You can go to cocktail parties and give off an aura of smart by very virtue of your occupation, simultaneously despised and loved for being a card-carrying member of the intelligentsia.  You’re a serious candidate for a companion/benefactor position with some rich Santa Fe heiress that has an obsession with younger men and gaudy turquoise jewelry.  Maybe best of all, you can now bump elbows with your profs without worrying about raising eyebrows in the department.

It’s acceptable to drink more than three cups of coffee per day now without people voicing concern about your addiction to caffeine.

It’s all right to pick up some negative habits because you’re legitimately alienated and not just in that emo-write-in-a-notebook-in-the-corner-and-wear-emasculating-jeans way.  You’re spending a huge chunk of your life in books very few people have ever heard of, fewer still have read.  This is the real fucking deal.  Suddenly, Nietzsche hugging horses makes a lot more sense.

It’s suddenly OK to babble endlessly about postmodern philosophy.  Hell, it’s expected.  After all, you’re a graduate student.

Somewhere between standing up and introducing myself as a TA and listening to a lecture about Heidegger’s influence on Derrida, it sunk in: I am where I want to be.  For the first time in  two years, I am happy with what I am doing and where I am going.

Perhaps out of naivete, I retained hope—however mangled and shredded at times—of finding someone that would prove my point and justify the title of my blog: true love, in all of its absurd, fanciful iterations within literature, music, and the arts, really did have some sort of practical version.  And while it was never as perfect as was portrayed in those beautiful fictions, it nonetheless existed in some instantiation that, while flawed, was actually observable…noticeable.  The kind of love that turned heads and made people jealous—jealous not of one person or the other, but the bond itself and the intense emotion that existed between some two souls.

It has been roughly six months since I became single after enduring what was easily the most difficult breakup I’ve been through.  Between then and now, I’ve had a lot of time to think.  Perhaps too much.  Perhaps way too much.  I changed the name of my blog in some (futile) attempt to dig myself out of a mindset that had simply been dragging me down.  The idea of “true” love—a phrase that still drives me nuts with its connotations, but has to be sufficient out of a simple linguistic shortcoming in the English language—the concept itself simply cannot exist in the world of youthful singlehood, in my experience.  In short, these cultural environs are not simply tough times to be a romantic, but are a veritable minefield for people that are emotionally available, in touch with themselves, and actively seeking someone with similar qualities and approaches to life.

The essence of this mindset seems to be that it is simply unacceptable to really show yourself to someone.  Being emotionally genuine with another is simply setting oneself up for heartache.  We are the generation of a protected nakedness, where we will happily and readily lock lips with strangers and take our clothes off with them once we know their name.  When it comes to articulating emotions, acknowledging the bond that inevitably emerges from such associations, though, we take a gamble where the odds are profoundly stacked against us.  If I go out tomorrow night and have poetry-inspiring, beautiful sex with a woman and follow it with a soulful conversation, I am to remain quiet even if my partner stirs something far deeper in me than lust.  I run the risk of sounding “too serious,” even if my sentiments are genuine and imply no commitment whatsoever.

And try as I might, I can’t seem to function here…in fact, I am aggravatingly dysfunctional.  It’s not that I’m looking and insisting on a quote-relationship-unquote, merely looking for someone that is comfortable not playing mindgames and being upfront about how they feel.  In spite of the assurances of some of my acquaintances that I will one day find someone that appreciates me for what I am, it’s not easy to retain even a shred of hope here.  I’m quickly turning into a misanthrope.  I no longer have faith.  I’m not doing so hot.  The last great romantic is taking his last gasps and, honestly, I’m looking forward to the day when he no longer sits on my shoulder and injects poetic hope into me.

To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub…

When I reveal the fact that I’ve decided to go off on another trek into a lengthy, labyrinthine novel, most of my friends give me a bewildered look  (or, as one friend calls it the “Oh Jesse” look).  This isn’t unusual.  It’s something I’ve come to expect when I discuss what kind of media I like to digest.  Similarly, I encounter few people who share my sentiments on what makes a good movie.  And my taste in music is appreciated by only a handful of my friends.  My choice of entertainments is eclectic.

