On the top right hand corner of my Tumblr menu, it informes me that I have followed 0 people and liked 0 things. Is my blogging so anti-social? I prefer to think that I like all kinds of things, and I follow the fossil footsteps of all living things that have walked the ground before me. Rather than needing to hit a button to inform the world that I follow or like something, I will simply take it on faith that my enjoyment and movement in the real world constitutes that rare quantity known as “enough.”
I sit now in the office, which is really part of the large common area of this house, listening to the music of the dishwasher and the cooling fan of a tired old computer. I’m trying to think of things to write. I have token observations, but it’s strange; somehow “male kangaroos have huge balls” doesn’t really sum up how I feel like it normally would. Instead I find myself rife with questions about growing up, parenting, and human nature. Or perhaps human nurture. Side note, does anyone else think they made those words that similar just for pithiness’ sake? It seems awful convenient. They appear to be etymologically kissing cousins, and that makes one wonder aloud: Are they even different?
Truth be told I’m not sure. All the murdering psychopaths were at one time “nice young men” say the neighbors and grannies, and all the quiet nice guys have somewhere, deep inside themselves, a reserve of vitriol and imagined violence. It could be we’re all just coins, one side showing the other hidden, waiting for just the right circumstances to come along and flip us. Or, and I’m more inclined to think this, while the capacity for both beatific kindness and hasty malevolence exists in all of us, certain events and dynamics in our lives tip the scales one way or another.
Dealing with small children you get to see the influence of various social structures played out on them. In the home, the older one is attentive and polite, helping his younger brother in play and in mundanities (hand-washing, tidying, etc). As I dropped him off for school, however, I heard him complain to his friends of his brother being a “stupid little baby.” I’m not really going to get too mad about it, because, well, the younger one has not shown remarkable intelligence (it’s hard to do when you can’t speak), is physically small and clumsy, and still shits into a plastic pair of disposable undies. BUT and this is a rather big BUT, what drove the elder to cast aspersions on his beloved sibling?
In short, a lot of things. Frustrations pent up from making allowances for the younger’s “not knowing any better,” those must play a part. Saying things you aren’t supposed to, that has an allure to it that even now I can barely avoid. And then there is the sad and simple fact that while it’s not a masterfully crafted phrase, “stupid little baby” is just about guaran-goddamn-teed to go over like gangbusters with his little friends. And that’s where things get messy. It all seems, to me, a relatively new bystander, that it all comes down to priorities. It’s a bit like allegiances; but instead of making formal declarations, it all comes down to one intangible, ever changing idea: whose approval matters the most. The word I would horribly misappropriate to describe this idea, based on the rewards given and implicit encouragement? Nurture.
That changes a lot during the course of someone’s life, and the ultimate answer many of us come to is “Mine and mine only, ultimately.” Sure there may be a spouse or a special friend who can bolster one’s self-esteem, but there will be times when one is alone. Under one’s own baleful, navel-contemplating gaze, it’s really quite difficult to squirm or make hazy justifications. It’s not so much a matter of “must,” it’s just that you simply do appraise yourself.
There’s really a very good chance that this boy I write about, who has sold out his brother for popularity, won’t even remember doing so. It’s so early in his life, and I certainly can’t claim to remember my early years. But it could become the beginning of a pattern. It could be the first natural snowflake in a nuture-based avalance. His friend laugh, his brother falls further behind, all the while his nature and nuture pull backwards and forwards, dragging his soul further down a path he may not want when he’s older. But that’s just the problem, the crux of the entire argument: nature and nurture are both words to describe growing up in such a way that the person growing up lacks all agency. You were either fucked from the start, or someone fucked you up. Blunt, brutal, and essentially what the entire argument (as a whole, and part and parcel of a larger ideology) is arguing.
I’d like to think there’s a third option. This one would allow for comfort, control, balance. It would let us as individuals be a constantly flipping coin, or perhaps more accurately a coin eerily balanced on the edge, the two sides unfolding to face the viewer like butterflies’ wings. Half heads, half tails. Right and wrong. Popular and moral.
When you get to the last one, it just doesn’t sound likely, does it?
Anyways, that’s likely more than enough deep thinking, but that’s the sort of stuff rattling around in my head right now, so deal. More on kangaroo balls and ridiculous food later, for now it’s all developmental stuff and me scraping away layer after layer of a bad metaphor in an attempt to find truth. Comment as you will, reply if you read all of it.
RJC
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