Turning the Other Cheek

October 4, 2012September 26, 2021 RilalyLeave a comment

“If someone strikes you, turn the other cheek,” is one of the most powerful, most ubiquitous quotes from Jesus of Nazareth. It has been quoted, paraphrased, and interpreted throughout my life, and for thousands of years prior to that. To say that the quote has been misinterpreted may be a misnomer, for as with all brilliant philosophical quotes of this nature, it’s open to subjective interpretation, relative to the person, time, and place.

“What does it mean?” a young child asked his teacher. The teacher provided an answer that aligned with the interpretations of the day’s pacifist’s ideals. The child enjoyed that interpretation. He wanted peace. He wanted peace throughout the world, especially on the playground. He wanted to play the role of messenger for this interpretation to spread the word, but he knew his bullies. He knew that they were irrationally prone to violence in ways that a peacenik, like his teacher, either couldn’t or wouldn’t understand. He knew, as later crystallized in the movie The Dark Knight, “Some men just want to see things burn.” Asking bullies for peace, in such a manner, was simply unrealistic in the child’s world.

The young child didn’t call his teacher out. He assumed his teacher knew more than he did, and he also didn’t want to be disrespectful. He was just frustrated that he didn’t think he could apply this answer to his situation. He thought she was smarter than him, and if she were in a similar situation, she would find a way to make it apply, but he couldn’t. He thought he wasn’t strong enough or confident enough. He also knew that providing her further detail of the situation, and the urgency he had for greater meaning, would result in a “If that continues, you come talk to me,” reply from the teacher. He didn’t want to hear that, because he knew that that would only result in more abuse at the hands of the bully, and scorn, and a possible ruination of his reputation.

To add to his frustration, the child would see his teacher’s interpretation of the quote work on TV, and in the movies. He would read it in fairy tales and other books, but he knew that their solutions were all theoretical before he even knew what theoretical meant. Their theory was based on the idea that all kids were truly good kids, and that every bully was so reasonable they were open to reason.

The young child took his dilemma to his mother, and his mother felt sorry for him. She offered him solutions, but as every boy knew most female advice doesn’t work on the playground. She knew it too, so she asked the father for advice, and the father said: “You walk up to him and punch him in the mouth!” The mother was aghast. She said, “He’s little. That kid’s probably twice his size.” The dad then muttered something about the rules of the jungle and said, “If you want to end it, you have to end it. If you don’t want to do that, don’t ask. Stay away from the kid … I don’t know.”

Here, the young child stood at a crossroads in life. He was all alone in a defining moment, and he knew it. He favored the turn the other cheek philosophy for one reason: It would be less painful and less confrontational. Plus, in some ways, it appealed to the manner in which he thought the world should work. The world should be one that rejected violence. Violence never solved anything. That’s what they said on TV, in movies, and in all the fairy tales he had read throughout his life. Jesus said something along those lines, and so did Gandhi, but they didn’t say it where it mattered most in his world, and on the playground, in the jungle, as his dad put it.

This kid tried everything at one point. He tried reasoning with the bully. He tried trading comments. He used every piece of advice he could gather, and at some point, it proved pointless.

In the midst of these exchanges, the kid proved to be quick on his feet, intellectually, and he got the better of the bully. It was a shining moment for the boy, and he was proud, probably too proud. He wore his pride well, and contrary to the advice the kid sought, this infuriated the bully.

His bully finally punched him, and it didn’t hurt as bad as the kid thought it would. The kid didn’t think at all, as a matter of fact, he struck back. Prior to this incident, he dreamed that when he finally struck the bully, it would be the haymaker heard throughout his world. It wasn’t. He wasn’t schooled in the art of fighting. He had never been in a fight before. His punch was ugly, sloppy, and ineffective.

He heard the idea that most bullies don’t want to fight, they just want to bully, and the minute you stand up to them they’ll back down. They might even respect you more. They might pump an eyebrow at the subject of their ridicule and say, “Nice punch kid!” and walk away. That’s the way it worked in the ABC After School Specials, but that wasn’t the way it worked in his reality.

The young child was called upon to engage in a protracted tussle that extended far beyond the single, exclamatory punch. It turned out to be this kid’s personal Karate Kid/Tom Cruise moment, except for the fact that he lost the fight. The bully, the kid knew, had two older brothers who loved to fight. They punched him all the time. The bully probably fought his brothers every day, and in the course of those daily bouts he developed a love of fighting.

