What if You’re Wrong?

May 30, 2017June 15, 2023 RilalyLeave a comment

“You’re wrong,” a friend of mine said. “You’re wrong about me, and the little theories you have about people always end up being wrong. You’re so wrong about so many things, in fact, that I’m beginning to wonder if you might be just plain stupid.”

I don’t care what level of schooling one achieves, or the level of intelligence one gains through experience, such a charge goes to the bone. The subject of such an assessment might attempt to defuse the power of the characterization by examining the accessor’s comparative intelligence level, and the motivations they have for making such a charge, but it still leads to some soul searching.

“How can I be wrong about everything?” I asked her. “I might be wrong about some things, but how can I be wrong about everything?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “You just are.”

In the course of licking my wounds, I remembered something my eighth grade teacher told me, after harshly grading a paper I wrote.

I was a disinterested student for much of my schooling years, but I chose that paper to display whatever ability I had at the time. I’m not sure why I chose that particular paper, but I think it had something to do with my desire to prove myself to a teacher I respected, and I think I wanted to prove something to myself too. Whatever my motivation was, I poured my soul into that assignment, and I couldn’t wait to see the grade I received. I also thought effusive praise would follow.

I was wrong on both counts, and it crushed me. “I worked my tail off on this assignment,” I told her with that graded paper in hand.

“It was mealy-mouthed,” she said.

After she explained what mealy-mouthed meant, I said, “I did as you asked. You said that we had to be careful to present both sides.”

“You were instructed to provide evidence of the opposing opinion,” she said. “You presented too much evidence,” she said. “It was a position paper, and that means you have to take a position when you write it. When I finished your paper, I still wasn’t sure which side you were on.”

She concluded the back and forth by offering me the opportunity to rewrite the paper, but before I left her desk she cautioned me with words that have stuck with me ever since. “If you’re going to be wrong, be wrong with conviction.”

We’re all wrong all the time. Knowing that might help us delve deeper. Our attempts to understand human nature are going to be incomplete, fraught with error, and vulnerable to scrutiny. We’re going to encounter anecdotal evidence. “My aunt Judy is a person similar to what you are describing,” she says, “and she does not do what you are saying.” It bothers me in the moment, no one enjoys being wrong, but I go deeper. Am I wrong, or is that anecdotal evidence that only disproves me on a situational basis? Some naysayers argue that we deal in generalities, as if all that is necessary to disprove is an anecdotal example. “Okay, you’ve found one example that disproves my theory, but if it’s true 50.0001% of the time, it is a generality, and therefore generally true.”

How many of us have been wrong, in front of so many people that we still cringe when we think about it. We can view those situations one of two ways. We can never say, or write, anything else again, fearing that we might be wrong again, or we can view it as a gift. We can say we’ll probably never be that wrong again, so what’s the big deal, or we can say, “I was wrong, big deal. I survived it, and in some ways it’s liberating to know being wrong is never as bad as we fear.”

✽✽✽

“Have you ever considered the possibility that you might be wrong?” another person asked me years later.

“Have you ever met my dad?” I asked the person who had. “I think he pretty much covered the idea that I’m wrong about everything, every day for about eighteen years.” I considered it an insult, during those formative years, that my dad didn’t think I had the facilities to be an independent thinker, but I now know how difficult it is for a parent to believe that the person they knew as a toddler can arrive at independent thought, until I had my own child. It also took me a while to believe that my dad didn’t introduce me to this mindset just to drive me insane. Whether he intended it or not, my dad’s constant badgering did lead me to try to prove him wrong about me.

There is a compliment in the question that person asked me, somewhere down deep that the provocateur did not intend, regarding a confident presentation. People loathe confident presentations, and they loathe it so much that they feel compelled to douse our flame, but some people pose this question so often that those of us on the receiving end can’t help but wonder about their greater motivation. Is it a silky, smooth method of stating that they think the speaker is wrong, and so wrong that they might border on stupid? Do they truly think that we’ve never considered the possibility that we could be wrong before, or is it a method some use to undermine another’s credibility?

The interesting dynamic in such conversations is that prolonged involvement with such an accuser reveals that they’ve never considered the idea that they could be wrong. Their role in life, as far as they’re concerned, is that of a contrarian. They challenge the status quo, relative to their own life. This mindset does not, however, lead to reflection on one’s own set of beliefs. They focus all of their energy on refuting the speaker’s words and the “Have you ever considered the idea that you might be wrong?” is the best weapon they have in their arsenal.

The ideal method of refuting further questions of this sort is to be humble. If a speaker wants to win friends and influence people, they should qualify every statement with a preemptive strike, such as, “I could be wrong but-”. I used to do this, as often as social dictates require, but I found it tedious after a while.

✽✽✽

I could be wrong, but I think any attempt a person makes to describe human nature is going to be fraught with peril. Some will not agree with various descriptions, and many will view the conclusions the author reaches as simplistic, trite, and anecdotal. Some might even view such positions, as so wrong, they could be stupid.

In one regard, I view such assessments with envy, because I don’t understand how someone can unilaterally reject another’s opinion with such certitude. I still don’t, as evidenced by the fact that I still remember my friend’s “You might be stupid” charge more than twenty years later. I assume she summarily dismissed the assessments I made of her, and I doubt she recalls them at all. I assume that she’s as certain now as she was then that she was right and I was not only wrong, but I could be stupid.

Somewhere along the way, I learned that one’s definition of human nature relies on the perspective the individual has gained through their interactions and experiences. If it’s true that definitions of human nature are relative, and that one’s assessments are based on the details of their upbringing, then the only thing anyone can say with any certitude is that the best story an author can tell is that which is listed on the pages of their autobiography.

