Deflection

The pride before the fall

The summer after my sophomore year in high school I started expanding my social life in a way only a 16-year-old with a freshly minted driver’s license and a $500 car can. In the spring semester I was in several classes with Frank. We were in a public high school, but Frank had attended an expensive private middle school. This meant he was friends with girls who attended the private catholic schools. I didn’t know much at 16, but I did know I wanted to be better acquainted with those girls. That summer was filled with free concerts in the park, drinking beer around bond fires, and late-night coffee shops. I became well acquainted with a girl named Jen.

Jen was pretty typical of the girls we spent our time with. She attended a private catholic school. Her parents were successful professionals, her father was a lettered man. Her bedroom walls were plastered in clippings from Vouge and other magazines a poor straight boy from the inner city would know nothing about. Her long curly hair was worn loose a perfect complement to her slender well-dressed frame. In my 16-year-old eyes she was perfect, or almost so… The only flaw was a slightly discolored front tooth.

We spent a lot of time together that summer. I’d poke fun at her for bringing a blanket to the movie theaters or fixing her hair before we went on a hike. She was a vegan and wasn’t thrilled I wasn’t, not that this came up that often. Most of our dates were either grabbing coffee or spending time together she didn’t like going to restaurants because she was never sure if they were vegan friendly enough. She complained during a picnic about how tired she was, this gave me an opportunity to show my sinewy arms were strong enough to carry her back to the car.

One night as we sat around the dying embers of a fire at Frank’s house (we hosted many parties there), no longer nursing the beers in our hands, she told me she had something to admit. The previous summer she spent most of her time in a facility. She told me she had issue with how her body looked, and she had developed anorexia. The facility was intense psychology and close monitoring of her food intake.  16-year-old me didn’t know what to say, I just gave her a hug and we cuddled as we watched the embers die out.

That relationship did not last beyond the summer, but that archetype had been imprinted on my young hormone filled soul. I would spend the next decade chasing “Jens.” Artists, actresses, fashionistas, thin and well dressed. I started to notice a lot of them were vegans or had similarly restrictive diets. Many found an excuse to avoid dinner dates, “lets just grab drinks” always a clear alcohol with little to no sugar. Sugar is a poison you know… discolored teeth, brittle hair, easily fatigued these girls all seemed to have the same traits.

Looking back years later it all seems so obvious. These behaviors were sophisticated covers for their eating disorders. This was a deep insight into human behavior a young me had never encountered. This deflection from their body image issues, and the eating disorders emanating therefrom, onto supercilious political or cultural fights is a pattern we see across the political spectrum. The deflections are different, but they all resemble an angry mother bird feigning an injury to lead you away from the nest.

Sam Harris believes humans do not have free will. He spoke for nearly two hours on a podcast about the topic, and at the end the co-host asked him if he would tell his children they have no free will. Sam said, “no that’s probably a bad idea.” If there is no free-will then crime and punishment have no meaning. It is arbitrary to punish someone for an event they did not chose to do. All of our acts were predestined at the birth of the universe, a consequence of atoms bouncing off one another for 14 billion years. “Son why did you draw on the wall?” “Because the Big Bang happened, Dad.” The son is not wrong and punishing him seems pointless. Of course, Sam understands this and says he’s… made the choice… to not tell his children about his theory. His not seeing the obvious contradictions in such a theory is probably because of the Big Bang too.

A great feature of believing all of your actions were predestined is knowing you no longer bear responsibility for anything in your life. Outside of the internet I have only known one person who seriously believes free will is a myth. He is a smart man. He’s a skilled oncological surgeon who has saved hundreds of lives. A few years ago, after some soul searching, he decided there was no free will. This soul searching was done after his wife discovered he had been sleeping with several nurses. He thought on this a long while and determined he had no role in his failed marriage. He also started to develop strange eating patterns. Micro-meals, no food dye, vegan… this made it impossible to eat at a restaurant. Consequently, he no longer goes out to eat with his family and friends. Lucky for him since being around his social circle reminds him of his failure to maintain relationships, they may even think him a bad person for his infidelities. Luckily it was just the Big Bang’s fault.

 The denial of free will is only one way to remove responsibility from the self. Many in our times, though progressives in particular, blame nearly every problem they have on external systems. Crime is because of poverty. Poverty is because of discrimination. Discrimination is because the system teaches us… its an endless loop. It’s turtles all the way down.

Many ideologies attempt to redefine the concept of original sin. Original sin is the fundamental truth that mankind is broken and flawed. All human endeavors will be flawed because humans are flawed. This is why humility is such an important concept in Christianity. We must be humble enough to understand we are fallible. Satan rejects the way of things, he rejects God (order and truth and beauty) for his own prideful vision. He ends up in hell. This warning is ignored by the ideologue. We can make the world perfect by removing markets, by removing government, by ending woke, by removing white people, by removing the jews, by ending hierarchies. Underneath the academic jargon, underneath the bumper stickers, lies the same pride that caused the fall: it is not I who is wrong; it is God.   

A less dramatic example came from social media this week. A viral post asking if picking teams was still a thing in school. The user felt it was just a way for popular kids to rank everyone in class. “It’s unfair and makes kids feel bad about themselves.” When confronted that this was probably due to athletic skill and not popularity he said, “the two were the same at my school.” His response to discovering he was not very good at sports was not to undertake the difficult task of discipline and practice to improve, nor was it to accept that he’s simply not that good at sports. His reaction was to destroy the mechanism that made him confront those faults.

This is the impetus for all revolutionary movements. The system must burn. America is evil, why? Because I am not doing well. It’s the murder of the Kulaks, it’s the great leap forward, its down with the patriarchy, it’s removing standardized tests. This is the behavior of a carpenter who yells at his measuring tape after making an incorrect cut.

These covers are not only to keep away the prying eyes of others, but a shield from honest self-reflection. This becomes most obvious in the realm of identity. Often mocked on the internet are the furries, the Xir/Xems, the otherkins. It is ridiculous behavior, but I have always seen the conflict below the behavior. The Rolling Stone ran an article about a trans abortion doula. This is a woman who calls herself a man who helps emotionally support other women through the process of procuring and recovering from an abortion. The article is a masterpiece in progressive jargon; dissembling and redefining terms in every paragraph, but it does offer some insight into how this individual became the progressive caricature she is today. She had an abortion.

Abortion is not simply a medical procedure. No amount of redefining terms or progressive “shout your abortion” campaigns can make women feel that this is the same as going to the dentist. Pride in your abortion is the natural result of the argument the pro-abortion side must make. If you feel any negative feelings, then you must begin to examine why. Down this path leads to serious challenges to the pro-abortion argument. Cover that path with Pride.

This emotional conflict remains unresolved, as all things swept under the metaphorical rug are. Tell yourself there’s no problem, in fact Be proud of what you’ve done. It is no wonder Pride has become such a central feature of our modern culture. But conflicts reemerge, identities can be their battle ground. A woman who rejected one of the most fundamental aspects of femininity, her ability to create life now feels she no longer belongs in the category of feminine. She calls herself a man and helps to ferry women down the same conflicted path she traveled, hoping they don’t become as lost as she.

Agency is everything. Where one places it is a reliable sign of moral character. There are systemic problems, acts of God and random accidents that severely detriment your life, but before you lay the blame away from yourself, confront your flaws. Understand the role you have in shaping your life. Be honest with yourself even if you must lie to the world and understand most will not.