Some people come into your life for a reason, a season or a lifetime (author unknown).
Some people intersect us like hasty passers-by, who touch us by mistake, without realizing it, but making their mark on you: a light bruise, a shiver, an elbow, a pick-pocket, a shrugged shoulder or a turned head. At times, we wonder what impact such a passer-by can imprint on us.Or, we just insolently move on, without giving it much thought. It's seldom that we see no benefits of such encounter and all we perceive in the end is the annoyance, the brutality of the gesture, the harassment, the screamed warnings, the pulled-sleeve, the violation of our personal space and world.
The reason is usually defined as "the basis or motive for an action, decision, or conviction. See 'because or why'.
Why? Because.
Perhaps, as a declaration made to explain or justify action, decision, or conviction? Eg. "she inquired about his reason for doing so". Maybe. May be.
The reason itself is a motive and there is a motive for almost anything, as we can pretty much justify every deed: murder, cheating, misleading, and/or creating false expectations. Or just not aligning our expectations.
The same heartless but helpful dictionary says that an expectation is "something what you are eager to happen". Not the anticipation/longing/hope but the result that did not live up to expectations". To expect something means to take into consideration the downfall of that thing not happening.
Out of an understandable fear, or just emotional handicap, some people choose to distance when they intersect our views on love, dreams, departed people that meant something to us, freedom and breach a trust we difficultly built, after we hardly manage to create an emotional panic room where we feel safe enough to let them get acquainted with our ideas.
When we erroneously think that our level of comprehension manages to transcend the human mental barriers, the others lift once more a mental wall. It's understandable. If we were them, maybe we would do it, too. But we are not. We look all our lives for "the love", "the one", for answers, or clues, and when we finally get them, we lose our precarious balance, as we are not ready. Will we ever be?
The attraction to love is an intrinsic requirement to be in the world, because love is a type of knowledge, of self or the other, of our nature. Experiences, people, choices and knowledge make us who we are at the present time.
Sometimes, we really are who we think we are. Some other times, we are who others think we are. Right here and right now, this is us, a snapshot in time, attached with the warning that we can straighten our wrongs. Or rights. Or just be happy for a season. Or a reason. Never a lifetime.
People you think are spiritually permeable, manage to surprise you eventually, sometimes unpleasantly. What we think it is a common ground - free spirits, accomplices in life - it is all along and exclusively your prerogative and not also theirs.
As luck would have it, they might even think we are abnormal, although we agree that normality and weirdness are both a matter of perception and prone to subjectivism and relativity. Dictionary and psychology experts say abnormal means to deviate from the norm. The norm? What is the norm? Who establishes the norm? Who is the norm authority? What culture? Personally, I've always considered oddness a quality and a first sign of normality.
To those who failed to understand, we hold no grudges as our earthly encounter is not hazardous. Each and one of them teaches us something.
A friend of mine said there are only two things that are everyone's problem in this world and one of them is how we relate to people. His advice was to unemotionally relate to as many people as possible, but don't become part of any relationship. Remain free and let them be free of you. (2009)
Monday, October 30, 2023
The fat, the terrorist and the whore
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent (Eleanor Roosevelt)
I wished the title of this piece to have been the title of a movie script, which you have to admit, it would have resulted in an awe-inspiring, if not bizarre, film. But this is not it. All I want is to bore you by talking about stereotypes.
An American friend, politically correct as we know them, tried to be very gentle in relation with me, until I urged him to speak of the unspoken. To clear any diplomatic tension that might stand in the way of what it seems to be an open and heartfelt friendship, I told him what we, the Europeans, think of them, the Americans: “You guys are fat, stupid, imaginary world’s policeman, bullies, superficial, rednecks, and jerry springers”. And, I added quickly, to avoid an embarrassing moment and to merely spell out his own thoughts about it: “This makes us, the Eastern Europeans: poor, communists, sluts, thieves, gypsies, and second hand citizens”.
My friend claims that although we cannot escape stereotypes we can however keep them in check. With all due respect, I find that hard to believe.
Come to think of it, stereotypes, like legends, are founded on a core of truth. Generalizing them is painful, but nevertheless stereotypes are true. Books define them as oversimplifications of a set of attributes a group of individuals have, especially underlying the negative ones. However, it doesn’t mean they are not based on true attributes. OK, the fact that we nonchalantly dismiss so many people and stereotype Americans as fat, doesn’t mean they are not fat. In this particular case, thou, the minority of 40% that are within weight limits might feel offended, but yes, Americans, most of them, are fat.
Stereotypes are usually formed on “the basis of prejudice and are employed to explain real or imaginary differences due to race, gender, religion, age, ethnicity, socio-economic class, disability, and occupation, among the limitless groups one may be identified with”.
Hear, hear! Imaginary or REAL! According to the very same stereotype, Eastern European women are sluts. A slut, apart from being considered a dirty woman, is someone who engages in sexual activity with a large number of persons. What is a large number of persons? If people get married, and cheating is not being taken into consideration, anything above number 1, 2 partners labels you as a slut. It all breaks down to details. But we are talking numbers, facts, and statistics. Since, however, stereotypes come to define a majority, the error that one can make when labeling a member of another society is minimal within the range or error margins.
The Middle Easterners are usually stereotyped as terrorists. A handful of inhabitants from the Middle East have chosen to engage in terrorist acts, considered by them a “holy war” and by the rest of us, terrorism. There is nothing holy about murder. Not even suicide. Coincidence makes it that some of those people, if not all, were also Muslims. The resulted stereotype was this: all Muslims are terrorists. Moreover, it avalanched into “all Middle Easterners are terrorists”. I am confident that curiosity is defined by proximity and most people are not aware or informed of the surroundings of the world we live in. However, Middle East is a region that spreads from southwestern Asia, southeastern Europe, and northeastern Africa and it is composed of more or less 18 countries. Cyprus, a Greek Orthodox Christian country, and Israel, a Judaic State, are among those 18 countries. Here is the correction: not all Muslims are terrorists. Not all Middle Easterners are Muslims. Not all Middle Easterners are terrorists.