What if I am as wrong as she claimed though? What if my stories don’t even come close to achieving what some might call a comprehensive study of human nature? What if every belief I’ve had over the course of the last twenty years is so off the mark, or so wrong, that they might be stupid? These questions should haunt every writer, artist, and theoretician who attempts to explain the nouns (people, places, and things) that surround them. As for an answer to those plagued by the enormity of trying to explain the otherwise unexplainable, I suggest that they pare it down to what they know. An author can only write what they know, and often times what they know is limited to what they hear, learn, and experience firsthand.

One trick I employ to try to understand human nature and explain my findings in an entertaining manner, is to employ a technique painters call sfumato. This technique involves shading and drawing attention to the background to enhance the central figure. Most people will not sit down at a Starbucks on Tuesday and explain their philosophy of life, or if they do it is an enhanced version of their truth. Their truth is somewhere outside what they tell you, in the shading and the background. The only way to find it with them, or for them, is to watch them outside that initial conversation, until we are experiencing their triumphs and failures vicariously, and we begin processing their autobiographies so thoroughly that they become part of our own. The curious mind must go beyond hearing only what the person telling the story wants us to hear if we are to fortify a thesis, and listen to what these people say.

Some will dismiss some of the stories contained herein as anecdotal evidence of human nature, and in some cases that might be true. To my mind, these tales explain the motivations of the characters involved, and the stories and theories I arrived at that have shaped my definition of human nature, and presumably my autobiography, better than any other stories can.

If there is a grain a truth in the old Chinese proverb, “A child’s life is like a piece of paper on which people leave a mark,” then those who preceded the author have played an integral role in shaping his definitions of human nature. This is not to say that one’s definition of human nature is limited to experience, but when we read books and see movies that depict questions and answers, we’re apt to be the most interested in those that apply to our own experience. A reader might ask, “Why do these particular stories appeal to your theories?” For that, the only suitable answers I’ve found are, “All theory is autobiography,” and “I’m telling my story, as I heard and responded to others.”

These quotes form the philosophical foundation of these pieces, coupled with an attachment, via a complicated circuitry, to the philosophy that drove Leonardo da Vinci’s numerous accomplishments. I can’t confirm that he said the actual words, but based on what I’ve read about da Vinci, questions informed his process more than answers. As such, I’ve derived the quote: “The answers to that which plagues man can be found in the questions he asks of himself.” Another quote that the reader will want to keep in mind is from playwright Anton Chekov: “It is the role of the storyteller to ask questions, not to answer them.”

It’s possible that the curious reader might find more questions than answers in these pages, and they may not derive anything beyond simple entertainment. For the author, each story comprises a central theme, one that I believe relates to my questions about motivation. The goal of each of piece was to explain, to one curious mind, human nature, and the answers touch on the questions I have asked the people in these interactions, from my small corner of the world. Some of those I’ve interacted with might fall on the fruitloppery index, and some might appear a bit delusional, but most of the characters of these stories appeared so normal on the surface that the author thought they might be boring. It’s impossible to know if we’ve asked the right questions, but when they open up and allow the author into the deep, dark recesses of their mind, we can feel some confidence that we’ve at least tapped into something they consider worthy of discussion.

While most of the following stories are based on real-life experiences, some readers might still require an “I may be wrong, but …” qualifier, lest they view the author as obnoxiously sure of himself. Those who prefer this should ask themselves a question, how interesting is it when an author qualifies all of their characterizations and conclusions in such a manner. Some authors do this, I’ve read their work. They spend so much of their time dutifully informing their readers that they’re not “obnoxious blowhards” that they end up saying little more. It’s so redundant and tedious that I can’t help thinking that they do so in fear that someone somewhere might tell them they’re wrong. Some might even go so far as to suggest that their experience is so different from the author’s that the author might be stupid. If this is the reason behind the need some authors have for qualifying so many of their conclusions, my advice to them would be to heed the words from my eighth grade teacher, “If you’re going to be wrong, be wrong with conviction.”

Thief’s Mentality II: Whatever Happened to Kurt Lee

January 28, 2017March 6, 2024 Rilaly2 Comments

“Who is the greatest thief in history?” Bill Kizer asked at a party. As usual with most provocative, party questions, Bill had a provocative answer that he didn’t think anyone would get. Some of us focused on the monetary value of the thief’s heist, saying, “If one thief stole $6 million dollars worth of currency and/or objects, and another stole $7 million, then the other was obviously more successful.” Some of us focused on fame, “Thief B may have stolen something of greater value,” they said, “but if we are more fascinated by thief A, calculated by the number of news stories written in their present tense, and movies and documentaries written posthumously, then you would have to say that thief A is more famous and thus more successful.”

Neither of these answers are wrong or right, but such is the nature of provocative party questions. We love to debate, argue and discuss trivial issues that have no bearing on anything consequential. Our answers define us, and most of us deal in answers that lie somewhere below the bottom line: More fame equals better, and/or more money equals better. It’s human nature for most of us to try to cut through the fluff and find an inarguable answer. Bottom line, it’s fun to debate.

Every once in a great while, someone comes along and shuts the floor down. They say something to which there is no argument. We can’t argue the merits of fame, in other words, and arguing over total value is kind of pointless when someone who truly knows the facts of the value of the heist(s) thief B masterminded, but we could argue that those arguments are not provocative, in lieu of the answer one of the party goers offered for our consideration.

