Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Pick-up Artists of the Patriarchs

Why are these sociopathic displays only found on pick-up trucks? Don't other vehicles have back windows? There is plenty of glass on the back of a Prius, for instance.

Patriarchy has its roots in insecurity. To me it seems to be a strain in our culture that revolves around countering its inner fears by projecting menace and the ability and willingness to degrade and instill fear in others.


How safe would you feel around a dirt ball who thinks this window decal is funny? Who wants to be this guy's girlfriend? Who is desperate enough to bear that clod's child and what chance is there that child would be raised with out absorbing the lesson, as children do when steeped in bluster about bravely cavalier treatment of others, that he too should feel unsafe? Its not a joke unless everyone can laugh about it.

I can not think of an easy way out of a self propagating miasma like that. A solution matched to our sick era would be to stimulate the economy by giving these clueless souls large sums of money that can only be spent on psychotherapy. Cheaper I suppose would be to look into my own heart until I found a way to only feel how lost they are and then address them directly without any of my own fear or even reproach.

We all have a long way to go.

9 comments:

  1. I've seen many examples of the Calvin-pissing-on-something sticker phenomenon (I wonder how Bill Watterson feels about that?), but yeah, that one's pretty special.

    ReplyDelete
  2. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Sick stuff like that in the mens locker room at steel mill or an oil drilling platform or a grimy merchant marine? Sure it happens. Guys love to impress each other...but right out there on I-90 for all to see?
    An awful lot of social neurocircuitry has to have been squelched or scrapped to run that like a flag.

    And from what I can tell by the Wikipedia bio of Waterson [of whose work on mountain biking themes I still have yellowed clippings 15 years later] I think he would be pissed [pna] since he refuses to even autograph a book because he doesn't like it that people just turn around an sell those.

    Tue Aug 25, 07:43:00 PM EST

    ReplyDelete