After many, many evenings of (slightly) alcohol-fueled reflection, I’ve figured out the root of our current human conundrum, at least here in the United States. It all boils down to the recent unwanted birth of a third culture, the result of a tawdry ménage à trois between honor culture, dignity culture, and social media. And as is only proper, both honor culture and dignity culture blame each other for the unholy results.
You see, there used to be only two ways to resolve personal insult, and when handled with some constraint and within their cultural contexts, they worked great. Allow me to illustrate by painting the scene at your local pub/bar on a Friday night. First, in an honor culture:
I’ve taken my little lady down to the local watering hole to fluff my feathers and display the successful results of my manliness in that I’ve been able to attract the niceties of such a lovely, little lady in the first place. After two drinks, I notice some young pup making goo-goo eyes at my prize. I slam down my mug and demand satisfaction. We exchange knuckle sandwiches in the street for a few minutes until both parties are satisfied that they’ve represented their manliness to the best of their abilities. Honor intact. Matter resolved.
Now the same bar scene in a dignity culture:
My old lady and I stop by our local pub to down a pint while trashing on the fans of the rival sports organization, because they suck the biggest suck of all sucks. After two pints, one of the vapid idiots suggests my old lady would be better off with a real man. I suggest that his old lady has been with everyone in the bar and is still looking for a real man. We exchange laughs and drink the next round together while our old ladies commiserate. Dignity intact. Matter resolved.
Then the internet and social media happened. Honor culture ends up Facebooking dignity culture and dignity culture responds by tweeting honor culture in the Facebook. Kapowza. Now we’ve got everything from tech-saggy Boomers to tech-suckling Millennials (of which I fall somewhere in between) publicly airing micro-aggressions via their personal platforms in effort to rally sympathy for their side.
All the while, dignity culture can’t figure out why honor culture keeps wanting to punch everyone for getting all up in their personal freedoms, and honor culture can’t figure out how dignity culture keeps buying into all the bleeding-heart bullcrap. Both sides see the continuous and ugly stream of yapping that has been labeled as “cancel culture” or “victim culture” and attribute it to the other. Honor culture sees the problem as the bastard child of dignity culture. Dignity culture sees the matter as a digital mutation of honor culture. Everyone blames big tech. (Personally, I respect our robot overlords.)
I can practically guarantee the results will lead to some alien race turning Earth into the most popular reality program in the universe. If I wasn’t elbows deep in the whole mess, I’d be nonstop laughing my ass off. I can’t even keep up with the amount of satirical rich content we’re dead-seriously crapping out these days. A few years ago, would any of us imagined flat-earthers working together with Antifa at a QAnon meeting to use Chinese TikTok to bring down a Russian troll farm actively promoting anti-maskers to unite with forever-Trumpers against Pizzagate socialists walking the thin, blue line?
You, sir, have micro-offended my honor/dignity.
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At the Desk This Week
I finished Ep. 5 of Season Three of the Green ones! I’m going to go back through all five episodes and clean them up a bit before I tackle the final episode, Ep. 6. By the time I finish Ep. 6, the whole season should be pretty clean, and I’ll hand it over to an editor to get it ready for release. I apologize for how long this is taking. It has been a bit clunkier to get back in the saddle than I had thought it would be. At this point in my career, I’ve written enough words to know when I’m generating my best work…and when I’m simply grinding. But sometimes I gotta grind through the process in order to eventually get to my best work. It just takes longer.
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