“We all want to be rich and famous, and thieves are no different,” Bill said. “They, like the rest of us, want as much money as they can find for their efforts, and they enjoy seeing their name in lights, but the overwhelming desire of the accomplished thief should be to avoid unwanted attention, particularly when it leads to a level of notoriety or infamy that might lead to their incarceration. The answer to your question is that we all have an opinion on who the greatest thief of all time is, but what are those answers based on? They’re based on reporting, in the media and history, but I submit to you that we probably don’t know who the greatest thief of all time is, because law enforcement was unable to catch them, the media didn’t report on them, and they essentially remain unknown to history.”

The reason I consider this theoretical answer so perfect, is that I knew a skilled thief, and I saw everything he fell prey to in his formative years. He turned out to be the opposite of an accomplished thief, because the relative elements of fame in our high school got to him, and greed caught up to him too. Bill’s ideas about the greatest thief of all time stuck with me, because I knew that the greatest thief of all time would need to learn how to avoid all that brought Kurt Lee down.

*******

Retired law enforcement officials inform us that the crimes that still keep them up at night are the random, or seemingly random, crimes that were almost impossible to solve. Law enforcement officials count on a number of factors to help them solve such a crime, but the most prominent ones involve the character flaws inherent in the criminal mind.

One of the more intense scenes of Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas involves the actions of the players involved in the Lufthansa heist. This scene is based on a true story, and in the true story, as in the movie, the main player instructs the players involved not to spend the money to draw unwanted attention. Some of the players go out, in a relatively short span of time, and defy that order. “How could you have been so stupid?” the main player asks. To which, those of us in the audience say, “How could you have been so stupid to include this player. You knew who he was in the planning stages. Why did you include him in your plans?” The answer is that if you plan on engaging in a large heist that requires multiple players, you’re probably not going to have a crew comprised of the best and brightest, and among the thieves you bring on, you’re going to have wide variations of thief’s mentality.

Most criminals have never had any real money. If they grew up with money, inherited it, or found their own honest way to make real money, they probably wouldn’t be thieves. Thus, when they manage to successfully steal some money, most of them will not invest it in slow growth, high yield municipal bonds. They’ll spend it with the same impulses that drove them to steal in the first place. They’ll spend it to try to live the life they thought they should’ve been living all along, they’ll spend it to live the life they think others live, and they’ll spend it in a manner that draws unwanted attention. They have never had any real money, so they do not know what to do with it when they get it. Most thieves also know they’re living on borrowed time, so they will spend their money as if it’s all going to end tomorrow.

Buying extravagant items leads to extravagant flaunting, and flaunting leads to talk. Their people may not speak directly to law enforcement officials, but talk leads to talk. If the thief displays some restraint in this regard, they are apt to fall prey to another human conceit of wanting to tell those who said that they would never amount to anything in life about their newfound wealth. The natural byproduct of those forced to endure the bragging is jealousy, and jealousy might lead to trusted friends and family making anonymous calls that can change the direction of an investigation. In the event that those with a thief’s mentality are able to avoid the typical pratfalls of criminal success, law enforcement officials will often sit back and wait for greed to take hold.

If a true piece of work (a POS) manages to pull off a $10,000 heist, $10,000 dollars will not satisfy a thief. The nature of the thief’s mentality –as taught to me by Kurt Lee– is such that they will probably be planning a $20,000 heist, as they drive away in the getaway car from their $10,000 heist. How many of us have watched a movie, read a book, or known a true POS in life and said, ‘If they would’ve just stopped at some point along the way, they could’ve walked away with all that money. How much money did he truly need?’ Kurt Lee’s mentality suggested to me that it is about the money, and it isn’t. Money, wealth, and comfort drives the heist, but no amount of money can satiate that drive. A true POS has so much wrapped up in those heists that they eventually fall prey to all of above, with greed being the most prominent.

*******

I knew Kurt Lee, on a superficial level, for years. He was good friends with my best friend. Kurt Lee and I spoke just about every day for years, but we were never so close that one would characterize us as intimate. It wasn’t until Kurt Lee invited me, and my best friend, to join him at the baseball card shop that I received a window into Kurt Lee’s mentality. As detailed in the first installment of this series, by the time Kurt Lee and I were in the car driving over to the baseball card shop, the act of shoplifting had long since lost its thrill for him. It bored him so much that he asked me if I wanted to watch him steal from that baseball card shop’s owner. I never met a true thief before Kurt Lee, so my reference base was limited, but I imagined that more experienced thieves would suggest that this was the on ramp to a bad road for Kurt Lee.

More experienced thieves might suggest that the very idea that Kurt Lee was attempting to accentuate the thrill of theft, by having another watch him do it, suggests that Kurt Lee wasn’t motivated by what they might call the philosophical purity of theft. He wasn’t doing it to balance economic equality, in other words, as some more experienced thieves will say to convince themselves that there is nothing wrong with stealing from someone that has so much that they don’t know what to do with it anymore. He wasn’t doing it to put food on a table, or any reasons that a more experienced thief might consider a more noble or justifiable motivation. Kurt Lee was simply doing it because he wanted the stuff on the shelves, and he enjoyed the thrill of it all. Once that thrill was gone, he needed to supplement it. A casual observer, just learning of Kurt Lee, might also suggest that he asked me to watch to quell some deep seated need he had for approval or acceptance. I would’ve considered that notion foolish at the time, for the Kurt Lee I knew displayed no visible signs of caring what anyone thought of him, much less me. With the advantage of hindsight, however, I have to consider that a possibility.

