When
does it actually happen? What does being an adult even mean? If you ever saw a
bar after 2 am the place looks like a kinder-garden playground, creatures
screaming and bumping into each other, fighting about nonsense, and crying
quietly in the corner.
So
when’s the switch? When does that pristine definition occur in our lives? Let’s
go to the inter-webs and find the answer.
"Human adulthood encompasses psychological
adult development. Definitions of adulthood are often inconsistent and
contradictory; a person may be biologically an adult, and have adult behavior
but still be treated as a child if they are under the legal age of majority.
Conversely, one may legally be an adult but possess none of the maturity and
responsibility that may define adult character.”
Totally vague. What attributes
define this ‘adult character’?
“An event relating to the
oncoming of adulthood is coming of age, which encompasses passing a series of
tests to demonstrate that a person is prepared for adulthood, or reaching a
specified age, sometimes in conjunction with demonstrating preparation. Most
modern societies determine legal adulthood based on reaching a legally
specified age without requiring a demonstration of physical maturity or
preparation for adulthood.”
Fuck this dictionary. This whole
idea of ‘act like an adult’ or ‘grow up’ is nonsense. This means if I can pay
my rent (I can barely do that, I live in NYC), pay my bills (same), and not
piss on bar room floors or weep uncontrollably in public, I am an adult.
What I’m thinking, by inference,
is that being adult means accepting that life is not fair, that we are
condemned to work until we die, and that most things, sadly cannot be trusted
to last.
Does that sound right?
That by the time we figure out
any of the mysteries of life we are either too old to care and unlistenable to
younger people who might need that advice. I didn’t listen to anybody growing
up (maybe my drug dealers, because I feared them).
It turns out that maybe in youth
(I’m talking the early years), in our stumble through a world inhabited by
generations that came before us, that our ignorance was actually an asset.
Think of all the risks you took in your early life you would NEVER do now. I’m
willing to bet that 85% of those risks you took paid off in droves.
I’m starting to believe that in
reality, nothing ever really changes in our personalities. The only thing that
really changes is our avoidance of things that were deemed bad from our mad
rovings of youth.
Think about when we were in high
school. Do you remember who you were in high school—the part you played? Were
you the Hamlet of your school, or were you the Macbeth? I truly believe who
ever that character was remains with you into adulthood.
The bully stays the bully. The
jock stays the jock. The nerd stays the nerd. The outcast stays the outcast.
Sound like The Breakfast Club, doesn’t? Well, let me tell you, back in 1991
(the year I entered high school), that’s just what the world was.
Nowadays, things have changed.
There’s the School Shooter. The Oxycotin dealer. The Hacking Cyber Terrorist. The
Twerking Chick. Shit is different. And you wonder why these kids can’t pay
attention. They’re busy avoiding bullets, narcotic prescriptions, the NSA, and
their virginity at all costs.
Guess which one I was?
As the frequent new kid in
school, I was always the outsider. I was attacked for being the new kid.
Add to that my flagrant lack of fear of others, which made me a smart-alleck. I
didn’t care who I pissed off. I grew up in Rhode Island, a small town kid with
a simple upbringing, and watched the bullies attack the other kids. I would
step in the way and defend the weaker kids. I love the underdog. I hate groups.
Moving to Southern California, I
was a pasty, acned face kid with a VERY strange accent. I was not a Surf God.
Outcast. Moved to Boston later in life and was poor, didn’t care about sports,
and did not graduate from their universities (the 3 deadliest sins in Boston).
Outcast.
I couldn’t stand regular jobs so
I became a bartender. The last resort for people who want to be at the center
of everything and not part of it at all. I was basically born for VIP.
I feel so outside of everything
that I don’t even want to be a part of this world. I’m like a ragged wet angry cat left out in the cold so long it has become feral. I love humanity from the bottom of my heart but want absolutely nothing to do with it. I woe for my future wife. I hope she
has a high threshold for psychological pain.
Soooooooooo?
Soooooooooo?
What were you in high school?
Till next week.
P.S.
A small addendum.
Just for the record. I was in
Orange County, yes that terrible place, 10 years after high school (I was
kicked out for ‘problems with authority’) I was in Albertsons buying some
groceries when I heard out of the blue:
“Matthew?”
