Tag Archives: memory

DISAFFECTED

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The word was once, alienated. Now individuals are lonely. Wisecrackers and smart guys figure loneliness is society’s problem. Let’s make money. The United Kingdom has a Minister of Loneliness. They are wrong. The appropriate word is disaffected, and each person is alone.

If an individual is lonely today – media; cable TV; music everywhere; books and libraries; families; social, political and cultural groups catering to all causes, stamps and ilks; telephones; computers; and social platforms, religions, faiths and belief systems to follow or create – than that human being is not trying. 

The basic problem becomes, can any person entertain her or him self?

Lonely persons in ill-health, physically or mentally, or are handicapped are less capable. Some might abuse alcohol or drugs; or they are like Alice, one pill makes them bigger and the other makes them small; not all humans like the lingering haze of THC and what it does to company.

Lonely people might have just left a job or are retired. They know nothing of life but work and fellow employees. Perhaps they have never heard or heard anything except they themselves are right and righteous. Finally some might now fear other human beings, whom they consider enemies: Consider the trash man who has seen the worst of society.

So what is loneliness today? Having 5,000 friends on Facebook and trying to respond to 50 people might take two weeks – hopelessness of reaching everyone and explaining X. Does anyone truly care? How come no one responds? Each friend has 5,000 friends of her own to respond to. People in this predicament are like attendees at a wedding in the scrum to catch the bridal bouquet. An individual gets a quarter of the flowers, along with pedals and other plant composition. What good are the thorns on a rose stem?

Some famous people and well-known individuals, exposed on social media, have announced they are going dark. The end. After 2015 Kelly Evans of CNBC made that announcement. Perhaps the best way to reach Kelly Evans is by letter delivered by the United States Postal Service – stamp (now 55 cents – two quarters and a nickel for new-school devotees), an envelope, a written address, and some form of return address delivered by a mail carrier to a street address. Old-school, they say. Come out and play.

Is the ability to reach three billion people in the world and become known raise the worrisome issue of loneliness? Over exposure to the masses is not a situation most individuals are prepared for, or like. Individuals cherish isolation. Human beings cling to what is familiar and friendly, sensations that comfort and warm. Does anyone ever wonder why any individual remains and lives in Barstow, California? The cultural center is the McDonalds attached to a few railroad cars converted into shops selling sundries and T-shirts and doubling as a bus stop. A gas station is across the main drag, next to the Freeway off/on-ramp. The biggest thing around is the San Andres Fault, 50 miles away.

It seems isolated, but most human beings like what familiarity delivers: Security. What is known become secure. What is routine becomes predictable. What seems certain and simple become truth. Why wonder? Why ask why? Curiosity is something to overcome, put away and reject. The imagination is fiction and dreams, the fake and the fancy of childhood. So at twenty years of age, human beings may have in place the ingredients to stop living.

Like all other animals human beings feel good being on solid ground, accepting set rules and going forward from there, rather than swimming in a swamp, or stepping into quicksand. This great divide separates home versus taking risks.

On its own communication becomes preposterous because the current length and style confine a tweet or text to a 50-word unit. Emails are short. Oft times one has not seen the person for two years or more. Nothing has changed in those years – life is the same, experiences are the same, human beings have not grown, no sense of living and doing, accomplishment, failure, struggle and solutions. Every person is the same, samo-samo. Time stands still as in The Lord of the Flies: Boys on the island for months maintain all physical, mental, spiritual abilities and relationships as when they were together in boarding school, or wherever. The in-group kills Piggy. Life on earth is always static. Put and keep the best face forward despite the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. A person can be in luxury or comfort and live a sheltered, rote, routine existence and wonder why life is not satisfying. Hamlet is no longer amongst us.

Will Rogers reacted to persons recommending a facelift: “I want the world to know why I look this way.” It was similar to Abraham Lincoln’s response to his being two-faced during the 1860 campaign for President: “If I had another face, do you think I would use this one?”

Which age of life do curiosity and imagination leave human beings? Two aspects – one regarding one’s own personal outlook, no self-reflection, and the second, looking at the world including human beings around us. The Second: Each of us has observed friends, acquaintances and souls who are or who have checked out no matter their ages. The ardent sports fan might be unable to tell which teams are on the field, who the players are and the sorts of plays. Those persons may be unable to recount a play or a situation. Indeed, some of those fans aren’t unable to comprehend the game without the noise of the crowd on TV. It is why the Whistle Guy, a New Orleans fan, was so annoying. Alert: Whistle Guy was why pass interference was not called against the Rams. The Rams won the trip to the Super Bowl.

Good Luck, Rams. Boston Red Sox versus LA Dodgers. No Babe Ruth. SOX.

Pats versus the Rams. Brady versus The Brady Bunch. PATS.

