The Remainder
It is true that individuals spend an inordinate amount of time spouting off about the people they don't like; at least, in this culture, at this time.
Amongst my friends, this activity is sometimes out of hand. Beyond the disparaging comments leveled at individuals, which (admittedly) there has been an attempt to curb and discourage lately, to varying degrees of success, there are also the wide-ranging generalizations brought to bear against social groups and minorities. This, perhaps, sounds worse than it is. As we make up a fairly multicultural, mixed-gender, inter-generational, poly-sexual-oriented clique, most of the bases are covered: the "post-modern, self-referential, ironic social commentary" (as it has been coined) has been a hallmark of the last few years, but it's run its course, and we're attempting to put that puppy to bed, as it just doesn't seem to be as funny anymore.
As easy as it has been for me to sit around the patio table with a nice, cool beverage and espouse that "I hate gay people", or Satan's Little Pixie shouting out that "Asians suck", both of us only half-joking -- making it funny because it's true AND because we are what we slag -- what we really mean is something different.
Perspective, after all, is everything.
Most of the human race is not to my taste, nor to that of my companions. We are unwilling participants in this mixed bag of humanity, though smart enough to realize that there's not a damn thing we can do about it, except try and live as responsibly as we can. Most of us have grown into maturity as minorities within minorities; we have been mavericks and outcasts and punching bags, and somehow, out of all the mess, the disillusionment and alienation, we have managed over the past few years, to hammer together a cohesive, supportive and loving circle of friends. People that sometimes sparkle, and other times dazzle. Who fall and pick themselves up. Who give credit where credit is due.
This is not to say that we are not also deeply flawed. We are, as I said, human.
We are also spoiled; and we lose perspective. We forget that 99% of the race really does suck. The same mistakes are made on massive scales over and over: apathy ruling common sense; laziness trumping fraternity and empathy; selfishness hoarding wealth and privilege and progress; and fear crouched in its gnarled pinions, overshadowing it all, with wings ready to beat everything down with a black wind.
So yes, gay people do suck (and yes, I'm familiar with the joke). An oppressed minority fighting to establish its own equality does not grant its members moral or ethical superiority, it just gives them a cause; and causes are notoriously blinding. Equity is definitely a noble thing to strive for, if you can sustain those ideals past the point that you get what you want from the deal. Gay marriage is now legal in Canada, across the board. Wonderful. To get here, to this point, it has been a long hard travail. People have fought. People have died. Now, people have forgotten.
A younger generation of white, middle-class twenty something homosexuals have taken for granted that they live with the mere residue of the vicissitude that the generation just preceding them had to endure, to say nothing of our great gay grandparents who threw down the gauntlet when they had everything to lose. They do not bother even educating themselves about the past trials and tribulations of our predecessors, our benefactors, but rather club, and date, and screw, and buy, and preen in a privileged, isolated demi-class that has been built around an ideal of sexual desire. What has been won is the right to be just as self-absorbed, materialistic and classist as if we had been born straight, white and middle classed.
What a brave fucking new world.
And in the same way, the discrimination and abuse foisted upon those peoples who have immigrated here in no way absolves them of the very human frailties which plague our species. Persecution does not ennoble its victim, at its base. How one deals with that persecution can. Suffering at the pleasure or sport of another is simply that: suffering; and it degrades both of the parties involved; but there is a knee jerk reaction that attempts to sanctify the quality of the oppressed to give greater credence to the cruelty of the act.
certainly, there are good people who are monstrously abused. There are also bad people who are monstrously abused, along with the apathetic, the strange and the boring.
All the colours of the rainbow.
The Irish, during the 1800's, were a downtrodden, abused and abhorred race under the British Empire. They suffered and they died for the pleasure of the ruling classes.
And then they came to America. And in a couple of generations they turned the tables.
It's our turn now.
The cycle of life. The reason why 99% of people suck. Majority really does rule, and it's because we let it. It's because, of that catalogue of sins, sloth is probably the most debilitating to any real change, its the one that lets real nobility waste to death in the corner. It's the lack of perspective.
Which is everything, and what I need to check in myself from time to time.
I am very lucky. Somehow I've found a good portion of that 1% available to me, nailed them down and made them say "I love you", just so I can say it back. Surrounded by people who are trying to learn, as best they can, to be good and responsible and real. We have been outcasts for all of the right reasons, questioning the status quo and calling people on their shit, and now that we have found each other, it's sometimes hard to forget that we no longer really qualify for the misfit category, because in a very real way, we now belong to something that is greater than ourselves, a community that we have helped create. In our own way, we're become the cool kids at the back of the bus.
So, when I say that I hate gay people, it does not really mean that I hate 99% of all people... what it means is that I am so terribly discouraged by the majority of the race, so constantly disappointed; that it breaks my heart to see us continue on without learning, and without any real change.
But I see the beginnings of a variation, and the proof of hope, every time I go out for a drink with one of my friends.
