If you could only read my mind

Slick’s room, Tuesday the 27th October, 14:00

Hey, it’s me again- plain to see again. I’m just full of creativity lately, it would seem. Maybe the drama of a new term in Durham is inspiring me…

So, today I’d like to talk to you about a topic which is very close to my heart. I’ve touched upon it in a few previous blogs, but not until now have I attempted to meet it head on. Yes, I am talking about the two words which express one concept which will make my male readers curse loudly in frustration- the dreaded “friend zone”. For those of you who don’t know the friend zone- i.e, females with poor self-awareness and people who live in caves, I suppose- it is the almost universal female habit of de-sexing their close male friends, regardless of otherwise relevant factors such as physical attractiveness or compatibility, in an attempt to make them “safe” to hang out with. No mere words can express the frustration this one silly psychological habit causes boys and men the world over, and yet, brave hero and spokesman for the everyman that I am, I will attempt it.

Firstly, and I address my female audience here, it is necessary to understand something crucial about the male psyche. We do not have a friend zone. If a girl is available, attractive, and compatible with us, there is no reason why we should/would not persue her, even if they are our best friends in the whole world- no reason, that is, except for the knowledge of certain defeat and humiliation at the hands of the friend zone. Think about it for a moment: the typical justification for not dating a friend is fear that it will “ruin the friendship”- and this, as far as it goes, is admirable enough. On full reflection, however, this is easily exposed as both naive and fruitless: firstly, consider the fact that, even if you have desexed your male friends, they have not done the same to you. Do you feel any different towards them? Hopefully, the answer is no. Guys understand instinctively that it is entirely possible to think of someone as both a friend and a potential romantic interest- we live with it every day. The existence of close guy/girl friendships is proof that it is possible to be close friends with someone who you would, should the opportunity arise, be more than friends with. Also, have you ever considered the possibility that advancing the friendship in a romantic way will ultimately bring you closer as friends? I know that has certainly been true of some of my relationships, and I consider it a valuable experience. The flip side of this coin is, of course, that maybe it will harm the friendship if one party likes the other party, but is dismissed- not because he is unattractive or unsuitable in any real sense, which, while harsh, would be fair enough, but simply because he is “a friend” and you “don’t think of him in that way”. The cliche of the guy best friend falling in love with the girl, helping her through her guy troubles and secretly hoping all along that things will change, is a staple of our collective imagination/Hollywood- but in real life, there is only so much of that a man can take before he needs to retire from his role as best friend for fear that his own testicles will throttle him in his sleep.

Okay, so I got kind of involved there. Allow me to take a deep breath and try to play devil’s advocate for a moment. Yes, it is true that, sometimes, if you date a friend and then break up, the friendship is ruined. But then it is also true that sometimes your best friend moves town and the friendship is ruined. Sometimes it is true that your best friend falls in love with someone who you can’t bring yourself to like, and the friendship is ruined. Sometimes it is true that you date your best friend and it is the most wonderful feeling in the world. Sometimes it is true that you date your best friend, it goes wrong, things are painful and awkward for a while, but after enough time the breach heals and the friendship is, if anything, stronger. Sometimes you don’t even need to “date” the friend in any official way: sometimes just the one night (or several, isolated nights) of more-than-platonicness, to put it delicately, with someone who was once “just” a friend, is enough to create a really meaningful bond which doesn’t interfere with, but magnifies the friendship. My point is that we should not allow ourselves to be ruled by fear: if they are really, truly your friend, then they will understand that a relationship might go wrong, and they will continue be your friend afterwards. Wow, I really sucked at playing devil’s advocate and defending the friend zone. Somehow i’m not surprised.

