Life is a Banquet - OR - Why We Poop

Warning! NSFP  (Not Suitable For Prudes)

I recently came across an interchange that happened online with some prominent people in the LDS community that got me thinking about how much I love it when people behave toward each other in real and honest ways.

In 2007 Richard Dutcher, a pioneer of LDS film making, blew a haughty kiss goodbye to the LDS film industry.  I read his goodbye and I loved it. He seemed a bit inflated, sounding a bit like, "Now listen Children!", but it was what he was really thinking and feeling at the time, uncensored, unadorned, a bit reckless, and I loved him for that.  Kieth Merril (another filmmaker) then responded in a very real and self-justified way at Richard's ego and what he saw as delusion (I could see that too from his perspective).  Again, unrestrained and raw.  I loved that.  Beautiful stuff.  He later issued a formal apology to Richard ... meh OK, that's good too.  I like to see people get along and admit their mistakes as well.  But more-so, I love it when people dare to be real and have real emotions, opinions, and responses.
Richard Dutcher: Parting Words on Mormon Movies
Kieth Merril: Dutcher Comments Showed Arrogance
Keith Merril Apology

In our society there is so much pressure to always smile and show the best, most positive sides, of who we are.  That's good n all...but it's also a little phony and plastic. People who tune in too heavily to this broadcast become passive aggressive pleasers, among other personality disorders caused by not expressing your true thoughts and emotions, and our get along and go along nature which causes us to stuff it down more than we let it out.

I love it when people are not afraid to show a bit of the underbelly when having a spine.  I love it when people have a bit of grit and backbone to their personality.  I hate FAKE.   If you know me, that's one thing you will know loud and clear.  I abhor deception and people and things hiding who and what they really are.  I don't like artificial or pretend when it comes to people ... and in order to get that I will walk along the shitty roads with you.  I adore real, and I strive to be real...maybe a real weirdo, or a real idiot, or a real jerk...but hopefully I'm real.

In a recent conversation with a friend on FaceBook (FB) they mentioned how they get tired of people on FB constantly promoting their perfect wonderful lives.  I responded, "Yeah, it's almost lie a contest eh?"   I noticed the spelling error so I texted again, "I meant like, but lie works too"  A hearty agreement was returned.  I call my friend's reaction to this FB kind of sharing, The Pollyanna Reflex Syndrome.  As many know, Pollyanna is a little fictional girl who is always so sweet, kind, and full of hope.  So wonderfully optimistic ... So terribly punchable in the face!

Punchable that is, if you're like most people whose lives are not like that.  The urge to punch her in the face when she won't concede anything negative about anything is The Pollyanna Reflex Syndrome, when Pollyanna pushes it too far and might just benefit from a serious punch in the face (Hey - I'm not condoning violence toward children - it's metaphor people!)

Just sayin, maybe Pollyanna needs to get real ... go through a major depressive episode? ... of course we only see her when she's young and full of hope and her naive and wonderful optimism, a sweet adorable dopey little head full of only the best ideals.

Yeah, let her live long enough in the real world and life will  inevitably beat some reality into that curly little head.   Ahhh! - Did I really just say that?  I'm horrible I guess.

Point is, the optimism portrayed in that movie is NOT REAL.  Sure, she goes through some adversity when she gets hit by a car and has to adjust to being crippled, but in real life she would NOT walk again.  Spinal injuries are a bit that way.  Some things you simply cannot solve with positive mental attitude (PMA), although PMA can make life happier, and more tolerable.

Many people get annoyed by the imbalance of unbridled PMA and must inject some pessimism into the equation to balance it out.  Life is a brutal teacher ... if you don't keep moving, striving, working ... it will kick your ass and take you down.  Dreams do not work if you don't. If you stand still your dreams will bury you. Sometimes it even takes you down when you're doing everything right.  Life is kinda fickle that way.  Butt - Big BUT, You WILL endure it better if you can maintain a PMA, but PMA alone will not save you from hardship, or miraculously mend your spine, without the work and the willpower to see the bad things through, and some bad things you simply never get through, or over, you just deal ... and keep dealing.

I came across this excellent presentation when in the middle of thinking about this - http://www.upworthy.com/the-most-brilliant-form-of-social-control-ever-invented-is-right-here?g=2

This is the insidious myth that we continue to teach our children (well meaning as it may be), that if you are good and positive (righteous) that God will protect you and keep bad things from happening in your life ( I actually heard an adult say this recently to a group of young cub scouts).   This unfortunately contains the burrowing mind worm message that should something bad happen in their lives (which it inevitably will), that it is somehow their fault, and God let it happen (e.g. parents divorcing or death).  God doesn't/didn't love and protect them because of some issue within them.  Somehow they cosmically brought it on themselves.

