Come, take a look with me.
It’s a typical rainy Portland day in early February. We’re looking into a typical coffee shop on Southeast Belmont or Hawthorne or any of Portland’s quirkily-named streets.
There they are. The hipsters. The dreamers. The students. The people of Portland.
They are plugged in. Their intellects are deeply penetrating the lavish screens of their laptop computers. Some swipe at their fancy smart-phones or smart-phone knockoffs. These are the mycelium-raisers, the yeast-users, the fermenters, the stitchers and the bitchers and the post-modern post-feminist post-post-post-meaning marauders of the status quo.
And they are all completely alone.
They are together, crammed together, asses to elbows, sipping blond roast and dragonfly chai and italian soda and cremosa and home-made chicken soup and getting ready for the tasting at Stumptown and the mood installations at the Ace Hotel and the Gauntlet Hair show at Bunk Bar or Rotture or wherever.
There’s a lot going on, but nothing happening. There is laughter and tweets and Instagram and Facebook-Likes and hashtags and reblogs but no real community and no real connection and no real love and all these people, though thrashing together in a collectivist consortium of culture, are not really here at all.
They are along together, immersed in their separate virtual universes, unaware of each other as they comment on each other’s statuses and peruse each other’s photos and trade gossip on who has changed their relationship status to what lately and what used to be a statement of fact is now a commentary on a symbol, a second-order suggestion of a real event in the real-world, but that is failing too because the distinction between different levels of reality is breaking down.
Inception was a movie and an event and captured the zeitgeist of the Aughts because it showed us that reality, real or virtual, is collapsing like the dream of a single unified American reality, and the Zeitgeist Movement and Occupiers and Party of the Tea all stand for a slightly different version of what we used to agree was the facts in a garden of forking paths that would make Borges’ head spin.
As our shared reality crumbles and forks and bifurcates, and our filter bubbles grow bigger and denser, and the Twitters and Googles build custom-fit websites to adjust for the varying levels of democracy in different countries, and suddenly one of our chief values, Freedom, what used to be the most quintessential of American values, Freedom, for God’s sake, is now a slider-bar the way an RGB value used to be. Which hue of human rights do you want today?
As our reality has become programmaticized and algorithmicized and versioned and increasingly more fractal and holographic, the study of quantum mechanics leads us deeper down the rabbit hole into a Universe that may actually be impossible to understand, not ultimately reducible to some eternal substance but infinitely reducible, and the terrifyingly big Secret that this lets us in on is that Reznor was right and you were never really real to begin with.
Have you seen enough yet?
The question of meaning and purpose is not treated; it is maybe best avoided; because all these people wouldn’t be drinking coffee together alone for any real purpose, would they, except if it were the same reason that our blood keeps circulating, regardless of the not-food we lace it with, and our eyes keep seeing, regardless of the illusions we pour into them, and our hearts keep loving, regardless of the violence we heap upon them?
Is it enough to be a cellular automaton in the all-encompassing garbage body of the united world of illusion?
Have you felt the cold shadow of doubt?
Have you held the cold glass to your face and looked into it, darkly?
Have you refused to flinch at what you see?
Look closer.
Portland is a small town, big city. Like most big cities, it has a certain amount of violence, just swimming around in the pot.
After a long day of riding public transit, I’m waiting for my last streetcar home. A homeless man is changing his pants behind the shelter, his sweater-wearing dog dutifully enduring the freezing drizzle. Despite my three layers of wool, I’m distinctly chilled. I feel sorry for the homeless guy.
Someone is yelling, walking down the MAX tracks towards our stop. “FUCK ALL YOU MOTHERFUCKERS!” he shouts. “WALK ON HOME, BOY!” and variations.
Mental illness? Drug use? You never know.
As soon as I hear this shouting, I know there’s going to be some kind of violence. I can feel it. But I know it’s going to brush by me, only just. I feel safe. I don’t know how I know, but I know. I’m safe.
I hear the shouting get louder. I stare up the tracks, towards where the streetcar was supposed to appear… three minutes ago.
