Consistency/Inconsistency

A word on consistency and labels: we could do better without them.

This is quite unfortunate since we live in a society of strict labeling: girl, boy, liberal, conservative, Muslim, bible-thumper, secular, middle-aged, black, white, bad student, good student, ugly, beautiful, rich, poor….what’s worse is that every one of these labels assume certain identities and expectations. By labeling, we trick our minds into thinking we know.

In a world with so much variety, variation, and outcome, our mind has no other choice but to compartmentalize. If we were unable divide, organize, and put things in their proper boxes and files, our minds would overload and burn out. But I like to think we are bright enough to further question our own labels and definitions of what we think things are and are not, and who we think people are and are not.

Ralph Waldo Emerson has a lot to say on this topic in his essay, Self Reliance, which I turn to when feeling the pressures of my own labels:

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.

Consistency (or more specifically, foolish consistency) leads to boredom and predictability, a life where decisions are made based on comfort and expectation. To live like this is to live an untrue life. I wish to live in the moment, and to make decisions based on the context and color of those moments.

We build our identities by the choices we make, the conversation we make. But nothing is ever the same, change is ever-occurring, and each one of us is dynamic, changing dramatically with each day. We become older and wiser with every moment that passes. Each day is a new opportunity, with myriad choices to choose from, and if we wish, we have the power to divert from the known, the labels, and go somewhere new.

Once we understand this, we can shift our view by accepting that we don’t truly know anything (or anyone–even our own self), and take every interaction as its first. We must honor the people around us for their dynamics; we must accept them for their process, not their static label our culture deems necessary.

Being inconsistent is not the same as being hypocritical. The difference is in the intent: inconsistency comes from the unpredictable choices one makes from living in the exact context of any present moment, hypocrisy is claiming to be one thing while secretly adhering to its opposite. Inconsistency is based on truth, hypocrisy from deceit.

So call me inconsistent, because that is how I strive to live my life: truthfully and in the moment.

EMERSON ON FOOLISH CONSISTENCY

“What I must do is all that concerns me, not what people think…You will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”

“The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them.”

“To be great is to be misunderstood.”

Elizabeth Gilbert & Crazy Creativity

Elizabeth Gilbert, author of “Eat, Pray, Love” challenges the association of creative genius and insanity. In a lot of ways I agree with her (we must see creativity springing forth from our interconnected experiences in this world–creativity inspires creativity, and so on. A creative genius do not live in a vacuum. [Exception: Emily Dickinson]). But at the same time, I think the best work I have ever done is when I am on the brink of insanity; darkness produces profound art.

I don’t think that being creative makes people crazy, I think crazy people are creative.

Everyone’s everyone.

[over radio]

Millicent Weems: Now it is waiting and nobody cares. And when you’re wait is over this room will still exist and it will continue to hold shoes and dress and boxes and maybe someday another waiting person. And maybe not. The room doesn’t care either.

Millicent Weems: What was once before you – an exciting, mysterious future – is now behind you. Lived; understood; disappointing. You realize you are not special. You have struggled into existence, and are now slipping silently out of it. This is everyone’s experience. Every single one. The specifics hardly matter. Everyone’s everyone. So you are Adele, Hazel, Claire, Olive. You are Ellen. All her meager sadnesses are yours; all her loneliness; the gray, straw-like hair; her red raw hands. It’s yours. It is time for you to understand this.
Millicent Weems: Walk.
Millicent Weems: As the people who adore you stop adoring you; as they die; as they move on; as you shed them; as you shed your beauty; your youth; as the world forgets you; as you recognize your transience; as you begin to lose your characteristics one by one; as you learn there is no-one watching you, and there never was, you think only about driving – not coming from any place; not arriving any place. Just driving, counting off time. Now you are here, at 7:43. Now you are here, at 7:44. Now you are…
Millicent Weems: Gone.

—- Charlie Kaufman, Synecdoche, New York

Fall in Love

Hush. Calm yourself. Life is flux and change. The cost of existence is high. Think of the burning and sun converting four hundred tons of hydrogen into helium every second! Think of the bill to pay for human consciousness. Stop whining. It is all on loan. Accept your life with cheerful affection. Fall in love. Fall in love outward. Fall in love with this moment, with this earth now. In that response will be the seeds of right action or right nonaction. Fall in love and see what happens.

— Standing in the Light: My Life as a Pantheist, Sharman Apt Russell

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Words on Supermarkerts by David Foster Wallace

“By way of example, let’s say it’s an average adult day, and you get up in the morning, go to your challenging, white-collar, college-graduate job, and you work hard for eight or ten hours, and at the end of the day you’re tired and somewhat stressed and all you want is to go home and have a good supper and maybe unwind for an hour, and then hit the sack early because, of course, you have to get up the next day and do it all again. But then you remember there’s no food at home. You haven’t had time to shop this week because of your challenging job, and so now after work you have to get in your car and drive to the supermarket. It’s the end of the work day and the traffic is apt to be: very bad. So getting to the store takes way longer than it should, and when you finally get there, the supermarket is very crowded, because of course it’s the time of day when all the other people with jobs also try to squeeze in some grocery shopping. And the store is hideously lit and infused with soul-killing muzak or corporate pop and it’s pretty much the last place you want to be but you can’t just get in and quickly out; you have to wander all over the huge, over-lit store’s confusing aisles to find the stuff you want and you have to maneuver your junky cart through all these other tired, hurried people with carts (et cetera, et cetera, cutting stuff out because this is a long ceremony) and eventually you get all your supper supplies, except now it turns out there aren’t enough check-out lanes open even though it’s the end-of-the-day rush. So the checkout line is incredibly long, which is stupid and infuriating. But you can’t take your frustration out on the frantic lady working the register, who is overworked at a job whose daily tedium and meaninglessness surpasses the imagination of any of us here at a prestigious college.

