(Title stolen from but unrelated to the Misfits)

I’m not one of those who thinks, ‘back in my day things were better; men were men, women were women, and music was music.’ Mostly, the only folks who think ‘those were the good old days’ are white, heterosexual, males who’re pouting that now it’s their turn to let others people play. So when I say that back in my day rock music was rock music, and hip-hop was hip-hop and country was country you can bet that I’m not being nostalgic. Nostalgia just ain’t what it used to be.

Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, Noah was still in the blueprint stage for his ark, and I was in high-school, people used to think that the boundaries that existed between musical genres were were inflexible and permanent, and that’s all there was to it. Rap and rock music were opposites and incompatible; as was country and punk, swing and metal, rap and country, gypsy and punk… (I can go on like this all day, but you get the point.) Hell, people even used to define themselves by these artificially created categories, they’d take sides and only allow themselves to enjoy one particular type of music; which was great and all, but it was kinda like limiting yourself to only one type of sex.

Then came the Twenty-First Century and it sang, “That’s fucking dumb!” and hosted a wild and beautiful cacophonic musical orgy who’s echoes are still making sweet and filthy love to our ear-holes to this day.

Thanks New Millennium!

As ridiculous as people saying that music can only fit neatly into one genre seems today, I’m surprised to see that people still do it all the time but not so much to music these days, only about themselves, and each other. If you look for it you can see it everywhere, people expecting others to be, and striving themselves to be, two-dimensional.

“One can hardly level a charge of hypocrisy without then becoming guilty of it oneself.”

A while back I was talking to a person I’ve known for years and simply pointed out that what they were saying was in direct contradiction with things they’d said in the past. Well, if you don’t know, let me tell you, people don’t appreciate this as much as you’d think. They often don’t take it as a slap on the back for evolving their opinion, and neither did this person. They were mildly outraged (if there is such a thing) and not only recanted their previous position but even went that extra mile of denying having ever said anything like it. The worst part of the whole experience? They actually believed it!
Naturally, I whipped out the word hypocrite, and things took a turn.

The parson I was talking to wasn’t psychotic, not any more than the average person at least, they were only experiencing what psychologists call cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is that uncomfortable feeling we get when we do something we feel is contrary to our beliefs, or if we’re confronted with new information that smashes things we were so sure of just moments before, or even if we just try and have two values that we think are in opposition. As humans we hate this sensation and will do just about anything to end it – Kill it! Murder it until it’s fucking dead! And on fire!

“Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.” ~Walt Whitman

You know what? Everybody’s a fucking hypocrite (yes, you are) and that’s one of the things that makes us such amazing creatures. I know that I am, I’d be disappointed in myself if I wasn’t. we’re too complex not to be. Somewhere inside all of us are ideologies of such opposing polarities that it’s amazing we haven’t imploded from the force of their attraction. We just have to accept that we are growing, changing, ever-evolving organisms that shouldn’t try to be static.

People are like die and life is a craps shoot. There are countless factors that go into what number you see on top after a roll. Your mood, the wind direction, the table you’re playing on, the moons pull on the earth, that famous butterfly flapping it’s wings somewhere on the other side of the globe, and who knows what else. All these things effect the game in ways we’ll never comprehend. And like that, who we’re talking to, where we are, the number moments since our last public masturbatory experience, and whether we’re wearing our sexy or our granny panties all effect us, and who we are every moment of every day. This is called priming and it can be pretty scary stuff.

In dice the 4 and the 1 touch, just a fraction of a millimeter difference between them, but a world away from winning to a looser. The 1 and the 6 are as far apart as they can get, they’re still the same die, just as one’s arguments may seem to be at odds, they’re both still them.

When Nietzsche was describing his ideal state of being he said, “Sharp and mild, rough and fine, strange and familiar, impure and clean, a place where fool and sage convene: all this I am and wish to mean” So take Nietzsche’s advice and Make yourself. Become the beautiful monster you already are, stitched together from all the best junk you can find like an obscene quilt of flesh and soul and ideas and talents. And though a quilt is made up from bits and pieces of many old things each one is new and unique.

People who aren’t hypocrites, who are consistent, they’re just trying to damn hard to be the same thing all the time. No one is just a hippie, Christian, punk, a good-guy, business-man, sadist, female, goth, straight, or republican, and if they appear that way, their either faking it (to themselves) or lobotomized. If someone calls you a hypocrite, or a walking contradiction, just smile and take it as the compliment it is. That’ll really piss them off. But more importantly know that it just means you’re too nuanced to be easily defined. After all, to de-fine means to make finite, to limit, and you are a potentially infinite combination of mix-and-match possibilities.

(Title stolen from, and yet unrelated to, the Mountain Goats)

Now that I am middle aged – the summer of life, I like to think – I have finally figured out what I want to be when I grow… Upper. I wanna be a heretic. I am not saying this to sound cool or shocking. I assure you, it’s the only thing that makes sense.
Like a lot of our ideas we stole the  word heresy from Ancient Greece. It originally meant something like to “choose for oneself” or “go one’s own way.” It spoke of the time in a young life when a person is still sampling all the different flavors of philosophy the world has to offer, and finding which tastes best to you. Or better yet, creating a new recipe all your own.