After his humiliating defeat, however, a funny thing happened. Even though the bully thoroughly enjoyed torturing the kid every day, and he obviously enjoyed beating on him in the bathroom that day would prove to be the last time the bully ever picked on him. The bully never said anything about the matter, and he never said anything regarding a new found respect for the kid. He just chose another antelope limping at the back of the pack.

The kid expected some kind of renewed, progressive torture that centered around a comment such as, “How’s your face kid?” He expected some comments about the cuts on his face, the bruises, and a recount of that day’s activities. It came from all other quarters, but the bully did not join them. The abuse just ended without comment or further incidents.

Did the kid learn that turn the other cheek was wrong, no, but he did learn one important lesson, you have to teach people how to treat you.

The moment the kid shared with his bully might have been his Karate Kid/Tom Cruise moment, but it was not a Karate Kid/Tom Cruise movie. As if by baton, others took the bully’s lead, and the kid learned other rules of the jungle: confrontation is a constant, confrontation is relative, and confrontation is ever-changing. The kid had this notion that that one punch would be the punch heard ’round his world. He thought every other kid would hear of his exploits and realize you don’t mess around with him. He had this notion that once he faced down this, his greatest confrontation, he would be forever capable of handling future confrontations. It wasn’t true of course. Bolstered with confidence, he would face down some confrontations, but he would walk away from others. He would learn to regret those latter moments, for none of these confrontations ever ended until he dealt with them properly. All of the lessons learned from successes, and failures, would eventually culminate into an adult who could handle confrontations, but in his particular case, he never gained much by turning the other cheek

The crucial point is that this child’s actions, and the lessons learned, are not a direct refutation of Jesus of Nazareth’s quote, but the interpretations and paraphrasing those teachers and intellectuals have spread in the centuries that followed. Another interpretation of this quote, that would’ve been quite helpful to this young man, is the following:

“But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.” – Matthew 5:38-42

“At the time of Jesus’ teachings, striking someone deemed to be of a lower class with the back of the hand was used to assert authority and dominance. If the persecuted person “turned the other cheek,” the discipliner was faced with a dilemma. The left hand was used for unclean purposes, so a back-hand strike on the opposite cheek would not be performed. The other alternative would be a slap with the open hand as a challenge or to punch the person, but this was seen as a statement of equality. Thus, they argue, by turning the other cheek the persecuted was in effect demanding equality.”{1}

{1}http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071209121037AARdG0I

Psychological Swearing and other maladies of the human condition

July 16, 2012October 15, 2013 RilalyLeave a comment

1) Swearing. I used to wonder what it would be like to swear like an adult when I was younger. Their ferocity fascinated me. Their anger! had such punctuation. Their sense of regret and sadness were palpable. Everyone took them so seriously, and I was seen as a little kid. I couldn’t get my emotions across. It was a source of great frustration for me. I saw adults in movies sweep everything off their desk to convey ultimate frustration, and I saw them stare into a mirror for thirty seconds before punching it, but in my inner circle of adults it was swearing that caused one adult to take another adult seriously when they were trying to convey emotion. Swearing had great punctuation. I knew I could punch people to get them to understand I was mad at them, but that usually prompted them to punch me back, and I didn’t care for getting punched when I could avoid it. I knew I could cry to convey my sadness, but I’m a boy, and boys don’t cry. Boys used different swear words, boy swear words, to convey sadness. I knew I could raise my voice to convey excitement, and I did when I said something was great! but most people didn’t latch onto that excitement and try what I was telling them to try. I realized that if anyone was going to take me seriously, I was going to have to start cussing. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to start cussing, it was that I was bad at it. I didn’t have the timing aspect of it down, and my inflection was horrible.

