A world of flat characters

I was once called a flat character by a flat character in my life.  The comment was directed at  a group of people, myself included.  I'm never offended by other people's opinions of me since I never spend time or effort in securing their favorable opinion.  But the comment made me think about the general subject of flat characters in the real world.

We are all flat characters in the lives of those who do not directly affect our existence, or who exist in the periphery of our lives.  We have an inner circle of friends and family and a broader circle of acquaintances including co-workers, and outside of that we are aware of information about individuals in a celebrity circuit including politicians, performers and criminals, but we are not acquainted with them in any way. And then there is the rest of the human population on the planet.  If you stop to think about it everyone outside your inner circle of friends is a flat character in your life. They exist, contribute to the plot inasmuch as they prevent you from living alone in the world and force you to adhere to established social norms, occasionally they may also be fodder for gossip. But you never see them evolve, change over time and grow.  Their storylines intersect yours occasionally but not enough to significantly contribute or detract. 

Flat characters sometimes have a significant impact on our lives.  A drug dealer that kills a member of your inner circle has a significant impact on your life, but he is still a flat character. Before that impact in your life you know nothing about him, after the impact you learn to cope without any contribution from that person.  His story remains static within yours, attached only by an event.

The person who made the comment that started me thinking about flat characters in the real world seemed annoyed to be in the company of flat characters. But it seems to me that flat characters are omnipresent and mostly neutral in our storylines. Unless, of course they invite you to lunch or try to have a conversation with you, then they are indeed annoying. Now, how can you tell whether a flat character is a potential inner circle member in someone else’s storyline?- No, I’m asking… how?  I don’t actually know. - At some point both people have to decide that they want the other person in their storyline, it has to be mutual otherwise you just end up with an annoying flat character.  The recipe seems to call for two way communication and a dash of time.

Two way communication and time seem to be essential ingredients in bringing a flat character into one’s inner circle.  Shortly after two way communication is established we decide whether that individual is someone we would like to promote into the inner circle from the realm of flat characters and we give some sort of continuity to the communication.  The circle of acquaintances is the buffer zone between flat characters and the inner circle. Seldom do characters progress from the flat character zone into the inner circle without doing some time in the circle of acquaintances.  The buffer zone is absolutely essential for the transition.  If we desperately try to pull a flat character into our inner circle without time in the buffer zone we come across as needy, desperate and even crazy.  If a flat character tries to push his way into our inner circle without time in the buffer zone, he is pushy, arrogant and meddling.  Both situations have a negative effect on the two way communication and the promotion into the inner circle usually fails.  The time spent in the buffer zone can be a few days or a lifetime.

Over time the person is brought into your inner circle. Naturally members of your family have done the communicating and the time necessary to be in the inner circle.  Similarly, a lack of communication or one-sided communication can easily demote a character out of the inner circle and into the world of flat characters in your life.  An ex-boyfriend, your best friend from grade-school or high school are often characters that once belonged in your inner circle but were demoted to flat characters in your life over time, distance and diminished communication.  You know about them, and perhaps you send out a card or an occasional e-mail, but you no longer watch them evolve within your storyline. They become flat characters.

Flat characters intersect our storylines all the time, they serve as examples, warnings, entertainment, but they remain flat over time. We care little about the flat characters in our lives, we pass them in the street, they help us in stores and work in the same office.  But remember this:  the flat characters in your life are all inner circle members in the lives of other people, and are therefore worthy of the same respect you would like the people in your inner circle to receive form the flat characters in their lives. It’s a simple concept that can make all the difference in a world of flat characters.

Shit happens

You get up in the morning and follow your usual routine which may include ablutions, coffee, tea, exercise; whatever you feel is necessary to get your day started on the right foot. Whatever your routine may be, it is most likely safe and predictable. For example you might walk your dog, have some breakfast, shower, dress for the day, catch the bus and go to work, all very safe, predictable and repetitive. You don’t expect anything to go wrong with your morning routine, it has become second nature to you, and some of us even accept it as a prediction to the sort of day we are going to have.

If your morning routine is marred by accidents and mishaps you feel that “this is not my day”, or “this day is not starting out right”.  Let’s say that your morning routine starts with your dog chasing the neighbor’s cat up a tree, a fallen coffee grinder that scatters grounds in places you never knew existed in your kitchen, your favorite shirt is in the hamper and you miss your bus. As you sit there waiting for the next bus you consciously or subconsciously brace for a bad day. The question that I propose here is whether a bad day is inevitable at this point, are these events foretelling of the sort of day it will be, or are they unrelated events separate from the progression of what remains of the day? The way I see it there are three different schools of thought on this subject: destiny, creation and pragmatic.

