Category Archives: Abstract Idea

High School

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Noun: High School.  Opinion: Pssht.

tjhsst

The Washingtonian recently featured a cover story on the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, rated by U.S. News and World Report as the best high school in the nation for the past two years running, and probably several times sporadically before (I can’t be bothered to look that shit up, just take my word for it).  The article was titled “Why You Should Hate This School,” and proceeds to talk about how the over-achievers who populate its student body are basically better than you in every way, and since you are a bitter, stupid and ugly LOSER, the Washingtonian saw it fit to remind you to direct your bile thusly.  Full disclosure: TJHSST (big fail on crafting an efficient acronym, there) is the alma mater of one Judgmentor.

Most locals call it TJ (that’s better), and it is a public magnet school you need to test to get into.  The test lasted about as long as the SATs from what I recall, thereby introducing most of us to the distinctive agony that is standardized testing.  There was an essay portion where I was inspired to write about aliens (I was, what, 13 or 14 at the time?) and a bunch of algebra I’m sure I used my fingers and toes to get through.   I don’t know how I got in.  We were known as the nerd school in the area, which would have hurt our feelings if we weren’t all diagnosable with the low-grade Asperger’s usually correlated with being interested in computers.

From what I remember of high school, it was a blur of social anxiety and bodily transformation.  Yet from reading this article one would think we were all well-adjusted, multi-talented brainiacs who translated Medieval French troubadour verse for fun and pooped out National Merit Scholarships when we weren’t busy running triathlons and curing AIDS at the same time.  I guess some of us were.  I certainly was not—see that kid at her locker observing the world with a stink-eye while noshing on a Hostess Fruit Pie?  Yeah, that was me.  I took AP Judgment in high school, and left it at that.

I have a lot of good things to say about my high school, but most of you don’t give a shit.  You want to hear what this genius factory sucks at.  Well, for one, there’s me.  That should make you feel better about yourself immediately.  And secondly, most of us were not as outstandingly awesome as the article suggests—there was a large dose of journalistic license liberally applied.  Granted, I did not have the benefit of going to high school more than once and increasing my sample size (HALLELUJAH) so I only have the perspective of my own experience.  We were probably more motivated than most, and more eager to be inspired, and that’s saying a lot.  But we were still teenagers, and thereby assholes by definition: lazy, hungry, stupid, insecure and just figuring life out.

TJ was definitely a safe place for a lot of us, especially during a time when the base schools were installing metal detectors to screen for weapons.  And during formative years, one can’t say enough about the benefits of something like that.  But we were also incredibly sheltered—those of us who developed any street smarts at all either grew up where that was already necessary or came by them far later in life.  There are huge advantages to being surrounded by smart kids of more or less the same socioeconomic status—but the disadvantage is a certain character-killing homogeneity.  I feel that a lot of us grew up sort of retarded in the ways of sex, drugs, racial and class relations—that is to say, the real world outside of White Liberal Guiltanistan—but damn if we couldn’t ride the shit out of a quadratic equation.

The article talks about whiz kids who are destined for the Ivy Leagues.  And then what?  How much does being able to clone an African violet in a petri dish really count for in life?  Seriously, now, do any of you living in the reality of adulthood actually believe that these kids won’t eventually have their dreams killed?  Most of them will, obviously.  Such is life.

And they will nevertheless lead perfectly responsible and happy lives, if they’re lucky.  The geeks will console themselves from the quotidian stressors of existence with their PlayStations, the jocks will masturbate to memories of their All-State victories, the drama kids will take their exhibitionist tendencies out on their co-workers, the straight-A students will continue trying to validate themselves by earning the approval of others.  It’s life.  Which is something that is attainable even if you never went to the best high school in America.  So you have absolutely no reason to hate this school, in particular.  You can hate it because you hate high school universally, though, and be grateful that we are no longer there.

Revised Schedule

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Noun: Revised schedule.  Opinion: Conflicted.

oreos

Dear Readers,

Effective immediately, entries will no longer be posted daily.  This pains me, as it has been nothing but fun to judgmentorize and interact with you every day.  You are the Oreos to my milk.  That makes no sense, but it means I love you guys like I love chocolate sandwich cookies, which is to say a lot.  Trust.