I learned timing first. I learned that there were occasions when group think purveyors considered it mandatory and acceptable to swear, but there were also times when restraint was necessary. Cussing too much drained the power of the words, and it made one look like they were trying too hard. Restraint was the key, but even using the words sparingly didn’t help me comprehensively. I still lacked inflection. I sounded awkward. I learned timing, and I learned how to place provocative words before and after sentiments to get people shocked, but due to my inflections few people took me seriously long term. The inflections came last, but they finally came, and I entered into that adult world of conveyance. I was shocking and provocative, and people began to take me seriously emotionally, and I found that pleasing. If I had a rough day, or someone was giving me the business, I could throw out a swear word, and everyone would back up and raise their eyebrows. They finally knew that I was someone to take seriously. What a glorious day that was! Everyone knew I was a person who used swear words adeptly! I was accepted into the club! To maintain membership, I swore all the time. I swore when I was sad, I swore when I was happy, and of course when I was mad and fed up. I was conveying emotion with a degree of ferocity that could be felt. A funny thing happened to me at one point in my swearing career, I began overusing the words. I drained them of their emotional impact through overuse, and I ended up right back at square one. I was unable to convey emotion in a proper manner, because I was swearing too much, using too many of the designed shortcuts, and no one was taking me seriously anymore. When I wanted to convey emotion at times when group think purveyors considered it inappropriate and unacceptable to swear I couldn’t think of any appropriate and acceptable words to use. It was then that I came to the conclusion that most adults have as much trouble conveying emotion as kids do. They just use swear words to camouflage that struggle.

2) Girl Crazy. “The charms of the passing woman are generally in direct proportion to the swiftness of her passing. –Marcel Proust.

When I was young, and I was very very young, I had this notion that every girl was attracted to me. All I had to do was catch their eye and hold it, and they would be mine on a temporary basis. It didn’t matter how gorgeous they were, I could captivate them with one powerful stare. When I got older, I had this notion that no girl was attracted to me. Now that I’ve met that person that I wanted to meet my whole life, I no longer care who is attracted to me, and I can look back on this cognitive dissonance with some perspective. Women like men that are attracted to them. They like to be wanted, even if they never cash in on the desire to be wanted, they like to be liked. So, when I had the notion that a woman was attracted to me, I was actually attracting them with the notion that I was attracted to them.

3) Assigning Characteristics to Animals. Movies, both cartoon and otherwise, depict a dog listening to a conversation and reacting in a manner that suggest they understand more than key words and tones. Some of us think this is cute and funny. Some of us think they truly understand. The cartoonish dogs hide their head when their owner says something stupid, and we laugh. They scurry from the room when the bad guy suggests that they would make for an excellent dinner. We laugh. It sinks in with repetitive messaging. Why wouldn’t Rover understand what we’re saying? We underestimate animals all the time. Look at what science is uncovering every day about the intelligence of these animals, why would it be so impossible to believe that they can understand us? It’s not impossible to think that they understand us to a degree, but degrees are the key. Dogs understand key words, and they understand tone. Those who believe they understand more than that are trying too hard to understand their pets. They’re trying to bond with their pets, and they believe their pets understand more than they actually do to bond with them, so they assign a degree of intelligence to these canines to have a better relationship with them. It is the same mind set we bring to trying to understand infants and small children. This is more credible, of course, as small children do have a greater capacity to understand language, but they do not understand high-minded, philosophical concepts such as morality. Some psychologists have stated that young minds don’t have a complete grasp of the ramifications of their actions until they’re about eighteen years old, but we’ve told them and told them, and they still don’t grasp it. This is due to the fact that their brains are not complex enough to understand these concepts. As hard as it is for some of us to grasp the complex concept that animals and children don’t understand complex concepts, it actually says more about us that we think that they do than it does whether they do or not. The question I have is am I onto something here, or do entertainment honchos know that we simply regard this all as entertainment and nothing more?

4) Misunderstood. “Everything great in the world comes from Neurotics. They alone have founded our religion and composed our masterpieces.” –Marcel Proust

I feel that I’m not understood, and I don’t understand that. I speak so clearly that a monkey should be able to understand me, but the humans around me listen to me with their own agenda so often that they do not take the time to understand mine. Or am I a blowhard that is so ignorant of the various agendas around me that if I took a little time to understand them, they would take the time to understand me?

5) The Dark Days. “Happiness is beneficial for the body but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind.” –Marcel Proust

There are dark days that overwhelm me. Nothing I think, or write, can overshadow these days. These are the ‘all hope is lost’ days when I am so depressed about what is going on in the world philosophically, that I can think of nothing that will supersede it. These are the days when I realize that the world holds views so different than mine that it feels pointless to continue pounding my keyboard. No one is listening. No one is watching. No one is reading. No one knows what’s going on. They all think in terms of their insular world, and they can’t see the greater whole. I look back on all the days I spent screaming from rooftops, and I realize I may have just as well have been shouting into a well. It all seems so pointless on these days that I can think of nothing funny, interesting, or enlightening to say or write. I just want to sit and sulk over the proceedings and realize that I have as little power as anyone else does to affect change. All hope is lost. It’s pointless. I don’t think I’m as important as everyone else thinks they are, so I end up cloistered by my own opinion and therefore invalid in the grand scheme of things.

