Entitlement and Prejudice: Abuse of Female Advantage

While Elizabeth Bennet, the female protagonist of Pride and Prejudice, is a kind, witty, and intelligent girl, I see in her some very familiar behaviors. In spite of her overall good character, she has a tendency shared by many women to judge people quickly based on the first impression that comes across in a social situation.

It is said that women are more emotional than men. This is not true, but it seems that women do have a far greater sensitivity to social situations and subtle cues than do men. It is not only one of their strongest abilities, it forms the basis by which they judge others. When women say they want an ‘intelligent’ man, they of course mean socially intelligent.

This certainly holds true in a book written by a woman in the 18^th century. The female main character perceives the socially awkward Mr. Darcy to be stiff, hateful, arrogant, and rude. Meanwhile she instantly believes the best in the silver-tongued and charming Mr. Wickham and falls at once for his every deception. The lies she accepts without question poison her opinion of Mr. Darcy still further and when the time comes to speak with him, she is simmering with resentment; all potential for seeing good in him is extinguished.

Women for all their ability to catch nuances often go awry when it comes to men. To say that women are good communicators is quite simply untrue. Socially adept is nearly the opposite of direct communication. Men are far more likely to be direct about what they’re after, so direct that neither gender can mistake their intent. Direct statements in female society, unfortunately, are a sure recipe for hurting feelings and creating enemies. Yet most women are unable to realize that the direct approach is how men normally do things. There is not necessarily any intent to hurt or be aggressive in such behavior. Furthermore, what is being said in female conversation is of secondary importance. The real message is in tone of voice and body language. Women are taken aback when they meet men who do not wear their mood on their sleeve and who have little interest in nuances. They frequently perceive this sort of behavior as hostile, rude, and anti-social. In fact, this is how men normally do things. From the mistaken female perception arises the well worn sentiments that men have less emotions, can’t communicate, are slow minded etc. From these wrong conclusions arises a certain deeply ingrained sort of female entitlement. If men are to be thought of as lesser emotional beings, certainly female needs outweigh those of the male. From this misunderstanding derives a mindset that entails female license to engage in all manner of aggressive, rude, and cruel behavior. Ethically, it opens the way for them to use their biologically endowed advantages without restriction to achieve their aims or to gain retribution for any offense, imagined or real.

Although Elizabeth Bennett is generally a well-meaning person, even she subscribes to this pervasive philosophy. When a socially inept rector shows up in her parents’ household, she relentlessly runs little circles of wit around him, mocking him in front of the entire family without his even realizing it. The rector certainly comes across as bombastic, conceited, and venal but that does not mean it is right to take advantage of his sex based weaknesses and publicly humiliate him. Just because she personally dislikes the guy and doesn’t want to marry him does not mean she’s entitled to take out her unrestrained aggression on him.

In the end, Mr. Darcy should perhaps have married a woman who understood men have their own strengths, strengths that usually they choose not to abuse. Men are by no means perfect but are in no position to convince themselves that they are entitled to take advantage of the weaknesses inherent in the other sex. When men cross a certain line, they go to prison. It is not men who have the reputation for ‘using sex as a weapon’ or taking men for ‘all they’re worth.’

Women seem generally better suited to perceiving the subtleties of human interaction, but it is wrong that so many of them feel they have license to abuse this strength or any other that is specific to their sex. It is no better for women to act in such a way than it is for men to get what they want through superior physical force.

Misconceptions of Childhood as Social Pathology

It cannot be forgotten that every child has a full time job: to learn everything they need to know to survive as an adult.  In affluent western households, children are often treated like household pets.  They are most valued for being ‘cute’ and generally encouraged to remain in that state for as long as possible.  Through most of history children have been free labor.  The romanticized idea of an ‘innocent,’ ‘magical’ childhood is a relatively recent concept that began to take hold in the late Victorian period among an affluent few.  As the West enjoyed mass affluence in the 20th century, this view became dominant and in the 21st century it grows to ridiculous proportions.

Children must be taught early on that they are not pets.  They are apprentice
humans who must contribute to the family as soon as they are able.  Their parents are there to teach discipline and train them in the habits that will make them strong and successful, not to be their kids’ best friends(this can come later in life).  Putting children to work is of critical importance.  There may not be a family farm to look after any more, but many children grow up seeing their wellbeing come out of nowhere.  They grow up as part of a family they have invested nothing into.  As soon as they hit adolescence, family regresses to little more than a part time job.  Children are showered with gifts but not expected to give anything back.  Thus, they grow up disconnected from the give and take that is the foundation of any lasting human relationship.  As adolescents and adults they end up learning that they must earn their way through life in contradiction to an entire childhood filled with ‘magic’.  Suddenly, just as they must begin thinking about caring for themselves, the adolescent must in an instant unlearn everything he or she has ever been taught.  The adult world they are growing into is jarringly and completely different from the world of children.  This disconnect is taken for granted in the 21st century Western world, but certainly it should not be.  In generations past, life went through its stages, but from birth, one’s experiences were part of a coherent continuity that fed directly into adult life.

In Victorian times, the ‘magic of childhood’ type of thinking was a reaction to the extremes of the day.  With the industrial revolution, children were commonly being placed on adult length shifts in dirty, dangerous jobs.  Because children’s hands were small, they were just the right size for reaching inside machines.  Because their bodies were small, they were just the right size for crawling through shafts in coal mines.  To top it all off, hiring kids was ridiculously cheap and if separated from family, they could be coerced into even longer shifts and into performing especially undesirable jobs.  An entire generation of children began to emerge from factories and mines with missing appendages, stooped and beaten frames, and in general, malnourished, sickly, and weak.  Those who had the privilege of living above the lower levels of society did everything they could to distance their own children from this nightmare existence.  A new ethic of shielding children from the world’s realities and keeping them in a safe, happy place until adulthood emerged.

While the misfortunes of industrialization were important in inspiring modern thought, just as critical were advancements in medicine.  Well into the 19th century, child mortality was quite frequent, an indisputable fact of life.  Spending lots of time obsessing about one kid just wasn’t worth it; getting too attached was just a way of getting hurt.  Chances were high that any given child would be dead before age 5 or 6.  As childhood mortality dropped off drastically with the beginning of the 20th century, interest in the early lives of children increased sharply.  With the vast move from rural family farms to suburbs in the 1940s and 50s, there was no longer much incentive to have children work, it was actually easier to keep them in the home as ‘innocent,’ ‘magical’ pets.  Still, children remained reasonably independent and spent much of their time learning by playing outside all day long, freely taking risks, and occasionally getting hurt.

Unfortunately an attitude that began from revulsion towards backbreaking child labor in hazardous environments passed down unchallenged from generation to generation, its original purpose all but forgotten.  More and more laws were made protecting children and their sheltered status.  By the 1960s a vast chasm had grown between the world of children and the adult world.
In the 21st century, adult life is an utterly foreign land that many do not truly see until their early twenties, after college.

If given half a chance children will grow to be hardy and strong.  However, they consistently fail to thrive when protected to the point of suffocation.  The same principle emerges in every aspect of childhood.  Studies have shown that children who are raised in a scrupulously sanitary environment grow up to be sickly because they never developed immunities.  Meanwhile, children who were allowed to go outside and play in the dirt become resilient and develop strong immunities to the pathogens they come into contact with.  Whether it is the immune system or their mind and character, children are inherently meant to be exposed to challenges at an early age.  Not only does it not harm them, it is a critical part of healthy development.

In Western society, it is taken for granted that adolescents are dictated by the very laws of nature to be surly, neurotic, depressed, and lazy.  Is this any surprise if children are never shown the basic rules of the adult world:  that one must work to eat, that one must compete to live, that one must give to receive.  Of course they feel put upon when the time comes to work when they’ve never had to do it before.  Of course they’re neurotic, depressed, and surly when they finally have to put in their share.  Of course life becomes highly stressful for adolescents when the entire life they grew up with turns out to be nothing more than an illusion and they have to begin again from day 1.  Having grown up without expectations, they prove to be weak, wilting, hothouse plants when it comes time to contribute as an adult.  To even begin to do so they must unlearn every habit they have ever been raised with, a process that is bound to be both tumultuous and painful.  Can it be taken as any surprise that the most privileged generation in history is committing suicide and falling to mental illness in droves?

In the past, children, and especially adolescents would have spent plenty of time in company of their peers, but the focus of their lives would have been their family and the need to be able to succeed one day in the world of adults.  From the earliest age possible, children were begun in the precursors of skills that would make for a successful adulthood.  Their education took place in the presence of adults, their standard of conduct was set by adults, and adults were inevitably their role models.  Under the current system, children grow up in artificial third world societies governed by children.  I call them third world societies because the notion of merit is foreign; status is decided based on who can claw their way to the top through corruption, deception, and brute force.  Personal worth and rank are defined by ‘popularity’ and other arbitrary criteria.  This environment is completely isolated from the adult world and the values it encourages are inimical to long term success as an adult.  It severs the continuity between child and adult, dividing life into two disparate parts that render one another nonsensical.