The destiny argument is that our destinies are written by some sort of superior power? It is preordained, somewhere in the universe it was written that Joe Blow would have a bad day on this day. It’s inevitable and you see the cat, the grounds, the shirt and the bus as warning signs of providence and prophecy.   Your destiny was written in the stars, or whatever parchment of your choice, and can’t be changed.  Your horoscope, tarot cards and crystal ball have already decided that this is to be a bad day. All you can do is prepare for the inevitable.

The creation argument suggests that you create your own reality; you are doomed to have a bad day simply because you’ve braced yourself for one.  Somewhere in your mind you have already thought “this is not going to be a good day” and with that attitude you then attract negativity to yourself. You create your own reality and the chance events of the morning plant the suggestion of a bad day.  All of your subsequent actions during the day will have an aura of that expectation of a failure. Subconsciously you expect failure and your conscious self is happy to oblige. You actually create a reality for yourself of a bad day. This is a self fulfilling prophecy, if the prophecy of a bad day had never been suggested by the marred morning routine, you would never have created that subconscious expectation and your day would have progressed normally. The creation subscriber is going to buy some self help books that teach how to control the subconscious, create your own reality and be very successful.  It’s all in the visualization, the mind’s eye and allowing the visions you create to enter into your reality, or something like that.

And then there is the pragmatic argument.  Dogs chase cats, coffee spills, your lazy ass didn’t do the laundry and didn’t move fast enough to catch the bus. Well, if you don’t like to start your day this way leash your stupid cat chasing dog, pay attention to what you’re doing, do your laundry and get your lazy ass out of bed a few minutes earlier. The pragmatist will not read the horoscope, buy the self help book and will have whatever sort of day is ahead of him, knowing full well that shit happens. It just does, stop reading more shit into it.

god's intentions are well known

The floods in Brazil have killed almost 600 people. The news coverage of the devastation is continuous. None of the Brazilian stations cover anything else.  It is a horrible situation and it is not my intention to diminish the extent of this tragedy in any way. But there are two comments I would like to make. 

First: The news channels have got to stop saying that the tragedy was caused of “excessive rain” or “heavy rainfall”, the rain is not to blame. They should instead be saying that the tragedy was caused by “faulty infrastructure”, “lack of infrastructure”, “lack of building inspections”, “illegal hillside construction” and “illegal deforestation”.  If the infrastructure had been anywhere near appropriate this would have been prevented.  Stop blaming the rain.

Second: Every victim interviewed says that “with the help of god I was able to get out alive”, “I prayed to god to hold back the waters so I could get out”, “with the god’s help I will rebuild”.  Excuse me! Who sent the water in the first place? There is an old joke about a guy who falls into a river and is being washed away by a fast current, he manages to hang on to a branch and pull himself out.  His friends run up to him and say “Joe, thank god you’re safe!” to which Joe responds “Thank god? No! Thanks to the branch! God’s intentions are well known.” It seems to me that god’s intentions are well known in this case. I suggest we fend for ourselves.

Protective gear? We don't need no stinkin' protecitve gear

The hot water main broke in my bathroom.  It had been poorly installed and when the plumber tried to shut off the water for a remodel project, the faucet came off in his hand and hot water started gushing everywhere. After shutting off the building’s hot water and dismantling the entire bathroom they set out to fix the pipes.  They broke through the tile and changed the pipes and faucet, which introduces the video below.  The elderly plumber doing the work installed a complex system of connecting pipes. Each connection had to be sealed with a solder-like metal.  He called it solder, and since I don’t know solder from salad I believed him. He heated the pipe and melted copious quantities of solder on the connection.  Then he heated the solder and smoothed it out with a wet rag.  Yes a wet rag! There is nothing but a rag between this man’s fingers and molten metal.  The searing sound you hear in the video is the rag against the hot metal, it could just as easily be human flesh against molten metal. (I refer you back to the man dangling out of my window to install a housing unit around the air conditioner.)  Safety, what safety?  Protective gear? We don’t need no stinkin' protective gear, we got a wet rag!     Also note the baseball cap instead of face shield… very stylish!

