I know that I am what could be called “The Voice of Doom” but I believe that society needs people like me. Following the traditions of SciFi and distopic writers I try to show the world how bad it could be, marketed in a coherent social image. Most of the time it doesn’t really help or at least not in the short run because society has such a huge inertia. Beside that, people who, in this time of happiness, still bother reading such dark scenarios… or simply bother reading, don’t really need to be told about it because they can probably make up for themselves the society I am writing about. For those, let’s just say that I am simply adding up all the markers and unify the big picture.
Yes, the brain becomes a more and more obsolete tool. What has began as a way to enhance our lives, to free more of our time for our pleasures and to allow us to pursue the happiness, has metamorphosed into a race for removing the daily functions of our brain.
Now, let us sustain this. We use GPSes to navigate our way not only in unfamiliar surroundings but in environments that should be/become familiar, like our own cities, large or small. I met quite a few people who, after living more than 5 years in a place, still can’t name the major streets and boulevards or even highways of their town/city. At the store, the machines add, and subtract and even the change to be given/received is computed from the bills handed. In general we don’t do this and is difficult to explain to children why they should memorize the multiplication table, as long as we don’t. We don’t read and instead watch TV because images speak more than 1000 words, are easily digested. Even so, it seems that with the increase of technical quality of our TVs, the intellectual content of the programming and of movies has decreased. We have PDAs and organizers and “intelligent” cellphones that can remember the telephone numbers so that all we need to remember is “John” or “Mary”. Even guessing time instinct is quite lost since we have so many sources of finding out time. A search engine can retrieve information in a matter of seconds and children know this better than anyone, since many teachers advise them to use Google for their homework. Not so many years ago, that very same information would have taken weeks of research, a number of books read and so on – now it’s received instantaneously in a pre-digested form and students never manage to grasp the idea that education requires effort. Started as a current against the dumb memorization process of the past, the educational process now moved into the other extreme, of considering memorization a totally futile tool, even when it comes to multiplication table or the national anthem.
This advantage, of having information at our disposal, lead many people to consider that there is no necessity to store it in our brain. Just like we don’t store water in wells because we have running water, we ended up by not remembering personalities names, dates, pretty much anything that is worth remembering. As a normal consequence of this excessive “offer” process, the value of the information has decreased and the “demand” has decreased. If you can find anything, anytime, anywhere, what is the point of storing it and – mostly – processing it?
Going back to another post – many people are against using the word “STUPID”. What they fail to perceive is that using less and less our minds, we DO become STUPID, individual after individual, and – eventually – as a society! Just by not talking about it is simply pushing the problem under the rug.
The Perfect Life Partner
Yes, yes, I know, there is no perfect partner. Still, as Robin Williams says in Good Will Hunting: “… she’s not perfect. Neither are you. What matters is if you are perfect for each other”. This material is trying to take a snapshot of somebody who would be perfect for ME. Why am I writing it? Just so I clear my mind, visualize my expectations and, when doing so, understand if they are realistic or not. Everyone seems to know what they don’t want but that is really not very helpful in the quest for a partner. Like always, I am trying to be different.
To figure out the answer to “how would your ideal partner look and behave like” I started by trying to find out who I am, what I can live with and what I cannot live without. Everyone looks for unconditional love – and I agree that this is how true love is. But how does one reach unconditional love? You meet somebody, go out on a few dates, share some laughs and have a good time in the sack and there you go: unconditional love?! It doesn’t make sense. It just dawned onto me – as I was writing these lines – that the road to unconditional love is through conditional one. At least for me. I am dual – a down-to-earth person and a dreamer locked within the same body. Through some unsuccessful experiences, I discovered that the perfect love, in my case, would have to address both my mind and my soul. Only when I will be have them agree, I will know that I met a long-lasting relationship.
Conditional love?! So what are these conditions that should be fulfilled? Only the person involved knows because for each of us the conditions are different: for some perfect beauty is the condition, for others success, for others intelligence or kindness but, in most cases, a mixture of all of these, in different percentage. When these conditions are met and solidified using the cement of time, only then unconditional love appears.
It took me a while to understand that respect and admiration is one the most important for me in a relationship. I want to receive them but – at least as important – I want to be able to offer them to my partner and have good reasons for doing it so. Well, pretty much everyone demands respect these days but, unfortunately, very few are ready to do something to gain it. I had myself a hard time understanding and accepting that respect is earned and not given. Moreover it is hardly gained and easily lost. I know with certainty that respect and admiration for the one who accompanies me in life would make me be the best I can be. I accomplished many things but I know I can accomplish even more if only I would have somebody close-by that I can look up to. I don’t like inter-relationship competition but, as a fact, I always try to meet the standards my partner lives up to (not those my partner would want to impose on me without imposing them on themselves). If those standards are low, I find very little motives to push me forward.