Let’s be fair; maybe it’s not something that can really be helped: perhaps the friend zone is an integral part of the female psyche’s defenses. But even if this is the case, history has proved that it is not undefeatable; there are people who fall in love- real, sexual, romantic, wonderful love- with people they once considered friends. And you might say “yes Slick, but these are special exceptions”- to which I would reply “do they have to be?” Women of the world, I beseech you to stop allowing fear to mentally castrate all of your close male friends- nothing ventured, nothing gained after all. Is not the perfect romantic partner someone who is also a best friend? Sure, it is normally the case that the romance comes first, and the friendship grows from it, but there is absolutely nothing in the world to say that this should always be the case.

Well, now that I have gotten that little rant out of my system, I will take a moment to address my male readers once more: fear not, brothers, for the friend zone, almighty a foe though he is, is not invincible. Gaze in wonder at Slick’s guide to kicking the friend zone good and hard in the crotch.

1) Alcohol is your friend. I’ve known girls to swear blind that someone was “just a friend”, only to lock lips with them 10 units or so later. And the real kicker is that at least some of these occasions, the people in question are now a full-fledged couple, and still going strong. It gives me hope.

2) Gentle flirting is your friend. Just throw out a few extra compliments, a few gently suggestive remarks. The goal here is to unsettle their comforting but ultimately unhelpful view of you as a sort of living ken doll. Remind them that you are a man, with a man’s needs and thoughts.

3) Occasionally, jealousy can be your friend. Sometimes all it takes is for you to get with someone else for the girl to realise that maybe you could be more than a friend- although the obvious question here is, if you have a jealousy inducing girl, why do you need the other girl? That is a question I leave you to answer for yourself.

4) If you can play it just right, elusiveness can be your friend. Just be slightly less available- don’t see them so often. Eventually, they will miss you, and it will have the effect of unsettling the whole “but he’s my friend” deal. Personally I am terrible at this strategy- I lack the patience and the necessary feigned coldness. But I have seen it work a treat.

And on a final, more personal note, if you are a close female friend of mine, reading this and starting to panic,  don’t worry, this blog is not a secret and no-so-subtle confession of my love for you, it is simply an outcry of general frustration on the part of men in all times and places. In the immortal words of Captain Jack Sparrow, “it would never have worked between us anyway, love”

Because I value our friendship too much,

Slick

 

 

Cos you’re the joke of neighbourhood, should you care if you’re feeling good.

Poi’s room, Sunday the 25th October, 18:37

Good even, gentlefolk. Slick again- bet you didn’t expect to hear from me so soon huh?

So, It seems it’s a good week for inspiration: I have a new blog topic already, wonder of wonders. Today, I’d  like to talk to you about the fact that I like everything. Well, lets clarify a little: when it comes to films, t.v, music, venues etc, I seem to enjoy things which everyone else thinks are actively terrible; I like cheap vodka, terrible cheesy nightclubs, terrible horror movies starring Jenna Jameson (and no, they are not porn movies. Zombie Strippers is a sorely underrated film). I like old school 90’s pop which makes all of my mates cringe. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve left a movie theatre thinking to myself “that was awesome” while everyone else starts complaining about it. I’m not embarrassed about this fact- in fact, I personally consider it a good thing: it makes me more readily able to have fun on any given occasion. In addition, having very low… erm, aesthetic standards, I suppose (and no, not when it comes to women. Or at least I hope not)… doesn’t make me incapable of enjoying the finer things in life, or the things that everyone universally agrees are awesome. Just because I like Scissor Sisters doesn’t mean I don’t like Metallica, to give a potentially controversial example.

So, to take the blog out of myself a little, I’m curious: what is it that makes a film, book, piece of music, etc “good” or “bad? Now, I know that the answer generally provided is that there is no real objective “good” or “bad”, but this is only a half-truth at best: some films are universally reviled, others universally loved (obviously I’m stretching the definition of “universal” a little here, but you can at least follow my point). Is it simply a case of tapping in to societies collective subconsciousness? Are there some sort of Platonic aesthetic ideals to aim for in a piece of music/film etc? And if either of these things are the case, how can we explain differences of aesthetic opinion? How can we explain those like me, who seem to have a lower “standard” than the norm? Or am I just an aberration with no need for explanation? That sounds likely.