In throwing crowds of children into one building so they can raise each other in a dysfunctional civilization of their own making, I reflect that those who implemented the system might have been true believers in the ‘magic of childhood.’  This philosophy contains the notion of child ‘innocence.’  This is an egregious misunderstanding of young humans.  Children are not innocent.  In fact, they are most likely to openly express humanity’s worst impulses.  Children have yet to be socialized.  Socialization includes the development of moral inhibitions.  Children are amoral.  Unless taught otherwise, they feel perfectly entitled to do whatever necessary to realize their ambitions.  By the very undeveloped nature of their brains, they are narcissistically self-centered, unremittingly cruel towards any in whom they sense weakness, and willing to forcibly take anything they calculate is not adequately protected against them.  They fly into a rage every time they do not get precisely what they want; they have yet to learn patience.  They have no sense of justice or fairness.  They are outraged when punished for infractions against others and are again outraged when those who wrong them are not punished completely out of proportion to their offense.  Childhood is not to be perpetuated, let alone glorified.  The correct approach is to instruct children in the ways of adults as soon as possible.

‘Innocence’ is often understood to be a lack of knowledge of the less savory aspects of existence, yet ignorance is not bliss as it is so often said to be.  Any reflection on childhood or observation of children quickly reveals the true nature of things—ignorance is fear.  Children are typically afraid of everything because they do not yet understand the ways of the world.  As far as they know, anything could happen and thus, even the shadows at the bottom of the closet seem a possible threat.  In reminiscence on living through that less developed stage, it’s amusing, but if we reminisce a little deeper, we realize the fear was quite serious at the time.  It is the lot of a child to live in an open-ended universe with no guarantees and the fearful unknown lurking everywhere until they begin to acquire knowledge and understanding.  There is nothing romantic about this difficult phase of development.  It is certainly not to be described as ‘innocence’.

Not only is this ‘magical childhood’ perspective blatantly backward, it demeans the rich and rewarding experience of adulthood.  This is a pity because adulthood, the chance to be wise, strong, skilled, and loving is the good part of life, not the beginning part where we do all the initial learning.  The feelings of confidence, security, and peace we feel as adults are unknown to children.  When we have mastered the fears that abound in an inexperienced mind, only then is the way to real enjoyment of life opened.

Ultimately, it is foolish to shower a small child with lavish gifts in celebration of a ‘special’ time of life.  Such a new apprentice human is just as happy with two oddly shaped sticks as with the latest primary colored, loudly shrilling gimmick.  A child approaching adulthood should be given many gifts that will help him or her pursue their dreams, peace of spirit, and development as a human being.

Since I have made many criticisms, I have also turned my thoughts to solutions.  There is no longer a family farm that makes child labor necessary.  However, there are still plenty of household chores to be done, especially if both parents are busy at work.  There are plenty of ‘traditional’ aspects that could be brought back into life by employing one’s children.  One could teach their children how to grow a vegetable garden, how to bake fresh bread, how to fix meals.  All of these skills drastically reduce the cost of feeding the family.  Since girls are no longer taught to cook and clean, it is an important set of basic skills for both sexes.  And to be realistic these are things many adults have never been taught.  Thus it has the potential to be a learning experience for all involved.  Such skills have the potential to become part of a family heritage, an heirloom that can be passed down to the next generation and give a solid feeling of identity in a liquid age.

If the family owns a business, it is a good idea to get the kids involved right away.  For instance, I recently visited a small family run shop where the kids were allowed to work at the cash register with their parents nearby to lend a helping hand if necessary.  A business allows children to see the adult working world in action from the very start, and they love having the opportunity to emulate adult behaviors.  It is a lesson they can learn while small that many college students still have not been taught.

If one had their home near some local businesses instead of miles away from non-residences in the suburbs, the kids could be sent to get groceries, take clothes to the cleaners, and run all manner of errands.  It could be a social experience for the children and an opportunity to deal with adults outside of the family.  These sorts of practices could save endless time and fuel for busy parents.  The less busy the parents are, the more time they have to actually be around their kids and have more influence in their upbringing.  If people are willing to be open to a different lifestyle, it is quite possible to bring change to the current dismal situation that so many people take for granted.

As a final consideration, I do not advocate what many refer to as a ‘soccer mom’ lifestyle: a way of existence in which children are constantly being taken to different activities and lessons.  In themselves none of these activities are bad, but children must go out into the world and obtain knowledge and understanding.  The explorations they undergo themselves are the most fruitful of all.  To have kids constantly locked up in classrooms and learning activities, even outside of school, is just another instance of the social pathology of smothering children through obsession and overprotection.  At lessons, children are under the direct control of an authority figure at all times.  In an environment that encourages healthy development, children are given responsibility and freedom by degrees as they master the skills they are taught.  When their obligations are fulfilled, they ought to most certainly be free to explore their world as they will.  It has all but been forgotten that children must be given space if they are to develop as strong, independent individuals.  All they need be given is half a chance, and they will grow without the defects, disorders, and neuroses that have become commonplace.  It has all but been forgotten that human beings, especially young ones, are incredibly resilient by nature.  To be allowed to discover the difficulties of the world for themselves, to have the opportunity to fail, to get scraped knees, and then to learn is all that is required.  The widespread obsession with ‘protecting children’s innocence’ is nothing more than taking what’s fixed and breaking it.

The Anthropology of Nerd Societies: Formation of New Group Indentities Within Industrialized Civilization

I

It is not uncommon that those immersed in the culture of sci fi and twenty sided dice are subjected to a high degree of skepticism and even outright disgust. It strikes many as strange and even offensive that these people would be so far outside of the popular scope. It strikes people as pointless when they see that someone has gone out of the way to remember the names of even the most obscure starships in several different franchises, the precise geography of a dozen fictional countries in as many separate fictional universes, and the biographies of characters that are present in only a few seconds of screen time. To critics, this seems like time profligately wasted on obscure trivia that no one will ever care about it. Rarely do they ask, what value or purpose do these ships, lands, and characters serve or why these nerds dedicate themselves with nearly nationalistic fervor. More often than not, they write these nerds off as rather conspicuously maladjusted human beings.

The first step to approaching the answer is examining a likely critic of these nerds, someone who feels in contact with that which is considered mainstream. It is safe to say they are in possession of a wealth of information, useless trivia one might call it, concerning their favorite stars in film, athletes, musicians. Such a critic is likely to know who their favorite people are married to, who they’ve divorced, and how they’ve embarrassed themselves in public. One could make the argument that these people have the distinction of at least being attached to individuals in the real world, but this really isn’t true. The mainstream critic knows these people only insofar as they appear in performances onscreen and on stage. Furthermore, even these celebrities’ public conduct directly affects their show careers and is inevitably bound up in contrivance. The main difference between the critics and the nerds they look down upon is the number of subscribers to their group.

Each social group has its language of acceptance and shared values. Members dedicate themselves to mythology, the heroes, the music, the religion that best represents their culture. If one compares demographics, a disproportionate number of black people prefer rap or other types of music made chiefly by black people. One could conclude that black people have a ‘rap gene’ or far more plausibly that such music serves as a means for black people to connect with their group and distinguish members from outsiders. Familiarity with a common repository of stories and personalities helps foster cohesiveness and a sense of unity. Most groups of friends in American society overlap in preferences to at least some extent and are not usually distinctive enough to be coherent entities and certainly not enough to appear clearly outside of the accepted canon. If the Main Stream has a width, a spectrum so to speak, it is readily noticeable when one encounters those who are well outside of it. To critics, the presence of nerds is offensive because they are clearly disconnected from the larger culture.

A disproportionate number of nerds are physically awkward, socially awkward, or both. This is because they possess traits that make social acceptance at a young age extremely difficult. Such woes are commonly dismissed as a mildly irritating, passing aspect of childhood, but this is done without considering long term implications. When one is excluded from a social group during key formative years, it only becomes harder to catch up. At a certain point, the excluded ones admit even to themselves that there is never to be any reconciliation. During those key years, they grew apart from everyone else. Excluded by their peers in the real world, they discovered far away worlds and galaxies populated by peoples wholly alien to the order that rejected them. In these alternate realities, they find stories of hope and acceptance, lands where those traits which are considered impediments in ours could actually be an asset. Sooner or later, these people begin to meet and coalesce into groups. Finding a place is generally more difficult for these nerds and once they do so after a difficult time growing up, they devote themselves with a degree of enthusiasm that seems unsettling to outsiders. Critics understandably find it difficult to understand how anyone could become filled with excitement at the prospect of mastering a fictional language that no one outside of a small circle would ever know of or care about.