Of course, respect and admiration are very general. What raises respect in one person, could not make another one blink. I gained the respect of my mother by simply proving myself capable of doing house-chores: cooking from scratch, cleaning the house, washing and ironing clothes. For years and years I had many excellent accomplishments that few people can boast and yet they didn’t mean anything for her. Suddenly I do something that pretty much any responsible adult should be able to do and I am raised on a pedestal.
So what is that I do respect and admire?! I admire true fighters – people who know what they want in life and want reasonable things and find the power not to wine for not having them but work hard to get it and somehow manage to still remain moral. Trivial? Most people would like to think so because they think highly of themselves. Personally, I am not convinced this is a quality easy to find. People want better homes, better cars, better vacations, and better family life but very seldom do they want to create the basis for this: better themselves. I take pride in my work and, as such, I respect more a janitor who does his work impeccably than a PhD who didn’t learn anything new in a number of years. We all have things that we are not capable of doing but we can’t know that for sure unless we gave it our BEST try.
I believe that a strong partner can motivate one to raise the bar for himself too (or so it should be). Like a competition. Not an unhealthy one – many times partners compare salaries or other sordid matters as a base for the internal competition and that leads to many issues. I usually say that for me envy is a positive feeling: whenever I envy somebody for their accomplishments, I do not deny those accomplishments but my mind starts working about what I can do to match those accomplishments I admire. Self-satisfaction can be as destructive as never being content – and not only on oneself but in his close ones as well. What is the point of pushing you forward when doing this just increases the fault line between the two partners? And if you do push yourself forward, the trench that separates the two will become insurmountable.
Without being a snob about it, I am a person of relatively good taste. It’s not something I did educate or actively sought to become. It just so happened. I accept the evaluation of what constitute refine things is relative but there are some accepted guidelines. Sometimes, like in literature or when it comes to movies and sometimes in art, I can verbalize my choice. Other times – like in the cases where I am less educated – such as wine and wine tasting, it’s instinctive. Actually I kind of hate snobs, the real ones, the ones who think that expensive is better, the ones who can never achieve a personal opinion but just take it from critics… not the other archetype that the pop culture pushed onto us: people who have good table manner, who are educated and so on.
Lack of any good or at least genuinely interesting taste in culture and education is, definitively, a put-off for me and I would not see myself sharing my life with a person with whom I cannot share artistic feelings, impressions – I say share, not communicate because I yearn for conversation, not monologues. And yes, my partner’s taste don’t have to be totally similar to mine – although a common ground would be helpful – but they need to be somewhat supported in the great scheme of things. I would definitely appreciate someone who can initiate me in new areas of culture, music, food etc. I realize now that I am looking in a person the same quality that I am looking for in art/cultural products: novelty, inspiration, insight, not repetition.
Speaking about taste, I believe one tragedy of the world currently is the continuous search for comfort. I am not the one to despise the comfort under normal circumstances but when it comes to wearing flip-flops in a good restaurant, putting the legs on the table in the same restaurant, going in pajamas to the bus station, walking bare-feet through the office… I believe some of us are going too far in this search for comfort. This all boils down to there is a time and a place for everything but not every time and place are suitable for something.
I also found out about myself that while I am a dreamer, I am still anchored very much in reality. I live on this Earth and if I wrote SciFi or fantasy it means I like to speculate not that I believe in such. I have little tolerance on people who try to meet ET, who believe that crystals are a cure to anything, who believe that the cure for cancer is in the possession of some dude in Kirghizstan and it’s not released just because a huge conspiracy of the pharmaceutical companies. Exploration of these topics, speculations I can sustain but once I feel that there is belief I back down especially because, from my personal experience, I know it’s not a single “birdie” flying up there but a whole nest of them. In other words, I am looking for some common sense. Yes, I know that common sense is not so common but I would nevertheless try to find some. To be honest, reading this I am wondering if I have common sense: somebody who have common sense would probably accept quickly when they do something out of range, while somebody who doesn’t have common sense would never admit to such a fault. Yet, still, I know I can judge somebody who doesn’t have common sense: if you believe that you are saving when you buy useless or seldom of use objects when they are in sale, you don’t have common sense; if you constantly believe that the others are in the wrong, if you don’t see (or admit) when you are at fault, then you don’t have common sense; if you keep on doing the same thing over and over and expect a different result, you don’t have common sense…
All in all I’m not asking much from my partner – just the impossible: a strong person (not a stubborn, or yelling one), with a decent taste in all that makes this life worth living, based on a solid common sense and that’s it… And please, before you swear at me, remember – I never demanded more than I can offer.
