Wrote this on Facebook, xposting it here.
There is a tendency in the modern bourgeoisie to see the world through the prism of consumer choices. It is, after all, the battleground on which they compete. The classic middle class family is constantly trying to appear as successful and high status as possible, and the best way to do that is through spending your money on just the right things in order to get the most social bang for your buck.
As small a thing as a slightly greener lawn or a fancier front door can determine social victory and loss, and the implied message of the victor is always the same :
“I can’t believe THAT is what you chose!”
As petty, pointless, and pathetic as this is, the real problem comes when they are dealing with poor and/or working class people, because they view those people not as people dealing with an entirely different financial reality but as people just like them and made horrible consumer choices that make them seem way less prosperous and successful and therefore socially repulsive.
Ironically, the problem is that they are treating poor people as equals, in a sense, and judging them as they would judge someone with roughly the same income as them.
If you are not quite clear on what I am getting at (and you are middle class), imagine that you meet people who you know for a rock solid fact have big incomes and lots of savings and investments, but they live like poor people. Unkempt lawn, cars on blocks, kiddie pool in the front yard, yelling at their kids in public, you name it. The whole picture.
You’d think there must be something terribly wrong with them, wouldn’t you? Even though part of you knows they must be living exactly as they please? You would really want to know what the “problem” was. You’d need an explanation.
And deep down, a little part of you would want to punish them. Drive them out of the community, even, for the temerity of living as they please and not how society says they should live.
Despite the fact that being an individual on your own terms is exactly what society tells us we are supposed to do.
Kinda fucked up, isn’t it?
We now return you to your regular blogging already in progress.
…and was totally covered in unicorn sperm.
An attack of gravity
It’s been a rough afternoon so far.
After lunch, I was feeling a little sleepy. So I figured I would do what I often do, and take a little nap until around 3:30 pm and start my day then.
Bad idea. Wke up feeling awful. And worse than the usual awfulness I feel upon waking. My head felt like it was full of hot molasses and like I must have been the victim of a very greedy vampire because I felt like my blood level was at least two pints low.
So I played my game, Witcher 3, for a little while but I cpuldn’t concentrate worth 2.05 shits and so eventually, I had to succumb to the Earth’s pull and lie back down and sleep more.
I wonder would have happened iof I had decided o work through the slight sleepiness and say down to work directly after lunch. I had a big glass of Diet Coke to keep me going Maybe by now, I would have already blogged and taken a crack at my Secret Informant work too. I don’t want to leave it all for the day before the meeting, but it sure looks like that is going to happen because I will have to do my episode tonight, and if things keep going the way they are going right now, that will use up all my remaing energy.
Why must I be such a sickly thing? Is it some kinda of karmic balance thing? The price I pay for being so fucking intelligent and such? Like I am some kind of big-headed but physically weak and fragile alien species?
Afte giving in to sleep, I woke up feeling somewhat better. That’s when I sat down to blog. I still feel pretty shitty and it hard for me to concentrate and I keep nodding off at the keyboard. But I am determined to get something done before I once again to sleep’s siren call and slip once more into the icy inky depths of my smothering reverie.
Seem it’s not the sleepiness that is making me write that sort of thing.
It is, however, what is keeping me from caring. I enjoy writing these little flights of poetry and this is my blog so that is where I am going to do it.
I could never be an actual poet, though. The literary scene in general is not my idea of fun. So much pretension, so much petty politics, so much ridiculous over-analysis of works that treats authiors like gods and their books as holy writ.
Plus, there’s not exactly a living to be made from it.
But that doesn’t bother me much.. It’s the scene that does. I suppose I could be an arrogant hermit and send my poems to my publisher directly, without anyone else’s involvement, and show up for readings but ignore everyone there and leave the moment I am done. Maybe sign a few books.
In other words, I could be a poet, but only if I was a total asshole about it. It doesn’t seem to be worth it. I don’t even like reading poetry. Most of it is awful and made by people who want to do poetry and be seen to have done poetry but have no poetry in them. They just string random thoughts together along with words they think make them seem smart and deep,, but there’s no substance to it. It’s all poses and half thoughts and self-adulation and pathetic toadying for social status.
Fuck that noise. If I was a poet, I would be a combination of Bukowski, Byron, and a snarky sarcastic teenager. A total bad boy with a limited patience for stuffy parties full of dull people trying to soak up some value and status by associating with people who actually have something to say.
So yeah. I’d be a total asshole. Like, Harlan Ellison level asshole.
Think I will stick with the TV writing. Keeps me humble.
I will talk to uyou nice people again tomorrow.