William Blake was pure heretic when he said it plain and desperate, “I must invent my own systems or else be enslaved by other men’s.” And according to my computer’s dictionary, “His poems mark the beginning of romanticism and a rejection of the Age of Enlightenment.” So I guess he wasn’t just talking shit. But this raises the question, why would we choose to be “slaves” rather than heretics?

The Asch Conformity Experiments were a collection of tests so easy that when taken, people gave wrong answers less than 1% of the time… until they took them in a room with a handful of others.
Lets pretend that you’re the subject. You’re sitting in a room with a bunch of other volunteers and the experimenter shows you all a card with some lines on it, all you have to do is say which line on one card matches the line on another card. No problem, you’ve had this kinda shit down since kindergarten. The only thing is, all 7 of the people who went ahead of you just gave the same, obviously wrong, answer. They all seem sure and no one was even snickering about it. Now it’s your turn. What do you do?

Of course the right answer is, ‘stick with your gut,’ or ‘be true to yourself’ or some other such platitude, and naturally that’s what you or I would do. But because they doubted themselves, or felt the need to fit in, 75% of the test subjects gave in to the herd-and went along with the rest of the group. Obviously all who went first were really just actors and in on the joke. Yup, only 25% chose for themselves and went their own way every time. I like to think that I would’ve been one of those heretics, but I try to be more honest with myself, so I’ll just say… ‘Who knows?’

Admit it or not, we’re still damned dirty apes. It’s part of who we are. Semen-flinging, shit-kicking chimpanzees, and mother-fucking, slack-loving bonobos. By our very nature we are tribe animals. You can’t spend ten minutes out in the world without seeing it. The us-against-them, in-group/out-group dichotomy. We’re hooked on it. Are you a Yankees or a Red Socks fan? You a Mac or a P.C. user? Gay or straight? Jeep or motorcycle? Christian or Muslim? Freak or normal? Democrat or Republican? American or foreigner? A woman or man? Hipster or something with a soul? So many silly divisions that all basically boil down to, are you one of ‘my people’ or one of ‘them?’

Albert Einstein called nationalism “an infantile disease,” but he could’ve just as easily been talking about any of the other lines we so love to draw between ourselves. But wasn’t Big Al one of God’s Chosen People? Surely he wasn’t talking about religion. He’d never burn his membership card to such an exclusive club, right?

“For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong… have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power.” ~ A.E.

The cancers he was speaking of are the dark-side of our nature, the megalomania and abuses of power that we don’t like to admit still live deep within our monkey brain-meats. We don’t like to think of those things as our problems. We aren’t the bad guys, ‘they’ are. Einstein wouldn’t have been surprised at all if he’d lived long enough to hear science tell us that regardless of race or social background 1% of all the people in the world are sociopaths. Statistically speaking, if your ‘tribe’ has 100 people in it, it’ll have at least 1 potential monster. And how about the wife-beaters, child-molesters, and sickos so fuct we don’t even have names for them? If your group is big enough, you’ve got some of those too. Are you really so much more like those ‘your people’ than you are with someone from across the isle?

Tribes may have stood for something back when we lived in small communities of families where everyone took care of, and regulated, their own. Now we live in a world nearing 10 billion people and divide ourselves up into concept-groups with thousands or millions. Saying all my people are good isn’t far off from saying all those people are bad. Both rob the world of it’s beautiful complexities and the intricacies of the human-animal.

We’re all self-fulfilling prophets and whether we like to admit it or not, we mold ourselves to fit our definition of ourselves. The more we think of ourselves as existing within these meaningless titles, these boundaries,  created before we were even born, the more we subjugate ourselves and choose to limit our potential. To de-fine means to make finite.

Do you ever have questions that spin around in your head so fast you can almost hear them boring their way out of your skull? Me neither. But if I did they’d keep me awake asking, “How much of me is me? How much am I just my conditioning?”

“Are we all the same? If you and I switched places and I’d lived your life, would I be exactly like you are now? Would you be me? What about all those ‘thems’ and ‘monsters’ out there? If I had their pasts would I be that today?”

I like to think not. But I’ve no evidence of this so I’m not sure if that makes me an optimist or just naive. “Can we strip away what our culture has built on top and get down to our very cores? Would we find who we truly are? And if so how?”
Now that I list them out I wonder if it’s just the psychedelics keeping me awake and taking the questions along for the ride…
You see that?! I made thinking these ‘strange’ questions into a joke. Why? Because when you bring this sort of things up people start to look at you weird. Why? Because our culture tells us they’re a waste of time. These aren’t the type of conversations we value. “Now get back to work or go watch TV or something!”

(Another fun little psychological experiment I wrote up but just made this post too long)

Social Conditioning is so ubiquitous it’s invisible. It forms our notions of good and bad, beautiful and ugly, wealth and poverty. It’s how we decide the things we need, be it religion, education, health, money, family, art, or porn. Doesn’t that seem awfully limiting? There’s a whole world out there, filled with countless forms of foods and drugs, passions and persuasions, adventures and experiments that you would’ve loved had you grown up with them. And you’re missing out on them because you believe you’re  not that type of person. But you could be. Life is short. Experience as much as you can before you wind up on your deathbed, realizing just how unfulfilled you’ve always been.