But life has done to me what it does best–intervened in my bidness and got all up in my shit, and thus my attention must be applied to other endeavors.  This is not necessarily a bad thing in general, just in specific–to this blog.  I will continue posting, and you will continue rolling your eyes and calling my ass pathetic, just not on as regular a basis as before.

I’ll see you back here intermittently, and I’ll be collecting nouns daily, and I’ll be thinking about y’all hourly.

Opinionatedly yours,

The Judgmentor

Voices in Your Head

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Noun: Voices in your head.  Opinion: Hmm.

shhh

Does anyone else hear them?

Shhh.  There it goes again.  This time it’s telling me that writing this entry will put me in the crazy bucket with final and absolute resolution.

Don’t front.  You hear it, too.  Some people call it your heart, others call it your gut, others still call it guardian angels, for some it’s the devil.  It’s not actually a voice that articulates per se, but it’s more of a feeling.  More of a tug than a speech.  What is it, exactly?

It’s an opinion.

It’s your own personal little Judgmentor, pulling or pushing you towards an act or a belief.  I’m not sure where these unsolicited opinions come from; are they merely manifestations of your better judgment, honed over years of experience and conditioning?  Or is it coming from a chemical imbalance in your brain?  Or is it the expression of an internal Other, conveying the views of something disassociated from your ego, which tends to slime everything it sees with self-defeating protectiveness?  Jesus, is that you?  Grandma?  Maybe it’s spooky little ghosts and gremlins that live inside your head.  I don’t know.

But I would like to know.  I got into an argument with a friend of mine as to whether these voices can be trusted or not.  She contends with unqualified certainty that they can, that they have your best interest at heart.  I’m more suspicious; they always give an opinion, but they never give a reason.  She thinks they have served her well in her life.  I agree—for the most part.  She believes it’s the universe speaking to her.  I think it’s dead people.

No, no, I’m kidding.  My voice—my heart, my conscience, my gut, my instinct—has indeed served me well, but not infallibly.  I have listened only to be punished, I have ignored only to be reproved, and there’s no winning with these clowns.  They have mostly been a source of comfort rather than clairvoyance.  But as much as I get shifty-eyed when dealing with them, I still rely on their wisdom; they have insight that my logical mind lacks, and besides logic can be used to rationalize anything.  Just ask your lawyer.

I have a big decision to make these days and the voices are getting loud.  There are lots of them, warring out their conflict in my head.  True to form, they are opinionated little twats.  Some are convincing, some are strident, and others are just damn seductive.  The issue is that not one is tugging harder than the other.  Yeah, it’s not so awesome in there.

Anyway, I wonder how the rest of you deal with the voices in your heads.  I know it’s not something people talk about in polite company, because it comes across as psychoretardedlooneytunesmentalhigh.  But I’m putting it out there.  I need to know.

Intelligence

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Noun: Intelligence.  Opinion: Overrated.

neocortex

I have been surrounded by smart people since birth.  It’s an almost meaningless epithet to call someone “smart” in my circles—like calling someone “nice” or “human,” it’s a descriptor used when you have nothing else going for you.  I suppose there are privileges to coming from this kind of environment—people tend to be educated and fairly comfortable, so they’re not prone to petty crime and mullets.  But I think the biggest advantage is an ability to be clear-eyed on the importance of intelligence; more notably, the ability to avoid fetishizing the neocortex and its contribution to life.

Intelligence looks good on paper.  Whether measured in IQ, grades or SAT scores, it sits there smugly on a throne, peering out at you from a resume as a promise of excellent performance and procreative potential.  We regard it as a peerless virtue and attribute countless personal merits to a person’s faculty for logic.  In my unscientific study, being smart is one of the top five traits people use to describe themselves to a suitable mate, along with being “attractive,” “sexy,” and “successful,” all accounted for by the philosophical virtuosity to “work hard and play hard” (this apparently works for some of you).  If you’re smart, you are more competent, gifted and deserving to live than I am.

I call BULLSHIT!  Intelligence has been paired with some of the most atrocious fuckery society has seen.  Some of the smartest people I know are also the biggest butt nuggets in my rolodex.  The way in which they are bad for the world outweighs any value they can generate in terms of profit, rocket science or national fiscal policy (if you choose to shift your eyes sideways towards Mr. Greenspan right now, I won’t tell).  Intelligence signifies nothing about a person except their intelligence.  You can win Jeopardy without losing your stride in your pursuit to be the world’s leading piece of shit, the two are not mutually exclusive.

