As I sit down to write the blog entry that must so obviously follow my last blog entry, I feel sadly unmotivated. This idea has been creeping around in my head lately that yet another reason why normal contemporary human interactions are marked by such woefully small uses of intelligence has to do with efficiency; that use of intelligence is somehow, instinctively, a costly exercise and that people who don't interpret something as a problem for themself are naturally inclined not to spend any precious "intelligence units" dealing with it.
I think the following topic might actually be a great example with which to test that idea if only it would generate enough blog comments to provide some measure of evidence.
But no matter. Let me take a deep breath and persist:
I challenge you to grasp the following scenario: I walk into a restaurant with my friend Mary. Mary, we all presume, has a vagina and is officially recorded as being of the female gender in the records of all relevant governmental and socio-economic schemes.
We sit down and we both order steak.
The waiter asks how we would like our steaks cooked.
I immediately leap to my feet, cast my napkin at the floor and shout, "How dare you insult us! Can't you see I am a man! Can't you see this is a woman! Obviously men eat their steak medium rare and women eat their steak well done! How dare you question our normalcy! DO YOU SUSPECT WE ARE PERVERTS!"
Now. Is my reaction intelligent? Is my reaction logical? Is my reaction sane? Or should I be quietly ushered off to a psychiatric hospital at this point?
Okay, back up and let me offer a more responsible reaction:
The waiter asks how we would like our steaks cooked and I cordially reply, "Oh, we're both meatlinear. But thank you for asking."
The waiter then smiles and departs, understanding of course that I want my steak medium rare and Mary wants hers well done, just as he would have guessed, knowing that meatlinear people are in the majority and meatgiddy people (men who prefer well-done steak and women who prefer medium rare) are in the minority of 10% or so!
Does this scenario sound much more intelligent? Much more logical? Much more sane?
What? No?
But scenarios alike either of these are played out every day all over this continent (and others I assume) by damn near every single person, I would wager. But instead of steak preference it is used in terms of sexual preference or "sexual orientation".
The problem with the above scenarios is that there is of course no correlation between gender and how you like your steak cooked except that if someone did a study you would inevitably find some pattern because it is mathematically impossible not to.
But what people so hysterically find impossible to grasp, is that there is no correlation either, between which brand of dingly-doodle one carries between their legs and which brand one prefers their bed-partners to come equipped with, except that if someone did a study (hmm.. Kinsey?) he would inevitably find a pattern because it is again impossible not to.
Now, is anyone already thinking I'm wrong, that there is a big difference between sex and steak (I enjoy both equally, by the way); because genitals and meat are two different things (if you ignore the obvious joke) while genitals and genitals are the same thing?
They are not the same thing. That is soft thinking. What you
have and what you
want are two different concepts. Apples and oranges.
Any person actually has a plethora of sexual preferences at once. You can't just give a "straight" man a vagina in a jar and he'll be happy.
There are untold factors to his preferences of varying significance, much of which can not be quantified, verbalized or perhaps even consciously recognized.
My point, by the way, is that such labels as
gay and
straight are a wild aberration from normal thinking and from scientific process, not that they offend me or that I'm militantly against their use (though I can not think of myself as "gay" or "straight" - the idea feels stupid) but that this social peculiarity is a very significant phenomena which the average person seems unable to even comprehend, despite it being a matter of simplest logic. And I say this only because every time I've broached the subject in conversation, people who otherwise get away with being viewed as intelligent just stare at me like I'm an alien... Who has just double-dipped his potato chip... In the punch bowl...
Normal scientific process labels things based primarily on what they are, not on combinations of arbitrary conditions, and socially we copy this method.
By normal scientific process we would label
all people who sexually prefer males "male-lovers" or whatever fancy word and
all people who prefer females "female-lovers" or whatever. The idea that our primary label is derived through the arbitrary condition of one's own gender is wildly unscientific and no more sane or logical than saying that blond people who like women are called "straight" and dark-haired people who like men are called "gay" or perhaps "wiggly".
People who like medium-rare steak are just called "people who like medium-rare steak" and there is no thought to any conditions, gender-wise or else-wise because, and this is my main point:
We are as a society and as individuals massively deluded by sexual superstitions and not so much by meat superstitions.
Unfortunately it is pointless to demonstrate the astounding reality of our sexual confusion because my motives will be misperceived and rather than understood as a man just sick of all the bullshit I'll just be suspected seven kinds of pervert. So why even go there?
I have a feeling I've never met a human being entirely free of superstition nor any human being capable of recognizing their own superstitions for what they are.
Am I the exception? How could I know for sure! I know that for the first 30-odd years of my life that almost everything I believed was crap and then I literally started over as an integral seeker of truth.
Now... what is your argument?
That gender "orientation" is not a preference; that there is no choice in the matter? That's fine. But same with steak. There is no choice in that matter either. You like it one way and not the other for reasons that connect in your non-conscious mind. Both are indeed preferences.
But the 90% straight rule is consistent! There is some kind of meaning there! No. There are mathematical patterns to steak preference or any other preference if you care to do the field research. There are multiple components to these and most other preferences. It is no wonder that cross-gender attractions are the more common when you realize that a large component of sexual attraction stems from fascination with the unfamiliar. Societal customs dictate that we spend more time naked with our own self and with people of the same gender. Need evidence here? Foot fetishes are wildly common in North America where people's feet are largely hidden from view in shoes, and almost non-existent in warm nations where people's feet are exposed in sandals daily.
Okay but "straight" longings are normal and other longings charitably tolerated (or not, in many cases) and we know this because straight couplings make BABIES which is a VERY BIG DEAL and essential to survival of the human race! SO THERE...! Wrong. Not a big deal. Water is essential to all of life on this planet but that does not make it a perversion when oxygen or hydrogen blend with other elements to form materials other then water.
I could go on predicting what the soft arguments would be and pre-emptively axe them in this space but I'd rather stop here and go to bed, frankly.
If you understand my point despite my less than ingenious attempt to explain it then that is much to your credit, I would say. But I suspect that most people are so enslaved by the pressures of survival instinct to be socially normal that you are being prohibited from doing the math!
I would love to hear from you whether you "get" what I'm saying. Or if you still think I'm wrong, I'd love to hear why!
This is very abnormal, I know, but truly I take great delight in discovering flaws in my own thinking but also it is my responsibility to point out a flaw in your own comment if applicable!
Peace.
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