Is That All There Is?

October 24, 2012August 30, 2024 Rilaly2 Comments

We expect things to be different. We don’t know if it’s going to get better or worse, but the human mind is built on expectation. We fail at times, and we succeed in others, but we never let these moments get us too high or too low, because we expect the opposite is hiding in a bright or dark corner. There’s always despair, there’s always hope, and there’s always something more to life. There’s always some extraneous force that counters and balances our current situation. We’re in a perpetual state of looking around the corner for the next event to fulfill our expectations. We look forward to the weekend, to vacations, to moving, to promotions, retirement, and the afterlife. Eager beings like us look forward to tomorrow because we know it will be different than today, for better or worse.

In this quest for a greater tomorrow, songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller write that we are frequently disappointed. The song, written in November 1969, is called Is That All There Is? The song’s lyrics detail the nature of expectations and the revelatory disappointments of life that begin in childhood. The song uses the circus as an example. The moment that circus began, we thought we would experience one of the greatest moments in our life. When they do it right, there’s something magical about the circus. Those who do it right appear to engage chaos in their presentation, but when you sit there long enough, you begin to see the patterns and rhythms, until you began to see the orchestrated chaos. You figured it out, and that’s what brought a warm smile to your face.

There is a smell endemic to the circus. It might take you a while to source the smell, but you soon realize it’s animal dung, both horse and elephant. Anytime you smell horse and elephant dung, you smile that warm smile, because it makes you feel five-year-old again, the first time you went to the circus. Couple that smell with the warmth of the room under that incredible large and tall tent, the taste of that stale, overly salted popcorn, and the pageantry of the pre-game show and we’re giddy again, as giddy as we were when we were five. No matter what age we are, we’re not quite six when the first clown makes its appearance. We pretend that we’re laughing with them, but we feel some sort of strange, internal glow we cannot push back down. We laugh wildly at everything the clown does, even though nothing a clown does is really adult funny. If they did the same thing without makeup, would we even smile? We laugh because for one brief spot in time, we are five-years-old again, and our laughter and that warmth are borne of expectation. When we saw the magnificence of elephants walking around, yards away from us, our little faces just beamed with awe, but they usually didn’t do anything to meet our expectations. They just walked around in circles and occasionally did painfully slow tricks that were supposed to impress us, but we were kids. We didn’t know how much it took to make an elephant stand on one foot on something. We know now, but we remember when we thought different. We saw a beautiful lady in pink and green tights flying high above our heads, and we cringed with the expectation that she might fall, and then she didn’t, and then it was over, and we walked out of from under the tent disappointed that our incredibly high expectations weren’t met. We couldn’t help but think that we missed something. Is that what everyone was talking about? “Is that all there is to a circus?”

Is that all there is?
If that’s all there is, my friends, then let’s keep dancing
Let’s break out the booze and have a ball
If that’s all there is

Sung by Peggy Lee (later PJ Harvey) Is That All there Is? moves to more depressing matters as the song progresses. It talks about how the most horrific moments in life, even fire, can end up a little disappointing when one is all hyped up with horror. When the afterlife is discussed, the lyrics detail how we don’t want to die, because we fear that final disappointment. The theme of the song, as evidenced by the above refrain, is that if that’s all there is to life, let’s live life to the fullest. Let’s break out the booze and let’s keep dancing if all these overhyped joys and horrors turn out to pale in comparison to what are supposed to be life’s greatest joys and horrors.

When we talk about the power of America in the world today, we talk about how she has the ability to shape the world in its status as the world’s lone superpower. When we talk about the technological advances she has made in her 200+ years of existence, we talk about it being the lone beacon in the world for individual achievement. Even after acknowledging this ingenuity and creativity, we are still vulnerable to insecurities that lead us to notion that there is something bigger, brighter and more powerful out there just waiting to expose us as frauds. We don’t know what that is, but we know that we can’t be all there is in the world.

We fear China. While few would say we have nothing to fear from China, our overhyped fear of them is borne of expectation. They are a very secretive country. If they were superior to all countries on earth, wouldn’t it be counterintuitive for them to keep that a secret? If that’s not the case, what’s the alternative? Do they enjoy our overhyped fear? Do they enjoy remaining the unknown? They number into the billions, they speak a funny language, and they’re a very industrious people. In our greatest fears, we portray their people, their citizens as almost machine-like. Their government has less regard for their lives and their suffering than we do. They pay their workers peanuts, and they rip off our creativity and ingenuity, but does this equate to superiority? If we were to construct a line-by-line comparison, we might find that they are not superior. They have their areas, of course, and we have ours? How about in the future? Ah, there’s the rub Skippy! The future is the unknown quality. The Chinese may be more organized, they may be better at math and engineering, and they may be so disciplined that they can they march in lockstep? But, are they superior? We don’t know, and our insecurities are driving us nuts.