What critics do not understand, is that the obscurity and hence the exclusivity of such information is precisely the point. Made to feel shame in the early part of their lives, nerds create something they are all proud of, a culture and folklore that both provides entertainment, stories and metaphors pertaining to their lives, and which sets them apart from the main stream in which they never found acceptance. Nerds take exquisite pleasure in participating in a social environment in which they do not feel intimidated or pressured. After being cast out they finally take it upon themselves to return the gesture by actively shutting out and rejecting the widely accepted lore and culture and replacing it with something that fits with their personalities and interests. Certainly, it is conceivable that some of the disapproval expressed by critics results from a sense of indignation at how completely conventions have been deliberately shunted aside and ignored.

II

Nerds are a phenomenon that results from the structure of Western industrialized civilization. It is in this society that children spend most of their time around other kids in their age group rather than the family. Even where there is the luxury of a stable nuclear family, obtaining optimal employment means moving every several years. Thus, contact with extended family tends to be sporadic at best. Both parents are likely work full time jobs and are often preoccupied with satisfying the obligations of the workplace even after hours. Cell phones and laptops ensure no minute of the day is sacrosanct. It is certainly possible to regulate one’s life, but parents live in an environment that is particularly conducive to workaholism. Detached from family most of the day with only a handful of adults superficially involved in their lives, children develop in a scholastic environment isolated from the adult world outside. Left to form their own society, an environment dominated by the most physically able and socially clever individuals results. Those who are unable to compete become members of the lowest class in this brutal hierarchy.

Nerds are generally seen as a group of human beings that inevitably spring forth, but such a phenomenon is a product of the Western model. Only in such an environment does social failure at school mean complete isolation. The nerd very likely has parents who are constantly busy, if indeed they are both present in the household, lives in a suburb that is deliberately located as far as possible from anything non-residential. In such a neighborhood, the neighbors are generally casual acquaintances at best. There is little to no commonality or sense of community. Most people there will have moved somewhere else within a few years. The neighborhood was designed in the interests of adults and the safety of very small children. For children who have grown older, there is nothing to do and nowhere to go. In small Western families, there are not likely very many siblings to help care for and in an industrialized economy, no substantial way for children to contribute directly to the wellbeing of the family through labor or by learning trades. Relegated to the lowest tier in the social sphere that dominates life—school—nerds find themselves in possession of a wealth of leisure time. In this time, they become experts on everything from computers, to science and mathematics, to star trek trivia. Perhaps the origin of a nerd begins with being rejected, but over time the individual is more attached to the values they have acquired in isolation or with a few others of their persuasion. Eventually, they make the final choice to split off completely.

As youth life progresses into high school, participation in society becomes more of an obligation than ever before. To get attention from the most important and influential people, one must be a regular in the social and party scene. To even have means of meeting the requirements of this social life one must have a car. Teens who own cars must hold jobs outside of school just to scrape together enough to cover the expenses incurred by their vehicle. None of this is enough; a teenager must change around his or her wardrobe every few months as fashions change or be left behind. The lifestyle necessary to acceptance demands every spare scrap of a teenager’s time; it allows virtually no room for reading or independent study. A nerd, someone for whom these things matter most finds him or herself no longer desirous of participating. Succeeding in high school social life requires absolute devotion and constantly battling against fierce competition. Even if a nerd had a complete change of heart at this point, he or she simply would not have the necessary qualifications to operate even at the entry level. Without first mastering basic fashion, the right way to talk, the right way to carry oneself, the right way to walk, the right TV shows and music to like, there is no breaking in. Fortunately, most nerds are by this point not regretting the choices they’ve made that have led them down a different path, at least not as much as they used to. Even if it is lonely and painful to be as they are, they begin to accept themselves and in the larger high school environment begin to encounter those who share their tendencies. A distinctive nerd culture cut off from the rest of society results.

III

Nerds possess a great deal of knowledge, some of which makes them highly competitive in the workplace. However, they tend to lack people skills and have more trouble than average doing well at interviews and keeping good relations with co-workers. They are more likely to be in their cubicle laboring away, rather than creating a network of useful contacts by socializing. They will never meet a great many people who could help them with their work or even promote them.

The members of the mainstream on the other hand are extremely adept in social matters and have everything they need to score a job for which they have lower ability or qualifications. The years they spent fighting to get on top of the social heap left them without any time to develop professional skills. They are accustomed to cutthroat social competition, but they developed in an arbitrary society formed by children. Many of the values they learned are useless in the real world. In the professional environment there is an expected style of dress in the workplace. An expertise at following fashion trends honed over years of practice suddenly becomes obsolete.

In the long run, those who grew up in the mainstream still come out on top. Nerds are a small minority and fitting in even in the real world outside of school is always going to be an uphill battle. Any given hiring manager is highly likely to be somewhere within the mainstream spectrum. When faced with hundreds of resumes and dozens of interviews, they are going to choose those who walk, talk, and act like an ideal employee, in other words, a normal person. Qualifications and claims on paper can be embellished or even lied about. Personal presentation is going to be the ultimate decider.

Not only does the mainstream person have the advantage in grabbing jobs, but also in relations with the opposite sex. They’ve had years of practice in opposite sex social interactions while most nerds are barely getting started in college.

Though crippled and stunted through their adverse developmental experience, nerds take a fierce pride in their identity. They are more than willing to make sacrifices in life in order to be the people they feel they were meant to be and to be as true as possible to themselves. When they come together, they create a society in which mainstreamers would immediately appear hopelessly inept and crippled if ever they tried to participate. Perhaps critics are disturbed by the fact that there is more than one path to social legitimacy besides the one upon which they labored with such intensity and for so long.

Though mainstream people have the edge, everyone loses under the current system. Well qualified nerds are ignored because they lack the skills to get attention and form connections. The socially adept get hired but find themselves minimally prepared for their work. The businesses lose because they have difficulty finding candidates who are well balanced between social acumen and hard skills. The fact is that society at present does not encourage the formation of the well balanced individuals they are looking for. If society were a business, its manager might very well be fired for gross incompetence. In real life, things became the way they are because they were left to form arbitrarily according to the forces of nature. That anyone ever expected an ideal form of society to come from such an approach evidences a fundamental lack of thought, or at least that this system was itself a random aggregate product of many individuals acting with varying degrees of coherence, motivation, and influence over the course of generations.

IV

An examination of nerds and their surrounding environment is by necessity a study in anthropology. In this situation an entirely new society with different if not directly conflicting values forms within the bounds of the one already established. This phenomenon has come about not in small tribes or provincial villages, but in dynamic sprawling civilizations composed of millions of citizens. Ironically, a small group seems to be better suited to integrating all of its members. When there is a small community, even the eccentric and socially inept are known to all and can over time be accepted for their redeeming qualities. With a small stable permanent population, it is possible to have a real sense of community. With all members contributing directly to the wellbeing of the whole, it is much easier to have a genuine sense of unity. In such an environment, mere idiosyncrasies and divergent hobbies do not in themselves merit ostracism. In a larger environment, however, people must compete even for recognition of their existence; those who are awkward get trampled. The first impression is frequently the only chance one gets and as a result, the range of behavior society can tolerate must narrow if there is to be accepted social standards across larger populations. Furthermore, when a society counts its numbers in the millions, there can be no direct supervision of successful societal transmission by family and neighbors. Cohesion must be forced by formal institutions, ideological abstractions, and the fear of social unacceptability, which is for many humans greater than the fear of death.

A mass society with an excruciatingly specific agenda of how one is to behave inevitably creates a disaffected underclass. Human beings are incredibly adaptable, especially in social matters, so the percentage of those who simply cannot make it tends to be small. Those who fail thus see most everyone around them meeting with greater success and are very likely completely isolated. By the very design of a mass industrialized society, the conditions are right for the formation of new societies that better suit the needs of castaways, minorities, and splinter cells.

The more specific and rigid a mass society becomes, the fewer people it suitably serves. With increasing numbers of ostracized individuals, resentment pools and the nerd phenomenon becomes more likely: a new type of sub-society forms. One that actively rejects the values and the culture into which its subscribers were born. Thus it could be said concerning mass industrial societies that consensus breeds antithesis.

There is an Aesop’s Fable that warns how attempting to please everyone pleases no one in the end. This moral applies to societies because humans identify with tight knit tribes on a more visceral level than they do with nation states and mass cultures. No single institution or cultural entity can represent the views and needs of all or even a majority of citizens. Though only a small minority is unable to make it or refuses to participate, they can safely be considered the tip of an iceberg of discontent. There are many others who are only just able to meet the minimum qualifications and live a high stress life on the lower tiers of acceptance. There may be only a few who break away, however, particularly difficult times or the right catalyst could easily amplify the trend.

It would do critics well to cultivate a better understanding of nerds and other social fringe groups, because so long as current conditions prevail existing minorities will grow in number and new groups emerge. If millions of people collectively hold a custom that eating salad with an almost imperceptibly smaller fork is the only right way to do things, there will eventually be those who do otherwise. The dominant custom is enforced through overwhelming weight of numbers, but if it becomes a source of pressure by the very fact that it is a widely held standard, deviation follows. There needn’t even be any huge dissatisfaction and certainly not protest or consciously assembled social movement. People do what comes to them most easily and naturally, a cuture that comes to pressure millions can only hold sway for so long in such a varied and volatile environment.

