Redneck Chinese

There aren’t really any Asian people where I live.  If you want to see an Asian person you have to go to a Chinese restaurant.  The people who own the restaurants and work there are Chinese, but, nobody has any idea where they live.  You never see them anyplace else but in the restaurant.  They are exotic creatures in the Great American Southland and do not appear to thrive in the cultural soil Dixie has to offer.  What Sky-Lab is to astronauts orbiting earth in the airless and hostile environment of space Chinese restaurants are to Chinese people in my little redneck corner of Dixie.   They dare not venture out unprotected.  Not from a lack of oxygen and gravity, but rather from a lack of the cultural nourishment and foundation they require to thrive.

The title of this little slice of the absurdity that is my life, like my life itself, makes absolutely no sense at all.  There are no Redneck Chinese.  It’s what they call one of them there Oxymorons… like Giant Shrimp, First-strike defense and Thank God, I’m an Atheist.  You scratch your head for a while.  Then, you move on.

The problem is I can’t let things like this go.  I’m suspicious by nature and my suspicion is that Chinese people, Asian people in general actually, can be seen and used as canaries in a coal mine were, at one time, used to gage the wholesomeness of the environment.  In short, the better an environment is at supporting Rednecks the worse it will be in supporting Chinese.  The opposite it appears is just as true.  For example, Ivy League universities and high tech research facilities are always crawling with Chinese and Asians of every variety, but, search as much as you like there ain’t a redneck to be found in such places.  Not a one!

My hypothesis, for starters, is that it’s all about education, in one way or another, and rednecks and Chinese people occupy the opposite ends of that spectrum.   Statistically bout 44% of all Asians have a Bachelors Degree or higher compared to 24% for the total US population.  In the county I live in the figure is 16.2% and a very large part of that figure is made up of people known locally as “come heres” as apposed to “born heres”.  The average median income of Asians in America is much higher than any other group.  In contrast, 37% of the people who live in the county in which I reside live off a “Government check”.

Chinese people tend not to join Fundamentalist Christian Churches.  My county has a little over 30,000 people and 87 Fundamentalist Southern Baptist Churches.  Rednecks are just crazy about Fundamentalist Christianity.

Asian people tend to not be Republicans.  In the entire history of the Tea Party not one Chinese person has ever joined.  Whenever there is an election for anything where I live the local newspaper always publishes the results the very next day.  It always reads something like this…

“Everybody voted Republican again yesterday except for Mrs. Neutron and we spect Y’all know where that hateful atheist Yankee Bitch lives by now.”

It is indeed comforting to be recognized by ones community and as P.T. Barnum once remarked… “Even bad publicity is better than no publicity at all.”

All that aside what this really comes down to is culture.  What are any of us really except for our culture?  Where would we be without the pack of lies and bundle of bullshit that “we” (those of us IN our cultural group) agree to pretend to each other ARE the absolute, undeniable, truth?  We wouldn’t be human… that’s for sure.  Culture, in all its kinds and permutations defines us as human and the real rub is that part of the “deal” with culture is to “believe” that your culture is the best culture and teach that belief to your children no matter what.  Rednecks do that.  Chinese do that.  All cultures do that and, usually, out of respect for people who are different from us we are supposed to just… let… it…go.  But, we never do because our culture is the best.  Thinking, believing and teaching that to your children is how a culture survives and if there is one thing a culture wants to do… it’s survive.

At this point you are probably asking yourselves… “So, where does that leave us Mrs. N. and what the fuck are you trying to say here anyway?”

What I’m saying is this.  When you go reading statistics like half the people in America don’t believe in evolution and such & such percentage of Americans think President Obama is a Muslim and that global warming is a Liberal plot to destroy American capitalism and force us all to become communists… you have to see it for what it is and what it isn’t.  The temptation is to think it’s CRAZY.  That would be a mistake.

Culture dictates it all and there are cultures that work to promote happiness and economic success and cultures that do the opposite.   Any attempt to understand a person without understanding the culture they come out of is condemned to failure.  Not to understand this is to entirely miss one of the basic facts of what it means to be human.

