So the show I’m not watching has a bunch of shit about greatness, accomplishments, following your dreams and all the other attendant happy horseshit designed to turk your jeers and make you sniffle until next week’s show (ok, so I’m not watching the seasons not put into cans years past, years that never happened). I don’t know if I wrote this here or anywhere that I actually sent it, but I’m doing it again so fuck it.
The real hero’s I know in real life, real greatness and real accomplishment, it’s done anonymously. Yeah, of course, I taint the observation and I don’t actually know anyone famous, they could be stand up guys and gals that the world just happens to notice. I’m not even willing to admit that I believe exclusively that not seeking recognition makes a person greater or stronger. I am, however, sticking by my original statement, the greatest things I’ve ever witnessed never made a headline, a TV screen, even a podcast.
Some philosopher in some tedious argument with himself about real altruism says it doesn’t exist, that even in my anonymous greatness scenario if the person is self-satisfied it speaks to some pride or other that taints the altruism. I know, it’s more complicated, and one of y’all will throw the philosophers name at me, but it’s more or less the stuffy version of the show I’m not watching just kind of flipped on it’s head. Are we really that shallow of a species that if we’re not gazing into someone else’s belly button we’re gazing into our own?
I guess I did pick apart true love on here, that wasn’t my intent. My intent was more to disabuse, I don’t you, maybe me, my it’s my own self argument, of the notion of absolutes. Love isn’t diminished based on it’s relative trueness, and, in the context of my own life I don’t even know what that means; did I love my dogs less, do I love my kids less, or grandkids because I never said As You Wish to them like Robin Wright? Don’t get me wrong, I loved the princess bride, but that was a story being told to a kid. Kid stories are always told in broad strokes, in absolutes. Kids also inherently know they love their dogs and their parent(s) and that girls (or boys) have cooties.
My argument is against absolutes, and, in a rare spirit of sticking to where I started, greatness is hardly an absolute. A for instance, and bear with me I’m an old fogey, Bob Dylan is a great songwriter. He’s not, as far as I can tell, a great human being, and though music has guided me through pretty intense times both dark and light, I don’t really place it all that high on the list of human endeavors. Hmmm, that’s not entirely true, music is a pretty singular and wonderful thing that humans do; I don’t place the conduit, the person, Bob Dylan up there with running into a burning building to rescue a kid, sacrificing a kidney for someone else, giving up someone you love because your love is bad for them, throwing a ball to a team mate to score because that’s what’s best for the team, the fans, the sport, working at a minimum wage job to keep your family fed and clothed and never bitching about how very soul sucking it is. I could go on; the music is necessary because that’s what the unsung hero/ine does afterwards, crank up the tunes and looks at the sky or watches the traffic, or turns out the light and lays down the weary head.
And if it happens with no one watching, yes, it is great, and if it happens without absolute altruism, it’s still as great, and if it happens without a god in heaven it is still moral and if there is a god in heaven I can’t imagine greatness being weighed against the same person’s misdeeds. My experience suggests it is the misdeeds, the weight of shame we all carry for that thing we can’t ever forgive ourselves for, that sends us into burning buildings, that lets a loved one go, that gives a kidney, that throws the ball, that puts on that apron that smells of old grease and bleach.
Funny, I’m using examples off the top of my head but dealing from the bottom of the deck. I have real examples, with the exception of running into a burning building those other examples are compositions of people I know (one of my best friends from childhood has been a fire chief for thirty years. My uncle Smokey got his name from running into a burning building to save kids not much younger than he was). It stops being anonymous if I start being specific. Some of those things in that list, though, are done every day, without comment, anonymously, and they all beat the shit out of what the first ten celebrities that come to mind have ever done to get famous. Granted, I don’t know the celebrities, I don’t know what they did anonymously, I do know, however, that, say, Lindsay Lohan isn’t famous for any of that. No one reading this is asking themselves who is Lindsay Lohan. I don’t know her, but I know why she’s famous, I know we equate fame with accomplishment, with greatness, possibly, jealously, with luck.
Ok, a tangent on that last. There are people on this website that I believe are better writers than Dan Brown, better in every way you can use that word except for book sales. Most of the musicians I know are more talented than whoever is on the billboard charts. Doesn’t make them or you better people. Just saying, my standard for greatness is a bit different, and I’m more likely to suspect you have achieved it if I’ve never heard of you, which, I admit, is my own problem, prejudice, peccadillo, whatever you want to call it. In my own experience though, the people that I truly love all fit into my idea of greatness, and I love them enough not to spoil it.
I’ve also been in love with people who really sucked, who would run from a burning building, screen calls from a relative who needed a kidney, squeeze the will to live out of someone they loved instead of letting go, hog the ball and take the shot, quit a job that was the families only means of support because the boss was a dick of the gig an affront to their pride. And, if by accident, did something noble, would self-promote it. Didn’t mean I loved them less, just that I loved them for a shorter time. Um, ok, pretty much had to do with sex. Not to ruin anything for anybody, but, if the princess bride was rated R that’s pretty much what that was about too. I mean she was kind of a bitch and he was kind of a criminal, I know, ultimately they were good people, but it wasn’t rated R and kid stories are told in absolutes. That’s why we hang on to them. That’s why I watch westerns.
Absolute love is like absolute good and evil, it makes a plot easier, but you’ve never really seen it. Well, you have, it runs into a burning building, etc --- I mean absolute love does. I’ve never met absolute good and evil, and sure, I’m an agnostic, I literally believe in WTFDIK (what the fuck do I know) but I’ve met a lot of people, I actually know axe murderers and not celebrities, and I have witnessed anonymous acts of incredible kindness and sacrifice, and still I’m unwilling to point at one human being and say “He’s all evil” or at another and say “she’s all good” (you can switch the genders around, in fact you, yes, you there I’m talking to you, don’t look over your shoulder, you sort of like switching the genders around. It’s ok, doesn’t make you evil, but don’t come to the grandwhelps opening ball game topless, ‘kay?) .
Hmmm yeah, I think I did write this and deleted it. I was comparing and contrasting two very real people that I know very well and beside me feeling petty about it I decided it wasn’t any of our business.
Stupid thing is I’ll probably still watch the last three seasons of the show I’m not watching and there will be conflicts, peaks and valleys, where some people (actors and actresses playing roles) will step up and some won’t, but none of it will be anonymous. Y’all know exactly what I mean too, y’all are dismissing your own heroic acts, but you’ve been picturing someone (I mean if I held your interest this long) some of you have even been going abstract; a book or a painting (or even contrary and thinking of a song that heroically saved you). It’s ok. It’s one of the reasons I keep an online journal. I’m going to write anyhow, but every now and again I accidentally hit some nerve and you reflect on your own life and you are pretty fucking A heroic and nobody knows and you’re pretty fucking A ok with that.
For that matter Lindsay Lohan might have done the song of played the character that does that for someone too. I didn’t entirely pick her at random; I picked her because it’s easy to think of her as shallow, commercial, useless and a very open book. Real human altruism, in my mind at least, involves suspension of disbelief for real live people, the idea that despite being famous for being famous that maybe Lindsay Lohan could secretly be a hero as well. I wouldn’t argue the point, but like love altruism is real enough when there’s any at all, and it’s much better to have some than weigh the trueness of any at all.
Loading comments...