The Reluctant Cynic

For someone who really considers himself an optimist and as such strongly decries cynicism, I fear I give in to cynicism far more often than I care to admit. Of course, I prefer to think of myself as being more jaded than cynical, but realize the line between the two is often so thin as to be non-existent. Be that as it may, no matter how hard I try, I can’t escape the fact that I truly despair by what I see as the state of the world. We seem to constantly be presented with views of the underbelly of humanity.

You’ve undoubtedly noticed that one of the strongest recurring themes in these blogs is my utter inability to understand either the world, or, far too often, other assumed members the species to which I belong. How can anyone with an iota of awareness possibly understand, let alone justify, what lies behind and beneath the incomprehensible stupidity, cruelty, bigotry, hypocricy, and ignorance that constantly assail us—and that we ourselves too often display?

How can any intelligent person cling to hope for the future of mankind when nearly every TV commercial seems very deliberately designed to mislead us; when every computer’s “In” box is awash daily in dangling bait so egregiously insulting to the most basic concept of intelligence? How can anyone capable of communicating thought not only produce such utter garbage but expect anyone capable of reading to respond to it? What motivates them to do so is simple: 99.5 percent of all the steaming elephant dung plopped into our computers' Spam folder—into which I regularly dumpster-dive for blog material—has one reason for being there: greed. Those who respond to it are complicit by eagerly seeking something for nothing (a Ph.D. in brain surgery by mail? Earn $10,000 a day at home typing envelopes? It is to weep!). Our politics is an open sewer of self-serving lies and hypocrisy and misrepresentation.

Our media is increasingly being taken over by talking-head pundits and predatory political sociopaths without conscience, compassion, remorse, or regret (Fox News, anyone?). Their claim to being human is largely genetic, and they apparently derive a sense of superiority in pouring gasoline on any potentially volatile issue.

Of course, the saddest, most discouraging and "abandon-all-hope-ye-who-enter-here" aspect of the internet is that it is, indeed, a net cast into a rich feeding ground for predators. If there weren't huge numbers of people unwilling to use, or incapable of using, common logic, the predators would starve. And while that prospect is unlikely in the extreme, there is some small comfort to be taken from the fact that from what I can gather—the exact same message being received from several different spammers, for example—that major spammers franchise out their crud to lesser spammers. It appears to be some sort of a pyramid scheme and a perfect example of a snake swallowing its own tail. Secondary spammers are conned by the primaries into thinking they're going to get rich. All of which proves that those who send out spam are just as prone to being suckered as the people to whom the messages are sent.

That after several thousand years of struggle and sacrifice to establish a civilization we, as a race, have produced a society which seems to thrive on taking advantage of others, and we are back at the first sentence of this blog.

Gloom and despair descend upon the land, and the dark closes in.

Quick! Someone bring me a basket of kittens!

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday and Thursday. Please take a moment to visit his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, you might want to check out Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1), which is also available as an audiobook (http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=sr_1_1?asin=B00DJAJYCS&qid=1372629062&sr=1-1).

Teeter-Totter

Life is a lot like a teeter-totter, in that balance is always strived for and seldom if ever achieved. We are all constantly going through the ups and downs of happiness and misery, success and failure, and too often having our rear-ends slammed jarringly on the ground. Getting both ends of the board level is one of those forever-elusive goals of which life is, in fact, made. And once balance is achieved, either in life or on the teeter totter, it never lasts long.

All my life I have sought—largely unsuccessfully, of course—to find a balance between my totally unrealistic egoism and my excessive and unhealthy self-loathing. It's a theme touched on constantly in these blogs. (I am not content to merely beat a dead horse; I insist on pureeing it.) My egoism makes me demand far more of myself than I or any human being could ever possibly deliver, but that doesn't stop me from demanding it. And it is my inability to meet those demands—or even come within walking distance of them—which fuels the self-loathing which truly frightens me at times.

I think, yet again, that I am so utterly fascinated with life that my frustration often stems from weighing everything there is to see and learn and do against what I have seen, or learned, or done or will be likely to live long enough to do. I see life as a vast candy store, and myself a little kid shoveling candy into my mouth with both fists until I look like a chipmunk with both cheeks bulging. And then I get angry because I want it ALL and my mouth simply cannot hold any more.

I've often noted that every toddler thinks of himself as being the center of the universe. Life soon dissuades most of that notion, but I fear it has never totally succeeded with me. Even today, battered and shop-worn and often thinking of myself as being in the "Free! Help Yourself" bin at a rummage sale, I am consumed with the wonder of life. I am quintessentially aware that since the instant time began, through all the time involved in the birth and life and death of stars and galaxies, and onward through the rest of eternity, I am the only "me" there ever has been or ever will be. (Of course, so are you: but it's still a mind-boggling thought.) How could I not think I am special? How could you not think you are?

And since I am so very special in my keen awareness, why shouldn't I be equally special when it comes to everything/anything else? But I am not, and I cannot—-well, let's make that absolutely refuse to—accept that fact. (We won't go anywhere near the subject of my tenuous relationship with reality here.) 

Balance is often achieved through accommodation, through a system somewhat similar to the way submarines and lighter than air craft use ballast; getting rid of some excess weight here, or moving/adding it there. I fear I'm not all that good at accommodations. I want what I want without having to give up any of what I already have. Hardly practical or logical, but fully realizing that fact does not materially change things.

But on thinking it over (as writing these blogs often makes me do), I realized I actually have found something of a tenuous balance on life's teeter-totter despite myself. Every teeter-totter has two seats, one at each end, and in effectively dividing myself into Dorien and Roger, my life has two parts. The real-world Roger, who must deal as best he can with the infinite frustrations and anger of daily life, and Dorien, who is largely able to ignore the wars Roger fights every day, and simply gets on with writing of worlds in which evil and cruelty exist only, as the scripts of plays often call it, as "voices off." Dorien's life is far less stressful, and while Roger must still constantly struggle for balance, it gives him comfort to know that he can use Dorien as emotional ballast to keep the teeter-totter a little more level.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday and Thursday. Please take a moment to visit his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, you might want to check out Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1), which is also available as an audiobook (http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=sr_1_1?asin=B00DJAJYCS&qid=1372629062&sr=1-1).

In, but not Of

When I was very young, having one day seen God looking down at me while I was watching clouds, I was utterly convinced that I was very, very special and that I would one day do great and marvelous things. To some degree, I still cling to that belief after all these years. (It is sometimes a blessing to be unfettered by reality.)

My sense of being in but not of the world is a common theme for these blogs, mainly because I still retain the concept of "me" and "everybody else" being mutually exclusive. I have always lived in a state of extreme envy for what others can do with such grace and ease that I cannot. I watch clips of rock concerts where what I assume everyone else thinks is music causes everyone to rock and sway and thrust their arms over their heads, obviously having an absolutely wonderful time. Were I there, I would stand like Lot's wife, totally immobile and excruciatingly embarrassed and furious with myself for not being able to "let go."