I know someone, somewhere wants to punch me in the nose for writing these sentences. They aren’t politically correct. Offend someone: I won’t watch because I don’t want to hear the announcers chat between themselves rather than describe the game to viewers. Plus there are loads of advertisements. No one comments about the commercials. There is humor and honesty when someone can present an alternative, cogent reality or faith. However, they are not present during the Super Bowl.

Next are grandparents in their Sixties and older. Many cannot shut up about their grandchildren, primarily because they have forgotten the lives of their own children or have rid themselves of recollections of their own lives. What happens to a young child may seem new and strange, but truly it is close to what was experienced by previous generations. Any grandparent may not feel alone if memory recalls the similarity between their own lives and what the runts, generic off spring are going and experiencing. 

Many people my age, and many younger and lots older, have forgotten that humor – not comedy – plus a sense of ridiculous boost hope throughout society. Human folly. Everyone with a family knows nothing in life is perfect; indeed, nothing turns out perfect. Laugh or cry. Drollness is a good response to occurrences in life and society. The best any individual can expect is a sense of fairness. Old people know this. Young people must struggle with it; they must fight for perfection – it is the glory of being young, enthusiastic and somewhat ignorant and naive. The triumph of youth is sometimes blessed: James Madison was 37 years old when the Constitution was ratified in 1788. He had worked seven years getting a governing document accepted. Off the bad in human behavior Madison took opportunities to exploit the good.

In society Americans are offended. Don’t judge me. Don’t be judgmental. Americans are wrong. Yet, they are revealing they watch too many law programs: Perry Mason gone wild, now Law and Order. There’s no evidence. I have issues. That’s hearsay. I did nothing wrong. Prove it. I’m innocent. You’re judging me. Other legal words and phrases have crept into the American vernacular and are used to ward off preconceived criticisms or to avoid conversation.

Any friend is not judging. At best he is a juror and mostly works on impressions. Issues are problems sometimes revealing mental illnesses. No one can live life bound by rules of evidence – Just the facts, Madame. All human interaction would be frozen by evidence. Hearsay is inadmissible but is frequently true. Human beings infer, feel, suppose, believe and wonder. Every claim to be innocent – innocent until proven guilty – misstates the legal principle: Not guilty until proven guilty. The legal principle is closer to reality, because everyone is guilty: …He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone…(John 8:7)

If Americans remain defensive about everything, we are a sorry set of human beings, each an over sensitive crybaby. Our society is odd, foreign and idiotic; it is incomprehensible. Is it all right to be discriminating, or judgmental? Food, stores, clothes, personal hygiene. music, movies, sports teams, games, sports teams, music, cars, etc. Americans make choices, express opinions, have likes and dislikes (thumbs up or down, emojis with a smile or a frown), vote with dollars, and favor many things over others which might be beneficial or a waste of time: Global warming, (climate change, or new term} and pollution need a stronger push and better arguments to be accepted by persons other than benevolent enthusiasts. 

What is the difference between making choices and being discriminating and being offensive when doing your own thing or making comments about behaviors and attitudes that offend, are gross or arise from curiosity? Most people do not make the distinctions. They say nothing; they end friendships; they are silent; they become isolated. Ideas offend or an individual’s behavior can be entertaining: Comments say more about the person making them than the recipient. Americans do not always believe adverse words carry benefit or are funny. Is any comment accurate or true? An individual should evaluate. Should an American have to reflect on comments? Yes, we are human beings. Someone on Facebook told me I wasn’t part of the Twenty-First Century because I didn’t smoke marijuana. I’m taking that comment to the bank. Should Americans distrust that which is perceived to be criticism? The immediate reaction is do the macho thing, make fools of defending oneself in all circumstances, and lose: Americans should be celebrate the manifestation of human diversity, opinion and folly, and recognize all that in ourselves. 

An unquestioning mindset over decades separates thousands of individuals from more wondering human beings. There is security in isolation – I’m right; no one else tells me otherwise. That person may as well be living in Barstow, California. What anyone says reveals deficiencies: Spout cliches and dated ideas, like the person has lived on that island with boys and none had changed. What does any human being think now, about existence, life or the news, rather than events 40 years ago? Who to talk to? How to entertain oneself? Cable TV, Doctor Phil. Change the channel to Judge Judy. Think TV was once better? Indeed, did Edward R. Murrow ever ask anyone he interviewed: “How did you feel?” Eventually most human beings want society after fifty years of confined, narrow thinking. How to break out? Human beings lose the ability to socialize. It is why principle topics that emotionally come to people – religion and politics – are forbidden subjects in many retirement homes.

