MrNepathy's Blog

I won’t pretend that being born in the 1970s and growing up in the 1980s made me strong or brave. My biggest challenge was trying to figure out how to help Yar get his revenge or only having two of the Predacons which meant not being able to form Predaking. But I did grow up in a time when we still had the vague threat of nuclear annihilation. Growing up I had a poster on my wall of a mushroom cloud. To this day I’m not sure why I had it. Perhaps I had it as a testament to how I wasn’t afraid of such a thing. Maybe I had it because on some level, I actually was afraid. We had movies and novels all about the Soviets trying to launch World War III. The perceived invincibility of youth kept those fears back. Or maybe it was a simple understanding that most people, if given the choice, wouldn’t blow up the planet.

Recently some overpriced network pundit formulated the theory that the America from the days of the “Mean” Joe Greene Coca Cola commercial era is gone. He was actually crying by the end of his editorial. John Stewart was quick to point out that the Coke commercial aired around the time of the Iran hostage crisis and the gas shortage when you had to wait in line for hours for gas. People always seem to imagine that they lived in a better world “back then.” It’s often said that hindsight bestows upon us perfect vision, but then why is it that nostalgia blinds us to the full details of a situation? We look back at our early days imagining an only slightly-stained utopia where kids respected adults, the government was honest and things were done right. They weren’t.

But there is something to be said about the quest for survival and how it affects us. With every generation our survival becomes an easier struggle. We develop better medicine and technology. Old enemies turn into new, though often tenuous, allies. Even during this prolonged recession we haven’t had the sort of reactions that occurred during the crash that caused the Great Depression. Lives have been affected, to be sure, and many people are worse off than they were, but it seems to be more of an issue of debt than survival.

Perhaps generations, or cultures, are guided by the same behavior patterns of the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems in individuals. Simply put, when a person is at rest or at ease the parasympathetic system allows us to digest and perform normal functions. When we feel threatened our sympathetic system takes over. Some normal functions slow down or halt altogether. Our bodies switch over to “fight or flight” mode. All of a person’s energy is devoted towards survival. At these times we are incapable of certain normal functions. In other words, “no time for love Doctor Jones.” In times of war the government has rationed things like butter and gasoline. The economy kicked into high gear as people went to factories to build tanks, make ammunition and uniforms. The sympathetic nervous system of the United States started up. As a nation we were in “fight” mode.

Maybe we are better off in that mode. I don’t think the America of old is gone, but I do think there has been a shift in how we relate to things. With the Information Age comes disinformation and misinformation. We’ve turned YouTube ranters into nearly legitimate celebrities. Cry about people bothering Brittney, we’ll give you a sitcom on non-standard cable. We expect the people that whine on an island while trying to win one million dollars to star in TV shows and movies. We’ll make Monopoly into a movie and take the thing you loved from childhood and twist it into a horrible perversion of itself. Sometimes, we’ll even make it better. Maybe we’ve lost our imagination. Maybe we’ve embraced the feeling of playing it safe. You know what I loved as a kid? Red Dawn. You know what I never needed to see made into a remake? Red Dawn. It will have lost context. People will think the Cold War is a typo for the Cola War. Like a show about logging? Here are two more, including one about logging in a swamp. We’re tripping over ourselves in the race to be supremely unoriginal.

But that’s not even the real problem. The real problem is because we have lost our real enemies, we’ve created new ones. Don’t like the health care plan? Well just compare it to Nazis. It’s socialized medicine and the Nazis were socialists, so clearly the two are equivalent. On what world does that make sense?

Some people believe the only way to support one candidate or idea is to completely hate the other. The world is far more complex and beautiful than that. We can support someone without hating their opposition. Life isn’t one of those “get to know you” surveys you fill out in email. You don’t have to choose between tea or coffee, vanilla or chocolate… you can say you like both. Being a Star Wars fan doesn’t mean I hate Star Trek. I love Marvel but can admit Dark Knight is a fantastic movie. I voted for Obama but I cannot deny the dignity and grace that McCain had during his concession speech… though good luck getting me to watch Jay Leno.

