“My parents fucked here”.
This is a Bill Hicks quote I also use sometimes to describe the degree of sentimentality I have about living in America. I don’t really talk or even think politics much lately. History is one of my poorest subjects, and so I end up only being able to take philosophical positions on discussion topics. I skim the news here and there, read a political philosopher on occassion, the idea of second tier libertarianism appeals to me, but my opinions about America are mostly aesthetic, as strange as that may sound. The visual and even emotional texture of this country just disturbs me and always has since I was a kid. Much of American architecture, the way towns and suburbs are laid out, the cookie cutter mindset behind almost everything that completely devalues art and feeling and the environment, even down to our color pallette … gaudy saturated primary colors, even our flag is ugly. It makes me shudder when I see Americans walking around in their flip flops, gut hanging out of a “World’s Best Dad” shirt and an American flag hat.
The passions of delusion are inexhaustible.
I vow to extinguish them all at once.
I read somewhere about Papaji, a modern Indian sage, saying that Americans who take up a spiritual search are often more spiritually ready than people in countries like India, because people in these countries haven’t witnessed the “man behind the curtain” of celebrity, glamour, fortune and flatland capitalism they are exposed to. Seekers in America are close enough to the realities behind these images to see that they are illusions and that there is no happiness in them. But from afar it looks like a paradise on Earth has been born. This is how I see much of the “coming to America”. They don’t see it’s a lot of false advertisement.
2 comments ↓
Dad may have pulled out: Another viewpoint.
True. Our parents “fucked here.” And I think the use of that quote is appropriate as a launching pad to discuss your political disconnection with living in America. Oddly enough, however, I think that statement can also function just as effectively as a symbol of your connection to the American framework.
Starting on a broad level, that specific quote hinges greatly on a moral struggle that has been going on in America for the entire course of our lives – censorship and the correct interpretation of the first amendment.
Your use of that quote was a pastiche to a comedian, whose entire career was largely built around showcasing his ideological disconnection with modern America.
Yet his act would never have been possible without the very system it gripes about; a system that allows freedom of speech and artistic expression. He too may have felt a disconnection with the American consciousness, politically or aesthetically, but his identity was invariably tied to the liberties of its framework.
That is, the reliance on a document that governs our society, contributes to our identities, and in turn creates a consciousness.
Similarly, you earn a living on the periphery of the sex industry, voraciously consume the writings of obscure, sometimes fringe philosophers, and run a blog where you have the luxury to write as critically as you like about the state of modern American society.
It’s kind of like speaking out loud about how you don’t feel like your brain and mouth have a physical relationship.
I see more disillusionment than disconnection in your writing, as if the disappointment you gleaned from being raised on “false advertisements” have festered into a disdain for the entire ad campaign.
I don’t disagree either. Many facets of American culture make me ill.
But have you considered that the jarring letdown you think seekers “coming to America” are destined for may not occur, because here, they’ll create a new unique kind of philosophical connection that has no “man behind the curtain?”
And therefore, maybe, just maybe, America is no longer the “America” that we as Americans were raised to believe?
love you,
bRian
P.S. In the “About Sean” section of your page you wrote “it’s regal sound” about Sebastian’s name. This should be “its.”
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