Vegetarianism: The Elitist Idealism

Those who are vegetarians for ideological reasons are typically brimming with good intentions; to lessen the amount of suffering in the world for animals and sometimes, for human beings. Their movement addresses aspects of human society in which there are genuine issues to be considered yet it founders and remains confined to a narrow group of liberal, highly educated, middle to upper class citizens in Western democracies. While their intentions are good, they pursue their goal with an incredible naïveté that could only arise from disconnection with temporal realities. They focus on emotional appeals before well-reasoned arguments to support their cause, propose alternative strategies that are detrimental to or simply not feasible for the rest of society, make deeply mistaken assumptions concerning human physiology and diet, and alienate those who disagree with them by adopting a moralistic fervor, or sometimes even an air of downright rudeness and snobbery.

A few years ago, I was sitting in a restaurant where a huge, beautifully prepared roast hung on a spit in plain view. Customers could order a slice of meat from what they could see right there, a great setup. One person at my table, a vegetarian referred to it as “that carcass over there.” I was a bit taken aback at this. It is not very polite to comment on other people’s food preferences during a meal. Certainly, it was a piece of dead animal, but the word ‘carcass’ implies it is rotting, laying out in the open, fit only for vultures. It was demeaning, insulting, inappropriate behavior. It can perhaps seem justified, though, when one’s culinary regimen is also part of a moral crusade. If one views eating animals as moral wrong, then it is not only proper, but a matter of civic duty to educate, criticize, and even chastise the rest of the world. It’s a rather simplified way of approaching a complex issue. No doubt there is a certain thrill in adopting morally exclusive eating habits while everyone else is living in the dark ages. Thus, one who lives in such a way is quick to point out to others the error of their ways.

It is common for vegetarians to argue that meat is unhealthy, unnatural, and unnecessary to the human diet. They therefore contend that such foods should be replaced with plant substances. It is indeed well established that people can live without animal products, but should they? A vegan(one who uses no animal products whatever) must rely upon a profusion of exotic beans, nuts, seeds, and even supplements to get enough protein and all the necessary amino acids. Any unenlightened lout can get all of that from one piece of meat. Clearly, for fulfilling certain nutritional requirements, meat is overwhelmingly superior to plant products. If one thinks about the matter in terms of common sense: what is an outstanding source of stored energy and certain building blocks for a creature of flesh and blood? Answer: flesh and blood taken from another creature. The common claim of vegetarians that meat is unhealthy and even poisonous is quite simply a flight of fancy. I would suspect that they are simply reacting to the typical Western diet in which an excess of meats and other fatty foods combined with a sedentary lifestyle leads to an unhealthy result. This doesn’t do any good for the vegetarian argument because an excess of anything is bad and a sedentary lifestyle is unhealthy no matter what one eats. Meat is a perfectly healthy food and an excellent contribution to the human diet.

Meat may not be necessary for human survival, but neither are plant products. The Mongols, Colonial Argentina, the Inuit are all examples of cultures that depended predominantly if not exclusively on animal products for their survival. The Inuit, Laplanders, and other Arctic peoples in many cases lived on such a diet until well into the 20^th century. They were found to be in perfectly good health and without vitamin deficiencies. In fact, maladies such as tooth decay were virtually unknown among these peoples until sugar and starches, both derived from plants entered their diets with the coming of modernization. Indeed, consuming plants and their derivatives comes with its own possibilities of malnutrition and illness. In parts of the world where people live predominantly on rice, vitamin deficiencies are a real problem, particularly when subsisting on polished grains. Vegetarians may point to meat borne diseases and high profile recalls as proof of its unhealthiness, but vegetables come with some of the same problems. Leafy greens, especially spinach have undergone several recalls in the last few years. Even with recalls, the meat experience is overwhelmingly safe, especially with systematic regulation. Every now and then a few people die from eating bad meat. I honestly find this statistic incredible. A food eaten by hundreds of millions of people and it cannot be connected to substantially more deaths than occur from tipped vending machines! When one examines vegetarian claims that eating animals is dangerous for humans, one finds a supremely impressive record of safety. The probability of dying from or even being poisoned by meat is negligible in comparison to the risks of everyday life.

Ideological vegetarians are fond of taking ridiculous claims even further by insisting that eating meat is an unnatural part of the human diet. They look back to prehistoric times when people supposedly traipsed naked through the forest hugging trees and gathering up acorns.(No vegetarian or vegan hunter gatherer societies have ever been found) One of their silly arguments is to point out that human hands are not particularly well suited to killing living things. This is irrelevant considering that hominids used tools long before sapiens existed and considering that meat eating is thought by paleontologists to have started out as scavenging. It is hard to know exactly what hominids ate in prehistoric times, but examination of teeth generally furnishes researchers with a pretty good idea. Location is also important. Hominids were best suited for living on the plains not in the forest. In that sort of environment, plant sources of food are not incredibly abundant while animals are often present in gigantic herds. By the time sapiens actually showed up, people were not only indisputably eating meat, but actively hunting it down as well. To claim that meat is unnatural for humans, an unfortunate result of domestication, is moronic when one considers the many species such as woolly mammoths, giant sloths, and North American camels that were all hunted down to extinction in the prehistoric past. Eating meat can in no way be said to be bad or unnatural for human beings; it is not only one of the original human foods, its consumption predates our species.

Ideological vegetarians rely on these poorly reasoned justifications as inspiration for an elaborate menu full of foods that are difficult to obtain and in many cases impossible to afford for the average citizen, even in a wealthy country. Organic foods, a staple of the vegetarian table are an excellent example. Many items instantly double in price the moment the organic label is slapped on them. Most people already have enough expenses to take care of without paying enormously more than necessary just to put food on the table. For people who do not read extensively about food products, ‘organic’ doesn’t even make much sense. Certainly almost any food product is organic in the sense that it contains biological substances. Even when one learns it’s about returning to older agricultural practices, one who is unindoctrinated might stop to wonder why that’s a good thing and why it’s worth paying more for it. Other typical mainstays of a vegetarian or vegan diet have to be imported at great expense from foreign countries or simply rank among the most expensive of fresh items at the supermarket. Fresh items in general are indispensable to the ideological vegetarian. Baby spinach is an instant hit, but canned spinach is liable to remain untouched. Fresh food of course is much more expensive than canned food and only lasts a few days. To be able to live a lifestyle full of costly foods that are delicate and spoil quickly, one must have both lots of money to buy them and lots of leisure time in which to plan out their consumption and to prepare them. Yet another requirement is constant trips to the health food store, a feat difficult to pull off for those who don’t live in the big city. The diet that ideological vegetarians adhere to and expect others to adopt is impractical for all but the rich and idle. Altogether, it is inherently hostile to the poor, the busy, and the rural. Ideological vegetarianism is by nature elitist.

Vegetarians insist their way of eating is ‘natural’ albeit with lack of evidence and in the face of glaring contradictions. When the reasoning is this flimsy it becomes clear that many of the proponents of the system must have other reasons for subscribing to it. Sophisticated, educated, urban are all images that come to mind when one thinks of common stereotypes associated with vegetarians. It is a trendy behavior associated with the wealthy. People in every age and place have a tendency to attempt to imitate the most ‘successful’ members of society. When only the rich could afford enough food, it was fashionable to have some extra body fat(look at Venus or Eve as portrayed in old paintings). Now, when only the rich can afford lots of time for physical activity, it is fashionable to have as little body fat as possible. When only the rich could stay indoors all day, it was fashionable to be pale(the classic Victorian look, the classic Geisha look). Now, when only the rich have time to be outdoors all day, it is fashionable to be tanned. When only the rich had frequent access to meat, it was fashionable to put anything that could be killed on the table.(venison, peacock, pigeon, pheasant…) Now, when anyone can cheaply buy enough meat to feed a family, it is fashionable to live on only exotic vegetables. Although ideological vegetarians have multiple motivations for their eating habits, class consciousness is certainly among them. Not only does ideological vegetarianism allow its subscribers to feel sophisticated but it comes with lots of added bonus points for moral superiority. Whether their diet makes sense or not, vegetarians can still make the big claim that killing animals for meat, clothing, gelatin, or medical research is a violation of their rights and therefore immoral.

The whole notion of animal rights is ridiculous. To participate in a system of rights, one must be able to hold their end of the bargain. This cannot be done unless one is a moral agent and conscious of one’s actions. Of all species on earth only human beings meet this criteria. Animals cannot be expected to participate in such a system and humans have only one moral responsibility to them: not to cause harm and suffering without cause. There are cases in animal husbandry when humans may sometimes overstep moral bounds, but this does not justify running around telling people that eating meat is intrinsically immoral. Undeterred even by this shortcoming, vegetarians turn to emotional appeal before argument, routinely showing footage from slaughterhouses in attempts to inspire knee-jerk reactions. Such grand theatrics seriously undermine their position when there really are serious issues and legitimate grievances associated with the sometimes murky world of factory farming. The ideological vegetarians, however, are their own worst enemies, however, in adopting fallaciously justified elitist diets combined with hysterical moral crusading and lightweight tactics that shy away even from honest discussion.

