Taboos become larger cultural palpitations. These manifest themselves in waves of group-think, which can sometimes result in the masses doing something retrospectively incorrect that seems like the right thing in the moment. That incorrectness is often disregarded in favor of turning a cheek. The path to redemption is indeed arduous and often seemingly fruitless. Acknowledging error and working to grow has led to more gratitude, work and understanding; so, I wonder why the isolation of taboo perpetuates if such dynamics prove to continue creating more suffering or isolation and repeating the same patterns.
Sometimes those waves from taboo palpitations are called egregores, or as the art-school crowd preferred the eye-roll inducing term: zeitgeist. What is the simpler word for either? Something that describes behaviors that are noticed or go unnoticed? Aware or unaware? Experience and vision come to mind, alas the way the world is seen, sensed and how to parse out what is illusion from delusion or reality requires getting to the origin. The origin is likely not going to be found in this foray today, but will likely be hinted at. Sometimes hints are all we have to go on.
I’ve decided to try out using cash more often, as a trial to create new patterns and see if I can regain some cognitive abilities to make simple calculation I began outsourcing to automated transactions. I attribute the ease technology offers as a quiet robber of my ability to do things I was taught, quite young, how to do, and hopefully prevent future self-made victim/perpetrator dynamics with the robots ;) The simple change has granted both I and the cashier a new pattern in the day.
A small change, like any change, has a ripple effect. Today was no exception. Upon going to pay, I witnessed the cashier scrunch up the nose and roll the eyes to put on some gloves to handle the money with. After a swiftly completed transaction with my bare hands placing the paper down on a fixed-tray, not like the mini-cafeteria kind in Japan, to the gloved hands of the official handler behind the banal apparatus dividing us, the gloves were removed and the big bottle of anti-bacterial hand sanitizer came out. I put my obviously dirty hands into my clearly soon to be dirty wool mittens and smiled going out the door for a number of reasons based on recent conversations with friends.
Sure, it’s ‘just’ a simple transaction, alas, Annetta Kapon’s words echoed in my mind still: nothing is ‘just’, meaning there is so much happening and going on: pay attention! The funniest bit to me was the mental and lived taboos humanity worked so hard to overcome, that being freedom of bodily expression along with sexual preferences, was being met by an age old concept of dirtiness and cleanliness. Funny to me, as the lover of clean everything, using such ‘dirty’ money instead of the chip in the piece of plastic, that again everyone loves to hate: plastic.
Soon this rabbit hole will come to a close but not until noticing another thing about how particular ideas are relative to their congruence in observable behavior and the rapid culdesac and conclusions preemptively made on people before really learning, or understanding, who they are as so indicated by the rise of dating-app culture….to what degree are people investing into relationships is a deeper question I wrestle with, not only as I am told to be a rare, somewhat classical liberal, considered semi-conservative today, simply because I care about “old values.”
The idea an artist or any creative is a sell-out if they make money, or the notion that everything should be free runs directly against the concept of currency. In the sense of science, everything in reality costs energy, and the energy comes from somewhere. The issue is not the currency itself but its distribution. Such as with food and water, the distribution of basic human decency has seriously been compromised across the globe, and even that said: one culture cannot be ethically forced to be precisely as another. The amount of behavioral adaptations what would need to occur in a rapid time would likely incite a great deal of anger, grief and other emotions that can result in illness of bodies. The notion that suffering is inevitable and somehow valuable is a concept that really shocked me and is one of the few worldviews that continues to strike immense horror and grief into my heart.
Alas, money itself is not the evil here but what is done with it. As I often wonder why people who care do things that do to not help the causes they care about, I was informed that is because people seem to believe they do not have the power to assist or care for the life they say they do. Quite often capitalism is pointed at: the very system that insulates great masses of population from the rest of the world. So often, I wonder why the middle-ground, formed by what some ascribe to Christian values, but I would reach further back to the kindergarten, golden rule of: treat others as you would like to be treated….I had to wonder, was my desire and will to use my brain suddenly a new taboo? Is the money that floats around actually dirty? Most articles of the science would say so: yes. Wash your hands after handling money; of course! Wash your hands often anyway! Alas, I watch myself, watching the world often looking at where the tacit mass behaviors are heading and want to pull back on the proverbial dragon we have been riding on to get a bigger picture look at where ideas, unchecked or not talked about, lead to. The undiscussed usually results in fissure, lesion, separation, and in some cases termination. Therefore, I could not remain silent about this observation because I live with another idea to wrestle with wonder where it came from: all humans are the same. Even writing it makes me itchy because it is so obviously not true.
If I am supposed to be just like you, and everyone is actually the same, why are people shouting for more diversity, since diversity was born out of difference? If people think the beauty of living life as art is boring and are more driven by seeking treasures, escapism, then how will more sameness reconcile such incongruousness in thought and behavior?
So you may have noticed here, this is free. People claim anything given is not appreciated. That may or may not be true. Appreciation as a word with meaning, with and without currency, resides in the realm of feeling. The question I have is: whose feeling, why, and how do we know if it is true and rooted in reality or in fantasy? Such as many products are branded as having higher value, the question is not only about to or for whom, but why.
I’m quite delighted to be living now and not long ago since I would have probably been burned alive for having the gumption to even utter these words….but humans before me fought against horrific forces embodied and emboldened by people for the sake of my comfort.
That alone seems to be the way I consider ideas…how will that look 50 or more years from now. Will it look like people giving each other more or less respect? Will that look like more robotic or more human behavior?
I really do not know much about you; but I am here for the persistence of the human. Flawed and all because the human still has the ability to feel, and it might be the ability to express and relate through those feelings instead of feel no relationship to them, or the feelings of others, that transforms a tiny little transaction into a ripple effect that makes more people smile while they’re healing and recovering from whatever memory they forgot hurt them.
I hope you consider maintaining the dignity of working for one’s livelihood can afford. What’s behind the door? A pastor collecting secrets? A taboo words or behavior that could get me cancelled: as if I wasn’t already, in some circles? You can find out if you want to, but even if you don’t, I hope you are enjoying your time here because that’s part of the fun in sharing stories, and if you want to share a story on Le Lapin, please write to mariammanart@icloud.com
https://mariamman.net/herculean-chalice/
A currency comes from the Latin word "currere," which means "to run" or "to flow." The word "money" comes from the Latin word "monere," which means "to warn." The Mesopotamian shekel was the first known form of currency.
The "Method of Currere" is an approach to education based on post-modern philosophy and psychoanalytical technique, first described in a 1975 paper by William Pinar.
Film really looks so different now we are all so used to screens…..it’s not just nostalgia, it’s the persistence of the human.
Listen to this episode with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Le Lapin to listen to this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.
