Expecting perfection

It's safe to say that we're brought up with certain expectations about our lives. We grow up with our parents as a model--a house, a job, a spouse, a car--a whole life leading to the success the led to you. But there's a bit of a gap between having and not having and I think it takes some time to realize that--maybe for some, more than others.

But after time we kind of develop an uneasy contentment with a lack of material comforts. We go off on our own, accepting moderate destitution (as only upper-middle class white kids can do) in hopes that one day we'll have the job and the money to live as comfortably as we would like.

The only thing we never really seem to reach a similar level of comfort on is relationships. Blame it on Disney or the media or romantic comedies or whatever, we have this level of expectation about who we want to be with. There's an expectation for the palpable chemistry from the first glance and then just a series of perfect interactions that leads to that magical first kiss and then... who knows.

We want them to be just like us but not enough like us that we hate them. We want them to be like our parents (Freudian style) and be liked by our parents but not so much that we hate them. We want them to like the same music but not all of the same music but definitely like the same kinds of movies because god knows we don't want to watch crap movies with them unless we both think they're crap. We want them to be talented yet endearingly flawed, confident yet endearingly insecure. We want them to be as smart as us but not dumber or smarter than us because we don't want to feel like we're constantly being one-upped.

We want someone beautiful but accept that beauty is subjective (sometimes). Actually, physical beauty seems to be affected by what we know of the person. Like a series of filters or something, the more we know about a person (for better or worse), the more differently we view them. We learn a bad thing they've done and all of a sudden they're less attractive. Or you learn something really adorable about them and now they're much more attractive. Then as soon as the relationship is over, the filters are removed... or are they? Maybe it's chemical but I think it's all psychological.

We tell ourselves that we'll accept the perfect person and all of their flaws but when we meet anyone we pry open those flaws and make them more than the are--we expect existence before essence or to fall in love before the flaws.

We've got an image in our head of a person. We don't know who it is but we love them deeply and fully. Whether we realize it or not we compare everyone to this person and when we find a good match, we latch on. This seems great and all but the subconscious of a human is anything but fallible. We are open to so much more suggestion than we realize and adding onto the fact that we're incredibly self-destructive, how could we ever know what's really good for us?

I've always viewed relationships as an empirical and mechanical study of people and their qualities, but I think it should be viewed more as a chemical reaction--a rush of neurochemicals as unique as a snowflake... or whatever. And I think the exact ratio of whatever chemicals are flying between your synapses is always different depending on the person. And maybe, just maybe--a certain mixture of stuff causes attraction. Maybe, just maybe, a different mixture of stuff causes love--if that even exists.

It's a lot like the nature/nurture thing in psychology--a question that we will never ever know the answer to. Do we fall in love because we expect to? Or because we can't help it? Is our attraction determined by chemicals or by previous experience? Most people would say both, in both cases. But I can't make that call since it could go either way.

But I think my overarching point is that our expectations are likely to tend to cloud our perception of things. In fact, it's kind of hard psychological theory that they do. Not that there's anything we can do about it. We just learn--because our expectations are usually just that: figment's of our imagination and not really grounded in any sort of logical reality. I'm just saying... life and people aren't perfect. It's just how it is. We all know that. Unrealistic expectations can cause you to miss what's in front of you. I'm not saying goals are bad things to have because what you should expect is a certain standard of what you realistically deserve. Everyone should have a place to live with a sustainable job and someone to be good to them and love them. But its important to not have your head in the clouds looking for something better.

It's funny because I think a lot of my contemporaries are starting to realize the worldly limitations when it comes to jobs and a future. These are rough times we live in and think the idea that we were going to graduate from college and have a sweet job was kind of unrealistic. Maybe not at the time--but it certainly isn't as much of a reality now. I'm starting realize my own limitations and what I can and cannot do; what I didn't set myself up to do; how all of my mistakes compound to make up the reality that I live in. I say mistakes because you don't ever realize anything is wrong until it comes up. All of a sudden you realize that the way you thought things were going to turn out... well... didn't.