Giving voice to those…
“Giving a voice to those who never had one” seems to be the message of the day. It is viewed as a quality, public figures receive praises for doing this and the message behind it seems to be that democracy itself leans on this principle. Since it is such a revered course of action, more and more people either promote this generous idea or take advantage of its application.
Yet nothing is all-good, just as nothing is all-wrong. It is a good principle but its implementation leaves a lot to be desired. We live now in a world of cacophony where everybody seems to have been given a voice and uses it in the most violent way. I believe that the idea behind this phrase was for the society to employ caring, intelligent, knowledgeable individuals to voice the desires and aspirations of the silent ones to those groups of governance and organization who can do something about them. Yet this idea was somehow lost and now everyone, no matter how educated, how informed, how intelligent, is given the gall to speak up. And that exposes the weakness of democracy – where the vote of a very informed person, intelligent, who pondered heavily on the matters at hand can be voided by the vote of somebody who doesn’t have the slightest clue about parties, candidates, what they stand for. The same way, the clear, informed voices get lost very often in the cacophony of the well-intentioned, ill-informed masses.
Now, please, don’t get me wrong. People should have a voice, no matter how wrong it is. After all I sincerely believe in the freedom of the speech and one of my favourite quotations is Voltaire’s “I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.” I admire any opinion, no matter how contrary to mine, if it’s presented with arguments and with a sound reasoning.
I used to believe myself that there are lots of people, admirable ones who due to a lack of exposure, could not have a beneficial impact on the society. And it is true. After all my grandfather, a simple peasant, but educated and self-taught, who would stop reading and getting informed only until the harvest, was such a man. Still, life has shown me that the vast majority of the people doesn’t have opinions. This situation doesn’t seem to prevent them from voicing the opinions of others without stopping and considering their validity. And it would be impossible to analyze these ideas/opinions/ideals because they do not have the tools to do this. They don’t have the tools and the biased leaders of opinions don’t offer them (for good reasons – they might work against them and their agenda). In an age where ignorance is cherished and promoted, all one has to do to push his ideas is to wrap it in a good intention and decent, but sub-mediocre minds would embrace it. Examples for this thing happening are in the thousands. Take for example, the help given to Africa. It seems like a “no-brainer” (oh, the love of the society for this term shows where we are heading to), a good and generous instinct that we have to send money over there, to help the poor children (no, I’m not ironic, they are poor, they are destitute, they live difficult lives), to send them fertilizers and help them grow a solid agriculture. Unfortunately, it only seems. There are a number of voices – smothered by high-profile do-gooders such as Bono or Bill Gates – who point out correctly that the western help, if anything, made the Africans even more helpless, it made the rich more rich and that many average people were pushed below the poverty line. Fertilizers made them more dependent of the prices of oil and fertilizers destroy the soil as it did to India in the 70s and 80s. Still, trying to point this one in public will make them treat you as a criminal who wants to condemn those poor people to eternal hunger.
And that brings us to the next point: it is ironic that exactly these new voices stifle the voices of reason, those who try to understand, investigate and debate things. Well intentioned people write to magazines complaining about racism in a 19th century depiction of N American society (duh! wasn’t there any?). When somebody dares to state the fact that Hitler did – a side effect, unintentional – a social service by confiscating and then hiding thousands of art works in protective bunkers, masterpieces that would have probably been gone in bombardments or vandalized, then he is bullied out of the job because he, an anti-Semite for sure, dares see some good in a sacrilege.
To me this seems like the radical groups who want to be given a chance to use democratic tools to get in power and then destroy the very same democracy that gave them a voice. Any lucid opinion that is perceived as an attack of the human values is shamed and destroyed with rush. This contrasts with times not long passed when stupidity and uninformed opinions were shunned and publicly ridiculed. One might say that is better kindness than intelligence but I beg to differ. Idiotic kindness can lead to more evils than considerate intelligence.
I guess my opinions make me an elitist. I am sure they do, but what other option is there? One would not want a bus driver piloting the plane one flies with. One would not desire his children taught history by a mechanic or have his food cooked by a chemist. Then why let uneducated, uninformed or even stupid individuals (yes, stupid, like in low-IQ but not as low as to be considered mentally challenged) make the decisions for our present and/or future?! Voice, like respect should be given to the ones who deserve it.
