Relationships: Word Definitions

I avoid politics like the plague in part because of the sheer ideology behind things like bumper stickers. There is a popular such decal where I live, one I have grown increasingly weary of, that says “Marriage = (block male figure) + (block female figure)”.

Sigh.

Outside of descriptive (never prescriptive) reference works agreed upon and designated for the purpose (say, dictionaries, encyclopedias, etc.), I suppose I somewhat resent anyone defining me and the relationship I have with my partner to me, for me and ostensibly better than I. Next someone will be telling me which recipe for lasagna I can use in my kitchen in order for me to use the word ‘dinner’. In this spirit I offer the following bit of silliness:

In all seriousness, I truly believe such word definitions should be left up to the individuals using them, every individual using them. Let everyone discover the pros and cons of using words, willy nilly or accurately, all by themselves. Let everyone be adults.

Earth Abides

Right now I’m reading Earth Abides by George R. Stewart. I picked it because it’s a bit of a classic (1947) and so far (80 pgs) it’s decent writing, eminently readable in fact. Yet while the concept is grand and fascinating (post apocalyptic United States), the plot so far is a bit thin and I’m about to quit reading and start skimming.

I did end up skimming a few pages but on the whole I think this was a ‘good book’ and a story I could identify with. Part of the reason the story was so slow for the first 110 pages was due to the development of the main character and his deteriorating environment, something ultimately necessary though frankly I think it could have been either shortened a good deal or spread throughout the rest of the story. In many places the story was hopelessly outdated, and perhaps this slow development is one way in which the writing was dated too. On the other hand, as what makes a classic is the timeless applicability and examination of the human spirit, in the remainder of the story how that developed character worried and struggled over the continuance of that outdated civilization was often excellent.

I’ve said before I think too much and this too was the protagonist’s flaw, we even worry and think philosophically about many of the same things. Like me, Isherwood Williams even had a partner whose contrasting silent strength and spirit not only seemed to enjoy life more often but in the end had the right of how people will ’go on’, how humanity will continue, how ‘men would go and come but the earth abide’. In no small way, his learning to relax, live and let live, love and let love, was the plot, was the story - and something I could easily slip into my own life lessons.

It wasn’t only his partner providing contrast however; in one scene his only son with an intellectual predilection discovers he can overcome his deficiency at putting puzzles together by matching the colors and designs on the pieces. Yet when he becomes faster at puzzles than his siblings and friends they claim though he can be faster if he wants, they’d rather have more fun doing it the haphazard way they always have. In a way this was a dig at humanity’s preference for Middle Ages ‘fun’ and ‘enjoyment’ (irony intended) over Industrial Revolution ‘progress’ and ‘advancement’ , but I rather think in the end the author wanted to point out (as I and many others have done before) that (post)modern industrialized society lost something that many in the New Age are trying to recapture. So I think it was more the point that ’Ish’, like his son, like me and unlike Em and my wife, tend to easily differentiate the history, size and scope of the forest at the expense of the compact experience of loving the living tree.

Interestingly, at several points Isherwood recognizes (and even once Em herself recognizes) how Em has often been more a mother than wife or partner to him, and (again similar to my wife and I) Em is Ish’s senior by about ten years. And while I do not think their relationship could be characterized as ‘female led’ in any way, the mother-son or parent-child dynamic has often been linked with female led relationships and I’ve written about this many times (see here, here, here, here and here).

Babysitting

I was in the grocery store today and this happened:

Bagger: Hi, how are you today?

Me: Well thank you.

Bagger: You babysitting the kid today?

Right now I’m really thinking: Babysitting? Who ‘babysits‘ their own kid?
But this would be impolite to say, so instead: You might say that.

Bagger: She sleeping? That’s good, you don’t want her to wake up.

Um, because I am a man and wouldn’t know what to do with a baby?
Me: Well, she will eventually.

Bagger: Ha -ha, ain’t that the truth.

Grrr.
Me: Have a day.

In retrospect, I should have said something, at least a bit more overt if still attempting politeness, about this sort of attitude. In fact I usually do – when people say things like, “so got the kids today?”, I usually say something like, “And every other day too!” But I didn’t today and I regret it – if we don’t speak up, how else will people become aware of their perceptions, prejudices and stereotypes and ever change them?

(Sigh.)

Postmodern Society and Pluralistic Ethics

The problem of course with postmodernism is that there are few (if any) absolute truths whereas modernism at least held out the promise of a knowable absolute truth, even if that truth as currently unknown. Not that there is any lack of truth options in a postmodern world, indeed it’s the plurality of often contradictory truths that’s the problem.