I hate doing things which I feel call attention to myself, which is why I don't dance. My assumption that anyone other than myself would notice me at all is an example of my perverse form of narcissism. And of course by not dancing while everyone else does, I...call attention to myself. I just can't seem to win.

I’m sure the fact that I knew from age 5 that I was homosexual is perhaps the major factor in these feelings of not belonging. Well, they aren't just feelings. I don't belong. Surrounded by a world of people to whom I could never really relate, never understanding what all these male-female interactions/courtships/rituals were all about...or caring...shaped my character and my life. Being gay may not be all I am, but it is the foundation upon which everything that makes me  “me” is built.

I've never wanted to be normal, and have succeeded beyond my wildest dreams on that one. I suppose a case may be made that normalcy, like beauty, is in the eyes of the beholder, and for as deeply as I hate and fear mirrors, I am constantly figuratively holding a mirror up to myself and never, never liking what I see.

Thank God that as a balance all those things I want so desperately but do not have, I do have an exquisite sense of irony and the ability to keep my tongue planted firmly in my cheek. I almost never, even when I am ranting and raving and beating myself mercilessly about the head and shoulders with my perceived flaws, allow myself to take myself too seriously. It's almost as if I were my own walking "in" joke. I have, and take full advantage of, the right to criticize myself mercilessly. But no one else has the right to do so. This has, throughout my life, caused innumerable problems. 

I began, also as a child, to belittle myself simply as a means of beating others to it...to say "I know my flaws; I don't need you to point them out to me." And it got out of hand. As I have reported a couple of times in previous blogs, my best friend in college once said, "Roger keeps telling people how terrible he is until they begin to believe him."

And all this is compounded by the fact that there is so very, very much that I want to do, so very many things I want to be, so much I want to know, to see, to experience. One one level I know full well that no single individual could possibly do all these things in a lifetime. But Tony travels the world, and Wayne has a vast knowledge of literature, and Travis is physically beautiful, and Gary is unflaggingly kind and wise, Bil knows opera, and Franklin flits back and forth between his condos in Chicago and Ft. Lauderdale, and....And we are again back to the world's unequal division between "me" and "them." "Me" is singular, "them" is collective, and I am hopelessly, hopelessly overwhelmed. On one level, I understand and accept all this, but down deep, where my timid soul peeks out from under the thick comforter of my memories, it is all utterly incomprehensible, and I totally overlook the good things in myself to ache for what I do not and never can have.

Accepting myself for who and what I am and for what I have always been and always will be is an ongoing struggle. And despite concentrating far more heavily on my flaws than my gifts, I stumble on, so overwhelmed with the wonder of life that I can truly not see my own position in it. Though, catching a glimpse of myself while passing a shop window, I can sometimes convince myself for a brief moment that we are two separate beings, and that perhaps the reflection I see is really one of "them."

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday and Thursday. Please take a moment to visit his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, you might want to check out Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1), which is also available as an audiobook (http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=sr_1_1?asin=B00DJAJYCS&qid=1372629062&sr=1-1).

I, Philistine

philistine: a person who is hostile or indifferent to culture and the arts, or who has no understanding of them

It is not that I am either hostile or indifferent to culture and the arts, but I do tend to have far less understanding of them than I should. I have always had the ability to stand apart from myself and   study what I see with, I hope, objectivity. I have found that, overall, my knowledge is like a very large but very shallow lake. To paraphrase an old song lyric, I know a little bit about a lot of things, but I don’t know enough about much about almost anything.

Last night I went with my friend Gary to a performance of the really fine DePaul University orchestra. I always enjoy hearing them play. The program consisted of  William Walton's Capriccio Burlesco  and Sergei Prokofiev's Symphony No. 5 in B-flat Major, neither of which I was familiar with. Unfortunately, when it comes to classical music, I have a requirement that one instrument must be played in order for me to appreciate it: my heartstrings. If my heart is not somehow involved in the performance, I am unmoved, and if I am unmoved, I am unable to appreciate it to the degree I know I should and probably would if I knew more about musical composition. My simple criterion for enjoying any piece of music is whether I can, after hearing it, remember and hum all or even parts of it?

I can with Tchaikovsky (I can hum pretty much his entire repertoire, and he is the ultimate virtuoso of the heartstrings), and Wagner, and a number of other composers. I expect flow and logical-to-me progression, and while the vast majority of major musical works obviously have them, the more technically constructed/musically complex the work, the less my ability to appreciate it fully tends to be.

Being a philistine encompasses much more than culture and the arts. I am a philistine in expecting everyone to like or dislike the things I like or dislike to the degree that I like or dislike them, and in being automatically and unfairly dismissive of those who do not see things in the same way I do.

My attitudes toward organized sports is an excellent example of my personal philistinism. I simply do not understand organized sports and people’s to-me-totally-mystifying addiction to them, and I suspect that I resent those who do understand and appreciate them simply because I don’t. I never have, despite any number of half-hearted attempts, managed either to figure out what the hell was going on, or to care when it is explained to me.

Perhaps my most shameful form of philistinism can be found in my attitudes toward heterosexuality, though I must hasten to  point out that my antipathy to the state of heterosexuality does not extend to the nine out of ten individuals who are, through no fault of their own, heterosexual. My prejudice is based equally upon my sincere inability to understand what makes heterosexuals “tick” and my anger and resentment at having lived my life being considered, in the eyes of the heterosexual majority, as something of a lesser species.

I should also point out that there is also a considerable difference between being an internalized philistine, which I consider myself to be, and an externalized philistine, whose actions can directly and all too often negatively impact the lives of others.

However, not wanting to be a philistine and not being one are two different things and, in my case at least, rooted in my admitted unwillingness to exert the time and effort necessary to change.

As that wise philosopher Popeye so sagely put it, “I yam what I yam.”

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday and Thursday. Please take a moment to visit his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, you might want to check out Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1), which is also available as an audiobook (http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=sr_1_1?asin=B00DJAJYCS&qid=1372629062&sr=1-1).

Political Correctness

I’ve never opened a blog with a caveat/disclaimer before, but when I wrote and sent this one to my friend/webmaster Gary, he wisely pointed out the following: 

I think, by the way, that you miss the whole point of political correctness.  You focus on your past and the fact that you weren't bigoted; but these terms, like "Sambo," have come to mean bigotry and hate, not perhaps to you, but certainly to many whites who use them and the African-Americans who hear them--and I have heard the "Sambo" used disparagingly in Texas and Oklahoma.  "People are people, candy is candy," you say, forgetting the hurtful connections to those words and how they have so often been used deliberately to cause hurt and pain.  And so they are not acceptable.  Your use of them may not be harmful in intent; but many who do use them do intend harm, and so we must try carefully not to cause hurt through the use of these politically incorrect terms.  Some people get carried away with political correctness (me included), but it's a step in the right direction.