Defending words, balancing self-confidence, speaking up and other things…
I recently joined a FaceBook group fighting against usage of names derogatory for special needs people. I read the description and it seemed to me well-balanced and having a good point – many groups created on Fb have very offensive names. After just 2 days, when reading some points of views in the discussion list I noticed very one-sided comments… well, let’s not hide behind words (and I am doing this on purpose) stupid comments. While the group included people with very balanced and rational comments, quite a few people would go as far as saying that words like “stupid, moron, cretin, idiot” should be outright banned from language. One person, mother of a child with Cerebral Palsy was even going as far as saying that she feels like slapping over the mouth the people who use the word “stupid” – never used against her son. I could, of course, let her know that my feeling was that she had issues accepting the terrible affliction of her son and was taking on the world, but I doubted I would be listened.
Words are just words. Like the atom technologies, they can be used to construct hugely beneficial things or destroy. They make up for the variety of this world and suppressing them would be totally wrong in my view. Of course, they should be used in the manner they were intended and adjust them to the sensibilities of the modern world but NEVER banned. I cannot describe the actions of a child playing in the street where cars drive +60 km/h with “less-than-intelligent”. A stupid person is NOT the person who by nature’s/God’s will has limitations but I believe it’s more appropriate to describe a person who has the capacity, the intelligence of being better and choosing not to do it. Education of how these words are to be used correctly is the only viable approach I can see. Banning? Even it would make some sense, which I don’t believe, it would never work since it doesn’t change attitudes. If “stupid” would be banned, people would use “oagadugou” or “phadhoum” (make-up words; can’t vouch they don’t mean something in some language 🙂 to describe the same thing. (When I was an adolescent, a friend has invented the word “babar” to describe cigarettes whenever his parents could be eavesdropping.) Education, on the other hand, could explain to some kids using “Look – here goes that retard again!” that in actuality they are the stupid ones because they choose to behave so hurtful despite having all the natural assets (intelligence, empathy etc.) to be something better.
I evidently withdrew from that FB group because I don’t want to be associated with hysterical people who want to social-engineer the very language. Then, at a party I mentioned my feelings about this, in approximately the same terms I am using here. A woman, teacher, retorted she doesn’t allow children to use the “stupid” word even when they describe themselves or their actions. Asked “why?” she looked at me as if it was obvious – “This could erode their self-confidence”. I started to argue that a balance should exist between boosting self-esteem and keeping it in check with reality. When one did something stupid, he/she should acknowledge that and apologize and try not to repeat it. Unfortunately, the teacher took the “higher ground” and kept silent. I say unfortunately because I honestly believe that only dialogue can educate free people – monologues are meant for slaves. In fact the whole assembly – about 6 people were witnessing this conversation – kept silent because, apparently, it is very embarrassing to have a contradictory conversation at a party, even if kept within decency boundaries. Later, reviewing the moment in my mind I reached the conclusion that the general silence was the saddest thing of that evening. 2 of the witnesses were very down-to-earth people and from other opinions they launched throughout the evening I strongly believe they were on my side. 2 others were Eastern-European immigrants and I have still yet to meet one Eastern European, who was educated there, who believes that artificially boosting children confidence is beneficial for anyone. What was sad is that no one of the 4 took any defense unless later, out on the porch, in private… at a time when it didn’t matter anymore. Some might consider this behavior good manners, I personally believe it comes from cowardice. I’ve seen it in team meetings (people loving the way you “told them off” but only in private conversations), I’ve seen it in high-school, basically I’ve seen it in any social environment. I remember a question a Women Studies Group from Algonquin posted as an answer to somebody accusing the group of manipulating The College: “How do you think 70 people could manipulate 1500?” This is exactly the way to do that: shame people into keep their mouth shut, throwing at them “guilt by association”: “he/she is a racist for saying that and you are one too if you defend his/her words”, being bullied into keeping your mouth shut because of what others could do or say about you… The silent majority, focused on every-day problem, allow “political officers/activists” take over and dictate their lives. What is more disconcerting is that later the same silent people complain of the results of their silence.
To come back to the conversation I had with that teacher, I had a vague compensation because the very next day I tripped over an article on BBC: Warning over narcissistic pupils! which confirms my belief that by boosting the self-confidence of children without any anchor in real-life performances is as bad as trashing it by continuous criticism (as it was done in Eastern Europe). Already we all witness the behavior of the Generation Y: demanding before giving, believing that they are entitled to everything and asking more and more, coming late at work and leaving early, suing over anything that discomforts them, abandoning their family/employee duties at the first sign of hardship… Imagine what 20-30 years of such education might do. I know it will all bounce back – the selfish, narcissistic generation will have children and faced with the choice of catering to their needs or the children’s, they will chose the former. Those children will probably grow with self-absorbed parents, trapped in an eternal pursuit of happiness. They will be neglected, ignored, their needs will not matter and as such they will grow to detest these attitudes and the wiser of them will write books, will work hard to avoid what they didn’t like (after all the Generation Y is the result of the New Age parents who preferred to be friends than parents, who didn’t believe in impositions of any kind). I know it’s a full circle but what good will that do to me, to us as a society in 50-70-90 years from now?