Amongst my friends, this activity is sometimes out of hand. Beyond the disparaging comments leveled at individuals, which (admittedly) there has been an attempt to curb and discourage lately, to varying degrees of success, there are also the wide-ranging generalizations brought to bear against social groups and minorities. This, perhaps, sounds worse than it is. As we make up a fairly multicultural, mixed-gender, inter-generational, poly-sexual-oriented clique, most of the bases are covered: the "post-modern, self-referential, ironic social commentary" (as it has been coined) has been a hallmark of the last few years, but it's run its course, and we're attempting to put that puppy to bed, as it just doesn't seem to be as funny anymore.
As easy as it has been for me to sit around the patio table with a nice, cool beverage and espouse that "I hate gay people", or Satan's Little Pixie shouting out that "Asians suck", both of us only half-joking -- making it funny because it's true AND because we are what we slag -- what we really mean is something different.
Perspective, after all, is everything.
Most of the human race is not to my taste, nor to that of my companions. We are unwilling participants in this mixed bag of humanity, though smart enough to realize that there's not a damn thing we can do about it, except try and live as responsibly as we can. Most of us have grown into maturity as minorities within minorities; we have been mavericks and outcasts and punching bags, and somehow, out of all the mess, the disillusionment and alienation, we have managed over the past few years, to hammer together a cohesive, supportive and loving circle of friends. People that sometimes sparkle, and other times dazzle. Who fall and pick themselves up. Who give credit where credit is due.
This is not to say that we are not also deeply flawed. We are, as I said, human.
We are also spoiled; and we lose perspective. We forget that 99% of the race really does suck. The same mistakes are made on massive scales over and over: apathy ruling common sense; laziness trumping fraternity and empathy; selfishness hoarding wealth and privilege and progress; and fear crouched in its gnarled pinions, overshadowing it all, with wings ready to beat everything down with a black wind.
So yes, gay people do suck (and yes, I'm familiar with the joke). An oppressed minority fighting to establish its own equality does not grant its members moral or ethical superiority, it just gives them a cause; and causes are notoriously blinding. Equity is definitely a noble thing to strive for, if you can sustain those ideals past the point that you get what you want from the deal. Gay marriage is now legal in Canada, across the board. Wonderful. To get here, to this point, it has been a long hard travail. People have fought. People have died. Now, people have forgotten.
A younger generation of white, middle-class twenty something homosexuals have taken for granted that they live with the mere residue of the vicissitude that the generation just preceding them had to endure, to say nothing of our great gay grandparents who threw down the gauntlet when they had everything to lose. They do not bother even educating themselves about the past trials and tribulations of our predecessors, our benefactors, but rather club, and date, and screw, and buy, and preen in a privileged, isolated demi-class that has been built around an ideal of sexual desire. What has been won is the right to be just as self-absorbed, materialistic and classist as if we had been born straight, white and middle classed.
What a brave fucking new world.
And in the same way, the discrimination and abuse foisted upon those peoples who have immigrated here in no way absolves them of the very human frailties which plague our species. Persecution does not ennoble its victim, at its base. How one deals with that persecution can. Suffering at the pleasure or sport of another is simply that: suffering; and it degrades both of the parties involved; but there is a knee jerk reaction that attempts to sanctify the quality of the oppressed to give greater credence to the cruelty of the act.
certainly, there are good people who are monstrously abused. There are also bad people who are monstrously abused, along with the apathetic, the strange and the boring.
All the colours of the rainbow.
The Irish, during the 1800's, were a downtrodden, abused and abhorred race under the British Empire. They suffered and they died for the pleasure of the ruling classes.
And then they came to America. And in a couple of generations they turned the tables.
It's our turn now.
The cycle of life. The reason why 99% of people suck. Majority really does rule, and it's because we let it. It's because, of that catalogue of sins, sloth is probably the most debilitating to any real change, its the one that lets real nobility waste to death in the corner. It's the lack of perspective.
Which is everything, and what I need to check in myself from time to time.
I am very lucky. Somehow I've found a good portion of that 1% available to me, nailed them down and made them say "I love you", just so I can say it back. Surrounded by people who are trying to learn, as best they can, to be good and responsible and real. We have been outcasts for all of the right reasons, questioning the status quo and calling people on their shit, and now that we have found each other, it's sometimes hard to forget that we no longer really qualify for the misfit category, because in a very real way, we now belong to something that is greater than ourselves, a community that we have helped create. In our own way, we're become the cool kids at the back of the bus.
So, when I say that I hate gay people, it does not really mean that I hate 99% of all people... what it means is that I am so terribly discouraged by the majority of the race, so constantly disappointed; that it breaks my heart to see us continue on without learning, and without any real change.
But I see the beginnings of a variation, and the proof of hope, every time I go out for a drink with one of my friends.
Comments
It's the learning curve... "how many times can one touch a hot element and still come back for more?"...
that old, haggard question.
I like that we can really say, maybe not 99% of the time, but a good 90%, that we are trying to Do Our Best.
SO -
nice correct
safe sane
suspect illusion
vanity vegetables
doom gloom
fat pariah
incorrigible sulking myth
perfect sloth hero working mostly
your
bullshit composit
eating television food dystopia the paper
packaged passenger thick or thin
grey test mushy peas
-MANDY-R, ENGLAND
for your comments and support. It's funny, you wait and wait for people to notice your blog, and then when it happens you end up feeling a bit bashful and shy.
It's a funny state of existence, this is.