Friday, December 10, 2010
Riddle Me This
ToDaZeD coffee thotz
What is it about City Fulk?
Do those who tend to be more “liberal” gather there out of choice? Or does something about the crowded environment lead to the adoption of “liberal” thought processes as a means of self-preservation, protective coloring, or herd/belonging behavior?
I realize my own tendency to stay the hell out of major Metro areas is in part due to my own introverted nature [defined as getting your batteries recharged via solitary activity]. All those people doing all that stuff with all that noise *aaiiiieeeee* Too. Much.
So is that the difference? Do extroverts [defined as getting your batteries recharged thru social activity] naturally gravitate to where the people are?
If that’s so, why the marked difference in worldview [defined as the framework of ideas and beliefs through which an individual interprets the world and interacts with it—Values & Visions] between City and Country folks?
I imagine I oughta toss in a ‘defined as’ on that, too. Those who, by preference, choose to live in an urban, usually coastal, environment/a rural or small town environment. Both tout the superiority of their choice on reasons that boil down to “it’s close to/in the heart of what’s Real and Important in Life.”
The Upper East Side New Yorker cites the available ‘culture,’ proximity to ‘what’s happening’ and ‘important people’ usually snide, fuckwit hipster twits. The ruralite cites ‘wide-open spaces,’ ‘ability to live with the rhythm of the Seasons,’ and ‘good, decent people’ a lack of snide, fuckwit hipster twits.
When you live in a City, damned near nothing you interact with is yours. A typical day: leave your [rented] apartment, walk down a [public] sidewalk or take [public] transportation to work in a [publicly held] ginormous corporation, lunch at a [open to the public] restaurant, rinse, repeat. But humans don’t work that way; we personalize. So it becomes MY building, MY street, MY subway, MY restaurant, MY job ask any union member.
In the Country/small town, dang near everything you interact with is either owned by you, or someone you know. Your house, your pick-up [on a road your county supervisor—at your behest—keeps paved. with your money], lunch at Suzie’s cafe or Ben’s drive-in, work on your farm or for Jack’s Tractor store, etc.
In an ideal world yeah, I made myself retch with that one, too. but stick with me a moment. those would just be personal choices—like chocolate or tutti frutti. But there seems to be a lot of slurs on the floor regarding these choices.
Take the latest kerfluffle over the Palin hunting caribou clip from her Alaska show. Stuff like this came out of the urban hipster fu contingent:
Personally, I know little about hunting. I blame this on having read “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter” by Carson McCullers at a young age and getting the notion that hunting was supposed to involve naturalism and squalor and wistfulness and some confusing anecdotes about deaf-mutes. To me, dressing an elk means putting it in a sweater.
Like 95% of the people I know, I don’t have a visceral (look it up) problem eating meat or wearing a belt. But like absolutely everybody I know, I don’t relish the idea of torturing animals. I don’t enjoy the fact that they’re dead and I certainly don’t want to volunteer to be the one to kill them ...
Aside from the parenthetical “I know big words - be impressed” snark; [or, more on point, because of it] added to the vague, pseudo-psychological “naturalism and squalor and wistfulness” confusion, I gotta ask: howinhell do these fulk think the animal gets from the field to their plate/feet/chairs?!? Fairies and magic dressing-wands?!? Or Teh Little Dirty People doing Jobs Real People Won’t Oughtn’t to be Expected to Do?
[ and yet, they don’t support slavery. rly?]
Run that by me again, Boy. Your point is you know Big Words, you read Important Literature, and you believe the morally correct stance is with your fingers in your ears yelling “lalalalalala” while someone else does the difficult dirty work to put steak on your plate and unborn lamb pelts on your cuffs? That’s really your thesis? That’s what you think is Right?
[I do NOT want to see your bathroom.]
And you expect my respect and obsequious adulation because you can couch your nouveau-aristocrat point in a snarky, “witty” manner that heaps contempt, pompous scorn and self-satisfied superiority over those who are willing and able to do The Deed that makes you scream like a little [City] guurl?
"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
— Robert A. Heinlein
That really seems to crystalize the difference for me. Some folks realize that Civilization is a thin veneer between us and the way the world really is: Mother Nature is out to kill you—all day, every day; Life is hard won and hanging on to it is a life-long, 24 hour/7day chore. Those skills that keep you and your family [and neighbors] alive are Good Things—not “dirty,” “nasty,” “icky,” or “beneath” anyone. Keeping those skills honed is what just might keep you and yours alive when [not IF] The Big One hits—be it earthquake, storm, Yellowstone Caldera or Iranian EMP missile out of Venezuela.
Other folks believe that they are Civilizations’ Special Children. They believe that, simply because they were able to master some of the more esoteric skills that Society has brought us [writing witty, snarky dialog for TV; generating or keeping track of the hippest, ever-changing fashions; mastering various tech gadgets], they have somehow earned the right to keep their own lilly-white paws free of the dirt and grit of every-day Life. They—the nouveau-aristocrats—don’t have to worry about where their food might come from and would be horrified and disgusted to find that the best mushrooms grow in steer shiit and arugula thrives in New Jersey dirt whence it must be harvested. Don’t even bring up the origin of their Kobe Beef Sliders.
Because Civilization is all they see—all day, every day—they forget what surrounds it. They would need to drag around a Valium IV drip if they considered how tenuous a hold it has on the tiny islands it occupies. They find it unthinkable that one medium-sized natural [hey—it’s naaaatural] disaster and *p00f* they’re three days away from Lord of the Flies: not literarily, but literally.
These fulk are, indeed, Civilizations’ Special Children [window-licker phyla]—byproduct of a Society that, because of its success, has lost touch through its affluence with its environment and what was required to bring it into being in the first place. They are a specialized breed—utterly dependent, without realizing it, and fragile.
The only question is whether or not this Civilization can afford this Special Class and how we shall choose to provide for their care.
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{/if}
