Over the years, people have said to me (as though I’ve committed an ideological crime), “You think most people are stupid!” Well, yeah, of course. I’d say ‘foolish’, but I’ll accept stupid if it means that. People are idiots. What do you want? Need evidence? Come on, turn on any media source. It doesn’t even have to be the news – just look at what people are doing for entertainment, or what they eat, or how they drive. People are idiots. Idiocy is the fastest growing commodity – if you can find a way to invest in it, you’ll get rich. That’s what Bernie Madoff did – it’s just smarter to find a legal way to invest in stupidity. The only reason I don’t is ethics and morality – I think it’s wrong to take advantage of people’s stupidity. Doesn’t mean I don’t think it’s there. And look carefully whenever the ‘common person’ is exalted and raised up; it is not a common person at all, but a lord of the common people. That applies to idiots, too. You see some guy who does something incredibly stupid on a news program, or in traffic? He may indeed be an idiot, but he only gets away with it, because he’s cleverer than the people providing the context for his idiocy – he’s a Lord of the idiots, but otherwise he’s not unique. What’s smarter, the bull that dashes out into traffic and gets hit by a car, or the cow that stands there watching and just going moo? At first glance, the cow didn’t do anything stupid. Yeah, the cow didn’t do anything – anything at all. Sharp as a tack, right? No, not standing out doesn’t make you a genius. Eventually, though, all the cows would have followed the bull out into traffic – it’s just the perspective of time.

At any given moment, we are communicating in scores of languages. The fact that we no longer acknowledge them – consider it impolite to do so, and evil even to notice (akin to witchcraft) – doesn’t mean it’s not happening. Our postures, gestures, myriad little movements, dilations, tone, cadence, pauses, breaths, pulse at the side of the neck, pallors, pheromones, and more that can be observed or experienced through the various senses of others. From goosebumps to bodily oils, people are speaking enormous volumes in mere moments. Even our pretenses reveal what we want others to believe. “You don’t know me! You don’t know anything about me! Not unless I tell you!” Ever heard that? I’ve heard it a lot – it’s what you get when you respond to the other channels the person is broadcasting on – the social fiction is that we’re only communicating didactically – it’s only word-concepts that are coming across. Ever since the Enlightenment, and before it with the Protestant Reformation, we’ve dismissed as unreal those things that are not presented in word-concept format. No incense, no robes, candles, or stain glass windows – just an auditorium, an audience, a pulpit, and words. Words in a lab report. Words we carry around in thick, black, leather books and read to our minds. Concepts, like the vocabulary words at the back of a textbook that are 9/10 of college education. Or the tautologies that make up most of our ideologies, from religion to politics: this is that, what she said is racist, what he did isn’t democratic, what you’re doing isn’t “biblical”. The culture is basically Protestant you see, even if you’re an atheist. You nice lab boys who pride yourselves on being rational are practicing the same religion – you’re just using different vocabulary. But go back before all of that, and we understood the reasons for bells and smells – it’s because communication, broadcasting, occurs on many, many, yes many channels. Iconography – my own people argued (and held sway in the West until 1014)  that the supreme mode of communication was non-verbal and the deepest prayer is without concepts. We cannot hide, except from those who cannot see, and each reaction against this knowledge reveals still more. We are nude, down to the soul which, despite all our philosophies to the contrary, is still integral to the body. The moment that we stop collaborating in the pretense that we are each covered up, clothed, protected, safe, we can begin to realize what it means to live in community with others. Each of us desires, irrefutably, to be known, and needs, deeply, an interaction with others that exceeds the limitations of intellect. To have these, we must allow the social walls that occupy even our most intimate relationships to crumble. We must look for the friend who will, on his own initiative, break down the first one in spite of us, and without welcome. We must keep watch on these walls, since they are walls of the thinnest sort, with the obvious singular purpose of being breached. Each barrier is a confession of our desire to be penetrated, entered, overcome, known, connected, vulnerable, revealed, woven together with others. The emperor has no clothes. The Edenic attempt to snatch a fig leaf and cover ourselves is futile. The bawdlerization of genitalia on the statue of David or the walls of the Sistine Chapel, like the ‘book burning’ of the iconoclasts and those who whitewash icon-clad temples into mere auditoriums,  is an attempt to reduce communication to a single dimension, to fix the radio on one channel and break off the knob. When you look and see, when you allow for the possibility that the airwaves are rife with content, that a person is communicating on all channels – all the time, you who claim you have no religion – you who bow down at the altar of the culture – then you realize you are no longer safe, and can finally rejoice. Ender says that it is impossible to truly know someone and fail to love them. That’s my experience, too. Finally, then, we can stop guarding that secret desire — to be wanted. Which all we big, strong, grown men hide, like timid little boys, slapping each other on the shoulders because we’re desperately afraid that the other channels will bleed over. It’s not even afraid that it’ll make us gay, or women – no, gay people and women are afraid too – it’s that we’re just afraid, period. Just scared little boys hiding under the covers from what we are, people who speak so many languages (and can’t help it), that we are not safe in out skins and skulls, but are vulnerable to the world, to everyone, or at least to anyone who is looking at you. It’s interesting to watch big, tough guys turn away, run away with their eyes, when you look at them, really look, and they can almost hear all of their own broadcasts in your eyes. Women, on the other hand, either show deathly terror (that’s most of the time), or abject wanting (which means you’ve got to be careful, or you end up in bed all the time, naked in every way.)

