The Latest Blog Game

It's called "The Caesar's Bath Meme," I can't quite figure out why -- maybe the bath was lukewarm and so was Caesar's enthusiasm?

List five things that people in your circle of friends or peer group are wild about, but you can’t really understand the fuss over.

You were supposed to receive a personal invitation to play, but Noah Millman invited himself, and Camassia invited everybody. So here goes. (I don't exactly have a "circle" of friends -- more of a splatter. My friends are so diverse in age, geographical location, and every other way that I don't even know what a "peer group" is. So I'm gonna just pick five things that are generally hot that to me are not.)

1) Social Security. Although I was raised in the quintessential New Deal-worshipping household, I just never got why this was a good idea. It never made sense to me that all the young people at any given time should be forced to support all the old people. Maybe because the World War II generation, who were a small cohort and had an unprecedented opportunity after the war to get educated on the G.I. Bill and buy low-priced property, were basically better off than their children and grandchildren would turn out to be in a much more crowded, competitive, value-inflated world. I can see everybody pitching in to take care of the needy old people who don't have anyone else to take care of them, but I think, like a Confucian, we're all supposed to take care of our own old people the way they took care of us when we were little (and, if we're hapless baby boomers, are still taking care of us in some cases), and it puzzles me that this should be mediated impersonally through the state. This is not a political position -- I naïvely just don't get it, and never have. Just to prove that I'm not a right-winger, here's the other big economic thing everybody loves that I don't get:

2) Real Estate. That shelter, a necessity of life, should be perhaps the world's number-one profit center strikes me as immoral, like slavery. I know that makes me sound like an idiot, or a communist. I also know it comes from the skewed perspective of having been a rent-regulated tenant in Manhattan for over 35 years, a condition that now makes you a hunted creature, fit for extermination like a cockroach. And the vast majority of the people I've encountered who derive their fortunes from rental property have the mentality of exterminators. Or slave-owners.

3) Reality TV. I don't even watch it. At least the people on its predecessors -- the scandalous talk shows like early Oprah (she wasn't always such an upmarket angel, remember her big hair and how she made her name?), Donahue, and Jerry Springer -- looked real. One of the subversive lessons of those shows was how many real-looking, actually-kind-of-fat women had men madly hot for them and fighting over them. The characters on the new shows are preselected to look like they've already had cosmetic surgery -- if, that is, they're not having it on the show itself.

4) "South Park." I've never been able to stand cruel humor. It makes me wince and cry instead of laugh. What was that movie where they threw a dog out the window? Ha ha. I'm too unfashionably mushy and sentimental, I guess.

5) Darwin. If you're a progressive it's supposed to be an article of faith, but long before I'd ever heard of Intelligent Design I was sick of hearing people fatuously resort to "evolution" to explain everything, even if it's really far-fetched -- like how selfish genes must account for unselfish acts. It's not that I believe "God" in some simplistic sense did it all, but the prevailing liberal mindset really has made Darwin into a godlet, a bearded stone idol.

Wanna play? Consider yourself invited.

- amba

UPDATE: Oops -- I should have put Clint Eastwood on my list. He's the flavor of the decade in Hollywood, but I call him a "pretentious old beatnik," the apotheosis of affected cool.

UPDATE ON SOCIAL SECURITY: On some reflection, I see how older people could appreciate having their own independent, impersonal source of support rather than depending on the caprice of kin. Family relationships are not always so cozy or respectful, and dependency can be fraught with power and revenge. But again, having the state enforce (as opposed to encourage or reward) savings in any form (taxation OR private accounts) surely vitiates a culture in which people expect from an early age to look out for themselves. If the assumption is that most people will not have the foresight to provide for their own security in old age, doesn't that become a self-fulfilling prophecy?

I'm not against any kind of safety net. I guess I'm against a universal safety net that most people (incuding those who are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves) come to take so for granted that they use it as a hammock. Because of the inevitable physical frailties of old age, Medicare -- a universal health insurance system for the old -- actually makes more sense to me than Social Security.

Comments

[rachel]

o but the terry schiavo southpark episode was pretty funny (and I never watch the show, either, I promise). and because they write and draw them so fast (only a couple of weeks before the show is aired, I think), it can be topical in a way that few other tv shows can be. but anyway, here's my list:
1) SUSHI
2) Bjork
3) bicycles
4) cocaine
5) tom cruise

[Ally]

This would be easier if my "peer group" was broadly defined. But that would be cheating, so...

1) Spirituality
2) Sports
3) Sushi (I'm with you, Rae)
4) Having a soundtrack for your life (music on 24/7)
5) A career

[Tom Strong]

I'll have to echo the "peer group" complaint, but I can easily think of several anyway:

1) Marijuana. Has not once made me feel happy or even particularly groovy.

2) "The Iron Chef". A little past it's time, I know. I tried to like it, but it basically felt like "let's laugh at those weird Japanese people." I have similar misgivings about Lost in Translation, but its sense of surrealism was more subtle, and the love story was moving. Plus I hate the idea of chefs as rock-stars.