The Kilroy instinct

What is the fascination people have for sharing information, posting blogs, pictures, facebook, myspace?   Posting mundane information, current and relevant information, instant information, illegal information, pirated music and movies.   We post everywhere and we have posted since the dawn of time, cavemen’s posts are studied to this day from France to Australia. As you walk through Pompeii there are countless modern names etched into the ancient walls.  These modern graffiti mix with ancient political campaigns and well wishes and poems on the same walls. As you visit Egyptian monuments, more of the same. People posting their presence in places they know are inappropriate.  People post pirated movies, music, software online with full knowledge of the illegality of their actions. These aren’t exceptions, they are the norm! The post medium has changed over time, but the desire to post remains the same. There are enough pirate posts online to change the course of entire industries.  Why do we do it, what’s in it for the one posting that he would defy convention and laws? We are compelled to do it.  Why?

We cannot exist alone and remain completely sane, millions of years of evolution have made us social creatures, it’s innate, and it’s part of our genetic make-up, our DNA: we are social creatures.  We are also self aware, we understand that we exist as individuals.  The combination of those two traits, society and self awareness, over millions of years has created in us an instinct for which we have no name.  It’s a basic instinct to have our existence verified by others.  It is not enough to live in society, and it is not enough to be self aware, we must have witnesses to our existence.  It’s instinctive.

The combination of social animal and self awareness evolved into an instinct that creates a desire that our society be aware of us. Self awareness alone apparently doesn’t do it for us, neither does being in society if no one is aware of us. We have evolved what I will call the Kilroy instinct, we need others to witness our existence. Something that says to others “I was here.” It’s instinctive because it is a self contained aspect of our common condition like vanity, pride, creativity, reproduction and survival, it is an instinctive aspect that is an essential component of all those conditions. The Kilroy instinct mixes the social creature with the self aware creature who then expects an awareness of the self from society. It wants to say “I’m here”.

It’s not pride, it’s not ambition, it’s not ego, but it is an element in each of those things. Without this instinct we would not have pride, ambition or egos, it is an essential ingredient to human aspiration. Consider pride without an aspect that thirsts for witnesses, for social awareness.  Consider vanity without an aspect that thirsts to make the statement “I am here, be aware of me”.  It’s instinctive, like breathing, it’s self preservation, but it’s not the self preservation that keeps you from jumping out of an office building window, it’s the self preservation what hungers to have that building named after you. But it’s not ambition, it’s an ingredient of ambition. Ambition, in its many facets, says “I want more”, the Kilroy instinct is right beneath that surface saying “I want more because I will gain witnesses to my existence”.  It’s an ingredient in all of human aspirations, but not the aspiration itself, so it has no name.

We communicate to gain recognition, to be noticed, to have our existence in the world acknowledged.  It’s not the self actualization on the top of Maslow’s pyramid, a starving person, or one who is living in unstable and unsafe conditions still has this instinct.  It’s a component of every suicide note. It screams “I was here. Now you know that I was here”.  Since everyone shares this instinct we don’t stop to try to understand, we simply accept it as a natural part of who we are.  Why do jumpers leave their shoes on the bridge? Mostly because of this unnamed instinct.  Existence without some sort of validation is a depressing thing, it violates our very nature. 

The Kilroy instinct is a way to ensure continuity, an immortality of sorts.  It’s why we procreate, it’s why write books, paint, and hunger for fame, beauty and youthfulness that is noticed.  We want witnesses.  We call it art, we call it vanity, pride, ambition, gregariousness, creativity, we have many descriptions for aspects of the human condition that depend on this instinct.  But none for the essential ingredient in each of those conditions. We create art for many reasons, but each of those reasons includes an aspect of “I was here and you saw me”.  We wear makeup and the latest fashions for many reasons, but each includes that same ingredient, a need for witnesses to our existence.

We call it acceptance, we long to be accepted by our peers, our parents, our mentors, our friends.  We need people to acknowledge our existence, everyone who reads “Leonardo” on the Ramesseum wall, everyone who downloads a pirated movie, everyone who reads a tweet, a blog post, a book is acknowledging the existence of the person who posted, is witnessing his existence in action. It says “I was here, and you saw it”.

It’s the reason social networks have boomed, it’s part of the reason we write blogs, it’s an ingredient in the pride we take in a job well done when it’s recognized.  It’s not pride, it’s a component of pride. It’s a component in the reason we erect tombstones on graves, it’s an ingredient in why we find the desecration of that same tombstone offensive:  it goes against our Kilroy instinct. The tombstone says “I was here” to deface that goes against our instinct.  It’s not an instinct to preserve the memory of the dead, but it is one of its elements. It’s a component of friendships, a friend is a constant witness to one’s existence as is a husband or wife or a child. It is even involved in our need to create gods.  If we have no other reliable witness to our existence, if there is nothing we can do ourselves to gain verification of our existence, if there is no wall upon which to etch our names, then god suffices.  No one else may know I exist, but “God loves me”.