I have, however, discovered somewhat of a flaw in my own thinking. While it is true that I will read/watch/listen to pretty much anything that us available, I am more of a… traditionalist when it comes to fine art- I’m not a big modern art fan, and I think that, for example, Deschampes fountain is a travesty of a piece, especially compared with something more classically famous, like Monet’s landscapes. It appears that while I have “low” standards in some areas, I’m quite picky in others. The logical conclusion then, is to take the discussion back to a personal level: people have different tastes in different areas of aesthetics.

But the curious thing is this: if I can make the statement “I have low standards in terms of film, but high standards in women”, and you, my readers, can understand me, then we seem to be trapped in a bizarre sort of hybrid position, which accepts both the existence of universalisable “standards” and, at the same time, acknowledges the prevalence of personal difference, and for me at least the union of these two things is somewhat troubling.

One way of viewing it could be to say that there do exist universal standards: the perfect woman, book, piece of art, etc, but it is up to the individual how much stock we set in these ideals. This would also accord with the fact that I can (and just have) self-described as a man with poor taste (or perhaps “indiscriminate taste” is more accurate) in films: I am acknowledging the criteria that exist, I am simply declaring that they are unimportant to my personal enjoyment.

Actually, I’m pretty happy with this solution: I think I may have just done the entire philosophical enterprise of aesthetics. Now I just need ethics, epistemology and ethics and I can pack up and go home.

Yours enlightenedly,

Slick

P.S if anyone in Durham who reads this blog is interested, I will be playing the film “Evil Breed: the Legend of Sam Hainn” starring everyone’s favourite adult movie star, Jenna Jameson (and no, it’s not a porno) sometime soon. Probably around halloween. It promises to be a truly awful/awesome movie.

Find yourself a girl, and settle down

Wednesday 21st October, Slick’s room, 16:55

Rumours of my demise have been greatly exaggerated!

By which I mean, I’m sorry I have not blogged for ages. I really do wish I could write with more consistency, but when the mood doesn’t strike me, it doesn’t strike me. I’d promise to update more regularly, but you all know I would fail, so I will promise simply, once again, to try my hardest. Also, I seem to have misplaced the notebook I was using to help inspire me… no matter, I’m sure it will turn up.

My personal mild guilt and being a terrible blogger aside, let us consider the question at hand. The blog I have in mind today stems directly from a conversation I had with Rebel lately. Rebel is a biologist, and he shared an interesting puzzle with me. All animals, he tells me, have specific breeding patterns. Some, like lobsters, some types of penguins, some types of seal, some types of bird, mate for life. They are faithful to their partner, and produce lots of offspring over a lifetime. This is a good, stable breeding strategy in a population which has roughly equal numbers of males and females. Some animals have an alpha male with a harem of women (lions, for example, and some species of deer/antelope). This is also a good strategy: the alpha male exemplifies the most successful genes, and these genes are passed on to the next generation. Genetic diversity comes from the fact that there are multiple females involved, and also the occasional crafty “satellite male” who gets his leg over while the alpha male isn’t looking, thus sneaking his genes into the gene pool. Some animals have many indiscriminate partners, which also ensures a good deal of diversity.  There are many different strategies, but the main point is this: seemingly all animals have one cohesive mating strategy, and they stick to it.

Now here’s the relevant question: what is the human mating strategy? We appear to contain elements of all of them. Many people mate “for life”; settle down, get married, have kids, have grandkids etc. But we are all aware that the system isn’t that simple: many of those people cheat on each other. Many people choose one “mate for life”, and then subsequently change their minds and upgrade to a new “mate for life”. Many people choose to mate indiscriminately. Some people (rock stars, for example) act as “alpha males”, holding exclusive access to a “harem” of groupies. Once again, it seems that we humans, with our big brains and our big libido’s, are the exception to the rule.

