(no subject)
"In America, we don't (nor are we encouraged to) look inside ourselves for healing, finding truths or answers. If you want to know something, you find out what the Person in Charge of This Area says. [...] Becoming responsible is about quitting the 'expert' addiction." -Inga Muscio
When I was 13, I told my shrink I didn't believe in experts or expertise, that I thought people were just people and experts were people who liked to learn about one particular thing but they were still just people and not insurmountably superior to me. I said I didn't think it was wise to worship experts. She pretty quickly set about convincing me otherwise.... Not a big surprise considering the money she was making on being an expert.
Paul's parents found out he's gay and his father's being a first-rate asshole about it, saying nasty things and threatening to stop paying for his USC education so that he'd have to return to Tennessee where they could keep an eye on him and mold him into the straight son of their dreams. I'm so sick of these people, my friends' parents with their mumbo-jumbo religions and half-baked convictions prescribed to them by an ancient book that also emphasizes things like the proper way to sell your daughter into slavery and the exact measurements of appropriate facial hair. I've seen enough Christian hate for one summer and not nearly enough Christian love. It's like Mr. Bowie says: "They're so natural- religiously unkind."
Hey, so, it turns out that feelings are okay. Certain persons who exclusively glorify being rational had me convinced that feelings are bad. And not just bad feelings like unjustified anger and bitter jealousy, but all feelings. Feelings are not primarily thought-based. They spring up, unfounded and uncensored, from some unidentified source within and can't be precisely explained. They are frequently understandable, but rarely "logical". Thus, I have been taught, they are not to be discussed and are to be supressed, if possible. I ought to be ashamed whenever I burden anyone with anything from an "I'm lonely" to an "I love you". Because anything that's not rational, quantifiable, and productive is personal and embarrassing. Bull shit. I have feelings and so do you. Mine are often irrational and so are yours. And that's alright. I am tired of being tutored in how not to be human. I want to be human. I want to feel, as well as to think. You know how Little League baseball is frequently vastly more entertaining to watch than Major League baseball? That's because the little kids trip and cheer and miss the ball and get excited and forget not to overrun third, whereas in the big leagues, the games often run like clockwork, like some kind of video game played by a video game addict. I don't want my life to be Major League basball, smooth and calculated, devoid of feelings and other similar nonsense. I want highs and lows and fits and starts and LIFE, real life. Aldous Huxley wrote:
Said the Controller, "we prefer to do things comfortably."
"But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin."
"In fact," said Mustapha Mond, "you're claiming the right to be unhappy."
"All right then," said the Savage defiantly, "I'm claiming the right to be unhappy."
Me too. I'm claiming the right to feel and, with it, the right to be unhappy. And happy. And angry. And giddy. And jealous. And loved. And everything.
The Conservatives are historically, notoriously, and nearly definitively better funded and better organized than the Liberals. This makes sense. Conservatives, after all, wish to conserve- to preserve- the current system, the status quo. Why? Because it is within this system that they have been successful, that they have made their wealth and established their connections. Conservatives are not categorically evil; they are just people who want to continue to be successful, who don't want to change what works for them. So the Conservatives are the status quo champions, the recent success stories. With success comes money and power. They have more of both than the Liberals, the folks who are trying to change things, to implement a system that differs from the status quo that has so served the Conservatives. But, in spite of this perpetual disadvantage dealt to the Liberals, they're winning. Say what you like about Congressional seats and ambiguous chads. Those are but passing statistics. The proof is in the real world, where people are, by and large, entertaining the idea of tolerance and achieving freedom to a degree that would have seemed absurd, blasphemous, to our ancestors. For all their evils, television, the media, comic strips, writers, comedians, people all over the world are bending, breaking the rules to bring a more liberal consciousness to humanity. And left fuming are the Conservatives who wonder whatever happened to the good old days when a person needed only to be rich and well-connected to be able to lord over his fellows with self-serving principles. Well I'm sorry ol' boys. You can bluster all you want about the increasing permissiveness of society. You can spew racist, sexist, ageist, imperialist, homophobic garbage 'til you're blue in the face. And you can go to church and pray for our souls. But, at the end of the day, don't forget to chalk up a point for the underdog. Thanks.