It is all education of a lifetime, not lessons of don’t judge, don’t question. Show no curiosity. Misunderstandings reveal weakness. Show ignorance, never! Listen to the exotic and believe it automatically. However being stupid and curious is fun, inspiring and harmless:  A supernova produces energy, radiation and light. I’ve never heard anyone ask an expert whether any sound or noise is emitted from a supernova which humans have detected, or whether it exists at all. [If a tree falls in the forest and no person is there, is there noise?] It seems absurd that noise would come from an exploding supernova a billion light years away! Perhaps it is the sound and sight of deity.

Finally, laugh. Laugh at yourself/ Follow Herman Melville’s advice in Moby Dick, Chapter 5:

A good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too scare a good thing: the more’s the pity. So, if any one man, in his own proper person, afford stuff for a good joke to anybody, let him not be backward, but let him cheerfully allow himself to spend and be spent on that way. And the man that has anything bountifully laughable about him, be sure there is more in that man than you perhaps think for.  

And there is nothing more pleasing and refreshing than a human being who is honest, frank and well-balanced, willing to admit what was once stupid, miscalculated and a jump into the abyss. That human being has learned, knows honesty, become conscious of the world and fellow beings, and is comfortable giving lessons, relaying experiences and telling stories. What all human life is, nothing is perfect: Mistakes, regrets and blunders speckle our lives. There is humor, irony, joy or love in all that.

 

 

CHARACTER: Crime Four

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Last year I presented three lists describing crimes and criminal activities, derived from TV crime shows. Issues in this article arise from a crime show: Woman has wonderlust. She moves from place to place but no stop is perfect and satisfies her. She needs satisfaction not contentment or acceptability. She continues to look for the perfect location with perfect people. She meets different and more people. There are chemistry and magic someplace.

A person seeking something from the environment or from society has a tough row to hoe. Everything is life predicated on experience: Wise men learn by others’ harms; fools by their own. Or, Experience keeps a dear school, yet Fools will learn in no other. Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanack. Our person relies on impulse, instinct and intuition, freely for the way forward but frequently is hurt or offended if someone is rude, questioning or dismissive. Yet ask whether our person is capable of love, or recognizes love apart from fondness, affection and attention.

Our person from the show was murdered in the same manner her mother was 25 years before. Picked up in a bar, taken into a forest, assaulted and killed. The murderers were easily caught. However, our person did not learn from experience, and there appeared no memory to let our person ponder, reflect or consider. This was a sorry, pathetic, weak and uneducated human being. What may be worse, our person may be lying to herself about herself.

How to breach the cycle relying in impulse, instinct and intuition? One ay, put something of substance into the person’s head. If she loves nature, educate her about forest lore, not the tripe James Fenimore Cooper recited but real things from education to survival skills. That education will change activities, the life, behavior, goals and aspirations.

Summing Up

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SUMMING UP

The Summing Up, Somerset Maugham, was written when the author was in his sixties before World War Two. It is a book of interest by a capable writer who can develop a point without being realistic or accurate in his assessments. Consider his analysis of being old:

“For the complete life, the perfect pattern, includes old age as well as youth and maturity. The beauty of a morning and the radiance of noon are good, but it would be a very silly person who drew the curtains and turned on the light in order to shut out the tranquility of the evening. Old age has its pleasures, which, though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth. The philosophers have always told us that we are the slaves of our passions, and is it so small a thing to be liberated from their sway? The fool’s old age will be foolish, but so was his youth… It is true that the old man will no longer be able to climb an Alp or tumble a pretty girl on a bed; it is true that he can no longer arouse the concupiscence of others. It is something to be free from the pangs of unrequited love and the torment of jealously. It is something that envy, which so often poisons youth, should be assuaged by the extinction of desire. But these are negative compensations; the old age has positive compensations also. Paradoxical as it may sound it has more time. …Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long. In old age the taste improves, and it is possible to enjoy art and literature without the personal bias that in youth warps the judgment. It has the satisfaction of its own fulfillment. It is liberated from the trammels of human egoism; free at last, the soul delights in the passing moment, but does not bid it away. It has completed the pattern.

(Penguin Books, NY, 1963, p. 190-191)

Maugham is very hopeful about what lies ahead (lived into his nineties), but fears and forces of age are to be observed. Loss of energy, loss of ability, loss of senses are major deficits in any human being, whether young and old. They are common with age. There may seem to be more time, but remember each act takes longer. Secondary symptoms accompany these deficiencies: loss of confidence, reduced sense of fitting in, being inflexible and frequently misunderstanding.

Maugham writes about a small percentage of people when he assumes as a person ages responsibilities, hatreds, prejudices and states of mind can change more easily. Age frequently ossifies points of view, sets biases, and gives obligations an anchor while limiting choices, augmenting burdens and submitting to predilection. The long and short of Maugham’s aging theory is, success in fulfilling it for all people happens long before they reach old age. If persons have no ability or inclination to change or learn from life and its experiences at 20 years or at 40 years, it can be assumed that people will not change at 60 years or at 80 years. Will people “undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long?” Are persons with no sense of passion and no desire capable of mastering new learning, seeing new perspectives on life, and taking new efforts to reach satisfaction?

