Get Off The Fence.

There is no place for emotions in a civilized society.  Even keeled, good tempered and the ability to outwardly project minimal fluctuations in emotions is a trait that at least makes it look like you have it together.  Civilized?  Maybe, maybe not.

Have you ever just seen someone totally lose control of their emotional disposition?  Wether it is anger, or depression, or sobbing, or whatever, the lack of emotional grip makes the person look out of control.  Mostly because they are.  The line between conviction in something and emotional control is blurred, but it's there.  Can one be passionate about something and have complete control over their emotional state?  I think so.  This week, I've decided to write about the dynamic relationship among emotions, how they influence public opinion, and what it means to be civilized.

Vanilla.  People have used this expression to describe a state of being of just sort of going with the flow. There is no conviction on either side of the fence.  There is no strong opinion about anything, really, at all.  The terminology is a metaphor.  Chocolate being an extreme on one side, and strawberry being the opposite extreme.  Those that choose vanilla, really don't lean one way or the other.  Vanilla is that center option, it is the "I can't get off the fence and choose a stronger option," option.  What might people think of me if I go strongly in the chocolate direction?  It will certainly alienate the strawberry people. And the converse is also true.  If I go in the strawberry direction, it will most certainly offend the chocolate people.  So this person is vanilla, ever so careful not to offend, ever so careful to try to identify with all groups, everywhere.  

So, then, I wonder, if being vanilla means not having your own opinions, or if it simply means you choose not to express those opinions since much of society can't seem to get a grip on their emotional state.  If I expressed a strong opinion one way, the unstable nature of society's emotional state could have consequences I simply don't want to deal with.  In fact, it could incite consequences that I feel that I'm above dealing with.  This whole freedom of speech stuff, while protection of it legally seems great, peer pressure is another matter all together.  The question then becomes how fast my government can save me from an angry mob of the general public?  Not fast enough.  Vanilla it is!  

Tolerance of opinion differences is a civilized idea, and can only occur with education.  That may be wrong.  Maybe it can only occur with intelligence.  And since intelligence can not be taught, we are evolutionary steps away from tolerance.  No amount of teaching can make a person tolerant of opinion differences.  It can only happen with a logical mind.  Emotions cripple the ability of the average person to achieve this.  And we are all emotional beings.  But we are also on the precipice.  Some people are intelligent enough to handle chocolate or strawberry.  Some people can look at things from different angles, get their pride out of the way and say, "When you explain it like that, I can see your position."  Some people can do it, but most cannot get outside of themselves to have this ability.

Our emotional depth is what makes us humans.  A robot can see things logically, but conviction, anger, sadness and art, all come from the heart and not from the brain.  When we lose our ability to stay vanilla despite how we feel, when we don't care about public reactions because there won't BE a public reaction, when logic rules and emotion doesn't exist, will there be anything worthy of conviction?  Without opponents to arguments, there is no argument.  Stay vanilla, but be against something.  Or stand for a strongly held belief.  Fight the fight if it is something you believe in, but listen to alternative opinions.  Be emotional, but be rational.  Be loud, then be quiet.  Be heard, but listen.  We enter debates too often with a closed mind, a mind that will not be swayed.  

We are changing, though.  A world without controversy--world peace--has always been an abstract idea.  And a highly-touted goal of Miss America contestants and politicians for lifetimes.  Evolution is the answer, and it is coming.  Make no mistake, we are emotional beings and we need that.  But we also need that one switch, that switch that we can turn on to allow us to consider alternative opinions.  We can never know all angles, and we need to realize that it might be possible that someone can explain an angle we haven't thought of.  So be chocolate, be strawberry, and be vanilla.  But don't select your position based on your emotional state.  It's possible to be neopolitan...

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Breaking Up With Yellow

     I'm not much for sentimentality.  I don't have a problem letting go of inanimate objects just because they're attached to a particular memory or feeling.  I'm a pack rat in reverse.  I throw things away I might desperately need at a later date.  Thinking that I might need something two years from now is simply not enough reason for me to retain it.