Unfortunately, stereotypes don’t seem to affect only the minorities. If someone, who is still not politically and correctly aligned with the new E.U. norms and regulations, addresses Romanians as gypsies, the latter will feel offended. Being identified with this particular ethnic minority, came in time to mean an insult. The gypsies themselves have their roots somewhere in India. They are nomad people who are generously spread all over the world, but mostly in Eastern Europe. Some of the members of this minority steal, kill, rape and pillage. So do the members of a Danish or Swiss society, of course, with less frequency, but when that happens, it must have been an “immigrant”. Hence, the entire minority of gypsies is labeled consequently. Moreover, a country that hosts a large number of this particular minority came to being labeled as such. The problem with stereotypes is that sometimes creates double standards. The inference is this: when applied to a minority based on what a majority is, might result in a truism, when applied from a minority towards a majority tends to be false. Ayn Rand, whom I particularly don’t like but I happen to agree with at times, once said “whenever you think you are facing contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong”.
I can't believe I am quoting Wikipedia, but here it goes: “sociologists believe that labeling is not only necessary but is inescapable. Even though stereotyping is inaccurate, it is efficient. Categorization is an essential human capability because it enables us to simplify, predict, and organize our world. Once one has sorted and organized everyone into tidy categories, there is every incentive to avoid processing new or unexpected information about each individual. Assigning general group characteristics to members of that group saves time and satisfies the need to predict the social world.”
So all we have to do is set our stereotypes straight to save everyone’s time.
On the other hand, psychologists have another approach when they enlighten us about stereotypes. They claim that “people tend to stereotype because of the need to feel good about oneself. Stereotypes protect one from anxiety and enhance self-esteem. By designating one’s own group as the standard or normal group and assigning others to groups considered inferior or abnormal, it provides one with a sense of worth”. Aw...:-)
So basically, what I did all along when I forwarded my “let’s speak about the unspoken” speech was to counter react a possible superior stand that my American friend might have had in relation to me. I boosted my self confidence by reducing an entire nation to a handful of fat, stupid and bullies, while however gave him the false opportunity to reciprocate, but depriving him of the upper hand he might have had if he had answered equally. How did I do? :-)
History taught us that either absorbed in childhood or at a later stage in life, once it is learnt a stereotype becomes self perpetuating. It dejectedly becomes an immune disease of our mental patterns.
David Cronenberg once said that “all stereotypes turn out to be true. This is a horrifying thing about life. All those things you fought against as a youth: you begin to realize they're stereotypes because they're true”. Which only enhances the proverb which advises us “not to tell the truth to your friend because he already knows it, and don't bother telling the truth to your enemy because he won't believe you”. Sad but true. (2009)
Tell me I am wrong
An African legend says that death entered the world in the following way: long ago, people were able to shed their skins, like a snake. Everyone did this and lived forever, renewing their youth. One time, a woman forgot that she should do this and put her old skin back on, and death came into the world.
In this day and age, death comes into the world by indifference. Indeed, we start dying when we become silent about things that once we thought that mattered. Someone said that, but my memory doesn’t serve me well these days.
When but especially why did we stop caring? When did we stop being humane? Which lethal gene mutation took place and modified our most important trait, altruism? When did we stop speaking up and standing up for what is just? Doesn’t silence deafen you? Isn’t keeping a middle lane just another way of masking cowardice?
We all know there is benevolence in the midst of evil, although this naive belief doesn’t diminish our perplexity when comes to our natural born indifference and selfishness. Is indifference an innate feature or a learnt behavior? What say you?
Is lack of information an excuse? Are curiosity and caring for our human fellows, and ultimately for ourselves as species, fed only by proximity? Isn’t world just a small village and us just villagers that live on different streets? Isn’t my 6.5 billion people tribe in danger if half of it dies of hunger? Does world end where our street ends?
Shall we self contently just say “Oh, well, at least we have a bed to sleep and a sandwich to eat, and the luxury of a bulb”?. If charity begins at home, isn’t world my home? What do you mean by “borders”? What is that? Please, explain.
True, not many of us lost their sound sleep over the fact that 2 billion people have no electricity and more than 1.2 billion are dying of hunger. As we speak.
Meaning, one in six people is hungry right now. John, James, Melissa, Samantha, Samuel, and Alexander had lunch today. But Chibale and Badru didn’t. Did you have yours? Was it tasty?
Half of the same world lives on less than $2 a day, and 1 billion survive on the margins of subsistence with less than $1 a day; another 1.1 billion people lack access to safe water, and 2.6 billion do not have access to any form of improved sanitation services. Simple world stats. For us. For others, a painful tragedy.
While we are debating whether there is god center in the brain or not, over 854 million people are illiterate. To those atheism versus religion in school is like a slap on a beggar’s face. Shouldn’t we try educating them before telling them there is no god, that Intelligent Design is BS and Banana Man is a complete nut? How condescending is our 5 o’clock intellectual chitchat while others dig through garbage for some filthy bread?
Being a middle-laner is not anymore a position of rationality and intellectual Zen, but became sheer spinelessness. Taking sides is a moral obligation.
The moment we just shrug our shoulders knowing our votes do not matter and voting process is just an irrational deed, we start fading away. If we think we don’t matter, we will end up not mattering.
We should not settle and stop searching for anything that requires (emotional, personal, or intellectual) effort.
