Think About The Way X (Думайте о пути)

The tenth of a never-ending series

1 December 1999

Savage City — There wasn't much traffic at midnight on Thanksgiving. I was just slowly drifting down Division street, looking at what the pigs had done to my hometown since my last visit. Nothing too imaginative, just the typical collection of plastic "progress" that is forever creeping otward from the core, in search of new virgin territory to conquer. I was behind a car with a couple of teenage girls in it, people who were, in all likelihood, locked into the shallow values I was avoiding. Could there actually be people cruising Division on Thanksgiving? It seemed to be a small possibility, but to some people there is nothing better than that drag strip; at the very least, it beats spending time with a family. My wonder disappeared when they did the U-turn at 33rd Ave, the only place for cruisers to turn around and start heading back towards downtown - the promised land. And just for an instant when their car was turning, I saw the driver and our eyes met.

There wasn't a whole lot to see there, and I probably looked the same way to her. She could have seen in myself what I saw in her: the searching, the aimlessness, the boredom. But her boredom is inherent in the game she is playing. Can there be much excitement in doing circles in a backwards hick town? My boredom was on a different level, and I didn't feel the city at all. I was just passing through, like I was a ghost. In many ways, I was, for the person who grew up in Savage City passed on, or at least has been frozen to be revived a different day.

I had half a mind to follow this car and see what these people were up to. Though I am totally ignorant about the etiquette and procedure of cruising up and down a main drag, and thus I wouldn't have much idea how to flag these people over, for a bit it didn't make a difference. There had to be some kernel of truth that these people had. Perhaps they knew something that I didn't know that forced them to drive around late at night with nothing better to do. I don't think I would immediately convert myself and join their sorry cult, but at the very least I would have some insight into what has created that empty look in her eyes. And I am a sucker for that kind of look with possible intelligence behind it, which has gotten me into trouble in the past.

But I ignored those feelings and instead went home. The fatigue was too great, and I had work to do the next day. Being back in Savage City for the obligatory Thanksgiving dinner was bad enough. By most measures, the dinner was better than any in recent memory. No yelling, nobody started crying, no fighting. It was as Norman Rockwell as my fractured family is capable of producing, which was exactly the reason it bothered me. I have never known that kind of family in my experience. Some may say that is my loss, but such statements are totally outside of my logic. My loss or not, I can only deal with what is. Not with what should be, or as a teacher said on The Simpsons tonight, "Sounds like somebody's got a case of the ‘s'posed to’s." Of What Is and What Should Never Be, which one comes first?

Earlier that night, on the roof of what passes for a skyscraper in Savage City, I meditated upon this predicament. Being on the roof of a tall building is good for many things, and though the Medical Arts Building is no Moos Tower, it was good enough. The streets even reminded me somewhat of Stadium Village near the U of M, with its angled streets and little stores. In this environment, trying to stand in the lee whenever possible, I thought. The situation never seems to change. My interest waxing and waning with politics. My interest waxing and waning with school. My interest waxing and waning with women. The peaks and valleys seem to coincide at odd times, pretty consistently. It's an endless loop.

This would be fine if it weren't for the fact that I have reached the end of my learning curve in this place. It is possible to be in a rut and still learn things, but for me it is no more. My job is at a dead-end, my studies are at a dead-end, my social contacts here are in a downward spiral (perpetrated by the dawning realization that the people here are not those that I wish to emulate). Progress is slowing down at the same time that things are speeding up chronologically. We are blasting towards the next year, four weeks to go now. The speed with which I am zooming would be great if there were some goal I was after, but that is not so.

There seems to be a general malaise around. I am not the only one who is at a loss, running down my engines because I have nowhere to go. Unfortunately, this can lead to fairly destructive behaviour, especially from the very people who normally choose to reject such immaturity. Perhaps it is a sign of frustration, the frustration that comes when a person sees that his or her "better" morality isn't necessarily followed by increased happiness. Perhaps it is the quest to recapture lost youth. I have learned to avoid people caught in these traps, and I know that there is nothing I can do to help these people; many times, all I do is make it worse. I haven't been totally oblivious to the lessons presented to me, but one thing remains that will never disappear, no matter how many times I experience this. It is the puzzled expression that appears on my face whenever I hear the latest escapade in stupidity.

This is the attitude I had going into the holiday. I had to get away from most people, and that is how I found myself on top of the Medical Arts building. After having played Scattergories and hearing the amusing teenage male mentality such a game can elicit, it seemed like a very good spot. From up there Sam and I could look down at my car (I never realized how good it looks from the air) and at the cops with impunity. Off to the north was the rotating beacon atop the hospital's helipad, and off to the southeast was the same beacon at the Savage City airport. There was a warm glow in front of that beacon; the Savage City Reformatory, where the best and the brightest go to relax from a society full of conflicting messages they are unable to process.