I, Robot!
Last night, although tired, I got stuck in front of the TV watching Star Trek – First Contact. No, although I don’t have much of a life, I am not a fan Star Trek – I was just cleansing my brain (already pretty well scrubbed by the exhaustion; but, you know, one can never be too meticulous about these things).
I was watching quite bored The Borg assimilate humans when suddenly a weird thought came to my mind. Nothing new here – the antithesis between the humans and machines is used and over-used for decades if not for centuries. Who is better? Stupid question! From where I stand it looks even worse – as an IT worker, for me the machine is a machine, a tool to perform some tasks. Am I better that a hammer?! WTF? Still, for some reasons this issue has risen to the level of a real obsession – books are written, movies are made, scientific or pseudo-scientific articles are published… Very few of them come to bring anything new to this conundrum. Last night, somehow, my mind managed to overexpose this (fake?) issue over what I think it is a collapse of the responsibility in society and it got me thinking. I believe that, indeed, there is a collapse of individual and collective responsibility: very few people still want to do what is right, very few people want to live by rules, hence the rejection of religion (people, religion is not equal to sexually abusive priests, to “don’t eat pork” etc.), of academic rigors, of systematic parenting and so on.
What if – pause and think for a second – what if all this behavior, this shedding of responsibilities has a fundament in us trying to make a clear-cut statement: “I am not a machine. I am not a robot.” Yes, I know it sounds far fetched but, incidentally or not, I can find many arguments for this. Technology has reached a level where it suppresses our individuality. While very often claiming to boost individual personality and liberating ourselves, technology – and modern society as a fact – does quite the opposite. Instead of a big fish in a small pond, we more and more identify ourselves with a tiny, tiny fish lost in the pond of globalization, of Facebook, of huge corporations. Yes, we communicate more and world has become a village but it’s a humungous village and we really feel lost in it.
Society managed to impose those rules within relatively confined spaces. Social rules are always much harsher and inflexible in smaller communities than in large ones. In face of technology and of this globalization that tries to change us into little robots, the self defense mechanism might kick in and it might try to assert itself by doing silly things and continuously trying to break the mold.
Even the dullest of persons will not agree that they are boring. We used to distance ourselves from accountants but that is so passé – now we are trying to distance ourselves from The Borg and as it becomes more and more difficult to do this, we are forced to become more and more inventive in doing so. 30-40 years ago stating that you will not marry every was enough to be stamped as different. Now, wearing in public thong, declaring that you are gay, live in a commune and will adopt children would probably not even get a shrug.
This is probably the dichotomy – our desire to be accepted vs our desire to be different. I used to wonder what the heck is with youngsters who, after covering their body with piercings and tattoos, complain that they are not accepted. You made this to be different and when, as different, you are treated differently by the society, you say it’s unfair. We should all understand the truth that lies in “one cannot have the cake and eat it too”.
Technology makes us embrace it by making us believe that we are different. Everybody seems to brag about their GPS, HDTV, PVR, Shine vs iPhone vs Chocolate. At the same time, our strong association of technology with The Borg makes us behave in more and more irresponsible and aberrant ways, trying in a futile and childish way to distance ourselves from The Borg. Sometimes I really yearn for the age when grandmas were baking cookies and telling stories, not getting plastic surgery, marrying men 30 years their juniors and jumping with the parachute.
The dichotomy above presented is present even in this article. On one hand, I come up with this idiotic idea – we are irresponsible because we want to draw a line between us and the machines – and on the other hand I really want people to say “Wow! I never thought of that! He might be onto something” (ok, you may lose the “wow” – there are so many words in English to describe amazement).
Peer Into a Soul
I copied shamelessly the marketing line for the new Kia Soul. Indeed, it is weird to see this commercial just as I was thinking to write something about the soul of objects – and out of all the objects my mind was focusing on my old and modest car. Indeed, I drive a Mazda Protégé, almost 9 years old, 174,000km which was in 2 accidents (one with my ex driving, in 2003 and another one with me, in Dec 2008). By its value on the market – maybe 3K – it’s almost a junk. Even so, after the last accident, I was very happy to get it fixed instead of having the insurance company declare it totaled.
I did manage to upset a woman some time ago – she didn’t say anything but did avoid me after that – by saying that cars are like women. It’s got to be a men thing: when you purchase them, you can’t have enough of all the features and bells and whistles and although you know there are better things out there, you feel like you found the one. Then, 6 mo to 1 year, you get used and start watching all the new models with different eyes, telling to yourself: “If only you could have waited another 1 year, you could have gotten heated seats at no cost”… But that is (should be?) a passing phase and if the car is reliable, if it doesn’t give you headaches, the initial excitement and passion you had for it transforms into some sort of deep attachment, into the warm feeling of knowing that it will take you where you want and you will take it where it needs (mechanic, car-wash etc.)… I should probably used “she” instead of “it” because after all these it’s become more of a “she” than an object.