I'm sorry, but I've more than had it with "Political Correctness." Our society has become one gigantic exposed nerve end. It wasn't bad enough that we Americans are among the most anal-retentive nations on earth and a classic example of "the double-edged sword" in almost every aspect of our national life and attitudes, but now we dare say nothing that might possibly be construed as being an insult to one group or another. Enough, already!

There are two quotes I dearly love and have repeated over and over, one Alexander King's observation that "there are those who find obscenity in the crotch of every tree," and the classic definition of puritanism as being "the deep, abiding fear that someone, somewhere, might be having fun."

When I was a kid, licorice was available in small pieces shaped like a child. They were called "nigger babies" because they were black. I loved them. Did that make me a racist? Was I in some way asserting my superiority over Negroes/Blacks/Persons of color/African Americans? No, damn it, I was eating licorice! Did I call or think of black people as “niggers”? No. People are people; candy is candy.

Brazil nuts were called "nigger toes." Good lord!! Where that came from, I have no idea. But that's what they were called, and when I ate them, was I making a symbolic statement of one race's superiority over another? Please!

A popular laundry detergent, The Gold Dust Twins, featured the faces of two Negro/Black/Persons of Color/African American children on the box. The little girl had her hair in small ribboned knots. A blatant, inexcusable racial slur and insult, since it implied yet another terrible epithet: "Pickaninny." The fact that many small Negro/Black/Persons of Color/African American children wore their hair that way was simply a fact.

Many traditional American folk songs which were part of our national history and heritage―most specifically many by Stephen Foster―are never, ever heard or played today. "Old Black Joe"? Horrors! How dare Foster have done such a reprehensible thing?

A favorite children's story was "Little Black Sambo" about a small boy and a tiger. But the little boy was Negro/Black/Person of Color/African American and today's children are therefore forbidden to even read let alone enjoy what is simply a charming story. Do you suppose if they changed it to "Little Absolutely-No-Discernible-Racial-Or-Ethnic-Background Fill-In-An-Acceptable-Name" it might be allowed back on the shelf? I doubt it.

I'm using examples of Negro/Black/Persons of Color/African American only because they are the focal point of Political Correctness. I can site lesser but equal examples where we never ever joke about the Polish or the Irish, or Jews, or allow any sort of dialect used in telling jokes. Any joke featuring anyone of an ethnic or racial minority is considered shockingly bad taste.

As a member of a minority myself...I'm a homosexual, just in case someone might not have already known...I find references to "Queers," "Fruits," "Pansies," and "Fags" deeply offensive if they are used or intended in a derogatory way. But I've noticed that members of many minorities use among themselves exactly the same words they would not tolerate from others.

We don't even call policemen "policemen" any more...they are "law enforcement officers;" the heads of committees are "Chairpersons." Oh, come on!

Political correctness has its roots in good intentions but too much of a good thing is a bad thing. As with all things, some degree of moderation is indicated. Common sense, already in such scarce supply as to be an endangered concept, really should prevail. We have, in our zealousness not to offend anyone under any circumstances, in effect robbed our culture and our heritage of the flavor and spice which made this gigantic melting pot of a nation of ours palatable. It is rapidly turning from a mulligan stew ("Mulligan...that's Irish, isn't it? Are you insulting the Irish? Shame on you! Shame!") into a weak and tasteless gruel.  

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday and Thursday. Please take a moment to visit his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, you might want to check out Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1), which is also available as an audiobook (http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=sr_1_1?asin=B00DJAJYCS&qid=1372629062&sr=1-1).

Guest Blogger: Robett Kingett

I've never hosted a guest blog before but decided to make an exception when I met, while trying to find a way to promote my audiobooks to the blind, an exceptional young man named Robert Kingett, a blind journalist specializing in audio description, adaptive sports, and disability news. He's a motivational speaker as well, and a campaigner for the Accessible Netflix project. His essays have been widely published in magazines, blogs, in several anthologies, and read on radio srations across the country and abroad. He's he chief writer consultant for America's Comedy as wellas a columnist for Truth is Cool. His most populara column has been Kingett Reads Fifty Shades of Grey. He holds several editing jobs and is a strong supporter and advocate for LGBTQ rights, and has raised funds for HIV and AIDS research. To read more about Robert, visit his website at www.robertkingett.com.

So, without further ado, I give you Robert Kingett.

My fingers hover over the keyboard, spread as if they are spiders who are confused on how to make a

web.

I’m resting at the forefront of my dating regime, at a desk in my apartment trying to think of something

about me that the members of this gay dating site need to know. Ironically this part of the initiation is

the hardest.

The signup was easy for my adaptive computer technology that robotically tells me everyone’s

messages, height, and weight. There weren't any words I had to type to verify my identity, there weren't any advertisements sprinkled into a profile detailing a guy who likes to pretend to fly with toy airplanes.  

Everything is smooth like melted butter until this part in the acquaintance, the about me.

My thought process seems to have a planned detour; as if my brain schemed how it was going to depart at the exact moment I need it to work its magic. First, dictation, then there's deliberation, then debating,

then dumbstruck diatribe. My fingers don't move but deductions springs into my mind like a sweptback

gymnast.

People will marvel at my eloquence for words upon first glance so this will whisk me up to an 80% on

the attraction slider. When they talk with me verbally however, I'm sure the stammer will jab me down

to 45%.

When people read that I have a white cane my dating chances will shoot down to 30%. I know this

figure based on experience. To boost my score perhaps I should entice them first with facts about

my journalism work where I detail LGBT news and issues, and couple that with my obsessive love for

mint chocolate chip ice cream and pony rides. If I do that my percentage will shoot up to 45% because

everybody loves chocolate ice cream way before mint.

If I say I passionately read books I believe that will drop my percentage to 40% because that's a boring

passion and I will be metaphorically studying every thought and action people have so I think I will leave that out.

If I say that I enjoy long walks on the beach I'll have scored a whammy without even needing to mention that I can't walk that far before my muscles complain because they have exercised past their patience level, gaging the percentage between 75% and 65%. no one wants to carry a blind wordsmith through the sand but it would definitely make a nice Christmas card.

My hobbies will definitely bring my dating percentage up but transportation will nudge it back down

again like tight jeans. Scheduling rides 24 hours in advance to everything from plays, to restaurants, to

sports games, to theme parks, and movies makes the percentage quiver at 85%.