I read, just the other day, in John Schumaker’s “The Age of Insanity” that  …  psychology managed to get things backward as it came to see the individual as a separate entity that operated outside larger cultural contexts.  We ended up with an asocial and misdirected field that was thoroughly preoccupied by the mythical disturbed individual.  In the midst of this preoccupation, psychology largely forgot about wider contexts in which these individuals operate.

Now, all that may not sound like much.  You may be saying… “So what?..  Big shit.”  Who gives a crap Mrs. N. and what’s it to me?”

Well Mrs. N’s gunna tell you.  A house divided cannot stand.  The smaller the world gets the less room for multiculturalism there will be.  Only the strong will survive and culture will determine strength.  The time has come for the wise to “pick” their culture.  The survival of mankind will come to be less and less a matter of luck and more and more a matter of educated choosing.  Choose wisely.

I think it is always helpful to remember the story of the single Chinese man who owned a Chinese restaurant.

One day a beautiful Chinese woman walked in. He immediately walked over and asked her out on a date. She agreed. They went out for a while, and soon, the man proposes to her. She says “Yes, but before we do, there’s something you must know. I have never had the sex, but I’ve read about it.” He says that it’s not a problem, and they are married.
On their honeymoon, the man tells his wife that since she’s a virgin, she can choose what they do first. She says “Oh, most honorable husband. I am honored to be your wife, even though I have never had the sex, but I’ve read about it. So, I have chosen to have the 69.

The husband looks confused, and after thinking about it, he says “You want.. the beef and broccoli?”

Kiss, kiss

Mrs. N.

 

I’m Upset

I read some things about elephants today that really upset me.  I have always liked elephants.  I have always found the very idea of having a prehensile nose fascinating.  I honestly can’t look at an elephant without feeling all childish inside and overcome with the excitement that comes with knowing that we are related.  Sure, we branched apart way back on the tree of life, but, we are cousins in a way and I can’t help feeling guilty when I see them performing tricks in a circus.  We all know that they were mistreated to learn tricks.  I can’t look in their eyes without feeling guilty.

What I read in the New York TIMES today caused me to become very upset.

“Since the beginning of 2012, more than 32,000 elephants have been illegally killed, according to the Born Free Foundation, a wildlife organization, and conservationists say the majority of ivory sold in China, which sells for more than $1,300 a pound on the black market, is of questionable origin. The Chinese hold the key to the elephants’ future,” said Iain Douglas-Hamilton, founder of Save the Elephants. “If things continue the way they are, many countries could lose their elephants altogether.”

It’s completely impossible for me to understand how anyone could enjoy something produced by killing an elephant.

I have nothing against the Chinese.  Their culture is ancient and they have given the world much.

Their achievements in engineering and manufacturing over the past 50 years have been astonishing and, in spite of what “some people” say, there is absolutely no reason to mistrust their motives with regard to international relations or economic trade.

I just have to wonder about a people who, on the one hand, can convince their population that they can only have one child, but, on the other, can’t stop a trade that will spell the extinction of elephants.  Quite frankly, it makes me think they just aren’t trying very hard.

The guy who owns the Chinese restaurant in my little Virginia town has been caught dumpster diving out behind the local supermarket three times by employees of the food store.   He always claims he “only take veg-a-bal… for home!”  He never has been caught bringing anything in to the restaurant, but, it makes a lot of people wonder.  I stopped eating there myself, but, a lot of local people still do.  They probably don’t know about the dumpster business.  I always felt they were talking about me whenever I picked up take-out.  They were always talking Chinese, and it always seemed to me that something funny was going on in the back room.

Maybe it was just me.   Im sure I have no right to let the fact that the Chinese are the people primarily responsible for slaughtering what’s left of the elephants on planet earth poison my view of an entire culture and population.  I should know better than to let this unfortunate situation foster ill will toward the Chinese, in my heart.

But, being a tribal creature, I’m not really sure I can, or, that I should trust the bastards.

I’m open to advice from readers.  I don’t feel like I have a lock on everything there is to know, or, if perhaps I’m being too judgmental of the diabolical little sneaks.

Is it me?

Is it just me?

