Blending in: What are you still doing in America?

Well, they say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. So why shouldn't my blog be?






I had intended this space to be about weighty issues: love, death, truth, especially truth, since as I talked about in my first post, i get frustrated because everyone lies, all the time, mostly through what they omit, not what they actually say. And for someone who values information as much as i do, *missing* information is nothing less than *mis-information*. I can't say that enough.


And it has several levels. Its my pet pieve: people who tell you things -- best example: directions -- when they have no IDEA of what they are talking about. Then they waste your life by sending you off in some direction that is wrong. (Trick: usually, just interrupting them changes this, if you sense they really don't know, and help them by saying: "You really don't know, right? its ok, i'll just ask someone else.." . You won't believe how many people will, when challenged, admit "Yea, i really don't know, sorry.")


The more dangerous game (and more common, it seems) seems to happen most day on news outlets like CNN. "We think we have made significant progress in Afghanistan." Its a war of ommission. Information ommission. Again, not a lie. A mis-completed statement. Ummmmmm, right. Not saying I don't love CNN, cuz I do. And it makes Fox News look like the Republican client division of Burston and Marsteller. However, it does omit. All the time.


Ergo: The most intellgent answer is "I don't know" more often than you think, even at work.


So, anyway -- are we blending yet? Its been three years since i left american soil, and i have to say that now i am truely a man without a country, or a continenent for that matter. i used to feel so alienated in america, which is why i moved to New York City, which is about a far from america as you can get and actually still BE in america, save certain parts of Haight/Ashbury.

why didn't i feel like i fit in? hmmmm. let's see: i think football is stupid, i think art was intelligent, i thought french was sexy (thank god i moved to europe and got that straightened out, but more French-bashing in later posts, i promse). I thought most people lived small lives, didn't care about history, or other parts of the world, or, well, to be honest (i know, i promised) i think Americans don't care about being "well informed" for the simple sake of being, for lack a better phrase, "better citizens of the planet."



i mean, Americans do not seem to be embarassed about what they do not know. Ironic, right, considering that my parenthetic diversion above was about how people hate saying "I don't know". But they don't. And they won't admit it. So are they REALLY embarassed? i don't know (yes, pun, pun!).


whatever the answer, unfortunately, is irrelevant. Because the real problem is: they ACT like they really don't care about what they don't know.


that was the part that, in the end, got me.


Americans are not embarassed about not knowing whether the war in the Central African Republic is still going on, or how many countries are still part of the United Kingdom. i don't know that either. but that's my point: it embarassed me. it embarasses me that i speak only one language fluently (and Brits dispute this anyway. But more Brit-bashing in later posts, i promise). i'm embarassed that America elected to the Presidency the mediocre son of an earlier oil barron president (althought i'm proud that they have finally elected someone worthy of the office). i have trouble with the fact that most Americans were outraged by NAFTA, and yet the national forum for debate, the press, is so mired in public relations information from all sides of the issue that its difficult to even tell fact from fiction (see Burston and Marsellars above).


maybe that's the problem. maybe america is so mired in 'professional' information people that most people don't feel that then NEED any information at all: the professionals will handle it.


(By the way, i liked the article this was lifted from, which says NAFTA was a failure. If you don't care, just skip this paragrah:


"Although NAFTA's adherents claimed the agreement would create new jobs, growing imports from Mexico and Canada have cost the U.S. more jobs than exports have generated. While increased exports to Mexico created 158,171 jobs, this growth was more than offset by the 385,834 jobs displaced by an increase in imports from Mexico. Similarly, increased exports to Canada generated 244,309 jobs, but these were dwarfed by 411,481 jobs displaced by Canadian imports. On the whole, imports from Mexico and Canada destroyed a gross total of 797,315 job opportunities. Net losses, after including the gains from exports, were 394,835 jobs.")


so there you go. who knew? well, my dad. but he's in the auto industry, and they've been exporting auto jobs to america's two neighbors since the Kennedy administration.


so no surprise there. but see, that affects america. so of course some people at least know about it. but how about the role of bio-fuels in pushing up basic commodity prices in emerging markets? do we know about that? mmmm. probably not. too busy shopping for a new big screen. or getting that damn showerhead in the downstairs bathroom to stop leaking. i hate that.


one thing i have noticed: i was making a pun today with a friend on Facebook about living in europe. Here is the email exchange:

Scott: So this Europe thing . . . does that mean that you're making more money than ever, but getting so much less for that money?

Mitch: No, it means that i'm making far LESS money, and getting even LESS for that money. I get something called "quality of life", which to europeans means less crime, and the ability to buy exciting forms of bread and pastries in most corner shops...


its true. I do make FAR less money, and what i can buy here is FAR more expensive. So i have FAR less 'stuff' then i did in america. but perhaps that's the point.


perhaps therein lies the 'quality of life'.


perhaps its because here people have less 'stuff' that they have more quality. Hmmmmm. More stuff. Quantity. Less stuff. Quality. But not the SAME, its apples and tomatoes, isn't it? but a tomatoe (as Dan Quail would spell it) is a fruit. so perhaps we ARE comparing the same thing, we just don't know it.


Is this quality/quantity debate simply the old song lyrics, you sayh "to-MAY-toe" and i say "to-MAH-toe" thing? Nope. i think its something real. when i packed and left for europe, i threw away, donated, sold, or otherwise abandoned HALF of what i owned. and arrived in europe, well, bored silly. nothing to do. but that's because i landed in switzerland, and that's how it is there. but i had no stuff to get in my way. and so i spent time attempting to learn french, eating a lot of cheese. and hooking up with a really sexy brazillian women, but that's another blog. sorry, this was a diversion. my point is that the 'stuff' didn't matter.


and i didn't miss it. on the contrary, i felt liberated to get rid of it.

