Questioning the Seemingly Obvious (with anecdotes from my dating life)
All progressive social change comes about, first, through questioning the assumptions that maintain the status quo. A society is, in essence, just a system of assumptions about the way the world works, the consequence of which is the set of social structures that define that society. Where one group is seen to be lower status than another, it is because that society maintains a set of assumptions that results in the perceived legitimacy of the status difference between the two groups. In order to dismantle the status differences, it is therefore necessary, first, to question the assumptions that allow the status difference to exist, and then to propose and enact more humane alternatives. This process is one that is typically framed as one of ‘consciousness raising’; that is, of becoming aware (and helping others to become aware) of the beliefs about one’s relations with others that one takes for granted. Often the process is not an easy one, as it requires us to think outside ourselves, question things that seem obvious, and consider the very nature of the world and ourselves as human beings. It is worth going to the effort, however, as it is only through this process that the structures that allowed slavery, the subjugation of women, the inhumane conditions of the poor and working class, and every other historical social ill, were changed, and continue to be changed.
In previous posts, I have attempted to challenge some of the assumptions that govern our world. I have tried to argue for the possibility of bringing about a more free society, where status differences are kept to a minimum, and power is diffuse rather than concentrated. When proposing such things, my arguments are often met with such assertions as: “a society can’t function without a leader”; “status differences just reflect the reality of differences in the work that people do”; “the only way to get necessary work done is through some form of coercion, or monetary incentive”; “true democracy can never work, because some people will never be capable of understanding complex problems and will never make rational decisions” etc. All of these are assumptions that, I believe, can be questioned, and indeed, SHOULD be questioned, if we want to make the world a better place for more people. Rather than question these assumptions directly here, though, I thought I would take a more lighthearted approach, and simply demonstrate, through some anecdotes about my dating experiences, how much we take for granted in our interactions with others. From this, I hope that any readers will take home the key message that what seems obvious is not necessarily so, and that questioning our assumptions leads us to see the world in a whole new light (one that has the potential to be the basis for a better world).
In what follows, I will be describing thoughts I had when I was dating someone six years ago (when I used to engage in such youthful pursuits). So a bit of context: we met at a hen’s night, and then really hit it off at the wedding that followed. At the end of the wedding, I left without getting her phone number, but then I thought “bugger this, I’m going to go back and ask her for her number”, which I did and she gave it to me. I messaged her not long after, and we organised to go on our first date.
For our first date, we decided to go to a Thai restaurant. As I got ready to meet her, I started to think more deeply about what we were doing. Here I was, trimming my beard in just the right way, because somehow the length and shape of this vestige of primate fur would make me more appealing to her. I was also festooning my body with the fur of other mammals (as well as some other materials originally developed in a chemistry lab somewhere), coloured in various ways that I deemed “went well together”. I then put some slimy paste on my head, roughed up my hair, and thought “this particular configuration of hairs, partly messy but also with subtle structure like a Jackson Pollack, should give me success in bringing her closer to me”. I then splashed myself with some whale blubber extract infused with various fragrances originally evolved to attract insects, because I knew I could fool her that this was actually how I smelled.
For her part, at the same time, she was also smearing her body with various substances, and enacting a number of other odd rituals. She had decided, as our society at large has apparently decided, that darkening and lengthening one’s protective eyelid hairs would really get my heart racing (and, I guess, she probably wasn’t wrong). She had also decided that she should wear an undergarment made of some kind of mesh material, like a butterfly net, but with patterns embedded within it. Rather than covering her buttocks with the mesh, however, she chose a variety with a strip that sat between her buttocks, because apparently she didn’t want me to be able see that she was wearing any undergarments at all… which seemed odd, given the intricacy of the butterfly net at the front. She then made herself substantially taller, by covering her feet with dark, moulded cow-hide, out of which protruded, from the underside of each heel, a mini stilt. She proved herself quite proficient at moving about on the mini stilts, which presumably was part of her attempt to impress me, like a form of amateur acrobatics… When I saw this later in the night, I made sure she knew I was suitably captivated. She also rubbed a heated cylinder along the length of her hair in order to ensure that it would take on a more acceptable linear form… perhaps because geometrically straight lines are easier on the eye than unpredictable, chaotic semi-circles, particularly when it comes to lengths of dead skin cells dangling from our scalps.