Surely the understanding that I sustain my own life and apartment would pivot me above 90%. It’d lift

me up to 98% because men like other men who have it together but the supportive living label will make me drop again. People always get skittish when they hear that the clothes I bought with money I've earned from work are washed by a certified nurse’s assistant in an apartment complex that houses 87 blind adults. This scares them a lot so I'm dropped to 90%.

With all of these factors deciding how attractive I am, I try to determine the best way for me to

outweigh all those scary stamps attached to my many good traits. The wonderment doesn't last long as

my fingers soon dance over the keys with precise confidence. I explain a factor that will rocket me up on the attractive meter. I'm lovingly assertive and love talking cats. Without a doubt the talking cats halts me at 100%.

Please feel free to leave a comment for Robert, and to let me know if you'd like to see more of these guest blogs.

The Haunted Mouse

I do not wear a tinfoil hat, nor do I see conspirators in every passing stranger. And just as I am an agnostic because logic will not allow me to be positive that there is a God, I also cannot believe without a doubt that the paranormal exists, though I admit to lean toward the belief that it does. There are just too many things we do not and cannot know to say “No, it does not exist.” There is, however, considerable evidence of it in my own life experience.

The most current example of this is in the fact that I seem to have a haunted mouse (computer variety). It is a wireless mouse, which necessitates turning it on and off via a switch on the underside. It operates like a light switch; physically move it up to turn it on, physically move it down to turn it off. Turning it off produces an audible click. The switch probably moves about an eighth of an inch.

Each night, when I turn the computer off, I also turn off the mouse. I physically move the switch down and hear the click as the blue laser light goes off. I set the mouse down and go to bed. But three or four times out of five, when I get up in the morning and pick up the mouse to turn it on, I see it is already on, and the switch has moved from the “Off” position to the “On” position. Since I know…know…I physically moved the switch from “On” to “Off,” how did it/how could the switch possibly have physically moved from “Off” to “On”? I am truly and sincerely puzzled.

Over the years, I’ve written a number of blogs outlining my experiences with what might be considered the paranormal, from my first at the age of about 7. A brief recap is probably necessary to prevent your automatically hearing the “Twilight Zone” theme.

While lying on my back in my parents’ lawn, alone, watching clouds and looking for warships and cars and all sorts of wondrous things children so readily see in them, one large cloud split in two, and a man’s face appeared; a real face with ruddy cheeks and a full black beard. He was smiling and looking to my left. (I can see it vividly to this minute.) His gaze moved in my direction and when he saw me, he  stopped smiling. The cloud came back together, and he was gone. I immediately ran in to tell my mother who smiled and said “That’s nice, dear.”

Some time after this incident, I awoke in the night hearing footsteps in the kitchen. Thinking it was my parents, I called out to them. There was no response, and the sound of footsteps continued, approaching my door. I was for some reason terrified and called again for my parents, who came running. There was of course nothing there, and it was clearly and logically chalked up to being a nightmare, which it well may have been. But….

As a teenager, I sometimes baby-sat for my two young cousins. One evening, after they were sound asleep, I became aware that I could hear someone breathing. It wasn’t me, and I held my breath to be sure. My cousins were asleep in another room with the door closed. The sound continued and grew louder, and again I was terrified. I was not asleep, nor had I been. I finally awoke my cousins and took them to the apartment downstairs where their maternal grandparents lived. They thought my story was my imagination, and I could hardly blame them.

And then there is Robert, who first came to me when I lived in L.A. and of whom I have written frequently. I really like Robert. He likes bedrooms and classical music. He also hides things, and I actually saw him once, reflected in a window. I don’t think Robert is associated with whatever is going on with the mouse. It’s more his style to take it and hide it somewhere, and I hope I’m not giving him ideas.

I certainly don’t expect these apocryphal stories to convince you…or even me…that the paranormal exists. Just sayin’ that Hamlet was right when he said “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy.”

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday and Thursday. Please take a moment to visit his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, you might want to check out Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1), which is also available as an audiobook (http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=sr_1_1?asin=B00DJAJYCS&qid=1372629062&sr=1-1).

A Matter of Words

It all comes down to words. Without words, there would be no language. Without language, there would be no civilization. Of all the things that set Man apart from every other creature on earth, it is words. They are infinitely malleable and, depending upon how they are put together to form thoughts and ideas, can be the equivalent of water vapor or steel. They can move us to anger, fear, or pride. They can lift us above ourselves or they can break our hearts.

All my life I’ve loved words. My mother began reading stories to me when I was very young, and would play "dictionary" with me...a game which involved opening the dictionary at random, close our eyes and point to a word, and see if we knew what it meant. (The dictionary, in fact, contains the building blocks of every book ever written, of every thought ever spoken or put on paper. Were I ever to be stranded on a desert island with only one book, I think I'd choose the dictionary.)

And yet, for all my love of words, for being a writer for whom words are my stock in trade, I so often find myself totally unable to say what I want to say in the way I want to say it. I was an English major in college, yet my knowledge of the rules of grammar is shameful at best. It is one of my standard "lines" that I would not know a predicate nominative if I saw one. Yet I somehow manage.

I never cease to be amazed at how limited the vocabulary of most people seems to be. With over one million words to chose from and play with, I've read  that the average person's vocabulary is around 5,000 words. And for far too many people, most of those seem to be expletives. Doubt me? Seen a "reality" TV show lately?

I play with words the way a toddler plays with bubbles in the bathtub (simile, anyone?), happily slapping at them with the flats of my hands, splashing water all over the room. I do these blogs, which are in reality nothing much more than a form of mental exercises, more or less--often less--concentrating on a specific theme. I almost never go back over them to present them in a more attractive form than the way they come from my fingers to the monitor in front of me. "Stream of consciousness," I think they'd call it. I just open my mind and let the thoughts flow down through my fingers to the keyboard.

My books are a somewhat different matter. I do take them quite a bit more seriously, and make a concerted effort to tame the rapids of my thoughts and channel them more carefully. And I do try to write well. It's obviously important, in telling a story, to tell it well; to use words in such a way as to catch and hold the reader's attention, and to convey the messages often hidden behind the words.

We are a social species, and we all desperately need to feel we are not alone. Words serve one purpose: to communicate thoughts and ideas to others, and that is why I write. I have no real idea why, but it is vitally important to me to be able to reach out to others...and specifically to you...to form some sort of link between us, even though we may never have met. 

I frequently find metaphors and similes popping into my head as a form of mental shorthand to convey my ideas, such as comparing being a good communicator to being a good cook: it's how you put the ingredients together that makes the difference between being a hash slinger and a gourmet chef. (And using that analogy, I would have to rate myself a sous chef at Denny's.)