We fear aliens from outer space for the same reasons. Aliens are superior to us. According to all speculation on this topic, they have technological advances we haven’t even dreamed of yet. Some claim that their culture may be thousands of years older than ours, so they must be thousands of years more advanced than we are. Some even claim that we base our comparatively little technological advancements on that which we’ve learned from alien visitations. There is one small problem with all of these assumptions: aliens may not exist. They may not exist, but if they do they’re superior to us. At least with the Chinese, we have tangible evidence for our fears, but the fear of aliens from outer space is a manifestation of our insecure belief that we’re limited by human constraints, and we can’t compete with them, and their superior intellect and machine-like abilities. The fact that we engage in these hypothetical fears is all is built on the expectation that this can’t be all there is.

Is that all there is?
If that’s all there is, my friends, then let’s keep dancing
Let’s break out the booze and have a ball
If that’s all there is

What would we do if we learned of an alien visitation from an individual who claimed the aliens who visited him were not as superior as we were led to believe? What if he said, “They might have been exceptions in the species, but I think I just got visited by a couple of alien hicks. When they stepped out of their incredibly advanced flying saucer, I think they were drunk. If they weren’t drunk, they appeared as drunks do in Buggs Bunny cartoons. They were drinking something, and they appeared to be belching. Then, there was the way they talked. We couldn’t understand what they were saying, but their rhythms made me and Todd think they were swearing. Then, when they violated us, I think they were laughing while they did it!” Would we believe this person, or would their story violate our theories on alien superiority so much that this would be the lone alien visitation story that we didn’t believe? How convincing would this the poor person have to be to override our need to believe that there is something spectacular out there that we have yet to experience?

Alien visitation stories also feed into fears of our ultimate destruction. The subject of the visitation usually relays information from the overlord, alien visitors that suggest that our reliance on war and technology will have an ultimate price if we don’t stop now. Most aliens also appear to be anti-corporate peaceniks. Due to the fact that aliens are superior, we know that they’ve seen the horrors technology can have on a society, so we could do a lot to stave off our Armageddon if we’d just put our iPods away and go back to a more primitive nature. The advice the aliens give us tend to follow the subject of the visitation’s political philosophy, and it’s usually advice that is as simplistic as the subject appears to be. “When ordering from a fast food menu, lay off the Biggee portions they’re not good for you,” the wizened alien says in his alien tongue that has been translated to English by the subject. “Stop driving SUVs, and lay off the cigarettes. Doobies are fine, but the nicotine and tobacco cigarettes are killing you Tony.”

The rational must accept the fact that we cannot be the only lifeforms in the entire universe, but does that mean they’re superior? If some are superior, isn’t it just as likely that some of them are inferior? If we met an alien dignitary, we assume that they would only send their best and brightest, their version of Earth’s astronauts, but what if a couple of drunk, alien hicks stole and hijacked their aircraft and decided to give Earth a visit? That would bring us back to square one if we didn’t witness their technology and believe that theirs is thousands of years more advanced than ours. Most people who indulge in alien folklore don’t even question alien superiority or inferiority. For these people, the evidence is in, and their fundamental belief system is based on ALF superiority. This is based on their frustrations with life on Earth. This is based on the fact that they don’t make a whole of money in a job that they hate, their family hates them, and they don’t have a lot of friends. They need something to believe in, and believing in a God just isn’t cutting it for them anymore. They need something bigger, better and brighter than the stuff their stupid parents taught them, and they expect to be right.

Some fear UFO people, some fear the Chinese, and some fear God. Some believe in some form of astrological control of destiny, and others believe that with the correct federal government legislation on the books we can all avoid total failure. Most of us have some belief in a controlling authority that directs our fate, our daily lives, and our failures and successes, and some psychologists suggest that is actually be quite healthy. They say that because believing in things gives us some distance from our failures, and it gives those of us who have had our expectations damaged some hope that things will get better, or if they don’t, then we have someone, or something, to blame for it. We might read, and reread, that definition of healthy with a skeptical, furrowed brow, but what’s the alternative? The alternative could lead to a psychological blackhole in which the patient implodes in on themselves with the knowledge that most of their fears and beliefs were overhyped and they break out the booze and dance to try to forget that this is all there is.

Would You Eat Someone Somebody Cared About?