Serenity can’t be all that we demand from life, right? We haven’t stopped fighting for and hanging with our claws and fangs for love, passion, ideas, outrageous theories, and emotional tumult. We are not born old. We can’t be just another homo vexus, vexed species, that reached our limitation, right? Tell me this is not terminus for us. Tell me I am wrong. Please. (2009)
Homo solitudis
What a lovely surprise to finally discover how unlonely being alone can be.” (Ellen Burstyn)
Man’s greatest chimera is not the achievement of happiness but the idea that he owns original thoughts. Tabula Rasa theory is a utopia. We come with a set of preconceived ideas and what we do for the rest of our days, is to live what is given to us. This is not fatalist determinism conveyed by some higher power I am talking about, but about sets of thinking patterns that we have to struggle with or obey to. We live with the illusion that we can and are allowed to reinvent the wheel. Dostoyevsky once said “there is no subject so old that something new cannot be said about it”. Does mankind keep on repeating itself?
A friend of mine once told me that “when one has written enough original thought over a long period of time one can't help but become a cynic”. But again, what is original? The virtue of introducing new ideas? The power of being unconventional? Since when being unconventional come to mean original and not anarchic? Is then anarchy original? If freshness means originality how original is a cheese cake which is not made out of milk cheese but soy cheese? It is still cheesecake. There is nothing out there that is original, not even nature. Not even our emotions are original. Not even our genetic evolution is original. It is said that chimps share about 98% of their DNA with humans. Isn’t obvious that chimps have actually gone through more genetic change than us? Any human venture to discover or invent something new is pure rubbish. "There is nothing original in life except the moment one creates and shares with another one". That is our uniqueness. How we relate to people, how we vulgarly and sentimentally display our emotions, weaknesses and flaws. It is not our strength that makes us unique, it is our weakness.
Humans are not meant to live together. We are not meant to live in packs, as we are not wolves. Even if we gather ourselves in small social groups, and we like to think we can live in packs, the human is defined by solitude. We are self sufficient and meant to live in a solitude that is of our own making. Homo sociabilis is a utopia. We are homo solitudis and we are condemned to solitude as much as we are condemned to happiness. (2009)
Confessions of a skeptilicious
I have come across an interesting piece of mind, written by Mr Patterson, on “self refuting skepticism” and I got to appreciate his enthusiasm of nailing on a Christian cross (Roman in fact), the modern skeptics. As a spiritual coward (that would be an agnostic), I found it relaxing to follow the mental ping-pong between Patterson, a convinced believer, and Dr. Shermer, a determined skeptic. Let alone the irony itself, that a convinced person cannot be a skeptic, as a skeptic, first of all, should doubt everything (science and himself included), I tend to tilt my balance in Mr. Shermer’s favor.
To his benefit, Dr. Shermer acknowledges the voids in his modern skeptic theory and agrees that sometimes, Socrates’ favorite motto of “agreeing of not knowing anything” can actually mean “not knowing anything”.
Personally, I don’t see a genuine problem here. Both religious and scientific people are looking for the same thing, with different means. The debate here is only about the means they are using, not acknowledging that, in fact, they both crave for the truth. This isn’t a matter of white or black, but what created that white and black. The skeptics vs genesis fans is a fun debate to watch and as old as women vs men, Arabs vs Jews, blacks vs whites. The duel became so heated that those who raised their arms, religious or scientific, forgot what they were arguing about and only cared about who said what, failing to keep in mind the bottom line, which is some ultimate truth. The nuance that arises here is not how they label themselves or the means they are using to reach to the core of the issue, but is how they define the truth.
Now, should we keep philosophy in mind, we need to seek further than genesis and try to actually agree on what the truth is. Our ancestors (who seem to have been more prolific than us, or had more time on their hands) generously offered us quite a few philosophical trends. Either we opt for Kant's a priori concept of truth, Pascal's or Saint Augustine's, the definition we apply to veridicity is pretty much the same. Either way, be it subjective, relative, objective, or absolute, truth has as many hues as the methods which we apply to finding it. You can bring into play the correspondence, coherence, redundancy or minimalist theory. Will it matter, since we are doomed anyway not finding a consensus? Use your logic for a second, and start from the premises that truth is not here to be known with our reduced means. Or that truth has as many facets as many truth theorists are there. If you keep this in mind, your metaphysical pain of not being able to convince your opponent will be more bearable and it will cure itself eventually, once you become wiser and more tolerant.
However, since I don’t see a probable and near future solution for these conceptual duels, I tend to dismiss these debates as being as barren as a menopausal woman. What is the benefit of mind games if the end result is creating confusion?
Why do people feel the need to be told they are right? Can’t we simply be? If failing to agree on our birth as species brings out more conflict than finding out the truth, doesn’t everything transform into a ludicrous dispute? Some claim life has no meaning, apart from the one we give to it, and it is just a sequence of chemical reactions, and that our ancestors were monkeys. Others like to think they are of divine origin. If you ask me, I would very much like, out of an extreme narcissistic inclination, to believe I am God’s creation. Now, the problem that naturally arises is “what/who is this God that created me”? But to be brutally honest, I don’t care who created me as long as I find out why I am here for. Would I still like to believe that a God, which allowed evil to be as spread as goodness, created me? I don’t think so. On a long term, it becomes less important what my origin is, and more important what I am doing right now with what is being given to me. Created by God or evolved from monkeys, I am a human being with means to be creative and produce goodness around me. If these debates startle so many passions and lead to hatred and discontent, then that is not a good debate and certainly God wouldn’t like it. A true Christian would turn his other cheek, as he would know truth is on his side, and he needs no arm rising to prove it. Debating skepticism is a very antichristian thing to do, and if you already reached to a conclusion, you are definitely tired of thinking.
One thing should the modern Crusaders bear in mind though, if spirituality searches for truth, so does science.