 

Fecal Matters

I confess that I have never spent much time contemplating how lucky I am to have access to a flush toilet.  I learned this past week that 2.6 BILLION people have no access to any kind of a toilet at all.  They go outside and squat.  In the city.  In the country.  Along the side of the road, the railroad tracks, behind bushes, on sidewalks in big cities…. 2.6 BILLION.  Where good sanitation and toilets exist people are wealthier, healthier and cleaner.  Sanitation specialists have estimated that people who live in areas with inadequate sanitation ingest 10 grams of fecal matter every day.  A gram of feces can contain 10 million viruses, 1 million bacteria, 1,000 parasite cysts, and 100 worm eggs.  Diarrhea… nearly 90% of which is caused by fecally contaminated food and water kills a child every 15 seconds.  In nineteenth-century London one child in two died early.  When sewers, toilets and hand washing became normal child mortality dropped more than at any other time in recorded history.  Sanitation is estimated to add a minimum of 20 years to the average life.

In the United States 1.7 million people have no sanitation.  In 1993, in Milwaukee, 400,000 people got sick and more than 100 died when cryptosporidium found its way into Milwaukee’s drinking water.  Milwaukee gets its drinking water from Lake Michigan.  Milwaukee also discharges its treated sewage (treated to remove some things, but not all pathogens and not pharmaceuticals) into… you guessed it… Lake Michigan.  Since 1994, 935 MILLION gallons of full strength untreated sewage have been discharged into the lake as a result of storm water overloads of the sewerage system.

Even the most advanced… the richest countries in the world… with modern sanitation systems that are marvels of engineering STILL don’t know what to do with all the shit!  They move it around, get it out of site and hide it until they can find a place to discharge it into water.  A river, a lake, or, in the case of coastal cities… the ocean.  Usually into a body of water that provides the drinking water for someone else and ALWAYS into the closed loop system that provides us all with a home and the food we eat.

I live near Lynchburg, Virginia where raw sewage is discharged regularly, when it rains hard, into the James River, or, as it is known to Historians… The First River of America.  My local County politicians recently spent over a million dollars to construct a boat dock and fishing pier out into the James right in front of where the sewage discharges.  …And people wonder why I remain perpetually ashamed of my species.  But, don’t think things are any better where you live because chances are they ain’t.

I’m going to give you another picture and remind you about the 2.6 BILLION people who have no choice but to go outside and squat.  I hope you sigh to yourself and contemplate what a lucky bastard you are.  Here goes…

Now Mrs. N is going to get serious because she finds herself even MORE disappointed in her species today than usual.

The average human being produces about 77 pounds of shit a year and 132 gallons of urine.  There are approximately 7 billion people on earth, give or take a few hundred million.  That’s 270 billion tons of shit and 924 billion gallons of urine.  Add to that total the combined industrial, chemical and pharmaceutical output of mankind and you can begin to imagine the disgusting soup mankind is making and HAS MADE of this planet.

Male frogs and fish are producing eggs and that three eyed fish on the cartoon show “The Simpsons” ain’t no joke folks.  Every year the rate of autism and autoimmune disease climbs higher.  Every day more and more pharmaceuticals and chemicals make their way into human drinking water. We are bathed in pesticides, herbicides, artificial estrogens and all manner of newly created chemical compounds not of this earth.  Mothers milk is so full of dangerous chemical compounds that the full extent of the potential damage it can produce in newborn humans can’t even be measured.  I read in the New York TIMES that scientists state that my children have a poor chance of living as long as I will and this is in the most advanced civilization the world has to offer.   

People wonder why Mrs. N. can get a little “cranky” at times.  People are sometimes quite put off when she tells them to go fuck themselves rather than listen to them blather on about guns, or, “the fucking right to life”, or, homeless people, or, what the jerk-off politicians said today in Washington, or, how important it is for us to support fucking Israel.

You have to understand something.  Mrs. N. can’t deal with that today.  Mrs. N. doesn’t want to hear about your trip to “Whole Foods” and how you try to “eat organic” and how much better the peaches grown organically taste.  You see Mrs. N. knows that you are, in spite of where you shop and how much money you have, about as full of toxic chemicals as a piñata is of candy and we are supposed to be the lucky ones.  We aren’t one of the 2.6 billion taking a crap beside the road right now and wiping their ass with their hand, or, a stick.  We got it made… and we are STILL fucked!

