50 things i don't 'get' about myself (and other humans) part 2 (#21 - #50)

i don’t ‘get’ which/what emotion i feel when a person i like expresses they don’t like me in a similar way

i don’t ‘get’ the concept of government or any derivative institution (which is a pretty big deal i think) i.e. departments, organizations, businesses

i don’t ‘get’ anthropomorphism

i don’t ‘get’ the concept of ‘lying’

i don’t ‘get’ how there isn’t a well-known cultural phenomenon/entity based primarily on the fact that humans sleep for 1/3 of their lives

i don’t ‘get’ the value construct basis for ‘currency’

i don’t ‘get’ the immediate impulse to masturbate or have sex with a person i don’t feel romantic attachment to after being rejected by someone i do

i don’t ‘get’ ‘group mentality’ or ‘group instinct’ or ‘tribes’ or ‘races’ or ‘cliques’

i don’t ‘get’ sexual dimorphism

i don’t ‘get’ how humans have perpetuated ‘competition’ as a valid basis/explanation for abstract conflict, i.e. ‘survival of the fittest’, ‘contests’, sports (related to #19)

i don’t ‘get’ prepositions (in abstract contexts), i.e. around literature, about time, in the mind

i don’t ‘get’ how i’m not sexually attracted to every other human

i don’t ‘get’ how most humans spend their entire lives interested in, arguing about, dissecting, and proving their opinions to other humans

i don’t ‘get’ ‘parenting’ or how humans do anything else while doing that

i don’t ‘get’ nostalgia/any desire to dissect and emulate the past

i don’t ‘get’ mourning

i don’t ‘get’ guilt

i don’t ‘get’ shame

i don’t ‘get’ mysticism/religion/the occult/mythology

i don’t ‘get’ humor/sarcasm

i don’t ‘get’ ‘respect’

i don’t ‘get’ how [anyone] justifies making a product that is ‘intentionally addictive’ for the purpose of ‘making money’

i don’t ‘get’ how nearly everyone i have discussed money with thinks it’s, ‘okay’, generally that the concept of money exists

i don’t ‘get’ time, or ‘keeping’ time, or the benefit of acknowledging ‘time’ (i.e. space-time vs. lunchtime vs. time to get a new watch) as the same concept as ‘where earth is in relation to the sun’ and ‘3hrs 46min 15sec’ since it changes relative to velocity, idk, idgi

i don’t ‘get’ how any human or group of humans think that their opinion re ‘life in general’ ‘justifies’ any action, especially violent, malevolent, or continuous, annoying action, that doesn’t communicate their opinion re ‘life in general’ and simultaneously accommodate other human’s opinions re ‘life in general’ by intentionally not encroaching on them or attempting to ‘force’ other humans to think/act a certain way

i don’t ‘get’ ‘advice’ or how people conclude that they desire ‘advice’ (related to #45)

i don’t ‘get’ plants

i don’t ‘get’ my relationship with non-human animals i regularly interact with

i don’t ‘get’ into a relationship

i don’t ‘get’ you

50 things i don't 'get' about myself (and other humans) part 1 (#1 - #20)

i don’t ‘get’ what this is i’m experiencing or what impulse results in a desire to derive ‘meaning’ from it

i don’t ‘get’ concepts of ‘responsibility’ or ‘consequence’ outside of a discussion on metaphysics

i don’t ‘get’ how there can be human activity that ‘upsets’ me/any other human

i don’t ‘get’ subjective standards of ‘quality’ in art

i don’t ‘get’ what ‘love’ is or how humans have allowed an emotion so vaguely defined and so intense to persist mimetically without ‘serious’ discussion about its ‘purpose’ in contemporary communication

i don’t ‘get’ how to ‘get a job’

i don’t ‘get’ large quantities of [anything], i.e. 10,000 molecules, 100,000 meters, 1,000,000 humans, etc., seems unquantifiable/abstract

i don’t ‘get’ the human impulse to assert liking something more than [all other things/concepts/objects/information of value] or if that phenomenon is psycho-emotionally possible or if people ‘just say that’

i don’t ‘get’ multi-faceted coincidences or how humans associate them with ‘a greater, sentient power’, i.e. if you develop a relationship with a human who looks/acts similar to another or amalgam of humans you like and think ‘this is “meant to be”’

i don’t ‘get’ the instinctual response of ‘fear’ or how it functions in societal development/evolution or if it is an ‘appropriate’ response to [any stimulus]

i don’t ‘get’ acting angrily/aggressively in response to [any stimulus], especially another human (related to #3, i think)

i don’t ‘get’ science or how humans think any knowledge can be ‘valid’/‘factual’ regardless of ‘tests’/’proof’/’empirical [anything]’, when understanding reality is based in a false ideal that a human or ‘humanity’ can view the universe ‘objectively’, when ‘clearly’ a) humans are part of the universe and therefore have infinitely subjective experiences, b) the universe is fluid and the ‘rules’ change constantly, c) all knowledge is inevitably lost/improved upon, d) scientific notation/language is based in an arbitrary/historic system of symbols and not something derived from current understanding of ‘the nature of the universe’ and is therefore fundamentally ‘rife’ with paradox

i don’t ‘get’ the psychology of ‘the orgasm’ (male or female)

i don’t ‘get’ how humans interpret the brain/body’s ability to process chemicals, i.e. DMT, MSG, THC, nicotine, as ‘requiring’ justification via evolutionary biology when mutations that serve no evolutionary purpose but have little-to-no negative repercussions re procreation occur ‘constantly’

i don’t ‘get’ the sociological basis of ‘fads’

i don’t ‘get’ how humans extend feelings of empathy beyond other humans or onto non-living things for that matter

i don’t ‘get’ metaphors

i don’t ‘get’ (or can’t ‘wrap my mind around’) the fact that everything i interact with was somehow ‘made’ by other humans, i.e. cities, everything on the internet, the genetic structure and mimetic concepts/assumptions i use to interpret reality

i don’t ‘get’ sports

i don’t ‘get’ how individual humans allow writing, discussion, or ideas about philosophy/socio-political structure/economics to influence what/how they think re irl interaction with other humans, and subsequently allow themselves to determine those notions as ‘validated’/’true’/useful based on their interactions