I’m not expressing a fondness for pretty women, mind you. A class of people that usually doesn’t have to work for things, grows to expect the world to hand them things they haven’t merited or earned, and has grown used to the dumbest fucking comments, attitudes, and habits being given special treatment, ends up being a lousy fuck. Seriously, you want to get laid, really laid? Stay away from the barbie dolls – they break easily, and they tend to have a deficiency of identity (no one is really there) – they’re lousy fucks, except to guys who think any fuck is a good one, and those guys just don’t have broad enough experience. That’s OK, they’re picking off the trophy babes, and leaving a more fascinating market for the rest of us. The car thing is just a symbol of the barbie girls, because it represents being taken care of – by a man – a Daddie. Yeah, they’ll throw a tantrum and pout if you apply a man’s standards to them, and they’ll whimper that they’re “equal” (whatever that means), but they aren’t equal, and they aren’t up to a man’s standards. The blonde in the red car – good stereotype to draw on, because it’s so prevalent – dollars to donuts, you pull them over and a man contributed to that purchase somewhere along the lines, or is subsidizing the barbie, which allows that purchase to be made. Pretty women driver nicer cars – you were OK with that weren’t you – until we pointed out that the reason is the same as the reason they go to bars without taking more money than it takes to buy the first drink. You know, and I know, and they know, so let’s stop futzing around about it and be honest. Daddy’s little girl, even if her Daddy is not her Daddy, drives a nicer car than the chick working in the independent bookstore, with the pierced forehead, the cropped black hair, the unshaved legs, the organic cotton skirt from a tribe in South America, and the “Say No to Starbucks” button. And it’s not just because she’s on financial aid at the community college. It’s because girls who look like the one in the red car don’t usually go to community college, and certainly don’t have to work in a bookstore. Daddy provides. You might think this is bitterness. Nope – I just don’t like bullshit. Part of wanting to see the truth behind everything, is having to cut away the illusions that large segments of society have placed there. Turn the TV to any sitcom. You think they can afford a house that size? A garbage man in Queens with a two story mansion? Fuck no. This is like that, if you think about it. Still, it’s fun. One of my versions of eye-spy is to count blondes in red cars (or any convertible), and guess whether it’s a dye job – she’s earning her keep, you know. What, you thought it wasn’t sexual with Daddy? Oh yes, it’s all bound up in Daddy’s sexual attitudes too, even if he’s not specifically attracted to her in particular. In fairness, it’s not only girls who make good eye-spy: I like to gauge the midget-like character of all those Midwestern guys in baseball caps driving the enormous pickups with no passengers and nothing in the back. How many of them need it for work, and how many are in a running dick-size contest with the other yahoo on their block? You probably have your own games.

This is Asher’s primary attitude toward everything he does. He doesn’t have hobbies, he doesn’t take “time off” – unless it’s time away from one kind of work in order to engage in another. He rests, but he works even when he rests (for example, he’s always reading). People shake their heads with mock sadness and say, “That’s too bad. You should get some rest.” or “You need play in your life.” They just aren’t listening. When Asher works, he *is* playing. Another way of stating this maxim is simply: If it’s worth your time and attention, it’s worth taking seriously enough to respect it. And respecting it is actually giving it your time and attention, not dicking around about it. Whether it’s lovemaking, house cleaning, writing, or whatever, if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing as work. And lastly, that implies that if you can find a way to make it the stuff  you get paid for in life, then joy is in that. Well, maybe not the lovemaking, but it all works into the equation – here’s a maxim: save money, make love at home!

