Saturday 11/19/22
This morning I saw a graphic on Facebook in a baseball history group, for who has led the game in home runs in the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. In the nineteenth century, there was Roger Connor with 138. In the twentieth, Hank Aaron with 755. In the twenty-first, Albert Pujols with 703.
Have a guess what happened? Dozens of of people in the comments started shrieking about Barry Bonds and where was he? Railing, ranting, jeering. This is how stupid people are. Some people who are deep in denial and stupid themselves will tell you that everyone is so complex, etc. They are not. They are simple and stupid, almost without exception. That's just the reality of the world right now, and by right now, I mean, people have long been a form of simple and stupid, but they are more so than ever at present.
People have nothing interesting or intelligent to say, so the technique that one will use on a dating site, when they have talk, is to play a game of twenty questions. They ask the same rote questions to everyone. How is your day? How was your weekend? (Here is what would happen if you say, "It was fine." They'd say nothing. No one would say anything again. It's a stalemate. Game over--that is, if that other person acts as the first person did. If they don't do more--really, everything that is will be done here, if anything--then that's it.) For me, they ask what kind of writing I do. That is all I need to know about them. We're done. Because I know they think reductively. Why must it be one kind? Why must it be any kind? You think it has to be--that's the statement you've made to me. It's the same as telling me you're simple and stupid. That you don't greet what you meet in this world with an open mind. The game of twenty questions is being played only because no one can say anything compelling. There's no wit. No felicitous observation. I demand something intelligent. Say something smart. I have by then. That's all I do.
A woman asked me the other day what genre of writing I do. I said I don't do genre writing. She then asked me what my favorite genre was. I said I didn't believe in genre. I didn't tell her this, but I won't believe in anything that limits me in what I write, what I make, what I care about, what I partake of. I may believe it exists, but I will not subject myself to those limitations. In that sense, I don't believe in genre. I may partake of a work of genre--an Agatha Christie novel--but I don't target genre as a go-to interest. Genre itself is not why I am there, doing that partaking.
She then says, "So you just write the first thing that comes to mind?" Again, how stupid do you have to be to try and make that connection? Yes, lady--I get high, wait for something to come to me, and whatever that is, I write it down, and that's how I work. Cognition is a process of progression, of connecting ideas, reasons, truths that go from one to the next, building. This person is incapable of cognition. We're not discussing Finnegans Wake. This is just basic life stuff. And she can't think her way through it. Not even this. So where would that leave us with the non-basic stuff? I wrote earlier that I can know everything about you from how you write. Here's an example. She follows up with, "What's your process?" What is my process? You want to know what my process is, simpleton? My process is, goodbye.
We look at people for what they offer us. There's nothing wrong with that. What can they add to our life and how? We should always be trying to add to the lives of others. We should be more oriented around what we offer than what is offered to us. We should always be trying to develop ways--and our very selves--to offer more. More to people on an individual basis. More to our community. More to the world.
But I see someone, and I think, what do you add to my life intellectually? In terms of kindness? Mentally? Emotionally? As a friend? As an example? As someone to be trusted? For work? An outlet? As a workout partner? Hiking buddy? Someone good for a laugh? Person to talk about the ballgame with?
Often, one answers the question of "Do they add to my life in terms of so and so" with a no. You move along the roster of possibilities. You keep going down that list. People are such husks of nothingness, you're often left with looks. Asses. "She looks good in that." "I'd fuck him." Then people complain about how no one wants them for anything else. What are you putting out there? What effort are you making? What is there?
What you have, typically, is one person who offers nothing but the one thing, and another who also offers but the one thing, so what do you think the one person is going to approach the other person about and only that? Exactly. People are rarely fully realized people, and hardly people at all, with things to say and individuality. Then, yes, it becomes "he's cute" or "she's hot" and "I'd like to hook up with her" and nothing else, because what is there? Fingers are then pointed, charges are made befitting the fashionable pejoratives of the time, but what are you? You want things that you think should be offered to you. What do you offer? One goes down the list, and what remains is what remains. That is what one goes with, or one doesn't go at all--at least not with that person. You have so few people who offer anything regarding those first few categories I mentioned. So yes, then you just have people who treat each other as bodies. What would one expect to happen? What should happen? But that's why it happens. And typically the person who just wants to fuck someone else could not themselves be desired for any other reason than someone might want--often because options are limited just then--them for the same reason because there isn't another.
