The world is so complicated..?

I was thinking about this, earlier today. The world seems so much more complicated than when I was a youth, working, getting into bar brawls, chasing the girls and driving so fast I was never again to be the designated driver.

It seems that every day I come across some new vernacular, some new concept. I read about identities that seem so accommodating. People reveal themselves in ways usually reserved for court cases or lurid tales - but they publish their innermost lives, and leave out the important details.

I read that Helen Boyd felt she had to provide a publicly stated reasoning about moving to Wisconsin, and her loving partner changed her name and is now, well, who Betty is is no ones business but Betty's and Helen's. Their relationship is no one business, where they live is no ones business, what they do with their lives is no one business. But she published a rationale, nonetheless.

That's what got me.

Although Helen, Betty and I have had a few differences, I still respect and like them. I still value the friendship we had. I recently read a few complaints on Helen's blog;

... [Deleted. It was not necessary for me to republish them. And I apologize for any anxiety my moment of inanity caused to Helen.]

It's not my intention to defend Ms Boyd - she's more than capable of that, and did a wonderful job in the series of responses her blog post generated. Unlike the accusations I readily throw- these aren't even fair. They have no basis. The writer(s) of these accusations simply want Helen to agree with them, and are upset when she doesn't. It just seemed so complicated, that's all.

What got me was just how complicated all this "gender stuff" has become. It's like people want it to be complicated, simply so they can affirm themselves. In some manner.

As I thought more about it - life got more complicated still. We have blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Web 2.0, and whatever is next. Google Wave will really tip the boat. The other thing I started to think about was an almost off-hand comment I made on Penny Red's blog:

...A couple of people on Fox News summed it all up: they complained about the banning of school prayer, about the fact that abortion is still allowed and now sees the fascist Obama [sic] as introducing a socialist state. In other words: don't look for sense, logic or even anything you can actually argue against. (...)

In other words: it's not about health care reform. It's about a Reagan-esque ideal versus a society that seems to be getting freer with each passing year. Leary's "do your own thing" versus what is perceived as "public responsibility".

[Emphasis added.]

And that's the crux of the whole thing. [You will have to excuse the rather dreadful duplication of "in other words". Oops.]

The modern world is complicated. Oh, perhaps not to some 20-something, or a person who "gets it", whatever it is. But to many, the world is complicated - and it's not getting any simpler.

It's more about the role of the individual within society, than it is about the individual.

Once upon a time, everyone knew their place. Except those who didn't. They changed the world. But the world got simpler, perhaps. Not more complicated. We learned that the individual was important, that offense was easily given, and not so easily appeased. We learned that hate was easy, simple. And that accepting others simply for who they are wasn't so difficult. Except when it was.

We learned a less offensive language. With that change, we welcomed social change. Language and social change became intertwined. Neither evolved in a vacuum, but developed in a way that most of us were satisfied with.

Others saw something sinister in these changes. Orwell saw how language could be manipulated - not to reflect societal changes, but to enforce them. Kafka warned of this, a full decade before Orwell, in "The Trial". He told us how we treat those who are different in "The Metamorphosis". Dali explored the same subject in some of his surrealist pieces. Ray Bradbury, in Fahrenheit 451, looked at the future of language, of storytelling, of society and saw how we were changing the language, and storytelling, to avert offense. We were becoming non-entities, incapable of bringing anything real to a discussion. Heck, Magritte figured it all out with his piece "This is not a pipe". If that wasn't an observation of what concepts had become, I'm not sure we understand what a concept is.

Mind you - I'm not convinced many do understand that.

At some point, it gets personal. Because it gets complicated.

Why does the transgender community want to impose a derogatory label to those who aren't transgendered? Why feign innocence and obliviousness when told it's offensive?

I can never understand why the transgendered world wants to simultaneously make gender complicated, and simple. "I am a woman", and by the way, here's an entire thesis on what gender is. Please don't complicate things by calling me anything but a woman. Am I the only one who sees the stupidity of this? The hypocrisy?

Why does gender have to be so complicated? If you were born a girl, physically, not figuratively, you're a woman when you grow up. If you were born a boy, you're a man when you grow up. If nature gets it wrong, you're left with a raw deal. But that does not make you what you are not. Although you may be, to all practical considerations. Damn, it's complicated.

You know what? The world is complicated. It's not getting any easier to understand the social mores, the patterns of speech, the way the world supposedly works. Except it all gets back to: we're humans.

"God did it" and "fuck this" are the province of the lazy. Defending god is easy - defending life is hard. Living is hard, damned hard at times. We experience life, all of us - but what we make of it is what differentiates us.

Life throws curve balls. It simply does. There's no rhyme or reason, no higher power, no nothing. As the saying goes: life happens. Tragedy and joy befall us. The one difference between us and animals is not that we're human - we're animals, too - it's that we have a modicum of control over our lives. Not much, but it's more than a cat or mouse has. They simply have to hope they survive the day. Every day.

Think about that.

We humans have a different standard for our daily lives:

You either take responsibility for your life, or you blame others for your woe. It really is that simple.

Perhaps life ain't so complicated, after all.

Carolyn Ann