season to begin again. Those dang Celtics are trading away their best players. Think this economy is gonna turn around? Don't know. Hope so. Well, I aim to find myself a good pancake eatery. Yep. That sounds good. Heh, heh, heh, that's a funny shirt you're wearing. Bought it at a yard sale. No way. I swear. Is that one of them tye dye shirts? I believe it is. But for some of us, odd as it may sound, these very ordinary encounters are enough to produce excruciating levels of stress and discomfort - not to mention perspiration and momentary mental paralysis. We make a good faith effort to "jump in the pool" and sometimes we're in the shallow end....and sometimes we're not. Sometimes it's like floating, and sometimes it's more like keeping one's head above water or just treading water, counting, slowly, as the minutes pass, until one of our interlocutors lures us toward the deep end or else decides to splash water on us. And sometimes it's like gasping for breath and feeling the oxygen not being replenished in our lungs. (Not to exaggerate but, that is what it feels like.) And of course the "pool rules" are not prominently displayed anywhere - so now we have a problem. The conversation hits a snag: Hey, chief. What? What the haps? Who...me? Why so serious, there, chief, what's wrong? Nothing...what are you...getting at? Just kiddin, but hey, you DO look uncomfortable, there dude... what gives? Gotta roll with the punches, chief. Are you saying... am I...my face, my shoulders [awkward pause] ....do they bother you? Relax, I'm just teasing, chief. Anyhow [yawn...stretch...looking around...] Think I'll be on my way now. See you later, worried guy. It's hard to completely analyze what goes wrong in these simple conversations - I think it has a lot to do with the feeling of being scrutinized and summarily judged - albeit provisionally and superficially - by another person acting without a search warrant. And if that's not weirdly problematic and insufferable enough, just add a few more high-energy sentient beings to the mix. That's when the warning lights really start to go off in the brain, predicting danger, danger, danger. We introverts - we agitated, "highly sensitive ones" - can almost smell the moment at which people come together for the dubious, open-ended, scary purpose of "letting their hair down" in public - sharing unseemly laughs hitherto unshared, boasting of vices previously kept hidden, losing inhibitions recently sequestered in warehouses, fidgeting like frogs in a bucket, exchanging sordid tales of lust and gluttony, trading insults and put-downs that only add to the festivities, surreptitiously competing to out-do one another in swagger and bravado, making light, making merry, laughing and snorting and cavorting until the room begins to spin and I - must - seek - fresh - air - immediately. What is wrong with this picture.... that anyone (like me) should feel so forlorn and oppressed? Oh Lord, why do we (my fellow introverts and I) feel so bent-out-of-shape in the middle of all this frivolity? Why does it unsettle us so very much when all sense of gravitas and sobriety is swept out of the room? A convention of stand-up comedians could boast of more stability than this. Because these situations are normal, right? People gathering and feeling "comfortable" with one another, talking about neither this nor that - nothing that you'd want recorded for posterity's sake...all that is well and good...and to be encouraged. So says the majority, so goes the way of the world. I get it....because people out there need to talk, to relax, to unwind, to regale, to laugh, to share, to tease, to reveal, to get wild, get crazy, go nuts, get jiggy as part of what they do. And if the majority is happy with that, we'll you know what that means, my fellow "aberrant weeds," my fellow "third wheels," my fellow "biological errors." We become the de facto kill-joys, the nay-sayers, the party-poopers, petulantly pining away for a pity party. But supposing it was really quite unnerving and somewhat traumatic for a certain portion of the population - oh let's say 17% for starters - to endure these common episodes. What if such experiences only served to disorient and confuse, to frazzle and to fluster, to place our nerve-endings on overload, to de-moralize and discourage those of us who are wired, at such moments, to look around (in desperation) for more serious, structured forms of philosophical conversation, which never seem to break out? What then? Oh, I could go on squawking about this incontrovertible issue for the next week and a half, but action, it seems is called for. Two choices remain for us - if any of this stuff happens to resonate with you: pity party in my room (5 minutes), be there, be square or else....we...could... start ...a... REVOLUTION!