3) Astrology, and other forms of mysticism. Perhaps not a huge trend right now, but very reflective of the people I hang around.

4) Modern-day "Skepticism". I mean the Penn & Teller kind, that has co-opted the word without embracing true skepticism. Nothing makes me angrier.

5) Grad school. I've resisted going for five years now, despite ample pressure and occasional desire. It just keeps seeming like a waste of money!

[amba]

I love these comments.

I also love sushi. But I concur on Björk, cocaine, Tom Cruise, sports, soundtrack, career, and graduate school. Although I appear to traffic in "spirituality," Al, most of it actually makes me gag.

[amba]

Go here for my views on Tom Cruise.

[sharon]

Good Game. My particular nemesis is Reality TV. I have an opinion, viewpoint or at least a little something to say about everything else suggested, but am utterly clueless on TV reality. I cannot watch it, not for one minute. It is not merely an alien concept, but an alternate universe of unutterable depravity. Give me sushi, every time...

[AmbivaBro]

1) Steroids in baseball. Who gives a shit? Let them kill themselves. This is ancient Rome, after all. If we want baseball to be the sporting equivalent of an early music ensemble, then I guess there should be no steroids. Since we spend our days in vicious competition, we should be allowed -- and the competitors encouraged -- to enjoy same. More cathartic. Besides, they'll always get around the sanctions, the way recreational drug enthusiasts do.

2) U2. Guess that dates me. I never understood the fuss.

3) Arguing politics. It's almost never real argument (it's usually just taking turns empatically stating your POV and not listening to the other). Whereas, if we really knew how to do it, we might actually learn something, and/or change a few minds along the way.

4) Golf.

5) Poker.

[Ancient Mariner]

1. Gomers (old folks)talking about their ailments. A sign that we've run out of ability to discuss matters of general interst.

2.The Super Bowl. It is so overblown. One restaurant down here in Florida used to close only one day each year. Guess when.

3. Faith-based government lying. A majority of us U.S. Citizens voted in favor of it.

4. Home baseball fans who stand up, and urge others to do so, when an opposing batter has two strikes on him. I believe that this habit began in Yankee Stadium, which is alone enough to condemn it, but it has been adopted throughout the major leagues. Phooooey.

5.People Against dogs on the beach. As far as I am concerned, a little dog poop here and there is part of the good life. I once neared an adult fist-fight on this subject.

A.M.

[Danny]

1. American Idol. Why do so many people watch this high tech amateur hour? I honestly think that the show is emitting some kind of hypnotic ray to the general public. But then again, I watched Faye Dunaway's "The Starlet" so I really have no street cred here.

2. Gigantic mounted high definition TV sets. I come from a long line of gadget junkies but this latest goody does nothing for me (and it's freaking expensive!). Everyone I know who has one has it mounted over their fireplace which just looks weird. If you must buy one of these things, build a screening room in your house and put the family photos back on the mantle.

3. People who don't "get" blogs. Oh, come on, folks, say you don't like them but stop with the not "getting" them! Read a few and see what they have to offer. There are as many blog styles as their are personality types, I'm sure you won't find them all offensive.

4. Hating France. True, the French can be arrogant and rude, and they sure as hell sold their Jews down the river during World War II, but admit it—you are secretly envious of their culture, gorgeous language, and superior cuisine. In the interest of full disclosure I must admit that my daughter is half-French and that most of the French people I know are Jewish so my impressions are a bit skewed.

5. Defending George W. Bush. I know, I know, what is worse than a one-track liberal who constantly froths at the mouth about W. being the second coming of the anti-Christ? Yawn. Hysterical lefties aside, let's not forget that with every passing day, Bush IS getting worse, worse, worse. He may not be Satan, but for whatever reasons he's doing his best to lay waste to the environment, education, civil liberties, and our place in the world as we know it.

[Simon]

1. the war in iraq
2. al qaeda and the terrorist threat
3. the pope dying and finding his replacement
4. attacking dubya
5. ambitions

[michael reynolds]

Cool idea fora post, and well-written, too.

You're right about SS, at least to a degree. Wrong on South Park, right on Reality TV, wrong on Darwin but not totally wrong. The problem is that a lot of people who defend Darwin don't actually understand Darwin. darwin was not a moral philosopher, he was a biologist. he was just making the point (now self-evident) that species which are well adapted to their environment ten to outlast species which aren't.

Here's my list:
1) Social Security. How about we help out poor people and the richer retirees are on their own?

2) Spirituality. What does it mean? Why do I need it?

3) The War on Drugs. never try to get between a willing buyer and a willing seller, unless you simply have no alternative. Legalize drugs.

4) The War on Gays. What is there, a list that right wing assholes work their way down? Let's see, we've done blacks, Jews, women, immigrants. . . Okay, faggots, you're up.

5) Sushi. It's a perfectly nice food style, but it is not transcendant. It's just. . . nice. Nothing more.