A Pixelated Mind

21. I have a birthmark on my leg that’s more of a Rorcharch test than anything. I see the ghost of Mickey Mouse. What do you see?

In civilized conversation, there is no more selfish phrase in the English language than “Are you okay?”

I say this in spite of all the seemingly more selfish phrases you can come up with. “I think I’d rather use these $100 bills as toilet paper than give them to orphans” and “Boy, you’ve all gotten so fat while I remain young and vigorous” are both outwardly selfish, but they are guileless and lack any real impact. The person who would say those is not worthy of consideration purely because he would be the type of person to say those things.

“Are you okay?” on the other hand, has often been spoken by well-meaning folk who know that something is not okay, but have come upon a certain situation. You usually ask if someone is okay for the reasons:

1. As a way to start a conversation with someone who is hurt/sad to show you care/are offering to help.
2. To make yourself feel better. (“I asked her if she was okay!”)
3. To inquire whether the person feels there is any permanent damage.

You don’t ever ask it wondering if someone really is okay, because okay is a default position. When a person could go either way, you ask if they are all right. ‘All right’ means stuff is good. ‘Okay’ means that stuff is acceptable or passable. So if somebody is ‘okay,’ it’s never something to be happy about. It’s just a lack of something to be sad about.

Most of the time, I think this phrase should be avoided in favor of what the person actually means at the time:

1. When a girl is crying in the corner: “Is your crying caused by the lack of strangers offering help for things they don’t understand? Because if it is… you’re in luck!”
2. When your girlfriend storms in, angry: “If you want to tell me what happened and why you’re mad, I’d love to hear it. Otherwise, I’ll just go get the boxing gloves and a cup, so you can just wail on me that way.”
3. When someone has fallen while running a marathon: “Can you go on? Do you need anything? I have speed, if that’s what you want.”

My true problem with the phrase is that I worry people just say it because that’s what you’re supposed to say. And, like kissing someone on a dare, it just isn’t the same. Most of the time you know the person is not okay. You just ask it to start a conversation or to ‘show that you care.’ The problem is that the phrase doesn’t do either very well.

And what should the other person even respond? You gave them a yes or no question to an open-ended problem. How selfish is that?

I realized some time ago that most arguments (esp. bad ones) can be deflated with a few well-placed words. If they’re really good words, they can also deflate the person’s ego and get a laugh from nearby bystanders.

I found a way to do this all with one word. The titular “Really?”

However, you can’t just say “Really?” in any old way. You have to say it in the particular proportions I’ve discovered. Like any recipe, you can modify it slightly to suite your own needs, but don’t try to work off book unless you know what you’re doing. Okay?

Here goes:

How to make a Really?:

Ingredients:

1. Tone of voice with 60 percent inquisitiveness, 10 percent condescension, 5 percent bewilderment, and 25 percent curiosity.
2. A stare that is simultaneously blank and mock ‘caught-off-guard’
3. A working neck
4. Facial expression with 40 percent grimace in embarrassment and 60 percent sympathetic questioning. Imagine you’re a lawyer desperately trying to defend an innocent person who keeps saying stupid things.

Instructions:

1. Wait until the appropriate moment. Usually this will be shortly after a bad argument escapes the lips of the person you’re debating. For instance, “Buildings can’t fall like that, Bush must have planned 9/11.”
2. Look at him blankly for precisely one moment. It is important for the silence to stretch for one full moment while you seem like you’re momentarily caught off guard by the argument.
3. Tilt your head to the right while simultaneously grimace and scrunch your eyebrows together while raising them.
4. Say “Really?” as if they just embarrassed themselves.
5. If needed, say “Seriously?” Or “you really believe that?” Each time make your grimace more pained.

While I generally hate rhetoric or sophistry, sometimes its the most effective tool in your arsenal. Try saying this sometime today. It’s surprising how well it works.

There are two types of labels that people use to describe themselves: accidental and essential properties (footnote to Aristotle*). I find these fascinating as I peruse ‘about me’ profiles throughout the Internet.

The perceived essential properties always jump out at me, because these are the things that people think are really important about them. I am composed of nothing but accidental properties. So I’m intrigued when I see people define themselves by something at all, let alone so easily.

I’ll give an example:

Mary meets Chris. Mary says, “hi, I’m Mary. I’m a ballet dancer.”