The young man I knew believed in the spirit of generosity, but this philosophy arrived most often when you had something he wanted. I did witness him display generosity with students in need, and he helped me once. Yet, I found that his generosity was more of a quid pro quo than a simple act of generosity born of altruism. When he asked for payback, the initial recipient of his previous acts of generosity often paid about four times what his generosity cost him. After the first, and only, interaction in this regard, I decided it was better to go hungry rather than ask him to lend me lunch money for a day.

He claimed that his generosity was pure however, and he enjoyed it when others considered him a generous man, which leads me to believe that if the adult Kurt Lee managed to pull off a $10,000 heist, he would begin spreading the wealth around. He might hire the services of a prostitute for a night, he might give some of his newfound largess to a homeless person, or he might generously tip a waitress or a housekeeper, and he would do it in a manner that would lead people to talk. He would spread the wealth around just to be a guy who could spread the wealth around, for one day in his otherwise miserable existence. He would do it with the hope that his various acts of generosity might say more about him than the criminal act he committed to attain the money. His motivation for sharing would not be truly altruistic, in other words, and he would do it regardless if he considered the idea that these actions might lay some breadcrumbs for law enforcement.

The point is that the theoretical greatest thief in history that Bill Kizer talked about at the party, one presumably imbued with the same thief’s mentality as Kurt Lee, wouldn’t fall prey to any of these conceits. The point is that Bill’s thief would be such an exception to the rules, governing one with a thief’s mentality, that he might be able to achieve something historic in the field of criminality.

*******

Those of us who knew the as of yet unformed, maladjusted, high school-era Kurt Lee wouldn’t need the prophetic words of a skilled thief to know where Kurt Lee would end up. We also didn’t need the list of fatal flaws from law enforcement officials to know that Kurt Lee was susceptible to falling prey to these conceits. Especially after he became the center of attention in high school.

Someone at our school learned about Kurt Lee, and they spread the word. I didn’t know who they were or what they said the what this person said to spread the word, but I have to believe that it had something to do with the idea that for everything was, he was not a nice guy. People often say the worst things they can think up, then they clean it up at the end by saying, but he’s actually a really nice guy. My bet is that with Kurt, they concluded with “Far from it. He’s actually a real piece of work (a POS).’ For most of those outside our demographic, I imagine that such a presentation might do some damage to Kurt Lee’s brand, but for us it was a special résumé enhancer. If Kurt’s carnival barker told the fellas around him that he found a guy that was dishonest, duplicitous, and something of a POS, but he was actually a pretty nice guy, the air would leave that expanding balloon. Most of us are already friends with nice guys, and our dads and our uncles are nice guys too. We want something different, some conniving, unpredictable, POS who shocks us.

Whatever the carnival barker said to describe Kurt Lee clicked, because Kurt Lee ended up becoming something of a celebrity in some quarters. The top athletes at our school were dying to know what he was going to do, or say, next. They thought he was hilarious. The cool kids even stopped by to get Kurt Lee’s reaction to the latest events of our school. They had never seen anything like him before. He was like a real life Al Bundy in our midst. Those of us who tried to avoid thinking that such people were impressive couldn’t believe the attention Kurt Lee was getting. Kurt Lee couldn’t believe it either, and he also didn’t understand it.

Those of us who witnessed this, learned what an unusual attraction those in our peer group have to a true POS with a thief’s mentality, and I don’t make any claims to being immune to this. As the previous entry suggests, I found Kurt Lee fascinating and hilarious. Some may consider it a bit of a stretch to suggest that the young, unformed male mind wants to witness a bully humiliate and hurt others, but if it happens most young males want to be around to witness it. Those who told Kurt Lee’s stories knew that no one enjoys hearing a story from a guy who can’t stifle his laughter, so they managed to get through their narrative without laughing. It was hard though, because the vicarious thrills one receives from telling such a story can be difficult to maintain.

Kurt also, incidentally, opened a wormhole to our understanding of what it took to be an honest man. He was so unabashed in his dishonesty that some of us considered him the most honest guy we knew. He was a genuine article of consistent, and unflinching, dishonesty. When Kurt Lee learned that these aspects of his personality appealed to a wide swath of fellas our age, he exaggerated these characteristics in a way that suggested he didn’t understand their appeal any more than we did. His answer to whatever dilemma plagued him was to try to live up to the caricature that we built for him and exaggerate it.

Kurt Lee became that bully, thief, and POS that every young, unformed male dreamed of being but dared not stretch to the point of extremes. The problem for Kurt Lee was that he needed a victim who would allow him to display his characteristics without consequences. He chose to focus on those inferior, non-confrontational, and significantly smaller than him, so they would present no challenge. He openly challenged anyone he considered at the bottom of the food chain to bolster his POS profile for those in attendance.

Kurt Lee was a POS the day I met him, but prior to his brief taste of popularity, he displayed a bit more discretion. I don’t know if he didn’t want to get in trouble, of if he actually had limits, but once he discovered how much the athletes and cool kids loved whatever it was that he was, he was balls out.

The problem with becoming such a character is that, inevitably, an ugly truth will rear its head. Young, unformed males eventually grow bored with a consistent character no matter how consistently offensive and insensitive that individual may be. When that happens, the instinctual response of such a character is to up their game even more, and exaggerate those unacceptable characteristics that everyone loved fifteen minutes ago, until the character ends up doing it so often, and to such excess, that he ends up revealing his desire to be accepted. This new game face stood in stark contrast to the very characteristics that made Kurt Lee so appealing in the first place, to those in the upper caste system of high school. It also resulted in the implosion I alluded to in the first installment.