I turn around. There’s the lady
behind the butcher glass, very pregnant, with a round, kind face. I don’t
recognize her.
“Hi”, I awkwardly say. It takes
a moment. I’m trying not to be a dick.
It all flashes back. Jennifer.
Here’s who Jennifer was in high
school. Cute girl, in a nerdy, awkward way. But she was remarkably popular,
certainly developed early above the other girls, and seemed totally
unattainable to my stupid high school mind. I would try to carry her books,
walk her home from school, give her shitty poems, all to no avail.
Now here was Jennifer, pregnant
as the day is long, smiling a wide-eyed grin, a half-pound of roast beef in
hand.
“What is up?” She asked. We
started talking. Of course, never able to let sleeping dogs lie, I bring up the
whole thing about high school.
“Jennifer, you were so popular,
you never gave me the time of day. I had a super crush on you.”
Right then, her face went blank.
The she shook her head, grinning:
“No. Not at all! I thought you
were so cool. You were just SO moody and distant, I never really knew how to
approach you.”
Right then. Mind blown.
Suddenly, it hit me.
It was me. I was the problem. It
wasn’t the world. It was me.
Okay, maybe the world is 1/4 the
problem. Maybe 1/2.
THIS WAS BASICALLY THE TEMPLATE OF MY LIFE IN HIGH SCHOOL.
THE DUCK MAN FOREVER! YES, MY LIFE IS LIKE A JOHN HUGHES FILM.
I thought you were the twerking girl...
ReplyDeleteBut for years I could never really firmly realize that. The allure of military identification is often strong. But I was reading Gandhi and MLK and Ginsburg. I carried Allen Ginsburg to school in highschool! LOL. But to go kill people? uh-uh. Impossible. Sure, I honor vets, and certain American values, virtues, standards, but it would be years before I would finally not be allured by joining the military. Edison...I was now like Steve Carell in Anchorman 2. I had no girlfriend, the wrong 2 friends. One of them only wanted to use me to get laid, and was a misogynistic pervert and malignant narcissist who always put me down. I embarrassed myself at Edison but frequently forgot. I dressed alarmingly, tried to be funny but failed poorly, and did things that probably got me on local watch lists, that only years later I realized were so disturbing, things that at the time I just forgot a few days later or sublimated. I was still very shy. And even teachers hurt me. But I was so desperate for teacher approval, and had many private crushes. And I also had this longstanding sense of being some kind of Eucharist or sacrifice for others. Not a self-involved teenage depressive thing really, but a sense of being here to be a sacrifice for others. That was another archetype. I went on one or two "dates" in highschool and was totally awkward. Its probably due to the kind and merciful girls at Edison who took pity on me and told their boyfriends not to beat me up that I survived at all. After Edison, college struck, and I had some kind of Aspy thing. The pressure for sex and intimacy at that age was immense, and I started having intense anxiety and not able to handle jobs for long after Remington. They made fun of me there. I wish I knew what I know now. My mind has evolved orders of magnitude since then. It was preoccupied with bullshit worries. Plus, OC has the highest number of neonazi groups outside of some town of Germany. Think about that. The only guy at Edison who shared my radical political scale was a one-armed Jewish guy, and even he rejected me. And I had two crushes on two different Jewish girls. Anyway, HB will eventually be under at least 10 ft of water, at the most conservative estimates. Its creepy knowing you grew up in a house that will one day be underwater. I always felt something was doomed about that place, just like those creepy oil dredgers that looked like dinosaurs and scared me. As an American, I had to reject all forms of nazism and racism. Now I feel like a minority in America among white people. I couldn't stand jobs that felt unethical, still had a problem perceiving opposition, still had trouble imagining my future path. Zen monk? doctor? Then I met you and your friends, and it was surely fun for a while until things took a turn for the worse. I surely got severely paranoid and suspicious and unfolded. My spirit went somewhere else. I do wish I just could have taken it easy more, gotten my kinks out, been more real, and more aware, but I also wish people hadn't been so quick to judge either. We are one sick society. Just look up that dude who whacked 7 people in santa barbara. Elliot Rodger. Grim and sad. He couldn't get laid, so he killed people. Sure, in highschool, I wasn't getting laid, I was sexually naive, but jealous of others? Rarely! And set to whack others? Never! I don't know how people like him still exist in this world. I don't know what you label it, Aspy, narcissist, god complex. I call it evil. One whacked mofo. Anyway. I know this was long. But I'm feeling great and have tons of ideas on my mind. Now onto the next blog. Tally-ho! Keep fighting those bullies! Stay fearless! Always expand your min
ReplyDeleteFYI: Afromericans and Africans: In Dire Straits
ReplyDeleteFebruary 6, 2014 at 2:12am
1) According to the FBI - Federal Bureau of Investigation, blacks murder twice as many whites each year as vice versa. Thus, the focus on white on black violence is undue; it occurs, but not nearly as much as the media suggests.
