House of Eratosthenes

On an Internet forum, someone made the observation that Marissa Leigh’s parents appear to be trying to make her into a useless person. She got two cars, not one, for her Sweet 16. She wore three pink dresses, and had her poodles dyed to match. Her mom is her full-time…everything. Executive assistant, wardrobe manager, publicist — and daddy pays for it all. Marissa is the only girl, the baby of the family. Twelve people — yes, twelve — are employed full-time in making her into a star. This is a big operation. The family paid $50,000 to rent a house for the birthday party, and made sure it was carried on MTV My Super-Sweet 16″. “She’s spoiled,” her mother says, “but hopefully, it’s a grounded spoiled.” A grounded spoiled? Huh.

I’m most interested in that very first comment: Her parents are trying to make her useless. Now, Marissa is nothing new or unique here; I’d venture to say all of us, at sometime in our lives, have met someone carefully crafted from the minute the cord was cut, to perform, to upstage, to be a shameless attention whore — to grow up with zero skills. Why do parents do this to their kids? You can live in very close proximity to such parents, for years at a time, and fail to understand. What is it, a serious effort to make the kid useless, or an unconscious thing? Is it some kind of a joke? Do they perhaps want some magical “skills fairy” to come along and teach the child how to do things that actually matter, so the parents don’t have to worry about it? It is truly a modern mystery, one we seem to be observing with greater and greater frequency as time goes along.

Well, my Yin and Yang theory explains this, if nothing else does. It goes like this: Just as some of us are right-handed and some of us are southpaws, there is another split amongst us, dividing those who think from those who feel. There are perhaps hundreds of such conceptual splits within our populace, of varying social importance — this one carries a paramount level of social importance, because any social interaction transcending this figurative boundary comes at the cost of rancor, dissention, loathing and suffering, that in spite of the best intentions all around, is inevitable. People on each side of this split, although nobody will outwardly confess it, are deeply offended by the realization that people on the other side do things the way they do, and like the way they do those things. In fact, people on both sides of this split are deeply offended by the recognition that the folks on the other side even exist at all. Each side sees the other side as an insult to their own existence.

The False Consensus Effect is used to rationalize to ourselves, that “this guy I saw today” is one of very few on the planet who do things the way he does; 99% of “everyone,” are just like me. It isn’t so. This split is actually fairly even. Fifty percent of us live on one side, and fifty percent live on the other. That’s why we’re so contentious.

Sure, the “feelers” are jolly all the time. I say, if you’re a thinker, get married to a feeler for a little while, and if you’re a feeler, marry a thinker and see what happens. The trans-boundary interaction, particularly within marital bonds wherein it becomes a perpetual, never-ending thing, drives everyone freakin’ nuts, even the always-smiling, always-jolly, natural performers. It isn’t long before the experiment stands revealed, as something that would have left everyone involved a whole lot better off, had it never been tried.

Personally, I’ve been worn down by events in my life up until now that I no longer have the energy to look down with scorn or disapproval upon either “side.” What is the point of disapproving of someone? You can express your disapproval easily enough, but then you have to say what to do with the people of whom you disapprove. Convert them? You can’t. Get rid of them? Freeze them for some future generation to deal with? Deprive them of their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor? What would be the point?

But I will say this; even though my upbringing drills into my head that it’s a wonderful thing, in adulthood I find it hard to realize an upside from having everyone mixed together. There’s so much fighting going on. Each half of the schism seems to exist in utopian harmony, right up until everyday life insists upon communication or interaction with someone on the other side — then the harmony crumbles. Pronouncing which side is better than the other, is something that no longer interests me. I just think we’d all be better off if we were split up. As information travels faster and faster, and we are reminded more and more frequently how different we are and what kind of problem this makes, someday it’ll probably happen.

But I think that’s why Marissa is being raised the way she is. It’s easy to see, from reading the article, that mommy is exactly the same way. If she’s the same way, she’s probably offended that there are other people who’ve made their way in life, by actually developing some skills and using their intellect to get productive things done. I believe she finds that distasteful. I believe she’d like to avoid any exposure to that whole way-of-living. Can anyone else come up with a good explanation why anyone should do their parenting this way — other than some kind of intense loathing for the child, which doesn’t seem to be the case here? The quotes from the story, like the child being described, are priceless:

“I’m a princess.”

“I’m such a rock star that I can do this.”

“So many people are so jealous of me because my dad owns three car dealerships and we have a lot of money.”

And this:

“I always get exactly what I want.”

I will grant you, I have a lot of idle speculation about the mother and very little concrete evidence to support the things I’m saying about her. But I see no mention of her burying her face in her hands in embarrassment over comments like these from her offspring, or sucking in her breath with abject horror. This tells me a few things.

Read this same story with hundreds and hundreds of people, maybe thousands if you have the time, throughout a year or two. Get a good cross-section of people. You’ll see that my theory seems to hold up: People who vomit when they read this story, or feel an impulse to do so, get along with each other fairly well. The other people, who say something to the effect of “actually, I think that’s kind of precious!” get along with each other pretty well too.

It’s the mix of the two camps that is deadly. We aren’t all built to live in close proximity with each other. We’re raised to think that we are, but there’s no reason to think that’s really the case.

Put people like Marissa, and her Mom, on an island somewhere — if you’re sufficiently thorough about rounding everybody up, Marissa, on her island, will find most of her interested viewers are right there where she is. People of that flavor don’t really require too much, other than that all-important attention, so who would suffer? Food and shelter may be a minor issue for a little while, but I’m sure a lot of Hollywood millionaires would be on the island too. And before too long the whole place would be transformed into a socialist paradise, so that the bountiful Hollywood purses will belong to everybody there.

[…] Yin and Yang III was posted on May 1, and it was inspired by the profile of Marissa Leigh, who is being carefully groomed, no expense spared, to become the next Britney Spears. Now it could very well be that Marissa Leigh is a nice, intelligent girl, and that her mother has the best of intentions. According to the information that has found its way to me, most of which is in the article linked, Marissa Leigh is an intolerable airhead and her mother is a pernicious bitch. It is a mystery to me why, and how, anyone would want to raise their daughter this way. There is a payoff to be realized from the years of what I see as nothing more than child abuse. The payoff makes sense to millions of people, whereas, to millions of other people who think more along the lines of the way I think, the payoff is for all purposes non-existent. I started to delve further into why I believe these two personality types are fundamentally incompatible. When contact is attempted, disharmony is the inevitable result. I have no interest in coming into social contact with people like Marissa Leigh; I know from experience, they have no interest in coming into social contact with people like me. […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 12/03/2006 @ 13:55
[…] Yin and Yang VIII Yin and Yang VII Yin and Yang VI Yin and Yang V Yin and Yang IV Yin and Yang III Yin and Yang II Yin and Yang I […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 07/21/2007 @ 19:06
[…] “It’s the mix of the two camps that is deadly. We aren’t all built to live in close proximity with each other. We’re raised to think that we are, but there’s no reason to think that’s really the case. […]
- rightlinx.com » Blog Archive » Dueling Natures | 07/29/2007 @ 21:58

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Yin and Yang IIIMonday, May 1st, 2006

Yin and Yang III
Monday, May 1st, 2006