Sam had just come back from Georgia, protesting the School of the Americas. I am fairly ignorant about this subject and I will freely admit it; I know that it is a bad school that teaches people to be terrorists, or something like that. But that is all I know. It is a popular target for protests, and though I would have to compare the rates of atrocities committed by graduates of that school to the atrocities committed by, say, alumni of the University of Minnesota before I felt comfortable protesting, fundamentally I would agree. I don't agree with the WTO protests, but that topic threatens too much to go off on some teddible, teddible tangent, so I will leave it alone for now.

It is a hard time for leftist fun and protests. Some of the problems arise from such stupid demonstrations as those in Seattle. Everywhere liberals with their hearts in the wrong places (which roughly translates to nowhere near their heads) are fucking up civil disobedience, by doing things such as going on a hunger strike to get a better professor to demanding that no black people be fired, despite gross incompetence. Good, wholesome protests are few and far between. There are no problems nowadays with the clear-cut demarcations of right and wrong that existed in the past. Hell, it was easy to see that it was wrong when police turned fire hoses and dogs on people because of the colour of their skin. I wouldn't have to see much of that before I would be on a bus to Selma. However, people nowadays are turning stupid cases into the moral equivalents of those a generation ago. This leads to such stupidity as saying the Vice-President in charge of athletics and student development during the worst scandal in the history of the University of Minnesota was fired not because he allowed it to happen, but because he was black. That's a good way to piss everybody off with illogic, but it's not helping make the world a better place.

On the other side, then, you have Nazi posters suddenly appearing on campus at the U. Now, Nazi groups and the KKK are no strangers to Savage City, but I used to think that a larger, more liberal, less Wallaceite campus such as the one I attend in Minneapolis was free of such things. Sure, there are crazy racists and White Power freaks in the student population, but the atmosphere is slightly less conducive to expressing those views here. But nevertheless, posters stating that race mixing is a crime spontaneously appeared, and the National Socialist Movement was responsible.

In this day and age, then, protesting is problematic. The enemies are still there, of course, but they no longer take their direct orders from Mayor Daley and wear easily identifiable uniforms. They go to church and go to work with the ideas and mentalities that were drummed into them from childhood, and though they don't overtly act with hate, they are affected subconsciously. Protesting won't solve this problem. I said as much to Sam, knowing that protesting in this day and age is getting to be increasingly absurd. He countered by saying that such a time is perfect for protesting, becuase things are at their least visible and publicity is necessary. To do any different would simply be, well, fair-weather social consciousness. Which is true in many ways, but there are still problems with this approach.

The conversation drifted away from protesting to general philosophies. It was at this point Sam made a very interesting proposal. In the spirit of Objectivism and Libertarianism versus more paternalistic forms of society, why don't we simply separate the two? Those who are gung-ho about living in a place where only the fit survive and everything is full of intentionality can live in their Galt's Gulch with their contemporaries, while those who simply wish to get along with the emotions and dreams in a world that is not dog-eat-dog can have their own system. The Objectivists will not be bothered by a bunch of stupid "looters" in their midst, and those who choose to live in a society that is roughly like it is now will not have to hear about how altruism and emotions not based on logic are inherently weak. Sounds like a win-win situation to me.

The problem that I face, however, is trying to figure out which side of the divide I would fall on. I have drifted back and forth over the year, becoming less compassionate in the fact of increased absurdity (which is what I am feeling now) and becoming less cut-throat in times of relative happiness. I seem to be in the middle of those poles. I have become increasingly moderate in my old age, to be sure, and this is just another example. A possible solution would be to create some third society for us fence-sitters to be in, but that would lead to increased fragmentation until I found myself in a society and a minority of one. Great. That is the definition of insanity.

The appeal of any type of life philosophy is the fact that you will never be in a minority of one. Most people will gladly give up the possibilities associated with free thought in order to ensure that they are never without allies. The most moronic religious beliefs exist because there are a lot of people who believe in them, and as long as they believe they don't have to explain to each other why they do. If I attack some rigid thinker, he or she will be be happy knowing that no matter how well I logically cut up their beliefs, there are other people who will totally agree with the philosophy and they will all sit around and talk about how wrong I am. For me, never really being sure of what I believe in because I have no book, no sage to turn to when I doubt. Perhaps this is the reason that I once heard, "You think about how things should be instead of just accepting how they are? That's so cool." It's not hard to get depressed by sentiments like that.

I wish this had a point. That would mean that I do have a direction, that I am not merely being carried along by forces I can't control. But unfortunately that is not the case. I find myself dangerously close to the kind of banality that characterizes average life. Just another middle-class freak who isn't doing anything great. The danger comes from the fact that this way of living is frighteningly easy and can even be happy once in a while. At the very least, it is not cutting me down. But I know damn well that the destruction will happen in the future if I continue. So the question is now or later? I have fought mediocrity without really knowing why. Now I feel that I might be wrong, that "being myself" may mean being average. I used to wonder how people go themselves into strangely fulfilling ruts. But this year taught me that I can do the same thing too! It was only fate that kept me from the easy path before.