I know, objects don’t really have a soul… but they receive one from the owner. After I divorced I considered selling my car just so I can get rid of all the associations between it and my complete family. I was hurting and many times I would see with the corner of my eye the shadow of my ex watching me with caring eyes, love maybe… This car had taken us in so many wonderful places – in N Quebec for a wonderful vacation on a huge lake, to Toronto to see CN Tower, Royal Ontario Museum, Wonderland, The Zoo, to Niagara, to Montreal – so many times -, to Quebec City, Sandbanks, Mont Tremblant, Calabogie… These metal sheets have incorporated a wide range of feelings: excitement when leaving, panic when missing the exit, rush when being late, mellow when swept by the sunset orange light we returned home from a sun-filled day, worries when noticing a strange engine sound… It has been a pot in which the feelings of a family (mother, father and son) boiled and mixed… and as such it got memories stuck all over it.
I didn’t sell it because I realized that I should not punish it for things somebody else did onto me. My car did everything I imagined it will do. There are cars 10x better: more HP, lighter on gas, more comfortable and with more options included – but I wish against all reason that I could keep this car forever. Like 20-30 years ago, when people didn’t have the financial power to change cars too often, my car is a member of my family. I know when there will be time to say goodbye, no matter what fancy, sport, expensive car I will be driving then, a tear will glitter in the corner of my eye as I see it leaving, driven by somebody else.
This is why I deplore sometimes the society we live in. Consuming society, peer pressure, our own shallow desires and thoughts, make us replace objects before they have a soul. Maybe it’s better – no attachment, no tears in the eyes when they break and need to be replaced… but also the bad habit of changing something just because we afford it, because we got bored, because there is something better out there. Even the love I notice some people have for their collection cars is not what should be. Going back to my comparison, I believe it is like saying to a woman “I can love you only if you win Miss Universe or at least Miss Arizona contest, if your breasts are this size and if you get me to where I want in 5.3 sec”. I see this often – the Nissan Z350 or BMW Z4 or some other fancy car washed, waxed, loved, cared by the same people who, in winter time, drive some rusted Corolla or Civic, letting it disintegrate and all its memories together with it.
No, I am not crazy – it’s just an object and when time will come I will do the reasonable thing to do. On the other hand I feel that we live in a time when things don’t get to have a soul anymore and I somehow feel that this makes our life less rich.
The Culture of Happiness
We all want to be happy, that is a fact. The writers of The US Constitution believed this is important enough to enshrine it in a public document. There is absolutely nothing wrong with searching the happiness and wanting to be happy. The search for happiness can, on the other hand, lead to a skewed way of life and unrealistic expectations.
I was reading some time ago on BBC that many marriages break due to people trying to live up (or down) to the stereotype imposed on them by the culture of happiness. Apparently movies and books teach people that, given enough effort, a couple can dwell in eternal bliss. When – as it is normal in real life – they encounter the first hurdle in their marriage, they are quickly to say “I don’t need to take this s…” and drop the towel. This is due to false image that happiness is a contiguous state. Happiness – at least in my understanding – is a mosaic: an experience created by hundreds and – hopefully – thousands of good moments, memories, sensations, and satisfactions. The grout between them is gray cement from the daily grinding mill or simply crap. We should collect the shinny and colourfull pieces of happiness and place them in our mosaic and – again, hopefully – at the end of our life we managed to create a meaningful picture with them.
And what would be wrong pursuing the eternal happiness? I found myself confronted very often with the view that nothing bad should enter our lives. People don’t watch the news of fear they might encounter death, don’t want to listen to sad stories although they might be carrying good lessons, even the children’s stories are modified so the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood will survive and, after getting in touch with his conscience, be repentant and become less wolf. Anything even remotely sad is quickly forsaken from our lives, and we forget that without Hell there would be no Heaven.
It reached the point where art productions creating negative emotions are avoided and deemed as unworthy forgetting that art should simply create emotions, not necessarily positive emotions.
Many people shudder and can’t understand how apparently some mild and happy-faced, family man, accountant by profession, comes one day home and kills everyone in his family over something as trying but still trivial as getting too much in debt or losing his job. “It doesn’t make sense!” they say. On the contrary, I argue, it makes perfect sense. Such people, who never contemplate nasty things, once they are confronted with a major crisis in their life, simply don’t know what to do and commit stupid things. And, when they turn around for help, everybody is so absorbed avoiding upsetting stories that they find nobody to give them advice. That is, if they are strong enough to ask for help and don’t put a frozen smile saying “Great, great, couldn’t be better”.
