Everyone gets gas and eventually those farts will leave skidmarks in their underwear. Whoever does their laundry — be it mom, yourself, your husband/wife, lover or roommate — will see those brown skids as they do the wash.
It is an INESCAPABLE fact of life we are imperfect beings we don't conform neatly to cookie cutter molds of not supposed to. Everyone feels pain, everyone does stupid things in their life, everyone reacts too far, everyone has embarrassing awkward incidents or habits in their life they'd rather not everyone know. Everyone at one time or another has had a less than a squeaky clean morality or "sanity" record on something they've done. Everyone has zits bumps and wrinkles. I don't know of anyone who has never lied, slacked off, goofed off, said something rude or tried something socially risqué during their life.
Everyone has regrets, and peeves, everyone has a part of themselves that makes their ego flinch, or doesn't measure up to that draconian Darwinist mirage called "normal". Very few of us look pure and invulnerable without scores of sycophants or PR men to clean up the rough edges, blot out unfortunate incidents, erase stupidities and deny our vulnerabilities. Everyone explores ideas and things that are not "normal" because people are curious beings. We all can be very greedy, selfish, narcissistic, cruel and blind sometimes.
The question is HOW FAR do we go? Is stealing a stapler and some paper from work the same as stealing your employees retirement funds? How far is this sort of "immoral equivalency" game of hypocrisy tolerated?
Why do average people, when driven by shame, point fingers at each other's flaws and indiscretions, as they let those who make the gold make the rules determine morality or justice? Is it fair that they can steal billions from the poor who work for them, poison millions with pollution are still seen upstanding? Why is it, if it gets out that YOU average joe, steal a stapler when you get a pink slip, have a cheesy affair because of an unhappy marriage or inhuman pressures, or xerox your asscrack on company time, you are made out to be some pervert monster terrorist? Why do we let society exonerate the HUGE criminals by masters of the appearance of normal, but yet we so readily demonize the average guy's faults or the "crimes" we are as average people prone to do under the pressures of a very unnatural system, with fewer resources and no PR campaigns to make us look good in front of each other?
Now with the Patriot Act here, I ask what would people fear most about their lives being revealed publicly? Might as well get over it now so it will hold no power over you or your life later. Sordid affairs, alternative sexual preferences, freaky religions, hotheaded stupidities, embarrassing incidents, questionable indiscretions a hairs distance away from illegal? They are part of the human experience too. One thing that we as people need to do is to accept one another warts and all, and to get over the shock of our differences, mistakes, tastes and explorations in life. I mean if the Patriot Act means snooping in private lives, to me that means it is all about gathering information to inflict shame, threat, extort or to frame people who aren't "normal", who think unChristian thoughts, or think Ashcroft and Poindexter are dangerous ... and say so.
My suggestion is to all of America: Confess your skidmarks to those who matter most. Forgive. Grow up. Disclose secrets to strangers and face the awkwardness and you will remove the power of stigmas and secrets. Honest self-disclosure, it has been found, actually breeds friendships if it is not pre-judged by the listener. Anonymous disclosure of personal skidmarks is at an all time high on the web because people do not like living a lie, and disclosing the secret warts on the 'permanent record' releases the power of THE SECRET by sharing the burden. When the burden is shared with people, they seem to find similarities in their own lives. And when enough people disclose themselves, they can accept each other's faults and differences easier. They are more willing to offer support and heal each other's wounds personally. Maybe it's because there's no pretense of invulnerability or moral superiority, because they've all faced it.
But this process needs to be done everywhere without pre determined judgements, without ego or expectations getting in the way. There are not enough people willing to listen to someone's pain without opinions of their own and insecurities interrupting. There are just not enough people willing to shut up and listen to the pain someone else is facing. They want to talk about themselves, to fix it, to be the guru/hero mommy or daddy. They want their share of attention too, to be listened to supported and accepted. There is an attention deficit in our society, we all want to get attention yet we do not want to pay attention to someone else. We want to be heard, and not listen. So when people are in pain and no one cares or listens they sometimes do obnoxious things to scream out the pain. Because no-one cares. They are too busy evading paying attention because they too are overwhelmed with their own pain.
