Social Class as Culture
POSTED BY: Fremdfirma
UPDATED: Friday, August 19, 2011 00:54
VIEWED: 3534
PAGE 4 of 4
Pish, ain't being heroic, it's just being HUMANE.
Here's the thing, this might wander a bit but I feel there's a useful point in here somewhere even if imma have trouble expressing it.
Whatever it is that makes people like other people, need other people, on an emotional-connection level, I don't have it, or have very little of it, probably due to being the extreme version of a latchkey kid and socially ostracised (once violence and other coercion had obviously failed) and isolated up till I was almost twenty, helped along by the fact that the further "away" I got from the rest of humanity, the less I liked em, and couldn't stand their company anyway - what tiny bit of empathy I have is mostly for animals, or other outcasts, and I really *don't* feel, emotionally, any impulse towards aiding or cooperating with humanity on that level, none whatever.
Which means that for all as often as I point out that humans natural instincts are cooperation and empathy, those are instincts I DO NOT HAVE.
And I haven't always been on the side of the angels, sure - but that also applies to this, cause here's the point I feel some internal need to make.
It is my *CHOICE* to do things, not following the path of least resistance, not cause of any possibility of reward or cause some law tells me to or cause society wants me to - in fact in a lot of cases I break or bend the hell out of the established conventions in my efforts, not even (much) as an act of rebellion but simply because I damn well please, cause it pleases ME to do so, even in the absence of those natural impulses, as an act of will alone.
I *chose* this path, despite greater "reward" being down the other, and in that act, by that act, realized that those who chose the other did in fact *choose* that path, excuses notwithstanding, which is WHY I am so blatantly, viciously nasty to those I feel have done so.
And just as states become traits in early development, behavior can become reflex.
http://www.trauma-pages.com/a/perry96.php
Honestly a lot of the small, decent things I tend to do had over the years begun to pass beneath my notice till Wendy started rather aggressively pointing them out to me - and she just handed me my ass *again* over a wager regarding Fallout3 - whether or not I even *could* do an evil-karma playthrough, which I failed abysmally at even while TRYING to do so because those reflexes betrayed my intent at every turn and corner.
So I think the concept discovered here is the notion that you can, if you mean to strongly enough, reach back through the gates of time and wrest your own humanity from the very claws of those who took it from you.
And I find THAT... extremely gratifying, cause it means no one is ever truly beyond redemption, although having seen some of the stuff I have will probably leave me doubting that regardless.
http://www.vachss.com/mission/behavior.html
-Frem
I do not serve the Blind God.
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Well, nothing and not interesting isn't bad. Like that Mal-à propos: "I long for a little dullness."
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Frem, I'm right there with ya in many respects. I don't wish people ill; I just wish them to leave me the hell alone, for the most part.
And I'll go out of my way to help those whom the rest of society would just as soon spit on, because *I* choose to do it - what others won't do, or "can't", I will, because I can and I choose to.
I'll share my lunch, hand over my money even when I can't afford to, because they're further down than I am and need it more than I do.
I had one lady scold me for helping those who don't want her sermonizing. She refers to these people as "dragworms", because they hang around downtown on the main drag to panhandle much of the time. She tells me there's no hope for them - even though most of them are no older than 24 or 25, tops! - and scolded me for giving them money, claiming they were just going to buy booze or drugs with it.
I turned when she said that - I'd been trying to ignore her - and I whipped around on her. "I fucking hope to your 'god' that they DO buy booze and drugs with this money! If you were this far down, wouldn't you want to find a way just to get out of your head for a while, forget about all this bullshit and trouble? I would!"
She stormed off, still clucking under her breath at me. One of the kids actually had a tear in his eye as he thanked me and said that I really did get it and understand.
And yeah, Frem - I meant it when I said you're a hero. Sometimes just the act of acting like a human being is the most heroic thing you can do. People need to know that, and remember it.
"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservatives." - John Stuart Mill
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Well yeah, s'funny that I used to wind up with a boatload of those little sampler bottles of booze from doing a bit of legally "grey" work for a certain liquor store - I would essentially linger, okay, downright loiter, leaning up against the wall in front of the place and look all threatening and stuff (it helped that I had a leather jacket, spikes and a mohawk at the time), which didn't whatever scare those "in the know", the regular customers, but did cause ACTUAL troublemakers to give the place a miss rather than get all into a brawl over turf-stepping...
And sure, I was struggling with a certain bent towards boozing myself, so I understood that kinda need, and handed out those little bottles to the drunks up on Patapsco pandhandling, told em "let's cut out the middle man, shall we ?", with a nod and a wink.
Seriously, as you say, if that's gonna be what it takes to get them through the day, then that's what it takes, ain't my damn business to run folks lives for em - you can't save people from themselves and ya shouldn't oughta try, that never ends well.
There's also, with me, that even when I know they're selling me a song and dance, a bullshit story, I'll play along, cause if their pride, their sense of personheed needs to believe they've pulled one over, if that is what it takes for them to feel better about themselves and the world around them, let them have their little "victory" in a world that has so defeated them - besides which it's often worth it cause you do get some entertainment out of it, don't you ?
Of course, that pride can be harmful of itself at times, one of my neighbors during the same period was so hell-bent on not accepting "charity" that she and her kids lived on the barest edge of starvation, more so than the rest of the neighborhood, and even though all I had at the time was peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, spread real thin (I used to keep the jar of peanut butter sitting in the middle of the stove over the pilot light so it'd be semi-liquifed and you could get more mileage out of it, and yanno, it tasted better that way too), but I'd sneak those kids a couple sandwiches any time I could spare it - which got me accosted by one of the local cops thinkin I was dealing drugs to em or something, and I tore into him about it, was one of the few times in my life I ever watched a cop feel shame...
That was another thing they were kind of assholes about, I rolled my own smokes cause that was all I could afford and they initially had a bad habit of fucking with me about "paraphanelia", aka rolling papers, and once even downright busted me for possession of a "lookalike substance" which did get me community service, the fuckers - which mind you was catnip, for the freakin cat, I told em yeah, go right the hell ahead and smoke that yourselves ya bastards, I'd love to watch you try.
Eventually they gave up on that when one of em got a talkin-to about it by the judge (who was kind of sick of seeing me and watching me mindfuck the prosecutor while serving as my own attorney instead of letting some dive-taking public defender stick me with a plea) and would pretend not to notice even when I started DELIBERATELY rolling my smokes to look as much like a phattie as possible, cause imma asshole, sure.
The rest of the community, a lot of em, didn't hassle me too much cause of a propensity for extreme violence when provoked and also cause they might someday NEED my ass, repair work is expensive and when you know a mechanical savant who's idea of payment is likely as not to be a square meal generally it's a bad idea to piss them off - which is one thing that lead to hunting predators online when I was laid up after the accident and the whole george burdinsky kidnapping thing blew up, I was the only one around who had a computer (built out of parts salvaged from the local salvation army) and knew how to use one, and when the feddies refused to go after the bastards who did it, the locals ensured my survival by trading food and medicine, and occasionally a place to sleep, in exchange for hamme
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