     I like clean lines, clutter-free, knick knack free countertops and tables.  My home is not a retail oddity shop.  You cannot come to my house and peruse an eclectic mix of bizarre items from around the country.  Functional items often cross the boundary into decorative, and this might be okay to some people, but I'm not trying to inflict my own personality onto the items I own.  I don't buy things because they're "cute."  I buy things that I need.

     Maybe it's a function of testosterone, maybe it's a function of a fear of personal attachment, but for the most part, I can throw almost anything away.  I think people, as a general rule, don't consider themselves enough.  People don't often sit down, have some quiet time, and consider who they really are.  We're on the go.  We have things to do.  We lose our sense of self awareness in our daily grind.  Our personalities are there, buried in us.  The fight to get out, though, has been lost.  We stand by original convictions as if we still feel the same way.  Case in point:  when I was very young, I decided that yellow was my favorite color.  Many years have passed, now, and when someone asks me what my favorite color is, I blankly, and without much thought, tell them it's yellow.  I have never revisited this stance and I am comfortable with the color choice of my six year old self.  I'm so comfortable with it, that I have a hard time revisiting my original conviction and I'm not really open to change it.  It's been yellow for so long, I feel that I might lose a little piece of who I am if I just up and abandon poor yellow.  And then where would yellow be?  Out on the streets, tossed aside like a used diaper in the trash!  We've been through a lot together, me and yellow.  How could I ever abandon you?  This may be an extreme explanation, but it illustrates the attachments we feel towards things.  And that's not even a physical thing, it's a concept.  Sorry, yellow, it's time for you to get evaluated.  People change.  It's not you, it's me.  

     I'm not saying that I hold absolutely zero sentimentality.  I like to look at old pictures, I feel connections to things I've had for long periods of time, and I have certain books that I just can't simply give away or throw out.  What I'm saying is in those rare times when we make a decision to like something, when we evaluate how we feel about something and respond according to that decision, we very rarely look back and reevaluate.  Once the decision is made, we take for granted that we will always feel the same.  We take comfort in never having to analyze that feeling again and years pass as we blindly assume that once we like something, we'll always like it.

     Sometimes, I make a snap judgement to throw something away that I don't think I want to throw away.  And it's hard.  But once it's in the trash, I move on and rarely ever think of it again.  Just recently, I was cleaning out my garage.  In there, I found an old beat up lamp, with no shade, in the shap of a koala.  The koala on the base of the lamp was a stuffed animal sort of thing, fluffy, hair matted down.  The lamp was not mine, it was my wife's and she had had it for as long as I can remember, probably before we had even known each other.  But I was cleaning out the garage.  I couldn't remember the last time we even attempted to plug it in.  Into the trash!  I continued cleaning out the garage, but luckily (and as an act of sheer self preservation), I got into that rare mindset of reevaluating my initial feelings.  Who am I, I thought, to inflict my personal feelings about keeping sentimental things onto my wife?  I thought about it for a while before I pulled it back out of the trash can.  Who knows what kind of memories this item holds for her?  Who knows what memories she would forever lose because this lamp was not here to remind her of them?  It was not my place, and I overstepped the boundary of respect for her belongings, assuming that she could have the same sense of disconnect that I have.  

     All of this begs the question:  Are we the sum of our belongings?  In a way, the answer is yes.  We acquire things and we project memories onto them.  We see an item and are reminded of a certain time and place, a situation, a smell, a feeling.  If not for the item, the memory inspired by the item, while not completely lost, will dull with the inactivity of thought.  These items bring it back, remind us of the memory, and repetition always equals retention.  

     So what, exactly, am I advocating here?  It seems as though I'm contradicting myself.  Throw it away, keep it for the memory it reminds you of...

     I'm saying that we are human beings, with thoughts and feelings and personalities.  We are unique and diverse.  I'm saying use the power of thought.  Don't blindly accept something just because it always was.  Reevaluate.  Hold yourself to a higher standard of thought and self awareness.  Try to understand how and why you feel a certain way.  It's easy to forget it in the mundane course of everyday life, but one day you'll wake up, and years will have passed.  It is the difference between letting things happen to you and making things happen for you.

     And come back yellow, I miss you already!

     

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