6) Bring the Magic. “Every reader finds himself. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself.” –Marcel Proust.

Is it possible for a painting to affect our feelings of relevance? What about music, have you ever listened to a song and felt alone? Have you ever been scared by a series of words in a book? It’s the only form of magic I believe in. Some of the times, we bring the magic to a piece, some of the times the piece brings magic to us, and some of the times we invent magic that isn’t otherwise there.

I sat in a theater once, one among many, and I horrified myself. The setting of the movie was one I knew, the characters were familiar to me, and I knew the plot from my own imagination. Goosebumps riddled my skin, my eyes were popped wide, and I wanted this movie to end well. This is unusual for me, because I normally loathe happy endings. I see them as unrealistic, cliché, and anti-climactic. When I’m truly horrified, however, I want peace in the valley.

I have a friend who never brings the magic. The onus is on the artist to bring him enjoyment. He doesn’t understand magic.

There have also been magicians that stole my magic. These artists insist on telling me that my artistic interpretation was nowhere near what they had in mind. How dare they steal my magic? These magicians have reached a place in their career where they are so accustomed to people enjoying their work that they take it for granted, and they want to define it for us, so that their work properly represents their worldview. They don’t belong in a world of magic.

It is possible, however, to bring too much magic. Yoko Ono created a work (that’s all I will call it) that was done on a large, white canvas. It was what she called a ceiling painting. The canvas was glaringly white and glaringly blank, except for one little word “Yes” painted up in the corner. The canvas was so large, and the word “Yes” so small that the observer needed a ladder to get to it, and a magnifying glass to see it. John Lennon later claimed this was one of the reasons he fell in love with Yoko Ono. He claimed that after seeing the piece, he had to know the author of the piece, and he had to meet her to see if she followed his ethic in life. He wanted to find that one “Yes” person in a glaringly blank world of no.

If you don’t “get” a work of art like this, there’s something wrong with you. You’re in the world of no, and you’re close-minded to the world of yes. You’re not smart enough, artistic enough, or hip enough to interpret the insular world of yes. If you look at this piece as a huge waste of canvas, that’s on you brotha. You don’t understand the psychological power or the sociological ramification of the grand minimalist approach in such a statement. Most of us know that art is a term that can be loosely applied to a number of works, but we all have limits. We all want artists to perform individual interpretations of the world, but we also think that there should be some sweat involved. Writing a word on a canvas in this manner could be called juvenile, posh and elitist, and something an insecure, high-minded, high-browed college art student would do to complete an assignment by the deadline. A really devious college student could then add in all the interpretations later, and slip his buddy a high five when the teacher fell for it. For this to be considered a seminal work by a seminal artist, on the other hand defies credulity, but as they say beauty, like art, is in the eyes of the beholder.

“It was beautiful,” Lennon said of the work. He got it. You didn’t, and we all know a number of people who get a lot of mileage out of that mindset. His interpretation was egotistical and insular. It could be said that that is what artistic interpretation is, but some of the times we bring too much magic to our interpretation. Some of the times we bring more than the pieces actually contain.

7) God and Philosophy. I believe in God, and I am sympathetic to those who want to worship Him in a relative manner, but God should have little place in philosophy. Philosophy is the study of the human mind. Philosophers take their observations, and knowledge, of man and spread it out to the masses. They help us understand who we are and why we do the things we do, and in their interpretations of man are many answers to the problems we face if we understand how the human mind works a little better. To say that we should turn to God for all that ails us is, to my mind, a violation of the “God helps those who help themselves” principle. A philosopher should be forced, in his study of general and fundamental problems, to locate an answer that is entirely secular. Everyone has a relative understanding of God, and I understand their need to seek his guidance in matters great and small, but to my mind God placed us on this Earth to fend for ourselves, and our greatest philosophical minds shouldn’t rely on God to provide the answers to human frailty any more than we should.

8) Bullying and inner-strength. “We don’t receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.” –Marcel Proust.

