Am I the only one that cannot understand why our culture is infatuated with booze?
It’s saturated with it. Consumed by it.
We are defined by it; a true drinking culture.
When the holiday season comes knocking, forget about it!
In fact, the culture is strangely infatuated with all types of shit I care little for and don’t understand.
So Many Rules!
We have all these rules and conditions that we place on our interactions with each other and the world. It’s truly bizarre.
Religion is branded as silly and make-believe. Science provides a world of irrationality, randomness, and chance. Psychology has all but evaporated the imagination with its rats and levers. And, the human mind is left, once more, with her thumb up her ass unable to interact with her environment.
What’s The Problem?
With our incessant need to have all the answers, we’ve unfortunately discarded the ultimate answer, which is the ability to connect and interact with our immediate and present conditions.
We instead fantasize about what conditions must exist in order for the interaction to occur. This is a tragedy, yet we call it “growing up.”
For instance, children naturally interact with their environment, they don’t place necessary conditions down prior to the engagement.
If you offer them a garden, they’ll dig it; offer them dishes to clean and they’ll scrub it; offer them love and they return it. The interaction is seemingly endless.
This is true freedom.
Oh, but not us.
We’ve enslaved ourselves through a process of what I term “the plight of the sophisticated.”
The Spiral Downward To The Drinking Culture
We use our heightened capacity to think and we’ve somehow managed to rid ourselves of meaning, purpose, value, and direction.
This has been done by dividing everything up into its smallest constituent parts, first of the universe with the sciences, then of ourselves with existential philosophy.
Consequently, we’ve created for ourselves tiny little compartments of identity that barely scratch the service of what it is to be human.
Enter Stage Left Incredibles 2
Oddly enough, I discovered this emotional apocalypse while watching Incredibles 2 with my daughters.
I know, a children’s movie!
But hear me out, there is this one monologue by the antagonist, the Screen Slaver, and it will melt your freaking mind.
I recall watching it and my eyes opened wide, looking to my daughters for validation.
Of course they didn’t give a shit.
But check out the villains speech:
The Screenslaver interrupts this program for an important announcement. Don’t bother watching the rest. Elastigirl doesn’t save the day; she only postpones her defeat. And while she postpones her defeat, you eat chips and watch her invert problems that you are too lazy to deal with. Superheroes are part of your brainless desire to replace true experience with simulation.
You don’t talk, you watch talk shows. You don’t play games, you watch game shows. Travel, relationships, risk; every meaningful experience must be packaged and delivered to you to watch at a distance so that you can remain ever-sheltered, ever-passive, ever-ravenous consumers who can’t free themselves to rise from their couches, break a sweat, and participate in life.
You want superheroes to protect you, and make yourselves ever more powerless in the process. While you tell yourselves you’re being “looked after”. That your interests are being served and your rights are being upheld. So that the system can keep stealing from you, smiling at you all the while. Go ahead, send your supers to stop me. Grab your snacks, watch your screens, and see what happens. You are no longer in control. I am.
Replace the Screenslaver with fear, Elastigirl with love, Superheroes with hope, and voilà.
With that kind of fear the only connective antidote is booze. Or at least its opiate like equivalent.
It’s amazing what a kids movie can teach you, ain’t it?
What’s a movie that really left an indelible print on your heart. Leave it in the comments. Look forward to interacting with you.