Neither is being smart and also a pimping badass.  Intelligence, as Einstein has said, has “powerful muscles, but no personality.  It cannot lead; it can only serve.”  It’s a bisexual skank that swings both ways; you can just as easily use it for good as evil.  In short, it simply has no bearing on a person’s quality.  I will capitulate that there are (negative) correlations between certain characteristics and intelligence…such as beauty.  Again, it’s not that the two are mutually exclusive, but it’s like really good-looking people exhausted their karmic allowance on their physical magnificence.  Same with athleticism, and for that matter, innate benevolence.  Even when these types do manage to string a coherent sentence together, you can feel like the playlist of potential dialogue material has been reduced to a few prevalent pop songs: mutual acquaintances, weather, local sports teams.  Maybe the current terror level on Britney’s crazy.  But stay away from current events in the global arena or Medieval Celtic poetry!  You may short-circuit their wiring and that mess is hard to get off your shirt.

I KID.  There are super-hot, fit, kind, brilliant people in the world.  I know many several two oh, who cares.  While there is an element of endeavor and tenacity in developing one’s intellect, it’s mostly an accident of nature like beauty and muscularity and the rest of it, with the possessor having had little to do with what she is in possession of.  Look, I like smart people, but there’s no need to over-glorify it; it’s nice to have, but if you meet a certain threshold of cleverness and curiosity, you’re well enough equipped to carry your own.

There are other gifts that are just as valuable—and, if isolated, just as limited—as intelligence.  I’ve envied friends with greater observational acumen, superior social skills, deeper compassion, and more whimsical imagination than my own, but these were not necessarily paired with better math skills than mine.  There are some skills that simply have more meaningful consequence; one good parent, for example, is worth a dumpster full of MacArthur geniuses in my book.  Life is a colossal clusterfuck of emotional undercurrents, human variability and physiological needs as well as facts.  If the only tool feeding your intuition for piloting through the world is intelligence, you are one doomed motherfucker.  I’ll be steering the opposite direction of wherever you’re heading, no matter how smart you are.

This could be a useless semantic argument, of course, as intelligence can mean much more than how one does on standardized tests.  I once knew a guy who got a perfect score on the SATs.  He knew big words and the square root to anything.  He was such a dumbass.  AND he was ugly.

Writer’s Block

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Noun: Writer’s Block.  Opinion: ___________.

writersblock

The Judgmentor has nothing to say today.  Yeah, it’s like that.

Thank you to those of you who have suggested nouns.  Some are very good nouns, indeed, but the muse of writing is a fickle ho, and she will sometimes look at a perfectly good noun and give me nothing.  You never know when she may change her mind.  So keep suggesting nouns, leaving comments and sending messages, as those are the best source of inspiration.  No joke.  And if ever you are in your darkest hour and deepest despair, you can rest assured that The Judgmentor Loves You.  That will probably not make you feel better, but it remains fact.  Trust.

Unemployment

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Noun: Unemployment.  Opinion: Conflicted.

Noun credit: addventurist

fail

I graduated business school without a job.  In business school terms, this is not a small blunder; in business school terms, this is the kind of disappointment that one would have to endeavor to achieve.  Sure, the economy helped by no small amount.  But it basically goes against all the training you paid and forfeited good money for, a complete emasculation of the very purpose you invested your time and capital in.  In business school terms, unemployment is one big FAIL of everything you are supposed to be and do.

I quite like it.

Oh, of course, I’m worried.  I just got my American Express bill, and believe you me, I’m worried.  I have MBA loans and a Manhattan mortgage to pay, I’m a pus-filled wart of worry.  The lack of money hurts.  But then, I also ate cereal at four in the afternoon, danced around my apartment for fifteen minutes for no good reason, spent an hour chatting about relationships with a newly formed acquaintance, and know what the weather’s like outside (very nice—I took a walk).  How was your day, Employee?

I am not one of those people who do not know how to fill my own time.  I am not one to bemoan the loss of structure in my schedule.  I am content staying up until 3am and sleeping past ten.  I feel no real compulsion to be productive all the time.  I am, generally speaking, not well-equipped to contribute to society.