Submerged in this culture of happiness, people never reach a full understanding of the world and life and never fully grow up. It’s like the situation when, surrounding by the bright lights of the city, one can see very few stars – it’s only in the darkness of a remote countryside that the full beauty and richness of Milky Way reveals itself to us.
Indeed, knowledge does not lead to happiness… but it leads to wisdom and, eventually, to peace. Yes, I wished sometimes to be a bumbling idiot, happy and strong in my ignorance but finally I had to admit that this is not possible, not acceptable, at least for me. Once we bit the Apple of Knowledge, there is no turning back.
Conclusion: Happiness is good and searching for it is good too. Sadness, misery and despair are bad, but avoiding them by using horse (murphy’s) blinds is even worse. Not dwelling in bad feelings is one thing and it makes sense, rejecting everything that might make us remotely sad is another one.
Carpe Diem
These days, in a world where Latin is quasi-dead, carpe diem seems to be the motto. Everybody seems to live the day – in every meaning of the expression. Young people in debt because they lived the day too hard, old people forced to work because they didn’t think there will be a tomorrow are examples of misuse of this philosophy. Despite my better judgment, I have to recognize, it makes me feel quite inadequate. Slave of the opinion others have about me, I was ashamed to admit I don’t live too much in the present. Today I muster the courage to step out of a closet… probably in another one, since we move from closet in closet (I guess that the trick is not to die in one).
Even so, my analytic thinking says I am not doing anything wrong. My present is not interesting at all. It moves at an even rate with its little joys and upsets. My future? My future was, as somebody said in a radio essay I listened last year (I apologize for my poor memory), amputated when I divorced. Now and then, I catch a glimpse of it but then fog covers the vague shapes.
What is wrong with living in the past? What is wrong, when times are tough, to cuddle back with your parents on a Saturday evening in their bed and watch a black-and-white western movie and then go content that Sunday follows and that I can sleep as much as I want? So what if my nostrils fill with the smell of steak and mashed potatoes and pickles and I read “The Three Musketeers”, or I laugh my ass off watching “Tom and Jerry”, while waiting for Mom to call us in the kitchen for the weekend lunch? What is the crime in remembering the smell of lime trees embracing my street in a warm spring night, after I just returned from the student campus where I met my girlfriend?
We all go places where we felt happy, safe, loved. Some go to Disneyland, I visit the space of my memories. I sift through them and then, when I discover a warm and fuzzy one, I nest in it and let it carry me through the neither-interesting-nor-promising present.
Memory-triggers very seldom make sense. I listen to Gloria Gaynor and I remember visiting my cousins – not having siblings, they were my brothers. I remember the nights I slept over and we kept yapping until midnight, whispering so our parents would not come in. Not that we ever listened “I will survive” together. I smell the freshly-cut grass and I remember the feeling I was getting at my grandfather’s place, in the country, in a cold spring, hidden behind the stove. I remember the smell of burnt wood.
Why is the present so great? We have a lunch with somebody we love, it’s peaceful, the conversation is great, and one sees glitters of love in the other’s eyes. It’s good but it will be a long time before being able to refer to this lunch as one that brought the most happiness in your life. Watch a movie – it’s good, it’s titillating, intellectually stimulating but one will have to waste hundreds of hours lost in stupid productions before acknowledging that this movie was one of the best.
Live in the present? Buying the CDs of all the latest fashion bands just to realize within 12 months, once the craze passed that they are worth even less than the plastic used in their fabrication? No, thank you!
Personally, I don’t see any value in present – it’s a fad, it’s a moment and then it’s gone, it’s without memory and it’s made for people who want to live without history and without future.
I promised myself I will shed my shame of not being aligned with this “carpe diem” society. I will sleep myself in lost times and wait for a spring where, hopefully, I will be able to love more the present through the remembrance of the feelings that crush me today, the past.
Being Death
For quite a while I asked myself why I hate so much the man for whom my ex left me. After all, she’s an adult and it was her decision to start a sexual adventure with him, it was her who fell for him and finally, it was she who hurt me deeply. He, like a true modern-day hedonist, was trying to satisfy his urge for another woman. He asked, she accepted and that should be it. Yes, if it was a fulfilled marriage, more relaxed, filled with love it wouldn’t have happened… or would it? He had 5 very-long-term relationship and the last one he ended to be with my ex, was a calm, friendly relationship. My ex told me that a month before she left me she was declaring her love for me “just because I was satisfied” and my too-realistic answer was that after 13 years of marriage we weren’t doing that bad.
