Tag: contemporary culture

The Lost Art of Lying

lying1Throughout history, from Pinocchio to Bill Clinton, there have been fantabulous liars in our midst.  Unfortunately, appreciation of the art has fallen out of vogue.  Personally, I blame Dubya and Cheney, who, having convinced half the world that Saddam Hussein had WMDs under his bed, finally (in a burst of weird integrity) admitted they never found any.  Honestly, if you’re going to lie, at least have the cojones to see it through.

Despite lying’s bad reputation, it is absolutely essential to modern discourse.  Lies pedestal our good intentions by rounding off the sharp edges of our conversations.  They give us a way in and a way out of difficult situations and grease the social wheels so we can get on with things.  Without lying, couples would suffer grievously and the breakup rate would triple (quadruple?) overnight.  Office workers would be at each other’s throats — on a daily basis — and salespeople, telemarketers and lovesick teenage boys would disappear entirely.  You see, we can’t tell the truth: at least, not all the time.  The problem is that dress does make you look fat, some questions are WTF stupid and we’re never going to do lunch – “real soon” or otherwise.  These are truths; however, it serves no purpose to broadcast them.  In fact, shooting your mouth off could open the door to tons of problems which, if just ignored, would solve themselves.  For example, the hideous dress will end up in the back of the closet or the landfill eventually – why push it?  Likewise, neither one of us wants to do lunch: we can’t stand each other.  So rather than descend into open warfare, we just pretend to be polite.

Every single person on this planet lies at least a half a dozen times a day, despite what we tell the neighbours, and none of us thinks it’s morally reprehensible to do so.  That’s why we call them “white lies” (sometimes we even add “little” to emphasize the point.)  We’re convinced, and rightly so, that these lies are not only harmless but, in fact, necessary.  They are an integral part of our human experience, and we accept that.  Yet, when it comes to institutionalized lies, we blow a gasket.  Why?  Because we hate being lied to — even though sometimes, it’s in our best interests.

Okay, the secret recipe notwithstanding, I want to know what KFC puts in my chicken.  It’s not going to do me any good, but I figure if Colonel Sanders is trying to kill me, at the very least, I should know about it before I give him permission.  That goes double for everything else I ingest, including the air I breathe.  So, when some bureaucrat tells me that the water is perfectly safe and I end up sick as a penguin, I’m hauling out the torches and pitchforks and, in the words of Russell Peters, “Somebody’s going to get a hurting, real bad!”

On the other hand, I really don’t need (or want) to know how close we are to bombing Iran’s nuclear weapons program back to thelying Stone Age.  That’s just counterproductive.  Believe me, I’m not going to sleep any easier tonight if I know that Obama just walked into the Pentagon and shouted “Cry havoc! And let slip the drones of war!” – and, BTW, neither are you.  In fact, we’re both going to get a lot more future Zs if he just tells us everything is fine.  Later on, he can make up another lie about national security or whatever to cover his ass — we’ll believe that, too, if it helps him out.  However, right now, I, and a whole lot of other people, just don’t want to know.

Everybody knows that being entirely honest is not all it’s cracked up to be.  Therefore, it logically follows that good leaders, like good people, should know when to give us the straight goods and when to just flat-out lie.  Unfortunately, contemporary society isn’t very sophisticated.  We believe in all kinds of non sequitur Pollyanna principles and rarely let common sense get in their way.  It’s too bad, though, because our time has produced some extraordinary liars.

The Homily: A Growing Menace

home4You know you’re in trouble when you long for the days of bumper sticker politics.  Way back when, it was pretty easy to “End Apartheid Now!” or “Free Tibet!”  You simply honked and moved on.  After all, you never saw “Enslave Tibet Forever” slapped on the ass of anybody’s automobile.  Besides, nobody believed that Bill Clinton’s limo would ever pull up behind you and he’d turn to Hillary and say, “Hey!  That Tibet deal sounds like a good idea.  Let’s call the Pentagon!”  Bumper stickering was a lot more symbolic than that.  Regardless, those simple days are gone.  Occasionally, you still see an itty-bitty billboard under the turn signal of an old pickup truck or clichéd VW van, but, in general, the streets have been cleared of this kind of pie-in-the-sky nonsense.  Unfortunately, now we have to deal with the replacement therapy.

These days, people have forsaken their vehicles as the medium of choice and are busy spreading the word electronically.  Not only that, but they’ve abandoned Tibet, Blood for Oil and Nelson Mandela to pursue the true path of enlightenment and, more importantly, pass it on to you.  You can’t go six cyber centimetres in this world without running into some idiot affirmation on how to be a better person or live a better life.  These digital drive-bys are very much like the real thing: they might not be intended for you, but if you’re in the general vicinity, you’re going to get caught in the crossfire.  The problem is they have nothing to do with you.  In fact, you’re irrelevant.