Wait a minute.  Did Mrs. N. hear you say something?  Did you say that there is always hope and that, surely Mrs. N. is looking too much on the negative side.  Surely there is hope!…  Is that right?

Poor Baby.  What was your name again, Mrs. N. forgets?  Was it Pollyanna?

Well, Pollyanna, of course there is hope!  You will find it in the same place you find all the other things that keep you from crying yourself to sleep and shitting your pants whenever you read the paper.  You fucking MAKE IT UP!  You know… like religion and Santa Clause and free will…  You make up the reality you need to inhabit, try to sell it to yourself, then others, and, if they buy it and it helps them feel better about being alive…. BINGO… you got yourself a culture.  You get to pretend things ain’t so bad by concentrating on “other things”.

Now, Mrs. N. is sorry to tell you this, but, that is, unfortunately, what we already have… in spades actually.  We are like the guy who jumped out the window of a 50 story building overheard to say, as he passed the 10th floor….. “So far, so good.”

We are a failed experiment in evolution.  The earth will forget us and try to do better next time.  That is no reason not to try to enjoy the rest of the cruse.  Drinks and hour-devours will be served in the main lounge.  While you are waiting you are free to make up any kind of bullshit you like with regard to “reality”.  The management fully expects you to.  It is, after all, the one thing human beings are superb at.

One last little lesson for today.  This is funny…

This is REAL.

 

Kiss, kiss

Mrs. N.

 

 

American Exceptionalism

As the Germans say… Eigenlob stinkt.

What that means roughly translated into English is…

“SELF PRAISE STINKS!”

Have you figured out yet where I am going with this?  In case you haven’t, let me give you a little more help.  Let me make no bones about it, not beat around the bush, but instead, lay my cards on the table.

I think at this time in the history of my nation, and I am a 9th generation American, the widely held concept and “belief” in  American Exceptionalism is poison.  That’s right, I said POISON and I meant POISON.  I think it is the kind of a poison that first makes you deaf and then makes you blind, before it finally kills you dead.

As the saying goes, “Pride comes before a fall.” If there ever was a nation, a people and an empire overly ripe for that fall….. it’s America.  It is my contention that it is precisely our “pride” and our “belief” in our own exceptionalism that, like a slow acting poison, has reduced us to this state and rendered us incapable of anything even close to objectivity when it comes to not only our past and present, but, our future.

Did the phrase “American Exceptionalism” once have the unquestionable ring or truth to it?  Undeniably!  Did our founding and the rights afforded to Americans by our Constitution and Bill of Rights represent something truly “exceptional” in human history?  Absolutely!  Does the accident of being born within the borders of the United States of America, in and of itself, mean that you are better than another human being born someplace else?  No it doesn’t and that is something America will either come to grips with and internalize, or, it will take its place at the end of a long line of “exceptional” empires, that ceased to be, found today only in history books.

Human beings are funny creatures and a little understanding of just how odd we truly are is essential in making any kind of sense out of where America is today.  All the rest of the living creatures on planet earth exist in what is called a “primary reality”.  What that means is they are, if you like, pre-programmed  to act and respond to what ever life has in store for them more or less without what we understand as thinking.  Their reality is concrete and waiting for them when they enter the world and remains just as unquestionable and concrete right up until the time they exit.  The opposite is true for humans.  We are the animals that create the reality we inhabit.  We do that primarily with a thing we call “culture”.  Culture, you understand, is that big bag of bullshit and lies that we all pretend is absolute truth and promise each other we will teach our children is true too.  It’s what holds a society together.  It is the “reality” we create for ourselves to provide us with rules and guide us in making decisions that will be productive rather than counterproductive in holding our society together.

My purpose with this essay is to prove that our culture of “American Exceptionalism” has passed the point of being productive and reached the point where the smell of the “bullshit” has left us all drunk on our own… bullshit.

So, lets at least try to look at ourselves objectively for a change.  Are we the happiest people in the world? No.  Are we the healthiest people in the world?  No.  Are we the best educated people in the world?  No.  Are we the most law abiding people in the world?  No.  Are we the most optimistic people in the world?  No.