Are Race, Ethnicity and Moral Outrage Still Valid Bases for Activism?

by Stephen Michael McDowell

On Saturday, April 14th, 2012 a woman named Fanny Lyckman posted a new ‘look’ on her lookbook.nu page displaying her in a pose on top of a structure in Berlin known as the ‘Memorial to the Murdered Jews in Europe’. For the most part, none of her followers seemed to notice/care about the location except to comment on its aesthetic. Ms. Lyckman also posted a collection of photos taken at the same site on her blog. Most of the comments on the blog post are in Swedish, and are either trolls exclaiming desires to see her naked, or people commenting on the clothing she’s wearing. But one of the more recent comments— around 5pm in what I assume is Swedish Time—is in English and reads ‘Wauw, great shoot! Love the place, It's Berlin, right? Great to shot some fashion photos. Also love your jacket!’

Six hours after the photo was posted on lookbook.nu, among the string of (mostly) positive feedback, appeared this comment:

‘What the [expletive] is wrong with you? You're leaping across a HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL? Those slabs under your feet are meant to represent people who were murdered by Hitler. They are not props for your pretty picture on Lookbook. It is absolutely disgusting that you would use this memorial ground as a setting for a photoshoot. Even worse that you tagged yourself on a gravestone with the words "GET IT ON." This is one of the most disturbing photos I have ever seen taken, EVER. It is akin to posting a look wearing a Ku Klux Klan hood, t-shirt with a swastika emblem, or outfit entirely inspired by the Nazis. It would behoove you to delete it and issue an apology to all of the Jewish, black, Asian, gay, and disabled people you offended with this post. Actually, I don't see how ANYONE couldn't be offended by this picture as it displays a complete and utter disregard for humanity and emotional detachment from the tragedy that is 11 MILLION DEAD PEOPLE.’

I saw on Facebook around 1pm, a post on my newsfeed by fashion blogger and alt celebrity Bebe Zeva, saying, ‘Blonde-haired, blue-eyed white girl on @loobookdotnu does a photoshoot in the Berlin HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL’, with a link to the ‘look’. I clicked on it and my immediate response was something like, ‘Is this performance art? Seems pretty innocent. Seems like a sweet, geometric landscape to have a photoshoot.’ Then I saw Bebe’s comment, and felt genuinely perplexed.

Bebe continued to tweet about the ‘look’ and garnered a small following of people disgusted by Ms. Lyckman’s seeming irreverence. Eventually Bebe tweeted, ‘Great work everybody and kudos to@lookbookdotnu for their immediate action! Happy to be part of a fashion collective that values equality.’ I tried to revisit the ‘look’ and found the link redirected to Ms. Lyckman’s lookbook.nu homepage. The ‘look’ was no longer displayed.

Immediately after all this transpired I was reminded of the outrage and, what I consider, bizarre explosion of racial [something like discourse, more like myriad of tirades] that followed the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman incident. An incident that has, from a legal standpoint, moved in the direction the outraged masses desired the case to advance: George Zimmerman has been arrested and charged with second degree murder.

Though I have an ethical investment in the philosophically empirical value of human life, I find it strange—and feel somewhat concerned—that second and third-hand ‘mourning’, especially in instances of possible, unconfirmed racism, can transform into collective fury without concrete understanding of the intent of the offending party. Also I find it strange that Bebe, who gained her first phase of internet notoriety on the satire blog, Hipster Runoff, was the propagator of this outright attack on an event that Carles, the anonymous persona behind HRO and someone Bebe at once considered herself philosophically akin to, might comically address and dissect rather than outright ridicule or ‘demand justice’ for without overwhelming irony.

I was under the impression, until today, that the ‘artistic intelligentsia’—of which I consider Bebe a member—felt some obligation to view racial and ethnic discrepancy with zeitgeist-based awareness that was separate from—and possibly philosophically superior to—the deep-seated socio-emotional and historically aggressive activism that inspired the civil rights movement and led to ‘the post-racial era’. I thought they considered every human being a ‘human being’, not an object careening towards some conceptual ground zero that will wipe out civil rights or a threat to future understanding of what it means to be human.

Bebe’s outburst against Ms. Lyckman’s view of the Berlin Holocaust Memorial (as an intriguing, potentially controversial aesthetic choice) and the outrage against George Zimmerman’s overzealous vigilantism and subsequent taking of life, are—to me—meta-errors in judgment that form two sides of a discussion about the value of human life, reverence for death, and ‘justice’. They are not, in my opinion, justifiable sources of moral outrage, or incidents worth the aggressively misdirected attention of people who consider every human being intrinsically, incomprehensibly valuable.

The circumstances of ‘untimely death’, in my opinion, are occurrences that deserve objective, evidence-based assessment. Respect for life lost is important and is diminished by an inability to view memorial as representation, as a symbol that has potential aesthetic value outside of what it commemorates. Trayvon Martin is not my son, though it means something for an activist to say that, and the holocaust was an unfathomable tragedy, but I don’t think 20-something fashionistas are interested in committing militaristic impudence against that fact.