Too Much of a Good Thing/ The Evolution of Insecurities

Sorry about the slow lead in. Bear with me here..

Why does society cater to incompetence? Is that what a society is? A system of support in which the strong take care of the weak in order to maintain our race? Its worked so far at least- tremendously well. The smart, able people have engineered products to compensate for idiots’ incompetence, reducing their impact, allowing them to function independently by either trashing and over utilizing their resources or by buying into the bureaucracy that provides the shortcuts necessary to bring lofty goals and complicated procedures down to the level of incompetent, unthinking people who can only thrive within the confines of structure, games and rules. And then becoming slaves to it. It’s worked. Despite the fact that we, as a society, structure, race, and people, have more problems and diseases and unhappiness as ever, there are also more people than ever, our systems are bigger, bureaucracies are more impenetrable and were able to get more things done faster than ever. Ah, sweet success. But what was our goal to begin with in creating this maze for ourselves? Were short sighted, maybe that’s the problem, creating quick fix solutions to problems that we’ve created by our own immediacy and laziness and then, just after we become fully dependent on our new creation, we realize that our new crutch is unsustainable, running out and has terrible backlashes.

Although this is often the kind of things I think about periodically, in the shower, putting away laundry, spacing out, this specific little impassioned rant was triggered by helping Keith clean his apartment to show to a potential renter. Keith’s not the subject matter here, Johnny is- the roommate whom three people are relocating in order to avoid. Our disbelief at the level of Johnny’s dependence lead me to ask what makes people this way. So here’s my attempt at an explanation.

People started by gathering. In families, tribes, near rivers- for transport, water, crops, connectivity, trade, then cities formed and grew and grew. Sticking up for yourself, your family was no longer enough. Now it was a society, you had to be a valuable member of society while still looking out for yourself- this survival tactic now based not on the maintenance of a closely-knit community where people felt confident and solid in their role, enough to lose a need for self- preservation and work instead for the maintenance of a way and a people one strongly believed in preserving. A then small-scale system in which you and everyone were necessary and vital components. But now in a city, a system, a society, moving as a unit of its own, unreliant on personal impact (every vote counts but not because we respect your opinion but because 1+1+1=3, times a few hundred thousand adds up, it all adds up, to maybe one point, which can win or lose an election), moving on its own, bolstered by and built upon a foundation of insecurities, inferiority and a desire to keep up with an impossible ideal. Now we’re lacking the reliance on one another that previously made up a society. Charity, then, made sense. Empathy and support because everything that happened to an individual effected the community. Here, an individual is no longer important in the bigger picture, just a number to add up to make a whole, a fraction of the bigger picture instead of being a microcosm for it.

In the good ol’ days, if your grand father and your father were barbers, you would be a barber too. Now, one has to find his own meaning instead of being born into it. You have a world of possibilities in front of you, hundreds of potential careers, lifestyles, relationships and if you choose wrong, it all comes back to point its fingers at you. What is masked as control over oneself is presented with such daunting possibilities and implications that it has the opposite effect and in turn, disempowers the individual. And if one day, for some reason, you’re a little discontent, its no longer just a bad day in the midst of a good life. It’s the result of thousands of personal choices that now, you must look back on, doubt and wish had been made differently in order to spare yourself from this impermanent unhappiness. So egos are considered, tried and fail. Within the privacy of your own home, out on the streets, a huge world is not comprehensible for us so we fragment it, create classes, races, stereotypes, groups, political parties and above all, watch out for numero uno! A safety in numbers (the dependence and personal responsibility one takes in a small scale community) morphs into the bystander effect where now, we’ve become so removed, that big world out there, its no longer our creation or even our land to walk on. It has a life of its own and is no longer ours, that a girl yelling for help on a street corner in New York has nothing to do with us, its not our problem, its just another struggle far off along with the thousands of problems and suffering brought to our attention and pinned on our backs as vague nagging responsibility, by a global community but not actually experienced, seen first hand, lived and felt.