The homeless man walks up to the streetcar shelter. He is mumbling. The homeless man with the dog: “No, you can’t pet my dog, dude.”
From one homeless guy to the other — give me a freaking break. I’m changing my pants behind the streetcar stop. Do I look like a petting zoo?
Shouting Man wanders away from Dog Man for a moment. Then he screams. Wordless, full of fury. Then, just as loud, “I’M BEING LOUD, I’M SORRY EVERYBODY. I’M HUNGRY, AND I’M BROKE.”
He then mounts the platform, walks past me, and then turns back to fix me with a manic stare. He drawls, “Do o y o u g o t a n y c h a n g e , b r o t h e r?”
I’ve been giving more money to people lately, although not always to people who ask. I shrug and say, “I’ve got nothing on me; sorry brother.”
I allow my gaze to drift away, but he’s still staring dead into my eyes. He’s fixated. I return his gaze.
“You’ve got one badass gaze, brother,” he says. “Bad-ass.”
I look away again, disengaging, knowing that he’ll wander away.
He wanders right into two Trimet cops, attracted by all the shouting. “Didn’t I talk to you at Sunset?” one of the cops is making a connection.
Shouting Man resists: “No, that ain’t me, man”
Trimet cop: “Didn’t you lose your dad? How would I know that?”
Shouting Man is persuaded to wander off with the Trimet cops. I smile inwardly, proud of my predictive ability, but the Violence is still to come.
A young girl and her Asian-American boyfriend are waiting for the train now. The girl is friendly, cheerful: “That’s a nice dog.”
Dog Man replies in kind. “Thinks she’s a fuckin’ Princess is what, spoiled brat,” he says. I lose their conversation as I get onto the train.
The next thing I know, Dog Man is brushing past me, muttering. Asian American guy whips around, chest puffed out, following him. I know what that means. Sure enough: “Hey! Don’t talk to my girlfriend like that.”
Dog Man is surly: “I just said the conversation was over, you want to get fucked up?”
AA: “Don’t talk to my girlfriend like that.”
DM: “Fuck off, pussy-ass bitch.” (mumbling)
AA: “HUH? What? Speak up when you talk to me.”
DM: “You come down under the Morrison bridge, there’s no cameras, we’ll throw your body under the train tracks, you see how you like that.”
AA: “HUH? What? What did you say to me?”
DM: “Turn up your earplugs, kid.”
AA: “HUH? Kid? Real tough. Big talk. All you’ve got is a dog.”
DM: “… throw you under the fucking train tracks, I won’t fight you, but I will kill you, come down any time, there’s no cameras…”
AA: “HUH? What are you saying? Are you talking to me? Look at me if you’re talking to me.”
I’m thinking, rather loudly, You don’t need to do this. The mistakes of ‘chivalry’ aside, defending your girlfriend’s honor from a clearly upset street person is just a losing proposition. What was that Socratic saying, so artfully rephrased by Jay-Z? Be careful not to argue with fools, ‘cause people from a distance cannot tell who is who?
Appallingly, dude’s girlfriend was NOT pulling him away vigorously — she just stands there, half-snickering, half-whimpering, judging Dog Man.
Asian American man is not giving up: “Did your uncle touch you?”
Dog Man: “…train tracks, man, come down anytime, we’ll throw you under the train… ” he’s nothing if not consistent. He’s nominally ‘winning’ this verbal altercation because he understands how to stick to his biggest weapon, the ghoulish threat of an inglorious death.
Asian kid probably has seen Paranoid Park. People really do get killed by trains. Accidentally.
AA: “Yeah, is that your happy place? Is that where your uncle touched you?”
Finally, the guy’s girlfriend starts pulling him away.
The next stop comes. The pair are getting off the train. Dog Man is still muttering. Asian American can’t pull his eyes off Dog Man. He is still fronting, saying “HUH?” & etc.
The happy couple disembarks.
Silence settles over the train.
Amazing, isn’t it? This man with the dog was mad. He made some comment and the Asian kid took offense, and thought he had to act tough to defend his girlfriend. Sixty seconds later, he’s being threatened with death. Death. Not a beat-down, but decapitation under the steel wheels of a locomotive.