I realize this can be interpreted as a great moral failing, an acutely flawed character, a personality type that is potentially dangerous to social order and should be eugenically eliminated lest my offspring continue to undermine that which society aspires to and values, such as a McMansion in the suburbs and a freezer full of Lean Cuisine frozen dinners.  That’s ok; I’ve long ago accepted the possibility that maybe my genetic makeup is one that is not optimal for procreation…I have bad eyesight and wore braces for two years in my youth.  But I don’t buy into structure as defined by Corporate America, and I don’t regret not contributing to a society whose values I find dubious.  So in order to be the change I want to see in the world, I really should have as many babies as possible.  Just pop out litters at a time and raise them all to be skeptical pains in the ass with deeply rooted problems with authority and crooked teeth and astigmatism.  I personally think we could use more of us, but I would, wouldn’t I, unemployed reprobate that I am.

Note I never said I was averse to work.  Work I can do.  And I love money, money’s very nice indeed.  I’m just averse to boredom, to mindless routine, to living life without scrutiny, to contribution with no meaning, to involvement with no ownership.  Most of my jobs to date have failed to list these conditions in the description, but nevertheless found them requisite.  And no amount of money could have made up for the happiness lost under such circumstances.

So, as a result, I am enjoying my period of unemployment far more than anyone thinks I should, including myself.  It is entirely unsustainable, of course, and so the search for gainful employ continues.  But if that doesn’t end in a desirable result, I can always fall back on developing my child army of myopic, snaggle-toothed degenerates.  If you want to do your part in avoiding this fiasco, allow me to suggest you give me a job.

Passive-aggressive behavior

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Noun: Passive-aggressive behavior.  Opinion: Hate.

passive-aggressive

A friend who lives here in New York was given the bird before eight in the morning the other day.  Swoon.  I love this stupid city.

Say what you will, that New Yorkers are vulgar and mean and rude and bitchy, but at the end of the day we’re honest.  And that person clearly had a blocked bowel movement that morning and wanted to let the world know it.  We’re not afraid of conflict here, and I think it is testament to our integrity, middle fingers and all.

It’s not as if I particularly like confrontation.  It’s uncomfortable.  It makes your face go red and provokes temporary ulcers.  Those who enjoy it are anti-social psychopaths (who often like to flip strangers off).  But sometimes it’s necessary in the pursuit of candor and transparency—and that’s a worthy cause for some momentary discomfort.  You deal with it and suck it up.  That’s pretty much the concept of maturity in a nutshell: sucking it up.

You swallow, and you swallow hard, but not all conflict needs to involve breaking plates.  It’s the avoidance of conflict altogether that’s infantile.  It’s passive-aggressive behavior that’s childish.  It’s the act of indulging your cowardice and then sulking about it that’s obstructive to fair communication.  I’ve encountered this kind of emotional exploitation in all contexts by all kinds of people—contrary to popular idiocy, this is not the purview of women.  Men are just as eager to take your cake and eat it, all the while batting their eyes like what.

I’ve lived in various cultures and environments where blatant confrontation is anathema.  And to put someone on blast in these settings is just poor manners.  But if something needs to be said and is worth your time to say it, there’s a pretty easy workaround: close the door.  Save face, I’m all for it.  In fact, I’d recommend this method of dealing with grievances everywhere.

But you might still encounter the fuckery that results from this weird avoidance of honest conflict.  The verbal acrobatics one of these passive-aggressive  types will perform is pretty impressive; they’ll spin, spin, spin until you’re reeling, all because they’re afraid to say what they mean but still want their own way.  This is emotional manipulation of the worst kind.  If I sniff the rotten stench of this kind of prevarication, I’ve yet to find a more effective way of defusing it than walking away.  It’s not a fair fight, why take the bait?  I certainly won’t do their retardation the dignity of indulging it.  And I’ve had people quit my bitch ass when I’ve committed this kind of brattiness (fully deserved), so I know it works.

Passive-aggressive behavior is like violence—it demands that you meet its exigencies by dragging you down with it to the rock bottom of human dignity, and if you concur to play that game you’re battling at the lowest common denominator of self-conduct.  If you’re smart and able enough to combat at such depths and resurface without getting a severe case of the bends, by all means, go to it.  I’d argue most of can’t, though.  So fuck them.  Let them wallow there on their own.  Walk away.  And just to make a point, make it a pimp walk.  Strut your junk out of there like you’re the baddest ass around and your shit don’t stink.