Looking back over what I've just written, it seems that my reliance on metaphors is a bit excessive today but, hey, if they work, why not? So I'll close this blog with one more: Words are small campfires around which we all gather for comfort, reassurance, and protection against the darkness of night. Think about it.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday and Thursday. Please take a moment to visit his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, you might want to check out Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1), which is also available as an audiobook (http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=sr_1_1?asin=B00DJAJYCS&qid=1372629062&sr=1-1).

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I Do Not Go Gentle...

Why am I so obsessed with being old? Why is it still a horrendous shock to realize that I, eternally young in mind and heart, am suddenly old in body? What happens to people as they age? When do they find themselves not in the mainstream but in some side-water marsh or tide pool? When do they cease being who they were and become...old?

Everyone lucky enough to still be alive ages, and it is ungrateful of me to complain for having been able to live long enough to be old when so many are denied the privilege.

Today in the supermarket, I was two customers behind a man about my age, or perhaps only slightly older, who for some reason was incapable of making his credit card work. The machine would not accept his pin number. He would  punch in his pin number again, swipe the card again, and the machine would not accept it. Finally, the clerk came out from behind the register and tried to help him, to no avail. 

I stood there for a good ten minutes, the man between the one with the problem and me growing ever more impatient, saying aloud that the man shouldn’t be allowed to be there without someone to help him. What a terrible...if perhaps accurate...thing for the old man to hear, but he ignored it, attempting to swipe his card and punch in his pin number yet again.

Finally something worked, and the man picked up his groceries and left.

How could this have happened? I know that at one time he was young and floated effortlessly with the mainstream, independent and giving not a thought to ever having problems at a checkout line.

Yet I identified with him totally. I find myself fumbling over things I can’t recall ever having fumbled over before. When I walk, I find myself weaving and almost stumbling. Why? How? What happened...is happening...to the “me” I have always been? Why am I not him now? And I am quite sure I speak not only for myself but for a great many people in my same position.

The quiet acceptance of reality is a concept I have always refused to accommodate. I know my struggles are futile. That age will do with me what it will. I may be unable to resist it, but I shall heed poet Dylan Thomas’s words:

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Please don’t misunderstand; although I will be 80 years old--is that possible? Surely not! How can it be possible----in a few short weeks, I do not believe I am quite yet standing on the threshold of that good night. But I am sufficiently practical to acknowledge that there are far far more days behind me than ahead.

And it is not made easier by the fact that those who still are in the mainstream make it abundantly if subtly clear that I am no longer one of them and do not belong in their world. Do well-intentioned people on public transportation get up and offer you a seat? Probably not. When you’re old, you look different from them, and they respond to you differently.

I watch college students at the Fullerton el station adjacent to DePaul University bound down the steps two and three at a time, as I always did, but simply can no longer do. Why? Why can’t I? I watch them run effortlessly across the street to catch a bus. If I even attempt to run, I have all the fluid grace of Frankenstein’s monster. This is not a bid for sympathy; truly it is not, it is just a fact.

So I suppose I use these obsessive “old age” blogs as an old time signalman frantically...and futilely trying to alert an oncoming train to the fact that the bridge is out ahead. There’s nothing that can be done to prevent whatever lies ahead, but at least we can brace ourselves for the inevitable.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday and Thursday. Please take a moment to visit his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, you might want to check out Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1), which is also available as an audiobook (http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=sr_1_1?asin=B00DJAJYCS&qid=1372629062&sr=1-1).

Cheating

Our society is so increasingly complex and difficult for any single individual to fully comprehend, let alone keep up with, that we are often totally unaware of the erosion of those things which raise humans above the other animals.

Simple honesty is a classic example. We have become totally inured to being lied to by everyone from politicians to preachers to used car (--excuse me; they don't have used cars anymore; they have "pre-owned vehicles", a very big difference, indeed--) salesmen that we simply accept it. In fact, it has reached the point where one can be fairly certain that no matter what he/she is being told, it is at least in part a lie.

Cheating has become a spectator sport, and anyone honest enough to live by the rules is considered a fool. We pay lip-service to honesty--someone finding $50,000 and returning it to its owner is considered newsworthy, and that fact in itself speaks directly to my point. For every person who, given too much change by a clerk, gives it back, there are far more who say nothing and simply take it.

I've commented before on a national-chain TV advertisement which glorifies cheating. You've seen it...the frizzy-haired blond who, upon looking at her receipt, goes racing out to the parking lot yelling to her husband to "Start the car! Start the car!" because she is sure she has been undercharged. Isn't that just the cutest thing? And doesn't that send a wonderful message? Turn around and ask the clerk for an explanation? Don't be silly! How the chain could have authorized such a reprehensible ad is incomprehensible to me.

Haven't paid your credit card bill in months? Knowingly digging yourself deeper and deeper in debt every day? Totally irresponsible financially? Hey, don't worry about it! Why bother trying to cut back on spending? File for bankruptcy! (I realize, of course, that there are people who legitimately file for bankruptcy as a last resort, and I am not speaking of them.) Easy as pi. Screw the companies to whom the money is legitimately owed. They can afford it. And anyone who thinks companies themselves do not engage in various forms of cheating their customers lives in a fantasy world.

How many ads have you seen featuring people (usually couples) smiling smugly and announcing how "We owed $73,000 in unpaid back taxes, and thanks to Screwumall & Sons, we paid only $3.17!" Way to go! Now get out there and start spending more money you don't have. It’s cheating the people/companies to whom the money is owed, but who cares?

Making the case against cheating is not easy, since none of us is an angel, and cheating seems to be a part of human nature. We all do it at one time or another. The problem lies in the degree of and frequency with which we cheat. Being charitable, perhaps for most people cheating is an occasional thing involving only relatively trivial matters. But there seem to be an exponentially-growing number of people for whom cheating is a way of life and taking advantage of others an assumptive right.

The ubiquitous "but everyone else does it" excuse can be countered with by simple fact that "you are not everyone else." That "everyone else does" something does not make that something right. It is the very complexity of life, the easily blurred lines between right and wrong, that adds to the problem. For example, a good case could be made for cheating in cases where total honesty would somehow be a sincere deprivation...a needy mother not returning $5 overage in change at the grocery store, for example. But even then, though it might be eminently understandable, it would still, at bottom, be wrong.

In the end, cheating, like so much else in life, is a matter of degree, of awareness, and of intent, and the greater each of these elements, the more reprehensible it becomes. Each of us is responsible, ultimately, for ourselves, but the matter of how much cheating we accept in others is just one more indication of our true worth as human beings.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday and Thursday. Please take a moment to visit his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, you might want to check out Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1), which is also available as an audiobook (http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=sr_1_1?asin=B00DJAJYCS&qid=1372629062&sr=1-1).