Have you ever met a guy who was never bullied? They’re out there, and they’re usually soft. They have no precedent in their lives. When someone lays into them, they can’t look back at the high school bully and say this particular person laying into them now is not as bad as that bully. They can’t recall a day when they had to fight their way out of a particular corner. They have no mechanism with which to continue the fight of their lives for the rest of their lives. They never had to face the reality that they’re alone in a fight, and they never had to deal with the fact that if they didn’t do something the endless abuse would continue. Your parents can advise you, and in some ill-advised circumstances they can step in and assist you in this fight. Most friends will abandon you on these occasions. They may put forth a “Leave the guy alone,” but that usually leads to you having a weaker perception of yourself and increased bullying. Most friends won’t want to implicated with the names you’re being called, or the degradation that you’re suffering. They’ll usually take their seat with the rest of the spectators and enjoy the show. It’s not that they’re evil or negligent in their duties as a friend. It’s just that they’re insecure individuals who don’t want any part of your pain. They probably have enough of their own to deal with, and this is especially the case in high school where insecurities are rampant. When you’re bullied, and I’m not talking about the occasional pot shots that are delivered on a daily basis, but really bullied to the point where you don’t want to go to school the next day, you’re on your own. You’re on an island with nothing but your own devices. As Proust says, no one can truly spare you the humiliation of these fights, but you will be wiser, stronger, and mightier for having successfully fought them alone.

9) Argument for pot legalization. If you bring up the fiscal problems experienced in California and elsewhere, you’re sure to hear a myriad of creative solutions. One of the most popular out there right now is the legalization of marijuana. “If we legalized it, and taxed it, the revenue we receive could balance a budget.” It is possible. I’m not saying it’s not, but my question is how long would it take to accomplish this goal? How many balanced budgets would be achieved before the representatives began reallocating that money? All of these creative measures are band aids to the true problem: spending. It’s our fault. We voted these guys in. They appealed to us by promising record levels of spending, and we continue to require that they spend more. Bottom line: All of these creative measures may bring more revenue to the government, but if these government representatives received increased revenue, they would simply spend more. There seems to be no end in sight to this cycle for the moment. We need a catastrophe. Legislators don’t usually change their ways without a catastropohe that touches the lives of enough voters to make a difference in how its broadcast to the world. Even then, they usually find their favorite band aid that allows them to keep doing what they want to do. We’re in whatever situation we’re in, because it favors those who put us there.

10) Purchasing an identity. We have too much time on our hands. We have too much disposable income. We have no disasters to worry about. We are so bored. We need a trinket that is backed by a successful marketing campaign to complete us. It’s a nothing nothing, but it’s something we need. We need something to have, but what do we have to have? We don’t know. We’re told in some creative manner that affects what we think of our completion what we have to have, and we fall for it, because we’re impulsive. We’re bored. We’re insecure. We’re searching for something to complete us. This one product could make life so much easier. We could be one of the crowd and better than the Johnstons, but at least we’d have something to talking about. We like to talk about the products we purchase and how our products are better than yours. It shows we know a little something something about the nothing nothing products we purchase. We’re finally complete, until the product runs its course and loses all tangible value to us, and it is a staple in the corner of our storage closet with all the other products that used to do something for us, until they grow so abundant that we need to buy a storage unit to house all of the products that used to complete us. We can’t throw those products away, because we may fall back a stage if we do.

11) Our interest in the joneses. We’re disinterested in most people. We claim to be interested in them. We detail for others who know them what we know. Then when we have that narrative validated, we move on. A friend of mine, we’ll call her Renee, wants to keep up on a girl we’ll call Shelly. Renee details all that she knows of Shelley’s life. Then she says: “Is that where she’s at right now at this point in her life?” Another responds that that is correct. The thing is if Shelley was at the reunion that just ended, Renee would have virtually no interest in speaking with Shelley. We all have these little gatherings to help us keep up on each other’s lives, but we’re all usually interested only in those things that have occurred with us and those in our inner circle. We constantly evaluate those of us around us to determine if there is something interesting in their lives, and we usually determine that there isn’t. We usually live most of our lives in varying degrees of disinterest to the lives around us.

Groundhogs, Led Zeppelin, and Our Existential Existence

March 11, 2012November 16, 2020 RilalyLeave a comment

We love to define ourselves through artistic venues. We believe that listing off our current musical preferences provide a concise definition of who we are, and who we aim to be. Our preferences in all art forms define us in relative ways, but music appreciation appears to be the common denominator we use to define ourselves among other fans of music. Most adults continue to listen to the hit singles and albums they enjoyed back in that insecure, confusing period of our development that occurs roughly between age 15 and 25. I don’t know if it’s a sense of nostalgia we seek, or if we’re trying to relive an era of our lives we didn’t appreciate enough at the time, but most of us find ourselves trapped in that era when others defined good music for us on the sliding scale of cool. If others helped us define all of the variables inherent in the definition of cool music, and we regard our musical preferences as a concise definition of who we are, how much control did we have in shaping the people we’ve become? We might prefer to believe that we’ve left those mercurial teenage years behind us, as they become smaller and smaller in our rear-view mirrors, but some social scholars state high school is like a line from a hit single that preceded my era, but was nonetheless as ubiquitous in it, “You can check-out anytime you like, but you can never leave.”