I recently suggested on a forum that passion was the real reason behind the worth of an individual’s expression, yet even as I wrote I knew pluralism makes the rules of how one person’s expression of passion effects another person a serious social problem.  In fact I recently thought seeking humanity’s absolute truth is akin to trying to find lowest common denominator for the entire number line – the only answer, one (1), is of no help as it pluralistically leaves every person a rule and absolute truth unto themselves.

Most people then turn to a denominator less than one (depending on your metaphor), turn to getting a truth that though not an absolute truth will still cover as large slice of situations and examples as possible, cover as much of humanity as possible. And though this is the essence of governance, it inevitably flails and must flail on the rocks that people are real and not numbers. We live, grow, learn, change and most of all love – passionately, and those decimal point partial truths must constantly take stock and measure, then shift wherever the mass of us leads if it is to continue its optimal coverage.

However I think the difference between passion and action has allowed the sneaking of practical modernism in the back door as it were, for we often respect, admire and appreciate outlaws for their passions and individuality, even as we hunt them down and lock them away for their infringements upon others. And the where, when and why of human legal systems remain grounded in modern (more like pre-modern) absolutist religious expressions.

Thus, because there are no pluralistic ethics with a common denominator higher than one, humanity remains an odd amalgam of modern and postmodern frameworks, mostly modern at the larger scale social levels with postmodern occasionally breaking out at the lower social and individual levels.

Yet in a very real sense the absence of absolute truth, or the substitution of absolute singular with a plurality of equals, wouldn’t matter were it not for the fact I occasionally have a Christ complex and want to save humanity from itself, were it not for the fact I mentally am still seeking the ‘progressive’ betterment of human-kind. This even though I frankly suspect such ‘betterment’ is either ultimately impossible, precisely because there is no single, universal, absolute, grand-scale schema available to ‘progress’ upon, or possibly just permanently stalled at the point wherever modern sensibilities end and postmodern relativity begins.

And though it’s unoriginal, I often think that the single greatest obstacle to large-scale, wide-spread, human happiness is that trait within us that overlooks what is best in the wide and large scale picture in favor of what is best in small and short term picture. But that trait has, I think, been proved unremovable (even occasionally advantageous) and so paradoxically though I want everyone to be happy I fear all proposed utopias, all utopian programs, all ideologies and frameworks – nevermind that aligning perceived self interest with perceived social interest is a problem outdating both the modern and postmodern frameworks.

~

Of course, as I recently pointed out and am painfully aware, though I just want everyone people to be happy and live in harmony, no one can make another person happy but that person alone, and the risks of living and playing in the biological meaning matrix (my own personal decimal point partial truth) include harm, hurt and pain.

And of course that there are no better answers short of systems that cause others more harm, hurt and pain I find extremely frustrating. So despite my being a pluralist, despite my believing in pluralism (may everyone find their passion as I found mine) I find postmodernism extremely frustrating (when will we all grow up?) it remains slightly less frustrating than anything else, and though it’s hard for me to swallow, I find postmodern social ethics mostly, almost entirely, ironically, an affair of the individual’s self education.

Fear: Self and Other

No -
no I will not say,
though they say it’s okay, that
some souls are somehow
less.

Yes -
I guess it may mean
my own mess I must clean while
facing, though fearing,
me.

~

I don’t usually veer off into ethics and uxory as a social issue, however, occasionally I come across enough things that make me wonder:

The bad news is if the man doesn’t a lot of dominance to begin with, and loses it in the course of the relationship, things can go very wrong- he may become the dreaded “kitchen bitch”. The content beta to despised kitchen bitch story is the story of much of American manhood.
~ Relationship Types and Dominance Levels, on Game for Omegas site, where the author also pointed out the term “kitchen bitch” was coined by NPR commentator and author Sarah Tsing Loh in this article.

[...] stands exposed as a floundering Man, not a panacea-laden Superman. Even his relationship with his wife has hurt his sex appeal: Uxorious men are never sexy for long.
~ Obama’s Vanishing Sex Appeal, The Daily Beast

Politics, along with a few other things, I avoid like the plague here – but what is it about any sort of deviance from the ‘alpha male normal’ stereotype that makes people so… denigrating? Why is their assumption so visceral?

With a little help from an SMTR discussion I realized it’s insecurity, social insecurity, and fear as motivation – an interior dynamic often identified in all sorts of bullying-like and prejudicial behavior.

In defense of fear I will say its design of making us pay attention to important things can be helpful. But it’s against how fear can make us treat others that I wrote this poem.