Beauty is Imperfection

A new study from a prominent journal by an expert of some kind was not paid attention to today because a voice in your head you have not identified as your father’s told you not to believe it.

The study concerned an important matter possibly relating to public health, economics or political strife but was not received due to the insistent reflex inspired by a husky Dad voice buried deep in the cerebral cortex warning you that it was not content he would approve of. This triggering voice first entered your sub-conscious brain when you were a child and continues to influence executive cerebral and limbic systems of your body (as well as the house-cleaning functions performed by your digestive system) and thus will not allow you to receive this important breaking news on a topic of critical importance.

The study was full of useful statistics and percentages that might help you adapt and make contingencies for emergencies, as well as anecdotal evidence relating to something that might affect your financial status or one or two ways you might not use a hammer, but its salient points were masked to you by the persistent social conditioning you received by a certain grey eminence whose early rules set down as an exchange for simple nourishment were indispensable for a helpless young homo sapiens facing a hostile world of animals. This conditioning severely affected your ability to assimilate new information, mainly because of the gruff, stern tone of the hunter gatherer, as well as implied and now subconscious threats that a challenge to him meant risking the loss of family members and peers and their body warmth—things at the time critically important to a child’s survival and well-being.

“We are definitely headed for trouble,” said a credentialed and educated person whose face you could barely be brought to look at as he or she offered countervailing information that challenged the prevailing norms, value systems, semiotics and archetypes laid down in your neural pathways by the patriarchal strongman and lawgiver whom you still in moments of stress and discomfort call “Daddy.” The story mentions several things you could do to address the critical issues raised by this news story, which might have been about gold prices or the flammable liquid in your house but whose message conflicted with your father’s opinions and threatened to upend the folkways and learned behavior that are now an immutable part of your psychological profile—offering you your ego, your identity and cultural belonging and likely your entire concept of self, a sense of belonging your brain feels is vitally necessary on this tiny planet totally alone in the universe and vulnerable to expanding stars, asteroids and heat death. As the spirit of your father says, there is a heavy price to pay by questioning tribe loyalty and listening to the plea of an outsider that you listen to him about this important topic which might be about lead toy paint or STDs or municipal bonds or global warming but which is not, unfortunately, powerful enough to get through your impressively large Dad-filter or appeal to your brain’s otherwise rugged and impressive neuroplastic cells.

“The time to act is now,” said a person of authority, perhaps a politician or priest or business leader, “but there is only so much time we have before it will be impossible to act on this [issue your dad has already made up his mind about] whose dire consequences cannot be minimized, unless it is by the comforting and unrelenting voice that gave you the gift of fear when you were still learning to crawl, the voice whose dissent against which offers perilous pitfalls, sickness and likely a hideous and prolonged death.

Read Full Post »