Most people respond with cynicism when I discuss my preferred films, books, and movies.  It is the era of the hipster, where people like things because it will make them seem somehow different, disengaged from the hive mind and mapping out barely-explored regions of the cultural geography.  Their disillusion is understandable because, hey, doing things merely because they’re different lacks that sense of self-awareness that has become the essence of hip these days.  The thing is, I really, genuinely enjoy this stuff.

In an effort to disassociate myself from being branded with the scarlet letter of hipsterdom, though, I’ve been trying to get to the root of why, precisely, I enjoy the things that I do.  After a few discussions with my friends, I think I’m getting close to understanding things.

I’ve found that, by and large, people see entertainment as a device that allows them to escape from reality, disengage their mind, and go on a mental vacation.  Popular novels.  Sitcoms.  Blockbuster films.  In the event that I’m faced with such things, I latch onto what I can and start analyzing it, combing through pop entertainment in hopes of stumbling upon an insightful cultural criticism.  If given a choice, though, I’ll opt for the challenging, involved, difficult media that is less common but far more rewarding.

In short, I prefer media that engages me.  Whereas your average person prefers the entertainment equivalent of slurping oysters on the halfshell while lounging a Mexican beach, I like media that makes me feel like I’m harvesting a pearl, prying and working and dedicating my full attention to the matter.  I feel as if I should have to work—that I owe this to the creator of whatever media I’m taking in.  To ask an author, musician, or other artist to strip their work of nuance and subtlety to make it easier for me seems insulting to both of us.

And this is why I choose the media that I do.  It has nothing to do with a deep-seated desire to be the pioneer of cool things, to come across as edgy and avant garde to my peers.  It has everything to do with taking an active role in the process of entertaining myself.  Your average experience on television tonight is the entertainment equivalent of a lapdance—the artist does their damnedest to make the audience feel wanted and desired and the audience passively stands by and waits for stimulation.  I prefer to take a more active role in my entertainment experience, though, and will happily lend a hand in reaching entertainment euphoria.

One of the snails got stepped on and his friends were eating him. I wonder how knowing that your friends will eat you upon your death changes your perspective on life?

With few exceptions, the area has been mostly occupied by local, non-corporate businesses.  When you walk down the street, there’s a very distinct sense of difference in the air.  Sure, the heat and pollution and all the classical city elements are there.  But it doesn’t feel the same as everywhere else in the city.  In most burgeoning neighborhoods—all over Rio Rancho, for instance, one of the fastest growing cities in the nation—you can’t spit without hitting a franchise: Starbucks, P.F. Changs, and McDonalds are planted every six or seven feet blocks.  Nob hill is different.  It’s not like that.  Sure, we have a Starbucks, but it took over the building owned by Arby’s.  And it is an exception to the rule.

In the past year or so, though, changes have been set in motion that threaten the very sense of place that sets Nob Hill apart from everywhere else.  A lot was bought by a developer and a massive construction project began about a year ago right in the middle of everything.  Business space on the lower story, with two or three stories of loft apartments above.  The lofts are priced in such a way that the demographic of the neighborhood is going to undoubtedly change.  It’s prime real estate, located smack dab in the middle of the quirky, funky Nob Hill area.  Any proud hipster would be happy to reside here, in the midst of this young, fresh neighborhood.

The problem is that this development, along with others that are starting to crop up, threaten to undermine the quirky, funky nob hill vibe that makes this corridor so appealing.  A sign was recently posted letting passersby know that an Urban Outfitters was going to occupy a space beneath the lofts.  Let’s just stop delaying the inevitable and plop down a WalMart, shall we?

I realize that I sound like an angsty Bohemian lamenting the inevitable flow of capitalism.  And I guess that, in a way, I am.  Outside of one store that will most likely be nailed by the presence of Urban Outfitters, called Toad Road, there are usually a couple of employees outside jamming on their guitars.  This is the essence of Nob Hill: the delightful combination of nuances that are unique to this one place.  You see things that you don’t see in subdivisions and planned developments here.  And I’m pretty sure that there isn’t a measure in the Urban Outfitters corporate handbook that allows employees to jam on their guitars outside of the store.