One of the biggest problems of factory farming is the treatment of workers in the meat industry. Conditions are often unhygienic, conducive to any number of diseases, musculo-skeletal disorders from repetitive motions, and injuries inflicted by moving machinery or the animals. Furthermore, these workers are usually paid poorly and have very little in the way of benefits or injury compensation. It’s not the sort of job that most people want and meat producers of course wish to keep wages and thus cost as low as possible. Therefore they turn to illegal immigrants, even going to great pains to have them smuggled into the country. Once present, the immigrants are virtually slaves because they can be threatened with being revealed to the authorities if they do not cooperate with the company’s every demand. Vegetarians do sometimes address this issue concerning the human beings involved but usually as a footnote to their larger concerns for the animals. More often, people only enter the discussion as the terrible tormentors of the poor creatures.

Then, there is the issue of pollution. When thousands of animals are kept concentrated on one small piece of land, the amount of waste produced is enormous. Factory farms produced more waste than can be used as fertilizer and end up storing the extra on site. If there is any breach of the storage containers, the local ground water, lakes, or rivers can become seriously polluted. Furthermore, ammonia fumes and gases escaping from waste storage are also dangerous contaminants. Clearly, there needs to be better technologies and more regulation for dealing with the waste.

A further problem are defining and identifying possible abuses of the animals in factory conditions. A particularly popular example might be gestation crates. These are metal boxes in which breeding sows spend most of their lives. It serves a cause of producing as much pork as possible, as cheaply as possible, but the pig spends most of its life in a space too cramped to turn around in, living in its own feces. Certainly, measures should be undertaken to find a way of generating the desired product that is better for the animal while negatively impacting the good of humanity as little as possible. In fact, it is even feasible for humans to pay slightly more for pork so that breeding sows at least have a space that can be moved around in. Indeed, some European countries and state governments in the US have already passed laws prohibiting gestation crates.

The meat industry like any other has the potential to move to excesses. Laborer treatment, pollution, and animal abuse are all potential problems but the solution is to introduce regulations that ensure the best possible situation for producers, animals, and the consumers. Reacting with inflammatory aversion and proclaiming that the solution is for no one anywhere to eat meat ever again is laughable. That is a textbook case of excess. It is likewise overreaction to insist that overcrowded animals be completely turned out of buildings and made into ‘free range’ livestock. Sows ought not to be made to suffer every moment of their lives in cage they barely fit into, but a small pen with room for walking is probably all that’s necessary to solve the problem. A popular refrain of vegetarians is “What if you were ____?” This is a question that exhibits a critical lack of understanding and represents yet another low emotional appeal. Animal desires and psychology cannot be considered synonymous with human needs. So long as animals feel safe from predators, have food to eat, and water to drink, they are perfectly content. Thus, one might ask whether factory farms compare unfavorably to being ‘free’ out in the natural world. In nature, starvation is a constant threat, the search for food takes up every minute of every day for all of life. As if that’s not enough the slightest mistake means death by predators. In this, there is no stunning shock administered nor is the animal killed within moments with a single slice of the jugular. In many cases, its intestines are ripped out while it’s still fully conscious. The weather can turn for the worst and keeping warm or cool is essential to keeping alive. All these stresses together make the task of raising young supremely difficult and draining. Chances of surviving to reproduce more than once are not terribly good. The lifespan is typically quite short, if the said specimen beats the odds and actually survives infancy. After a closer examination of what a life out in the wild actually means, it could be said that humans actually carry out a moral good by both benefiting themselves and saving animals from a brutal life at the mercy of nature.

The needs of animals are based on the requirements of survival. Concerns of dignity and fussing over living arrangements are simply not part of their psyche. Vegetarians frequently criticize the meat industry for treating its animals like production machines, as if it were somehow demeaning to the animals. Animals have no concept of machine or industry let alone the ability to associate such abstract concepts with their own state of being. Once again the vegetarians rely on an emotional appeal. Worrying whether animals are happiest in building or in a field is immaterial; they really don’t care so long as their basic needs are fulfilled. Pigs are the one agricultural animal that might merit special attention due to their high level of intelligence and as is indicated by worldwide responses to gestation crates, that problem is receiving considerable attention.

Vegetarians’ focus on hysterically emotional vilification of factory farming is so prevalent that they do not address, let alone try to refute some of the benefits of factory farming.

-Every animal can be overseen at all times and kept always fed and watered.

-Every animal is indoors and proteceted from predators and the elements

-Meat is produced more cheaply on less land.

-Without free range livestock related problems such as overgrazing, erosion, driving out native species avoided.

-Complete control over every animal at all times ensures unprecedented power in upholding set quality standards.

Factory farms are an extremely efficient and effective means of providing meat, perhaps the only way to supply millions and even billions of people reliably on a regular basis. Fortunately, vegetarians at this point actually start submitting arguments again:

-If only people ate more plant products instead, factory farms would not be necessary.

-If only all the land used for livestock were turned into green farm fields instead…

-Farm animals are fed more food than they produce. Net loss. Bad for all the starving people.

-As for the first point, the vegetarians are not able to persuade everyone that their way is the only way to eat. Likewise they also are not able to convince everyone to cut back on meat consumption. Therefore, for people to all reliably eat less meat and more plant products, world governments would have to enter citizens’ homes and tell them what they can eat in what quantities. This program would not only violate basic freedoms, it would be exceedingly difficult and expensive to enforce even in a totalitarian state.

-Grazing land is typically made into grazing land because it is unsuitable for agriculture. Furthermore, factory farms more or less solve this problem by eliminating the need for grazing land.

-Farm animals are fed great quantities of foods such as soybeans and sorghum in a minimally processed form. The land growing these foods is not needed in countries such as the US which have gigantic crop surpluses. In countries where it is not practical to grow feed, animals are grazed in non-arable land. There already is more than enough food to feed the entire world, but it is not readily transportable from wealthy countries to poorer lands because the local leaders cannot be relied upon to distribute donated food to their people. Wealthy countries possibly could invent huge and expensive replacement bureaucracies to distribute food to millions, but the local leaders would certainly shut down any entity competing with their power very quickly. The only option would be to invade every poor country in the world and force food to be distributed with a massive government imposed by the conquerors. With the fighting, chaos, sectarian violence, and uprisings countless thousands would die in the constant warfare. Infrastructure would break down and the goal of supplying food to the starving remain out of reach. In fact, there would probably be more starving people than before.

The net loss of food cannot be as great as vegetarians seem to think. Besides meat, there are also dairy products and eggs to consider. Furthermore, one may be losing crude grains unfit for human consumption in return for some of the best sources of protein, amino acids, calcium, and the elusive vitamin D. That certainly does not seem like a good description of a loss.

The ideological vegetarians have their arguments concerning the economic and political factors of meat, but they typically spring from total ignorance of the world and its basic realities. The very fact that they believe farm animals should no longer be killed for their valuable products is the ultimate testament to their astounding lack of comprehension and sheer depth of disconnection. Farm animals are domestic animals. As domestic animals they cannot survive if people do not give them food and protection. People will no longer feed livestock if they serve no function. Therefore several species and all their hundreds of sub-varieties would quickly starve to death en masse. If ideological vegetarians are to attain their goals, they must be in favor of massive extinction. A few strains would perhaps be preserved in zoos and nostalgia ranches, but their once great range and population would be a thing of the past, their continued existence a rarity and a curiosity. They would for all practical purposes be gone.

Only a few animals could be retained if they served no practical function and produced no profit. The rest would starve in countless millions. There would be far too many to euthanize, shock, shoot, or gas within a short period of time. The animals would waste away, suffering every moment until death. Their meat, hides, hooves, organs, milk, and eggs would go unused; they would be suffering for no cause. Therefore it would be the most egregious case of immoral treatment of animals in human history. I suppose I could pretend I was a vegetarian for a moment and propose a scenario in which the government imposed additional taxes on the populace to support millions of useless farm animals until they died of old age. This is so far on the side of the absurd I feel the need to stop its further consideration.

Ideological vegetarians are typically brimming with good intentions, but they do little more than create unfounded moral quandaries from the top of their exclusive ivory tower. Their case is a powerful example of how well-meaning people made overzealous by emotionally driven, reckless idealism can easily come to formulate solutions and reforms with disastrous implications. They end up creating worse problems than the ones they attempt to solve and even end up with results that are opposite of what they intend. If those who are vegetarians for ideological reasons were allowed to enact the reforms they so naively and stridently attempt to impose on others, they would cause the mass extinction of the very animals they are attempting to save and worst of all, bring about the greatest immoral suffering humans have ever inflicted on animals.

