In God We Trust

Serj Tankian - Lie Lie Lie

Trust is impossible to understand.

What is trust? Defined by the dictionary trust is “to have confidence or faith in”, a definition I, for once, am not appalled by. It does, however, present two very different versions of the word. Having confidence in something, including another being, is easily understood and accomplished. Generally, if something is consistent or proves itself in some way, it leads others to have confidence in it.

Having confidence in something, however, is much weaker than having faith in something. It requires belief, which assumes some degree of unknown regarding the object or person. In order to have faith in something, there has to be some degree of doubt, otherwise it isn’t faith. Let me pause for a moment to allow the person who convinced me this was true to realize they did.

So there are two versions of trust. The first, having confidence in something, can be found commonly. Ants, with no real measure of intelligence, work as a colony. They have complete and total confidence in the other ants to do their jobs and keep the colony alive. Wolves, which posses a high level of intelligence, have total confidence, or trust, in their pack leader.

For humans, however, the first definition does not justify the way we use the term. When you fully trust someone, you give them a blank check to make decisions that can deeply impact your immediate existence. In addition, you willingly believe everything that is told to you by that person without questioning sources or motive. From a survival standpoint, it seems irrational. Yet it is considered a necessity for intimate relationships (not just love, although this is a key component of any relationship involving love). When someone trusts another, and the word is used in that manner, they do not simply have confidence in them; they feel safe giving their very lives to them. You cannot give anything greater.

So where did it come from? Why is trust so much deeper for humans than it appears to be for our ecological companions?

It could be, as a vast majority of human behavior is, a self-fulfilling aspect of our existence. If we are able to trust another, and that trust is true, than we are able to reduce the number of decisions we need to deliberate carefully. Instead, we can allow the trusted other to deliberate half of those decisions, and we deliberate the other half. This leads to an overall better life, as each decision was thought out for longer and therefore has more beneficial consequences. This seems to make sense.

That is, assuming the other person didn’t exist before you trusted them. Since this is unreasonable, we have to assume that that person also has a number of decisions to make. Now, if you truly trust them, and they truly trust you, then they will also confer half of their decisions onto you. Now you have the same number of decisions. That was pointless.

Perhaps trust is a side-effect of our society, an evolution. Society is brutal, unforgiving, and stressful. Walking in this society alone is painful and absurdly difficult. To cope with their own monstrosity, humans developed a method in which to link themselves with one or more individuals to form a pack. This pack then exists together; delegating tasks and decisions as it best benefits the group.

Or maybe trust is just a delusion. We yearn to trust others so that we can believe that we don’t live in a world where self-survival is the only thing that matters. It would explain our stories of love and sacrifice. It would explain our desperate attempts at relationships and our disgust at failed marriages.

Going further, what if trust is malicious? We seek to take the burden of the world off ourselves and dump it onto another so that we can escape our reality, knowing that person will be unable to handle both lives. Yet, when someone trusts us to make their decisions, we insist on input from them. We refuse to take the matter into our own hands for fear that it will lead to further burden from that person.

Despite its complexity, I trust someone will have an answer someday. See what I did there?

Hit the Road, Jack

Deer Tick – Baltimore Blues No. 1

Jack of all trades, master of none. It’s a commonly understood phrase that’s used uncommonly.

They exist, but it’s incredible difficult to spot one. Jacks are individuals that manage to have raw talent at just about everything they put their minds to but rarely, if ever, develop this talent. They tend to lack a passion for anything in particular. Not to say that they aren’t looking. Instead, many simply have been unable to find something in which they are interested in enough to drop their meandering and settle.

They flow from experience to experience like the kids in that awesome Capri Sun commercial:

Jacks in Action

So why is the phrase so uncommon? Likely, after thinking about it, you probably know or have met an individual who fits this description. If not, think harder. They’re around, and there are quite a few of them. So why don’t we regularly acknowledge them?

At first thought, this would seem to come from jealousy. In reality, though, they legitimately remain unnoticed as a Jack through most, if not all, of their existence. Consider this: if someone is fairly good at whatever they try but they rarely pursue anything in depth, won’t there always be someone else around who has pursued whatever that is passionately? Won’t that person overshadow the Jack, since they are a master at that thing?

