I Go Overboard
2002-11-25 � 9:45 a.m.

Well -- that was a mess, wasn't it? Screw you, non-line-breaking HTML stuff! Or something.

A power outlet in my kitchen is dead. Of course it's the one that runs the coffee maker and the microwave. It's odd too, because it's not that a circuit breaker tripped -- I reset them all (even the ones that it obviously couldn't be on, just to be sure) and it's still just as dead.

I didn't know they could do that.

Pretty damn inconvenient, over all.

I was wandering around in my head (I do that you know), and I was thinking about people and about what makes them do the things they do, act the way they act. And I was thinking specifically about fear.

My contention has always been that everyone is afraid, all the time. There is a constant low-level fear in every human that is part of being human, I think, and no one can get away from it. I was thinking it might be a held-over trait from simply being a mammal, a vestigial survival instinct maybe.

But it's mutated from that, what with our expanded level of consciousness (I was going to say "intelligence" there, but for some reason that makes me uncomfortable) and it isn't any longer a general dread of things that might eat us, though the fear is still related to our desire to survive.

For most people (or so I have observed) the fear seems now to be linked to the desire for communion with other members of our species. Put simply, people are afraid of being alone.

Yeah, yeah -- no surprise there, right? Of course not. But I think that it's more pervasive than most people realize. It is of course most obvious in the insane ways people behave in order to either secure (or sabotage themselves in order to not secure) a meaningful and long-term interpersonal/romantic relationship, but I think it feeds over into most other social interactions too. Specifically religion and whatever form of nationalism/patriotism/globalism you prefer.

Haven't you noticed that humans have an almost pathological desire to group each other, define each other and themselves in terms of pack-like units? How do you define yourself? How would other people define you?

There are other reasons for that, yeah. Probably even more important ones, but I think the obsessive way that people not only create these groupings but also organize themselves and others according to them speaks to a powerful underlying motivating force.

Fear.

That's why people get so dogmatic and frothy when their chosen social groupings get challenged. Yeah, it is also because their identity is being challenged, because we do define ourselves through these artificial groupings, but that's because we can't stand the idea of being singular, alone, no pack, no pod, no others around to support our idea of self.

(This stuff gets complicated really fast, nar?)

And no doubt this fear has mutated into a purely social phenomenon because being alone no longer means there isn't anyone to watch your back while you eat in case a predator with teeth like knives sneaks up on you from behind. Now the knives are a kind of desolate blank wasteland where people can't see themselves or their existence as having any point. (I realize that's kind of a stretch, but you see what I mean, right?)

And like I said, this is most obvious in the insane ways people behave in order to get that ultimate validation and existential support -- the mate, the romantic interest, the Other that you imagine will complete you and fill the hole inside and maybe just shut up that goddamn voice inside that feeds this fear all the time.

And it only makes it worse when you are smart enough or insightful enough to realize that even if you find the most amazing person on the planet, the fear won't go away. It can't.

But that's why so many people hang so much hope on the idea of the Other finally coming into their lives. How many times have you seen/heard it? "Oh, if only I could find that person to Love! We would be so happy...everything would be golden and shiny...all my problems would go away!" (Yeah, right.)

Anyway, that's what I'm thinking right now. I'll probably change my mind about it soon, or quit thinking about all together. There are too many factors that feed all of these behaviors to really claim that any one is the main cause. But for now, I'm picking "vestigial mammalian fear of separation from the pack that has evolved into a fear of loss of identity without social support and definition."

Hahahahahaha! I kill me.

But this seems like a good time to re-quote something I know I've put here before, even though it's been a long time. But I can't be bothered to go find it, so pasting will have to do.

This is from a book with the most unfortunate title ever, Cowby Feng's Space Bar and Grille, by one Stephen Brust. The title is just so silly sounding, but it's a great book -- really. Yes, it is sci-fi, but it has great characters, and is mostly about inter-personal relationships. So, for context, this is a little soliloquy that the main character/narrator has after he is really hurt badly by his love interest.

Let's talk about love.

