"Be thine own palace, or the world's thy jail"

The slide into mass-thought is inevitable. There is no hope of avoiding it. This is not a strong statement that I am making in order to set up some optimistic reversal at the end of this post. There is no hope of avoiding it.

When I write against the twisted, zombified version of "community" that people talk about today, it is not in the wish that "things will change." They won't. The general person has resigned him or herself to the idea that "community" is everything; that he has no need of privacy or anonymity; that she needs to actually own nothing -- just pay for it and keep it "on the cloud." People are cool with YouTubing things from their bedrooms, dirty socks on the floor and pictures of the grandparents on the nightstand notwithstanding. Why should the world not see my bedroom? Why should I clean my bedroom for the stupid world? 

The other day, in an in-class debate, a student used this argument: "If you have nothing to hide, why do you care what the government sees of your phone records?" Clank. [That was the sound of my jaw hitting the floor.]

Cuppa Conundrum

I used to pride myself on not being a coffee drinker. Why? Because most other people drink it and I tend to take pride in going against the tide. Then, at some point (I blame my wife) I started drinking coffee.

I think I took  this. Might have been my wife, though. 

So, okay, I like it -- and my personal philosophy about "following" is that one is not an individual if he doesn't do what he wants, just because everyone else does it. Avoidance of trends can be another kind of following. But when I started drinking coffee, it was just because I liked it. And I never became the type to walk around chirping hackneyed mantras about needing my morning coffee or posting memes about not talking to me until cup three... I just like it. The taste and the warmth and the aroma are delightful. That's my coffee modus operendus. (I have no idea. I know virtually no Latin, but it just makes you sound so smart, even if your Latin is bad.)

Today, however, I went to the coffee machine at school and found that only decaffeinated "pods" were left. I felt (and I have been noticing this a lot recently) disappointed. I sighed and considered not having coffee at all, then finally brewed myself a cup.

Why? Am I, too, driven by the prevailing sense of entitlement I often rail against? Do I feel as if I deserve to have all of the possible elements of coffee? Do I feel cheated that someone stole the caffeine from me without asking? I see no difference in taste, as I do with tea. (Decaffeinated tea is poop, if you ask me.) So why should I care?

Bottom line is: I shouldn't.

Egocentric Sharing: Facebook and "Me"

My friend Ted's profile pic.

Facebook is kind of a paradox, if you think about it. It is a "sharing" site -- one that exists to promote "community" among online friends. That's why it should seem strange that it promotes a certain amount of ego-centrism. I'm not exempt from this; I don't think any Facebook user is. Some, however, are over the top.

This "sharing community," as I am sure I have mentioned, makes some of us automatically pretend to be movie stars. I won't get into it, but we've all seen the poses on the profile pics. It's embarrassing. (There is a rebellion against this with people who refuse to post pictures of themselves -- I do get that, but it also makes it harder for people to identify you as the same James Smith they knew in the seventh grade...)

The Smiling Assault

I think that I have mentioned before how much I hate formality – dressing up, sitting up straight, etc. But that doesn’t change the fact that it occurred to me, the other day, that a renewal of good, old-fashioned formality might just be the thing that can save our world from the groupthink, individual-suffocating vortex it is swirling down into.

We need to function in groups, right? It is, at times, essential for survival. So, we move into cities; we make organizations; we form “teams” and “think-tanks” and “committees” and “task-forces” for stuff.  We can all see the usefulness of working in a group. If we don’t see it, we at least have to admit that we are generally forced to, regardless of our perspectives.

The problem begins when individuals of the group begin to melt into each other. I think formality might be at least part of the remedy for this.

My wife, Karen, is a nurse. I used to joke about the fact that she referred to the doctors she worked with by their first names.  I used to ask her, “What happened to ‘yes, doctor; right away, doctor’” – the good old days when nurses called doctors “doctor” and the doctors called nurses “nurse”?

As a guy who is still a little uncomfortable with being called “Mr. Matarazzo,” even though I hear it a thousand times a day, my immediate reaction to informality between doctors and nurses  is: Good. Cut out the bull – we’re all equal. Formality, schmormality.

Raul's Ascent

A lot of people, including myself, complain about some of the effects of our rapidly-evolving technologies. In a lot of ways, technology is becoming something of an enemy of individuality; the over-emphasis on networking, team-mentality and social technology is, to some extent, causing people to fall deeper and deeper into constant interdependence on others.

But, in the hands of the right individuals, technology can be one of the most powerful tools for individual achievement. Twenty -- even ten years ago -- I would never have been able to have produce my CD on my own, as I did. The technology that is now available allowed me to do, for a few thousand dollars, what would have been financially impossible for me to have done just a short while ago.

Everything depends on people having individually-thinking minds -- on their seeing what possibilities, for individual expression, that technology allows. I guess what I am saying is that all is not lost. Teamwork is cool, and all, but I can't help but have a soft-spot for the achievement of one person with an idea.

Speak for Yourself

Has anyone else noticed an escalation in the use of "the second person" in common speech? It's starting to get ridiculous.

Usually, I hear it in interviews and I find it really annoying when people tell me what I would do in a given situation. For example, imagine an interview with a person who has escaped the attack of a mad gunman. Instead of :

"When it happened, I couldn't fight back. I was way too scared -- I hid."

...we often get:

"When the time comes, you just react by hiding. You don't think to fight back. All you can think about is getting away."

I don't? How the hell do you know? What a pathetic attempt head-off accusations this is. It's not that the speaker was too frightened to fight back; it is just he experienced what every human would under the same circumstances.

I understand "fight or flight" and the workings of the reptilian brain, but people do sometimes act heroically in these situations. And, by the way, it is perfectly okay if you were too scared to face down an armed maniac. Admit it, without shame, but do not insinuate what I would have done in your place. Neither one of us knows until the situation occurs.