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.

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.  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.