You were just expecting perfection.

Agoraphobia and Xenophobia

You know, I can't imagine being afraid of both going outside and foreigners. Even if you're able to go outside, everyone is terrifying. Regardless, I think having either would be a terrible way to live. [This of course is coming from someone who has neither--who is looking in from the outside so what do I know] If you're xenophobic, how does anyone go from stranger to friend? I understand being terrified of Mexicans, the Chinese, or the British (because they're foreign you terrible person) but what about the guy down the street? Everyone is foreign.

"Oh Dylan," you might be saying to yourself, "I see what you did there. You tied this post back to your previous one. You're a genius."

Thanks. I try. But that's not what this post is about. I just got back from London (sort of) and being around all those foreign people (The Brits, obviously) made me think a lot about the world and how we view foreign people. Okay, when I say foreigners I simply mean people from another country. It could be the way anyone views anyone else.

We generally accept the idea that most people in the world hate us. That wherever we go, people are going to hear our crass, yankee accents and automatically make assumptions and judgments about us. You know how I know they do that? Think about British people. Who comes to mind? For me, it's Emma Watson, Jason Statham, and Maggie Thatcher. In my head, every single British citizen is one of those people. And honestly, I get off the train at Paddington and I hear the accents and that's really all I hear. I hear exactly what Hollywood and the movies and media have told me British people are like. So it's interesting when a British person does an American accent or impression because 9 times out of 10, provided they're not being serious, it's going to be a southern accent with a lot of hard R's or something. But if you think about the average Brit's average interaction with Americans, it's in the movies or the media where they see us being indulgent and generally on our worst behavior.

And think that's where a lot of xenophobia and stereotypes come from--the media on the whole. If you think about what you see in our media it's all just scandal and gossip and rich people being rich and greedy and poor people on the major extreme of ignorance and necessity. The funny thing is--we know that's not representative of day-to-day life of most Americans. But of course, the media has to report on the extremes because they need ratings. They need to report on Casey Anthony and that senator sending picture messages to underage girls because that's what Americans sink their teeth into or something. Well the rest of the world sees that garbage too. Maybe, just maybe, the rest of the world hates us because all they see of us is us being absolutely retarded all the time or indulging in our animalistic tendencies all the time. Or maybe they just watch all our terrible movies. On every single double-decker bus in London was an advert for either the new Conan movie or Cowboys and Aliens. And honestly, that's the impression that they have of Americans.

Crazy, you might be thinking. But do we have a different impression of the British or anyone else in the world? Not really. The stereotypes we hold of everyone else in the world are based on the tiny instances in which we observe them.

But does everyone really hate us? I don't think so. I don't think that's the case at all. What do we do when we see a British person in America? We hear the accent and we stop and stare and triple-take and try to listen to what they're saying and doing and if we talk to them we're super interested about where they're from and we generally try to be nice. I imagine that when the average European (because I'll try to stop picking on the British) hears an American accent, they do the exact same thing because it's different. They aren't staring at you because they hate you (most of the time), it's just different from what they normally hear. Now of course they might hear you and instantly hate you, but that's like any stranger anywhere hating you--it's motivated by belligerence and ignorance. Or maybe you were being an idiot. Ever think of that?

I think if you asked anyone in the world what they think of when they think of Americans, they might say John Wayne, a Wall Street businessman, and a cowboy. (Sorry ladies.) But that's all they see. Like any stranger, if they got to know you, they'd like you, I'm sure of it. And some are just interested in your existence.

