pic nicked from here
It’s a habit of youth and one that too few people ever grow out of: Building oneself a box and getting stuck inside it. A human will assign themselves a category and then play that role out. I’m a punk, they’ll decide. I like this and hate that. I’m a feminist, I hate this and like that. And so forth and so on. Their personality is a check-list.
In a sane society, it would be considered a form of retardation.
Our society, however, is far from sane. We consider an identity to be a personality. When talking about who someone is, we often describe them in short-cuts and symbols: That’s Joe: he’s a Chinese, hippy art student.
Why, you almost feel like you know the fellow! But you don’t.
The bad news is that Joe might also describe Joe like that, even to Joe. In that case, he doesn’t even know himself. All he knows is the check-list. Where he conforms to the category and where he differs from it. But his personality? Who knows what the fuck that is?
Not Joe.
The categories often seem passed down from on high, like stone tablets from the hand of Hollywood Moses. The jocks do this, the preps do that, poets live like this and bankers live like that. A thousand movies reinforce these stereotypes and a million people act them out. It goes on and on.
It all seems oh-so-very real.
But it’s not.
It’s all just some shit, invented by some dead bozo to explain something he didn’t understand. Those stone tablets are cardboard. These identities were created by people who know no more than you. They all shat sitting down. And most of them are long dead anyway. So how much fun can they be?
Just the other day, at the football game, I was sitting close enough to get a good look at the cheerleaders.
Like any painted corpse, they seemed attractive. Looking closer, I saw that the whole thing was a glamour. Their faces were average, their bodies unremarkable and their sex was some bleached teenage fantasy. But all that was hidden behind a series of symbols.
They had pretty girl, blonde hair. They wore pretty girl boots and had pretty girl make-up. Pretty girl skirts and pretty girl pom-poms. You see all of that, all of those short-forms for beauty, and you conclude: That’s a pretty girl. Yet, stripped naked and given plain hair, I doubt you’d think the same. They’re only average.
Their beauty is just a glamour.
Sadly, so are the bulk of personalities.
It’s something I try to avoid in myself. I never describe myself with titles and categories unless I’m kidding and I flinch from any attempt to press me on the matter. Pressed further, I can quickly grow irritable and rude. Calling people by categories is as vulgar, stupid and ignorant as racism or astrology.
I attempt to dress with a complete lack of subcultural references; no buttons declaring allegiance, no t-shirts celebrating bands who celebrate some way of life and no haircuts that make a statement. A simple exploration of colour, texture and fabric, concerned only with quality and written within the confines of the suit.
The suit is not genre. It’s language. The English language. Same as I speak.
And if even this has become, to twits, some sort of subculture, that’s their problem. Not mine.
I have my own problems and my obsession with suits is a psychological one. In James Gilligan’s book: “Preventing Violence” he claims that shame is a necessary ingredient in any violent act. Though time weakens the daily blow, my past causes me a great deal of shame.
While drunk, I acted badly towards stranger, friend and family alike. Things were done that can never be undone. I’m lucky to have any friends left. I had become utterly repugnant to myself.
I wonder how many of you know what that feels like.
Some, I’m sure.
It’s a shame so complete that it can’t rationally be dealt with. There’s no talking to it, no explanations or excuses and no conversation. It’s a place beyond apology. Something you can’t reason with. Luckily, there are tools other than rationality.
To regain any sense of power or control over my own life, I needed to commit an act of violence against myself. By my reasoning, I should have taken blade to gut. But doing so would have been yet another selfish act, only punishing those around me who had already endured so much, only punishing them to salve my battered conscience. They did not deserve that and I did not deserve to feel better. Live in shame. Fight through it. Keep my mouth shut.
Denied the easy route, I instead took obsessive power and control over the thing closest to my body. My wardrobe. My every suit is an act of violence committed upon myself. It’s become a pleasure but it started as a bludgeon. I’m something like a torture victim who suddenly finds themselves interested in S&M.
pic nicked from here
As such, it’s deeply irritating and offensive to be categorized based upon my clothes. It completely denies my personal truth in favour of some hand-me-down reality, often spoken by some half-smart pedant, who doesn’t know the first god-damn thing about the subject they’re speaking on. Not from the gut. Only slightly from the head.