Now, Hollywood, and society in general, will tell us that the way to “win” the game of life is to fall in love with that one special person, get married and settle down- so that would lead me to the suggestion that “mate for life” is really our thing. But, it must be acknowledged, hollywood, and society in general, are full of crap. Something like a third of marriages end in divorce (although, admittedly, that means that most of them do “succeed”); and in many of those marriages which do stay together, it must be acknowledged, statistically speaking, that someone has probably had an affair. Affairs outside marriage are so endemic in human history and imagination that they seem to be hardwired into our society, into the very notion of marriage itself (after all, the “forsaking all others” vow in the marriage service is aimed specifically at combating this insidious threat to good social order). Finally, it must also be acknowledged that the search for “the one” is a search fraught with perils, missteps, drunken one night stands, and all those people who you thought were “the one” but who, it turns out, were not. All of this leads me to the conclusion that, if humans are meant to mate for life, we really, really suck at it. Personally I’m inclined to blame our intellects: while a mate-for-life animal, seeing an available alternate partner, would simply not think to attempt anything, because they “know”/genetically intuit that it is more beneficial in the long run to stay with one partner, a human will think “hmm, I wonder if/how I can mate with this person with any negative consequences”. Our minds and our urges team up in a deadly tag team combo against our better judgements.

Of course, it is also possible to view the puzzle form another angle. Perhaps it is the case that humans are “meant” to have multiple, indiscriminate partners, and we have simply been lulled into this idyllic “partner for life” idea by the inscrutable machinations of society. Part of me is tempted to blame religion, but let’s not open that can of worms today. This would explain the human lust for cheating and philandering, and the position held by some that the whole “marriage+kids=happiness” deal is off anyway, and that eternal bachelorhood (or maybe celibacy) is an option to be equally considered. Of course, this position would have to explain those anomalous people who do stay together for life, and i’m not sure it can- other than dismissing them as anomalies, or explaining them via other socio-economic/religious factors.

As should be apparent, both solutions to this enigma I have proposed are incapable of explaining all of the facets: if we should mate for life, why don’t we stick with our partners? If we should mate with lots of people, why do some stick with one person? I think then, that the only response which can be offered is to say that humans are, unsurprisingly, unique in this regard. We are confused about what we want, and our massive intellects elevate us beyond the point where instinct would choose for us. We are at the mercy of the twin forces of nature and nurture. And personally, I quite like it like that- I don’t want to be told that there is one girl out there for me, who I should stick with come hell or high water- but nor would I like to be told that there is definitely not such a person, and that I will be forever adrift in a sea of promiscuity, or, at best, serial monogamy.

Does anyone else think the phrase “sea of promiscuity” conjures up rather unsavoury imagery?

You can thank me some other time.

Slick

FYI

Slick here,

Just FYI, I’ve enabled rating on my blogs, and I’d appreciate if you guys could indicate your favourites, and, you know, your unfavourites- I’m going to try and expand my blogging horizons, maybe set up some polls and things, just generally make it a little more exciting. Watch this space.

Peace

You haven’t a clue

Slick’s room in Trevelyan college (the best place in the world to be right now), Tuesday the 7th of October, 14:52

Salutations, friends! Slick here, coming at ya like Cleopatra. The one hit wonder 90’s girl pop band, not the queen of Egypt.

So, without further verbal jousting, I’ll get right down to the blogging. Just recently, I have… had cause to consider the nature of yet another of the most primordial and ubiquitous of human passions: vengeance. Now, whatever action I do or do not take on a personal basis, I thought it would be interesting to share with you some of my more… esoteric reflections on the subject.

The first and most important question: is vengeance a good thing? Or, to put it more clearly, if someone harms you, is it morally correct that they should suffer some equal harm in retaliation? I would suggest, contrary to what modern Judeo-Christianity might teach, that the answer is “yes”. The argument for forgiveness over vengeance is typically this: if someone wrongs me, and I retaliate, then they will retaliate in turn and the cycle will be fixed, a downward spiral of violence and recrimination without end. If, however, someone wrongs me, and I “turn the other cheek”, the cycle of violence is aborted through forgiveness. However, the obvious and glaring flaw in this system is that, in refusing to retaliate, I simply invite my tormentor to continue their torment, and instill in them a sense that, because their actions are unpunished, they were “correct” actions, and not only do I find this personally unacceptable, it is no way to run a society: if retributive and righteous vengeance is not unleashed on the victimisers within a society, then order will collapse and a tyranny will be established.