This implosion started when something went missing in our school. Kurt Lee plead innocence, on numerous occasions, claiming that he was being unfairly singled out by our school, and he may have been, but Kurt Lee made a name for himself for all the wrong reasons. He may have been such an obvious suspect that he was too obvious, but the school ended up expelling Kurt Lee as a result.

If Kurt Lee permitted me to caution him, prior to this incident, I would’ve informed him that these athletes and cool kids don’t give a crap about you. They may like you in the short-term, as they take what they want from you, in this case entertainment, but once they have expended you as a resource they will put you out at the curb. They don’t care if you’re an actual POS, or if you’re just playing that character well. They don’t care if a person wants their attention. They won’t pay as much attention to them as they did fifteen minutes ago, once they see through the veneer. This long-term view would not have mattered to Kurt Lee however. He wanted to bask in the glow. When that brief spell ended, it wounded Kurt Lee, and he attempted to up his game even more, until he ended up with an expulsion, and he eventually ended up being incarcerated for another, unrelated matter.

***

Decades later, those of us who went to school with Kurt Lee were all standing around a funeral engaged in a ‘What ever happened to’ conversation regarding our old classmates. Kurt Lee’s name eventually came up. Laughter erupted at the mere mention of his name, as we all remembered the awful things he did to people. Someone in our group attempted to quell that laughter by mentioning that he thought Kurt Lee was actually a pretty awful person. No one said a word. That silence occurred, I can only presume, because everyone considered that characterization so obvious. Another spoke about Kurt Lee’s expulsion from our school, and the subsequent incarceration for an unrelated crime. Those who didn’t know about the incarceration laughed when they heard about it, but it wasn’t the bitter schadenfreude that often comes from those who were bullied, ridiculed, and beat up by the guy in high school. The laughter was more of a head-shaking chuckle that suggested we all knew that’s where Kurt Lee would eventually end up. Then the subject changed, and it didn’t change because some of those, at the gathering, harbored ill will towards Kurt Lee, and they wanted to move on in life. The sense that they had already moved past all that was palpable. The subject changed because no one truly cared what happened to Kurt Lee.

If he was a celestial being, witnessing this conversation, with the ghost of Christmas past over his shoulder, he may have offered a number of excuses for why people thought he was so awful. He might inform the ghost of Christmas past that he was just a dumb kid at the time, and he might have said something about how bullying actually prepares kids for the real world in that it strengthens their constitution against future bullying. Kurt Lee might have experienced a slight twinge of guilt, hearing our accounts of him, but I don’t think so. I think he would’ve enjoyed hearing us talk about him. Seeing how quickly we changed the subject, however, and all that it intoned about how we felt about him long-term, probably would have stung.

The fundamental mistake Kurt Lee made, a mistake that most of us make at that age, is that we know nothing about human nature. We don’t understand how few people truly care about what happens to us, and we fail to grasp that nothing –including internal squabbles, politics, and the desire to be more popular– should keep us from these people. The mistake we make occurs when we seek the approval of others, because we often direct that effort at those who don’t give a crap about us in any kind of comprehensive manner. Kurt Lee made the fundamental mistake of believing that when those cool kids began laughing at the things he did that they were laughing with him. He made the mistake of believing when others are interested in what he had to say or do, they are interested in him, and I can only presume that when these truths became evident, he attempted to double down on those characteristics they enjoyed, it ended up destroying him from the inside out.

As evidence of this, one of the members of this conversation knew some things about the adult, post-high school Kurt Lee. He told a couple of stories about how Kurt Lee began stealing bigger and better things more often.

“He didn’t learn his lessons from high school,” this storyteller informed us. “He grew so bold that one could call some of the things he did stupid.” Some may place whatever it was that drove the adult Kurt Lee to steal more expensive items, at a greater rate, under the umbrella of greed, but I think it goes much deeper than that. I think that expulsion, and the end of the life he once knew, drove him to neglect those mountain lion skills he often displayed by refraining from launching on his prey, until he could determine that there was absolutely no chance of any harm coming to him. The stories I heard, that day at the funeral, of Kurt Lee stealing such conspicuous items were so confusing that I couldn’t help but think they were troubling and obvious cries for help.

Kurt Lee was the best thief I’ve ever known. He was, of course, a small-time thief, and if he could’ve maintained that small-time status, I thought, he could’ve walked away from it all. If the greatest thief of all time were to fall prey to some of the same things Kurt Lee did, in his formative years, that thief would have to learn the lessons from these formative years. Kurt Lee, obviously, never did, and the fact that he ended up doing time suggests that the adult, post-high school Kurt Lee didn’t either. It suggests that he eventually imploded under the weight of whatever he was when I knew him.

The final answer to the provocative question is that there probably is no greatest criminal that the media and law enforcement never knew, because no criminal could engage in various acts of criminality with a sound mind and a guilt-free heart. The various taints on their soul are what drive to commit acts of theft and violence, and those taints and blemishes do not heal with one simple band-aid.

Fear of a Beaver Perineal Gland

February 23, 2015October 6, 2024 Rilaly1 Comment

“Do you know what you’re eating?” an informed consumer asked as I approached his table with a strawberry shake in hand. “Do you know what’s in that?”