Compare this to:

Christ meets Mary. Chris says, “hey, I’m Chris. I suppose I, too, am a ballet dancer.”

The difference is in both the tone and the content. In the first example, Mary believes that– in order to know who she is as a person– you have to be aware of what ballet dancers are like. In the second example, though Chris is also a ballet dancer, he sees this as something that is non-essential to him as a person. In other words Mary is a ballet dancer, Chris does ballet dancing.

People like Chris attach labels to themselves because they’re so used to labels being bandied about that they immediately resort to labeling themselves as well to facilitate communication. These people are never truly comfortable with them and sometimes even rebel at the idea.

People like Mary wear their labels with pride and perceive the world through those labels. They usually perceive the label as something bigger than them that they can be a part of. They also seek out a community of like-minded people with whom they can speak. If these labels are ever stripped away, they have an existential crisis. For example, if Mary was proud to be Irish and later found out that she was actually Scottish, it might affect her pride at her Irish flag tattoo (it’s on her buttocks).

Now, there’s nothing wrong with labels, per se, they’re just things to watch out for. It’s always dangerous when you begin to identify yourself by something that is outside of your control. Not just because it breaks you down into your component parts, uses, talents, positions and beliefs, but also because it inevitably leads to a flawed assessment of your self worth and place in the world.

Just two cents from a guy who happens to write a blog…

*ref: Plato

This post continues an idea from yesterday’s post.

When I was a kid I was always bad at Truth or Dare. It wasn’t because I didn’t want to share things about myself and it wasn’t because I was afraid of doing silly/stupid/dangerous/embarrassing things. No, I was bad at Truth or Dare because I never wanted to ask anybody any questions or ask them to do any dares. It took me a long time to figure out why I was afraid of this aspect. The answer jumped out at me one year in high school.

I was on the phone with one of my lady friends when she paused for a moment and said,

“have you ever done [insert thing I've never done here*]?”

I, being an ignorant 15 year old, immediately answered “no!” I also said “I think that’s illegal in this state, and I hear the United Nations Human Rights Council† is considering making that a crime against humanity.”

Her response was a quiet,

“oh.”

See, what I didn’t get back then was why she was asking the question. She was asking the question because she was thinking about it. She was thinking about it because it was important to her. It was important to her because her boyfriend had just convinced her to do that.

Had I been a smarter 17 year old, I would have gotten that and been able to go on with the conversation, addressing her fears rather than having her address them later with a revolver.‡ This is not to mention that I would have figured out more about her from her question than was possible from my answer.

In this way, I realize that questions are more revealing than answers. Because with questions, as with labels, you reveal what you think is important. It’s the reason I replaced all of my small talk with existential questions… which, coincidentally, is the reason I do very little small talk.

For more on this topic, read the Little Prince.

* No joke is intended by this punch line.
† I know that back then it was called the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, but I didn’t want to lose the modern day audience reading this that would have been taken out of the story by the seeming anachronism
‡ I’m kidding. It’s just a metaphor. She actually used a Walther P99 semiautomatic pistol.

I have an avid interest in labels. I find it interesting to see what words people choose to call each other. I think it defines the person saying it more than the person they’re saying it about.

For instance, a ‘friend’ of mine recently called a girl he knows a ‘ho.’ If you didn’t know this girl, you wouldn’t be justified in concluding she was a ‘ho.’ In fact, this comment would only tell you one thing: my ‘friend’ deemed it appropriate to call her a ‘ho.’

From this piece of evidence all of these conclusions are equally supported:

• This friend has Tourette’s, or some other ailment in which he uses inappropriate words.
• He wants you to believe she’s a ho or that he believes she’s a ‘ho.’
• She really is a ho and he thinks it’s a defining characteristic of hers.
• He thinks not being a ‘ho’ is important enough to warrant a comment when someone breaks this norm.

Personally, I think the final conclusion is most often the correct one. At least, that’s what I’m afraid of. In all the conclusions, one could arguably say that you can find out more about the person making the comment than the person the comment is about. That’s one of the reasons I avoid making comments about people or describing people. I worry that some other hyper-analytical person will get more out of what I’m saying than I mean him to.

What labels do you use? And what do they say about you? Do you know? Do you have the courage to find out?