September 17, 2012December 31, 2024 Rilaly1 Comment

Would you eat something someone cared about? Would you eat something someone whispered to sweetly?

On an episode of the brilliant, hidden camera show on TruTV called Impractical Jokers, the comedian Salvatore (Sal) Vulcano assumed the role of a worker at the counter of a bakery. In the course of his duties at the bakery, in an episode, titled “Who Arted?”, Sal spoke to one of the pastries a customer ordered before placing it in that customer’s take home pastry box. The implied joke, in this transaction, was that Sal developed a familiar bond with these pastries that went beyond the usual, professional association a baker has with his creations.

“I’m going to give you to this lady now, and she’s going to eat you,” he whispered to the pastry. In response to the confection’s purported plea, Sal Vulcano added: “I’m sorry, this is just the way things are.”

In reaction to this display, the customer on the other side of the counter, decided that she did not want that particular pastry. She didn’t reveal anything about her decision making process, but it was obvious that she was uncomfortable with the idea of eating that particular pastry. Without saying a word, Sal selected another pastry, and he proceeded to speak to that one too. The woman interrupted him saying:

“I don’t want one that you’ve spoken to.”

At the conclusion of the segment, all four comedians provided comment on the segment, and they admitted that they wouldn’t eat food that someone has spoken to either. Why, was my first question. I have no idea why, all things being similar, a person would prefer a pastry that hasn’t been involved in communication. We can only speculate why, because the show did not interview the woman after the segment, or if they did they did not air it, and the four comedians don’t say why they would reject the pastry either. My guess is that the four comedians wanted to let this woman off the hook.

In this space of philosophical confusion, I put the question to a friend. He said that his decision would be based on what the person said to the pastry.

“Okay, but what communication would you deem so unacceptable you wouldn’t eat it? It’s not something we see every day, I’ll grant you that. It might be weird, a little creepy, and I may join you in giving the man an odd look when he does it, but I would then sit and eat it without any uncomfortable feelings or guilt.”

The obvious answer is that Sal’s presentation animated the pastries in a manner that this customer found disconcerting. In her world, presumably, it had always been socially acceptable to eat pastries, and she wanted to return that world. She didn’t want the guilt associated with eating a product that had a friend, or that someone cared about, or at the very least she didn’t want to watch their interaction, or in any other way know about it. She was so uneasy with the association that she made a boldfaced demand that Sal give her another pastry, one that hasn’t been spoken to in any manner, and she did this without acknowledging the lunacy of such a demand.

Proper analysis of the segment is almost impossible, since we don’t know what was going on in this customer’s head, but it appears to be an excellent portrayal, albeit incidental, of an individual who over thinks matters. She appears to be an individual who cares about what others think of her. She appears to be the type who makes informed, compassionate decisions about her dietary preferences. When she watches documentaries on food preparation, we can guess that they affect her dietary choices

An author wrote a book that awarded “light counts” to each being. In this book, the author suggested that some animals are more aware of their existence than another, and that that awareness could be said to be a non-religious soul. Humans, he wrote, are the barometer, as they are the most aware of their existence. In the next tier of his “consciousness cone” he lists the dog, the cat, and various other animals that he considers more aware of their existence. The human is at the top, and the atom is at the bottom. The purpose of his piece, the reader soon learns, is to inform the reader what the author considers acceptable to eat. A plant-based diet is entirely acceptable, for instance, to eat plants, vegetables, and fruit, because they have very few light counts, and little to no soul.

Some have suggested that talking to cats and dogs animates them in a manner that improves their life. Others have suggested that talking to plants can improve their condition. Does this affect the way we care for them, is it all a myth, or are we, in essence, transferring some of our light count to them? What if a human decides to transfer some of their light count to a piece of pastry? Is that possible? Is it possible that this woman believes this on some tangential level, and she prefers to eat a pastry with no light counts attached to them?

If this woman knows about this multi-tiered philosophy, or thinks about it anyway, we can presume that prior to her interaction with Sal, she was always comfortable eating pastries, because she assumed they had no cognition or awareness of their own being. She is a woman who makes informed dietary choices based on similar compassionate bullet points. Thus, when Sal assigned the pastries such characteristics, it made her so uncomfortable that she asked him to give her one without communicating with it.

Who would eat something that someone cares so much about? A cad would. Someone who doesn’t care about a person, place, or thing would. They might even worry that doing so could reflect poorly on them if they eat the pastry without a second thought. You’re saying you would eat such a thing without guilt? What kind of person are you? How do we sell ourselves to our peers in the aftermath?