Being ideological is not a bad thing. It is good that humans are able to dream about a better world even if it is not consistent with the present reality. In conjunction with measured reason and careful consideration, an idealist’s dream can become a shining accomplishment. These are people who really change the world and who many people look to as role models. Not one of them could have succeeded, however, had they not also been denizens of the earth who understood how to integrate their visions with the realities of life.

Neatness: The Religion of the Rectal-Linear

For some years I have come to think of neatness as the Western version of Feng Shui. It is an ethic of lining things up and setting them in just the right way for the preservation of harmony. The similarity with Eastern superstition could not escape me, its arbitrary rituals seemed like ceremonial obeisance to some celestial denizen. While Chinese folk traditions are brimming with colorful language and portents of auspicious days and locations, the Western Feng Shui clearly lacked similar imagination and vitality. My comparison between the two philosophies derived solely from their shared emphasis on mystical knowledge of the proper way of things. There was an element of irony in thinking of neatness in this way, I could think of all the wise sages exhaustively sorting out every item in their possession.

For a time I was content with this cool, bemused, relatively indifferent stance towards the neat, but there was something about their ways and Western society’s widespread encouragement of such habits that continued to bother me. Not only did something strike me as fundamentally wrong about it, but I ceased to dismiss it as purely irrational and began considering the issue more closely.

In the professional environment, it is necessary to have a rigid structure to keep track of every order, plan around a just in time inventory, and make sure every cent of revenue is spent as prescribed. In the workplace a strict system of organization and cleanliness has a clear place and function. Adopting a philosophy of neatness is most effective in the corporate world, but inappropriate as a personal creed. When individuals adhere to such a method, they end up spending more time and energy maintaining their system than they could ever gain from it. Supporters of neatness often make claims about the time saved by organization without taking all the upkeep into account. Keeping everything placed perfectly straight, always in the same place, and spotlessly clean is a boon when a hundred people are using the same resource and sharing the burden of maintenance, but detrimental and pointless when there is one person. For an individual to maintain such a system is a constant thankless chore that brings joy to no one and which fails to achieve its declared objective of saving time. There is ultimately no clearly defined end goal or fulfillment, so it is hard to imagine that neat persons can feel much satisfaction with their labors. Furthermore, a neat person must be perpetually dissatisfied with all other human beings. When a system of organization defies reason, those who are not mind readers are hard pressed to conform to a neatnik’s imaginary kingdom of order. It is unsurprising then that such an eternal spring of dissatisfaction tends to spill from one life into others.

Most people are content to live and let live. They could care less how other people arrange their personal matters, less still about their personal spaces. One trait in common among neat people is that they believe themselves endowed with the right to waste the time and energy of others as well as their own for the sake of their philosophy. A messy person doesn’t care if his neighbor is neat. A neat neighbor probably experiences a significant rise in blood pressure every time they see the lawn next door getting too long for their taste. It seems characteristic of neatness to be aggressive, even invasive in nature. It is such patronization and presumptuousness that make the much praised proponents of cleanliness so often obnoxious. They behave in their informal, personal life as though they are still at the office and hold others, who desperately desire time away from work to similar standards. Their preferred style of living is contrary to the spontaneous nature of relaxed human beings and inevitably clashes with the personalities of almost everyone around them. The supposedly successful routines of rectal-linear persons are in fact anti-social and outright rude.

The behaviors of the neat send a message of contempt and dismissal to the rest of humanity. Both delicate and inflexible, their system is perfectly conceived for regular disruption at the slightest intervention of an outside force. The involvement of people is thus practically inimical to their way of life. They get upset at fellow human beings for so much as moving a single item out of place, a reaction that suggests they hold their arbitrary order in greater esteem than their guests, relatives, neighbors, and roommates. One must also consider the very fact that neat people like everything to be set perfectly straight, in perfect rows, in perfect order. The place they like for themselves and for others to live in is something that might be created by a machine. The rectal-linear in effect strive to erase all that is typically human from their vicinity. Organic materials, including people are unwelcome in their sterile environment. When a host is bent on eliminating any sign of their guest’s presence with all possible speed, the guest must begin to wonder if in fact he is welcome. It comes across as impersonal and dehumanizing when one treats people the same way they do their paperwork: something to be cleared out of the way. The rectal-linear find the irregularities and idiosyncracies of individuals to be fundamentally odious and

offensive. Any element that they cannot control to the utmost degree of precision rankles them to no end.

The residence of one who is neat is typically empty of personality; one could possibly wonder if anyone even lives there. A clean and tidy domicile is more of a barracks than a home. The vast majority of the space is empty and what items cannot be thrown out are stored away in specially designated boxes and drawers. Messy people, understand that the floor is the best storage place. Every available surface in fact is to covered with every conceivable item of use. This way, everything is out in the open and instantly accessible. No effort at all is spent systematizing; there’s no need when one makes full use of available space. An empty floor serves no function at all, it is simply undeveloped real estate. So long as one is able to walk across the room, there is no problem. The eight foot long journey has to become rather difficult before it merits thought, let alone effort.

A messy person never searches for dust and dirt. If it can’t be seen or smelled without actually looking for it, there are undoubtedly more important, more fulfilling uses for one’s time. If chasing dust is the best activity one can conceive of, it is necessary to seriously reflect upon one’s life. Besides, a little dust adds scent and character to things. Where would old books be without a little dust? The neat of course have no room or time for old books; they are thrown out with everything else that is not of immediate use. Messy people like to have miscellania on hand that can give ideas, inspiration, memories of times gone by. They understand that one cannot always predict what will be of use in the future. Ultimately, the messy approach entails both minimal effort and regrets. individual’s changing needs. Possessions are cleaned up or thrown out only when there is a clear reason to do so. Cleaning brings joy to no one, it takes up time, it is never to be done for its own sake. The spontaneous, informal way actually is a system of organization, one that is flexible, varies widely from person to person, and requires minimal maintenance. It is thus far better suited to the needs of an individual.

Neatness, having no clear justification is ultimately practiced to for its own sake. The full absurdity of this condition becomes clear in certain instances of paradox: Rectal-linears go through great effort to see to it that their lawns are perfectly cut, trimmed, and manicured. A reasonable being would suppose that they would then enjoy the fruits of their labor by spending ample time out on the plot they worked so hard on. Perhaps they would go out to play horseshoes or set up tables and chairs for an outdoor picnic. Astoundingly, the contrary is true. The neat person avoids so much as touching the lawn and becomes absolutely livid if anyone so much as steps on this pristine piece of green. The neat person completely forgets that the very purpose of a lawn is to have a place to feel soil underneath one’s feet and have an area for recreation even in the city. There is also no reason that stepping on a lawn should inspire any great ire. One could walk on it all day without causing any damage at all. It’s grass. Such an instance demonstrates both the arbitrariness and petty spitefulness of the neat. For little more than groundless superstition they treat both themselves and others with a poor and miserly spirit. Rather than promoting neatness as correct conduct in Western civilization, neat people should be encouraged to seek counseling and instruction in basic social skills.

Cool Hand Luke: A Rebel Against His Cause

Cool Hand Luke is a movie about a perfectly intelligent and capable young man who throws away the numerous opportunities given him by life. He ends up in jail for pointlessly destroying parking meters and although he has a shorter sentence than any of the other inmates, he causes trouble with such determination that the inevitable result is his destruction. This was a film made in 1967, the middle of the Vietnam War. To the radicals who so influenced the culture of the times, authority by its very nature was suspect. Accordingly, Lucas, the protagonist, spends the entire film fighting against a gigantic ‘establishment’ against which he has no hope of winning. The futility of his cause is alluded to during a boxing match with a fellow inmate who pummels him repeatedly. The onlookers shout at him to give up, that his opponent is simply too big for him to defeat. Lucas refuses to surrender, continuing to take a beating even though he is beyond the point of offering resistance. His motive to resist is of the purest order—defiance for the sake of defiance.

Unwilling to accept authority for any amount of time, he begins escaping from the prison even though he has nowhere to go to and virtually no chance of getting away for long. Every time he is recaptured, he ends up with leg irons, more rules, and harsh punishments. With each escape, Lucas is shown running through open countryside, symbolically jumping over all manner of barriers and fences as he goes. Such a scene may have seemed heroic in the 1960s, but I couldn’t help but think that Luke could have run free to his heart’s contentment if he had but refrained from a senseless crime. He broke the main condition upon which his freedom depended: the obligation to leave others, their freedoms, and their property unharmed. As strongly as Luke seemed to believe himself a victim of rules and regulations, he was imprisoned for the protection of the very freedoms he strove for. Freedom must be earned and Luke insisted that he was entitled to it, even at the expense of others.

