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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"Delightfully offensive!"  Slighted by humanity, God must put down the bottle long enough to save the world...

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Small Talk Is Vampiric

      I think I'm personable.  I think I get along well with others.  I outwardly accept most situations, even though sometimes someone throws a serious curveball and I'm ill prepared to mask my surprise.  Most of this may seem intangible so I'm prepared to back it up with examples.  But before the example backup, ask yourself how well you roll with the punches.  I guess it's not necessarily even punches I'm talking about, because that implies a hardship, and even though that's a portion of what I'm talking about, it's more frequent.  Ask yourself how well you can make someone feel that you relate to them.  How well do you put people at ease, allowing them to feel safe enough to give you a glimpse into their twisted lives?  I feel that I have, in some scope, refined an ability to do this.  It sounds sociopathic.  It sounds like social engineering or psy ops.  I suppose it is on its most basic level.  It's social guerrilla warfare, a manipulation of perception swayed in your favor to gain an insight not just anyone can gain.

     As a general rule, I'm not a "small talk" kind of person.  It's awkward and irrelevant.  Small talk is, at best, a disengenuous act of feigning compassion about someone else's concerns.  I'm more of a "say what you need and then let's shut the hell up" kind of person.  This may sound a bit harsh, and maybe I don't mean it quite as harsh as it seems to sound.  Basically, I want my conversations to stay relevant.  I have been known to tell people that I think their story is too long.  I can fake interest in brief sections of time.  But when someone's story drags on and on, I get antsy.  Gotta keep moving.  I liken it to someone telling me what they dreamed.  This is so irrelevant, it makes me want to cry vomit.  Yes, cry vomit, since it's so sad and nauseating at the same time.  What happened in your dream is pointless and holds no bearing on real life(I'll not get into a debate about psychic phenomena or future predictions from dreams, here).  Often, when someone is explaining their dream, it is an ill-constructed, plotless, weird recount of events that have no structure or climactic payoff.  They all end with "then I woke up."  There is no character development, and no plot line resolution.  Its a waste of time.  The only format in which dream recitation is acceptable to me is in two to three sentence explanations.  "I dreamt that you had a goats head, then we hunted you and ate you for dinner.  Pretty weird, huh?"  Quick, to the point, and a breath of fresh air.  So, I'm getting off the dream stump now, and back to what I'm trying to convey.

     Since I get bored with small talk and everyone seems to want to do it, I have no choice but to engage in it so I can fit under the societal umbrella of normal.  So I often play a game.  I roll with what people tell me.  I feign interest.  I ask follow up questions and I listen way more than I talk.  If you ever get a chance to watch two people engage in small talk, I recommend that you look at it through this prism:  Every intention that the two people have during the interaction is to twist the conversation into something meaningful and relevant to them.  It's a struggle for floor time, a struggle for each of them to keep the conversation about themselves, to gain control of the spotlight.  If I get stuck in a small talk situation(which is not that often, since I'm easily put off by it), I allow it to be about the other person.  I don't grapple for the focus.  It's interesting to me because it makes people really feel that I care.  But it's also exhausting because I am loading up on someone else's emotional baggage.  If I could come up with a way best to explain it, I would call it "emotional energy transference."  I am letting someone use me to unload their emotional energy and so I absorb it, making them feel better and me feel like I now have their emotional weight.  These people are energy vampires, off-loading their negative energy and corrupting my positive energy.  That's why I don't like to engage in it.  It's exhausting. 

     You'll find that when you don't wrestle for the focus in conversations, people will tell you way more than you expect to hear.  And also, your reaction will alert them as to wether they feel safe to continue or if they feel that they've said too much and back off.  I always try to handle whatever people tell me as normal and not too far off the beaten path, even when it is way outside the grid.  "Oh, you killed your girlfriend last night?  Hmmm.  Sounds reasonable.  How'd you do it?"  This makes them feel safe and they will continue, knowing now, that you are not judging and are sympathetic to their point of view.  

     So, I'm obviously and constantly thinking inwardly.  Outwardly, I accept what people tell me.  Inwardly, I'm thinking crazy thoughts about this killer I'm talking to and how I hope they don't kill me, and how can I get out of this conversation without getting kilt.  (Decided to use the vernacular of "killed."  I don't know, maybe now I'm getting bored with my own story)...

     So anyway, I guess this post is about holding a reaction to get more insight because it makes people feel more comfortable.  And I guess it's about how if I can avoid it, I will, but also, if I can't avoid it, I try to seem genuinely interested to build that trust to see how much I can get out of them.  Mostly it's about how bat-shit crazy my mind is, and how long conversations suck the life out of me.