Mom, dad’s naked again

Well its official. My parents just bought their tickets to Burning Man. I have this idiot grin on my face right now. The feeling is hard to explain. My folks will be trekking down to Nevada in their VW microbus to join in on the biggest counter cultural orgy in the world today. Do they have any idea what they’re getting into?

My parents aren’t exactly conservative, they’re rather liberal, open minded people. Otherwise where the hell would I have come from? Even so, they’re hardly hippies… well maybe they are, but not hardcore hippies, microbus aside. Mom wants to paint it, I don’t think dad wants to. That’s for them to sort out.

What I envision is this. Dad will be totally shell shocked for a couple of days and mom will bury herself in the event guide, seeking out labyrinths and meditation workshops. Around Wednesday dad will break through his barrier and start running around naked and scaring the locals with his enthusiasm – and they’ll love him for it. Mom will be mortified.

We’re going to camp apart. I don’t need my parents listening to labored breathing and moans coming from my tent, nor do I need them to see me bent around a wormhole thanks to some psilocybin mushrooms talking to the Eyes of God about my quest for immortality. Parents worry and worry is the last thing you want at the Burn. I don’t want to walk them through it either. But… its going to be amazing to have them there.

Burning Man is sort of like my religion, my spiritual home, so it will be amazing and wonderful to bring them into that sanctuary with me. If I find mom at Spike’s Vampire Bar though… well I might be disturbed.

Bloody Chocolates

Well, we didn’t win, but it was fun and I can confidently say if we knocked off the winning team we’d be next in line.

Unnngh. Seems I’m too stupid to embed a YouTube video. Fine. Click here.

The Quest for Authenticity in the Age of Celebrity

I’m feeling wordy lately, or perhaps heady. Vessels in my brain bursting with pressure. It seems to be time for another metamorphosis. Lots to think about on this grey afternoon in the city.

This came up for me at my men’s team meeting last night. I have an alter ego. I have many alter egos. I am a galaxy of masks, alternatives, refections and distortions of who I really am at the pulsing, glowing, beating core. A million stars circling an invisible but undeniably powerful and present black hole, a singularity of identity and energy. But just what is in there? Who am I? What do I want?

My subconscious is clearly on top of this, communicating in the only way the subconscious can. Subtly, with signals and gestures faint and unwavering. Its no accident that I’ve grown obsessed with the mythos of Batman – a man with two identities, or that my favorite film is Fight Club. Who is Tyler Durden?

Fight Club addresses the idea of masks, very, very well. The question of authenticity. Who you really are. What you really want. The fear in finding the answers to those questions. The danger in losing control of your mask, the mask controlling you.

The concept of authenticity comes at least in part from the existentialists and their precursors, people like Sartre and Heidegger. I have always identified with existentialism, probably because authenticity has been the primary struggle in my life. The definition of authenticity, briefly is thus;

The conscious self coming to terms with being in a material world and with encountering external forces and influences which are very different from itself; authenticity is one way in which the self acts and changes in response to these pressures.

In essence, linking it with a more eastern tradition, it is following your own Tao or way of being.

Now let’s bring Guy Debord and the situationists into the debate. Debord argued that modern society exists within a spectacle, a matrix of representations and signs but lacking in substance. In essence its a world where appearances are more important than truth. This is born out every single day in our chaotic, data driven society where object oriented programming comes to replace actual objects. Indeed we’re beginning to talk about virtual worlds as though they were real.

Perhaps the greatest example of the society of the spectacle today is celebrity. Celebrities are by definition spectacles, amalgamations of external meanings, notions and values. John Travolta is not the man who showed up on set every day for Saturday Night Fever. John Travolta is a cultural simulacrum representing films, politics, aesthetics and values that may have little to nothing to do with the man who eats, sleeps and acts. So to it is with all of us.

The 20th century ushered in a new age of celebrity with the widespread distribution of movies, radio, television and magazines. Never before have we been subject to so many signals as to how we should be, act, think and feel. Now in the 21st century we move into the second stage, the stage of mimicry. Now instead of just watching and absorbing celebrity we become celebrities ourselves.

A couple of months ago there was an article on the net generation and the new age of celebrity in the New York Times. Part of the thesis was that celebrity now belongs to everyone. Just look at a MySpace or facebook profile if you don’t believe me. Thousands of little rockstars and movie mavens plucked right out of suburbia, artifice piled upon posing in every profile picture. How the fuck can we be authentic when we’re all encouraged to be as fake as the people we see every day on TV?

Studies have indicated that many youth identify more strongly with sports and media celebrities then they do with their own friends and family. Is it any wonder that so many of us are so hollow, lonely and confused?

Nathan Taylor or Kay O. Sweaver? Tyler Durden. Bruce Wayne. What is real and what is a mask?

The answer isn’t self-evident. One of the creators of Batma: The Animated Series said in an interview that Bruce Wayne is Batman’s secret identity. Indeed in many of the more serious comics the struggle for identity is a constant underlying theme. Hmmm. Where does Agent Kaos fit into all of this?