What this means, to some, is that it is almost impossible to reach such a level of confidence regarding our identity. It is possible to know thyself to elevated degrees as we age, but remain forever susceptible to getting this definition slapped around by the prevailing winds of cool and uncool? This spawns another question: Do we ever reach a point where this dimension of our identity is absolute and true? Those of us who reflect on our life and analyze our actions believe we learn more about ourselves as we age, but others state that even though the core tenets of our personality mature as we age, our core identity forms in the early stages of life. How often was that core identity slapped around by the prevailing winds of cool and uncool? “You listen to who? Uncool man, uncool.” This spawns another question: Do we ever reach a point when this dimension of our identity is absolute and true? We all prefer to believe we’ve made individual choices regarding the music we listen to on a regular basis, but are those preferences ours, or were they shaped by group thought, rebellion to group thought, and/or rebellion to rebellious thoughts?

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Why do research scientists study other animals to get to the root of human psychology? Is it because the nature of the reactions other animals have are more primal? Humans are often more difficult to test, particularly in groups, because we tend to project idyllic images of who we prefer to be, rather than who we really are. Animals test much better because they remain closer to the primal state, because one animal might tell us more about our psychological base than hundreds of idyllic human test subjects can.

I understand the general point about the primal state, but I don’t understand how animals can teach us about the comparative complexities of the human mind. As far as we know, animals do not have the mental capacity to sit around and contemplate greater questions of individual identity. Most concepts of this nature are too foreign and complex for them, but how simple and primal are their brains?

On nature shows, we witness groundhogs watch one of their own fall prey to a predator. We assume their desire to watch a predator eat one of their own is born of simplicity, but could it be more complex than we’ve ever imagined? Is the desire to watch similar to our complex desire to rubberneck an accident on the interstate, or is that a primal, base desire on our part?

Groundhogs screech and chatter when a predator eats one of their brethren. We assume these screams are a mechanism they use as a last ditch effort to try to save their brethren. We also assume that they are attempting to warn other groundhogs in the vicinity, but could these screeches be similar to those that we engage in during horror flicks when we scream while watching a predator slaughter one of our own in a slasher flick? Is their fascination with horror similar our own, in that they’re horrified, but they can’t look away? Do they chatter about the images they saw later, in the manner we do when walking out of a theater, and do they mourn the lives of former friends and relatives in the aftermath?

When humans die, we attempt to minimize the deceased so we can live better lives in the aftermath. “Richard was a great guy and all, but he was old,” we declare to minimize the pain and horror of his death. We might say something along the lines of, “He smoked,” or “he ran himself ragged for so long that it was bound to happen sooner rather than later.” One has to wonder if groundhogs have a similar need for detachment to help them achieve some sort of distance from the deceased, so they can deal with the complexities inherent in life and death better. Do they say, “Alfonso was great guy and all, but he was slow. He didn’t work out enough, and building and rebuilding his home was really one of the only forms of exercise he engaged in. I knew he was going to die, and to be frank, I say good riddance.”

Do groundhogs like and dislike other groundhogs based on personality traits? If this is the case, how far do they take it? Do they ostracize those who have strange growths on their head, or are they more accepting of differences than us? Do they castigate others based on work ethic, the obnoxious behavior of their pups, and would one groundhog ever exclude another from the cool kid, groundhog group based on a titty twister?

I used to give titty twisters all the time. If you were in my contingent, and I considered you a mentally stable male, I probably gave you a titty twister. I thought it was funny, and I considered it harmless. These titty twisters had no sexual motivations as far as I was concerned, and I didn’t do it to establish dominance over a twistee. I just considered it a funny thing to do to a guy standing there, doing nothing, and acting far too normal. I thought a good twist might shake them out of an otherwise boring, normal day. It’s who I was, and who I will probably always be. I don’t force people out of the norm with physical actions in that manner anymore. I prefer more subtle measures now.