This thinking is the reason why society has a tendency to blame the victim, because we still sell this idea that people always deserve what they get. If god doesn't heal your crippled legs - guess what YOU SUCK!, or your attitude sucks.  More benign, yet still insidious, is the message "He's trying to teach you a lesson".  Really?  Then, what a mean Bastard God is!  He could help me out...but he chooses to let me suffer?  He could have prevented your brutal beating and rape...but He allowed it to teach you a lesson. (again the message that your suffering is due to some failing within you, something you need to be taught or learn, or have fixed by trial)  If only I had prayed more, and was more faithful and good...this would not have happened.  This making lemonade with God is just another form of PMA taken too far.

It's no surprise that we humans have invented a vengeful deity in our image.  We are punishing apes, bent on justice and consequences, who have no trouble handing down severe punishments.  Nor do we have much trouble imaging a god who favors those who agree with him, and punishes those who don't, until they're beaten down enough to get it.  And if they never do, there's a special place of  time-out in store.  As such, it's not hard to make the mental jump of assuming success and failure as assignments of the individual by God.

This social phenomenon of blaming people for their misfortunes is ancient, and likely goes back far beyond our species.  It is present today among other species which ostracize the weak and wounded from the flock or herd.  we too are flock and herd animals.  It's no surprise that we carry this behavior.  It is based on superstition and wrong headed thinking, but it likely promoted survival by causing people to distance themselves from anyone who encountered misfortunes, or who were generally unsuccessful, and to stick with those who were successful and then attribute it to the favor of the gods, rather than maybe the behaviors that group of people were engaging in.  "The gods favor the righteous and punish the evil, and if the gods can punish you so can we.  If you experience trouble and hardship, the gods are cursing you because of something evil within you."  It is baffling that this craptastical  thinking still goes on today!

In this world of chaos and chance, is it too much to just admit that sometimes bad things happen for no reason at all?  Good things happen to bad people, and bad things happen to good people...and of course the two other well spouted combinations.  You don't always earn/deserve what you get.  Sorry, life is not always fair.  But THAT can be liberating news for some people operating under the false assumption that it is, or should be.  Of course, should you work hard and apply effort to achieving things, you will likely get what you deserve, and the contrary to that as well.  There is a degree of controlling our outcomes, but when chaos and chance, and other people are at play, this thinking turns to shit.

Most maddening to me is when people who have had really terrible things happen in their lives fall prey to this thinking and turn their pain inward, engaging in behaviors and thinking that only serve to harm themselves and stifle their growth.  This thinking reaches outward from them and impacts anyone close to them, especially their family, specifically their children.  They are living in shit and spreading that shit around liberally.

When ideas and thoughts are not balanced against each other, they become platitudinous in isolation.  Words are the tools we use to think.  We should be careful not to adopt "loaded" language (characterized by "thought terminating cliches"). These one sided ideas and words constrict rather than expand understanding. They function to reduce complexities of experience into trite, hackneyed "buzz words".  Most importantly, spreading these unbalanced ideas harms people.  Optimism is great.  You'll be happier and live longer taking the higher route with your thoughts.  We should all strive to be optimistic, and full of hope.  But at the same time we must not oversell the idea.  PMA is the not a magical key to success and happiness.  You can be an optimist and have some terrible things happen to you.

You may have many wonderful things in your life, and for that I truly am glad, Share away! It's fun. It's joyful.  It's uplifting. But if we are always ashamed/afraid to be real with one another, and maybe admit that things aren't always so great, and maybe we aren't always so great, or delightedly happy, it all comes off feeling a bit phony and shallow ... even irritating. I'm sure that if I invested the time with any one of my Facebook friends I would discover their "realness"; it's sad that time (and stalking laws) don't permit that. ;)

I have been able to develop some real experiences with people on the Internet, and the Internet has been an enhancement to my relationship with real life friends.   Conversely, via the Internet I think I've also lost some friends who didn't like my views, or realized they didn't want to associate with someone so weird or who didn't agree with their values or beliefs.  Too bad life is so fragile.  I try to associate and learn from everyone, especially if they don't agree with my ideas.  But I totally understand why some people don't like being around me ... because I see myself as an ape, and apes as you know feel free to fling their shit, and I feel that this association and identity gives me license to do the same.

Like I said in an earlier blog, FB is not the place to share your inner weirdo.  Social psychology dictates that we always display strength in the herd, unless we want to be pushed to the fringes, or fall to the rear of the pack where we'll become more susceptible to predation.  Weakness or strange erratic behavior is seen as a
predator magnet by other members of the group...it sparks fear.  Unfortunately this shapes life in society into little more than a beauty or popularity contest.  Too bad for all you fat, ugly, untalented, inarticulate (oh wait, that's perfectly admissible)...u hmm, graceless, toothless, idiots (oh wait, admissible again!).