So maybe I am finally getting over being an American, after all.

jdf

Love and Death. Well, death anyway...

ok. Now that we understand the ground rules, let's get in.



First, i have to warn you that i'm a little out of sync, since i got bumped today from my flight to Hong Kong, and after spending 5 hours at the airport (which i live 20 minutes from) i'm back home again till tomrrow, my luggage still there, with tickets to take an identical route. so i feel a bit like i'm in the Chronicles of Riddick, with my life going on without me, and i have to catch it, and jump back in, and the images will gel together again, and i'll switch from black and white back to color.

Anyway.... let's talk about love.

I mean why not? Love and death, right?

"The only two things that could interest an intelligent mind," according to Yeates.

The two things from which everyone might run, but no one can hide. I know, it sounds a bit like poetry. In fact, it *is* poetry. Which i happen to hate. So its hateful poetry. Written to sound bad, on *purpose*.

Another story. On to death.

I'm reading Julian Barnes' new book "Nothing to Be Frightened Of", which is, as you might surmise from the title, about the end (and yes, i split that infinitive on purpose). And if you have a chance, you probably should read it. i've spent thousands and thousands of dollars on therapy over the years. I've been suicidal since i was eight years old. and finally, i found someone who thinks about death with as much humor and horror (more existential than Gothic) as i do, and certainly whom has more literary depth to bring it to life, pun very much intended. really. the book is, in some ways, beginning to finally edge out my *own* fear of death. well, not edge out; more make bearable. that's his point.

you never get over the fear of death.

in fact, he points out that those (of us) whom have finally managed to "look over the edge" and realize, with as full a sense of awareness as is possible (since we cannot really imagine it), that we will NOT exist at some point, probably much sooner than we expected, certainly than we hoped, are of a group. even if you've only done it once. Because if you have done it, it changes you. Forever. You now occupy a mental space that others do not.

in fact, it's sort of a club. for me (and for him, since the major thread of the book is dealing with his) the loss of one's parents is also this type of 'group'. if you have, you understand. if you have not (yet) then you can't possibly understand. sorry.

it's like being gay. you can even fuck a few boys (or girls, but i'm a boy) but unless you're gay, there's some things you just won't get. i'm not gay, so i know that i don't know (nod to Donald Rummsfeld here). and i haven't lost my parents, yet, but they're getting there, my mother is becoming senile and my father is getting his last lupron shot from his prostate cancer treatment.


what is somewhat sobering, however, is realizing that those who see death coming, who feel its presence, are a different crowd than those who are focused on, say, their golf game (which i think is a fine distraction, since i play). but it is only a distraction. not a cure.

I already talked about denial in the intro, so i won't go there again, but even those of us who are Dedicated Self-Medicators (alcohol, in my case) can only deny it for so long. like i said, mine started at age 8. lots don't until their 40's. if you've hit your 60's and you're still not paying attention, then you are either crazy or brilliant, or drinking a *lot*.


So now i have to close, and i haven't even gotten to love, (or death, really). except to say that whatever literary wisdom i picked up from Barnes' book has been amazing. i mean, life changing. and i have read Fromme, and Rogers, and Freud, and Jung, and Maslow, Skinner, and on and on, so i'm not a beginner, and, like i said, i spent many years paying 120 bucks an hour to talk this through, with far less outcome.

Read the book yourself, and see if you don't agree.

Love. Have to get that. whew. what a mess, than one. talk about lying
to ourselves. NOT about love. just about what we do to protect ourselves
from it.

jdf

Start at the Beginning: The Big Lie

Ok. Here's the ground rules.

Everyone lies. All the time. Small lies, mostly, just to make it thru the day, to smooth things over at work, to skip a fight for no reason over dinner. Lies of ommision the most common.

Most psychologists recognize denial as a primary (and healthy, for the most part) coping mechanism for humans. Read "A Mind of One's Own" or "The Happiness Hypothesis" for the more friendly version, if you're not in the mood for Jung or Horney.

But not here.

Here you have to work.
Or I guess I should say, here *I* have to work.


So no lies. That's the challenge. If you want to post comments here on my blog, you have to not lie. You have to not leave anything out. You have to admit it all. And so do I.

It sound easy. And it sounds like its been done before. But that's why I started this blog. Because if its been done before, it certainly hasn't been done *enough*. There's just too much reward for lying. About most everything. You can get more money, more sex, more power, more of just about everything, by lying.

The key in that sentence, however, is "just". Just about everything.

Except intimacy. Or truth (self-evident, but truth has non-contexual value to me. I think (again, key word) that its "true" that there is no God. That truth has value to me, regardless of whether it's used for anything or not. And yes, I think there is a life force, but that's a long, LONG discussion.)

Anyway, I used to think "friends" was on that list, but now i'm not sure. I think I tell the truth to my friends, but honestly I think when I do really tell them the truth, is when i really start to lose them. I guess it depends on *which* truth(s) you tell them. Because you can't tell them ALL of the truths. "Wow, your ex is really hot, i'd love 10 minutes with her in a hot tub." Or "Shit! What were you thinking when you slept with THAT guy?" Or "I think we only catch up for dinner when you have this idea that you're not spending enough time with your friends."

Things like that. Things that never really get said. But here, yes.

Or at least, maybe.

But I never lied to Joey. Joey knew everything.

Hence the blog title.

But, this being the loss of my blog virginity, I also realize that this may put Joey Da Fish out of bounds for some important people in my life to whom i have not been 100% truthful. Then again, let's face it, we probably lie most often to those we love, since you can view lying (see: denial above) as a way of protecting them. But we know that we only do that to protect ourselves.

Life's a bitch sometimes, right?

So, tell it, and tell it all. That's my motto.

This week, anyway.