The character in the film Precious, a person on whom is heaped unfathomable suffering from infancy and every day of her life, is the kind that makes me dismiss most of the white bread philosophies about how to think, feel, and live.

What the Hell do you mean by White Bread, Asher?: I don’t mean whitebread as an ethnic slur, for those of you who can’t hear anything without assigning but a single meaning to it, and particularly the lowest possible one. You have to qualify these days, because people stunt their brains with ‘reality’ TV. White bread is a metaphor for what is ultra-refined, “purified”, and doesn’t touch – is alien to – the grit, crust, or imperfections of the world. It’s part of a cultural phenomenon of wanting everything ‘clean’ – sanitized – white meat, white bread (and cut off the crusts), white tuna, white fucking everything. Not long ago I bought coffee filters and the cashier said she didn’t know they make brown ones. I had to tell her they’re all brown until someone adds bleach. I just don’t like bleach in my coffee. White bread. I’m surprised they don’t just bleach the coffee too. Oh, I forgot – some of you like white “corn syrup solids” better than real cream. Gives you a cleaner, more even whiteness.  And then of course, there’s the obsession with cleaning products. You can’t just wipe down a counter with some soap and water anymore – you’ve got to have some power-scrubbing anti-bacterial super-cleaner spray that does wonders for the local wildlife when it goes down your drain and into the river. Even clean isn’t clean enough. It’s like people that can’t leave food on the counter for a few hours. If it wasn’t in the fridge, when they saw it, it’s “dangerous”. If it touches the counter itself, it’s “dirty”. White bread. Personally, I find white bread bland, mushy, and disgusting. It’s solidified baby formula – which incidentally – white bread culture will tell you is healthier and safer than mother’s milk, which is ewww — full of her unclean essence. I’d drink colostrum, if I could get it. I figure it’d do wonders for my health and complexion. Oh, and if you say “eww”, you may be fucking whitebread. So now that we’ve got that out of the way, back to the philosophy.

White bread philosophies are things like NLP. It’s all well and good to say ‘envision your dream, and it will come to you’ or ‘negative thoughts produce negative results’, if you’re white bread. It’s a philosophy for the wealthier nations, the cul de sac, the land of entitlement. The Disneyland that rides on the back of devastated nations it keeps devouring to stay afloat. NLP might as well be HLC – Hypocrisy of the Leisure Class. NLP is a thought process that can only be born out of a certain set of expectations about daily life, out of an atmosphere of relative comfort. And if you wake up today and could, conceivably go buy yourself a Taco Bell burrito,  you’re living in relative comfort, compared to one hell of a lot of people. If you’re making a car payment, have a flat panel TV… well, you get my drift. Even our poor are among the world’s rich. NLP makes no sense whatsoever in the context of a young girl sold by her parents into sexual slavery in Thailand, or whose family is hacked to death by machetes in Africa. Can you really look her in the the eye and say, “think positive thoughts” or “don’t be negative” and, if you obey these rules, your dreams will come true? The big world is a world of people who live all the days of their lives in agony that can barely be imagined by people who can talk like this, but really not at all, because the mind simply won’t sustain such an empathy. You have to live it, too. These quasi-philosophies are the coffee house discussions of those who can own something from Nordstroms, or eat a bowl of mixed fruit more valuable than what others in the world will eat in a month. We can talk like this, but it’s a fantasy land that doesn’t take into account the real world, the big world.  We can afford the luxury of such philosophies the way we can discuss what kind of milk to put in our five dollar coffee. In fact, neither topic is relevant to the world, really. And until it is, it’s not worthy of belief.

A lot of religious systems are white bread too. It’s really unpopular to say so, unless you’re beating up “Christians”. That bigotry is fine. And in the case of some fundamentalists, it’s not uncalled for. Most bigotry has some link to some truth somewhere. But the pseudo-Buddhist who’s shoveling down pancakes at the Waffle House and reveling in ultra-violent media is just as white bread (absurd – relative to the big world) as the the fundamentalist who asks if the earthquake in Chile is God’s judgment. You only ask that because you live where you can get broadband, if you want, or near enough.

So aren’t you white bread too, Asher? You bet. I mean, look around you. I blog. I podcast. I create constructs. I’m talking to you about how white bread we are. Of course I’m fucking white bread. And if you’ve got time on your hands to read this, you’re white bread too. Hi – I’ll see you down at the club, later for some white crab on white crackers and a nice white zinfandel (someone explain to me what the hell a zinfandel is, anyway, and how you can stomach that shit). Gar. I’d rather suck on my gym socks. Which are also white. Ever ask yourself why? Look, if I wasn’t white bread, I’d be too busy, exhausted, in agony, or dead to ask if maybe we’ve gone over the top with some of this shit. And I don’t just mean fucking Joel Osteen, which is like a cherry syrup sweet Dick Cheney who thinks the money comes from God rather than fabricating an entire war on “terror”. I mean some of the things we pop off with at the drop of a hat to explain how the world works, or why conflict happens, or why other people are poor, or why we’re ‘lucky’ – that stuff.

I mean, think about it as if Jesus were here and you were walking around saying, “I’m in great shape, because I think the best thoughts, which allows me to drive nice cars, and have more things, and be able to afford the luxury of explaining my good fortune to you and enjoy it with other people like me.” I figure Our Lord would just about do an Exorcist vomit on something like that. I mean, if the Forerunner were  here (that’s St. John the Baptist, not the Toyota that drives over any terrain, by itself, whether you want it to or not) – if he were here, he’d be saying “ye brood of vipers” wouldn’t he? We’d probably make a logo and put it on t-shirts, and then put little rips in them so we’d look sort of third world, and then sell them to Abercrombie, and then go on TV and explain how liking ourselves made us wealthy. In other words, nothing sinks into white bread. It’s barely held together mush that just keeps getting re-formed into new food products. It’s immune to taking on substance. It’s been purified of all that. It’s “boneless” and easily formed into philosophical nuggets. Nugget is about right.

Anyway, if could slip the slightest yeast infection into the cookie dough, it would be this: next time you hear one of those philosophy products being shlepped out at your local whatever, ask yourself if it could be reasonably accepted by that 7-year old girl locked in the room in Thailand, waiting on the next visitor. If not, just shout out “white bread”. And if you catch yourself offering up something like that, ask the same question. If it is what it usually is, then slap yourself a couple of times and wake up – come out of it. Pick your nose and eat it or something, just so you get a taste of something dirty. You’ve forgotten the big world exists. Last question: Is that what you do, Asher? No. I have my own penance for such things. And that one for you, is just a suggestion. Now go spit shine your shoes. They could use a good hocker.