Skeptically yours,
Diana (2009)
Trying to leave behind/Hoping to have (2009)
| Hoping to have/find/do | |
| Stagnation | Evolution |
| Intense emotions | Intense emotions |
| Some Sadness | Occasional sadness |
| Good health | Good health |
| Excellent energy level | Amazing energy level |
| Stubbornness | Will |
| Toughness | Strength |
| Roughness | Firmness |
| Selfishness | Altruism |
| Irrationality | Irrationality |
| Some tears | Some or less tears |
| Some smiles | Less smiles |
| Unrealistic expectations | Expectations |
| Projections | Aspirations |
| Unfounded belief in the goodness of mankind | Don’t know, but am about to change my mind on this one |
| Not looking for love | Still not looking for love (is all good here) |
| Healthy dosed pessimism | Pessimist alertness |
| Men | @#$%^ |
| blank | (how many lines do I have to feel?) |
| Time for others | More time for myself |
| No SMS initiative | No SMS initiative |
| Email initiative | No email initiative |
| Writing stories for friends | Writing stories for myself |
| Listening to friends or people I hardly know | Selectively doing that; boundary is key |
| Cynic | Cynic |
| Anchored into reality | I like this one, will keep it |
| Agnostic | Still Agnostic |
| Brunette | I like brunette |
| 62 kg | 58 kg |
| 170 cm tall | 170 cm tall |
| Some smoking | Less smoking |
| Beer | Less beer |
| Sweet wine | No wine for a while (500 cal per bottle) |
| Very few books | Quadruple more books |
| Little time with K | More time with K |
| Sleep little | Sleep |
| My shit somehow all over the place | Have my shit together |
| Writing | Taking a conceptual sabbatical (am done blogging for a while) |
| No theatre plays | At least 7 times |
| No classical music concerts | At least 6 times |
| No opera house attendance | At least 6 times |
| Very seldom coffee with friends | I can skip the coffee with friends altogether (my liver hurts from so much coffee and my head is filled with nonsensical chitchats); a phone call would do; email me, I might get back to you. Or not. |
| Very short fuse | A longer fuse |
| Forgiveness | Will think about it |
| Forgetfulness | I have the memory of an elephant, so the answer is no. |
| Some occasional confusion | Increased clarity |
| Impulsiveness | Counting to ten before I explode |
| Naivety | Hahaha |
| Innocence | ? |
| Honesty | Damn it. I always keep this one. |
34 going on 10
It takes a long time to become young. (Pablo Picasso)
It is said that a true confession should not be seen by anyone. It should be written down and then buried so deep inside that the core of the earth would burn it and turn it into ashes. We express ourselves on public spaces, pompously claiming we are true and honest to ourselves and to our readers. We do however, choose our words and the information we want to release, carefully. Not too much, not too personal.
I have been trying to exorcise my demons a few times the past week, but to no avail. My attempts of desiccating and isolating my ruminations once more, failed successfully.
I questioned once again the veridicity of this blog and its confessions. I grabbed my pen, striving to squeeze my thoughts through its nib, but each time the result was an indefinable smudge, as the rain would smudge the mascara on the sad face of a woman, who passed her 30s but still believes herself a teen.
To some of us, time was gentle. It imprinted a wrinkle here and there, chipped some of our emotions, but allowed us to keep the heart of a child.
From a psychologist’s point of view, having the heart of a child is equivalent to being emotionally immature, hyperactive and hyperemotional (emotionally too intense for situations when one should be moderate) or having a false independence of willpower (stubbornness).
A mature adult person is emotionally balanced and has emotions that are directly proportional with the intensity of the emotional factor. From the adult’s perspective, the child (over) reacts. A child cries when he/she is in pain. An adult doesn’t. Because the adult has self restraint and learnt that part of the social traits and acceptance game is self control. Sure, as an adult you feel rage, sadness or joy but you just don’t go around splashing your playmate with pea soup, or burst into laughing or tears and give him your favourite toy or stick your tongue out. Bravo! You are a veritable adult, a gem of adulthood, a Cerberus of emotional actions and appetites.
Am neither a scientist, nor a psychologist, but some times I fall into the trap of pseudoscience (psychology that is) and read magazines and books about the most recent “discoveries” about the psyche. This is how I found out that Apfelbaum and Sommers claim there is an inner bigot within us and we choose to “celebrate the power of mind to make hard choices, despite our emotions”. Where will this constant rejection of our true feelings lead? Frustration? Happiness? “Is it possible that willpower is actually an obstacle to happiness and harmony?” Could be. Or not.
During our childhood, our educators (teachers, parents) inculcated us the idea of self restraint. In some societies, emotional honesty is highly appreciated and even recommended. In some others, it is regarded as a mental unbalance. So what is considered normal in the Japanese society (eg: smiling respectfully when you are scolded) is not considered normal in the American society (eg: accepting the scolding, eventually bowing your head, avoiding eye contact). Some cultures even consider expression of emotions as a possible threat to the social order.
While emotional expression is highly appreciated in arts, music, poems, literature and we all pretend to be touched by it, when comes to personal encounter no one wants or needs your emotional expression, even if highly laudable.
Although truth is greatly valued, most of our dissensions are basically generated by the way honesty and emotional expression is perceived in our societies. The emotional sincerity is not always regarded as a virtue, even though was considered ideal by certain societies. In order to socialize properly you need to mask a certain amount of sincerity in social wrapping (you need to be culturally smart for that). So yes, truth is indeed overrated and yes, we are required to lie in order to be socially accepted! Lying about how we feel, about what we think of a certain situation or person. How sad is that? To be accepted means to keep your feelings (positive or not) restrained. We are turning into emotionally mutilated machines as apparently, modern psychologists view sincerity as a construct rather than a moral virtue.
“The emotional reality is therefore taken as subjective: different people are expected to have different emotional worlds and to react in different ways to the same experiences”.