In order to preserve ourselves, engage in our surroundings, we create false worlds based on distractions and creations- things we can process and tackle. The drama in tonight’s episode of Desperate Housewives is more manageable, more tangible, closer to home, than the warring sects in the Middle East, the governmental corruption in Somalia and Kenya and what that corruption is driving people to do. So our efforts to engage in hum-drum routines and trivial pleasures is really just an effort to regain a control over ourselves and our own lives that was lost when our worlds went from tribal familiarity and familial values to large-scale worldly knowledge, expectations and involvement- a task much too daunting for our small simple bodies to take on.

We’re stretching ourselves in order to move further and further away from animalistic, bodily-dependent simplicity and further and further towards matters of the mind. If we disconnect from our bodies (what do you mean my mood is affected by the processed food-like substance I just ate for lunch? Im a lawyer, I make 200 grand a year, Im a self actualized human being!), distance ourselves from the mortal world around us, falling leaves and springing buds, life cycles, water cycles, mortality, change, death and evolution, than maybe- at least consciously- we’re able to detach ourselves from the impermanence which everyone fears. Why? I don’t know, maybe because its one more threat to our control. Control-that’s the one thing here that sets us apart from any other animal. A mind so abstract that its mere engagement contradicts every cyclic, mortal force that plays on our lives. Opposable thumbs my ass. If we couldn’t open jars, we’d find a way around it. A way to justify our inability with a desperate, quivering ego-based superiority.

The ingenious of us have found that the number one way to market products is to strip perspective buyers of their last thread of control, instill a feeling of incompleteness and lacking, making them dependent on an outside source to regain that thread. If you tell girls enough that theyre bad at sex, they’ll rake for solutions and find an impermanent solution in the false promises of a Cosmopolitan magazine. And for 6.99 a pop, that’s not a bad price for a quick fix high. If you convince a homeowner that her cleaning methods don’t protect properly against a certain strain of bacteria she cant pronounce, she’ll spend her money on products manufactured not to improve the quality of her life but to turn her into a consumer- buying a fix here and a fix there until the dopamine is expended, regulators forced open and the high becomes the norm and the lacking becomes the painful, sweaty trembling crash. Addicted, dependent on products that support the maker‘s similar struggle to keep up, prioritizing immediate personal gain over sustainable betterment.

Dependence on something means that without it, you’re lacking. When people are taught that they’re incomplete or not good enough as is, they lose the confidence in themselves necessary to think for themselves, follow not what is forced down their throats but instead what they independently believe in. The loss of control over oneself strips people of the power to think critically, question authority and say- this is how I want to see the world and this is what Im going to do to see that through. So little power is given, or taken, over ones own life that people try in vain to bolster their failing egos by abusing the few aspects of control that they still feel they have. Teens desperately do everything they can to rebel against parents and every force bigger than them- drug problems, self mutilation, eating disorders- some of the few things in life they feel are in their hands- so who could pass up the chance to exploit that rare power?

Johnny, as described by his former roommates, is a fuck-up. To the extent that his mom flew in from the east coast to come check up on him, you know, clean his sheets, buy him toilet paper. If his own mom doesn’t have the faith in his abilities to manage his own life, who will? And then it all became clear. Maybe if his mom hadn’t flown a few thousand miles to help him with his life, he may have understood, after perhaps finding himself in the bathroom with no toilet paper a few times, that his power over his life extends an ability to find people who are willing to take care of him. And maybe then he would scrape the leftover lasagna off of his plate before balancing it on the tower of his unwashed dishes in the kitchen sink. Maybe then he would have the self-esteem to redirect the energy and money currently spent on constantly revamping his wardrobe (to once more get that dying high of false confidence instilled upon consumers by marketers who don’t mind adding to the whirlpool of dependence and disempowerment to get a slice of their pie) to the promotion of something he genuinely believes in, something that brings actual, sustained, real happiness.

I might be completely wrong, totally missing the mark about all of this, but if its true- if this kind of pathetic dependent incompetence is in fact just the manifestation of a desperate confused desire for empowerment, its hard to look at Johnny and feel anything but pity. But I can also see how after a year of living with the guy, being constantly bombarded by his pleas for attention and approval, and scraping crusted-on oatmeal off of abandoned bowls, pity might morph into pure resentment.