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Conversation Faux Pas #1: Talking about The Wars

One thing I've always had a problem with is the conversation faux pas of discussing horribly screwed up things about the world with a high level of emotion in social situations.

Not all the time. But, sometimes.

One place I particularly remember this not going over well was the Grateful Dead. When everyone is stoned on pot. However, I did meet a very brilliant African dude who was getting a Ph.D. in sociology. And we had a good conversation about the Dead and about what function it might serve in society. He said it was 'an escape valve.' 

So I am not sure if it is an American thing or what. We're allowed to talk about immediate current events. But one thing people really don't like to talk about is the wars. We're in two wars. It's like that Steve Martin routine. When you are on trial for not paying your taxes, you just say 'I forgot.' 

That is what the war is like, now.

This has to be new. I do remember, in Peru, people did not like to talk about the ongoing war against the (domestic) terrorists The Shining Path (and a few other, more obscure, groups). They were afraid all the time and it just wasn't a good topic to bring up. For one thing, you never really knew for sure who was in the Shining Path. Many people were involved and everyone kept their involvement secret. And they often randomly attacked people they imagined to be their enemies. So best to keep quiet.

But we don't have anything like that going on now, here. So I suppose people simply don't want to be reminded of the wars. They are unpleasant to think about. And there is no need, perhaps? There is nothing we can do about the wars. We can't seem to stop the wars. We vote for a president who says he will stop one of the wars. And then he does not stop that war. 

And he also gets us embroiled much more in the other war--the war in Afghanistan. 

We aren't genuinely involved in the wars. And that's a good thing. Who wants to be involved in wars? Thank goodness we are not involved. I don't feel bad for not being involved. Do you? 

I think this is extremely good evidence that Americans are extremely detached from their own government. Our government is having two wars and it feels as if they are wars of another country. 

There are two things that have always made it difficult for me to completely avoid ever talking about the wars--even if I primarily talk about it with my husband. The first thing is just, wars bother me a lot. The people getting killed. It's awful to think about. I don't know why this is. I even remember crying over the Faulkland Island's war that happened when I was in grade school. This makes me laugh now. 

The second thing is the sheer stupidity of the two wars we are in. The insane waste, the uselessness and destruction for something completely unnecessary. It's the most infuriating thing I've ever seen in my entire life. It truly drives me batshit crazy to think about how avoidable and pointless these wars are.

That we are in much deeper in Afghanistan than we were is very depressing to me since I voted for Obama and I thought he was smarter than that. 

I do think this is the ultimate reason people don't want to talk about these particular wars: This pointless evil mayhem boggles the mind and most of us honestly have absolutely no clue whatsover about what we could do at this point to stop these wars. But there are also people who are in favor of the wars. Which I cannot understand.

These people are in the minority, particularly over Iraq. So that too is odd--to have these wars that so few people genuinely want to fight. 

Sadly, This Is The End of Cult Month

I was trying to figure out the specifics of what cult leaders do. But someone already did it:

I guess there is much more to it than I thought! I thought it was simply family structure plus control plus emotional manipulation and removing the confusion of freedom and unanswered questions combined with the promise of personal perfection.  But you can also make people subservient by physical activity and a deprivation diet. It is like ordinary social interaction--particularly during adolescence--freakishly amplified. What we won't do to fit into our peer group.

There are still things I wonder about.

(1) There can't be a cult leader manual. Can there? Maybe there is simply a script that some manipulative people intuitively know.

(2) How much is this like other things? It's terrible because I almost want to be in a cult--just for a month or two--to see how it works and what it's like. Oh, and you know that kind of thing would be good for my memoirs.

What Explains The Bacon Effect?

Somewhere I was trying to articulate what I'm now calling 'The Bacon Effect.'

This is the attractiveness of something that people are told is bad for them and that they should not do.

The bacon effect seems to have these components

(1) Something is bad for the individual who consumes it or for other people or animals.

(2) There is some moral wrongness involved in this badness and someone, somewhere criticizes this badness. E.g., bacon is meat and meat is known to be a morally sketchy thing in some people's eyes. But I think it is primarily the unhealthiness of bacon that leads to the bacon effect. People don't really think much about how their bacon comes from a pig and that pigs are smart and create ecological nightmarish pools of pig shit and massive quantities of methane gas, which is the most serious of all the greenhouse gases in terms of warming the planet.

They just know they aren't supposed to eat fat. And bacon is pretty much all fat.

(3) Some people begin to embrace their love of this thing and regard this love of it as a badge of honor.

Among the things most likely to cause the bacon effect are: Bacon and unhealthy foods like bacon, shopping, consumerism and irresponsible spending, SUVs and other gas guzzlers and pretty much anything people moralize about that is also interwoven into our lives and that we've learned to enjoy.

There are other things about the bacon effect. For example, there's nothing genuinely rebellious about one's love for bacon or SUVs or shopping. Instead, it's really just part and parcel of some stuff that you are told to love and that is branded and sold to you. It has to be a capitalist product to really be subject to the bacon effect.

Perhaps not. The burdens of motherhood are also subject to the bacon effect. Mothers trumpet their violation of the code of conduct and gleefully discuss their transgressions at times. I gave my kid a donut! I let her sit in front of the TV for hours and hours! And so on.

I suppose the effect is partly just a result of people not liking to be told what to do and hating moral arguments telling them they can't have what they want without doing something wrong.