Sunday, May 13, 2012
Saturday, May 12, 2012
Friday, May 11, 2012
...from Descartes' Meditation #4
Descartes has this famously weird ontological proof for the existence of God which sort of argues that the "idea" of perfection in our minds points to a separately subsisting Supreme Being. Be that as it may, the other very interesting aspect of this meditation has to do with humans who are self-consciously error-prone and tormented thus by that same idea of perfection, (autonomy, independence, invulnerability, freedom from fallibility) that we can never quite get out of our minds: "And it is true that when I think only of God and direct my mind wholly to Him, I discover [in myself] no cause of error, or falsity; yet directly afterwards, when recurring to myself, experience shows me that I am nevertheless subject to an infinitude of errors, as to which, when we come to investigate them more closely, I notice that not only is there a real and positive idea of God or of a Being of supreme perfection present to my mind, but also, so to speak, a certain negative idea of nothing, that is, of that which is infinitely removed from any kind of perfection; and that I am in a sense something intermediate between God and nought, i.e. placed in such a manner between the supreme Being and non-being, that there is in truth nothing in me that can lead to error in so far as a sovereign Being has formed me; but that, as I in some degree participate likewise in nought or in non-being, i.e. in so far as I am not myself the supreme Being, and as I find myself subject to an infinitude of imperfections, I ought not to be astonished if I should fall into error." - from Rene Descartes - Meditation #4
Thou Shalt Not! (if that's okay with you...)
Call me an aging curmudgeon (I know I sound like one) prone to reactionary nostalgia for biblical-sounding imperatives, but wouldn't you agree that these days we aren't inclined to follow very many "thou shalt not" pronouncements, and even if we did, we wouldn't know what to do with them. They wouldn't inspire us to go about avoiding specific behaviors with any degree of seriousness. (Examples: Thou shalt not worship false gods! Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife! I can hear people yawning already. Not me - them!) It used to be that a society defined itself according to a somewhat rigid set of "do's and don'ts" with emphasis on the "sacred prohibitions."But if a person tries to say nowadays "Thou shalt not be inordinately snarky toward people whose articles you are reading online," or "Thou shalt not neglect hygiene or decorum when standing in a crowd," or even better "Thou shalt not share intimate details of thy private life or go in search of publicity, self-promotion or other vain immodesties for the so-called benefit of people who really don't seek to inquire into your business" how many people would automatically nod in agreement? And so - (huge sigh) - I'm trying to make a short list of any actions that we absolutely will not tolerate as a community of like-minded moral agents here in America. But it's hard. Let's see...what can we all agree upon? Well, for starters, even these days, thank goodness, you (#1) cannot go around killing people at random or (#2) assaulting people (against their will) or (#3) slandering them on the basis of skin color without serious repercussions. So that's three big restrictions on our freedom right there that I hope no one will quibble with. And it's also somewhat unacceptable (again, thank goodness!) to (#4) abuse or harm children without incurring public wrath and infamy...And while we're at it, you'd be strongly advised against (#5) major forms of theft, trespass or extortion against another person's livelihood (to couch this crime in broadest possible terms). Since I don't hear a chorus of temper-tantrums breaking out, let me go one step farther. Wouldn't it be really, really helpful, wouldn't the world be that much more pleasant and hospitable (!), if people on various parts of the globe (specifically, men) could start treating their spouses, sisters, friends, girl-friends, mothers, daughters, grandparents, complete strangers who happen to be women, etc. etc. with greater degrees of respect on a consistent basis? But - oh heck - we're still working on that one. That's just too much re-adjustment for some backward males to adapt to. It should be on the list though - eh - at #6 if not higher up. And women, be nice to the men in your midst. I'm sure you will...And let's see, I'd like to see something about honesty and fidelity as well. There would be room at the #7 slot, but given that people lie on average 27 times a day just to get by, and show spotty fidelity to friends/spouses as they go, that's another one that we just can't put on the list without people sort of rolling their eyes at us. So in place of that can we agree to avoid whatever gratuitous trashings of the environment we are tempted to commit - unless we happen to work for large oil and coal conglomerates? (They forced me to add a loophole.) There. I'm stuck at seven. What am I forgetting??? It would be nice to get to ten.