But what's with the fascination of world travel? (Here's where agoraphobia kind of fits it, but I was really just trying to stick with the pattern.) Well if you read Stuff White People Like you know that white people like foreign things. It's exotic and not as mainstream as american stuff. In fact, if you do read Stuff White People Like, you know more about hipsters and less about white people as a whole. Anyway, they have a saying: The grass is always greener on the other side. We always think that things would be better for some reason if we lived in a different place like Italy or England or something cool like that where we could be fashionable and around people with strange accents. The fact is, I missed America in just the week I was gone. I miss driving on the correct side of the road and not having to mentally convert everything to dollars to figure out what I was spending and being able to speak loudly in public because I'm not afraid of people hearing my accent. I don't know if many people [hipsters] realize this, but moving to another country doesn't grant you freedom from the problems of being American, it just allows you to take on the crap that people in that country deal with on a day to day basis. You still have to deal with stupid people, taxes, crap politicians, and the daily grind. It just kind of pisses me off when people tell me genuinely that they day dream of leaving America and moving to another country because they don't like something here. I'm not saying there aren't legitimate reasons to move out of the country like job prospects or chasing the affections of a hot European actress but what I don't understand is why some people are so desperate to get out of here. Being over there is going to be exciting for a whole twenty minutes until you realize that gas and everything else is super expensive (comparatively). I'm just saying...

If it wasn't for modern technology, we wouldn't know the other existed. Louis C.K. does a funny bit on people complaining. He's talking about people complaining about traveling in airplanes--how the seats are so small and the food sucks and it's boring and being cramped with people sucks and how security blows blah blah blah. Louis just says Hey! You're in a chair in the SKY! You're traveling in the air over an ocean! That's freakin' amazing! Stop complaining!

And it's amazing how small the world is. I can send instant messages and skype with family in England if I want and that's incredible considering how far that information has to go. I guess the point of all this mess is to just talk a bit about how we view the world. I don't think anything will ever change. There's nothing wrong with a little xenophobia, but check your sources first.

Relationships

I haven't seen Just Friends or its counterpart No Strings Attached but the concepts of the movies alone got me thinking about relationship titles.

I think we can all agree that relationships are one of the most complicated things in the world. For clarification, if you've latched onto the tone of past posts, human interaction is easily the most complicated thing, and a relationship is any interaction you have with anyone. Duh.

Stranger is a relationship title. It's a title for any relationship you don't have... Or at least not quite enough to be an acquaintance which is a word for someone who isn't a stranger, but not quite a friend.

But I think it's a funny thing how we have to define everything in our world, down to our interactions with people. Of course, we have to define the physical and non-physical worlds and morality and art and everything that we have but those things seem relatively concrete (even if the interpretation is not). But I think it's interesting that we have to define our relationships in such concrete terms as friend, especially because relationships in themselves are not concrete or tangible at all. They're based on oral and implicit agreements and are subject to deceit and fault and yet again, we define them so rigidly.

Point is, if you tell someone that you're just friends, everyone kind of knows what that means. It has specific limitations and right and privileges. Now of course, if you tell someone you're just friends but you're secretly physically involved, now you're just a liar. It's just a specific terms with such a universal meaning for something that could mean different things to everyone.

And of course there's the notion of best friend which is some imaginary tier of friendship that involves being more intimate than your normal friends merit and infinitely more intimate than with acquaintances but yet something about this person sets them apart and earns them a special distinction. Somehow adding the word best to a title gives it prestige and adds all these responsibilities and expectations. It's funny because becoming best friends is like dating... how do you know when it starts? A hangout becomes a date becomes two dates and now... you're dating? One secret between friends becomes three and now you're best friends? I don't know. That's more subjective than anything, like knighthood right?

Think about how miserable you are when you don't know what your relationship label is. You're sitting there at a movie with a girl/boy you like and you're not even watching the movie--you're only thinking What are we? Then you awkwardly say goodnight at the end and all you can think about is your relationship label because all of a sudden if you said it and agreed upon it, it would make things easier. And it's true. It does make things easier. When two people sit down and say a label, things are easier because all parties involved know what that label implies and entails. They now know without having spell it out what the boundaries and rights are of the relationship. If a boy and a girl sit down and agree to be just friends, they know that there's no emotional or physical relationship to be had. If the boy says, "Hey I like you," and the girl says "Hey I like you too," then all of a sudden the relationship takes on a label and the rights of the relationship are more clearly defined and no one has to spend $11.25 to sit there thinking about it for two hours.

