Original Publication Information:
Suedomsa the Magazine March 1998 Volume One, Issue
Eight
Heinz 47 by Dara Shifrer
Are you a good girl? Do you only have sex with those you love and then in
the missionary position? Are you a bad boy, or are you one who escapes
under the "boys will be boys" rule? Did Santa fill your stockings with
coal, or did you do what you were told and follow the rules and behave as
you should? Babies are born blissfully unaware - they feel free to poop,
burp and tearfully rage in public. Discipline kicks in with the first
slap on the cheek when the baby chews the nipple a little too ferociously.
A whole black and white world of good and bad is fast revealed and
imposed. An average child will behave not for the utter sense of rules
imposed by parents, teachers and society, but in an effort to avoid
unpleasant consequences.
Rules and sense are not synonymous. If they were, then behavioral
expectations would not shift over time as they do. It used to be that an
exposed ankle was the height of risque behavior, but nowadays, public
attire is considered decent as long as there isn't a cheek hanging out.
The biggest problems in schools of yesterday included things such as
chewing gum in the classroom and running in the hallway, while today a
kid of worthy principal attention is smoking pot in the soccer field. I
guarantee though, that the Junes and Wallys of the fifties were as
distressed over the kids' disrespect to the hallway rules as the parents
of today are over their kids' drugs of choice. My point is that there is
a whole jolly assortment of directions we follow in life...just
because.
The taboos of religion seem to be a demon behind it all. Wars amid
countries, friends, lovers and families about a god that refuses to put an
end to it all and simply appear and say, "Okay, everybody, calm down. The
Hare Krishnas have seen the true light." America claims to be a country
devoid of religious involvement in state matters but if that were so, then
our pledge would refer to god and Monica and Clinton could tryst on the
White House front lawn. There is a huge conflicting diversity of beliefs
but over the wide rainbow of religions in this world, there is a sun of
morality that seems to cross most of the boundaries and get everybody's
approval. Don't kill. Don't steal. And on your neighbor's wife, don't
feel.
Maybe religion was invented or was at least a vehicle for instilling these
first basic "rules" forevermore in people, and, of course, for having a
semblance of control over people. Which, of course, has not worked very
well. I know the average person has thought indecent thoughts and there
are even some people who act on these indecent thoughts. And then go to
church the next day. Besides religion, we are a rule-happy people. It
takes us six months to learn how to drive a car between two lines. We
love complexity and intricacy and detail. There is nothing you can do
privately or publicly that has not been considered worthy of being
outlawed by a law. And despite this, we are an anarchic people. The
gunslinger, the rebel, and even the hippie have been icons in our culture
for ages. Deep inside, we all want to throw the chains off and frolic in
the meadows. Even deeper inside, we're scared senseless to be in a world
devoid of order and sense. Development and growth relies on the input of
the environment, and the input of the environment is a collection of
norms, standards and rules. It's inescapable.
Our cultural standards and expectations vary immeasurably over time,
person, and delivery. Then there's the ever reliable presence of
hypocrisy as your mother tells you the horrors of smoking and blows a puff
of smoke in your face and as the commuity-serving, money-donating, family
man slaps his kid around after dinner. Social graces are graceful when
timely, but is it really immoral to say you just despise that purple hat
with a daisy or to use your salad fork on desert? Rules are rules, and to
have masses of people doing what they want to do without colliding into
each other, rules must exist; but rules are not morality. There is no
grand morality - no absolute bad or good. There are just deeds we don't
want done to us that become negative deeds that become rules that become
"morality." Maybe murder really isn't "bad." No one really wants to be
murdered and so we ask that, please, nobody murder anybody. So please
don't take it so seriously, and please, do unto others as you'd have them
do unto you.