There are a lot of different ways to make this world a better place, and this is one of them.

Gossip

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Noun: Gossip.  Opinion: Like.

Far Side

I went to a small graduate program where by the end of your tenure you basically knew everyone by sight and name.  We were also deep to our armpits in nowhereness, the kind of small New England town where the local Japanese restaurant was run by Koreans figuring no one knew any better.  Isolation and an excess of free time made for an absorbing mix of small town friendliness and a disproportionate interest in what every bitch was up to.

My parents have stories of getting their graduate degrees in Europe during the 60s, spending evenings in smoky cafes discussing the imponderables of life.  Sartre was still a significant figure in popular philosophy, and hours were spent deliberating on how to reconcile the meaninglessness of life and the moral imperatives of human conduct.  They would speak of the role of youth in guiding governmental policy and social culture.  They spoke of art and music and history.  Yeah.  We didn’t do any of that.

You’d think that in walking the hallowed halls of a respected institution constructed in buttloads of red brick we would be inspired by the annals of intellectual yore.  We weren’t.  We didn’t talk about politics, we didn’t talk about philosophy, we didn’t exchange chicken recipes.  We talked about each other.  And how!  I have waaaay too much completely uncorroborated shit on these people, as they do on me.  There was one guy who was reported to be a hermaphrodite circus performer with a meth habit and two illegitimate kids living in Mexico.  Not really, but shit comes close.

And we were brutal.  Once a reputation was made, it was nearly impossible to unmake it even with herculean efforts at rational and wholesome behavior.  We enforced roles based on hearsay, not observable action.  It was just so much more fun to think that someone was a slut/bitch/jackass/pervert even when they weren’t.  Gossip is sticky.  Once a label is slapped on your nasty self, it still leaves a residue even if you do manage to peel it off.

This is bad.  It’s very naughty to gossip about people.  It is dangerous and potentially unjust.  I did it ALL THE TIME.  Everyone was doing it.  It was great!  How else are you supposed to fill the silence of the woods?

No, no, it’s bad.  But gossip played a critical role in the formation of society.  People talked about each other as a method of enforcement, a way to threaten perpetrators into behaving according to accepted mores.  Either through shame or the menace of exile, we imposed a code of conduct that ensured the security of the social order.  If someone saw you take an extra serving of woolly mammoth, you better believe that ho was going to tell the world the next day.  And off you go, kicked out of the club, all alone with your flint spear to defend yourself against saber-toothed tigers.  Good as dead.

I think it’s also a function of the size of the social circle you find yourself in.  Gossip is downright tedious in New York.  Spheres of influence are a good deal more dispersed here so we don’t have enough common experiences to reinforce prejudices and opinions.  We actually do end up talking about other things, which is refreshing.  But you definitely give up the benefits, too—you can’t effectively compel people to behave for the common good and you don’t know if a sex offender is your pharmacist.

I don’t have a tidy takeaway for this.  I’ll give it a try, though.  Gossip: bad, unless it’s good.  Choose your sources carefully.  Use in moderation.

Competitiveness

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Noun: Competitiveness.  Opinion: Hate.

survival

There aren’t a whole lot of places in the country that are dog-eat-doggier than New York.  I’m constraining it to the borders of the U.S., since the benchmark shifts by order of magnitude when we look at other places (say, all of Asia—and if you just made a they-eat-actual-dogs joke here you are not trying hard enough.  Have a seat.).  Most of us in New York live on the very edge of sustainable existence; one layoff, one break-up, one poor choice can upend entire years of investment in this city.  This makes it feel like life-and-death scenarios are daily events here.   Survival is the chief source of our anxiety.

It’s why we stay in shitty jobs (been there).  It’s why we hang onto crappy relationships (done that).  It’s why we’re so damn neurotic (…).  Mostly it’s why we’re so brutally competitive and easily talked into pushing others into traffic.  But it’s all in order to survive, and what’s more natural than the impulse to maintain life?  It’s natural we should be looking out for ourselves.  It’s human nature to compete, it’s Nature’s way of ensuring the fittest win out.