None of this was easy for me. I did not accidentally shatter my whole image of myself as a decent human being and painfully rebuild myself from the scraps just to become someone else’s fucking cliché; to easily fit into their prison and be chained by their ignorance. Not a dandy, not a writer, not a blogger nor a Taurus.
I am, first and foremost, Ryan Oakley. Everything else is just trees snapped by a storm. None of it can stand in front of the force of will and personality. Just as you are you, I am me, and neither one of us needs to be a category.
4 comments
tanya roessler
September 20, 2009 at 2:11 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
BRILLIANT!
Nadia Lewis
September 25, 2009 at 2:46 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I have to disagree.
While most systems definitely have limitations of use, they can give you certain internally consistent information, based on the operating rules. A lot of human labeling systems draw quite broad strokes around a personality, which on their own can seem useless; however, when multiple ones are used simultaneously, can offer a rough sketch of the character at hand. (Refer to sidebar for outline of the “Ryan Oakley” character.)
I definitely agree that fine brushwork is needed to give nuance to any human portrait, and that this is only achieved by interaction with the subject at hand. Which isn’t always possible, hence the shorthand, for practical use. Can you imagine how tedious it would be to have conversations without it: “And then this human said to this other human…” Eck!
Ryan Oakley
September 27, 2009 at 12:54 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
It’s interesting that you mention the sidebar.
This post was actually brought on by my removal of the old one, just as the thoughts that led to this post brought on the old sidebar’s removal. I even considered footnoting this in the comment section but decided against it. Thank you for affording me the opportunity to do so.
The old sidebar, with its pictures dead men each with their attendant philosophies, was a grotesque error on my part. It had very little, if anything, to do with how I see myself or this blog and great deal to do with how I think other people see it. It was a condescending and clumsy attempt to make things comprehensible to first time visitors here. I have no idea what benefit I hoped to glean from doing this.
Like most things done with little thought, it just seemed like the thing to do.
But it had grown to bother me and I needed to get rid of it. So it’s with some humour that I notice you pointing to the thing as an example of what I’m talking about. I too would point to that thing. The only difference is that I would –and did– reach a totally different conclusion. It offers no rough sketch of my character. To think it does or did is exactly the problem.
This blog might offer such a sketch. The great bulk of its posts have always been public notes to myself rather than notes about myself to the public. But even it is limited. Much like looking at a big room through a little keyhole. Most of what I say, do, think or even write does not appear here and never will.
Not just little things either. But big things too. Also things that really should appear here but just never do.
(I would also like to note, though it’s totally off the point as well as being an old, long-lost battle, that also never intended to called “The Grumpy Owl.” The blog was called that. Had I ever guessed that people would start calling me The Grumpy Owl, I’m not sure that I would have called the blog that. I might have named it after a place rather than a creature. But I lost that battle a long time ago and have just accepted defeat while moving on. Thank you, at least, for calling me by my name.)
Like most of the posts here, this was just something I was thinking about with my fingers. It may often seem that I’m being assertive or judgemental but –in my actual mind as opposed to this outboard version– I never-ever put myself above or beyond anything that I might criticise here. In point of fact, I’m often criticising tendencies that I’ve noticed in myself. That anyone even bothers to read this process (t is just that, a process, for I never see any of this as being my final word on anything) or to actually comment upon it constantly amazes me. I would do neither but am thankful that people do.
I agree with your point that these systems do have a certain utility. At times, so does referring to people by their race, gender etc. It can also allow for some humour. I just think the tendency needs to be watched lest it become pernicious.
So while we can agree on the utility of short-forms and categories, I hope that we can also agree on the dangers. If I emphasized one at the expense of the other, well, that’s just where my head happened to be on Sept. 20 2009 at 2:19 am.
Dakota
September 28, 2009 at 12:03 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I, for one, would simply like to applaud your confrontation of stereotypes in general. It seems a majority of society has become far too comfortable with the stereotypes both forced upon them and those they force upon themselves; while being completely oblivious to the negativity and damaging effects they cause. I teach middle school (pause for dramatic effect) and a vast majority of my “welcome to public society, teenagers” introduction involves recognizing stereotypes and then learning to ignore them or cast them off. Stereotypes are especially damaging to young adults who’s personalities tend to begin solidifying around the teenage years. I wish I could share this post with them, but the language and imagery would most certainly give some of them nightmares and/or get me fired. That said, still, it’s almost worth it. Keep up the virtuous penning Mr. Oakley.