The Weekend in Foolish Attention

Bits and bytes of the week

IT AIN’T PERSONAL. This week we brought in the forty-five ushers we hired. We were clear about attendance for the trainings we planned. We emphasized the required presence of all forty-five. Still, people begged off. For reasons they certainly knew were coming before the interviews and last minute reasons that had a higher priority than showing up. I had to explain that none of it was personal so reacting as if it was a personal insult is silly. I explained that, for the same reason, if someone simply isn’t on board, bail on the best laid plans, it isn’t personal if they need to find work elsewhere this summer. No judgment, no anger, because it is not personal.

We want things to be personal. A guy on a plane refusing to wear a mask makes it personal. A woman in lockstep with voting for Trump desperately needs it to be personal when you make a joke about his heart looking suspiciously like a Big Mac. A guy listening to his phone loudly on the train doesn’t know you so his insistence on jamming out is certainly rude but not personal.

In training these ambassadors of the park, I’m pushing the idea that nothing anyone says during a massive festival is personal. Almost 99% of the time, the idiot who demands he gets a seat when there aren’t any left has no idea who the usher he’s barking at is when not wearing the uniform. The runway to conflict is paved by taking his asshole ways personally and deciding he needs to be taught a lesson. It’s a difficult proposition given the bizarre belief that impact upon oneself is vastly more important than the intent of the loudmouth yet intent is essential in understanding how to react and resolve things.

EARNING SLEEP. As an adult, I maintain that the best sleep comes after a long day of being productive. Work your ass off, play your ass off, sleep like the dead. This week, with three twelve hour days in the park—usher trainings, setting up the park, evacuation plans and drills, a ton of administrative stuff to prep for the first festival of the season—I have definitely been earning my sleep. I mean, my average steps per day this week have topped 22,000 and, man, are my dogs barking!

FOOD IDENTITARIANISM. “What Is ‘Queer Food’? A Conference Explores (and Tastes) Some Answers.” That’s a real New York Times headline. And here’s a real excerpt: 

“The way you slice into okra and it’s crunchy and ooshy-gushy—a lot of people think it’s weird,” said Ms. DuBose, a nonbinary transgender lesbian who will soon graduate from the food studies program at New York University. “But okra is queer.”

Hamburgers? Straight.
Hot Dogs? Straight and Wants You to Know It.
Omelet? Lesbian.
Tacos? Bisexual.
Pizza? Pansexual.
Taco Pizza? Transgender.
Hawaiian Pizza? Drag Queen.
Mac n Cheez? Straight but curious.
Pineapple Upside Down Cake? Closeted Gay.
Slim Jim? Self Loathing Gay Who Rails Against Homosexuality But Gets a Blowjob in the Men’s Bathroom at Random Truckstops.
Bananas? C’mon. Obvious.

FURIOSA! Despite having a week so busy I’m slightly delirious, Bob and I caught the preview of George Miller’s Mad Max Saga on IMAX Thursday night and it’s AMAZING! I mean, really, really good. A perfect prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road. Anya Taylor-Joy is fantastic, Hemsworth is so much better than I expected considering the fake nose (which looked pretty good, btw), and the IMAX was so solid that I could feel the engines on every car in my seat.

BIRTHDAYS. Tomorrow is Himmel’s forty-fifth. Next Saturday is Bob’s fifty-second. A hap- hap- happy birthday to both gradually aging men. David’s had a rough year but he’s coming out of the worst of it. Bob’s been figuring out how to be an artist again without theater and is becoming a remarkable graphic novelist. I love them both.

THE WORLD WE LIVE IN. As things get warmer in Chicago, we enter the zone when random violence from overheated idiots starts to percolate like a coffee blend made from rampant loss of self control and rage. It’s best to remember that, yes, someone might steal the air conditioner your mom sent you from the lobby of your building less than an hour from being delivered, someone might stab a fellow employee to death at City Winery, there are shootings by kids with guns because prosecutors won’t pursue 65% of gun cases, but the overwhelming majority of people are in control of themselves and are not quite desperate or nihilistic enough to go over that edge. Try not to clutch your pearls so often and assume that at least 90% of the time the sky is not falling.

EMBRACE ADULTHOOD. An element of our reducing groups into easier to digest figurines, the stereotyping of people in order to process the ridiculous numbers surrounding us, is to almost unconsciously assume some sort of base stupidity on their part for choices they make.

We assume those coal miners who voted in blocks for Donald Trump are simply too dense to understand how they are voting against their interests.

We assume that immigrants flooding the Texas border are simply too dumb to understand that coming into this country without the due process is a crime.

We assume that women whose careers intersect with known sexual predators are just too naive to know that a Harvey Weinstein is a grotesque creep who will likely suggest sexual favors for industry clout.

I mean, if they can’t see the landmines their choices might step on, they must be as innocent as babies, as ignorant as children, right?

These assumptions are at the heart of our frustration with so many people on the Right side of the political fence. This infantilization of the Other is the core of the belief that children who grow up in poverty and oppression are incapable of doing anything but joining a gang and becoming a career criminal with a vastly reduced lifespan.

Let’s be straight — our go-to defense of mass shooters is that they are mentally incapacitated which is just another way of saying they are too dimwitted to understand the consequences of their choices.

Our personal set of justifications is to see Radical Christianity as somehow different from Radical Islam because only a child would believe that if they suicide bomb themselves there will be virgins in the afterlife but an adult believes in a white Jesus welcoming them in the clouds of heavenly embrace.

Not only do we treat those we disagree with as infants and those we see as the Other (people living in countries which our version of is completely determined by our own popular culture), we also allow ourselves to become subject to this process.

In many workplaces, managers can now electronically monitor their employees, many of whom work in open spaces with little personal privacy. Colleges now routinely monitor the social media accounts of students, guiding their every step, and promoting ‘safe spaces’ on campus which is bit like providing safety helmets for emotional pain.

We’ve witnessed the rise of a “therapy culture,” which, as sociologist Frank Furedi warns, treats adults as vulnerable, weak and fragile, while implying that their troubles rooted in childhood qualify them for a “permanent suspension of moral sense.” He argues that this absolves grown-ups from adult responsibilities and erodes their trust in their own experiences and insights.

Researchers in Russia and Spain have even identified infantilist trends in language, and French sociologist Jacqueline Barus-Michel observes that we now communicate in “flashes,” rather than via thoughtful discourse – “poorer, binary, similar to computer language, and aiming to shock.”

Others have noted similar trends in popular culture – in the shorter sentences in contemporary novels, in the lack of sophistication in political rhetoric and in sensationalist cable news coverage.

The specter of Big Brother, of an authoritarian government controlling our every waking moment, is predicated on a population of imbeciles. Combine Huxley with Orwell and you have the Donald Trump/Amazon/Apple/Google society we live in today and the reality is that we chose this society. We chose to be infantilized and to reduce the Other People in the world to the level we have aspired to: children who are not able to fathom the harshness of living on this planet together.

The only reprieve from the dystopian hell is that tomorrow, we can choose differently. We can choose to be adults. We can choose common sense and civility. We can choose to talk out our differences rather than demand to speak to the manager/police/Congress/Supreme Court.

We can choose to be adults in a world we’ve created that squeezes us into a tiny child-like box we prefer to reserve for Others.

---

What a week, right? The summer season begins soon. Enjoy your Memorial Day and get prepped for a genuinely hot summer with hotter tempers. Keep calm and carry some sunscreen.