Thursday, May 10, 2012
The Gift We Didn't Ask For...
What I would tell the graduates this year: Fellow mortals and sensitive bipeds out there, grappling with the pains of existence and the current lousy job market, I come with more words of advice for you which may at first glance seem overly sober and lugubrious... please don't blame me, though, I'm just the messenger here. This isn't much - I know - but it's all I have on the spur of the moment (I'm not getting paid for this) and besides, it's a topic that I predict you'll keep coming back to in the days ahead: Whatever else you take away from this special moment, please remember as you go forth, today, mindful of various blessings and advantages you have received along the way, that attached to every one of us is some unwanted and unasked-for circumstance, some dreaded fateful condition, an obstacle, a hindrance, an albatross, a curse, a blight, a wretched hassle, a wound, a hurt - something that we're stuck with for the long haul, something that gets in our way, makes us upset, keeps us vulnerable, adds to our insecurity, gives us reason to feel cheated, to feel handicapped, goes against our most cherished agendas of survival, success and prosperity in life. It might just be an obvious physical blemish, a mental quirk, a flaw in temperament, a cognitive deficit in some obscure area, a personality glitch (shyness, anyone?), a traumatic memory, a shift in fortune, a bad year, a lost decade, a troubled sibling or problematic parent, an extended dysfunctional family or inauspicious cultural climate (feeling like we were born in the wrong decade or century). We carry it around with us and it marks us for life; it grates upon our nerves because it's like some alien presence, an unexpected guest, an unwanted care-package, this random prosthetic to our otherwise normal physique, this fly in our daily soup that continuously spoils the feast - bringing us back to the lingering question of how things might have been - if only we had not been strapped with IT. And the problem in a nutshell is very simple - what to do about "the gift that we didn't ask for" - to view it as a weird, unexpected blessing-in-disguise from the great beyond or to use it as our ongoing Exhibit A of "more sinned against than sinning." How many of us carry around this familiar rock, for years and years, never knowing quite what to do with it, where to put it, how to hide it, what to make of it, until IT drags us down several notches from where we expected to be; or else we run from it, pursuing alternative scenarios where such afflictions cannot exist (!), generating as we go oodles of new commotion and chaos around ourselves designed to overshadow IT, to deny that it's really there. So much of life is taken up with responding (somewhat negatively, I must add) to what we didn't choose and never in a million years would have requested voluntarily. But there you have it. Even at this very late date in human history, when it seems that we should finally have gotten all our wishes met, given that the weight of nature, tradition and large institutions has been lifted from our backs, even now, how absurdly difficult it remains to do away with these sources of discontent...troubles that we can't run away from... which has the effect of forcing us to question, to turn back upon ourselves, to inquire as to what kind of creatures we really are (aside from all the hype and self-promotion), what strange entities capable of intense frustration, regret and self-conscious misery. And so graduates, I end my little jeremiad by telling you in advance that, although there is no solution to this awful package, and that even pharmaceuticals, sensuality and rock-and-roll can't reverse the trend, nevertheless, the good news is, if there is any, that what seems like the biggest downer - the source of isolation, frustration, alienation, angst, sadness, resignation, despair and whatever else we go to the doctor to complain about, is for some lucky mortals out there, also a source of the most sublime healing power. Who knows how and who knows why, but there are actually some who know how transform their hurt into advantage, their weakness into strength - these cherished few among us who keep us afloat, keep us inspired by their example - not of ease but of hardship. We admire the people most whose lives we would ourselves never wish for. So when you bump into one of these enlightened ones during your journey, be sure to ask them what their secret is - how they turned lead into gold - knowing that they share the same wounds as you - different in form and content surely - but the similar as to genus - that of the unasked-for gift.
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
Another Rainy Day
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