And that phenomena explains precisely what I’m going to miss.  The smelly hippies that haven’t showered for weeks will all be gone because they can’t afford to live here, as will the starry-eyed idealistic student activists and amateur cafe philosophers.  The flailing musicians that work in a shop to buy studio time won’t be allowed to loiter outside of their store with instruments because it’s against corporate policy.  The stores with the overpowering smell of incense creeping out of their open doors will shut down and reopen with chain stores catering to young girls that like to dress like Paris Hilton.  Real culture will be replaced with the much more profitable gentrified culture. The money will be great.  The neighborhood, though, will be gone.

It doesn’t help that my life has been somewhat of a train wreck as of late. After the break up with N and finally deciding to go to graduate school, I’ve been trying to get my shit together before I start studying philosophy in a really, really serious way. By getting my shit together, I mean getting some financial ducks in a row, mostly. This has proven far more difficult than I initially thought it would be.

Somewhere down the line, I got old. I don’t mean “old” in the chronological, distance-between-birth-and-now way, but the whole coming-to-terms-with-what’s-expected-of-someone-my-age way. At some point, you eventually realize that there are certain things that are and are not socially acceptable for someone who is almost 25 to do. If you want to remain a respected, well-regarded member of society, you have to really keep these things in mind to avoid being lumped in with the carnies and 40 year olds that make fries at Wendy’s.

Acceptable:

• think about a career
• go to bed at a reasonable hour
• look into buying a house
• discuss your 401(k) with your acquaintances over beer that everyone is pretending to like because it costs five times more than Natty Lite

Not acceptable:

• put off deciding on a career by going to school
• stay up all night reading bad fiction/watching zombie movies
• ponder moving to Eastern Europe
• consider the viability of finding a woman 20 years your senior who is financially stable enough to support the aforementioned items on the “not acceptable” list

About a year and a half ago I was on to something. I was just about to graduate, had fantastic visions of becoming a world-renowned cultural critic, and was getting ready to go to throw every ounce of financial and emotional sensibility out the window to go live with my girlfriend in France. I woke up yesterday and found myself frighteningly close to regretting all of that.

What the fuck happened?

On an only mildly related note, I engaged in a short conversation over carbon credits on the drive back to Albuquerque with some friends.  A number of companies sell these credits to guilt-ridden consumers, who shell out a pretty penny to offset the carbon footprint left behind by their choices.  In the course of the conversation regarding the mostly questionable value of carbon credits, I came upon a realization.

Now, as anyone who has spent more than just a few minutes in a strip club can attest, the mechanics are complicated.  The complexity is not just in the quasi-acrobatic hijinks that have to take place in order for a stripper’s ass to make any tangible contact with a person’s genitals through several layers of clothing.  In reality, the real mechanic of the strip club isn’t even about bodily contact—that’s just the end result.

What strippers are really peddling is desire or, if you want to get technical, feigned desire.  Desire is difficult to feign and even harder to portray in a way that is marketable.  After making the initial contact, the stripper typically sits on the customer’s lap and chats him up—learns a little about him, pretends to be genuinely interested in his interests, genuinely concerned about his concerns, and genuinely drawn to him like he is drawn to her boobs.  Ultimately, these interests build up and finally reach their erotic zenith in the lap dance.

In a lot of ways, the process mimics what you get in the dating world.  First contact, followed by an ongoing dialogue between the two parties, consummated with an erotic act.  This is not a coincidence.  However, in the realm of dating, there’s a reasonable assumption that the parties share a mutual interest in one another.  The mutual interest is pointedly lacking in a strip club, but the process is there to trick the customer into thinking that there is desire and actual erotic feelings.  Again, it’s not about the erotic nature of a nearly-naked woman rubbing up against a person—it’s about making the client think that the stripper is doing so out of a genuine erotic desire.  They’re not selling skin.  They’re selling a (hopefully convincing) performance that tricks the client into buying into a facade of desire.

And carbon credits are pretty much the same mechanic.  The companies marketing carbon credits are effectively targeting guilty yuppies who like the idea of being worried about the environment, but can’t be bothered to make any substantial lifestyle changes to help the environment.  Instead, they purchase carbon credits to offset their environmental impact and they go on driving their SUVs to work every day.  The issue, of course, is how carbon credits work.  The details of this are downright nebulous and the industry remains largely unregulated and startlingly unscrutinized.