It is more likely that most elderly will disappear quietly, except they vote. They get the most benefits from the government; they claim they have contributed and they are owed. That is true if they remain active. If they are passive and do nothing for themselves, for Americans and the country, that is the worst result. The old can participate and become elders – have a satisfactory life in old age, but that is a role to be earned.

Today is a situation that the Boomer and more recent generations must face, and it might be considered a joke like an earlier incident. Miley Cyrus did a skit. Apparently everyone was offended, but what is disgusting about it? I’ve not seen but heard about it. [My eyes are too sensitive. Having written a long novel about the Nixon years in Berkeley, I’ve seen more than I can imagine, about anatomy, bodies and activities arising from each.] About the skit Mothers and Fathers, throughout America deplore that it was broadcast without any rating: INAPPROPRIATE FOR TEENAGERS AND CHILDREN WHO WILL SEE IT ON THE INTERNET. Someone asked why the MTV producers allowed it on the air?

Is this the first time parents have talked to their kids about sex, love, life, drugs and the commercialism about all those topics? If it happened this morning and this week, it is too late. The idea that Miley Cyrus has presented a defining moment in American history is nonsense. As part of raising children, parents have the responsibility to be parents, just like all other animals do, and teach the young what is important, how to act, what to do, and how to get and use protection against culture and society. The skit is not Pearl Harbor, 9-1-1, or The Free Speech Movement.

Did Cyrus do this out of the blue? NO, she grew up with it. Remember Bill and Monica, a couple that will live in celebrity, in notoriety, in infamy. There were cigars, the acts and gyrations, no “sex-with-that-woman” and the other lies, the blue dress. Front page news for a few years, and Bill Clinton was a punch line while arguing that he had prerogatives, privileges and immunities to lie in a sexual harassment lawsuit brought by a third woman he victimized. The women were right; Bill was wrong, as is reflected in the large settlement he paid. However, the third woman was referred to generously by Clinton supporters as trailer trash. Apparently any woman bringing a sexual harassment charge against Bill was trailer trash, and no one defended those women; no one complained about the belittling, mocking, deriding “the third woman” or “that woman,” either. Just throw those women and all other like women under the bus. I wonder if the women who were subjected to Bob Filner’s (San Diego mayor) advances, affections and moves should be so labeled. Filner complained he was targeted in Republican San Diego because he is a Democrat.

There was some hope after Bill and Monica. Apparently Al Gore had indiscretions, and his wife, Tipper, divorced the asshole. I voted for Al, but in one way, I’m happy he lost: Any politician who can’t keep his indiscretions confidential should not be president. It is said that the French nation laughs at American shock and dismay that our politicians have affairs. That is incorrect. The French laugh because American politicians are indiscrete and like to be found with their pants down.

So what of the skit that Cyrus acted. First, there are no lies and no lawsuit; anything she did is less serious. Second, it is probably bad entertainment just like it was bad news 15 years ago. Third, if the content was all right for America in 1997, what is the difference in 2013? PBS, NBC, CBS, ABC, cable news and (All the news that is fit to print) The New York Times versus MTV, today? It is sour grapes that MTV did it first. Fourth, if the perpetrators and the acts themselves were not condemned in 1997, why are people spouting off, hypocritically, today?

What does this have to do with age? Reason, judgment, logic, thinking don’t improve with age unless each human being reflects, thinks and knows. A twenty year old can know as much as a sixty year old. Memories and memory don’t always play well in human beings, young, middle aged or old. Why cringe at sex today and yet when younger, not be startled or alarmed by lies, lawsuits, sex and abuse of power in 1997? I don’t condone Miley Cyrus, but I’m not shocked or surprised anyone would overlook the chance to do her skit. Anything to keep the name before the public benefits her. However, gaining a name by being a-serial-killer-want-to-be-musician appears to be the limit.

Charles Manson didn’t have the charisma, the savoir faire or grace to use older words. He didn’t talk well; he was a poor singer; he danced badly, he sneered when he smiled. He lacked the cherished traits to pass and get the attention and love from other human beings. Anyone who can do those needs no talent, no training, no ability and no mind. Just show the audience you’re willing to do anything to get the face and name into lights, on TV, before the public, on the Internet – chatter, sing, smile and dance senselessly.

Being old only allows people to forget what happened 15, 33, 50 years ago; there is no virtue or benefit in a poor memory or an inability to communicate accurately or with wisdom. Some people were causal 15 years ago, and are shocked today, and Americans may only say, we have learned nothing over the course of our lives. We should know our reactions to the Cyrus skit should not now be astonishment and horror. That should have happened in 1997 and 1998. Today we be ashamed.