It’s part of the reason we admire people who have become famous, it’s the part of the reason we buy gossip magazine.  Our instinct for recognition and witnesses to our existence see the celebrities’ complete recognition by society and is drawn in, it wants more, it basks in the reflection. It’s a bit like staring at a picture of a pitcher of ice-tea when one is thirsty.

This thirst, this biological need for acknowledgment of our existence, this desperate desire to have our existence recognized doesn’t have a name.  It’s not “ego”, though Freud skirted the concept with his id/ego routine, but he addressed human aspirations, not the components of those aspirations. - By the way, he also lost all credibility with the whole ‘penis envy’ concept.  Seriously ‘penis envy’? Sheesh!

So it doesn’t have a name, I called it the Kilroy instinct, you may call it whatever you like.  It is the unsung hero or villain of the human condition. Whether it is good or evil, it is part of us and unless we give up being social beings or self aware, it will continue to be a part of us and it will keep us posting on cave walls, and on the internet until the end of our days.

Offensive language for offensive intentions

So Mark Twain’s classic story of a boy growing up in the American south during slavery is being rewritten… The adventures of Huckleberry Finn is being expurgated.  All the nasty offensive bits are being removed so it is more palatable to today’s more politically correct audience.  It will no longer offend our delicate sensibilities. Electing Bush twice and killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people in two illegal wars is palatable; the N-word in a classic work of literature however, is more than we can take.  To the 40% of the Americans who don’t believe in evolution history is a malleable thing. If they don’t like it, change it, it’s that simple.  

My problems with this idea are too numerous to mention, but they can be classified into two categories, literary and historical:
Literary:

1. You didn’t write it assholes! It’s not yours to change!
2. You don’t like it…. don’t fucking read it! No one is forcing you.
3. Oh, it’s required reading at your kid’s school so you are in fact being forced to read it, you say…That’s because it’s a classic work of literature, written by a brilliant man, depicting a time in history where such vocabulary and actions were the norm and your child will benefit enormously from the knowledge. And here is a novel concept for you… let your child make up his own mind about the book, he’s in high school and even though you are a limited troll-like creature with the IQ of a Texas School Board member, there might still be some hope for your child, who knows.
4. First amendment, free speech, freedom of expression… ring a bell?
5. Censorship is a bad thing, accept that as a fact, it’s true. Repeat after me “Freedom of expression….goood. Censorship…. baaad.”

Mark Twain was never politically correct, he was brilliant freethinker who questioned the government, society and his peers.  Through his brilliant body of work he gained worldwide fame, his works have been translated and admired around the world, he is an icon of American culture.  Which begs the question of the people who are expurgating his work: Who the fuck are YOU?

Historical:
The time and place of the story could never be politically correct by our standards, there were in fact slaves in the south and the N word was used in reference to them.  That cannot be changed. It already happened. It’s done. It can no more be changed than the US’s economy and international credibility can be restored after GWB.  It’s gone and cannot be altered.

Now as to the N word that is so offensive: it’s just a word, a specific group of letters to which a meaning is assigned. That group of letters can only be as offensive as the meaning that is assigned to it.  The only reason the N word is offensive is that it carries its historic connotation.  It is offensive because slavery and the demeaning subjugation of an entire population is offensive to us.  If historically it had been used to refer to puppies today we would probably think it’s a cute word. The group of letters alone is not offensive, the context and the history associated to that group of letters, on the other hand, is extremely offensive. So by removing the N word from its historic context, by expurgating The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn we are actually removing the characteristic that makes the word offensive, its association with slavery in the south. Remove slavery, subjugation, subservience, imprisonment, and the horrors of that social condition from the word and it will no longer be offensive. Similarly, remove the offensive word from the context of slavery and the context itself will be less offensive. Therefore any attempt to sanitize works like Huckleberry Finn is in fact an attempt to assuage the horrors of a slave past, and doing so is offensive to the memories and histories of the people who had to endure those horrors.  It happened! People lived through that humiliation and social depravity for centuries. And now these assholes come along with some whitewash to make it seem less than it really was.  No! The N word is offensive because its history is offensive, you cannot remove it from that context without making the context itself less offensive, and to do so is to spit in the face of millions of people who suffered and still suffer with the injustices of slavery.