In the case of the strippers, desire—however disingenuous—is being produced and sold to customers.  In the case of carbon credits, environmental responsibility—however false—is being produced and sold to consumers.  But the very idea of producing abstract things like desire and responsibility is absurd.  Desire is a product of genuine contact between two people; responsibility is realized through thoughtful, committed behavior.  These things cannot be bought and sold.  Given the relative success of each industry, though, it certainly seems like they can be bought and sold.  Or, at the very least, people are convinced they can be sold.  And being convinced that something can and should be bought is really all you need in this, the era of consumer hypercapitalism.

In each case, commodification makes itself perfectly clear to the critical eye.  This is the result of the capitalist consciousness working its way into nearly all parts of life.  In this breed of capitalism, anything can be assigned a value and sold to a willing customer, reason or common sense be damned.  While the trend itself is troubling, what’s most worrisome is the fact that these purchases, however false or contrived, are considered by many people to be the real deal.  You can’t produce desire.  You can’t sell responsibility.  But commodification tells us otherwise.

And apparently some people are actually convinced.

One of the ugly realities of becoming an “adult” is that you have to begin to take stock of the mental landscape of your partner and yourself. After all, this isn’t high school or even college, where casual affairs turn into long, drawn out relationships that have to end when each of you go your separate ways. Here in the realm of the adult, the facade of “circumstances beyond your control” is removed and you are left with the reality of situations where people are in control. In my relationship with Natalie, coming to terms with that reality ultimately forced our respective hands and we ended up folding.

I would like to chalk this up to a number of circumstantial things. Things like the fact that I might be moving and going to graduate school and that, if she moved with me, she’d be abandoning a number of professional leads that would get her started on an “adult” career. Things like the fact that I can’t concentrate and study with noise and that she thrives on. Things like this, that are comfortably (and sometimes annoyingly) beyond my control.

The reality is that there was something else. Call it different states of the human condition, if you’d like. We were quite simply at different points in our respective lives. And I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that we could have done more. Would it have worked? I have no idea. No fucking idea. But that reality—the fact that you could have done more—undermines the certainty that this is, indeed, the best course of action for both of us. At times, it makes things downright unbearable.

There is a positive note, which is that we’ll most likely come out of this the best of friends. Things are already shaping up to be that way, even though we toe the line of “just friends” and “couple” quite often. But even this is double-edged: I have come to expect a rupture that ends it all—things are messy, bordering on irreconcilable, but the fight fuels your self-righteous indignation and you are thankful that you are now free of those shackles. With nothing remotely like this pushing us apart, with this “adult” treatment of our conditions, the emotional pain isn’t cut with anything that makes it more bearable. This is pure pain.

I am dealing as best as I can, but I find myself longing for the youthful days where things were less complicated and love was not up to me or her, but merely a matter of circumstance.

In spite of its taboo, though, I think that discussions over definitions are arguably the most valuable of debates, in terms of tangible, meaningful cultural impact.  The aforementioned subjective difference that eventually arises in your religious and political discussion very rarely makes much of a difference in the world.  Generally speaking, both sides have their minds made up and, in contemporary democratic societies, this generally results in a simple manipulation of the masses and subsequent policies favoring the victor.  When pressed, political and religious discussion result in one or both participants locating an anchoring point that hinges their discussion on a general point of faith and, typically, a practically insurmountable difference.

With language, though, the very framework of a discussion is under examination.  Words no longer become the simple devices to scrutinize concepts, but are under scrutiny themselves.  While a discussion over something like the definition of what, precisely, constitutes a “hole” or a “pile” are undoubtedly fruitless, it’s the discussions over larger concepts that have a lasting impact.  In making a precise definition and recognizing the important distinctions therein, language is refined and, by extension, the ideas that permeate our society are clarified.

Hegel is well known for positing the existence a cultural consciousness—a zeitgeist—that comprises the values, approaches, and attitudes that are foundational for a given society at a point in time.  While a zeitgeist is an interesting concept, I find his idea of Master Signifiers to be far more enlightening and important, in terms of philosophy that can actually change a society.  A Master Signifier is what we generally call a “broad” concept—one that is up to interpretation can be used in a number of ways.  Over the course of political, social, and conceptual struggles, a Master Signifier is slowly “filled” with new concepts which give it shape until, eventually, a precise meaning is embraced and accepted.