Hype

Have you noticed how ours is increasingly a culture of superlatives? Nothing is simply "good" anymore--it's marvelous"/"amazing"/"stupendous"/"incredible." And even in punctuation, the old standby sentence-ending "period" is going the way of the dinosaur, being replaced by the exclamation point, often in multiples. TV pitchmen no longer speak, they shout, apparently in the hopes that you won't realize that they are saying absolutely nothing. And speaking as rapidly as possible in a frenzied "Run! Save yourself!" tone is designed to create immediate reaction, not thought.

Movie trailers, especially for action films, take the opposite tack: narrators are chosen for their ability to convey ultimate masculinity and authority and each word is uttered as though it were coming from a burning bush.

They somehow feel that screaming at a machine-gun pace will sweep you up in the excitement and make you overlook the fact that they are in fact saying very little of substance. Billy Mays, the recently deceased TV pitchman, drove me absolutely to distraction. I found him unbearably annoying. Yet he became a multi-millionaire, which says something of the influence my opinions have upon the general public.

The trouble with superlatives...well, one of the many troubles with them...is that like a medicine devised to counter the strains of a virus, the virus mutates in response to the medicine to the point where what was once good enough to do the job is no longer effective. So a stronger medication is used, which in turn loses its effectiveness, necessitating a still stronger....well, you get the picture. Words to describe the condition of being adequate or pleasant or good lose their potency, to be replaced with stronger adjectives. The intensity of the delivery of the message is also ramped up.

For many years, any minor change made in a product was touted as "New & Improved" no matter if it was merely a change in the typeface used on the box the product came in. "New & Improved" covered a multitude of purposes, often masking the fact that the "New & Improved" product was now in fact smaller and more expensive than the old one. It always amused me, even as a kid, that as soon as the New & Improved version came out, the advertisers implied that the older version was worthless, even though they'd spent years touting how wonderful it was.

A hamburger is no longer a hamburger. It is a Super-Deluxe Scrum-Diddyiscious Monstro Burger Supreme, "piled high" (sandwiches are now always "piled high" with the freshest possible delectable ingredients hand chosen by gourmet chefs). Lordy, even cat food is described in terms one would expect to find on the menu of a five-star restaurant.

When is the last time you saw an ad for a good movie? No, movies are always the most spectacular extravaganzas ever put on film. You know this because, even though the film or TV show hasn't even aired yet, you are assured that "everyone" is talking about it. Well, excuse me, but I'm part of "everyone", and I'm not talking about it, and I don't know of anyone who is.

Promotion is fine, but there's got to be a line drawn somewhere. Can't we go back to calling a spade a spade rather than a Spectaculo X-980 Super-Colossal Jumbo Earthmover?

Sigh.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday and Thursday. Please take a moment to visit his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, you might want to check out Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1), which is also available as an audiobook (http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=sr_1_1?asin=B00DJAJYCS&qid=1372629062&sr=1-1).

Validation

One of the most basic but unrecognized of all human needs is the need for validation--the reassurance from others that we not only exist but have value as human beings. We never outgrow our need for consideration, for courtesy, for friendship, for praise, all of which show us that we are not, as we far too often believe, alone.

A tv program I saw many years ago, in which an experiment was conducted on young monkeys saddens and sickens me to this day. In the experiment, very young monkeys were taken from their mothers and confined in a cage with a wire contraption shaped like an adult monkey. To watch the babies try to cuddle, to get some attention from the artificial monkey was devastating. And when later, a cloth monkey was put into the baby's cage, I actually cried to see its reaction. Yet still, no matter how hard the baby tried, it got no response. That they had to endure this for “the sake of science” is unconscionable. Needless to say, those babies were emotionally crippled for life. The same, it is sad to say, is true of humans. Babies not held, not cradled, not physically touched or talked to lead lonely, dysfunctional lives.

But to one degree or another, even those of us who have not been deprived of normal human interaction still require validation from others. Some of us (myself included, I readily admit) need more than others. The lower the individual's opinion of his/her self-worth, the more important validation from others becomes. 

Children are notoriously needy of praise and reassurance. They're trying to find their way in a strange world, constantly confused and frightened, being bombarded by things they do not understand. It is validation from friends and family which makes the journey through life infinitely easier.

This need does not disappear by reaching adulthood, as I...and I suspect you...can attest. As a writer, nothing pleases me more than to hear from a reader who likes what I have written. I become little-boy delighted to think that I have received their validation, and that I may not be quite as bad as I far too often think of myself as being. I tend to react very much like Sally Field did when she said, during her Oscar acceptance speech, "You like me! You really like me!"

Effusive praise and fawning are self-serving, patently false, and off-putting. But like so many things in life, small, spontaneous gestures are beyond measurable value. Think back to the last time you received an unexpected form of validation, and how it made you feel. A smile, a casual compliment, even a simple (but sincere) question costs the giver nothing, but can mean the world to the recipient. Thoughtful words and gestures are the coals which, in the words of the old saying, "warm the cockles of the heart." 

Why we so frequently overlook the value of validation to others--even when we're aware of how it makes us feel--is a puzzle. Part of the reason is that we tend to take our friendships or admiration for someone for granted. "Oh, he/she knows how I feel." Well, no, he/she may not know, and even they do, it's nice to hear. Any acknowledgement that you value another person can do wonders and on occasion can be lifesaving. 

I began this blog on a heavy note and will end it with another, not to depress you, but to provoke thought. I've told the story before of the young man in San Francisco who determined to commit suicide by jumping from the Golden Gate bridge. He left a note in his apartment describing his feelings of loneliness and lack of worth. He was undecided about going through with the suicide even as he wrote the note, saying "I am now going to walk to the bridge. If even one person smiles at me or acknowledges my existence, I'll come back home."

He did not come home. 

The answer to the biblical question “Am I my brother’s keeper?” is, to a greater degree than we realize, “Yes.”

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday and Thursday. Please take a moment to visit his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, you might want to check out Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1), which is also available as an audiobook (http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=sr_1_1?asin=B00DJAJYCS&qid=1372629062&sr=1-1).

Time Travel and Jim Crow

Hatred and bigotry do not die easily, as any daily newscast or periodical will attest. There are still far, far, too many people who insist the President of the United States is somehow not qualified for the office, based on utterly specious logic masking blatant racism.  Still, despite our despair over today’s still considerable racial divide, the fact remains that we have, as a society, come a very great distance in a relatively short time. 

I was 20 years old when, in 1954, I joined the Naval Aviation Cadet program and left my home in the North for Pensacola, Florida and began a journal--via letters to my parents--which would become A World Ago: A Navy Man’s Letters Home, 1954-1956 (available as an e-book from Amazon.com, Untreed Reads, and wherever e-books are sold, and being prepared as an audiobook for release later this year).