SOURCE: http://1.usa.gov/1bszsLt
2) As Afromerican documentarian Sixx King took to the streets dressed as a Klansman to point out, Afromericans kill more Afromericans every six months than the Ku Klux Klan did in 86 years.
SOURCES: http://bit.ly/1c5HXfr, http://bit.ly/LRX99H
3) Young Afromerican men are far and away the most violent demographic in America. As Afromerican professor John McWhorter of Columbia University wrote in his TIME article 'Don't Ignore Race in Christopher Lane's Murder,' '[I]t’s just fake to pretend that the association of young black men with violence comes out of thin air. Young black men murder 14 times more than young white men. If the kinds of things I just mentioned were regularly done by whites, it’d be trumpeted as justification for being scared to death of them.
SOURCE: http://ti.me/1gOm5wN
+ Example of media bias: http://bit.ly/1bszv9X
4) The most violent cities in America are the ones with the highest percentages of blacks.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/LRY75O
5) Afromerican men are so unsuitable that Afromerican women are forced to date outside their race to find equal partners. College-educated Afromerican women outnumber college-educated Afromerican men by a factor of 2:1. 50% of Afromerican men either don't have high school diplomas, have criminal records, or both. 'Admittedly, the selection is slim,' Afromerican comedian Steve Harvey said while addressing the issue; he advised Afromerican women to accept that they likely will not find Afromerican men on their level. Afromerican Ralph Richard Banks wrote 'Is Marriage for White People?' and Afromerican Karyn Langhorne Folan wrote 'Don't Bring Home a White Boy' so as to encourage successful Afromerican women to accept that Afromerican men often make unsuitable partners and to encourage Afromerican women to date outside their race.
SOURCES: http://bit.ly/1lBKzez, http://bit.ly/1fwvjbJ, http://bit.ly/1fJBviN, http://bit.ly/1c5PbA5, http://bit.ly/1kXktyU
6) Due to lack of inclusion of Afromerican inmates in statistical analyses, the state of the Afromerican community is even worse than is usually indicated.
SOURCES: http://nyti.ms/1g4Hflk, http://amzn.to/1eWHpcq
7) 70% of HIV and AIDS positive people in the world are sub-Saharan African, due to cultural resistance to safer sex practices, as well as the rape culture prevalent in Africa. For instance, in South Africa, the nation ranked as the rape capital of the world in 2012 by INTERPOL HQ, a woman is raped every thirty seconds, and a quarter of South African men admit to having committed sexual assault, with half of them having attacked more than one victim. A traditional belief in sub-Saharan Africa is that AIDS can be cured through infant rape.
SOURCES: http://bit.ly/1ezC8ew, http://wapo.st/1esk6wk, http://bit.ly/1eW6K6q, http://bit.ly/1nc8qNs
8) Afromericans are the most unhealthy ethnic group in the nation.
