Individuality on the road
I don't know if it's the caffiene high I've been on for a few days, or just the aftermath of a really good review, but I can't stop lately. Thoughts are exploding into one another and I don't know why. Driving home from my workshop (120 miles away from home) I had a spooky revelation.
People are sheep. Sorry, but it's true. I don't mean it in the way Christians are supposed to be the flock of Christ, but there is some similarity between what I mean and the way fundamentalists and neo-conservatives and the right wing media act: They let someone else do their thinking for them. We are all guilty of this at some level. You either agree with something that Pat Robertson or Rush Limbaugh said because they said it, or you disagree with it just because they said it. Moments of listening and responding to what was sad, without the ad hominem baggage, are rare. Most people don't think for themselves.
Psychologists talk a lot about identity. At least, I assume that what they talk about. The few phsyotherapists I had talked about my identity as a person instead of my identity as teh roles I play in my life: husband, son, brother, writer, etc. It is a basic human need for each individual to be felt and dealt with as an individual, and not as a label. How many times do we treat other people according to some label: Dittohead, Fundie, Left-Wing Nut. How often do we hate it when we are treated by someone else as if we were nothing more than a label? It's a basic human dichotomy. We can't help but pigeonhole people and fight against pigeonholing, yet we let others do our thinking for us.
What happens? A conflict in how we deal with the world around us. We desire to be individuals and yet we want to be part of a crowd, but not part of a label. We let other people think for us. Our rampant desire to be dealt with as an individual comes out in more twisted ways. This really applies to Americans, I think. I don't think other countries have this problem, but I have a stereotype in my head that Europeans and Asians, for example, are on the whole more level headed than Americans. They may have this problem elsewhere. Individualism working like mad to exert itself in a culture that doesn't really promote individuality give us one odd behavior that I willingly, begrudgingly, admit to.
I hate following other vehicles when I drive.
Makes sense, though, doesn't it? How many times do you pass someone because even though you're going 70, 75 miles per hour, they're too few car lengths ahead of you? I'm not talking about passing semi's and trailers, that's safety. I'm talking about passing a sedan because deep inside you want to be going 2 mph faster than they are.
George Carlin once observed that anyone driving slower than you is a moron and anyone driving faster than you is a maniac. How true. I accepted it as another American hypocrisy, but last night I realized it is the symptom of a deeper cultural-psychological scar.
I only hope I can figure out how to heal it before anyone else does.
People are sheep. Sorry, but it's true. I don't mean it in the way Christians are supposed to be the flock of Christ, but there is some similarity between what I mean and the way fundamentalists and neo-conservatives and the right wing media act: They let someone else do their thinking for them. We are all guilty of this at some level. You either agree with something that Pat Robertson or Rush Limbaugh said because they said it, or you disagree with it just because they said it. Moments of listening and responding to what was sad, without the ad hominem baggage, are rare. Most people don't think for themselves.
Psychologists talk a lot about identity. At least, I assume that what they talk about. The few phsyotherapists I had talked about my identity as a person instead of my identity as teh roles I play in my life: husband, son, brother, writer, etc. It is a basic human need for each individual to be felt and dealt with as an individual, and not as a label. How many times do we treat other people according to some label: Dittohead, Fundie, Left-Wing Nut. How often do we hate it when we are treated by someone else as if we were nothing more than a label? It's a basic human dichotomy. We can't help but pigeonhole people and fight against pigeonholing, yet we let others do our thinking for us.
What happens? A conflict in how we deal with the world around us. We desire to be individuals and yet we want to be part of a crowd, but not part of a label. We let other people think for us. Our rampant desire to be dealt with as an individual comes out in more twisted ways. This really applies to Americans, I think. I don't think other countries have this problem, but I have a stereotype in my head that Europeans and Asians, for example, are on the whole more level headed than Americans. They may have this problem elsewhere. Individualism working like mad to exert itself in a culture that doesn't really promote individuality give us one odd behavior that I willingly, begrudgingly, admit to.
I hate following other vehicles when I drive.
Makes sense, though, doesn't it? How many times do you pass someone because even though you're going 70, 75 miles per hour, they're too few car lengths ahead of you? I'm not talking about passing semi's and trailers, that's safety. I'm talking about passing a sedan because deep inside you want to be going 2 mph faster than they are.
George Carlin once observed that anyone driving slower than you is a moron and anyone driving faster than you is a maniac. How true. I accepted it as another American hypocrisy, but last night I realized it is the symptom of a deeper cultural-psychological scar.
I only hope I can figure out how to heal it before anyone else does.
posted by Josh English @ 11:04 AM
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