The man with the dog is homeless. He’s got no power. He’s got no money. He’s barely, barely holding on via some sort of safety net, shelters, handouts, whatever he can get. Obviously he has a way to feed his dog. Obviously he owns more than one pair of pants. But he’s so disaffected, so antisocial, that he’s picking fights and threatening to kill anyone who offends him… even scrawny Asian kids (well, maybe especially scrawny Asian kids).
Look, I know the altercation was all talk. I’ve worked in environments where men fight, so I know that the vast majority of these verbal altercations never turn physical. To turn physical, you need some catalyst: excessive drunkenness, a female goading you on, a rep to uphold, fear of embarrassment, social sanction, something.
In most cases the costs clearly outweigh the benefits, and both parties know that. People aren’t stupid. Going down swinging on a moving streetcar, with your girlfriend/dog involved and at risk, is a dumb, risky waste of energy, and both these gentlemen knew that from the outset.
That didn’t stop them from hurling barbs at each other for a few stops. That didn’t stop the verbal violence.
And this is the common, everyday violence that is baked into this mad, mad world. This is what we get with our current state of inequality.
Think about it. When you’re making good money, when you’re getting laid regularly, when your belly is full, do you want to fight, do you even want to argue? No. You don’t. If you’ve come from a place of being hungry, of being cold, of being insecure, and then your needs are met, you want to get along with everyone. You don’t perceive competition, you don’t see scarcity, you become basically OK with everyone around you, all the time.
I’m making a larger economic point but I want to keep it firmly rooted in the social context. It’s not just the economy; it’s the cultural zeitgeist that allows casual violence to flourish. Our movies, TV shows, comic books, novels, they all encourage it. Violence is cool and sex is dirty.
A culture this wedded to violence is barbaric. Our economic inequality is barbaric and our social approbation of violence is barbaric. Some times I feel like I’m living in the most backward nation on earth.
I didn’t even notice when Dog Man got off, he got off so quietly.
There’s a strong social barrier everywhere we go. It’s the measure of the distance between people in social situations. Whenever you’re not at work, at church, at home with your family, you’re interacting across the social barrier.
It guides you to the socially-appropriate thing to say when you’re ordering coffee, or checking out of the grocery store, or getting and oil change. Every time you interact with a stranger, you’re at the mercy of the social barrier.
The social barrier is thinner in small towns, and thicker in big cities. It increases in proportion to the number of potential interactions we could have each day. When the number gets over about 20, the human social brain seems to start getting overwhelmed. For all but the most charismatic extroverts, the social brain seems to go into shutdown mode, and suddenly on a busy New York street nobody is making eye contact.
The social barrier doesn’t just tell you what to say — “Yep” “Thanks” “Can I get a” “Please” — it also dictates how you say it. Your verbal intonation, tone of voice, cadence, and all the rest. The combination of the words you say and how you say them add up to one big barrier between you and people you don’t know. It’s the film of inauthenticity that develops between your real personality and the social persona you project in order to “get along.”
It may only be a millimeter thick but as far as social connection is concerned, a mile or a millimeter makes no difference. We’re still prevented from connecting.
One of my most rewarding past-times is breaking the social barrier. It takes a great deal of energy and intention for me, and I’m sure it’s easier for people who are more socially adept, but it takes work.
But that work, when I make a breakthrough, is so worth it. This is the difference:
The lady at the counter hands me my coffee. “Thanks,” I say, quiet, hurried, abrupt, automatic pilot, moving off.
The lady at the counter hands me my coffee. “Thanks!” I say, with energy, presence, reality, creativity — and she responds with a happy sigh and a laugh. Or something.
I can tell that I broke the barrier by her response. A more authentic response calls others to be more authentic themselves. If you break your own barrier, they will often break theirs. Not always. But often.
Breaking the social barrier is like a breath of fresh air in the closed, musty space of social convention. Anyone who works with the public or in services has a hundred stale, rote interactions per day.
You can be the fresh one. Make an effort.