One of the things we have trouble with is admitting our flaws, admitting our weaknesses. Admitting that we may be wrong at the very core of what we believe. Admitting the vulgarity of our basic animal nature.  We try to hide and deny it.   Many people when questioned will not agree that they are an animal, let alone an ape.  We feel ourselves separate and apart from animals, and in some real ways we are, but beneath it all WE ARE ANIMALS.  Animals with some real hang-ups about our animal behaviors (Sex, attraction, eating,
digestion, defecation, grooming, etc.).  We also have a strong aversion to admitting that our brains and thinking isn't so perfect, being full of flaws, prone to a huge laundry list of flawed heuristics, cognitive biases, and logical fallacies.

Growing up from a child and into a young adult, and then beyond, society will continually pound home the shame and embarrassment you should feel for these aspects of being human.  When you are told by authority figures that these things about yourself deserve to be stifled and hidden, that they are embarrassing, offensive or 'vulgar' it begins to rub off on how you view yourself - vulgar, offensive, full of sin.  As a young person/adult if you are told that your  attraction to the opposite sex is "evil" and sinful and that looking with lust is equal to adultery, and you've sinned in your heart - WOW!  No wonder people are so hung up about sex.

One day while sitting on the toilet and stinking up the joint (come on we all do it) it occurred to me how much I hated this aspect of my life....how demeaning it was.  IF god made us why do we poo?  Why must poo be so ...poopy, and foul? I hate that I have to poo...I hate that I stink.  If I had my way I would never have to be physically offensive in any way. But I am.  Why would God make me this way?   It occurred to me, most people can't admit the shit.  Most people do not like the idea that they shit and that their shit stinks.   It's too vulgar, crude, unrefined.  If you're thinking right now, "Oh why must you talk about all of this...it's vulgar"  I would say, "Exactly - try to keep up."  I'm reminded right now of how much I love the song All Things Dull & Ugly, by Eric Idle, I think it captures what I'm after here.  "All things dull & ugly, all things short and squat, all thing rude and nasty, the lord God made the lot."

Like most things in life, thinking of the shit requires establishing a balance ... finding the middle.   Temperance does not mean prohibition. Whenever a culture makes a thing evil and forbidden it only incites more aberrant behavior in that thing. Abuse of women and children goes up within cultures that stifle and get hung up on
human sexuality.   Proven Scientific Fact!  Whenever we suppress and shame a natural
behavior or drive all it does is cause that behavior to become "constipated', perverted, pushing into the underground, and causing people to obsess unnaturally over it.  Somewhat like prohibition made drinking a taboo and only served to cause all sorts of problems with alcohol, and actually increased crime AND drinking, esp among women (interesting in that it was women who were pushing prohibition).  http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/prohibition/unintended-consequences/

Wrongheaded ideas tend to make things more complicated. If there is a god, (which I believe there is) our concept of how that God is involved with us is wrong.  Sin in my book is inefficiency.  Anything that slows or  stifles growth, happiness, and people living productively together is sin  Correct ideas tend to make life easier and interaction less complicated...but the paradox is that the real answers are usually very complicated.  There are few easy answers.

One thing that may help you find the answers is this little rhyme -  Once you admit the shit everything starts to fit. It denotes that when thinking about a matter, the fewer contortions and explanations you need to make the more likely it is that you're right, or getting close.  There were such problems in my life that became so much easier to understand by looking at it with due weight to the not so desirable elements in the equation.   Once those elements were given their proper weight many other contorted explanations dropped away.

Also, consider this thought nugget that occurred to me while on the toilet:
Everyone is full of crap - God designed us such that at least once a day we would be reminded of this important realization.

I should maybe amend it to read - "at least once a day (if healthy)". Some people suffer from constipation (This applies to the mind as well as the body). If you want to be happy (healthy) be sure you release your crap upon the world at least once every day.

Maybe a poem would say it better:

Life Is a Banquet

To say life is a banquet
we must also admit
that along with the feasting
comes a great deal of shit

with pressure, relief
with pleasure, too grief
and release of the pressure
brings pleasure too brief

Those whose views choose to lose
issues south of the mouth,
will find it quite crass, 
all my talk of the ass

But perspective depends,
my fair weathered friends,
whether not you'd defend
crap can come from both ends.

This poem is the proof 
that I speak the truth
especially if you
find it uncouth.

So consider the crap 
like you value the meal
Just like a storm 
makes weather a thrill
Don't just look at one side 
when you choose to 'get real'
The end you despise 
doth comprise the ideal.


Well, I think I'm finished...time to clean up and climb off.  Maybe you didn't quite like this installment.  Maybe you found it crude, stupid, offensive?  I've allowed myself to be quite a bit more vulgar than I usually am, but it's art, the content pushes the concept...reinforces the theme.  If you find me vulgar, well, what can I say?...these are my thoughts.  They're not all gems...but they are all real.  I took very little effort to polish this installment...the adage of polishing turds springs to mind. I just let it spill out of me, in a very natural way.  So it may appear scattered and a bit disorganized, and distasteful, but how fitting when thinking on shitting. Oh, and I'll be sure to leave the fan on for awhile.