Hatred Versus Haha: The Battle of the Sexes?

Does anyone still think it is amusing to poke fun at the opposite sex? I think it is okay sometimes. I know that is horrifying, especially if you are cocked-and-loaded about the issue already. But that doesn't mean anyone has the justification to go to extremes about it. Sadly, some do.

Last night, my guitar teacher, who is a woman, followed up my long-winded, educationally-based explanation of why I was failing to master a particular technique on the guitar, by saying: "No. I think it's just because you are a man." I laughed. In fact, she was right. My dude tendencies were getting in the way.

Now, one could argue that, because I am a man, I have no problem being teased, because we dudes have had all of the good stuff for centuries. And I do understand why women would be more easily offended by stereotypes than we males, particularly if these stereotypes are ones that have helped to keep women subordinate over the years.

King and Riggs. She won.

But, I recently heard a woman call a group of men, who were making jokes on a Facebook post, "misogynists." The post (put up by a woman, in fact) asked how the plot of Lord of the Flies would be different if it were a group of girls, instead of a group of boys, were stranded on the island. Several men chimed in with over-the-top stereotypes and a female friend of the post-maker was offended to the point of calling the commenting men "misogynists."

Misogyny is a hatred of women. Talk about over-the-top -- especially when the woman who created the post was clearly looking for some fun banter about stereotypes of women, versus the ones about men that already exist in the book...

The Goofy Road to Possible Doom: On the Stupidity of Recreational Drugs

Now Philip Seymour Hoffman is dead. Another one on the list. Sad. Definitely sad.

But, you know, it occurs to me that no one would die of recreational drug overdoses if everyone would just stop using them.

I have always thought recreational drug use was, at best, silly. I'm not going to take some high-road moral stance about it. To me, it has always been embarrassingly inane to do something in order, simply, to make one's self feel goofy. It seems so damned puerile to me.

People will argue about the whole "opening of the mind" thing. Of course, everyone who is not someone who is trying to make a dignified excuse for making himself feel goofy is aware that this is nonsense. Drugs artificially open and expand the mind, then they leave damage and residual confusion and mental instability in their wake, if not worse. And, often, they leave people dead, in which state it becomes fairly irrelevant as to how open the mind is, what with it being non-functional. So there is that.

The Embarrassment of Having Stuff

Once a peasant, always a peasant.

It's amazing how one can be sculpted by life into a certain mindset. We were nothing close to destitute while I was growing up, but, let's face it, my dad was a trumpet player/arranger/composer and my mom is a singer and worked as a hairdresser while I was growing up. We weren't exactly swimming in money. We ate. We got college paid for. We had a nice house. But, we never had lots of stuff. Family vacations were rare. That kind of thing.

But, we rarely had "extras."

Which is why I had this absurd feeling last night. Keep in mind: we are anything but rich, but, we're fortunate to be okay and maybe a little more financially flexible than my parents were.

I was fiddling around in my little music studio, arranging things. (Not literally "fiddling" and not musically arranging; like, just moving stuff around.) It is a studio that is funded, mostly, with the money I make as a musician. Once in a while, I cheat and throw in fifty bucks or even a hundred from the teaching income or from our collective money, but most of it, as a result of my silly personal code of not "stealing" money from the family for my own needs, is music equipment with music money.

Whatever Can Go Right, Will

If "whatever can go wrong, will," then I think it is also true that whatever goes right will be under-appreciated. I also think that "whatever can go wrong, will" implies that more stuff goes wrong than goes right. Right?

Does more stuff really go wrong than right? -- or, does it just seem that way because our demands on "rightness" are a little unreasonable? All of this stuff is connected, I think. We want many things -- maybe too many things -- out of life and when we don't get them, we feel conspired against by the fairies or by God or by the machinations of Fate.

Sadly, for some -- and at some times, for all of us -- it is true it rains problems and people find themselves existentially adrift. We can't deny that. But, all things being normal, most of us lead lives on pretty solid, dry ground.

In the woods, on a "snow day"
with my Wiffleball Warriors

"Appreciate what you have" is another popular mantra, whether from a religious or a from secular spiritual perspective. It is good advice, really, and it implies the need to thank some higher power for all that is good. But I would bet that the "whatever can go wrong will” perspective comes from the failure to do that on a small scale; not to the lofty level of saying “dear God, thank you for keeping my baby healthy” but from breezing past the many small, fortunate occurrences in our lives. In short, whatever can go right, will, but it will be under-noticed and soon forgotten about. The bad air sticks in our lungs like cigarette tar, but the bad things are breathed in and exhaled to dissipate and to mingle with those iconic molecules of Caesar’s last breath up in the ether.

Reality in a Holographic World

Love. Touch. Sight. Sound. Scent. Taste. Pain. All of these are filtered through both the conscious and unconscious mind and they all manifest themselves in an individual's own interpretation, for him or herself. That interpretation is that person's reality. That reality is not something whose validity can be argued against, because it is what has taken root in the individual's mind through the routes of taste, touch, sounds, sight and scent.

I'm not talking about the ideas surrounding the feelings, I am talking about the feelings themselves. My love is mine and yours is yours and they are different, though they are both true. My pain might not be pain to you, but, to me, it is what it is. That is real.

For that reason, I think reality only exists inside of us or between us, when we experience each other through the senses above.

The rest? Unreality. What Holden Caufield would call "phony." What drove his creator into a shack and into a jumpsuit. All of the things we label as "real life" from money to government are nothing but constructs. They are not real, in the cosmic sense, though the impact of their phoniness can be felt in many real ways. This is what drives those who can sense true reality insane; or, at least, to the fringes.

The old fellows were right: transcendence is the only path to reality. We need to live for ourselves without hurting others and to seek reality and be conscious of our impact on the reality of others. Reality exists in our thoughts and it extends no farther than our nose, ears, tongue, eyes and fingertips.

The rest is holographic.