You can find a master of essentially anything. Whether it’s a sport, art, or profession, there are individuals who are passionate about it. These individuals are masters of their craft, devoting most of their energy and time to that specific thing. These people shine brightly in their chosen world, and this is revered by our culture. Devoting yourself to something, anything, is considered a point of pride for us. Consequently, those who do not devote themselves to anything in particular are considered to be still looking for what it is that they will devote themselves to.

The idea of a Jack is not just ignored, it’s neglected completely. In fact, declaring yourself a Jack would be considered narcissistic by the vast majority of people, as the immediate reaction to someone claiming they are good at something is to assume they are passionate about it. Claiming to be a Jack would be to claim you are passionate about everything, which is entirely unreasonable. To make it more interesting, Jacks have the same concept of what it means to be good at something, since they are part of our society. This means that the Jacks themselves are unaware of their own identity, smothering the possibility of them identifying themselves as such.

This leads to a self-defining issue amongst the Jacks. Instead of a sub-culture you get stray wanderers seeking something they can really devote themselves to, a “hidden talent”. Many never will believe they never find it, while the lucky few will realize they’ve been a master all along. A master of adaptability.

Cat Ladies

Gnarls Barkley – Gone Daddy Gone

Cat Ladies are the most fascinating type of person in modern culture.

Everyone has met one of them or has heard of them. These are the people, not necessarily ladies but for generalizing purposes I will continue to use the term, that have decided that they would rather spend their days with a plethora of cats in their home than wandering around aimlessly through metal and wood like the rest of us. They tend to be downright crazy, although they have a multitude of personalities, and many of them have more than one. They also seem to have a heavy reliance on tea.

In the same way that not all rectangles are squares, not all cat owners are cat ladies. A cat lady is a very specific kind of cat owner. To them, the cat is not a pet. Instead, the cat (or cats most of the time) is a manifestation of their dissolution with their place in society or with society as a whole. Allow me to present my theory:

A cat lady begins their conscious life as an individual just as anyone else. Cat ladies are not born cat ladies. Instead, they must develop into a cat lady. There are two ways of doing so. The first, called the “Catalyst to Cat Method”, involves a disastrous event such as a tragic love affair or perhaps the death of someone close. This method is very traumatizing and usually causes the individual to evolve into a cat lady at an alarming rate as they attempt to replace the loss with a cat. The second, called the “Metamorphosis Method”, involves either a series of small events or stems from the individuals’ inability to locate a place for themselves in society. Eventually, as they lose faith in mankind’s ability to generate happiness for them, they begin to replace society itself with cats. In this way, they create a living society that they can shape however they see fit, and it usually involves many, many cats.

Cats are ideal for this type of person as they are, for one, living. In addition, they are independent creatures that will also interact with others. You can see them thinking, judging, and analyzing. This allows the cat lady to feel a sense of being one of many, while at the same time inventing what the cat is thinking, as the cat cannot express itself in our language. Since they cannot express their anger or dissatisfaction short of attacking a creature much larger than it (which is not a common response), the cat lady can (sometimes correctly) deduce anything they want about the cat or cats.

The issue at hand is that once an individual becomes a cat lady, through either of the methods above, they enter into a cycle. They were lonely and unable, for one reason or another, to find satisfaction with society. They then replace society with cats. Now that they are the ruler of their own kingdom, they become accustomed to this status and, when they do venture outside, are appalled that they do not hold the same status. They then yearn to return to their own society and improve upon the flaws they saw in our society. Rinse and repeat.

What do the cats think of this? Are they content being ruled by a turncoat of humanity? If I could venture a guess, they probably think of their predicament in much different terms.

Reality, In All It's Glory

Pink Floyd – Welcome to the Machine

It’s boring, and it’s our fault.

Reality is the most uninteresting aspect of our existence. We continuously do everything we can escape it. Movies, books, games, drugs, vacations: all ways of removing ourselves from our normal, boring reality. Would we being trying to escape, mentally or physically, if it wasn’t boring?

The problem is that it’s inexcusably repetitive. Our experiences from day to day look unmistakably similar to the experiences we’ve already had. Sometimes the shape, color or weather changes, but at its core it’s the same experience. To make matters worse, you can actually observe others going through the same day to day monotony, adding to the growing intolerance of repetition.