SOURCES: http://bit.ly/1kXkXVP, http://1.usa.gov/1fJBNWR
9) Due to malnutrition and other factors, sub-Saharan African average IQ is the lowest in the world.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1gOlFX7
10) Sub-Saharan African cultures remain highly primitive and resistant to modernization. David Brooks writes in The New York Times, 'We’re all supposed to politely respect each other’s cultures. But some cultures are more progress-resistant than others, and a horrible tragedy was just exacerbated by one of them.... As Lawrence E. Harrison explained in his book “The Central Liberal Truth,” Haiti, like most of the world’s poorest nations, suffers from a complex web of progress-resistant cultural influences. There is the influence of the voodoo religion, which spreads the message that life is capricious and planning futile. There are high levels of social mistrust. Responsibility is often not internalized. Child-rearing practices often involve neglect in the early years and harsh retribution when kids hit 9 or 10.'
ReplyDeleteSub-Saharan Africa is the most brutally superstitious region of the world today, with albinos, hunted for their body parts, fearing for their lives even in broad daylight, thousands of elders and children tortured, abandoned, and murdered in witchhunts, witch doctors charging exorbitant sums for quack remedies, soldiers fighting naked and crossdressing to repel bullets, and savage application of street justice, such as the gruesome and peculiarly African practice of necklacing.
SOURCES: http://bit.ly/1esmyTt, http://bit.ly/1itYsGC, http://nyti.ms/1itFlNo, http://huff.to/1dpW9RQ, http://nyti.ms/1itY4b5, http://bit.ly/1g4b7hV, http://nydn.us/1kXdvtI, http://bit.ly/LS3hyx, http://bit.ly/1awseus, http://slate.me/1esue8g
11) Sub-Saharan African nations are also among the most corrupt and squalorous in the world. Somalia, for instance, is the most failed state on Earth, and Nigeria is a global fraud capital. Foreign aid is routinely intercepted by rulers and juntas. South African president Jacob Zuma, for instance, spent almost the entire UK aid allotment to SA for one year on his private mansion. Consequently, economist Dambisa Moyo - born in Zambia, one of the most violent of African nations - argues in 'Dead Aid' that foreign aid does far more harm than good in Africa, and should possibly even be cut off.
SOURCES: http://read.bi/1hBsyI8, http://dailym.ai/1cZwKyj, http://youtu.be/dyf2Cf5GkTY
12) According to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Dataset (ACLED), the number of civil wars across the developing world has decreased over the past fifteen years, but the levels of political violence have remained relatively stable. As the number of battles decreased, riots, protests, and violence against civilians increased. With a murder rate of 17 per 100,000 compared to the global rate of 7 per 100,000, Africa is the most murderous continent. Southern Africa has a staggering 30 per 100,000 murder rate, making it the most murderous region of the world, and the Western African Republic of Côte d'Ivoire (the Ivory Coast) is the most murderous nation in all of Africa, with a staggering 57 murders per 100,000 people, exceeded globally only by El Salvador (69:100,000) and Honduras (92:100,000).
SOURCES: http://bit.ly/N6OsJr, http://bit.ly/1kDKuGY
13) Black on white genocide is being carried out in Africa, unreported by the mainstream media. White South African farmers are murdered at a rate 700 times that of the global average.
ReplyDeleteSOURCES: http://bit.ly/1ax1fPw, http://bit.ly/1e5jRBc, http://bit.ly/1eWFe8U, http://bit.ly/1b4hFQ3, http://bit.ly/1d2i6Gy
14) Indigenous sub-Saharan African culture has contributed next to nothing to the world. Africans who succeed intellectually do so by adopting colonial (European, Arab, and also Asian) knowledge, infrastructure, literature, language, dress, medicine, technology, and culture. Frederick Douglass' life, for instance, ultimately turned out better for having been enslaved; once he earned his freedom, he fully integrated into American society, becoming a man of letters. In his native environment, untouched by colonialism, he never would had any such opportunities (this is not an endorsement of the detestable practice of slavery). Consequently, the rise of white guilt and Afrocentrist revisionism seriously undermines the civilization which set the gold standards in education, science, technology, democracy, human rights, tolerance, freedom of expression, separation of state and church, and international cooperation.