Consequently, we end up liking, falling in love with or disliking another person than we are in reality, as in our insane strive to be socially acceptable we put on a mask we forget to remove and get used to it so badly, we end up forgetting who we are. To be sociable likable and accepted, we lie, thus wrongly setting the basis for a fake and superficial relationship. No wonder 1 in 2 couples divorce, as you never know who you end up taking home. We sleep and eat with people we don’t (want to) know. Emotional truth is more than we can or want to handle. Imagine an ideal world where people express, accept and appreciate their deepest emotions- and they do this just because they are emotionally mature. Isn’t more a sign of immaturity and emotional handicap to reject and hide your true emotions? Were Spartans a society meant to last? Where are they NOW? Imagine this ideal world where men are not turned off when they see an emotional woman, where women don’t have to repress their feelings if they want to climb the career ladder, or don’t think a man is weak if he cries; or men don’t reject a woman as having a split personality because she wanted to please so many people in between.
Do we behave like 10 year olds when we let our emotions run freely? Yes, we do. Do we behave like 10 year olds if we cry when we are in emotional or physical pain? Yes, we do. Does a 10 year old suffer less? Is his pain less genuine? No, it isn’t. Can we even measure pain? Apparently we can, as experts came up with pain thresholds measuring scales. But who allows us to declare that your pain is lesser than mine? Or that you feel pain like a child? No one, as children feel pain too.
So let me introduce myself again. Hi, my name is Diana; I am a 34 year old woman, with the emotional expression of a 10 year old. I cry when I am in pain and I don’t hide it. As "there is sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are messengers of overwhelming grief...and unspeakable love (Washington Irving). (2009)
So, Chuang Tzu woke up one day
“Insanity in individuals is something rare, but in groups, parties, nations and epochs it is the rule” Friedrich Nietzsche
I have come across an interesting concept the other day, maybe known to some of you, which stated that “insanity is a legal concept not a medical or a psychiatric term; that in spite of the fact that insanity is a legal concept, it doesn’t mean that someone is not sick”. Moreover, the character went on and added that the “legal distinction between sanity and insanity rests upon free-will”.
Logically, for a determined fatalist, who rejects the concept of free-will and claims his destiny is written by some higher power (e.g.: Thy will be done) there is no such distinction. Consequently, such a person cannot be held responsible for his acts. Not within the frame of the current legal definitions.
What makes a person crazy? Who decides who is crazy and who is not? Who decides the normality of a situation or behavior? If your answer to those questions was “doctors”, you were wrong. Try again.
Bear with me for a second and let’s try to define a few words so we can get the hang of it. Michel Foucault tried to define the relativity of values as opposed to the social power. Our cultural values, especially what we consider normal, determine and are determined by the way society exerts its control. Who is considered mentally sick? Who establishes this?
Tom Cathcart and Daniel Klein go on with their explanation about the relative truth and tell us this well known story. Sometimes some stories are so widespread, they lose their in-depth meaning. So, Chuang Tzu woke up one day after he dreamt he was a butterfly. Or, he asked himself, maybe in fact he was a butterfly which dreamt it was Chuang Tzu. Was Chuang Tzu insane? At that time, no. But according to nowadays definition, yes.
Is insanity fashionably updated? What was considered to be normal 500 years ago, ceased to be considered that way? Can we be accused and charged with abnormality like the rabbit was charged with battery? Since when normality became equivalent with contemporary median? Always?
Cioran used to say that the divagations of a lunatic are absurd only by report to his situations, but not reported to his delirium. Kind of makes sense, right?
Dictionaries define insanity as violations of societal norms, or behavioral expectations. What if we fall under the expectations? What if we disappoint the society? Will we get imprisoned for it? No doubt, crime is an extreme disappointment, but isn’t equally disappointing if we cut our own veins, take drugs, drink, read the stars or have daydreams and visions?
Since normality equals to being adequate, what happens to those who don’t fit in? Shall we stone them to death for getting out of line? Isn’t what the repressive societies and the despotic leaders did? Isn’t this why communists imposed uniforms in schools? To make us all fit in and stand inline? What is the society expecting from us? One simple example of social expectation and norm is hands shaking after a match. So, no, it is not OK to be a sour loser and show your disappointment or that you hate your opponent. No, Vae Victis (Woe to the vanquished) is not socially acceptable anymore. Go back to ancient Rome for that episode. Although you have mens rea (bad thought) as long as you don’t allow yourself into actus reus (bad act) you will be fine. Keep it to yourself and we’ll be socially content.
It is quaint to notice how insanity got to equal, in time, “unhealthy”. The word itself, sane derives from the Latin sana, which meant healthy, and by extension insane became unhealthy, or non compos mentis (a non-composed mind).
There were times when daydreams, visions and divination were highly appreciated and sought after by wise men, not all crazy, I might add. In ancient Greece and Rome, such techniques were equally adulated by philosophers and demos alike. Words of wisdom and secretive meanings kept an aura of mystery and many looked for answers in ambiguous riddles. Pretty much like bibliomancy, where each random text pertains a meaning for a person, they all made sense to them. In our desperate and unquenched thirst to find answers, sometimes we are ready to listen and give meaning to what once were meaningless symbols, words, icons, gods. Some claim that newly found wisdom is an eye-opening experience, while others think those who can read beyond the immediacy of our world are “abnormal”.
Under these circumstances, normality can be defined as what lays under our eyes, what we can see from left to right, or what others tell us is normal. Now, the problem that arises is that philosophers will jump right at your neck and tell you “stop trusting what others tell you or what your eyes tell you, as the truth can only be known through reason and not senses”. Question, question and doubt some more! Dubito, ergo sum, right? Can you debate in a court motivating “the victim of the murder you have just seen, hacked into pieces, was not real? That we create our reality and your eyes are cheating on you? That nothing is real?” Isn’t how George Berkeley would have played the devil’s advocate? Wasn’t the physical body only a mental object, which had extension in the space of a visual field? How can you apply your refined wisdom and 5 o’clock tea theories when you have to talk about truth and the slippery concept of sanity? How would you explain to a victim’s family that the crime and drama they go through is not real?