It has been said that if we do not learn from history we are doomed to repeat it.  In this case it seems to me that some assholes are trying to sanitize the history of slavery in America to make it more palatable to the younger generation.  What exactly are their intentions?

Is Twitter a stage (re-edited)

The stage has always been part of human civilizations. We have always had a need to tell stories. Take a caveman painting a hunting scene on a wall, this was not the action of a lonely artist sitting in a cave by himself, it was a social occasion. We can just see the largest and bravest caveman being taunted by his fellow hunters with innuendos about size of his spear. The rules for theater etiquette started being evolving in those gatherings.

The ancient Romans had a strict social hierarchy in their theater seating arrangements, at first only the elite got to sit, later everyone sat but the elite sat in the first few rows. The rules of etiquette in a Roman theater audience were few, when blood sports are on the stage few restrictions are placed on the behavior of the audience. In the Globe the elite would actually sit on the stage. From those cave days to today we have developed a complex set of rules for behavior on and around a stage.

A few rules of etiquette are common sense and widely understood, you should arrive on time. Recently a veteran Brazilian actress managed to pass a law preventing people who arrive late from entering the theater during the performance. You should refrain from talking, especially to the actors on stage, and on your cell phone. But there is a lesser-known theater rule of etiquette that was never posted in the lobby: don't pinch the actor’s butt. Once in an off-Broadway theater I was on an aisle seat of a Frank Langella play in which the sword fight could not be contained to the stage and in a lunge motion Mr. Langella's butt was inches from my shoulder. My mother, who has always been a bad influence, whispered to me "pinch it". Even though the no-butt-pinching rule is not explicit, if I had pinched the butt of the most gorgeous man to walk the earth, I would have been kicked out of the theater and probably banned from Broadway. Heckling is a few notches below butt pinching, but still unacceptable. Throwing things on stage, unwrapping noisy candy, kicking the chair in front of you, wearing tall hats, etc. are all against etiquette.

So is Twitter a stage? Do the rules of etiquette apply to Twitter interactions? When I follow a celebrity on Twitter is he or she on a stage and am I in the audience? Is Twitter just another technological advancement of the stage, like trap doors and pulley systems or better lighting, or is it a brave new world? Am I heckling an actor on a stage if I post 140 characters that irk him, am I disrupting the audience if I post a lame story in his audience's timeline, or tweet him incessantly with mundane comments?

Twitter allows celebrities and brands to interact directly with the public, to have specific and personal conversations with the audience, so it is not a stage.  At the same time the information in such cases flows in one direction: one celebrity communicates to thousands or millions of followers in the audience, so it is a stage. But there is no script, no direction and no actual stage, so it can’t be a stage.  What the hell is it?

Recently Setephen Fry threatened to walk off Twitter because someone in his audience commented that his tweets are boring.  "I admire and adore Fry, but his tweets a bit... boring... (sorry Stephen).”  So is that the equivalent of a bad review on the NY post? Is it enough to shut down production, turn off the lights and send the caterer home?  Apparently to Stephen Fry it almost was.  Open praise and criticism is part of the communication in Twitter, but was Fry heckled on stage? Did someone throw an egg and some tomatoes onto his Twitter stage?  Brent Spiner on the other hand takes a completely different approach.  Instead of walking off Twitter when hecklers spit venom at him he adds them in his list of favorites.  Twitter provides a separate space for people to save their favorite tweets and Mr. Spiner’s is filled with the most evil and vile comments lobbed at him from the orchestra seats. He takes back control of his Twitter by turning the spot light on the troublemaker.

So is Twitter a stage? Twitter is a conversation, a stage, a seat in a lecture auditorium, crowd of strangers, a bunch of friends over for a barbecue, a news channel, graffiti on a wall, a short story, a poem, a star trek convention, an art gallery, a hug and a slap on the face all at the same time and in the same place. Suddenly the rules we spent millions of years perfecting don't apply. It's a brave new world and we are starting from scratch.  New rules must be developed, the problem is that new etiquette rules take hundreds of years to evolve and gain acceptance, but the technology that creates the necessity for those new rules evolves in a matter of months.  By the time we come up with some sort of Twitter etiquette we will be wondering if it’s rude to use the new telepathy gadget to get some racy images out of George Clooney’s girlfriend’s head.