When I gave a titty twister to this one guy, however, he punched me in the chest for it. I twisted his titty. He was being too normal. He had a normal expression on his face, and he didn’t say anything for a spell. I gave him a titty twister, because I thought he needed a random shake.

His reaction might have left me doubled over on a normal day, as I loved impulsive, obnoxious reactions, but his reaction carried a mean face with it. I assumed we were friends, but his mean face informed me that the punch sent a message that rejected everything I valued, and that our friendship was officially irretrievable. I’m sure groundhogs reject other groundhogs’ over over-the-top attempts at humor, but do they hold grudges? This guy told people he hated me after that, and he added an insulting characterization of my manhood.

Does a groundhog ever do anything to shake up the norm, or is their existence so primal that they’re simply happy to be alive for one more day? Does that attribute say more or less about human beings? Do we take life for granted to such a degree that we’re no longer happy just to be alive? Is this desire to shake our lives out of the norm a complex desire, or is it a simplistic, biological need to keep our brains firing at a rapid pace?

If a groundhog decided to perform an act of procreation in a different position, for example, would we document that decision as simple or complex? If the groundhog displayed a sense of listlessness prior to trying the new position, how would we document his actions? If the groundhog performed his act on other groundhogs when his selected mate wasn’t around, would we view the adulterous act as complex or simplistic? If we could see inside the groundhog’s brain and witness a dream of an army of aliens shackling him to a wall, while suckling on his reproductive organ for the semen nutrient they needed to survive, would we consider this a complex need for fantasy or a simplistic, base desire?

That former friend of mine, whom I titty twisted into an enemy was a heavy metal dude, and I was a heavy metal dude. I mistakenly assumed that commonality would serve as the glue to our lifelong bond.

Most of the people I grew up around were heavy metal dudes. We called all like-minded souls, hessians. I so badly wanted to be a hessian that I was willing to do just about anything to make it happen, but I had a tough time gaining entrance into their world. I didn’t like Rush or Iron Maiden, but I did like KISS. They regretted to inform me that my application to into the world of hessianism would require a rejection notification at this time, for KISS was too popular and mainstream. Feel free to reapply, they said, when your preferences evolve to more of an outlier group. If I stubbornly resisted Rush or Iron Maiden, they said, then I should feel free to explore the worlds of Slayer or Megadeth. “Sorry,” I said. I wanted to be a hessian, but I didn’t care for those musicians. Their album cover art was cooler than cool, with cool monsters and satanic imagery, but their music was beyond me. I wore the mandatory denim jacket and donned the requisite mullet, but for some reason I was on the outside looking in for most of my young life. It may have had something to do with the fact that I didn’t say the “Dude” but I didn’t give “a durn about nothing”, and I found authority figures laughable. I thought that should be enough.

One thing I learned in the beginning of my public square humiliation was that my practice of calling my grandma “My Nana” would be out, if I wanted to be a hessian. I didn’t have to hate her or anything she stood for, as that was a trait reserved for punkers, but I didn’t have to like her so much either. A hessian was to remain somewhat unimpressed by his grandmother’s entrance into a room. He might consider shaking her hand as an alternative to hugging her, and a “Hello ma’am” is a viable alternative to running across a room screaming, “Nana!” When the greeting reaches a conclusion, the hessian is then to go on about his business, as if he’s not concerned with her existence. Ignoring such staples could consign the music aficionado to the perception shared by Genesis and the B-52s listeners.

Genesis lovers valued simplicity over the adrenaline rush we found in the force of heavy metal, so we hated them, and hating things gained us a lot more mileage than any expression of love, adoration, or a fondness for anything or anyone. Hatred gave a hessian character and complexity. To the question, “Do you enjoy the music of Phil Collins?” one must answer, “No. I think he’s feminine.” Loving something subjects one to scorn and ridicule, and it gives a hessian the license to hate another. What you love is irrelevant be it KISS, Happy Days, or your Nana. Loving something is a weakness to poke and prod, until the recipient of such scorn is too embarrassed to love anything, unless it’s Metallica. One can say, “I love Metallica,” and their hessian membership card will remain unblemished, but that’s the extent of love in the hessian world.

If the scorned has never heard the music of Metallica, friends will instruct them to run out to the store tomorrow and buy Ride the Lightning, Master of Puppets, or And Justice for All…” If the listener stubbornly refuses to worship these three albums, after repeated listens, they run the risk of having a ‘poser’ label cast upon them. That person may as well take the denim jacket off, cut their mullet, and start calling their grandma “My Nana” again, because they’ll never gain entrance into the hallowed halls of the hessian.