Informed consumers annoy me. They act like they have this whole formula figured out. They pretend to have some authority on this subject after reading some information on some click-bait site, and they can’t wait to share it with the world. Do they pursue primary information from some top notch health advisory board that has decades of research to back up their claims? No, they often rely on one of those “Know what you’re eating,” click-bait articles. The thing of it is, these purveyors of click-bait info then drop contradictory click-bait articles in the next two days, weeks, months, or however long it takes to make it feel fresh. “There might be some medicinal properties to coffee,” “It turns out eggs are good for you, depending on how you prepare them,” and “there is such thing as too much water.” These contradictions don’t make it into informed consumers’ presentations, however, because they don’t stimulate their need to demonize our diet.

If their sole goal in life was to attain and retain information for their diet, or if they shared it exclusively with their close friends and family, I would have no problem with them. The thing that fries my ham is that they’re not afraid to intrude on an associate’s meal. They’re not afraid to make that face when those of us they hardly know sink our teeth and gums into a greasy cheeseburgers. “I just hate to see you put that into your body,” they say to associates who associate with them.

“That’s fine,” we say, “don’t watch.”

If we were preparing to down a plain salmon sandwich with a side of sautéed yellow squash, would they applaud us? “Good, feed, feed!” Are they concerned that if we don’t change our diet, we might not make it to sixty? I don’t think they care. They barely know us. No, their interruption of our meal is a small, insignificant power play. That “How can you eat that?” is not born of concern, it’s disgust, and displaying disgust for another’s dietary choices is one of the last socially acceptable avenues for displaying disgust for our fellow man. It’s a repository for the disgust we have for all of mankind that comes billowing out on us when they see us eating a chili and cheese dog.

What happened to all of our lines? You remember those lines, those imaginary lines we erected to keep associates we hardly know from invading our privacy. Those lines defined our relationships with those around us, and we knew not to cross them to violate the unspoken tenants of those relationships. We might be genuinely concerned about the diet of a family member, and others with whom we’ve developed a substantial bond, but we should have abide by the unspoken rules that suggest we probably shouldn’t say the same things to those who casually and infrequently associate with us. Our fathers and grandfathers went to great lengths to establish those lines and teach them to us. Those lines are gone, and I for one, miss them.

There may have been a time when we considered what informed consumers said and adjusted accordingly. We thought their lectures came from a good place, because we joined them in their concerns for our good health. We know you-are-what-you-eat, but somewhere along the line it reached a tipping point. Somewhere along the line, it felt like too much information and too much knowledge. Somewhere along the line, it felt like informed consumers stepped over the line with too much knowledge.

Yet, we know better than to complain about too much knowledge, because we know they’ll hit us with a “What are you talking about? Too much knowledge regarding quality food, good health, and ways for us to live longer? That knowledge? I’ll take too much knowledge over too little.” Game, set, match they win. Yet, every time we leave our home, someone hits us with their knowledge, until we’re drowning in it.

“Let’s put it this way,” my informed consumer continued. “What would you say if I asked you to tell me the difference between the strawberry flavoring in your shake and a beaver’s anal secretion?”

“I’d say I can tell the difference,” I managed to say without yawning.

“You’d think that wouldn’t you?” asked my informed consumer, “but people confuse the two every day. Those of you who enjoy eating strawberry, raspberry, and vanilla flavorings are, in essence, big fans of beaver anal secretion. It’s true. If they’re willing to pay a little more for products that use ‘natural flavorings,’ they’re probably eating a number of secretions from animals, insects, and a wide array of repulsive animal byproducts. The natural assumption is that the opposite of natural flavorings involves manmade, chemical enhancements, but does the average consumer know the true extent of the ‘natural flavorings’ in the products they purchase? Chances are, anyone who prefers natural flavoring in their strawberry shakes has actually been devouring this yellowish, mucus-colored secretion from the dried perineal glands of the beaver, in a most gratuitous manner, for years.”

The Castoreum Connection

Castoreum is the exudate from the castor sacs of the mature North American Beaver. Consumers state that they prefer this natural flavoring augment to other natural flavorings in blind, taste tests. The internet offers no details regarding whether this market-tested preference is due to the scent of the secretion, or if the flavor has been determined to be more delicious than any of the other alternatives flavorists have tried over the years. Whatever the case, the beaver doesn’t produce this exudate from its castor sacs to tweak our senses. Rather, they release this natural product as a territory marker. The procedure involved in extracting the exudate is such that the beaver doesn’t have to give up his life to provide this flavoring. Rather, enterprising young hands milk it from the castor sacs located in the beaver’s anal glands. One warning to those curious enough to pursue too much knowledge on this subject, entering the search term “milking the beaver” in a search engine may not pull up the information videos they seek.

It’s important to note that research scientists in this field, called flavorists, have developed synthetic substitutes for castoreum and almost all of the natural additives listed herein. Yet, informed consumers tell us that synthetic substitutes fall under the artificial flavorings umbrella, and artificial flavorings fall under the manmade umbrella, and that we should all consider these two terms unacceptable. When informed consumers read the words “synthetic substitute,” “chemical additive,” or “artificial flavorings,” they may make the leap to animal testing or to the unintended consequences of man messing with nature, because some anecdotal bits of information stick in our minds regarding chemical synthetics leading to cancer and other health concerns. As a result, we prefer the natural flavorings such as the beaver’s anal secretion.

Natural and Artificial Flavoring

So, what is the difference between artificial and natural flavorings? Gary Reineccus, a professor in the Department of Food Science and Nutrition at the University of Minnesota, writes that finding the difference between the two requires one to look at the original source of the chemicals used.

“Natural flavorings just mean that before the source went through many chemical processes, that it came from an organic, natural source as opposed to an artificial one that has no natural origin.”

