9-2-26. An Affinity For Hierarchy, Part 1. I don’t believe I have expounded on this before, at least not here. I’ve been schlepping that phrase, “An Affinity For Hierarchy,” like a cheap, shtick slogan though I don’t really mean it as such, for a long while, for decades, going back to the 80s. As Ram Dass might put it, for me it’s “a model.” I’m going to try and open up on that phrase, like maybe I never have, and see what comes out, all of it, the bullshit and the on bended knee offering. Onto death go we all, and maybe that’s the key.
I got into Ram Dass, initially, in the Spring of 1972, on St. John in the Caribbean. I had seen the book, “Be Here Now,” on the coffeetables of friends when it first came out, in the Fall of 1971. I was turned on to it, you might say when I was ready for affirmation. I bought a copy in Charlotte Amalie for $3.33 and devoured it. It told me I wasn’t crazy, or demented, or stupid, but sensitive, imperfect, of course, with a grace/burden, the gift of presence, the presence of being, and that that was going to complicate things, but it could be OK. I was 21 years old.
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9-1-26. There are four topics of acceptable conversation in most social groups: Boasting, Chatter, Trivia and “Them-ex.”
Boasting is the showboating bombast about oneself. A boaster can go on endlessly, and override interjections with motor-mouthing, a privilege of the boaster. Boasters get upset when not acquiesced to for their ostensible superiority. Boasters demand subjugation. If you do not ebulliently subjugate, you are suspect, and not to be trusted. You should count yourself blessed to be included in the boaster’s periphery. Boasters get to lie, ridicule and debase, to be curt and dismissive.
Chatter requires no thinking at all beyond putting out the most rudimentary coherence. Drunk or sober, at dinner parties or after meetings, chatter is the guaranteed non-offensive topic to blurt out about. It might be about the weather, decorating, recent purchases, grousing and so on. Nothing consequential. Nothing complicated. Chatter is the opposite of complicated. There’s nothing “developed focus” about chatter. BlaBlaBla, everybody gets to chime in. What joy.
Trivia takes on essentially meaningless aspects of existence and makes them substantial, like when and where some event may have happened. Thinking is constricted in safe, non-complex realms. No speculation and zero ambiguity. There’s one answer. Certainty contains thinking comfortably. It’s like Bingo for the mind. Like Chatter, nothing complicated or consequential, so no self-analysis required, the way most claim to want social groups around them to be.
Them-ex is talking about someone who isn’t there. They may be someone from within the group not there up for ridicule or questioning, or anyone known to all participants outside the group. It is as popular as Boasting, Chatter and Trivia because it involves participation without inward contemplation, therefore it is non-threatening. The “sharing” involves gossip and innuendo. It’s usually attack mode but can be for praise. The key is that we all appear to agree.
Nowhere on this list is vulnerability, opening up with sincerity about doubts and ambiguities. That would mean thinking and self-reflection, which is very frightening to most groupisms, who consider it rude to raise such perspectives. The idea is to keep it stupid and sloganistic, so that there’s a sense of “us,” as in “we.” I do not offer congeniality to tolerate Boasting, Chatter, Trivia and Them-ex interactions beyond a one-shot deal, if even that. They are minor adjunctives at best, way after sharing of being.
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8-29-26. One-liner Therapy, Part 3. I am too influenced by one-liner therapy to ever be upset by anything. That’s hyperbole, of course. But one-liner therapy helps me to “let go,” and letting go is essential to health. Onto death go we all.
Just as I support coalitions on issues and coalitions on candidates political activism, I do not acquiesce to group demands for participatory inclusion when mutual respect is not stressed and criticism is not accommodated. I marvel how gross, unethical impropriety can be tolerated and collective intervention dismissed as long as group loyalty, the value most praised, is clear, present and consistent.
We can twist “religious” and “political” (and other) communities into dumbing down requiring acquiescence and subjugation. My last experience with a political group expected going along with all manner of irrelevant positions on issues, and you were “seriously ignorant” if provocative. I accept the badge of honor being “cut off” from those who wouldn’t know courage, principle and honor if it was
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