So our response is to escape. But how? I know, let’s make a movie about a guy that runs around dressed up like a bat, hanging from ceilings and beating up that crazy clown from our childhoods that scarred us. Woah! Now that’s fun. Notwithstanding that incredibly clever name given to him, what’s so appealing about this guy? He never does the same thing the next day. He never does the same thing the next hour.

The effects are miraculous. You become entertained watching this individual, totally forgetting, even if just for a moment, that the trash needs to be emptied and you need to be at work the next day. You’ve been removed from your normal, dumb routine and put into the shoes of another who never has to worry about trash or toilet paper, because he is just that cool.

It doesn’t have to be supernatural to have this effect either. Even better is the entertainment that looks like normal life. Romance movies are a great example. Guy and girl meet in an interesting way in a totally normal place and go on to have an incredibly interesting tale of not doing the same thing over and over for many years.

Then it ends. At first, the side effects of entertainment are minimal. You talk about it the next day with others who have seen it, changing the conversation for the day. Then more time passes, and more and more entertainment comes out. Suddenly, the long term effect kicks in: people actually begin to believe that these things are reality. That life is like this for some people, that there are those out there who don’t have to perform the same tasks on a routine schedule.

Now that the concept of reality has been created in the image of your favorite director, you can’t be interested in reality. Reality is plain and routine. Nothing ever happens the way it does in the movies, so you go out and look for where it does happen like the movies. Except it doesn’t. Then you get upset. You think others are out there having exciting lives and you’re not.

Now you’re bored and unhappy because you’ve witnessed excitement, and it’s not part of your life. You need something to do to keep you occupied until you can find that excitement. So you watch a movie.

On Being Lazy

Norman Greenbaum – Spirit in the Sky

Everyone’s lazy. In fact, the idea of laziness boarders on absurd.

The dictionary definition of lazy is “moving slowly and gently”. If we go by this strict definition, then I can understand some cocaine fiends or overachievers claiming they aren’t lazy. Of course, the exclusive use of the dictionary severely inhibits our ability to understand modern spoken English.

“Hey that’s cool” becomes, “Hey that is neither warm nor very cold”. Why thank you, it was my intention to make this article fit those exact descriptors of temperature.

Allow me to demonstrate:












This cat is not moving slowly, nor is it moving gently. In fact, this cat is not moving. This cat is being lazy. But why is this cat being lazy? The only time this cat would be being lazy would be when he isn’t doing something someone else wants him to do. If no one wanted him to do anything, he wouldn’t be being lazy. He would be relaxing.

So who are these people that want us to do something else? It could be a marital partner, a roommate, parents, friends, or even society. Society, through its own evolution that has managed to completely ignore everything that its inhabitants have asked of it, has developed its own idea of what the world should be doing. Specific to the topic at hand, you should be “contributing”.

Could you be a little more vague please? Contribute to what? The economy? The standard of living? The planet? Let me, in my 70something years of existing, personally do something to directly affect a planet that has existed for billions of years. A planet that regularly wipes out all life on it because it gets bored and decides to roll around in an ice cube for a few centuries. Don’t worry though, by doing something utterly mundane and with no direct benefit to my life I can contribute to the planet. That cigarette butt was the end of the world, I promise.

Being lazy means doing what you want, when you want, no matter the direct or indirect pressure to be doing something else someone else wants you to do. Odd, when it’s put like that doesn’t that sound like being “free”? Isn’t being “free” something that is revered throughout the world? Not being lazy though. Being lazy is bad for everyone.

So how is everyone lazy? Certainly everyone isn’t free.

True. There are those who are openly lazy. The Zen masters of laziness. They hitch rides, bum smokes, borrow money, eat your food, live on your couch and overall live a happy, carefree life doing whatever they feel like doing. They also tend to live a lot longer.

On the other hand, there are also those who genuinely enjoy working. They enjoy getting up for work in the morning, performing their routine, and crunching numbers or whatever it is that they do. No one is telling them to do it, right?

Unless you’re the first of the android invasion, no one is ready to live an entire life based on a schedule someone else makes for them. They work day in and day out so that, one day, they can finally sit back and let their money, family and life take care of themselves. They reap what they’ve sown. They get to be lazy.

Everyone strives for that day they can finally just be lazy. For some people, that day is the first day of self-consciousness. For others, that day starts with a party hat and a big cake that says “Happy Retirement”. In the end, though, we’re all striving for the same ultimate, tangible, and obvious reward of being free from care and worry. Of being lazy.