Since it was established that doctors and specialists have no say when diagnosing a “non composed mind”, who will then hang the label around the lunatic’s neck? Correct, the others. Your neighbor, who can hardly sign his name and whose common sense is less evolved than a stray cat’s, the sweat and garlic stench bearer, the idiot who drinks until he loses his senses and then goes to a football match to hit a face or two, the hooligan, the road rage fanatic, the gossiper, the envious, the poor-minded one for whom the “legal concept of insanity” means shit. Nowadays, in a court of law, the mental health specialists can only suggest or submit their opinion to the court. However, it will be the judge and or jury (ordinary people, ANYONE) will make the final decision regarding the defendant's status regarding an insanity defence. And believe me, you wouldn’t like a bunch of stone casters to diagnose you.
But I’d say, since we are tangled in jungle of legal lianas and sane definitions, and what society expects of us, why not start a revolution, an innocent one, to see how far we can push the society’s limits by breaking small rules. Revolutions meant first of all, evolutions. Let’s being slowly, with a single act. Let it be yours. Stop shaking someone’s hand when you don’t feel like it, but you do it just because society expects you to. Be honest when expressing your emotions. In exchange do a good deed, one that society doesn’t expect you to do. Feed the parking meter of someone you don’t know. Or anonymously clean the elevator mirror or the graffiti on someone's wall. Or visit someone you don't know at the hospital and leave them flowers. Let’s do the unexpected! Let’s defy the societal norms by creating a sweet and positive anarchy, the kind no one expects! Let’s get abnormal! Let the revolution begin!
I have come across an interesting concept the other day, maybe known to some of you, which stated that “insanity is a legal concept not a medical or a psychiatric term; that in spite of the fact that insanity is a legal concept, it doesn’t mean that someone is not sick”. Moreover, the character went on and added that the “legal distinction between sanity and insanity rests upon free-will”.
Logically, for a determined fatalist, who rejects the concept of free-will and claims his destiny is written by some higher power (e.g.: Thy will be done) there is no such distinction. Consequently, such a person cannot be held responsible for his acts. Not within the frame of the current legal definitions.
What makes a person crazy? Who decides who is crazy and who is not? Who decides the normality of a situation or behavior? If your answer to those questions was “doctors”, you were wrong. Try again.
Bear with me for a second and let’s try to define a few words so we can get the hang of it. Michel Foucault tried to define the relativity of values as opposed to the social power. Our cultural values, especially what we consider normal, determine and are determined by the way society exerts its control. Who is considered mentally sick? Who establishes this?
Tom Cathcart and Daniel Klein go on with their explanation about the relative truth and tell us this well known story. Sometimes some stories are so widespread, they lose their in-depth meaning. So, Chuang Tzu woke up one day after he dreamt he was a butterfly. Or, he asked himself, maybe in fact he was a butterfly which dreamt it was Chuang Tzu. Was Chuang Tzu insane? At that time, no. But according to nowadays definition, yes.
Is insanity fashionably updated? What was considered to be normal 500 years ago, ceased to be considered that way? Can we be accused and charged with abnormality like the rabbit was charged with battery? Since when normality became equivalent with contemporary median? Always?
Cioran used to say that the divagations of a lunatic are absurd only by report to his situations, but not reported to his delirium. Kind of makes sense, right?
Dictionaries define insanity as violations of societal norms, or behavioral expectations. What if we fall under the expectations? What if we disappoint the society? Will we get imprisoned for it? No doubt, crime is an extreme disappointment, but isn’t equally disappointing if we cut our own veins, take drugs, drink, read the stars or have daydreams and visions?
Since normality equals to being adequate, what happens to those who don’t fit in? Shall we stone them to death for getting out of line? Isn’t what the repressive societies and the despotic leaders did? Isn’t this why communists imposed uniforms in schools? To make us all fit in and stand inline? What is the society expecting from us? One simple example of social expectation and norm is hands shaking after a match. So, no, it is not OK to be a sour loser and show your disappointment or that you hate your opponent. No, Vae Victis (Woe to the vanquished) is not socially acceptable anymore. Go back to ancient Rome for that episode. Although you have mens rea (bad thought) as long as you don’t allow yourself into actus reus (bad act) you will be fine. Keep it to yourself and we’ll be socially content.
It is quaint to notice how insanity got to equal, in time, “unhealthy”. The word itself, sane derives from the Latin sana, which meant healthy, and by extension insane became unhealthy, or non compos mentis (a non-composed mind).
There were times when daydreams, visions and divination were highly appreciated and sought after by wise men, not all crazy, I might add. In ancient Greece and Rome, such techniques were equally adulated by philosophers and demos alike. Words of wisdom and secretive meanings kept an aura of mystery and many looked for answers in ambiguous riddles. Pretty much like bibliomancy, where each random text pertains a meaning for a person, they all made sense to them. In our desperate and unquenched thirst to find answers, sometimes we are ready to listen and give meaning to what once were meaningless symbols, words, icons, gods. Some claim that newly found wisdom is an eye-opening experience, while others think those who can read beyond the immediacy of our world are “abnormal”.
Under these circumstances, normality can be defined as what lays under our eyes, what we can see from left to right, or what others tell us is normal. Now, the problem that arises is that philosophers will jump right at your neck and tell you “stop trusting what others tell you or what your eyes tell you, as the truth can only be known through reason and not senses”. Question, question and doubt some more! Dubito, ergo sum, right? Can you debate in a court motivating “the victim of the murder you have just seen, hacked into pieces, was not real? That we create our reality and your eyes are cheating on you? That nothing is real?” Isn’t how George Berkeley would have played the devil’s advocate? Wasn’t the physical body only a mental object, which had extension in the space of a visual field? How can you apply your refined wisdom and 5 o’clock tea theories when you have to talk about truth and the slippery concept of sanity? How would you explain to a victim’s family that the crime and drama they go through is not real?
