June, Other Thoughts (4)
The other thing I have learned about humanity is a little more obscure: we, for the most part, are pretty polite in this culture. But we aren't real. Politeness rescues us from any feelings or tendancies toward realness.
I started to see this at jobs like mine. For the most part, I am very polite. You can infuriate me, talk down to me, disrespect me - and I'm still polite. And in response, the majority of customers are very polite back. Every once and a while, someone will be real - either you or me. And suddenly, the whole exchange is different. We aren't just going through the motions. We may say this or that, perhaps not even much - but the authenticity of the conversation can still be felt throughout the room.
Politeness severs that, instills in each of us a negative effect: breaking points. Because underneath all of that niceness is the reality, is our fury at the world and at ourselves and at each other. But politeness keeps it hidden away so no-one knows what infuriates us. So we go on being polite, but steaming - all of us walking pressure cookers waiting to explode. And eventually, some small thing will tip the scale - will tap the lid of the cooker. In an instant, we have thrown caution and humanity to the wind, and we are shouting at the top of our lungs above the polite din at someone we haven't known for more than a moment.
Then the fury passes, the pressure resets, and we are polite as pie again.
The problem here is honesty. So many of us go around acting out a multitue of alterior motives that we never tell anyone. Most of those movitves are self-focused, which brings us back to the earlier discussion and really mucks everything up. Which leads to this grim summary:
Humanity is a lot of self-focused liars who layer manners over true motives in attempts to make soeciety work together more peaceably.
But it isn't working. And eventually all of our timebombs will go off. Then, after the desolation, perhaps the right order of things will be restored and humanity will get one more chance to start from the start again.
But we'll probably fuck that up too.
It's inevitable.
I started to see this at jobs like mine. For the most part, I am very polite. You can infuriate me, talk down to me, disrespect me - and I'm still polite. And in response, the majority of customers are very polite back. Every once and a while, someone will be real - either you or me. And suddenly, the whole exchange is different. We aren't just going through the motions. We may say this or that, perhaps not even much - but the authenticity of the conversation can still be felt throughout the room.
Politeness severs that, instills in each of us a negative effect: breaking points. Because underneath all of that niceness is the reality, is our fury at the world and at ourselves and at each other. But politeness keeps it hidden away so no-one knows what infuriates us. So we go on being polite, but steaming - all of us walking pressure cookers waiting to explode. And eventually, some small thing will tip the scale - will tap the lid of the cooker. In an instant, we have thrown caution and humanity to the wind, and we are shouting at the top of our lungs above the polite din at someone we haven't known for more than a moment.
Then the fury passes, the pressure resets, and we are polite as pie again.
The problem here is honesty. So many of us go around acting out a multitue of alterior motives that we never tell anyone. Most of those movitves are self-focused, which brings us back to the earlier discussion and really mucks everything up. Which leads to this grim summary:
Humanity is a lot of self-focused liars who layer manners over true motives in attempts to make soeciety work together more peaceably.
But it isn't working. And eventually all of our timebombs will go off. Then, after the desolation, perhaps the right order of things will be restored and humanity will get one more chance to start from the start again.
But we'll probably fuck that up too.
It's inevitable.
1 Thought(s):
No. After the desolation, we will simply continue to act in the same manner, with a little less complete mask. But that too can be rebuilt. Read (or better yet watch) The Hairy Ape by Eugene O'Neill.
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