Monday, 31st January 2005
Girl into woman as blind into sight
“The personal problems of ‘learning to see’ can often be overwhelming. […] His personal life takes on entirely new forms; it is brought home to him how much other people can observe him without laying a hand on him; and he realises that he must take an interest in his clothes, attend to his hair and watch how other people regard him. He gives up many habits that he could not formerly relinquish, because he is suddenly ashamed of them.” Patrick Trevor-Roper, The World Through Blunted Sight
I read that the other day and it struck me how similar (re)gaining one’s sight is to a girl becoming woman. A long time ago I recall reading that a beautiful woman always knows what it is like to be constantly observed and I felt that perhaps it meant I was sometimes beautiful because I understood what it was like to be scrutinised so. I no longer recall where I read it, or who said it, but I still find it to be true. If I tie the two quotes together we can perhaps properly understand the pressures young girls feel in trying to come into themselves as women.
A lot of women are so caged, their movements so restricted and their habits so defined so as to minimise the shame of unconscious action that might turn out to be the source of their ridicule. I somewhat touch on my transition from androgyny into woman in this entry, but, in characteristic Tank fashion, instead of feeling shame that my self does not meet an ideal, I feel angry that I should be asked to meet one at all.
To eat too much, to have messy hair, ill-fitting clothes, laugh too loud, imperfect eyebrows, bad skin, fat thighs, flabby stomach - all these things only mean something to those conscious of being observed. If you don’t know you are the subject of public scrutiny you don’t know your eyebrows are not perfectly arched, unless, of course, you are some kind of Narcissus. (Did Narcissus love himself as perfect because he fit an external or internal pattern? Are all internal patterns shaped, consciously or unconsciously, by external influence? Hello, my name is digression…) My imperfect eyebrows have no bearing on how I process the world, only on how the world processes me. Once I become aware of the commodity of me, and the shame and poverty indicated by not being just so, I seek to live up to an ideal or archetype so as I can reflect my inner worth. The sad part is that I think so many women sacrifice so much of what is most beautiful about them by trying to live up to an ideal.
I’m wondering if this is why so many women are searching for their “inner child” - this person who isn’t aware that the eyes of man are price tagging every movement, decision and action she makes. Or perhaps too this is why for so many women “life begins at 30″. Perhaps at 30 we finally have the confidence to say fuck you and laugh as loud as we like.
Oh! I’m talking too much as usual. The quote and the analogy are enough.
Saturday, 29th January 2005
An ode to Zell Kravinsky
Just over a week ago, I got a letter from e which contained a copy of an article from the New Yorker on Zell Kravinsky. This then is my little ode to him and the moral life…
A lot of people do not like the idea of morality outside of religion. Outside it acquires a large degree of personal responsibility. Inside it can be shouldered onto God, the idea of God and the notion that having God equals good and therefore some innate or implicit morality. Outside religion one has the burden of actually acting like Christ in order to be moral, inside one only has to acknowledge him as one’s saviour.
If I am honest, I think that people’s morality is determined by their conscience. The more acute their conscience is, the stronger their morals. Unless, of course, they are religious and then their morality is bound up in the notion of allegiance with a group and very often that allegiance is, in and of itself, morality. I can commit as many sins as I like, so long as I repent. Yet alone and Godless, I have only my conscience to answer to and no external force to assuage my guilt. In this way, the atheists and agnostics I know are some of the most profoundly moral people I have ever encountered. Some of them are almost crippled by the burden of living up to their own acute conscience.
So you encounter the story of someone like Zell Kravinsky and you see a human being who is taking complete responsibility for his life and his actions. You see a human being with an acute conscience who believes in his own capacity to dictate right and wrong. You see a human being who has dared to go beneath the surface and come to the startling realisation that he is worth no more than you or I because he is you or I. It’s such a profoundly obvious fact to anyone that dares dig around down there, but for those worn so ugly from their cynicism, (which is in reality just a shield erected by a guilty conscience), he becomes, in a classic moment of projectionism, selfish.
A lot of people are stuck in a quagmire of mediocrity: thou shalt not kill but thou shall buy Shell Oil to fill up your cars. So killing becomes okay so long as you are not actively doing the murder. The ugly cynic linked to above states that Kravinsky took his utilitarianism too far. That Kravinsky cared too much about too many people. She believes that we should place certain values on certain lives, which is why, I presume, people like Ken Saro-Wiwa can die with nary an eyelash batted. His life is less than our own.
I’m not entirely well versed in utility, but it would seem to serve the principles of democracy well: the greatest good for the greatest number. Our leaders are chosen by the greatest number of us who believe that they will serve us the greatest good. It would seem to be why we would rather give our £10 to Oxfam than to the wine soaked bum on the street. Principles of utility often lie within many of our “good” motives and yet, for following it to its logical conclusion, Kravinsky is selfish or deranged? No, he’s just not a hypocrite is all.
Had Kravinsky done all this for some kind of external cause or allegiance, then I don’t know that he would have been criticised so. If he had done it because he was Christian or Muslim or Jewish, I think his acts would have been lauded as the acts of a righteous man of faith. All those others that identify as Christians or what have you, would have leapt at the very idea of him, clutching him to their breasts and in doing so, hoping that via some miraculous trickle down effect, his virtues became their own. But that isn’t the case; he didn’t do it for God or Allah, he did it because he is human and it is what it means to him to live. So I think people have problems with him, with those that make unusual decisions by themselves and for themselves, because it calls to question the normality or mediocrity of their lives. People don’t like to be pointed out as humdrum or ineffective or stagnant because in doing so, they actually might have to change and we are far too lazy and apathetic a species for that.
If you don’t condemn Kravinsky as somehow selfish or insane or ludicrous then you are left with only one terrifying option - to compare ones own actions with his and I think most of us will be found wanting. Or, I suppose, you could pretend he doesn’t exist and carry on being average because so long as the exceptional are marginalised, the mediocre will set the standards for humanity and we will continue to get more abhorant as a species. Every generation, out of sheer laziness and apathy, breeds a people, a culture, an eventual history, that is degraded, ever so slightly in quality.
For me, I applaud Kravinsky and I am humbled by him. I find him to be a great inspiration. It is wonderful to know that amidst all the people picking and choosing their morality, amidst the lazy, apathetic, cold and callous majority, there is a single person compelled to act by his own knowledge of what is right and what is wrong. I find it wonderfully refreshing that whilst Mr. Average cares about the design on his mattress, there is someone out there with a heart that is beating.
I’m going to finish with my favourite part from the New Yorker article, where Kravinsky says:
“”Maybe that’s why we’re fatigued all the time,” he mused - from “the effort” of disregarding the greater need of others. “Maybe that’s why we break down and suffer depressions: we have a sense that there’s something we should be remembering and we’re not. Maybe that’s what we should be remembering - that other people are suffering.”"