Would we eat a small child’s beloved dog? Most would say no, to quote Pulp Fiction’s Jules Winnfield, “A dog’s got personality. Personality goes a long way.” If we agree with that sentiment, what are our parameters? Would we have any problems eating a small child’s beloved turkey? What if we met that turkey, and that turkey displayed some personality? What if that turkey displayed a little spunk that we couldn’t help but appreciate? What if that turkey befriended another turkey in a manner we found it endearing? What if the bird displayed an act of kindness that left an impression on us? What if it allowed us to fondle its wattle? What if that turkey had a name? How could anyone we eat a living being with a name? What kind of people are we? Would we rather eat a turkey that we’ve never met, that some individual in a factory farm slaughtered and packaged for us? We are informed, compassionate beings who don’t want to see anyone, any animal, or anything suffer, and when an individual does something that suggests they’ve bonded with something we plan on eating, do we consider how much pain that food might go through when we gnash it with our teeth, do we want to avoid thinking about that, and does it challenge what we think we know about light counts, the soul, and overall cognition.

The different between a quality baker and a top-notch one is the care they put into it. Some top-notch state that they put love into the confections they create. They care about their creations in the manner any other artist might. Sal’s joke might have been a spoof on the love and care some bakers put into their creations, and he did not expect the reaction this woman gave.

Once that reaction was out there, however, I would’ve been obsessed with drilling down to the woman’s philosophy behind rejecting the pastries to which Sal spoke. I would ask her if Sal redefined her philosophical stance on eating pastries in all the ways described above. If she said yes in any way, I would ask her why she considered another pastry acceptable. If he redefined it for her, wouldn’t that definition apply to all pastries? If she said no to this preposterous notion, I would ask her if she thought Sal transferred some of his soul, some of his light count to the particular pastry that she rejected. What’s the difference? Where is the line? It’s a pastry you say, and a pastry does not have the recognition of its own life in the manner a turkey does.

If a person has difficulty eating a pastry that someone spoke to lovingly, they may be a little too obsessed with their presentation. They may be as susceptible to commercialization and suggestion as those people they claim to hate. They may take the line, you are what you eat, a little too literally. They may consult websites that contain modern intellectuals who detail who we are by what we eat. They might refrain from eating a pasty, because of what it says about them if they do. They might be so afraid of what is says about them that they cannot sleep at night after taking a bite out of something that Sal appeared to love. Do they think too much, do they have too much time on your hands, and are they a result of the problem or part of it. If this woman was a spectator of the joke, as opposed to the subject of it, would she think less of the person who could eat such a confection without guilt?

How do we make our decisions on what not to eat? Does a vegetarian, or a vegan, make their dietary choices based entirely on a love of animals? Some of the vegetarians and vegans I’ve encountered initially say something along the lines of, “I don’t care for the texture of meat.” Or, they tell a story regarding the moment they made their decision and how they experienced a moment that shaped that decision in some way. Some others will detail for us the health related benefits they’ve explored. All but the very few will openly address anything political about their decision, and even fewer will state that they did it to achieve some level of cultural superiority by becoming a vegetarian or vegan. The minute we deign to put a piece of meat before our mouth, we will learn about their politics on the issue. We will also learn of their feelings of superiority over meat eaters before we learn their last name. If neither of these are the case, or if my experiences could be called anecdotal, why would a seemingly reasonable woman reject a pastry based solely on the fact that a Sal whispered sweet nothings to it before placing it in a pastry box?

If Sal had a Snickers bar perform the Can Can to animate that candy bar in a realistic, non-comedic manner would that woman, a vegan, or a vegetarian, be able to then eat that Snickers bar without regret or guilt? I realize that Snickers bars and pastries are relatively inanimate, but with proper, serious characterization would it be possible to animate them in such a fashion that a person, with susceptibilities to messaging, could be made to feel guilty about eating them? If that was successful, could an enterprising young documentarian launch a well-funded campaign, steeped in political pressure, to lead a segment of the population into avoiding eating Snickers candy bars based on videos about the inhumane manufacturing process involved in the creation and packaging of Snickers bars? With the proper documentarian displaying the inhumane process through which the peanuts and caramel are adjoined with the nougat in a final process that involves what could be called a suffocation technique employed by the layer of chocolate placed over the top, would it be possible to substantiate this cause to a point where a person would not only stop eating Snickers but denigrate those that do and anyone who supports Big Candy to be in line with evil? It’s not only possible, in my humble opinion, the seeds of it were on display in the inadvertent brilliance of this comic sketch on this episode of Impractical Jokers.