like it is
In relation to somebody who is completely off the wall insane, I feel sane like I've got it together. In relation to someone who is sane, by which I mean conscious, I feel like a bumbling blockhead. In relation to somebody really stupid, I feel smart. In relation to somebody really smart, like historian David McCullough, for example, I feel like I skipped every day of school. Some many years ago, I'd pass judgment on a really complex work of art, like a film, as if it were a poem by an 18 year old about wanting to cut her wrists. I believed I could say of a work of art whether or not it was a piece of shit, and what I'd say would be valid. LOL. I see people the age I was when I thought I was bubbling hot shit, am appalled by how ridiculous and out of touch with reality they are. I look back at self in that age, and today have nothing for it but shame. Shame for the arrogance of judgment.
The part that justifies the arrogance of judgment in me is in others as well; it's taught. It's what we learn in culture, in school, on tv, reading. It comes in from everywhere. I see what appears to me emptiness in the young, and know by now that I was the same way. Coming up out of the American suburban bedroom as encampment and American public school, college was another world I wasn't ready for, especially conceptually. Another way of thinking I had no access to. It took two years of concentrated reading to get myself ready, and then, I wasn't really. The culture I grew up in had no place for college in it. It wasn't a consideration, like living under water is not a consideration. It was another way of thinking. I learned that way of thinking, making judgments. Learned to use the mind as a measuring device. Learned the nature of our place along the way of social and cultural evolution in the advancement of civilization and how we got here. Learning to read with understanding. It was tip of the iceberg learning in each field, graduate school for the big underwater part. Or reading on one's own, which has no credentials that go with it, in fact is frowned upon, and that's a good thing.
I learned that the way of thinking of the people I grew up among was wrong. Working class. I gobbled up that belief, because I already believed it. School taught me and television taught me the working class is a culture of ignorance. I found after becoming a believer, the middle class I'd been educated into did not appeal to me. I preferred the culture I grew up in. Perhaps like someone from Cuba who came to USA. Their Cuban upbringing, belief system, culture had been internalized. Naturally, living in south Florida, they miss connecting with the place within that is a stranger this side of the water. It does not mean they want to go back, it simply means they're living in a culture they did not grow up in. I would not want to live among the working class people again without enough education to have an understanding of why. In the mountains, I've found much among the working class people that is commendable, that makes the world of the working class one I couldn't live outside of now that I have enough understanding to appreciate it.
The middle class and the ruling class look down on the working class for crudity and one and another reason. I'm convinced that the taboo of saying fuck in public is a class issue. It's ok to say fornication anywhere, the pulpit in church. The meaning is the same. One is latinate and declared ok by the middle class, like the words penis and vagina. The other words that mean the same thing are said by the working class where they laugh at the unfamiliar new words. Somebody who says vagina instead of cunt "sounds better." Sounds cultivated, on the climb, middle class. Sounds like you're seriously on the ladder, wanting to be looked up to by laying off the working class words such as aint, and them for those.
In the time of the music store, from time to time a PhD whose wife was visiting relatives came into the store. They have a uniform so uniform I could spot one stepping out of a car in the parking lot across the street. At first, I was glad for somebody to talk with who reads books. That didn't last long. Momentarily forgot about the rooster phenomenon. Conversation with any one of them amounted to a test. I was tested until found inferior by the interrogator. I quit responding to the interrogation. In first sentence of first answer, I used them for those, or aint. Powerful words, whichever. It worked every time. I was judged one of the idiot locals, and he turned away from wasting any more time with a working class boob. It was predictable; it worked every time. Yauwsuh, dat's what I is, boss! (translation: the door goes out as well as in). I only take tests when I sign up for and pay for a class, not to amuse somebody who believes a PhD a height you look only down from, the top floor of the WTC. This likeness comes to mind to remind self that all in illusion is perishable. These examples are patterns that my friends who are PhDs do not fall into. We couldn't be friends if they did. We don't play rooster games. That's how we can be friends.
This seems like subtle stuff, but in the world of what we call "actuality," it's attraction is really strong. I see a PhD and see a Brahman with the thread. The very identity they hold onto unto the last breath. I used to think that was important and wanted it. But after living among hillbillies for half my life, where I knew among the old people, seventh and eighth grade educations, I soon found them to be brilliant minded men and women. Their education to that point taught them how to figure things out, figure out whatever they wanted to do, in the time when work was physical. And figure out meanings in the Bible. Now, the work that pays is mental. We need more attention given to paying attention in school. That's where I fell off, in paying attention. My prayer for next lifetime is that I have motivation to pay attention in school. I'm not throwing off on PhDs; for one thing, it was once an ideal to me, too. Just looking at a pattern in social behavior. No pattern includes everybody, though I probably would have been the same way. The world is not a correct answer to a test question.
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