Okay, I'm done. Just one more brief announcement:
Rosie and my swing dance/going away party will be held Saturday, August 7 2004. The time and place are still to be announced. Keep watching for details.
When I was 13, I told my shrink I didn't believe in experts or expertise, that I thought people were just people and experts were people who liked to learn about one particular thing but they were still just people and not insurmountably superior to me. I said I didn't think it was wise to worship experts. She pretty quickly set about convincing me otherwise.... Not a big surprise considering the money she was making on being an expert.
Paul's parents found out he's gay and his father's being a first-rate asshole about it, saying nasty things and threatening to stop paying for his USC education so that he'd have to return to Tennessee where they could keep an eye on him and mold him into the straight son of their dreams. I'm so sick of these people, my friends' parents with their mumbo-jumbo religions and half-baked convictions prescribed to them by an ancient book that also emphasizes things like the proper way to sell your daughter into slavery and the exact measurements of appropriate facial hair. I've seen enough Christian hate for one summer and not nearly enough Christian love. It's like Mr. Bowie says: "They're so natural- religiously unkind."
Hey, so, it turns out that feelings are okay. Certain persons who exclusively glorify being rational had me convinced that feelings are bad. And not just bad feelings like unjustified anger and bitter jealousy, but all feelings. Feelings are not primarily thought-based. They spring up, unfounded and uncensored, from some unidentified source within and can't be precisely explained. They are frequently understandable, but rarely "logical". Thus, I have been taught, they are not to be discussed and are to be supressed, if possible. I ought to be ashamed whenever I burden anyone with anything from an "I'm lonely" to an "I love you". Because anything that's not rational, quantifiable, and productive is personal and embarrassing. Bull shit. I have feelings and so do you. Mine are often irrational and so are yours. And that's alright. I am tired of being tutored in how not to be human. I want to be human. I want to feel, as well as to think. You know how Little League baseball is frequently vastly more entertaining to watch than Major League baseball? That's because the little kids trip and cheer and miss the ball and get excited and forget not to overrun third, whereas in the big leagues, the games often run like clockwork, like some kind of video game played by a video game addict. I don't want my life to be Major League basball, smooth and calculated, devoid of feelings and other similar nonsense. I want highs and lows and fits and starts and LIFE, real life. Aldous Huxley wrote:
Said the Controller, "we prefer to do things comfortably."
"But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin."
"In fact," said Mustapha Mond, "you're claiming the right to be unhappy."
"All right then," said the Savage defiantly, "I'm claiming the right to be unhappy."
Me too. I'm claiming the right to feel and, with it, the right to be unhappy. And happy. And angry. And giddy. And jealous. And loved. And everything.
The Conservatives are historically, notoriously, and nearly definitively better funded and better organized than the Liberals. This makes sense. Conservatives, after all, wish to conserve- to preserve- the current system, the status quo. Why? Because it is within this system that they have been successful, that they have made their wealth and established their connections. Conservatives are not categorically evil; they are just people who want to continue to be successful, who don't want to change what works for them. So the Conservatives are the status quo champions, the recent success stories. With success comes money and power. They have more of both than the Liberals, the folks who are trying to change things, to implement a system that differs from the status quo that has so served the Conservatives. But, in spite of this perpetual disadvantage dealt to the Liberals, they're winning. Say what you like about Congressional seats and ambiguous chads. Those are but passing statistics. The proof is in the real world, where people are, by and large, entertaining the idea of tolerance and achieving freedom to a degree that would have seemed absurd, blasphemous, to our ancestors. For all their evils, television, the media, comic strips, writers, comedians, people all over the world are bending, breaking the rules to bring a more liberal consciousness to humanity. And left fuming are the Conservatives who wonder whatever happened to the good old days when a person needed only to be rich and well-connected to be able to lord over his fellows with self-serving principles. Well I'm sorry ol' boys. You can bluster all you want about the increasing permissiveness of society. You can spew racist, sexist, ageist, imperialist, homophobic garbage 'til you're blue in the face. And you can go to church and pray for our souls. But, at the end of the day, don't forget to chalk up a point for the underdog. Thanks.
Okay, I'm done. Just one more brief announcement:
Rosie and my swing dance/going away party will be held Saturday, August 7 2004. The time and place are still to be announced. Keep watching for details.