Here’s a letter to my parents, exactly as I wrote it, after a three-day leave in New Orleans. Keep in mind that while I did not and do not consider myself racially prejudiced, some of my comments, made in all innocence, would be considered inappropriate today, and  I was a bit shocked to find a note of unintentional condescension when referring to a child on a bus. 

September 11, 1954

I’ve met a very interesting character down south.  His name is Jim Crow.  He is a barefooted little girl, an old man in coveralls, a well-dressed man in a business suit.  I had a nodding acquaintance with him the first day I arrived in Pensacola and rode a city bus.  A sign says “WHITE seat from front to rear of coach―colored seat from rear to front of coach―Florida Law.”  He is so quiet at times, you are scarcely aware he exists.  At other times, he is  a vicious, despicable animal.

As I said, at times you aren’t even aware he is around, until suddenly it dawns on you that he is conspicuous in his absence.  It came to me in a drugstore, when two well-dressed Negro women came to the fountain.  Though there were plenty of empty seats, they stood at the end of the counter and asked for two milkshakes, which the counterman made and gave to them in covered paper cartons.  They disappeared then―I don’t know where they went, but they were gone.

It was then I began noticing―the bus, trains, and plane depots with their “Colored Waiting Room”, the restaurants, the theaters (“Colored Entrance” via an outside fire escape to the balcony), the “For Colored Only” taverns (in the slum parts of town, of course).  It is most apparent, however, on the transportation systems.

Coming back to downtown New Orleans from the amusement park, Pontchatrain Beach, I was almost the only person on the bus as it started back from the end of its run.  I sat, as I usually do, about even with the back door.  The silver hand-rails along the back of each seat, I noticed, had two holes drilled in the top.  I gave it no notice until six Negro teen-aged boys got on the bus.  They came to the rear and picked up a wooden sign from the back seat and placed it on the hand rail of the seat across from me.  It said “For Colored Only.”

On the bus from Mobile to Pensacola, I  sat alone in a seat for two while five Negroes stood in the aisles.  A mother and three small children got on the bus; the kids were cute as only colored children can be.  One was a little girl about three, in bare feet, carrying a huge handbag.  She came grinning down the aisle with her two brothers, who were carrying large bags of groceries.  After a few minutes, the little girl, who hadn’t yet learned that Negroes must stand if whites sit, started to crawl up onto the seat next to me.  The mother scolded her and started to pull her off the seat, but I said if she wanted to sit there, she was perfectly welcome to.  The mother was evidently surprised, and said “thank you,” and the little girl sat clutching the handbag and grinned at me as the bus roared on….

Back in Pensacola, a Negro Marine was the only colored person on the bus back to the base.  He sat in one of the side seats like we have at home.  Five or six white kids, about ten to fifteen, got on and stood clustered up around the back door.  There were a lot of empty seats―the side seat opposite the Marine, and the entire back seat.  The bus driver stopped the bus and said “Would you colored folks mind sitting in the back so these people can sit down.”

I pity the Negro sailors, marines and Navcads stationed here.  They can live with us, eat with us, and sleep with us, but they cannot ride a public bus with us.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday and Thursday. Please take a moment to visit his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, you might want to check out Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1), which is also available as an audiobook (http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=sr_1_1?asin=B00DJAJYCS&qid=1372629062&sr=1-1).

Bureaucracies

Oh, dear Lord, how I love bureaucracies! 

Yesterday, I mailed a book to a friend. I carefully put on more postage than I knew it needed, and dropped it in my corner mailbox. I found it in my own mailbox today, covered with important looking stickers totally obscuring the address of the person I sent it to. A large blue label ("Important Customer Information") informed me that since the book weighed a gnat's eyelash more than 13 ounces, it was obviously a bomb, and to prove it was not, I must hand-deliver to my nearest (6 blocks away) friendly post office for a careful inspection. That getting to the post office and standing in an endless line for more than half an hour in order to see the one working clerk might be something of an inconvenience of course matters not one whit to the U.S. Postal Service or its mighty minions. (Paraphrasing Lily Tomlin's character Ernestine yet again: "We don't care. We don't have to. We're the Post Office!") 

I know the Post Office has fallen on hard times, partly due to their own actions or lack thereof. And I sincerely hope that charging me again in order to remail my package helps them get over their financial slump. I am here but to serve.

If you will allow a very slight digression, although those who know me know I never digress, I have long held the belief that one reason why postal rates continue to go up, other than the fact that no one can stop them, is that they need the extra money to buy "This Window Closed" signs for those few post offices which still remain open. 

Well, let's make that two digressions: there is a huge, ornate old post office a mile or so away from my apartment. You enter through giant double metal doors to find yourself in a crudely partitioned-off room the size of a bedroom closet. You cannot buy stamps there. You cannot mail a package or a letter there. You can cram yourself into the claustrophobic space for the requisite half hour wait for the single clerk who takes every possible opportunity to disappear behind a swinging door supposedly to pick up something, but is in reality an excuse for another coffee break and a couple of rounds of whist. You can hear people laughing and singing behind the door, but you of course never see them.

Okay. Where was I? Oh, yes, bureaucracies. It's not just the U.S. Postal Service (whoever added the word "Service" had a marvelous sense of irony); it is any city, county, state, or federal agency charged with dealing with the public. I am convinced bureaucracies must carefully screen every applicant for employment and select only those with a demonstrable streak of megalomania. For the minute a person becomes an employee of such an agency and is placed in a position of actually talking to us common folk, they cease being Joe or Josephine Schmeltzman and become the physical incarnation of the bureaucracy by which they are employed.

Though I have not seen the Employees' Handbook by which rules they are required to adhere, I am quite sure a few of the more basic points include: 1) Never hurry. Never! Who cares if anyone in line is in a hurry? If you show weakness, they will attack! 2) Anyone caught smiling or wearing an expression of anything other than regal disdain during working hours will face six months unpaid suspension. 3) Demonstrating even the slightest bit of interest in the customer's problems is subject to immediate dismissal. 4) Any opportunity to step away from your counter is encouraged, and weekly prizes will be awarded to those who manage to stay away longest. 

This bureaucratic attitude extends into the field of commerce. Sales clerks employed by any large retail institution automatically assume the mantle of the institution itself, and since the institution has no interest whatever in the people shopping there (other than in deigning to take their money), sales clerks are encouraged to adopt the same attitude ("I'm on the phone!"). Attending to a customer's needs is far less important than socialization with other clerks.

But, look: bureaucracies are serious business, and don't you ever forget it. Civility, courtesy, smiling, "thank you," or any indication that the customer is an actual human being whose life has any value or meaning is routinely discouraged.

As Walt Kelly, creator of Pogo, so aptly put it, "We have met the enemy, and he is us."

