delicious irony

[this is something I rarely do; I'm not actually finished writing this article yet. I've been sketching some ideas out for awhile and just felt like publishing what I had so far.]

"you can sometimes look at a 12-year old and see the obnoxious idiot they could one day become. they aren't bad in that 'grow up and sell crack to preschoolers' kind of way. more the type that will drive a hummer with a 'save the planet' bumper sticker."
--geoff trenchard
on def poetry jam

I'm glad the holidays are over. being the procrastinator that I am, I waited until the season's feeding frenzy was in full effect before getting my own ass started on my christmas shopping. I was confronted by the standard hordes of people all dragging themselves out of their homes for charity, peace and love. crowds of people, sub-speed-limit traffic, stores running out of pretty much everything interesting, the works. but this year more than other years, I was surprised by how douchey people were. maybe not the level of douchiness (though the level this year seemed much higher than I can remember from previous years), more the combination of the level with the context: people were out buying gifts to demonstrate how caring they are, but were being absolutely horrendous to everyone around them in the process. the day after thanksgiving was an especially strange sight: people swarming with elbows out; pushing and shoving in the spirit of graciousness and generosity.

in my angrier days, this would turn into a rant about the inherent stupidity of some people. I would probably ramble on some uncreative "have you ever noticed" diatribe while basking in my own cleverness. I like to hope that those days are mostly past. now more often than not, I'm just a bit saddened by this particular sort of irony.

let's clarify a little. that we can hold several mutually exclusive beliefs is nothing particularly extraordinary. just about everyone can classify themselves as both an extrovert and an introvert. context obviously has a part in determining what facet of a personality will manifest in behavior. a basic example would be a porsche stuck in traffic simply isn't going to operate at it's full "porschidity." if you conceive of human identity as a complex system of rules for behavior, it shouldn't surprise us that we operate by many rules that have exceptions. "always" and "never" are *rarely* completely true. even "don't stick your dick in the mashed potatoes" has the exception "unless it's *that* kind of party."

what is fascinating for me is when belief and behavior negate each other, AND we refuse to let go of either. this is particularly fascinating when a belief revolves around specific self-images. very often, people inadvertently cross the line between "rational" and "rationalizing." we can be induced to do a great many things that don't actually make sense and yet we'll scramble to justify them with contrived explanations. goals can activate behaviors that negates themselves. the aforementioned example was of how notions of christmas could drive people to act in un-christmasy ways. another example involves cleverness; I know a few people who say a great many unclever things (that they know to be unclever) in an attempt to demonstrate their cleverness.

the truly remarkable spectacle to behold is when these clever and loving people watch others behave in the same way and then chastise and judge them for doing so. the other day, I found myself starting to talk shit about a few people I know who talk mad shit about everyone. am I justified? hypocritical? both? we're not talking about battling sociopathic mass murderers here; does that "whoever fights monsters" stuff* apply when we're just talking about gossip?

I definitely don't have answers yet. and, I'm wary of simplistic explanations. that people seem to have a growing tendency to invoke "stupidity" to explain all behavior they don't approve of is the subject of a much longer post. for now, I just struggle to wrap my feeble mind around the ironies. I feel like it's a puzzle I haven't figured out yet. I feel like there are a great many hidden complexities to unravel and examine.

or maybe I'm wrong and there is no irony. maybe it's all just tragic.