Mark Bittman Visits Portland

Portlanders love books. We are a town of bookies.

Portlanders love food. We are a town of foodies.

If there is anything that Portland loves more than books and food, it is a book about food. But wait! Toss in the slow-food movement, and some polemics from a New York Times author and you’ve got a delicious recipe for success!

I am disappointed to say that I was completed out-nerded by most of Portland last Thursday. I thought arriving to Powell’s ½ an hour before Mark Bittman was to speak would suffice (Remember, this guy?). But the second I stepped into The City of Books I hear over the intercom, “If you are here to see Mark Bittman, you better hurry your ass to the fourth floor because most of Portland has already taken their seats!”

I rush up the stairs, whereupon by complete surprise I run into Karen and Bob from work (everyone really is here!), and we push our way through a crowd of enthusiastic foodies. And low-and-behold there is not a free seat in sight. I lean up against the travel books bookcase with a copy of Food Matters, and read until 7:30 when he arrives to applause clad in his iconic blue striped sweater.

Bittman explains that he is an “incriminatalist.” He advocates for Americans to take an incremental approach to improving their diet and thereby their health and environmental impact. Eat 30 meals a week with meat in it? Try cutting it down to 27 meat-meals a week. Also, did you know that the #1 source of calories in the American diet, weighing in at 17%, is soda? And the #1 food group we eat from is that of the “pastry, donuts, sweets” group? Truly astonishing!

I see Bittman as embracing the middle way in terms of food philosophies. He is not a vegetarian, but practices more or less “vegan ‘till 6.” He is pushing for us to more conscious of our food choices. Home cooking has become an activity of the past, with most Americans eating out for the majority of their meals. The only way to become one with your food, to know it and therefore know what exactly is in it is to cook for yourself. But with our ever shortening leisure time, where do we find the time to cook, or to even learn how to cook?

Food in this country, and in the world, is a perplexing and difficult issue. How is it that our country is the wealthiest, fattest, yet most diet-obsessed country in the world?

Oh, and just as a side note: the meat industry sure has done a superb job at brainwashing our entire nation into making us equate “protein” with “meat” when in reality ounce for ounce spinach has 10x more protein than meat! And spinach won’t give you cancer! And don’t even get me started on the dairy industry….

Happy eatin’!

Mark Bittman’s Blog.

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Life Disintegrating

Koyaanisqatsi. The perfect word to describe life for Americans in this, the 21^st century. Koyaanisqatsi. Life in turmoil. Life unbalanced. Life disintegrating. Koyaanisqatsil; derives from the Hopi language. Koyaanisqatsi: the name of a 1982 visual-musical poetic film by Godfrey Reggio, Philip Glass, and Ron Fricke. (A prophetic warning of days to come?) A film connecting the dots between technology and the destruction of our bloodline, our life. This film, made in the dawn of the rise of glutinous American consumerism, before being green was the cool thing, peels back the layers and slows down—this world we live in, all beautiful and destructive and chaotic and horrible and completely astonishing. Chaos. Chaos.

Koyaanisqatsi: a state of life that calls for another way of living.

Is it too late?

A Good Day for PETA

Have we lost our sense of irony?

So PETA, being the shock-seeking radicals they are, released a proposal to Ben & Jerry’s asking they switch from cow’s milk to human breast milk for their ice cream products. This isn’t the first time PETA has challenged milk production by equating it to women’s breast milk: remember the “Milk Gone Wild” commericals? This request of theirs is obviously so ridiculous, that you would think the media would catch on. But they didn’t, and they fell right into PETA’s clever publicity stunt.

PETA is ideologically positioned in believing that animals are at equal status to humans. They believe animals should not be eaten, used for products, experimented on, or used for entertainment (this includes zoos and pet-owning). They are pretty radical, and have been associated with the Animal Liberation Front, a vigilante group who has been known to use violence and property destruction to spread their pro-animal message.

In protests and demonstrations PETA often uses shock-value and macabre images; this use of the tasteless and obscene may do more damage than good (are they simply trying to shock people into becoming vegans, or do they really wish for the peaceful liberation of animals?). Past campaigns have included protestors raiding high-fashion store fronts while wearing furs spattered with “blood”, and billboards juxtaposing images of prisoners in Holocaust camps to cows in slaughter houses.

Anyone who knows anything about the way PETA functions as an activist group would be able to figure out that their “request” to Ben & Jerry’s is a simple satirical ploy to fool the typical American. Their absurd idea is so strange that it of course made the headlines, spurring bloggers to talk about how they “respect PETA, but this is just going too far!” Well, my dear blogger–that is exactly the point!

PETA wants you to equate milk-giving-cows to milk-giving-mothers, because in their mind these two species are equal and both deserve happiness. Their hope is that this reasoning will lead to the question: if cows suffer intensely due to the overproduction of milk, what would happen if we did this to human mothers?

Good one PETA. I can’t say, like many of the bloggers out there, that I respect PETA. I believe many of their tactics to be too extreme, and not founded on education or tolerance (not to mention that they exploit and degrade women in their campaigns). I believe they give animal rights activism a bad name. And unfortunetly because they are the most well known animal rights activist group (and the most extreme), any who fight for animal rights is immediately shunned by association. However, I must say that their marketing is smart, and in this case, witty, sardonic and clever beyond belief. So kudos to PETA today for showcasing the shallowness of our media: joke’s on you!