Are we the most in debt people in the world?  Yes.  Are we the most obese people in the world?  Yes.  Are we the most depressed people in the world?  Yes.  Do we have a larger percentage of our citizens in prison than any other country in the history of the world?  Yes.  Can our nation and our government run, for even one day, without borrowing money from other people and other governments that we not only “believe” but teach our children WE are BORN BETTER THAN? …… NO!

So, where is that “American Exceptionalism” to be found other than in pleasant dreams and remembrances of days long past?  Who is that flabby, punch drunk, palooka with the cauliflower ears holding the microphone and telling us that, tonight, he is going to win back the title he once had from the young and still hungry new Champ?  We say to ourselves, “He is so proud” and we comment to each other about how TRULY great he once was and that he still “believes” in himself and that, in spite of the obvious reality that he is outclassed and fooling himself, he STILL thinks he will make it past the first bell.

Is he us?

Place your bets.  As the saying goes, “Money talks and bullshit walks.”

Cultural Confusion -or- A Nation of Mutts

What is this creature we call an American?  First, he is a human being and as such a paradox.  He sticks out of nature, and yet, is hopelessly stuck in it.  He towers above nature and has awareness of his own splendid uniqueness, while at the same time, in the strangest and most repugnant way, he knows his ultimate destiny is to dumbly and blindly rot a few feet beneath the earth.  What we like to think of as the lower animals are spared this hideous contradiction.  Lacking a symbolic identity and its accompanying “self awareness” they move and act reflexively guided by their instincts.  Nameless faces in a world without time.

Philosophers, anthropologists and Darwinists have long understood that animals, in order to survive, have had to be protected by instinctual fear responses not only with respect to other animals, but to nature itself.  Reality and fear go together naturally.  The human infant is in an even more helpless and precarious position.  To assume that the fear response disappeared in such a sensitive and weak creature is folly.  Our ancestors who were the most realistic about their situation in nature had the highest chance of survival and as survivors passed their “realism” on to their offspring as a direct result of its survival value.  The result is man as we know him.  A hyper-anxious animal who invents reasons for anxiety even when there are none and obsesses on authentic reasons that do exist where ever they are to be found.

Humans, being group animals, out of necessity invented something called culture, quite by accident.  Initially it must have been nothing more than simple agreement on simple things.  As life grew more complicated more and more things had to be agreed upon for the group to maintain any degree of cohesion and functionality as a group.  Because it had survival value, like Topsy, it grew and grew to eventually encompass every aspect to human life and, in the end, came to be the primary identifying characteristic of any group of humans.

And there’s the rub!  Since mankind has always had and probably always will have a thousand questions for every certifiably correct answer available to him, something had to take place to bridge the enormous gap, complete the reality picture and dampen the inherent anxiety of not knowing.  Bullshit did that.  The agreed upon, revered, unquestioned and viciously defended bullshit we have come to know as culture.  The big lies and the little lies that every group agrees to pretend are undeniable truths.  All Gods, Goddesses, demons, religions, magic and “truths” grew and flourished from this soil and the fertile anxiety plagued mind of man.

Now all this was not only good, but essential for the survival of mankind in a hostile and unforgiving world.  A sentient being, after all, cannot proceed without a compass, at least of sorts, in a universe made up of only questions.  Culture, with all its faults and all its misunderstandings provided that compass and continues to do so to this day.

This brings us, at last, to the title of this essay.  “Cultural Confusion”… or “A Nation of Mutts”.  It confronts us with the questions that go unasked, largely, in a nation in the process of tearing itself apart.

If we understand the above and agree that man without culture is not and can never be man, it begs the question, how can multiculturalism breed anything but chaos?   How long can any sentient being pretend that his neighbor, with another compass pointing in a totally different direction than his, is anything but a profound and pernicious danger to everything he holds to not only be true, but holy?