Hessians can smile and laugh, but they need to reserve those reactions for moments of scorn and ridicule. A hessian can like KISS and Van Halen, but as I said that’s not enough. They cannot –I repeat cannot– like Poison, Cinderella, or Faster Pussycat. Doing so, will open up the floodgates for scorn and ridicule, granting all card-carrying hessians in attendance the smile and laugh allowance. I assume that social media forums have made life easier for teens in America by comparison, for a person can now block those who question their musical preferences.

This complex world of identity through music became a lot easier for me when I became a Zeppelin guy though. Prior to experiencing the sensorial, shocking world of Led Zeppelin, I assumed they could be lumped in with The Doobie Brothers, Foghat, and all the other relatively nondescript bands of seventies music. When I discovered how faulty that assumption was, I became a Zeppelin guy.

Most of the fellas I knew wanted to befriend Zeppelin guys. They wanted to talk with us, be like us, and accept us into their community. I could hang out with Zeppelin guys. We could talk for hours about the band’s iconography and folklore. I could even proselytize others into the Zeppelin world if I wanted another friend. I could just play the Led Zeppelin albums II and Zoso, and create a friend, complete with all the shared associations and memories that went along with it. After becoming a Zeppelin guy and creating more Zeppelin guys, I decided to progress from being just a Zoso and Zeppelin II guy to a Physical Graffiti and Zeppelin III guy. I learned every lyric and every beat on those two Zeppelin albums, and to some Zeppelin guys I progressed from being a Zeppelin guy to the Zeppelin guy. For loving those two albums as much as I did, other Zeppelin guys assigned complicated and mysterious Zeppelin guy characteristics to me.

“Yeah, II and Zoso are great,” I said to beginners, “but wait till you start listening to III and Fizzy Graph,” (Fizzy Graph was the nickname the Zeppelin guys gave to Physical Graffiti.) “I’ll lend them to you when you’re ready.”

It was a glorious world to enter into, a world of opportunity. In this world, Zeppelin girls existed, and one could taste forbidden fruits and still be one of the fellas. Hessians, punkers, and even some Genesis guys could stand side by side, in mutual admiration. This society involved musicians and music aficionados of all stripes. We could talk, laugh, and listen to the greatest music ever produced, for as all Zeppelin guys know, all music stems from Led Zeppelin.

Zeppelin guys felt like rule breakers, for who broke more rules than Jimmy, Robert, JPJ, and Bonzo? Rule breakers do have rules though, albeit unspoken ones. We Zeppelin guys still had to avoid giving a durn about most things, as being a Zeppelin guy wasn’t a cloak against being ostracized. We still had to despise Beverly Hills 90210, Michael Jackson songs, and Tom Cruise movies, and the fake, superficial, and artificial matters, they espoused. We also could not permit fellow Zep guys to call their grandma “My Nana” either, especially if they aspired to the Zep guy status.

We also had to fortify our Zeppelin guy status on a continual basis, then the Zeppelin guy status if we were lucky enough to achieve it. A Zeppelin guy still had to guard himself against complacency in the Zep guy world, or we could lose our status entirely. It was all right to enjoy the music on In Through the Out Door, for example, but a true Zeppelin guy could not love it, because the music on that album relied on synthesizers too much, and John Paul Jones had far too much influence on it. It lacked the raw Page/Plant magic of the first six albums, and every fella who wanted to maintain the Zeppelin guy status had to know that.

We all know that the brain of a groundhog is less complex than that the human brain, but we also know that even the most simplistic, primal minds react to music. If a groundhog listens to the same music, however, will he, over time, develop an affinity for it? Will certain groups of groundhogs break out of the pack and develop discerning taste? Will these groups begin to develop an affinity for Zeppelin over Genesis? Will they begin to ostracize Genesis lovers just to gain some cachet within their own groups? Will groundhogs reach a point when it is no longer about the music for them but the iconography and complexities they developed in their particular group in the groundhog community for the music they chose to love? Will their love for the music strengthen over time, and if it does, will it reach a point when one can characterize that love as complex, or will we simply deem it a simplistic desire to belong to that group of groundhogs who listened to the same music other groundhogs considered cool, and will the groundhogs ever begin to see the distinction for what it is?