The World According To…

What would it be to inhabit the brain of a person who is your opposite? Say, an extremist who’s spent the last few years stockpiling weapons and canned goods for the Armageddon to come? Or who goes to Trump rallies driving across several states? Or marches with her own AR-15 for the rights she believes in? Would it be a revelation, seeing through her eyes, or more like a nightmare that won’t be done with?

Suppose a biblical scholar discovered the evil found in the Old Testament stories in fact resided inside his fellow creatures, and now he was living with that evil as well, how would that feel? Could sufficient empathy be mustered under the circumstance?

Or a worse horror, upon finding yourself inside someone’s mind, a person you are certain is the anthesis of your ethics, to then view yourself through their eyes in reverse–to realize things about your own personality that are rationally wrong or justifiably reprehensible? After recovering from such a thing, would you ever be able to look at yourself in a mirror again?

Take the peacenik confronted by a soldier of war who’s prime motivation is living in perpetual warrior state, or a vegetarian shoved inside the mind of a deer hunter, and suddenly comprehending the excitement of stalking another beast through the woodland. Not all differences are that primal, though some are, and we don’t seem to know how to grasp them.

How about the Dalai Lama living in Hitler’s mind? The thought makes me imagine lots of better outcomes.

And, of course, any of the preceding could easily reversed. We view our opposites–or even less than total opposites–just skewed slightly in ways we aren’t comfortable with–as aliens. Never trusting we could find commonality, and the narrower the perceived gulf sometimes it seems the less chance of reaching across that divide.

Saying it’s a vestige of our tribal past suggests a trait rooted in ancestry–but toward what possible advantage for the species? It’s understandable one wants to avoid differing with saber-tooth tigers, but what is it about the ones with kinky hair, or different skin pigmentation or badly pronounced English, like those truly peculiar folks with New Jersey accents?

I once had the seed of a sci-fi story about a scientific discovery that language differences are in fact the product of totally different evolutions happening simultaneously in separate parts of the globe, the outcome of which was that a far distant people actually were not our brethren, but an altogether different species. I never worked out the possible permutations. If true, it could explain a certain lack of understanding between the tribes.

After graduation when my classmate, Andrés and I drove a rental truck with all our earthly belongings from New Haven to Miami, he took me to his grandmother’s place in Coral Gables where she served mangoes for a snack. That was the first time I’d ever eaten one. Mangoes in South Carolina? He, on the other hand, relished them, explained by the fact Andrés was from a Cuban family, truly weird as it seemed to me.

And if my trusted dog could talk, I’d query her as to what on earth she is so fascinated about in all those leaf piles.

Would an average joe be overwhelmed by the mental processes of an Einstein say, or Proust writing in his death bed? Confused beyond comprehension? Or would seeing through the eyes of a genius beyond yourself create a gateway to a resulting revelation the first of your life?

Do we ever think about our opposite number, let alone worry about it, or question our beliefs by comparison? We as a species are very facile at spotting the differences, but not so interested in understanding why those might exist or how to take advantage of knowing them.

I keep watching my wolf-eyed beast when she says something important.

Signs of an Amateur Writer

I should foreground this last bit by introducing Zach Payne on Medium. He is a writer concerned with the art itself, hitting on thoughts worth reading more than not. He also writes sonnets but that’s a different story. Though coming on the following bit of writerly advice, I felt the need to react.

In Three Signs of an Amateur Writer, Zach says using sanserif fonts are a dead giveaway. I say hmmph!

Please, Zach!

Please don’t make me spend the rest of my days in Times New Roman! It would be hell for sure! Don’t have so many centuries more to donate to the cause.

Who exactly bought you off? Is there a serif lobby I don’t know about? Those medieval monks–get them back in their monastery! Getting paid by the serif, are you? Dear oh dear.

Decades, son!

I’ve spent decades staring at Times New Roman. Had to live with it way too long. Swear to the heavens, I’ve hated it! Once I got rid of my manual typewriter and that ugly Courier font only to be cursed with Time New Roman on a 286 machine? Ever since, I’ve been tortured by NMR as Zack refers to it.

See? You don’t even want to write it out–big, big clue!

Was there ever a Times Old Roman? Roman times two? Musta been drinking when the dude named it. Ms Google says it was invented for a friggin English newspaper – those such last-century paper curiosities.

Lemme think about it, calm it down a bit. NAW! No f’ing way! I won’t be PUT DOWN by the MAN.

Otherwise a good article by Payne as usual…

Photo by Jeroen den Otter on Unsplash

Having gone through the grind of architecture school, and after hours of appying press-on letters for multiple presentation boards, my next most-hated font is Helvetica Medium.  We all have our peeves as Zach freely admits.