The Legacy of Monogamy

It seems an appropriate time to talk about relationships, in both specific and abstract terms. I need to do more research before I can substantiate any of my theories, ideas or concerns, but this will be a useful launching point.

Like governments, economies and technology our social framework has undergone tremendous upheaval over the past century. We are truly a species in transition, having spent millenia operating under survival conditions our species is now able to live to a hundred years old with reams of free time to whittle away at various diversions that are no longer linked to our survival. Sports, television, even driving across town to work at a factory producing blenders – none of this is essential to survival. Yet, our minds, bodies, even the social framework of our lives is formed around that one single thing, survival. It is no longer necessary, but it persists.

Humanity is no longer natural. We’ve taken ourselves out of the jungle almost entirely, but for all our rationality and reason we are still hardwired for the jungle lifestyle. Social systems exist to compensate for our natural, primitive urges in order to promote the survival of the tribe, or the survival of dominant tribe members.

I need to do more research, but there is plenty of evidence that monogamy is a relatively new (2000 years old) concept in human society. Modern statistics bare this out revealing that one in ten children was sired by a different father than they thought and the Florida Supreme Court just set a precedent that a cuckolded father still had to provide child care payments to his ex-wife even though the child was proven not to be his – they claimed that infidelity is so widespread he should have known the possibility existed.

Many animals are known to be non-monogamous, particularly birds. How many of us have never cheated on a significant other? How many of us can claim we haven’t been tempted? If we were truly meant to be monogamous we wouldn’t get such urges would we? Clearly we’re predisposed to having multiple partners, right down to the neurons in our brains.

In the latter half of the 20th century and here in the beginning of the 21st there’s a growing sense that there’s something wrong with our relationships. Divorce rates and through the roof, people are getting married later, serial monogamy seems to be the a priori way of life. Or is it? Its easy to reminisce about a golden day when people got married and were forever faithful, but a quick glance at the history books will reveal just as much tomfoolery in 1897 as in 2007.

I think the difference was one of permissiveness. Social taboos were much stronger in the day, so if someone cheated it was covered up. For sure nobody got divorced over it, that is unless it became public, then it was required that a divorce and social shunning ensue. In the 20th century this artificial system of repression and control began to collapse and in the late 60’s we saw “Free Love” paraded around as its opposite alternative.

Since then we’ve taken the idea of pre-marital sex, casual sex, true love and serial monogamy and ran with it, but we’ve maintained the old world mindset of finding one true love, marriage and monogamy.

Back in the day marriage had nothing to do with love. It was a legal and financial arrangement between clans, tribes or families designed for political or financial gain. This continued up until very recently when marriage suddenly became about something called “love.” Indeed today marriage for financial and political gain still happens, but much, much less frequently.

So what the hell is love? Is it lust? Is it friendship? Is it some mysterious force that comes out of sappy fantasy films?

My belief is this. Human beings are capable of love in many different forms and to many different degrees. To think that one single human being can fulfill all the needs of another human being is sheer lunacy. We are not naturally monogamous beings, that is simply what society has expected of us for the past 2000 years. It served a useful purpose in terms of population control, political and economic alliances. Today however that purpose is played out.

We’re playing on a new field now. A field where resources are no longer scarce, we have birth control, politics and finances are rarely a matter of life and death. This has freed us to behave in new ways, ways in which we used to behave in the jungle or dancing around the maypole. Sexual and emotional freedom are upon us. We no longer need to feel shame for our feelings or desires. But…

But though we have a brand new field in which to play, many of us try to play by the old rules and expect things to work the way they did before. They won’t. Your grandparents probably got married before they were twenty. They were forced to work together to create a home and a family under harsh conditions. Sleeping around and exploring other relationships wasn’t an option in their world. Monogamy was important for them to survive. But today things aren’t the same.

Most of us will date numerous people, live with one or two partners before finally deciding to settle down and get married. This is new territory for most of the human race, our old institutions and traditions are no longer relevant – they can’t help us through this. We need to slow down, be thoughtful and find our own way through this.

I believe that we are polyamourous by nature, that we are not only capable of being in relationship with multiple people in our lives, but that we need to be. When we set arbitrary boundaries between ourselves, particularly when we do so silently we can’t help but hurt ourselves and those around us. If we deny a fundamental part of ourselves then we hurt ourselves in the process and those around us.

How many of you have felt strong feelings for someone, but stopped yourself from exploring those feelings because you or they were “attached” to someone else? Who’s to say that you wouldn’t be more valuable, more healthy if you pursued all of your potentialities instead of just one?

Would it be easy? No. We’ve forgotten the tools to make this work, if indeed we ever had them. We need to invent them anew. But that’s no reason not to take the wheel and give it a try, to strive to be all you can be, for yourself and the people around you.

I’m not currently in a polyamourous relationship, nor have I been for any significant period of time, but I’m open to it and would like to pursue it more in the future. It feels right to me, much moreso than serial monogamy where I have to pretend that one person is perfect for me. There is no such thing.

More to come as I do more research. Its great to listen to peoples’ opinions and anecdotal experiences, but hard science is what gets me behind something.