The mistake of seeking balance over truth

From Bukowski‘s essay Looking Back at the Big One in the book Portions From A Wine-Stained Notebook:

..in many creative minds, there is the natural urge to see the other side.  And a desire to sometimes stand with the other side just for the hell of it.  Because the first side has been there so long, so steady, and seems so worn….In an attempt to get beyond Good and Evil (if such do exist), the balance sometimes wavers and one goes to Evil (saying it might be there) because it seems more interesting — especially when your own countrymen just blithely accept to follow what they are told is Good (and never doubting it).  Generally, there is a tendency in intelligent men not to believe what most of the masses believe, and most of the time this puts them right near target; other times it gets their asses burned, especially in the political arena where the winners dictate which side is right….a Loser has never won a War Crimes Tribunal yet.

When I was young if I noticed everyone was on one side of an issue…  no, that’s not it… when I noticed that people didn’t even realize there was another side to an issue, I would tend go as far to the other side as possible to achieve some kind of balance, like the jumping guy in this figure:

It is a natural thing.  When you see everyone just accepting what they are told without giving it critical thought, it can be very frustrating.  You want to yell and scream “what’s wrong with you people?!?!”  And to try and get their attention, you say the most radical thing possible.  But..as I have gotten older (hopefully more mature), I realized that this is not the right approach.  I have learned to resist the urge to rebel just for the sake of shaking things up.  Now, I try to stand on the platform where truth is, regardless of whether it is close to where the masses are standing or not.  Not only does being provocative for the sake of shaking things up tend to not persuade those on the other side, it can even make them feel more confident in their beliefs as their single opponent does not have the force of truth behind him.

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Flies in a spider web

From Pulp:

The bartender was an old guy, looked to be 80, all white, white hair, white skin, white lips.  Two other old guys sat there, chalk white.  Looked like the blood had stopped running in all of them. They reminded me of flies in a spider web, sucked dry.  No drinks were showing.  Everybody was motionless.

…

“Has anybody here seen Cindy, Celine or the Red Sparrow?” I asked.

They just looked at me.  One of the patrons’ mouths drew together into a little wet hole.  He was trying to speak. He couldn’t do it.  …  The bartender remained motionless.  He looked like a cardboard cutout.  An old one.  Suddenly I felt young.

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Flag allegiance

From the short story Politics in South of No North:

I always disliked pledging allegiance to the flag. It was so tedious and sillyass.  I always felt more like pledging allegiance to myself, but there we were and we stood up and ran through it.  Then, afterwards, the little pause, and everybody sitting down feeling as if they had been slightly molested.

I never did like saying the pledge, which shouldn’t be a surprise.  Slightly molested.  Yes, that’s a good way to describe how I felt.

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Marketing

From Factotum:

“We have three types of cartons, each printed differently.  One carton is for our ‘Super Durable Brake Shoe.’  The other is for our ‘Super Brake Shoe.’ And the third is for our ‘Standard Brake Shoe.’ The brake shoes are stacked right here.

“But they all look alike to me.  How can I tell them apart?”

“You don’t. They’re all the same.  Just divide them into thirds.”

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More Bukowski

From his short story Notes on the Pest, included in the book Tales of Ordinary Madness:

…I parked the car and went in.  I ordered a New York cut, french fries, so forth, and sat there over my coffee until the food arrived. the whole diner was empty; it was a marvelous night.  then just with the arrival of my New York cut, the door opened and in came the pest.  of course, you guessed it.  there were 32 stools in the place but he HAD TO take the stool next to mine and begin conversing with the waitress over his doughnut.  he was a real flat fish.  his dialogue knifed into my guts.  dull rotting tripe, the stench of his soul swinging through the air wrecking everything.

“His dialogue knifed into my guts.”  I’ve been there, Buk.

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Consuming good art decreases your overall art consumption

After reading a lot of Charles Bukowski‘s writing, I’ve lost interest in reading some other authors.  They just don’t seem good enough anymore.  This reminds me of something that Seth Roberts wrote about:

Before last night I had heard of Amy Winehouse and I had heard Rehab, but hadn’t put the two together. Her Grammy performance blew me away. I watched a bunch of YouTubes of her. Back at the Grammys, I listened to an orchestra play Rhapsody in Blue. I used to like it; now it sounded awful. I listened to a few more group performances; they too sounded bad. Just as The Joy of Sake had made me no longer enjoy cheap sake, listening to a lot of Amy Winehouse had made me no longer enjoy “average” music — music where several individual performances are combined.

Some of Bukowski’s poems are here.  I like these (link and link), for example.

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Voting for rulers

Charles Bukowski wrote a great short story explaining why he doesn’t write about politics.   In the story, he noted that:

the difference between a Democracy and a Dictatorship is that in a Democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a Dictatorship you don’t have to waste your time voting.

Robin Hanson has suggested that people prefer voting for their rulers, in part, because it’s higher status:

I’ve been saying for years that people prefer democracy mainly because they think it raises their social status – being ruled by a king makes you lower status relative to people who “rule themselves.”  We can’t quite fool ourselves into thinking a king is just a “steward”, but we apparently can think we really rule because we elect our rulers.

In this country, I don’t think we are really even ruled by the people we elect.  Sure, the President and congress do have some power. I believe that we are better off with Obama than we would have been with McCain.  However, I think for the most part these people are figureheads.  Or maybe puppets is a better metaphor.  They do have some power, but they’re not really the ones calling the shots.  The people who write policy, the people who have real influence, the people who help decide who can get elected, they’re not voted on.  We didn’t vote to have Pharmaceutical companies shape the prescription drug program.  We didn’t vote to give AIPAC power.  We didn’t vote to give Sandy Weill enough influence over congress to repeal Glass-Steagall.

Do we even want direct democracy?  It appears to me that we are okay with being ruled, as long as we call it Democracy.

Bukowski also said:

are there good guys and bad guys? some that always lie, some that never lie? are there good governments and bad governments?  no, there are only bad governments and worse governments.

He spends some time pointing out examples of how easily citizens of any country can become convinced that their country is killing for freedom, democracy and/or humanity (take your pick!). And you are probably thinking “but our country does only kill for those reasons.”  And people in other countries think the same thing about their governments.  In any case, the people we are killing are just like us, but we don’t see them that way.  We see them as evil.  The Iraqi’s were killing babies in incubators!  They’re not like us!  Or we see them as victims of their government.  We defended South Vietnam by invading South Vietnam.  The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in self-defense. We invaded Panama because Noriega wanted to get our kids high on drugs, instead of high on life.  And so on through a million excuses that should be transparent.  But if there is one industry that is more advanced than any other, it’s P.R.

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