Mmmkay.  Let me tell you something about Nature.  She extends far beyond this planet.  And as far as we can tell, we’re the only ones like us around.  Most of the universe is barren.  Lifeless.  There’s activity, but no anima.  We are the freaks, the exceptions, the accidental outcome to a myriad of different physical events that each had the probability of a little more than zilch of happening.  We—humans, birds, dolphins and dung beetles—are in terms of magnitude, decidedly unnatural.

Life in and of itself is not the baseline model for Nature, it’s the abnormal outlier.  It’s the deviant mutation, the fuzzy glowing mold budding in the little petri dish known as Earth.  We don’t make a lot of sense in the grander scheme of things, so stop bringing Nature into it.  Bitch has already proven time and again she couldn’t give two shits about our insignificant asses.

Nothing we do can be excused or forgiven based on “natural law,” there’s no meaning in it.  Throwing someone under the bus at the office to promote yourself?  Worthless.  Another alcohol-facilitated sexual conquest?  Futile.  Crushing a perceived threat regardless of the impact it may have on the other party?  Inane.  Rationalizing such frenzied, spastic behavior by claiming it adheres to the natural order of things?  Typical.  But still stupid.

Yes, we function in a competitive ecosystem architected by limited resources and the strange and miraculous history that transpired over the millennia.  But Nature threw us a bone by providing humans with the ability to be thoughtful, to create and to be moral.  For the purposes of the survival of the species the capacity for love and kindness were seriously overkill; we could have done well enough if not better with just the capacity for contractual obligation.  But for the purposes of trying to imbue life with sense and import, they actually add some value.  So, take a load off, people.  Chill the fuck out and settle down.  Survival has no meaning, but life certainly can.

Economics

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Noun: Economics.  Opinion: Indifferent.

Noun credit:  Jean-Luc.

andy-warhol-dollar-sign

They call economics the “dismal science.”  That’s being entirely too kind, methinks.  Though I’m no expert (like that’s ever stopped me from forming an opinion before), I’ve studied econ every which way starting from the dinner table with my own economics professor dad through business school, and there is nary a discipline out there based on such rickety premises.  To presuppose consumers are rational beings is a conviction tantamount to religious faith, only with far more empirical evidence invalidating it.  Economists are lovers of gross reductionism.  They take the messy disorder of human conduct and demote it down to manageable variables, regardless of how off the mark they are.

Economists also enjoy using currency as a metric of optimization.  And by currency we mean that with which we associate banknotes, bills, coinage.  This is somewhat limiting, as there is trade occurring at every moment that uses currency of different kinds.  There’s the starlet who uses her sexual currency with a casting director.  Or the socialite exploiting the social currency of connections with the upper class.  There are the enormously imperative currencies of kindness, of decency, or in the Utopic vision cherished by some of us, of chocolate eclairs.  Don’t talk to me about maximized utility unless there are all the latter three involved.

The problem is that in their simplest forms these elegant economic models do work…say 64% of the time.  Which is often enough to use them given a dearth of alternatives, but one still has to accept a pretty considerable failure rate.  That means the entire catalogue of economic study has the relevance and reliability of a heuristic, a back-of-the-envelope calculation, a sloppy and potentially dishonest rationalization to preconceived conclusions.  National policy is being formed based on these computations and this may explain why we’ve been floating aimlessly up shit creek.

Economists will often come up with elaborate justifications for their ideas, causing migraines the world over as eyes simultaneously roll up to the back of people’s heads.  They are sometimes very pretty ideas, but they rarely survive outside the rarefied air of their ivory tower incubators.  This could explain why so very few economists ever make any money off the stock market (don’t MAKE me come over there, Myron Scholes!).  One confronted economics professor’s panties got so twisted that he defiantly huffed: “Well, if that’s what you believe, then economics just won’t make sense to you.”

…Right.  That.  Is.  The.  Point.  As if the world is supposed to suspend sound reason in deference to your vaudevillian dog and pony show.

The most honest response I ever received from an economist was from my father.  He nodded thoughtfully for a moment and paused.  Then he shrugged his shoulders and exhaled a Gallic raspberry of dismissal.  Yes, see, now this is the only rational reaction to the irreducible chaos of human behavior.  Call it the currency of “meh.”