Morality seems oppressive. But I think this is mostly because people doubt their ability to live by the standards, and the nebulous nature of the standards. People don't trumpet their pleasure in stealing other people's stuff. We know we shouldn't steal and we know how not to steal.

Giving in to the bacon effect is an incredible decadence. Not so much: A piece of bacon is decadent. But just the idea that the person who is genuine worried about not destroying the planet or animal suffering or the desperation of someone's poverty is just a pill who needs to be put in their place. And the reason is that their stance might limit some small pleasure of yours. 

It really is a kind of 'burn dollar bills while people around you starve' kind of stance. Drink the champagne in your wine cellar before the mongrel hordes invade with their starving children. A thumbing one's nose in the face of dreary morality and the sanctimony of others.

It's better--or more socially acceptable--to indulge oneself than to comment on people's indulgence that causes harm to others or grossly ignores harm. In some contexts, anyway. In some places, driving your hummer and just being a consuming nightmare is a kind of charming statement of individuality.

In that sense, it is simply a protective mechanism. Don't tell me not to chop down the trees. I'll show you what a badass I am, what a manly man and chop the fuck out of this forest until there is nothing but ashes and stumps.

It is the response of a child and oh, so very, very American. I've done it myself. I've reveled in the air conditioning and the general decadence, all the while knowing our days are kind of numbered as a result of all this reveling.

(We sit and feel guilty for it, which is absurd. The whole point of it is to make money for someone else. We barely benefit. Almost all of us are entirely on the tail end. And we are also obeying, in some sense, the advertiser, who puts the bacon effect to great use in manipulating us to buy what it is the advertiser wants us to buy.)

Maybe it's a fatalistic helplessness as well. Because morality's thrown in our faces and we wearily think there's almost nothing we can do. Which is not true. But what we can do is teeny tiny in the face of all the bacon eating.

The problem for me is that indulgence, when it's connected to the destructive lifestyle forced upon us, creates anxiety. And the only relief I find are in things like never buying cleaning supplies but washing all my counters with vinegar. Re-using water and other strategems. I drive the hell everywhere. I'm not talking up my own virtue. I'm just pointing out that the bacon effect has limits. Although you will reach out to people to confirm the OK-ness of your bacon-eating, at the heart is that quiver of uneasiness.

The Cult of Gadget Hackwrench

Check out the photos in National Geographic: Inside a Cult

I'm telling you: For cult-leader wear, white is de rigeur. Nothing else works.

Cults make me curious but I suppose they shouldn't. First, you want to know why people are so eager to give up their freedom and then you want to know how people get the idea of organizing people in such an odd way.

And who got the idea? Or is it simply a natural thing for people to collect around a figure or idea, create rituals and a way of life with something sacred at the center.

It's a blurry line between religions and cults--and perhaps both repeat family structures in some way and that's why they are so compelling.

But it's not just that. It's not only giving over your freedom to some leader. There is also the promise of (1) knowledge and (2) control.

All cults come along with theories of the world. Religions too purport to explain the randomness of the world, the universe's sheer indifference to us, the fickle finger of fate and so on. And, as in Hinduism, the explanation can be very similar to science in that it isn't an agent or person directing all the bad shit going down. The bad shit is just a karmic response to some bad shit that someone did. A bunch of cyclical shit.

There are rules. Sometimes the rules are simple. In the Iglesia Maradoniana, the cult formed around the Argentine soccer player, Diego Maradona, the rules are things like:   "Love football over all things"

Simple! They even thought of a rule that says you have to obey all their rules. Which is wise, if a bit recursive.

I discussed religion in depth with a Hindu priest as part of a class I was teaching. He was, as far as I could tell, a fundmantalist. And his rap was amazingly similar to the rap of Christian preachers in that it took our human confusion and discontent and attempted to dissolve it in a warm fizz of comforting explanation. The universe is a reasonable place where all the utterly horrific things that happen are simply punishment for some prior karmic debt we don't remember.

But in addition to preventing us from freaking out at how completely bizarre and unpredictable actual reality might be, if viewed from a detached perspective, a good cult narrative will give someone something to do and sometimes even tell them how to live their lives at virtually any second. Even down to how many times to chew your food.

Thus, you have structure, explanation, an explanation for senselessness, etc. Then, you often have the comforting idea that you as an individual are significant to the universe and in the universe. Not as significant as the cult leader, by a long shot. But you do matter.

Now this is true of course...You do matter. Kind of. We all do. And we also kind of don't.

Then there is also the familial tie and the sense of belonging that cults give us. People to turn to.

But I am now remembering how I liked to start clubs when I was a kid. Cult-like clubs. So maybe I get it a bit more than I should. One of these cults--started in the 4th grade--was about the Greek gods. I got another kid to believe that we were descended from them and arranged a series of religious rituals worshiping. She was might pissed when she realized I kind of made it up. But my grip on reality has never been that strong.

I remember conducting elaborate funeral services for my friend's hamster, 'Hillary'...I was a budding cult leader. At least until 9th grade.

Here's a list of the 8 craziest cults. The Raelians are #1!

I've been trying to keep it light here. And it's hard to keep it light when writing about cults because the most fascinating cults are also the scary ones, like Jim Jones.

Supposedly there is a cult of the Disney mouse Gadget Hackwrench (picture above). But I'm not sure I believe it.