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday and Thursday. Please take a moment to visit his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, you might want to check out Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1), which is also available as an audiobook (http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=sr_1_1?asin=B00DJAJYCS&qid=1372629062&sr=1-1).

The Herd

I’m far-too-frequently dismayed by stories of individuals being physically assaulted in public places while those in the immediate area do nothing to stop it.

And yet, in a natural disaster, acts of incredible bravery and self sacrifice are common. How can we reconcile these two disparate reactions? Why will we go out of our way to attempt to rescue someone from a burning building, or a natural disaster, yet refuse to come to the aid of someone threatened by other members of our own species? I would be fascinated to know why we react differently to dangers imposed by nature and those imposed by others of our own kind.

I think much of it has its roots in our earliest days as a species, when survival was everything, and on the fact that Man is indeed biologically as much an animal as is a Wildebeest or a deer. And just as the herd instinct is a protective reflex for them, so is it for us. Actually, when you think about it, it's very simple and very logical. The herd provides safety. Acting and reacting exactly the same as those around you make you less likely to be spotted by predators. The less distinguishable you are from those around you, and the closer you can get to the center of the herd, the safer you are. Conversely, the more you stand out, the more likely you are to be spotted by predators, and the greater potential danger you are in.

That primal part of our brain sees the person instigating an attack on another in a subway as a predator, which triggers the herd instinct: do not call attention to yourself. But in natural disasters, although the dangers to ourselves may be equally great, the fact that there is no identifiable predator to trigger the herd instinct allows our more noble motivations to prevail.

The herd instinct is not limited to obvious or direct threats, however. It extends to every aspect of our society. People who, for whatever reason, refuse to object to the objectionable to sheep, who refuse to expose themselves to any perceived danger, are often and accurately called sheep, which are herd animals. Sheep simply follow other sheep because it is both safer and easier than not doing so.

While it may be unkind of me to say, I have come to the conclusion that most people (thee and me excluded, of course) are, indeed, sheep. Even with no threat of predators, they timidly stick together, follow wherever they are led, never ask questions, and have a very narrow range of interests or goals―and even their goals seem to come in neat, pre-packaged cubes. They live in pens with arbitrary walls they have been told are there and therefore utterly believe in, though they cannot see them. They recognize doors, but if the doors are closed, assume they are closed for a reason and have little or no curiosity about what lies beyond, or any interest in making the effort to find out. 

All human children are born children, not sheep. Yet is it coincidental that children are called “little lambs”? Children soon learn that to survive, to have friends, to be accepted by their peers, they must behave like everyone else behaves, believe what everyone else believes. And gradually they turn from human children into sheep, as their parents and relatives did before them. To be different is very unsheeplike, and punishable in any number of subtle and not-so-subtle ways, none of which is pleasant. 

And of course, there are always predators. Human wolves lurk in the fields and forests of the internet as spam messages, as letters from Nigerian Barristers, as wonderfully unreal offers for wonderful things, and because sheep simply accept what they are told, it never occurs to them that the wolf even exists, or that they are the wolf’s next meal. Human wolves rob and lie and cheat with impunity because almost none of the sheep realizes what’s happening until it is too late, and those few who do realize something isn’t quite right are too…what word do I want?…oh, yes: sheepish…to do anything about it.

And what is the answer? How do we move away from the herd without being immediately attacked by predators? The first step lies in not only realizing but acting on the simple fact that while Man is an animal, he is not a sheep.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday and Thursday. Please take a moment to visit his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, you might want to check out Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1), which is also available as an audiobook (http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=sr_1_1?asin=B00DJAJYCS&qid=1372629062&sr=1-1).

Ben and Cleo

While I was never blessed with Narcissus's beauty, we do share an overwhelming element of self-absorption. I never cease to be amazed by me and by why I am the way I am, or why I see life the way I do.

I take inordinate delight in little things which would either go largely unnoticed by anyone else, or just accepted and forgotten.

This morning, for those reasons known only to but never explained by my mind, I started thinking of little tidbits of pure delight I've picked up while attending movies, though not necessarily from what was on the screen.  I have two absolute favorites, which I keep carefully wrapped in imaginary tissue paper in a little equally-imaginary box on the top shelf of the closet of my mind. I never tire of taking them down from time to time, for the mere pleasure of doing so. If you have heard either of these stories, as well you might if you've been following these blogs for very long, please just skip to the end.

I went to see the movie "Ben Hur" when it first opened in 1959. It was a megabuck production starring Charlton Heston as Ben, and in the course of the movie, set in the time of Jesus, Jesus himself appears two or three times, though his name is never mentioned and, as was the unwritten law of Hollywood until only recently, Jesus' face was not allowed to be shown. His arrival on the scene would be preceded with a welling tsunami of music befitting the Son of God. And, because his face could not be shown, he was always photographed from behind....flowing white robe, long, perfectly-brushed straight blond hair of the color and style apparently worn by most Jewish men of the time.

At one point, Ben is being dragged across the sand dunes by those nasty Romans, his face drawn, lips cracked from thirst. At last, he collapses, unable to go on. And suddenly, the music wells up to the point of shaking the plaster from the theater ceiling, and a hand, arm covered in a pure white robe without a speck of sand on it, reaches down with a cup of water. Ben looks up, awe and reverence on his face, takes the cup, and drinks.

The next scene is a long-distance, low-level shot across the dunes to show Ben, outlined against the clear blue sky, being dragged off again by the Romans, looking back toward the camera and the back-shot figure in the white gown with the long, flowing hair.

At this point, a little old lady seated directly in front of me turned to her friend and said, "Who IS she?"

I loved going to the movies with my best friend Russ, a schoolteacher who looked like everyone's idea of a Catholic priest. He had a brilliant wit, and had the tendency to say things which would send me into hysterical laughter at the most inappropriate times.

We went to see the movie "Cleopatra", the 1963 Liz Taylor/Richard Burton no-expense-spared extravaganza, the highlight of which was Cleopatra's arrival in Rome to be presented to Caesar. The scene required tens of thousands of extras, a couple hundred elephants, phalanxes of Roman soldiers, nubian slaves, trumpeters, drummers, ornate gold-covered carts, long, long shots down a reconstructed Roman boulevard lined with temples and obelisks and pedestaled statues, crammed on both sides with toga-clad Romans cheering and shouting and waving banners and...well, you get the picture. This scene dragged on and on for what seemed like an eternity. Finally, her silk-draped golden litter is set down in front of Caesar and Liz/Cleo steps out and approaches the emperor.

At this point Russ turned to me and said: "If he says 'How was the trip?,' I'm leaving."

Maybe you had to be there.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday and Thursday. Please take a moment to visit his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, you might want to check out Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1), which is also available as an audiobook (http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=sr_1_1?asin=B00DJAJYCS&qid=1372629062&sr=1-1).