Asher calls them vices, not because they are immoral, but because they do not submit to moral judgement. He calls them twins, because they always struggle, like twins (even if they’re not moving), to be the version of a self that you have in focus. There can be only one, but there are two.

It’s lovely to think that way. Looking around, thinking of the world… like so many things, it depends on simply allowing for the possibility, and then one discovers the truth of it – like superpowers or finding one’s vocation.

Making love is the ultimate metaphor. But that’s not really the whole story. Everything is sexual because we, the perceivers of it, are sexual, and can’t help it, from the celibate in the desert to the maimed veteran to the impotent husband or wife. And because we perceive things in accordance with our nature, we cannot help but impute to them the characteristics of nature – that all our species possesses. I’m not saying that we impute our personalities (what is utterly unique about each individual) – I think objectivity is possible in that regard – we can look around ourselves, if we’re clever, but we cannot help but impute our nature (what is absolutely shared by each individual) to the things we think about in the world. I’m not saying, with the coffee shop philosophers “you see the world as you are”, I’m saying “we all see the world in accordance with what we all are”. Is everything really sexual? I don’t know and, practically speaking, it doesn’t matter. The sophomores in any given college town like asking trick questions, like “is there anything in an apple that makes it inherently red” and, if you answer “yes, of course”, they tell you that you don’t understand science, perception, and subjectivity. No, they’re missing the point – there is something, objectively, in the apple that reflects light in just the right way that we see red – it’s not random, it’s objectively different than an orange or banana. The point is that such questions presume you can think outside of your nature, which includes the ability to see and, unless afflicted with color blindness, to see color. Sure, the sophomores are observing that the colorblind person doesn’t see color, so they say it’s subjective – nothing brilliant there – but they have failed to realize that the colorblind person doesn’t change the apple in any way – it is still pigmented exactly as it was, so yeah, there’s still something in the apple that makes it red. My inability to see the red, doesn’t change that. That’s basic Artistotelian logic: x=x, the law of identity – a thing is what it is, regardless of whether I know about it, have seen it, etc. Erroneously, despite it still being taught in those universities, but still usefully, developmental psychologists say that one sign of cognitive development is transcending the ‘out of sight, out of mind’ phenomenon – the idea that toddlers supposedly have, that because they haven’t seen a thing, or haven’t seen it in a certain way, it doesn’t exist or isn’t that way. They’re right that that failure, common to sophomores and coffee house philosophers, isn’t very sophisticated. They’re simply incorrect that toddlers can’t imagine what they can’t see – lots of good tests show the stuff in your Ed Psych textbooks is crap, as it always was. The seniors would prefer I say “lots of good tests *now* show”, but that’s the same mistake – just because you didn’t know a thing was true 10 years ago, doesn’t mean it wasn’t true all along. So I’m not going to pander to the proclamations from the ivory towers as though it was or is ever acceptable to talk that way (“We know the following:”) with insufficient and non-comprehensive evidence. Lots of mothers could have told them that what financial aid put in their heads was stupid and wrong, but they only considered objective what their teachers told them, and of course that was always dumbass thinking, whether right or wrong. So yeah, it was dumbass thinking whether or not they knew it, and the apple is red whether or not you can see it at all, let alone see the red. Oh, and everything’s sexual, at least as far as we know.

It’s really that simple. People hurl that epithet a lot: “You think you’re right! You always think you’re right!” Well yeah, if I thought I was wrong, I’d change my mind wouldn’t I? See, that comes from people who wouldn’t, which is why they struggle so much epistemologically, and why they live bewildered lives of quiet chaos. If you want truth, if you want it more than you want pride, if you want it even if it means you’ve been wrong all along with all that might cost you, if you want it at the expense of everything, then the moment you discover you’re wrong, the moment your argument is defeated, the moment you detect a failure to correspond to reality, change your mind. Even if it means you “wasted” years. Start now. And change your life accordingly. The other option is more years of being wrong, coupled with knowing that you know better. You see, that fear, along with pride, is why people cling to things they know don’t really hold up. You may think I’m arrogant for referring to bewildered lives of quiet chaos, but it’s what psychologists call cognitive dissonance – living as though something were true, when you know deep down, that it’s been shown to be otherwise, or that it doesn’t hold water, or that it doesn’t correspond in some way with reality. Everybody does it – well, except Asher, which is one of the things that makes him such a freak in people’s eyes. This is Asher’s First Maxim, and it hangs over the entrance to the Arena. It is also why friendship with Asher mostly centers around a mutual commitment toward truth.