Since it was established that doctors and specialists have no say when diagnosing a “non composed mind”, who will then hang the label around the lunatic’s neck? Correct, the others. Your neighbor, who can hardly sign his name and whose common sense is less evolved than a stray cat’s, the sweat and garlic stench bearer, the idiot who drinks until he loses his senses and then goes to a football match to hit a face or two, the hooligan, the road rage fanatic, the gossiper, the envious, the poor-minded one for whom the “legal concept of insanity” means shit. Nowadays, in a court of law, the mental health specialists can only suggest or submit their opinion to the court. However, it will be the judge and or jury (ordinary people, ANYONE) will make the final decision regarding the defendant's status regarding an insanity defence. And believe me, you wouldn’t like a bunch of stone casters to diagnose you.
But I’d say, since we are tangled in jungle of legal lianas and sane definitions, and what society expects of us, why not start a revolution, an innocent one, to see how far we can push the society’s limits by breaking small rules. Revolutions meant first of all, evolutions. Let’s being slowly, with a single act. Let it be yours. Stop shaking someone’s hand when you don’t feel like it, but you do it just because society expects you to. Be honest when expressing your emotions. In exchange do a good deed, one that society doesn’t expect you to do. Feed the parking meter of someone you don’t know. Or anonymously clean the elevator mirror or the graffiti on someone's wall. Or visit someone you don't know at the hospital and leave them flowers. Let’s do the unexpected! Let’s defy the societal norms by creating a sweet and positive anarchy, the kind no one expects! Let’s get abnormal! Let the revolution begin!
(2009)
Do you love your parents? Let's have a moment of brutal honesty and question our emotional and why not, moral, integrity. Are our mothers infallible just because they gave us birth? Or because they fulfilled their emotional void through us? Do the blood-ties blind us? Should the shared DNA oblige us into experiencing parental love? What makes us love our parents?
We know what makes us fall in love with the opposite gender, the surge of hormones to the brain, the release of cuddle hormone, the appetite for sexual desire and the devilishly pleasant and irresistible tingle in our groins. The basic need to copulate and multiply. The insane desire to become immortal and conquer death by giving birth to our children. Or the mixture of intimacy, passion and commitment.
Why do we love our parents? Biologically speaking, once we exit their tutelage, and we seek no further support from them, our affection based on needs should cease. Yet, we keep on loving them. Or maybe it is not love. What is love? I know what love is not: not unconditional. Love is a tradeoff. Otherwise you feel outwitted. Like everything else in life, love and respect, even parental must be earned through hard work and diligence.
Parenthood doesn’t come with the territory and a parent must earn his/her respect like everybody else. Anyone can breed but not everyone is fit to be a parent, let alone a good one. Parental respect is not self-understood and you should never take your children’s for granted.
Why as parents love our children, it’s pretty much a no brainer.
If we were god, we loved our children roughly, exigently, demandingly, pushing them beyond their human limits, asking them to overcome them, thus initiating their perfection. But we are not. Cause there is no god. And the love for our children is passionate, irrational but moreover unconditional. We love our children possessively, simplistically, maternally, desperately, energetically, gloriously and sometimes to the point of alienation. At times we define ourselves through them.
Yet, as adults, we discontinue loving our parents. What is left is pity for their weaknesses (some call it compassion), gratitude for what they have done for us, duty and moral filial obligation, as no one abandons the weak, especially someone from the same tribe, sometimes respect as a remembrance as they led a righteous life.
Have our parents done no wrong? Actually, what have they done wrong?
For a while, we feel guilty for not being capable of loving them as much as you feel they love you, and you might wonder if there is anything wrong with your “love skill”. I haven’t seen an adult madly loving his/her parents, unless they are pathologically and freaudianly undeveloped. You are looking for possible excuses within yourself and them. Childhood sexual abuse? Nope. Domestic violence? Nope. Lack of affection? Nope. What is wrong then? Why can’t we love our parents back the same way they love us? Is it biology? Is it maybe because like rats, we push the elderly, the sick and the useless towards the edge of the cliff so we can make room for the young, voracious and vivacious? Is this what we are eventually? A pack of rats? A gathering of apes? Yes.
Shall we feel guilty and apologize? Apologize for what? For our faulty genes which determine us to shift our focus from our elderly towards our offspring? Both are equally helpless. Ironically, psychologists claim that insincere apologies are better than no apology. However, “the person who offered a coerced apology was judged even more harshly than the one who offered no apology at all”. Well, if this is the case, we are sorry for being who we are. After all, if biology is our destiny, this is what is waiting for us, too. A proverb says that you can define a society by the way it treats its dogs and elderly.
We should not trust a society that shoots stray dogs or shows no mercy begging senior citizens but claims to have family values. (2010)
Who can handle the truth? Not me.
Truth is over rated. People, in general, and men, in particular, want to be gently lied to.
Experience taught me that 3 (or 4, ok maximum 5) is usually the perfect answer when asked about the men in a woman's life. Two is too little ("must be something wrong with her"); more than 3 or 4 labels you as promiscuous.
So, my next lover, you must know that you will always be my number 4. Yes, Alice, you are right again. Number One is always the teenage lover that sweeps you off your feet, number two is always the husband, number three is always the rebound guy (and who wants to be the rebound guy?) so only number four benefits you totally. As they say in court "say the truth and nothing but the truth”. Full stop. Don’t volunteer information more than it is necessary. Apply wisely Occam's razor
.
Another irrefutable proof that men cannot handle the truth is that no matter how loud and clear they claim they want an honest and open woman (especially open-minded, but not too open, otherwise her brains will fall out) once they realize what this openness and honesty involves they withdraw within their shell. What? How? Try telling your lover what you think about his last sexual performance and he will accuse you of ruining his libido for life. Try suggesting your lover about nose hair trimming or using some cologne and he will accuse you of trying to emasculate him and turn him into a gay. As if would be something wrong with gays. Cause “a real man is sweaty, hairy, not a manicured and perfumed sissy”. Cause manhood equals au naturel. So they think. Is THAT so? Oh, my, they are so clueless. Yeap, hair and sweat is a major turn on for female chimps.