I suppose the real issue is how closely the concept of “vengeance” ties in with the concept of “justice”. If someone steals form me, and they are arrested, does that count as revenge? I would argue that “officially sanctioned vengeance” is precisely the nature of justice, adding only the caveat that, obviously, the vengeance/punishment should be, in a relevant sense, “equivalent” to the initial crime- if someone steals from me, and then the government chops their hands off, for example, then “vengeance” might have been served, but justice has not been. Also, there is the issue of whether or not I actually get my stuff back- I’d consider a return of what has been taken to be justice/vengeance, or at least a particular form thereof.

Another relevant consideration is that of “motive”- if someone steals from me, and I personally see to it that they are arrested and made to pay for their crimes, because I want to witness their suffering, am I acting unjustly, because it is emotional vengeance that drives me, rather than a more objective love of justice? I’d argue that, in this case, personal motive can be aligned with objective justice- I am doing the right thing both because I want to and because I feel like I morally should. In fact, the question of whether we can have overlapping, supporting or even conflicting motives for the actions we take is an extremely tricky one, and one I won’t really attempt to tackle here- it really rather deserves a blog of its own some day.

Another relevant factor in deciding whether vengeance can be considered a good thing is that of its ultimate ability to satisfy. I would argue that, if someone wrongs me, and I revenge myself upon them and feel good about it-  good enough to consider the matter closed, then I have likely enacted a positive and righteous vengeance. However, it is famously often the case that a well-executed vengeance just leaves one feeling hollow rather than whole. Perhaps the nature or extent of the vengeance must be precisely tailored in order to be satisfying? But this doesn’t seem to be the case either: if, for example, someone harms a good friend of mine, I find that the most initially and viscerally satisfying form of revenge is physical: i.e, giving the hypothetical offending party a swift, hard knee to the testicles. Or three. However, upon more cool headed intropsection, I imagine I would derive more satisfaction from a more elaborate and subtle revenge- something involving social ruination or professional humiliation. I suppose it’s probably a personal thing- different forms of vengeance work better or worse for different people. There are “kick the shit of him” types of people, and there are “send photoshopped pictures of him sexually assaulting a horse to all of his friends” people. Probably there are some people who are both.

A major problem with vengeance, is its darkly seductive nature. The mere act of writing this blog, and a an analysis of the rather dark tone I have taken, so at odds with my usual light-hearted, enlightened libertarianism, has taught me something about its nature: vengeance, like love, or sex, or death, fascinates the human mind, enslaves the imagination. It makes us feel alive in a way which few things that are legal or advisable can. A potentially even greater problem with vengeance (and love, and sex, etc… isn’t it strange how so many fundamental aspects of human nature have so many wierd parallels?), is that, while it has tremendous potential for righteousness and good, it has equally powerful potential for abuse and evil. If, for example, someone wrongs me, and in retaliation I make it my life’s work to ruin them utterly in every way I can, then I have allowed vengeance to consume me, and moved beyond justice (although again, justice can famously be mistreated by a few corrupt judges or jurors- nothing, it seems, is really immune from corruption). I think that we humans have a tendency to become over invested in our own states of mind to the point of obsession: otherwise insignificant things have a remarkable power to consume us. Fortunately, as if to compensate for this aspect of our natures, we also have blessedly short attention spans- the vengeance that consumes me today could be forgotten tommorrow- or perhaps thats just me? Sometimes the thought of what I (and indeed people like me, but, you know, more evil) could achieve if they could just focus sufficiently scares me a little.

And on that bombshell,

Slick