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...

Check out my satirical fiction:

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

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The Hope Of Perpetuation

     Everything, everywhere, builds on a foundation.  I've always considered this to be true, but I've never articulated it in writing, verbally or otherwise.  I'm think, at one time or another, everyone has at least thought about it.  Look around you, and think about everything you have, everything you've learned, and everything you are, currently, as a person.  Everything occurs in a series of steps that builds on the foundation you have laid down.

     I once thought of the world as a mess, as a hodgepodge of incomplete works, things people began but never finished.  Everywhere I looked, I saw unfinished projects: roads in the middle of construction, flip phones, tube TVs, gardens, elementary school children, the NFL draft.  All of these things, indeed everything else in this world too, were not finished and would never be finished.  They were simply building to a crescendo that would never occur.  They were all projects that would continue to be reinvented, redefined and improved upon.  But my view of the world, as I get older, is beginning to change.

     I dare suspect(as if I know the minds and hearts of others) that I am metamorphisizing backwards in this.  I would think that most people initially view the world through the prism of hopeful optimism and evolve away from that into a negative cynicism.  As I live on, I think I'm moving away from the idea of an incomplete world and into the idea that there is no technological ceiling.  There will never be an end to the incomplete projects of the world, but now I feel a comfort in that, not a brooding sense of failure.  It is like a classical masteiece ending on a suspended seventh, and I'm waiting, screaming for that resolution chord to finish the concert but it never comes and we, the audience, sit in our red velvet seats, stuck in suspense for all eternity.  But after being stuck on that chord for so long, maybe, just maybe, I begin to recognize the hope in it.  It is the idea that we are never finished--not as a negative, but instead as a positive.  Things will always improve.  And with that idea, comes hope.  It is the focal point that changed, I guess.  I am no longer focussing on the incomplete, but instead focussing on the future possibilities, and imagining the evolution.

     The same is true with everything in this world.  End points are an illusion, like the concept of time.  Ends are a means constructed by the human mind to force some sort of order on the world in which we live.  The idea helps us feel fulfilled.  Admittedly, it's hard not to be seduced by it.  For example, I mow my lawn.  I am finished.  Broaden the time frame and I am not finished.  If you broaden it enough, I will end up cutting it next week too.  Broadened to infinity, I will never fully complete the task.  Again, and simply for the fact that it bears repeating, everything is this way.  

     We define what constitutes the end of something.  We make an imaginary stopping point, a point where we say, it will be done when....fill in the blank.  But it's never done.  We percieve something to be completed when we arrive at this imaginary end point.  Everything stretches to infinity, and our minds cannot grasp it.  Because of this inability to fully grasp the concept of infinity, we must create absolutes.  

     

     Instead of negatively viewing a project as never finished, I submit the challenge to view it positively.  It is a chance to improve on it, a chance for continuation, a hopeful progression of perpetuation.  There are no real end points, no fulfilling victories.  The fulfillment comes in improving, in always having that last chance to do it better.  It is what has given us what we have today.  Everything builds on a foundation and goes on ad infinitum...

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