Still, it wrangle my guts to know this man – and many like him – walking out there. Yesterday I was finally able to realize why. Because he is like Death… and I was a moron. I knew that my marriage was not filled with happiness. The crazy years after immigrating to Canada were very hard years, for both of us. I was riding the highs and – more often – the lows of hi-tech industry, burdened by the thought that all our good life relied exclusively on my shoulders, working long hours, she was learning the language, getting college courses, juggling the school and the household chores… But, amidst all this chaos (driving sometimes 120 km/day on city-streets) I had in mind a future where we can relax, a future where I don’t have to scram the money for Christmas presents, a future where the family would have at least a real, 10-day vacation every year, where everything would quiet down and love would sip back into my marriage. I was dreaming about a sabbatical, at least 5-6 months traveling throughout Europe, visiting history where it was made, showing my son and my wife the fruits of all the hard labour, of all the sacrifices we made. Things were on the right track – or so I thought. Disgusted by a disappointing job-market in Ottawa, I left for Arizona to show to myself and to the world that all my certification exams, hours of learning and testing until wee hours of the morning were not in vain. Money was good, taxes were low, I was finding Information Security Specialist title as very satisfying… but far from my family I realized that without them nothing matters. It was in the solitude of the desert, like a true prophet, that I had this revelation. Some might say it was late, maybe too late. I say it was just right: I was able to afford this revelation, we were financially stable, I finally got my confidence as high as to understand that a job is just a job and if one ends, another one awaits you around the corner, provided that you are decent enough and hard-working by nature… Yes, I should have dropped everything and come home but I didn’t: since I had sought this contract I thought that I have to drink my poison up to the last drop. Should have, would have won’t help me now… It was all over in the blink of the eyes: Mr Death, the random man, in search of a boredom break, made contact and then everything went down the drain.
Sometimes We are Death. Like when you postpone to see your Grandfather, thinking there’s always time to see him in the summer vacation and then he is taken away and there are no more chances to say good-bye, this man took away from me any chance of fixing my marriage. Just like Death, who takes randomly, without regard of merits, reasons, this man killed my marriage with indifference, outside of right or wrong. He might as well have killed me for good. I hate him, and it would be a lie to say I haven’t envisioned many times his real death… But Death doesn’t die – if you kill one Death, the Universe will make up another one and it could be you. I hate him and I hate myself. Just like him I killed something thinking that, time and money allows, I will be able to grow it again. I was Death.
Buying love
The fat raindrops break on the windshield into something that looks like asteroid craters. I travel at snail speed, caught in the stop-and-go traffic. My mind drifts away, just like the red car inching into the other lane without the blond, teenage driver noticing because she is text-messaging someone.
Why do we try to buy love? Most of us do it – direct and indirect, visible or not. I just realized – with shame – that this is what I have been trying to do. For a very, very long time. I would say 38 years but it would be too melodramatic since I didn’t start until I was a teenager.
The shame I feel has nothing to do with the fact that it is stupid to attempt anything like this – and we all know it or we should. It derives from the fact that I criticized this behavior in others many times. Until now, though, I never realized I did the very same thing. Agreed, I was not trying to buy love with fur coats, cars, diamonds or expensive vacations. I was doing it in a more subtle way… trying to show off, trying to overachieve, trying to be the first. Be first or go home. Be a fighter or you are nothing.
I used to be hard on others and I considered it fair because I was even harder on myself. It wasn’t. I know it is corny but in my simple, skewed way I just wanted to buy love.
I reach again a full stop, holding the clutch then I release gently and I move ahead a little bit. My leg is tired and it trembles. It’s like my strength drains together with the rain.
“I’m not going to write you love song” plays onto the radio. Why not? If you love him and that is what you do – write songs – why not write it? Just because he wants it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t offer it to him. He wants love, he needs love and if you would just give him his damn love song maybe everything would be all right and the both of you won’t end up caught in a crowded solitude.
I chuckle because I remember the Seinfeld episode where he was dating the massage therapist and he was eager to get a good massage… and she would refuse to understand his hints.
Right! Buying love. Why do we do that? My mind knows that there is no way love can be purchased. True one, in any case. Not with jewelry, not with a social status, not with a successful career. No, love is rand… It dawns to me. If we stop trying to buy love, we have to admit that love is random. That it doesn’t matter what you do, who you are, how beautiful or ugly you are – it’s all a happening over which you have no control. Love comes and goes as it pleases. Not only “money can’t buy love” but “nothing can buy love” – yes, some things can be done – voluntarily or involuntarily – to maintain it or have it fade.
And its random factor also means that it could never happen… or never happen again… It’s scary. And that is why I have to change gears… radio stations… memories…