Wednesday, October 04, 2006

a richly veined passive aggressive bedrock

Monday the fourth of October, 2006

I saw a snake escape the afternoon, the other day. It crossed into the grass and morning closed with a flick of its tail.
People know their behaviour has crossed norms when they feel the urge to justify, and they seek the complicity of others when they couch their presentation in terms the other can understand. The victimhood of the ancestors has a ring to it, polyphanous. Where the narrator places the onus, to whom the narrator would have it befall the wound, the failure, the responsability or the shirking of it. Who is seen as the betrayer, the betrayed, the perpetrator. To whom were the consequences kind.

They were competitive.
He was struck by the competitiveness of individuals in the highly conformist society.
They didn't want to be most like the other, he thought.
They wanted to be most like the ideal societal unit; fulfilling the mosaic of categories
of age and position and image.
More like the ideal than the next person.
This conundrum had a force.
The almost murderous desire to surpass their peers, and the necessity of peer-group comparison,
parity and pressure.
It was a bedrock.

I live in a place where altruism is a non-idea. Where everybody's motives are suspect. Where acting in your own self-interest is the basso profundo. It makes for intense competition, and open jostling for power and resources. There is no pretence even at solidarity.
I make no comment as to whether there is a right or a wrong switch to this, only that it has been some time since I heard innocent laughter, and I miss it.
I miss knowing that someone is happy.

Below is some version of an assessment of a tradition. It has merits.
Competitve hospitality. Arms-length hospitality. Ostentatious hospitality. Arranging situations to leave the guest in a position of scrutiny, when scrutiny can only mean vulnerability. Hospitality as a glittering mirror, behind which moves the secret.
Hospitality as a concert of exclusion.

Another is to say take us as we are and we take you as you are. One says come in, the other keeps silent.

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