When did we lose our ability to disagree with something while still seeing the merit behind the intention? When did we revert to some binary system where everything is right or wrong? Shouldn’t there be a .5 somewhere in between the 1 and the 0? I’m sorry to disagree with you Obi Wan but Sith aren’t the only ones that deal in absolutes. Americans do as well. The only thing we aren’t absolute about is our cynicism. We are lousy at being cynics.

You tried to sell a political office? You’re fired. We can’t trust you. But please accept this parting gift of a chance to be on Celebrity Apprentice. So on one hand we reward horrible behavior but with the other we chastise people for taking on a large problem like health care. We apply our cynicism to the wrong things. Celebrities rally to help Haiti and people criticize them for using it as a publicity stunt. Shouldn’t our default setting be to believe that it was out of the kindness of their hearts? Even if it weren’t, really, who cares? A check for one million dollars cashes the same no matter if it was to make celebrities look good or if was sincerity. My former supervisor decided to collect jackets, gloves and hats for the homeless to help a charity. He collected two large boxes worth of things from donations from coworkers. I have no doubt in my mind that he did it because he believes in the cause. If he had power and fame would he have used his influence to gather more? Absolutely. Free Tibet seemed like a ploy to me. That felt like people chose an unwinnable struggle in order to make the ordeal seem more grand. Helping Haiti doesn’t seem like a ploy. But we’re burned out on people. We trust no one and that’s horrifying. Are we so unused to kindness that we immediately believe any hint of it is a deception?

The days of America being fantastic aren’t gone. We’re just so shielded and protective that we can’t see it any more. People take offense at the ridiculous. They want the government to protect them from things they don’t like. The purpose of government is to protect the least common denominator. Clearly some things should be illegal. They have clear victims and so should not be condoned. Your sensitivities are not a victim. The public airwaves and media can and should be filled with all speech, both foul and clean. We’ll allow erectile dysfunction ads during the Super Bowl, but the news will rant that there’s nudity in a video game geared towards adults that is to be sold to only adults and played by adults. I could find fifteen worse things on the internet in less time than it takes to type this sentence. If your life is so easy and soft that you have the time to go out an rally against a video game that your kids shouldn’t be playing anyway, then you should probably spend your time writing thank you notes to life because it sounds like you have it pretty good. Put a puma between you and the mailbox and we’ll see how important it is that you might get offended by something you have no intention of ever taking part in. Learn that part of being in a free society is that there are parts of society you won’t like, and there will be things you do that someone else doesn’t like. I won’t take away your cigarettes if you let me shoot pixilated people in the face. Let me watch Rescue Me and I’ll let you read Hustler. I really don’t care what you do. You shouldn’t care what I do. We’ve slapped enough warnings on things that it should all be covered now. I’m fine with warnings and love ratings systems. It’s censorship I hate. It’s the belief that if you don’t like something then it shouldn’t exist that I can’t stand. Who cares what you like. I don’t have to care. I just have to allow for a world in which you are free to like it.

The America of my youth isn’t gone. Our will to withstand things that are different is what has suffered. We need to be daring, we need to accept things are going to irritate us and we need to realize that someone that comes up with an opinion contrary to our own isn’t evil. That person might not even be wrong. I don’t challenge you to disagree with me, or this blog; I encourage it. But you can disagree without assuming I’m stupid or nefarious. My friend thinks we need something bad to happen so that we put aside all the small irritating things. Maybe then we would stop creating confrontation and turmoil where neither exists. We also need to stop using days that never existed as an example of how things should be. The world was never perfect and will never be perfect. But it was a little better when we didn’t have 30 channels of “news” so people could tell us how bad things are. I can’t and wouldn’t take you off the air, Mr. Pundit. It’s freedom of the “press” and speech. All I’m doing is using my freedom of speech to tell you you’re not Andy Rooney. America is still great because it lets people like you with their ridiculous, melancholy and hyperbolized statements voice their opinions.

Title taken from “Leningrad” by Billy Joel.