“I used to be a vegetarian,” a friend of mine told me. “I grew up on a farm, and I saw what they did to the chickens and the ducks to prepare them for our meals. I decided that I would no longer eat them. I felt bad for them. When I was a little girl, I had no idea I was eating the chickens from the pen. I never associated the chickens from the pen with the chicken I enjoyed eating. The question of why they had the same name just never occurred to me. When they explained it all to me, and I saw how they prepared all of my friends for consumption, I couldn’t eat chickens or any other meat for years.”

How much do you enjoy M&M’s and jelly beans? Informed consumers might ask us if we enjoy their shiny appearance. “How do you think they get so shiny?” they might ask with something similar to a smug smile. “Have you ever heard of shellac? Yes, the substance they/we lay on wood furniture to give it that extra, little shimmer. What’s the problem with that, though, if it passes the rigorous standards of our Food and Drug Administration (FDA).”

“Nothing,” writes Daisy Luther, for the Organic Prepper, as long as consumers know the shellac “is a resinous secretion from bugs during their mating cycles, the female lac beetle in particular. Glazed donuts and glossy candy shells owe their shininess to her secretions.”

If we listen to and abide by the informed consumers’ findings, we might not be able to eat shiny candy again, much less the strawberry Frappuccino from Starbucks.

“You’re seeking visual appeal,” informed consumers ask with a snicker. “That’s all right. We all are. What we see and smell adds to our enjoyment of flavor. Even I admit that.”

They inform us that Starbucks once had a difficult time keeping their strawberry Frappuccino a visually appealing vibrant red. The struggle for Starbucks was that most of the red flavorings they tested couldn’t offer us a delightful hue, so they turned to Natural Red #4 dye, otherwise known as carmine. This proved more successful in holding the color, but informed consumers discovered that it is actually a cochineal extract, a color additive derived from the cochina beetle’s shell. The process involves drying the insects and grinding them up to give their strawberry Frappuccino a more sustainable red flavoring. Informed consumer groups forced Starbucks to end the practice and caterwauled them into transitioning to lycopene, a pigment found in tomatoes.

As usual, all this caterwauling is much ado about nothing, as studies performed over the last sixty years by independent researchers and the FDA’s research arm conclude that while most of these additives land high on our yuck list, there are no discernible health concerns or anything life threatening about them. Our culture once laid out a perfectly acceptable joke for such matters, “If you want to enjoy sausage, do not watch how it is made.” No more. We will not abide. We substitute that joke with “Do you know what you’re drinking?” questions that informed consumers end up saying so loudly that corporations hear them and adapt.

Fish Bladders and Bitter Beer Face

“We do it for you,” informed consumer groups might say when they intimidate corporations into changing their practices. We don’t think you do. We don’t know what goes on in hearts and minds, of course, but how many of us act in such a manner to pursue purely altruistic goals. How many of us pursue goals that align with an agenda or a worldview? Some are subtle, some are not, in their calls for greater corporate social responsibility. They suggest that food producers and manufacturers are engaging in deceptive business practices because they do not list “beaver anus juice” in their ingredients, and the FDA should force them to be more transparent.

To this charge, I submit that most of these ingredients have been market tested and FDA approved, and they will bring consumers no harm. They’re gross, some of the ingredients informed consumers dredge up are so gross that they might change our opinions of said products, but that’s our choice as consumers. “Are you informed?” they ask. “Isn’t that the core issue here?”

Informed consumers might seduce us into avoiding beer, because most beer manufacturers dry swim bladders of beluga sturgeon (Isinglass) to filter sediment, but the alternative is yeast-filled beer that no consumer, informed or otherwise, would purchase. We prefer clear beer that has little-to-no sediment.

I also submit that in most areas of the food and beverage industry, profits are far slimmer than infotainment, click-bait purveyors preach. If they’re able to keep their costs down, they’re able to keep our costs down. The food and beverage industry is such a competitive industry that the need to keep costs down, and their ability pass those savings on to the consumers is often the difference between being able to sell said products and folding up shop. If an informed consumer demands more corporate responsibility, along industry lines, they should be prepared to pay more for these alternatives, because those higher costs will be passed on to consumers. Informed consumers are also fickle beings who force corporations into changing from natural flavorings to synthetic and back, nearly undermining their efforts with constant barrages from their outrage-of-the-day vault. Those of us who pay attention to such matters, long for a pushback from corporations and consumers. We long for the day when uninformed consumers will step up, en masse, and say something such as:

“I don’t enjoy hearing that my beer spends some time in a dried fish bladder. I might prefer that they find some other way to clean my favorite beer, but I’ve been drinking it and those fish bladder remnants for decades. I eat fish all the time though, and I see nothing wrong with it, and I think the idea of bullying corporations to do things another way has reached a tipping point.”

To Get Us in the Mood

Various corporations also use the beaver castoreum to cure headaches, fever, and hysteria, as it contains large amounts of salicylic acid, an active ingredient in aspirin. These anal secretions also contain around twenty-four different molecules, many of which act as natural pheromones that help us get in the mood.

Castoreum gives off a musky scent used in perfumes, much like ambergris, the solid, waxy, flammable substance of a dull gray or blackish color, produced in the gastrointestinal tract of sperm whales. The whale does not have to die for ambergris extraction either. Ambergris is a bile duct secretion produced to ease the passage of hard, sharp objects the whale ingests in the sea. As such, enterprising souls often locate the ambergris floating on the surface of the ocean in whale vomit, which makes it easier to harvest and include in our favorite perfumes and colognes.