Wikipedia
(my 4th mother after my own, Mother Nature and Google) defines truth as a concept that extends to honesty, good faith, and sincerity in general, to agreement with fact or reality in particular.
Try telling your boss the truth about his boring discourse and you will find yourself unemployed by the end of the day. Or your best friend who just came from a posh hair dressing salon that her hair looks like the stylist was one-handed and she might as well throw the latte in your face. Oh, or your mother what you think about the major errors she made during your childhood and see what she says. Top that by telling your lover about the previous men in your life and see how he reacts. You will find yourself looking for cigarettes at midnight. Yeah, I know. Ouch.
Honesty never works in woman's favor when comes to the number of men in her life. Alice Nastase agrees with me. Even if men parade the number of women they have slept with and actually take pride in it, and ironically, it raises their "value" on the market, women can never volunteer such information without being labeled as "easy or promiscuous". Men have double standards.
While the woman is all along the passive hunter for the man, but lets him gently think he has the lead, is the woman that has to pass as innocent and immaculate, eventually. So be it, if that makes them fall into the web. Men seemed to have hypocritically develop an obsession about the purity of their partners, while they display contradictory theories about how women should be: chefs in the kitchen, whores in bed, ladies in society. Oh well, I personally have very bad manners. But I am a mean cook. You should try my banana chicken rolls. In the kitchen, I mean.
(my 4th mother after my own, Mother Nature and Google) defines truth as a concept that extends to honesty, good faith, and sincerity in general, to agreement with fact or reality in particular.Try telling your boss the truth about his boring discourse and you will find yourself unemployed by the end of the day. Or your best friend who just came from a posh hair dressing salon that her hair looks like the stylist was one-handed and she might as well throw the latte in your face. Oh, or your mother what you think about the major errors she made during your childhood and see what she says. Top that by telling your lover about the previous men in your life and see how he reacts. You will find yourself looking for cigarettes at midnight. Yeah, I know. Ouch.
Honesty never works in woman's favor when comes to the number of men in her life. Alice Nastase agrees with me. Even if men parade the number of women they have slept with and actually take pride in it, and ironically, it raises their "value" on the market, women can never volunteer such information without being labeled as "easy or promiscuous". Men have double standards.
While the woman is all along the passive hunter for the man, but lets him gently think he has the lead, is the woman that has to pass as innocent and immaculate, eventually. So be it, if that makes them fall into the web. Men seemed to have hypocritically develop an obsession about the purity of their partners, while they display contradictory theories about how women should be: chefs in the kitchen, whores in bed, ladies in society. Oh well, I personally have very bad manners. But I am a mean cook. You should try my banana chicken rolls. In the kitchen, I mean.
Experience taught me that 3 (or 4, ok maximum 5) is usually the perfect answer when asked about the men in a woman's life. Two is too little ("must be something wrong with her"); more than 3 or 4 labels you as promiscuous.
So, my next lover, you must know that you will always be my number 4. Yes, Alice, you are right again. Number One is always the teenage lover that sweeps you off your feet, number two is always the husband, number three is always the rebound guy (and who wants to be the rebound guy?) so only number four benefits you totally. As they say in court "say the truth and nothing but the truth”. Full stop. Don’t volunteer information more than it is necessary. Apply wisely Occam's razor
.Another irrefutable proof that men cannot handle the truth is that no matter how loud and clear they claim they want an honest and open woman (especially open-minded, but not too open, otherwise her brains will fall out) once they realize what this openness and honesty involves they withdraw within their shell. What? How? Try telling your lover what you think about his last sexual performance and he will accuse you of ruining his libido for life. Try suggesting your lover about nose hair trimming or using some cologne and he will accuse you of trying to emasculate him and turn him into a gay. As if would be something wrong with gays. Cause “a real man is sweaty, hairy, not a manicured and perfumed sissy”. Cause manhood equals au naturel. So they think. Is THAT so? Oh, my, they are so clueless. Yeap, hair and sweat is a major turn on for female chimps.
An older study claimed "in order to catch a man the woman must be less competent than he, more passive and more virtuous" (Franzwa, 1975). Super. 1975.
Life taught me that even if we preach freedom, truth and pushed-to-extremes honesty, one cannot practice these concepts without being ostracized by the peers.
Consequently, we have been placed into the situation where we have to weigh what is really important to us: socially lubricate the others and be accepted (the need to acceptance is as vivid and real at 30 - ok, ok, 34, - as it is at 15, when you get a tattoo or smoke joint just to fit in with the cool gang) or serve the truth like you serve revenge, a cold and raw dish and bear the consequences of not being digested. These consequences might imply not only isolation but hurting the feelings of others, as what is truth after all? Just a simple accord with reality and pure facts. And reality hurts. Badly. So, my name is Diana and I will be your waitress tonight. What will you have? (published in 2009)
Life taught me that even if we preach freedom, truth and pushed-to-extremes honesty, one cannot practice these concepts without being ostracized by the peers.
Consequently, we have been placed into the situation where we have to weigh what is really important to us: socially lubricate the others and be accepted (the need to acceptance is as vivid and real at 30 - ok, ok, 34, - as it is at 15, when you get a tattoo or smoke joint just to fit in with the cool gang) or serve the truth like you serve revenge, a cold and raw dish and bear the consequences of not being digested. These consequences might imply not only isolation but hurting the feelings of others, as what is truth after all? Just a simple accord with reality and pure facts. And reality hurts. Badly. So, my name is Diana and I will be your waitress tonight. What will you have? (published in 2009)
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