Filed under: Daily Specials | Tags: cheating, disillusionment, infidelity, life, love, marriage, men, random, relationships, sex, thoughts, women, work
Last night’s drink: Louis Jadot Beaujolais
Helen is a coworker that I spend a significant amount of time with – especially since, at least once a month, we drive six hours together to and from Indio. Helen is in her 40’s, from a traditional Mexican heritage, in her second marriage to a Chinese man who cooks American/French fusion cuisine, and the mother of two daughters about my age. Helen is the kind of person that likes to give advice, and I’m the kind of person that likes to hear people’s opinions - sometimes, I’ll ask her insubstantial questions just to hear what she’ll say.
Last week, I was venting to Helen about my disheartening experiences with marriage, as of late. It seems like, for every four married men I meet, three are having affairs.
“That’s about right,” she said. “Most married people these days cheat. It’s rare to find monogamy in marriage.”
Her response took me aback, but the opinions that followed were pretty interesting.
The people who were more likely to cheat, she said, were the ones who were wealthy, or who wanted to appear to be. This includes young upstarts with nice cars and crappy apartments, and established men with fat nest eggs and even fatter heads. Having multiple women is like a luxury to them – a logical continuation of the affluent lifestyle they seek. It really isn’t anything personal against their wives – it’s just another investment in being the part…maybe even the part their wives expect them to play.
In some cases, men and women in these situations both cheat – or they may even have an understanding between the two of them that there will be others outside of their marriage. Let’s face it – nobody’s perfect. Neither is marriage, from what I’ve heard. If your sole purpose for getting married is to have a comfortable living or simply a body to come home to, then it may make perfect sense for you to get married first, and then find your intimate connections after.
Another reason people cheat, Helen said, is to network professionally. Whether you’re trying to make a name or simply move up, no one can deny that sex sells. Mixers, conferences, professional organizations or even boards – these things bring people together from different tenticles of an industry for their own benefit, and the benefit of the product. In general, the more professional “connections” you have, the more successful and reputable you appear to be.
So you have a lot of like-minded people in one place, oftentimes drinking, and meeting under seemingly serendipitous terms, and it creates all the chemicals needed to produce explosive connections. These types of connections between men and women can feel very emotional and intimate, but it’s more than likely that heterosexual males are having the same connections with eachother. Work or no, it’s exciting to meet people you connect with. The difference is that the prior example will likely lead to sex at some point – marriage or otherwise. If a man can have a professional and a personal conquest in one, why wouldn’t he say yes? It’s twice the food for his ego, with only half the work.
In both the “luxury” and the “success” perspectives, the affair is a way to build yourself up with more instantaneous gratification than, say, honor and hard work will proffer. Plus, guys get to feel like they have a modern day harem, and what guy doesn’t love that image.
The thing to keep in mind, though, is that the root of the word “harem” actually means “protected” in Arabic, and in other early languages. This is because the harem of classical terms (the original harem) was meant to protect the women, not to exploit them.
Isn’t that the reason why you guys are bigger and stronger?
Filed under: Daily Specials | Tags: conscience, conscious, dreams, faith, free-will, lies, life, random, subconscious, thoughts
Tonight’s Drink: Rodney Strong Merlot.
When I was in Junior College I took what has probably been one of the more influential classes of my college career; a humanities course called “The Bible as Literature.” As you may have guessed, the course was centered on a complete read-through of the bible – in this case, the Oxford Annotated version, with the Apocrypha. My professor, whose name escapes me, was flamboyant and heady, but very sharp. When he got really excited, he would V his arms out to his sides and point his middle fingers into the air in dual-bird motion to each corner of the room. Then, when it was time to answer questions, he’d call on you using the same middle fingers. It was very disarming, to say the least.
I bring up this particular class because it was my first introduction to the concept of free will. Obviously, in the eyes of the church, I’d been exercising free will my entire life, compliments of God. But in this class, the professor made a point to talk about how God’s bestowal of free will upon man had made him different from animals, and therefore subject to greater scrutiny in their choices between right and wrong.
“Do angels have free will?” I asked.
“The bible doesn’t talk much about angels,” he said. “But based on the information, I would say no.”
I was dissatisfied with the answer at the time.
The concept of free will has its basis in the conscious mind. Your conscious self makes decisions, interacts with others, drives your car, buys your clothes, and eats your food. Your conscience is the name for the knowledge you use to make these decisions. The ideas and activities that fall under ”right” and “wrong” are organized in your conscience.
But your subconscious is always there in the background, lurking. With stronger opinions and greater convictions, your subconscious just lets you think that it’s up to you. Like Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction, it’s out there.. just waiting to boil your bunny and show you who’s boss. Then you have a wierd dream, or you check out your married coworker, and you think, “Am I a bad person? I’m having these thoughts, and they’re coming from my mind, so it must mean I’m bad.”
But you can only be bad in your conscious state- that’s the only state you have control over. But how free is your conscious state, really? Your subconscious is around whether you’re asleep or awake, so how would you know you weren’t being controlled by your mind?
I was awakened on Wednesday at 2 a.m. by a dream in which I was driving on a rainy highway along the Mendocino coastline. In front of me was a Ford Bronco or a Chevy Suburban, multi-colored, and we were both driving at a decent clip as Northern Californians do. As we approached a bridge over a creekbed swollen with rain, a huge pileup materialized in the slow lane. What looked to be a new Dodge Charger or an old Cadillac DeVille swerved to miss the wreck. The quick move sent the Bronco/Suburban veering, which transitioned quickly into a hydroplane-induced 180. Suddenly, the backwards-facing SUV slammed up against the bridge railing and flipped over the edge, sending it crashing, upside-down, into the rocky ravine 20 feet below. I was three cars behind, watching the whole thing in shock. I knew that person had to have died.
The fact that this was only a dream should have been a relief to me. But I was caught off-gaurd by the fact that my own mind could surprise me with such a complicated chain of events. How did I not see that coming? Why was I so surprised that it did? And, more importantly, why was I feeling so much anxiety over the whole thing?
I would argue that consciousness does not equal free will – it only offers the opportunity for critical thinking. This is the reason why psychology can only interpret human reaction based on the psyche. The psyche is the body, the conscious mind is just the clothes it is wearing. And just like the way my walk swings a jersey skirt around my knees, so, too, does the walk of the psyche directly influence the movement of the conscious mind.
And this is the reason why that professor could assume that angels do not have free will. Because they don’t have the option to think critically or make mistakes. This is not to be mistaken for any will at all, which is what Lucifer exhibited during his descent. Your will can be evil, and some people’s wills are – many of these same people consciously fight their will before they give in to it.
The trick is, then, to know your will at its extremes. Know what you’d die for, know what you live for, and know what you absolutely will not allow. If you don’t like what you find, be prepared to fight it for the rest of your life. Or, more simply, take ownership of it, and take comfort in knowing that you’re aware of the things people may not like about you or, for extreme cases, the things that will eventually put you in jail.
And if you’re still skeptical, try fibbing to a lie-detector test.