The classic example is that of socialism.  Socialism, in economic terms, is very strictly defined.  However, the Soviets appropriated it and adapted it according to their political aspirations and views.  Meanwhile, the United States and other western powers contributed to a conceptualization of socialism that was a far cry from the Soviets’.  Whereas Russia defined socialism in the context of (a rather utopian) economic models and contrasted it to the horrors of capitalism,  the United States painted socialism in a primarily political light, in which the realities of the Stalinist models were exposed (and sometimes exaggerated) to emphasize a lack of individual freedom.  Oversimplified, one side framed it within a collective vision, whereas the other framed it in relation to individual liberty.

In the end, neither of them were very true to the classical economic definition.  But the battle itself was important.  How socialism was defined became an issue of significant importance, far more than who had more nuclear weapons or satellite states.  In this case, the Master Signifier was socialism and its definition and the controversy therein was of primary importance.  The definition of a single word and its associations was key in waging a war that was, primarily, ideological.  In much the same way, Master Signifiers can be imposed upon situations to encompass a number of varied and unrelated phenomenon, as was the case when the failures of Germany in the post-World War I climate were manifested in a single concept: the Jew.

I’m not so willing to lament over a debate over definitions.  I think precise language is fundamentally important in maintaining a broad ideological landscape.  Communism, socialism’s synonym in the western world in spite of its profound difference, illustrates this idea well.  In merging the words communism and socialism, capitalism and socialism managed to rob meaning from the the third—and arguably least political—of the three means of economic distribution.  It is also worth noting that both capitalism and socialism require a significant degree of state power, in varying capacities, whereas communism does not.  The economic concept of communism was lost entirely due to politically driven linguistic ambiguity.

When I get involved in debates over definitions, I am not intentionally obfuscating, nor am I trying to be a pedant.  I am ensuring that linguistic ambiguities are not getting in the way of understanding our world and the evaluative judgments that accompany them.

But now, nearly six years since my divide with the Christian faith, the idea of an afterlife is offensive and repellent. This shift in my attitude actually occurred long before I took the time to reason it out, but I finally sat down and took the time to think about it last week after the subject came up in a conversation with some friends.

Marx is infamous for his declaration that religion is the opiate of the masses. This accounts for a number of problems that I have with religion, but fails to really address why I have such a problem with the concept of an afterlife. Nietzsche addresses it perfectly, though, claiming that religion is Platonism for the masses. Although a tad heavier on the philosophical buzzwords, the crux of what he is saying encompasses my distaste for the idea of an afterlife perfectly.

Plato posited that there was a separate plane of existence that contained the ideal “forms” for every object and concept known to man. Each form realized an absolute perfection unattainable by anyone or anything in the mortal world. Anything on our plane of existence was merely an imperfect attempt to mimic the forms. No matter how beautiful a statue is, no matter how long and hard an artisan worked on it, Plato argued that there was a transcendent form that realized the aspirations of the artist more perfectly.

The idea is bothersome. It’s universal one-upsmanship: anything you have or experience, no matter how amazing, is less than a form located elsewhere, inaccessible to you, a mere mortal. It’s one thing when a concept like this is applied to art, but what about feelings of love? Forms apply to feelings, too—your mortal understanding of the feeling is dwarfed by the transcendence of the absolute perfect.  The bond between two lovers? Parent and child?  In the grand scheme of things, these mean nothing: the forms realize the intensity and grandiosity of these emotions far better than anyone can know.

In much the same way, the Christian afterlife posits an almost identical framework: Heaven is a separate plane of existence that is far beyond our mortal comprehension. The love and presence of God is far greater than anything we can know or understand. Our worldly desires and passions, compared to being in the presence of God in Heaven, mean absolutely nothing to us.

Once again, we get the same sense of universal one-upsmanship.   No matter how intensely or passionately I feel about something here, there is something far greater in the abstract “out there” that I cannot fathom. The idea cheapens my existence here in the mortal realm where, quite frankly, I’m more than happy. I can be intensely loved and passionately engaged and more than satisfied by what the world has to offer me.  I don’t need an abstraction to sustain myself. Perhaps the idea of an afterlife would be less appealing if the same people that took the time to obsess pray/worship would use the time to revel in the delights of the mortal realm. It really can be quite good down here.