Much of the film takes place on a chain gang, laboring day after day down an empty road that seems to stretch on forever. It is perhaps a commentary on the life led by a typical conformist working away at some job until life comes to an end. The workers are kept in line by a ‘man with no eyes,’ an intimidating figure representative of authority who tirelessly watches over them. His eyes are always covered by reflective glasses, his vision is penetrating, and his aim with a rifle is flawless.In the context of ‘60s rebellion, conformity came to mean following any traditional rules whatever, especially those laid down by authority figures. Real conformity, of course, is thoughtlessly adhering to rules that are arbitrary or unjust. Luke’s defiance for the sake of defiance drives him to violate and treat with contempt the basic conditions one must meet to exist in a human society. The price for eating food grown on a farm and wearing clothing made in a factory is a minimum of return contribution and deference. Unwilling to cooperate, Luke needlessly escalates the conflict which he has created to its climax.

Luke knows he will be killed if he escapes a third time and of course does so as soon as he can possibly manage. His victory lies in provoking authority to overstep its bounds, an outcome which he knows he will soon achieve as he says a last prayer in a dark church. Soon he is surrounded, and the man with no eyes waits for him outside. Luke sticks his head out the window and repeats one of the film’s famous lines just before he is silenced forever with a bullet through his throat. Authority’s mandate to enforce rules stems from protecting the individual. It is in the moment that Luke is destroyed by the powers that exist to preserve that he is fulfilled. Authority loses sight of its purpose, reverting to a common tyranny. The ‘man with no eyes’ loses his glasses soon afterwards and gropes for them blindly in the mud. He does not succeed in regaining his sight and the viewer sees the glasses crushed beneath the tires of cop cars as the authorities leave the scene. Though Justice entails a form of blindness, it is in the interest of gaining a clearer sort of vision. The ‘man with no eyes’ loses justice and is cast into a true blindness upon slaying Luke. He is vanquished the moment he carries out an act of vengeance and crushes an individual for the sake of the many.

Cool Hand Luke is the product of a dark era that gave rise to pessimism and doubt in the USA. It succeeds to this day as an exploration of boundaries in the relationship between the individual and society. As a story it is delightful and entertaining. Luke may be unreasonable, but he is roguishly likeable and possesses an undeniable charisma. He pulls off even the most pointless defiance and self-destructive acts with enjoyment and style. Only he can succeed in the end as a rebel against his own cause.

Ways of Drinking

I had my first alcoholic drink at the age of 21 and a half. Before that point, I had told plenty of people I was never going to drink. It seemed an unnecessary danger as well as an unnecessary expense. My family had a long history of alcoholism and I had heard alcohol damaged the brain in any case. The only drinking culture I was familiar with beforehand was that which exists in America, particularly its younger crowd. In the United States use of liquor is associated with getting drunk. Drunkenness is achieved using the cheapest liquor possible. Watery canned lagers are consumed by the case(An impractical, flavorless way of getting drunk). Even when the party people see sense, they resort to the cheapest rum and vodka, drinks so noxious that they usually have to be mixed with something else. Even so, these cheapest drinks cause them to throw up and cause monster hangovers.

I found this American drinking culture to be repugnant. I could not think of a single good reason to participate. In fact, I asked people why they did it. Most people told me it ‘loosened them up, got rid of inhibitions.’ This was less than convincing as I remembered some nights on campus when it sounded as though several species of dinosaurs were calling out in the night. There were some inhibitions I thought I would rather keep. The only possible lure was the association of drinking culture with getting laid. Even so, drunken sex, I could infer is for the most part forgotten the next day and is a fantastic way to knock someone up, get an STD, or both. It occurred to me that one might be inclined to forget condoms and pills while inebriated. I continued to ask people why they did it and I still got the same answer. The reasons I wasn’t being given became evident in personal observations and reading on the subject. It was an odd, self-destructive ritual of social acceptance. The bizarre ethos of youth drinking showed itself when I listened to party people boast about how they had turned a drunken friend’s head while prone so he wouldn’t choke on his own vomit. This they cited to me as if it were evidence of how their drinking culture promoted interdependence and bonding. I was disgusted that these people were willing to put themselves in danger to have a bonding experience by having their friends save them from themselves. What really struck me wrong was that the entire situation upon which they were desperately trying to create friendships was wholly contrived. This fundamental falseness and dishonesty turned me off above all else. The emotional dependence of party people on drinking troubled me. Plenty of party people told me they thought it was fine I didn’t drink, but I couldn’t help but notice that I was always outside of their inner circle, which consisted of fellow party people. They say that there’s no pressure to drink but they don’t quite seem to be aware that it simply isn’t true. In any case, there was a decision to make. I rejected the drinking culture and by extension, alcoholic beverages.

 

My perspective began to change when I studied abroad in Argentina and lived with a family there. Evening meals would quite often be served with a glass of red wine. I would opt for water instead, but no one cared. It was no more important than whether I wanted milk or fruit juice; it was just a beverage to be had with a meal. No one ever drank enough to become even mildly intoxicated and it quickly became clear I was witnessing something different. I eventually tried some wine and found it to be very much an acquired taste. Even so, I liked from the beginning how a bit of it could clean the palate of flavorful, thick, or salty foods. The flavor itself quickly grew on me until I actually preferred a glass of wine with dinner. I returned from Argentina a drinker and I quickly got into trying different drinks for the pleasure of the taste, the feeling on the palate, and a mild relaxing effect after a long day. I learned I had started out on some of the driest and most flavorful reds and after acquiring the taste, liked them best of all. From wines I expanded into liqueurs, whiskeys, meads, beers, brandies, cognacs, cocktails, and absinthe. Even with the passage the last few years, I have gotten intoxicated only rarely and never anywhere near the point of being unable to freely move about. I have never had a hangover and I have never thrown up from drinking. Rather, it has been an engaging hobby and a celebration of the senses.

The trend of needlessly destructive drinking that seems so strong in the USA in part arises from the fact that alcohol is stigmatized and kept in the closet. Since it is treated as some forbidden substance it is a natural temptation for impulsive children, who never having been taught a healthy ethic of imbibing alcohol, quickly move to excess. They don’t even know exactly what they’re doing to themselves until they’re already drunk. During my time in college, it was almost always freshmen who would drink to the point of alcohol poisoning. They were young men and women who drank like children in the truest sense. Without Mom and Dad to keep an eye on them, they were utterly clueless. Ironically, cultures in which consumption of alcohol is a part of everyday life and the family seem to have less of a problem with such reckless abuse. When alcohol is no mysterious substance nor an elixir of adulthood, there is less motivation to drink for the sake of getting drunk.

In the United States at present, drinkers are growing fewer every year and I can’t blame them for abstaining. One could live a lifetime in American society without seeing alcohol cause anything but the misery that results from its chronic abuse. They might never know that there is another way of drinking.

Eye of the Cougar: Reaching True Equality Between Men and Women

There was a news article that filled me with admiration and delight earlier this year about a 65 year old woman who successfully saved her 70 year old husband’s life from an attacking cougar. She bashed the animal over the head repeatedly with a log and even took a pen from her husband’s person and jammed it into the animal’s eye socket. Then she continued to bash with the log and scream until the animal finally let go of her husband’s head and went away. The bravery and fierceness of her action was an inspiration to me. That’s my kind of woman. Throughout human civilization it has historically been the duty of a man to protect women and it remains so to this day. Very few feminists have shown initiative in adopting any of the obligations of male citizens that involve personal risk or which are generally disagreeable. Among those duties is military service. Every young man is compelled by United States law to sign up for selective service, an act that puts their life on the line to protect their country should they be called upon. Women now stand equal to men under the law, yet face no similar obligation.

Feminist groups are inclined to insist that injustices wrought by their imaginary ‘patriarchy’ continue but in turn act with little to no sense of justice. They do nothing against and have even supported an existing system in which women get drastically less severe prison sentences than men, get preferential treatment in divorce courts, and are able to send men to prison based on word alone in cases of sexual misconduct. In the schools, new disorder labels are appearing seemingly every year and the group to which they are applied is overwhelmingly male. In the workforce, jobs that involve personal danger are almost unanimously filled by men. Perhaps most importantly, if there is a war that requires more than the nation’s volunteer force, men too young to have an alcoholic drink will be drafted and sent out to die in combat. Women will be able to stay safely at home if they like.

The case of the woman against the cougar brings me feelings of optimism that the system must eventually change and a new equality be reached. So too do the women fighting in Iraq even though their country is divided over whether they even belong in the line of fire. As the cause of feminism becomes ever more reactionary and isolated, women are showing that they are able and willing to stand alongside men as partners and equals under a system based on fairness and shared duties as citizens. However, there is not yet any major organized female movement to help bridge the gap. It seems, unfortunately, that men will be largely responsible for taking the final steps to true equality.