The net WAS the perfect place to share. Maybe THIS orgy of confession and interconnection is why Poindexter and Microsoft teamed up. There is a lot of dirty underwear out there to exploit; one only need find out whose it is to shame them and extort them into doing anything to save face in front of employers, pastors, family friends and the PTA.
So, why not throw your face away yourself? Why not publicly tell the truth about who you are? People's hypocritical opinions and gasps be dammed, we are all imperfect people and we all make mistakes. We all explore and we all need to quit pretending we don't.
If you give yourself away, and have the guts to say it is YOU who did whatever — unafraid and unashamed to be a fallible human being — at least Poindexter and his merry band of creeps won't have the thrill and the power to do it later, to control you through the opinions and hypocrisies of others.
But on the other hand you might have to clean up your act or explain yourself to make things right with the folks who DO matter in your life. When the folks that do matter understand you, then at least you won't face the public alone and have to deal with shocked, upset family members too. You will have others who understand, helping you.
Businesspeople do it for each other ALL the time. Yet we the public are aghast that someone is gay, was raised in an abuse-filled home, or has a mental illness. The truth might ruin a relationship, a marriage or a job, but then again — that need not be the end of the world unless you let it be.
At least you aren't stealing billions from people who trust you and retiring into a huge mansion and evading prosecution because your immoral colleagues are with you, right? At least you didn't destroy a river and kill people and destroy an entire town with pollutants, pay off inspectors so you could cut costs, to make more money like the obscenely rich people who get away with it, right? You are not responsible for the Union Carbide incident at Bophal, right? What's an office affair in comparison to that?
If we are willing to listen to each other's pain and frustration, it might even HEAL and deepen our relationships. Growing up means being accountable to others and growing past yourself. Remember ... you are NOT alone. Why not talk and find out how not-alone you are?
The Kinsey Report was dropped on an unwary public like an 800-page bomb in 1948. Nobody, not even Kinsey, expected the reaction it elicited. It went to the top of the bestseller list, and stayed there for 27 weeks. The Kinsey Report introduced facts and statistics into America's dinner table conversations, dramatically altering the perception of sexual behavior in America. The statistics shocked and scandalized: 86 percent of men said they had engaged in premarital sex, 50 percent said they had committed adultery before turning 40, 37 percent of men reported at least one episode of homosexual sex, and 17 percent of men who had grown up on farms claimed to have had sex with animals. The Kinsey report blew the lid off the container in which sexual experience had been sealed by the cult of' normal'. Sexual activity previously labeled "deviant" or "immoral" seemed rampant among the very people who outwardly condemned it.
OK. Outward condemnation of secret doings: HYPOCRISY!
With all this hypocrisy and deception and this artificial striving towards a Darwinian "normal" and conformity to it, we create an atmosphere of secrets. And secrets are most powerful when they are withheld. Stigma is most powerful when everyone pretends and tries to reinforce "normal" for everyone else, while being quite the deviant in secret. IMHO, there is no such thing as "normal."
The entire concept of normal has it's roots in EUGENICS! To me, a relationship that is HEALTHY night not look "normal" by conventional standards. A healthy relationship is finding equilibrium and understanding, acceptance for the faults and differences each of us have, without hurting, bullshitting, intimidating, condemning, lying, controlling, or being two-faced to each other. Security with each other's vulnerability is one hallmark of relational success, and so is trust. Self-disclosure brings understanding. Understanding brings trust AND accountability. Both of these things are in short supply, and that is why so many Americans hide their heads in the sand and trust institutions to do what we as people should have been doing all along.
Our social lives are shallow and unconnected because we have not invested OURSELVES in our astonishing depth and diversity. Entire lives are lived to just to project our appropriate images of "normal," and so we suffer and are made vulnerable.