The unfortunate, but entirely natural and utterly predictable answer is every where we care to look.  When truths are no longer universal, and agreed upon, existential anxiety begins to bubble up from the depths of man’s inherent, but carefully hidden, helplessness in the face of unforgiving nature.  He is forced to seek cover in the only place he knows, his culture, now reduced to a sub-culture in a sea of other sub-cultures.  Since a culture, capable of being questioned, no longer serves its function as an anxiety reduction system he stops questioning his culture, his lies, and becomes more and more hostile to those that dare to.  To pretend that this is not the case with America today is to deny the obvious.

What this means is, unfortunately, equally obvious.  Since neither a family, group, nation nor empire can long endure without sharing, in the most intimate and unquestioned ways, a system of anxiety reducing lies humans call culture… the center cannot hold.  It will not hold.

One of three things will take place.

1.  It will collapse into chaos and barbarism.

2.  It will, in the nick of time, invent a new and improved set of lies to teach its children and hold chaos at bay.

3.  It will surrender itself to another more powerful and better functioning culture.

What it will not do, what it cannot do, is endure in its present state of adversarial multiculturalism.  In the face of this philosophical and anthropological reality the only sensible advice that readily comes to mind is…. Hang on to your hat!

Homo Suggestibilis

THAT’S US BABY!

     We are the ape with the built in ability to “construct” a reality that best suits our needs at the time…  Evidence, proof, logic and other peoples opinions BE DAMNED!  All are totally irrelevant in the face of mankind’s innate suggestibility.  Culture is the medium by which suggestibility is channeled or directed down “acceptable” paths.   Directing suggestibility is the primary function of culture.

     Lets examine three American cities with regard to their culture and that local cultures ability to direct suggestibility and, as a result, what is considered real in that particular location.

In Salt Lake City, Utah, no one would be considered insane for believing that a magical person named Jesus visited America (after he was executed in what is now the Middle East) and spoke to the local inhabitants.  It would likewise not be considered odd for a person to believe that, after death, one would, if they conducted themselves appropriately while alive, spend eternity in the sky with their entire family by their side.  Furthermore, wearing underpants marked with secret signs and symbols would, in Salt Lake City, be considered a very wise move if one wanted to ward off demons and their influence.

In Boston it would not be considered insane to believe that the use of birth control would result in the user spending eternity in a place of torture and torment…unless said usage was appropriately confessed to a qualified celibate man sitting, in the dark, within a wooden box for the purpose of hearing such confessions.

In Lynchburg Virginia it is not considered insane to claim the earth to be but 6000 years old and our human ancestors to have ridden upon the backs of brontosauruses and stegosauruses.  It is further considered well within the realm of sanity to expect righteous people to disappear into the sky, leaving their dentures and eye glasses behind, at any moment.

     Since all three of these locations are within the boundaries of America and all three conflict rather wildly with each other…  what is a rational person to make of this?  Since the three examples given do not even begin to scratch the surface of the wildly conflicting paranormal belief systems that blanket and infect America we are want to ask…  How, and for how long can such bedlam be considered governable?

     “How many times have we heard people say they want to “find them self”or allude to the desire to be “true to themselves”?  Such talk is pure folly for all we can ever find is culture.  Each of us is destined to become culture because, as Homo Suggestibilis, we are not intended to escape.  Culture and its primary product, paranormal belief, is, or was, good for us.

     Culture is the vehicle of normal insanity and counter-intelligence.  It is the Central Bank, if you will, of “suggestion” that we draw from to transform chaos and terrifying truths into order and soothing untruths.  Culture manufactures the stupidity we desperately need and crave to function in this world.

     Culture is the “invention” of a creature in need of something to absorb the chaos and overwhelming mystery of the universe it finds itself imprisoned within.  As such, culture must be understood in the light and context of our fundamentally theological natures.  It is an invention of our paranormal belief imperative and entirely…. at its service.”

[As Christopher Dawson states]…  “While culture is an organized way of life, it is never conceived as a purely man-made order…  it is founded on a religious law of life, and this law in turn depends on non-human powers toward which man looks with hope and fear, powers which can be known in some fashion but which remain essentially mysterious, since they are superhuman and supernatural.”

     What, one must ask, can be the long term survival chances of such a creature in a world rapidly becoming overpopulated and running out of natural resources?  What…indeed?