Dieting Is Not the Answer

Dieting is probably the single most popular method of ‘shedding the pounds’ even though it is one of the least effective ways of doing so.  I would guess that this popularity comes from the fact that it seems such an easy way out.  Supposedly all one has to do is eat a little less food and change around the content of one’s meals.  This small step, unfortunately, never seems to really work out.  The ubiquitous sorrow of dieters is the constant craving to return to the foods they used to eat, the unending desire to eat just a bit more, and despair at seeing the pounds quickly return with any lapse of discipline.  These are all signs of the truth; that dieting is a fundamentally wrong-headed and short-sighted approach to achieving good health.

            The downfall of dieting is above all its obsessive focus on changing the purely cosmetic in as little time as possible.  More often than not, it is about trimming the waist down for swim suit season, and not about leading a healthy lifestyle.  Motivating dieting is a fundamentally flawed ethic; the perception of one’s physical wellbeing as just another annoying dilemma, like electric bills, to be solved with a quick fix.  The truth is that a healthier body is achieved through a consistent lifestyle based upon regular exercise and sound nutrition, not through painful rituals of self deprivation that last until the individual loses their will to endure.  Strangely enough, though, dieters seem to take almost perverse satisfaction in the pain they undergo as a cause of their arcane eating habits.  They seem to have a concept that stems from the fundamental flaw in their approach—that eating must be paid for with sufficient atonement and guilt as electricity is paid for with money.  The end result for each case in theory is that the problem is swiftly dispensed with and gone until it is next brought to the individual’s attention.

            The human body, however, cannot be deferred until next month.  It is the constant vessel of our existence and the decisions made every day shape its rhythms and tendencies.  Good health and the leaner body that results is not the product of a month, but of a lifetime.  Deciding to change months or years of precedent within a short period is like trying all at once to stop the inertia of a moving ship and then immediately change its direction.  Thus, dieters have the sensation of tugging against an overwhelming force.

           

            Any solution to the issues of body weight and health must be established on a correct understanding of the human body.  To bring real change, one must gradually leave behind a sedentary lifestyle.  It is true that beginning exercise will be painful to those who are unaccustomed to physical activity, but the human form is far more capable than most people realize.  Within a month, a sedentary person can reach the threshold where exercise no longer feels awkward and painful.  A month might seem like a long time to endure, but once surmounted, the way is open to achieve years of good health and enjoyment.  In comparison, an awful month of dieting invariably ends in guilt and failure.  Even in the rare and temporary instance of success, one is changed in only the most superficial sense.  The old system remains, struggling always to return to its normal state; the body is scarcely any healthier than before.  Ultimately, the very practice of cutting back on calories is a self-defeating behavior.  The body responds by conserving energy and storing up what it can; the status quo resumes the moment the fasting is broken.

            Regular exercise, on the other hand, changes the very way the body processes energy.  The body well-cared for craves nutrient rich, hearty foods.  Empty calories, excessive sweeteners, and grease become repugnant.  Dieters like to cut out carbohydrates and every form of fat, trying to live off of lettuce and low calorie shakes.  The very materials they attempt dispense with are essential for a healthy, physically active person.  In fact, many endurance athletes observe a practice known as ‘carbo-loading’ the night before a competition or challenging workout.  Gaining excessive weight is simply not a concern for someone who frequently gets out and moves around.  For the physically active, eating healthy portions of good food is an enjoyable daily necessity.  Overeating loses its appeal with increasing fitness and fades from one’s lifestyle.  People who work out have fine-tuned bodies that give warnings when the balance is disrupted; they suffer acutely from abuse that a sedentary person might be able to ignore.  Once a regimen of fitness is adhered to for a time, it is as though a ship has gained inertia in a desirable direction—it is a course that requires great force to change.  The very principle of the human body that frustrates dieters is the ally and aid of one who pursues fitness.

The Dark Joke of the Modern Totalitarian State

Some of the most ruthless individuals who ever lived, the rulers of Nazi Germany comprised a weird, oddly comical collection of personalities no author could ever have conceived of. They were the type that get left out at (or not invited to) dinner parties: Hess and Roehm, gays in a regime that reviled homosexuality, Himmler, the disgruntled chicken farmer, Papen, the effete noble, Goebbels, failed playwright and pint-sized propagandist, Funk the obsequious Wormtail, and Frick the professional desk jockey who signed off people’s lives as if it were any other paperwork. Nay forget Ribbentrop a diplomat with no social skills, Keitel the military yes man, and Rosenberg, the pseudo-philosopher. As weird as all the rest put together was Adolf Hitler, a failed artist, ex-homeless person, a man who actually enjoyed WWI, who was a vegetarian yet ate a mountain of sweets every day, whose tantrums were so intense that detractors referred to him as ‘carpet chewer’, who sported history’s most ridiculous mustache, who was a megalomaniac incapable of having a two way conversation. Only Goering—the flying ace and popular war hero with his infectious grin balanced out the cast of criminals. If it were not horribly real, one might think it some warped black comedy. People would certainly wonder if the author was mentally imbalanced.

What originates that certain sense of weird one gets when looking upon these deranged rulers and the states they create? Do maladjusted minds bent on oppression have a certain element in common?

***

Across the river Spree in modern Berlin, it is clear that the East German regime was in force not so long ago. When I was staying there, I most definitely got a monstrous, unsettling feeling of weirdness.  In the Friedrichshain district, it was tough to get a street address because of the gigantic blocky buildings with no signs that took up an entire city block and which were built along vacant eight lane roads and 20 meter wide sidewalks. The balconies of towering, dismal condos were painted bright primary colors in eye scorchingly poor taste, and the subway interiors all through the East side were tiled in single colors varying at each stop between mud brown, bile yellow, and scrubs green. In the sterile and ominous atmosphere of the former STASI headquarters, there were landscapes of Mitte district hung on the walls rendered in simple patterns and neutral colors—as if it were a design for a paper cup.

Thinking over it all, I wonder if such mind boggling oddness is just a byproduct of modern dictators. Consider Kim Jong Il, an autocrat who denounces Western culture, yet for whom a basketball signed by Michael Jordan is an appropriate gift. Consider the tyrant Ceausescu, a cobbler, who while oppressing Romania for more than twenty years, hailed himself as ‘The Danube of Thought.’ He squeezed a country impoverished by his disastrous policies to build himself a ‘people’s palace’ of bizarrely grandiose proportions.(James Bond would opine he had an edifice complex.) In Berlin, almost all of the Third Reich buildings were destroyed, but the former Luftwaffe headquarters remains—a giant neo-classical brick that of course covers an entire block.

Absolute rulers have been common throughout history and gigantic palaces a staple, but something sharply distinguishes the variety that arose from nation states in the 20^th century. Most autocrats of the past paid at least nominal respects to a higher power or ideology (God, the Gods, the way of Heaven) and had a whole host of bureaucrats, nobles, and even eunuchs over whom they had varying degrees of control. Some of these rulers certainly rivaled modern dictators in ruthlessness and vanity, but there were other powers in the state they had to contend with and they did not have the same opportunities provided by later technology. The new tyrants in contrast establish themselves at the top of the ideological and spiritual hierarchy. The resulting state is founded on a strange cult of personality. Any checks and balances of power such as parliaments and elections are just a quick fix for discontent or a phony show for the benefit of other nations. Mass media and cameras allow the unrestrained dictator to infiltrate every aspect of every citizen’s life and modern weaponry gives the ability to oppress millions with impunity even while loathed by all except for a cadre of well-paid loyalists.

This unparalleled power enjoyed by a modern totalitarian ruler, rather than being awe inspiring ironically has an opposite effect. Culture, artwork, and architecture suffer ludicrously with the suppression of free thought. With every absurdly large and blocky building the dictator constructs, every unremarkable portrait that is painted, and every dull propaganda-laced program put on the air, the comically bloated egotism and small, self-serving thought behind it all becomes ever more apparent. In this lies a certain dark joke, that these improbable people who no one would want at their dinner party are running a country. Their willingness to hide cameras in people’s houses, in the clothing of unofficial informers, and even tree trunks says more about their own petty paranoia and personal abyss of insecurity than it does about those who are monitored through every day for any trace of treason.

Visiting the vestiges of totalitarian states gave me feelings of dread, fear, a spine-tingling cold, and at times the urge to laugh. All together, it comprised that feeling of weirdness. A medieval ruler had no equivalent means of direct observation, influence, and involvement, but with these new technologies, more light is shed on the deepest intent of the autocrat—the drive to subsume an entire population into their being until it becomes indistinguishable from any other bodily appendage.

Madeleine L’engle, in a Wrinkle in Time, imagines a world called Camazotz where an entire society functions in perfect synchrony with a central, disembodied brain. The slightest act of non-conformity is treated as an aberration and pathogen; a threat to the body. I found myself thinking of Camazotz as I encountered the unnaturally square, coldly utilitarian, the eerily tidy, and the chillingly bland. However, I very much doubt that such a terrible allegorical world could ever come to be. The mission of a megalomaniac goes against the very grain of the human spirit and from this folly, I think, derives the dark joke.