Giacomo Casanova, well-known raconteur, often sprinkled a dash of ambergris in his evening hot chocolate, in the hopes that when his lover approached its musky aroma would be permeating from his skin. If Casanova were feeling particularly insecure, while in the company of a promising damsel, he added an extra coat of it on his collar.

The theory is that our sense of smell serves a dual purpose: warning us of danger and attracting us to a prospective mate. Market research has expounded on these findings. They have it that animal materials such as civet, castoreum and musk (from cats, beaver, and deer, all located in the same region) offer a sensual fragrance, because they harbor chemical structures similar to our own sexual odors. Musk has almost identical properties to human testosterone, in other words, an enzyme that powers our sex drive.

Who Discovered It First?

The last questions that arise in discussion involving natural substitutes and additives involve their origin: “Who first discovered this, and how did they arrive at the conclusion that it could be used in the manner we now use it?”

Did someone notice that an inordinate number of women had an inordinate attraction to whalers? Did this first observer set about to try to discover why? Did whalers, after a number of successful conquests of women, realize that there was something to their success rate? Did some notice that the correlation went beyond the rugged individualism women of the era seemed to associate with whaling? Did one whaler rub some whale vomit behind his ears before he went to the tavern one night and encounter so much success that his fellow whalers followed suit? How long did it take before someone officially unlocked the alluring properties of ambergris? On that note, who was the first person to mix beaver anal juice in ice cream and decide it was such a winning proposition that they should pitch it to corporations? What did this enterprising soul say in that pitch to make it persuasive? While we’re on the topic, how did someone discover the psychedelic and psychoactive properties of the toad?

What was the trial-and-error process that led to this discovery? Did someone eat a toad and find themselves feeling a little loopy in the aftermath? Did they discover these toad venom properties after an incident, or did this enterprising individual walk around licking everything in the forest, from the trees to the various orifices of the aardvark, armadillo and the antelope, seeking a natural high that they hoped might eventually lead to fame and fortune?

We can make an educated guess that any individual who persisted in this manner probably didn’t care about money as much as they did achieving a state of mind in which they could no longer care about money.

We know the natural properties in plants and animals can provide homeopathic remedies, and these theories date back to the Native Americans, to Aristotle, and beyond. We also know that there was a great deal of trial-and-error in that research, much of it accomplished in environments that were not sterile, and they produced results were not consistent and would have a difficult time standing up to the kind of peer review such a finding would experience today. With that in mind, another question naturally arises: “How many people became ill during these trials? How many experienced short and long-term paralytic effects? How many died before they found that the 5-methoxy-N, N-dimethyltryptamine (5-MeO-DMT), is a chemical derivative of bufotenine located in toads? This chemical, after all, is not available in all toads. It appears to be a property exclusive to the bufo alvarius. We can only guess that many people had to lick a wide variety of wild animals before they discovered the one that secretes the perfect venom for those who wish to experience the euphoric results of brain cell death.

The chemical (5-MeO-DMT) is a natural venom these toads produce to defend against attackers, and recent research indicates that the toad-licking phenomenon is dangerous, and that the hallucinogenic properties are an old wives’ tale. That research reports that human beings, whom the toad views as attackers, are susceptible to the same consequences of any attacker that runs up to lick it. The human attacker may become ill and/or paralyzed in an attempt to milk the toad in a squeezing motion or to ingest it in an oral manner. This leads to the next question, which alleged educated researcher watched their fellow researchers or test subjects fall to the ground in paralytic spasms, or to their death, and crossed out the words lick it. The researcher or the one next in line must have tried everything before they found the successful method of drying the toad and smoking it. Word then leaked that someone found the Holy Grail of brain cell-killing euphoria, and the proper use of the secretions of the Bufo alvarius soon became so ubiquitous and eventually so detrimental that Queensland, Australia, deemed toad slime as contraband, an illegal substance, the possession of which is punishable under their Drug Misuse Act?

My

Advice to Informed Consumers

If the reader is anything like my informed consumer friend who insisted on informing me about the natural byproducts of my strawberry shake, and the reader is interested in trivial information about consumable products, that reader already knows about the number of websites that will feed the need. These websites provide tidbits and warnings about just about every product and service available to mankind, updated on a daily basis. If the informed consumer is so interested in such information that they feel an overwhelming need to share, just know that an ever-increasing segment of the population has already reached that fight-the-yawn tipping point, because most of this information proves to be little more than a conglomeration of trivial concerns, if not contradictory.

My initial fear, in publishing this particular article, was that it might contribute to what I deem a violation of social protocol, yet I offer it here under the banner “There’s no such thing as too much knowledge.” I am aware, however, that there will always be some informed consumers, like my broiled to black on too much information friend, who don’t believe that sharing such information will do any harm. I also know that the moment of sharing will arrive soon after the unsuspecting sits down to enjoy those products the informed consumer is now afraid to consume based on what they know about said product. To these people, I offer my paraphrase of one of Mark Twain’s most famous quotes: “Sometimes it’s better to keep your mouth shut and appear uninformed than to open it and remove all doubt.”

The next time someone approaches your table with a strawberry shake, a bottle of beer, M&M’s, or a fried Bufo alvarius toad that they plan to consume, just swallow your bullhorn. Don’t even say something you consider relatively benign like, “Well, I wouldn’t eat it.” Just let it go, because you’re not doing it for us. You’re doing it for you. You’re doing it to solve some mysterious mess you have entangled in your innards, and the sooner you admit that the happier we’ll all be. I would also ask them if they really care about my health, “Seriously, you don’t really care, and I don’t care about your prescriptions for my greater health. The difference between the two of us is that I’m not going to pretend I do.”