The state of Afromerican society - in terms of criminality, education, employment, and incidence of sexually-transmitted diseases - has steadily declined as America has desegregated. Freed slaves who remained in America fared far better than those who returned to Africa; Liberia, founded on the charity of European Americans, quickly descended into failure and has never recovered. Haiti, too, collapsed after the 1804 Haiti Massacre in which Europeans were ethnically cleansed from the island, and prosperous European-governed Rhodesia became African-governed Zimbabwe, which immediately entered a tailspin, experienced unprecedented hyperinflation, and still has yet to come anywhere near the level of prosperity once enjoyed by both blacks and whites in Rhodesia. Last year, Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu angrily admonished his fellow Africans, saying that South Africa's government today is worse than the apartheid government, and even many black South Africans are now saying that their lives were better under apartheid.
SOURCES: http://bit.ly/1c5OCGh, http://bit.ly/1nccLjD, http://bit.ly/LS3hyx, http://bit.ly/MuiNkc, http://bit.ly/1eWcRrq, http://bbc.in/1bwVDmD, http://f24.my/1itHlVN, http://bit.ly/1fU1kMm, http://bit.ly/1fwHG7v, http://nyti.ms/1e5q4wR
As William H. Cosby, Jr. and Stacey Gear, among others, have said, forever holding the rest of the world and other peoples - whatever responsibility they may or may not have - as all-too-convenient, eternal scapegoats for African failures is counterproductive and harms no one more than Africans themselves. Polite society has a strong tendency to ignore inconvenient truths, especially when involving issues of race. Nonetheless, for reality to change, it must first be acknowledged.
'I love black people, but I hate niggers. The niggers have got to go!' - Chris Rock
SOURCES: http://bit.ly/1esvwzW, http://bit.ly/LAIpLq, http://bit.ly/1bx1mc4, http://bit.ly/1esvXKF
I remember Mr. Tallman at Edison. He was the one liberal. He loved my work. He told me a lot of kids just believe what their parents teach them. I do wish I had certainty of profession, and more confidence still at times. But I am glad I didn't choose the wrong profession, or the wrong gal. Conflict is a tough one. Sometimes it is necessary. But I think being nonviolent can go a long way too. We have to be ready to show courage when necessary. But also be virtuous. People are at their worst over property. We have to be on guard for that negative energy. Its the beast. But we also have to be willing to defend our property too to a certain extent. Its like we need a strong military, but we need to condemn a lot of what its done in the past fifty years as well. Its weird how all that violent and heinous rap infiltrated culture. It really is disgusting. I can't believe I used to like some of it. Some of it really does sound good.
ReplyDeleteplease check your mikaraylives@gmail.com account. Very urgent message.
ReplyDeletebtw, that guy who bullied me at Sowers, well he was actually the biggest dude at that school, and at Edison. And he wound up playing football with Pat Tillman. He posted vids of it on youtube. Crazy friggin world.
ReplyDeleteBut its weird. I never thought of him again. I didn't even notice him in class. Or my friends who were conservative and suddenly spited me. I didn't keep grudges, not like them. That wasn't in my nature. Even when people mocked me at Edison, i blew it off. even if it hurt or embarassed me.
ReplyDeleteThing is conflict can be inevitably constructive. I think you are good at constructive conflict. But you could probably hone it more. I'm conflict avoidant. Anger is usually an evil to be avoided. Hatred is worse. You criticize a lot, but maybe temper it with more of your heart. You have a good heart. I've seen it in your posts. And withholding criticism can be just as cruel as criticism itself, or worse. But society is evolving. I hope. We all need to improve on constructive criticism. Most of us just argue. We haven't evolved. Our minds haven't expanded. And some people, if you criticize them, will hate you and might present a danger. But we all need to set our boundaries, even if it might hurt others. But the whole world needs a lot more mercy and understanding. We are still locked in Darwinian thinking, which is bogus. The utopian future will still require, as its one golden asset, the reaching out and healing of all sentient beings capable of suffering.
ReplyDeleteDude. elliot rodger is fuckin with my head. I've watched his vids, been following, read his 137 page manifesto. One sick pup. I'm still speechless. This guy needed to be drugged up, drooling in some facility. Its so evil. No soul. How do you explain this guy? He was lost in his little arrogant world. He wound up killing angels. Is this the end of the world? this was one cold sucker. How did this fucker come to be? Its so sad. I just don't get it. We are doomed as a country and a species. I just don't get it.
ReplyDelete