I sat in my room with my back to the door, my legs straight out in front of me, my feet limp, and I stared at the ceiling and thought deep and profound thoughts from which wisdom emerged, as by magic. Well, okay, maybe not. But answer this for me: Why should the end of a fling with someone I hadn't even met two months before leave me more dejected and, well, alone, than the destruction of the birth world of the human race, the place imprinted into my psyche and very genes as being and containing everything that was home?

Imprinted into my psyche and very genes. Aye, there's where it's used as a polishing cloth. Exactly what has been imprinted into my genes and very psyche? I dunno. Standing here, at the door to yet another epoch of humanity, with a view that spans from one end of the hall to another, I say to you that I have no idea in the world, or worlds, what this thing is, except that I got it and I can't shake it. But some things are learned, and, in fact, are learned so thoroughly that they'll never be pried out of the mind in which they have taken root.

Love, to pick an example at random. Romantic love.

To be a human being born into the twentieth century is to inhale ideals of romantic love with your first breath, to drink it with your mother's milk, to eat it with your Gerber squashed peas, and to have it drummed thoroughly into your skin and vital organs by every children's tale, television serial, Hollywood movie, work of popular music (and unpopular music), and back-alley conversation.

But here's another one, just to confuse you: to reach maturity in the late twentieth century is to learn that romantic love is a myth, created by the needs of the spirit and the skill of the songsmiths and the confusion of a spiritual being left, for a time, with nothing spiritual to believe in. Perhaps I overstate the case, as most people of that time were not aware of all this - certainly not consciously. But nevertheless, romantic love was in the process of being discredited, even though the generation of man doing the discrediting was its slaves.

It's quite a concept, all in all. It tells us that love must be hot instead of warm, or the sharp peak of a mountain instead of the gentle slope of a hill. Yet we all know that too much heat can burn, and that mountain peaks, while pleasant to stand on for a while, do not make as good dwelling places as hillsides. At least, for most of us.

We are a very creative race, you know. And an imaginative one, even when we don't know it. It seems that those individuals who most bemoan their own lack of imagination are the ones who think they have met the perfect mate and spend hours spinning daydreams of how it will be and what it means. These people, along with their spiritual brothers who are waiting for the perfect mate who must be out there somewhere, are using their imaginations to find new and ingenious ways to hurt themselves.

I'm referring, of course, to myself.

We could tell ourselves that what we wanted was the warm familiarity of the lover we knew, who knew us, with whom we had grown together and could continue to do so, that security was part of love, rather than its anathema. We could tell ourselves this, but even as we did, a persistent voice whispered from our souls, This isn't right. There's something more. And there is the other side, perhaps worse: when we achieve, out of nowhere, the explosive infatuation reflected in a hunger that cannot be sated, the voice says, Yes, this is right, it must be like this forever.

Infatuation, as a phenomenon, can never be fully exorcised. Infatuation, with a person, an idea, a flower, a mountain, a starship, will exist as long as man. People who find their reasons to exist in other people will exist as long as man. But be grateful, you who stand with me at the end of man's infancy and the beginning of his adolescence, that no longer are such things held up as a virtue for which we all ought to strive.

All this I have learned, and much of it I learned there and then, as I sat and thought deep and profound thoughts, from which wisdom emerged, as by magic. I am thus immune from causing myself needless pain over what cannot be and should not be, and I am able to go on with my life and those things that are inarguably far more important than who is sleeping with whom at any given moment.

I sat with my back against the door, my legs straight out in front of me, my feet limp, and I cried until I was exhausted, and eventually I slept.

I'm so fucking wise.

And he is. Wise, I mean.

(As an aside I will heartily recommend any of Brust's books, but especially Feng's and The Sun, The Moon and the Stars and Agyar. Maybe Agyar the most. A very clever and affecting book.)

What has triggered all of this, you ask? Nothing in particular, actually -- more a collection of little things that have accumulated over the last several days. I could go on in this vein for quite some time, but I see by the clock that my tiny welcome has been worn right out, so I'll let you all go back to whatever it is you do.

And I'll do the same.

-t

Currently Aurally Inducing: Built to Spill, Cleo
Selection of the Lyrical Vocabulary: "Wiggly days, wiggly nights..."

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