“Do not accept what you hear by report, do not accept tradition, do not accept a statement because it is found in our books, not because it is in accord with your belief, nor because it is the saying of your teacher… Be lamps onto yourselves.” ~ Buddha’s final words.

People Suck – or at least that’s what I hear from; friends, coworkers, folks I randomly eavesdrop on in public, and of course, Bill Hicks. It makes me wonder, is this some original-sin type of self-loathing, or a me-against-the-world kinda hyper-elitism? Are these men, woman, and children admitting they too are a people, and that they do indeed suck? Or are they saying that it’s everyone else who’s doing all the sucking?

When I was younger I was sure the whole world was out get me, and that I probably deserved it. So I guess it was a little of Column A and a bit of Column B. Ah, angsty youth, I remember you neither fondly, nor well. Because of this I now often find myself volunteering with ‘troubled youth.’ Victimized youth is most often the case. So I spend a few days every month hip-deep in the horrors that some members of our species do to the most vulnerable. I’ve heard stories and seen scars that have turned my old, jaded, blood to ice. I almost never share these accounts with anyone who hasn’t chosen this path; on occasion though, I have lightened my soul and let a little of the weight of these stories escape. I always immediately regret darkening those I care about’s thoughts.

“Ya see, that’s why I hate people” they say, and usually follow it up with something like, “That’s why I like animals better.”

I know no one wants to believe this but, humans might be the nicest animals on the planet. Yes, yes, I know, animals have never fucked you over the way humans have. But that’s only because you’ve imprinted yourself on them as their alpha. If you were smaller than your kitty, it would slowly torture you to death for its own amusement. Much the way your pooch would, right before it rolled around in your entrails. You know, the way they do with just about anything weaker than themselves. Not for food, just for fun.

Ducks rape, not occasionally, just about every time they mate. Different tribes of chimpanzees wage war on each other. Dolphins torture and kill other creatures with their prehensile penises. Every animal that over-populates has devastating effects on its ecosystem, so much so that if things ever get back to the way they were before it only comes at the price of a mass die-off. Otters sexually assault and drown each other, and baby seals… and continue humping for up to a week after they’ve killed the poor things. Penguins also take advantage of wounded females, little ones fallen away from their parents, and corpses. Whenever an old lion that had fathered a baby dies, a new alpha will come in and eat that cub so its mother will go into heat. The mother will then mate with that new young stud, while his breath still stinks of her child. Bunnies will often eat the runts of their litter because even the cutest vegetarians are really just opportunistic carnivores waiting for something weak enough for them to slaughter.

I’m sure if we search we could find instances of us human-animals doing some of these things, but that’s my point, we would have to search. It’s not the norm, it’s the exception.

One of the reasons we like to think humans are evil is because we see it on the news, which broadcasts all the wickedest shit from all over the world right into our brain-meats. Constantly. But that’s not what life is like. Go look out your window. That is life. Things that are common are not news. News, by its very definition, is what is rare. Dying of old age, babies being born, people not being assholes to each other, and animals doing things that people would be executed for, these are not news. A human behaving like an animal to another animal, human or otherwise, now that’s news.
Yes, we’ve all been fucked over by members of our own species, but we will physically interact with tens, and tens, and tens, of thousands people in our lives. Is the number who’ve done us wrong really a high enough percentage to justify discriminating against the entirety of humanity?

Some obviously feel the answer is yes. Which sorta makes sense, because we too are animals, and as such it’s still easy for us to fall victim to our old hard-wiring.

I think we all know that our monkey-nature is still alive and well deep inside us and often finds itself at odds with the modern world. Our fight/flight/freeze response, which was meant to protect us from saber-toothed-tigers, now goes off every time we hear the phrase, “we need to talk.” We get depressed because our bodies were never meant to sit for 8 hours at work, then for 8 more at home before going to bed. A similar reminder that we’re still just naked apes is the leftover survival mechanism called Negative Bias.

The Negative Bias is pretty much exactly as it sounds, we are biased towards the negative. We give the bad things that happen more weight than the good, so it’s the unpleasantness of life that sticks out. This came in handy when we were trying to survive in the jungles; if we got sick or hurt that memory glowed bright so we learned to prejudice ourselves against those things. Now that we live in a world made so safe that almost all of us get to die of natural causes, the Negative Bias is just the thing that makes us judge billions and billions of people by the few bad apples we’ve met, seen on the news, or just heard about.

People suck – only if we let the fuck-ups mean more to us than the people we’ve known who’ve been slashed splitting up cat or dog fights, or have risked their lives going on thin ice to save stuck animals. Or those who’ve used eyedroppers to feed runts pushed out to starve by their mothers. Or just the people close to us we take for granted because our negative bias comes so naturally.

The thing that separates us from other animals though, is that we can learn these things about ourselves and not let them control us.