People aren’t tossing these Post New Age homilies all over The Net because they home2think you don’t realize that “life is like a box of chocolates…”  Nor are they “sharing” because they’re worried you may have forgotten that “your smile should change the world, not the other way around.”  Actually, that’s the least of their concerns.  Unlike Jehovah’s Witnesses, who are honestly trying to save your soul (annoying as that may seem) these Internet evangelists don’t give a damn about you. They’re posting this stuff promiscuously to proclaim their own high level of enlightenment.  They want you — and everybody else with Wifi — to know that they’ve achieved Maximum Awareness.  And as caring, sharing children of the 21st century, their expanded consciousness just natural overflows into all areas of their lives.

I know there are some people who believe this crap and even those who don’t, have the right to say as they please.  The thing is, though, unlike bumper stickers, whose message was confined to the asphalt and gone at the next left turn, these sermonettes are, first of all, front and centre and secondly permanent fixtures.  It’s like being trapped in an Elsinore elevator with Polonius.  “Life is art: paint your dreams.” “Promote what you love; don’t bash what you hate.”  “Don’t judge…”  “Avoid wrong…” “Eat the penguin…” “Ride the donkey…”  It’s endless and they’re all so staggeringly simple minded, it’s scary.

home3In an age when Playboy Bunny Dumb is considered a career choice, we are in danger of stupiding ourselves to death.  Throwing meaningless homilies into the mix is just accelerating the process.  If we’re not careful, one of these days, “A smile is the prettiest thing you’ll ever wear” is going to sound profound.   When that happens, it’s “abandon all hope, ye who enter here” because we’ll be in Beauty Queen Hell!

Eagerly Offended: Our Brave New World

offendedI doubt that congratulations are in order, but as of this week, our world finally hit critical mass on the “I am offended” scale.  In less than a day and a half we went from a society that was merely easily offended — by pretty much anything — to one that is now eagerly offended by it.  Therefore, as of close of business, January 30th, 2013, we are currently self sustaining in the injured feelings department and will remain constantly offended by one thing or another for the rest of all time.  My, but we do live in a curious age!

The Malcolm Gladwell Tipping Point, that threw us into this abyss of indignation, came during this week’s hype-up to the Super Bowl.  No, it wasn’t Ray Lewis mouthing off about the devil.  Quite frankly nobody’s on his side (the devil’s that is, not Lewis’.)  Nor was it Taco Bell getting its ass kicked by a bunch of militant vegetarians.  They were the ones who were so offended by Taco Bell’s “attack ad” on healthy eating that they made the faux Mexican fast food chain withdraw its Super Bowl mega-mercial in abject shame.  (Frankly, I never realized vegetarians were an identifiable activist group.  I thought they were just people who didn’t eat meat.)   No, the straw that proverbially pushed us from “easily” to “eagerly” was an innocuous player interview from the three-ring media circus.

The radio interview of Frisco 49er cornerback Chris Culliver (BTW, I’m a Raven’s fan so I have no self interest in defending Mr. Culliver.) was probably cliché-ing along quite nicely when interviewer Artie Lange asked if there were any gay players on the 49ers.  Culliver’s murky, meandering answer amounted to assurances that he was a heterosexual, his team mates were heterosexuals and nobody in the 49ers’ locker room was interested in exploring any alternative sexual orientation for at least a decade.  The loud and proud crowd jumped on the guy faster that you can say leisure-class activist.  They hauled out their own battalion of clichés – homophobia, intolerance, discrimination etc. and made their usual demands – a personal apology, a corporate retraction and some force fed re-education for the offending member.  The 49ers’ organization reacted immediately, tremblingly obeyed, and all was right with the world again.

Unfortunately, as per usual, people were offended by the wrong thing.  It’s offended1beyond my comprehension why nobody was pissed off by the question itself.  Rhetorically speaking, why did Lange even ask it in the first place?  What the hell does homosexuality have to do with football?  I doubt very much if Raven’s Coach Harbaugh (John) called his players together and said, “Listen up!  My brother, over in San Fran, has got himself a couple of homosexuals on defence, so we’re going to overload the strong side on 3rd and long situations.”  Sexual orientation just isn’t part of a winning football strategy.  It would have made just about as much sense for Lange to ask how many Norwegians were on the team; more, actually, since Norway is not what you’d call an American football powerhouse (no offence, Norway.)  Yet, Artie got off scot free (no offence, Scotland, or Dred Scott or whoever — My God, there’s no end to it!)

My point is somebody is always going to be offended by something.  This is as natural as homosexuality itself.  However, bringing up contentious issues at every possible inappropriate opportunity is actively seeking to be offended.  There’s no second choice on this.  Lange didn’t ask the question because he genuinely thought the world needed to know the straight-to-gay ratio on the 49ers.  He askeoffended2d it to see if he would get a stir-the-pot response.  He did.  The usual suspects were shocked and appalled, and our society gasped in some kind of sicko socio-emotional masochistic satisfaction (no offence, masochists.)

It comes down to this: go ahead and be offended if that’s what makes you happy.  However, don’t go striding around as if you’ve just been confronted by the antiChrist.  As of a couple of days ago, it’s pretty obvious that getting offended in our society is something we’re doing on purpose, and it’s now just as institutionalized as the Super Bowl!