I think Facebook has had an interesting effect on relationship titles. Obviously, everyone you're friends with (including the 200 people you may or may not actually know all that well) is going to know the instant you add someone as a relationship partner. It's going to be a big deal, people are going to "like" your new status update and comment saying things like "OH MY GOSH SO CUTE" and whatever and I think adding the social aspect does some odd and horrible things to a relationship. I mean, from my previous definition of the topic I would say that relationship-defining terms are strictly between the two people to decide. Obviously, you can share the good news but the terms friend, boyfriend, acquaintance, best friend, enemy are really just for you to know where you and someone else stand. Once you give that title it's pedestal on Facebook for everyone to see, I feel like it all of a sudden becomes a permanent memorial to the integrity of the relationship whether it's real or not. To be less vague, once everyone know it exists, it's existence is a social responsibility. People will notice if you screw it up. But then people are also privy to the intimate details of your life and everything just becomes very real when other people know about it. I'm not against having your relationship status on your facebook, but I say give it a significant amount of time before you put it up there. Make sure your stupid relationship status isn't going to appear on my newsfeed every week because it keeps CHANGING.

The fact is, even though we have these concrete terms with these more or less concrete deno-/connotations, relationships aren't that simple. Every term has an asterisk when it comes to defining how you interact with someone. Not to say there's anything wrong with that. I'm a HUGE advocate for defining relationships. Even if it can't be defined in a single term like friend, it's good to know what you mean to someone. Think about it. If you have any unclear relationships in your life, clear them up. If this means telling someone how much you appreciate them as a friend or if they've been upgraded to best friend status or even if they've always been your friend, they'll always appreciate hearing it. Of course, don't say it like you're dying though. Don't give anyone cause to worry. If you like like someone, tell them. Knowing they do or don't like you back is going to feel much better than not knowing. And of course, if this advice means telling someone you don't like them or making sure your relationship has clear boundaries, then that's what you got to do. Again, everything's better when everything's clear. Then you make sure you can say I told you when someone tries to say you've been dishonest with them. I know there's a few relationships in my life I'd like to clarify.

Death: Parte the Second

So I just got back from London. And by just got back I mean I got back Wednesday night and have been way too lazy to do this until now.

Anyway, one of the highlights for me was seeing Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead in the city on Tuesday night. Great show! Really funny. For those who don't know, it was written in the 80s or something as a kind of "what if" for two of the most significant insignificant characters in one of my favorite Shakespeare plays, Hamlet. Basically, Shakespeare says next to nothing about these two characters that play kind of a big role in the whole grand scheme of things so this guy wrote an entire play about them. It's kind of a philosophical look at issues of death and psychology and it's something I legitimately found a lot of interesting stuff in, as you would imagine.

Anyway, there was an interesting bit on death and why you should or should not fear death (this was as the characters slowly come to realize the inevitability of their own death and the hopelessness it creates).

Guildenstern quoted Socrates when he said something to the effect of: we don't know anything concrete about death, so it is therefore illogical to fear it. And that makes a ton of sense to me because a lot of my discussion of death was why it's such a crappy thing to happen to you. But it's a great point to note that if our fears are based on things we observe (through our own filter of experience) being contrary to what we value (that is, what helps us enjoy and further our own lives), then we logically shouldn't fear death because we really have no idea whether or not it's contrary to our lives other than the fact that it's the end of it. Now I understand that doesn't make a ton of sense but if you think of death as just another chapter of life (which it very well could be), it's really not the end of anything substantial. Death could be great.

Now many people say there is no God or afterlife because it doesn't make logistical or physical sense based on the world that we live in what with the laws of physics and nature and things like that. But my question is why should God or the afterlife have to abide by these rules? Why does anything have to abide by these rules? Why can't it just be that everything we know on this earth coincidentally follows a set pattern (see: Problem of Induction) and everything outside of our know earth follows a completely different set of patterns. With the limited knowledge of the earth that we humans do enjoy, why is it so hard to accept things that might not seem plausible on the surface?

I heard a quote in a movie the other day (I think it was Thor) that magic is just science we don't understand. Think about that.