At the allocated time, we met at the restaurant, and ordered food and drinks. We then regaled each other with tales of our own lives, discussing what we had been like in our less developed, juvenile forms. We also told each other various anecdotes designed, explicitly or implicitly, to elicit a sort of upward tightening at the corner of the lips, and a rhythmic exhalation of air, sometimes voiced repetitively and in rapid succession with the phoneme “ha!”. This was sometimes accompanied by the phrase “that’s pretty funny” or a variant thereof… because forcing someone into these involuntary actions is apparently attractive.
As we ate, I couldn’t help thinking how it was odd that dates were almost always focussed around food. After all, eating is the first part of the digestive process, where you place nutrients into the upper part of your oesophagus, for it to eventually be absorbed by the body, and the waste expelled. It seemed odd to me that we would be so comfortable sharing this aspect of our bodily systems so early in our courtship, when the only conclusion one could draw from witnessing it is that later the person opposite me was going to do a poo, and our dinner, so romantically shared, would be flushed away with so many others… why, I thought, are we so happy to show others this end of the process, but not the other end, when they are inextricably linked?
As the first date wound down, we walked around the city together. I started to feel pressure to show her that I was interested by clasping the digits of my front paws around hers, obviously. I also started to think “maybe I should touch the outer membranes of my mouth against the outer membranes of her mouth” to really show her that I was serious… I also hesitated, though, because I knew that if during the membrane touching I inserted my taste organ too far down her oesophageal opening, she may think I was coming on a bit too strong… because apparently you can’t have someone taste the dinner you just shared when it’s already inside you (which incidentally was another reminder, for me, of the poo she would later be doing)… I went in for the kiss, but tried not to go for too much tongue, and then I bid her farewell for the evening.
About a week later, for our second date, she invited me to a friend’s birthday party. She picked me up and we went to the party together. As I got into the car, I again felt pressure to share with her that I was interested, so I placed my hand on her thigh as she drove, and she caressed it to ensure that I knew that I didn’t have to remove it, and to ensure that I knew that she hadn’t misinterpreted it as an attempt to ascertain the particular variety of material she chose to wear on this occasion. We arrived at the party, and she introduced me to her friends. She looked happy to be able to parade me around to her nearest and dearest, as if to say “I brought this, do you think it goes well with my life?”
As the festivities got under way, I stood in the corner holding her hand, and watched everyone enjoying themselves. Someone brought out a cake, and proceeded to stick wax cylinders into the frosting, which were then set ablaze. We all huddled around and ritually chanted, indicating our happiness that the Earth had made exactly 25 revolutions around the Sun since the birthday girl exited her mother’s uterus. The birthday girl then blew out the fire atop her cake, and we all cheered that the blaze had been extinguished, after which we proceeded to slap our palms together in apparent triumph. After this, the birthday girl began to rip colourful sheets of flattened tree pulp from a number of boxes which she had been given by all those in attendance. The colourful sheets were clearly attempts to conceal the contents of the boxes… because lying by omission is an important part of showing someone you’re happy that they have survived an extra year.
On our third date, we decided to go to the botanic gardens. We again organised to begin the process of digesting our food together, and decided it would be nice to meet not long before the darkness of night descended upon us. We watched as the sun slipped behind the horizon, and noted the many colours produced by the diffraction of light through the atmosphere… this was the essence of romance, I thought, because perceiving many wavelengths of light simultaneously at the point at which the Sun disappears from sight… does… something… in our brains. We kissed and lay down, and she placed her head in the nook created by the joining of my arm to my chest. We lay in this position – her listening to all of my cardiac chambers contracting with increasing speed and me stroking her impeccably geometrically linear hair – for an hour or more. She began to feel cold, so I removed my jacket and placed it around her shoulders, as a sign that I valued her so much that I deemed her worthy of the energy clinging to the inside of the jacket, that I had earlier produced for myself. I held her tight, further emphasizing that I understood the laws of thermodynamics and therefore cared about the entropy she had just been experiencing. We both started to feel a sense of oneness at this moment – as the transfer of energy from one entity to another would predictably engender – and we decided to walk together, arm in arm, into our future… which lasted a few months, at which point we broke up.
Through these anecdotes, silly though they are, I hope to have shown that our day-to-day interactions are riddled with assumptions that, when questioned, may lead us to see the world in a whole different light. Some things we do seem obvious, and the rituals that form part of our culture seem objectively important and meaningful, but with a bit of a questioning that apparent objectivity and obviousness can come crashing down. Sometimes the result is relatively inconsequential (for example, when everyone who reads this article decides that they should never go on a date with me), but at other times, the results can change the world. Always question, always look for new ways to see the world, and we can make real progress towards a better future.