Art of Persuasion

6

Paper 3 - Final Draft

Ian Pratt

WC: 2,194

as for me and my louse, we will serve the hoard

The summer before my junior year of high school, I came across a book titled "Understanding Human Behavior and the Social Environment." It was a textbook for a master’s level program in Social Work. This book had everything anyone had ever said about human behavior. Every single personality theory known to man was in this book. There were charts of "eye accessing cues," a way to tell whether a person was recalling a visual, auditory or tactile memory based on the direction their eyes were looking as they recalled the memory. This was the moment that I fell in love with psychology.

            My junior and senior years of high school, I read psychology texts religiously. I even ditched school some days and stayed in my room reading psychology books all day. I read the DSM IV, the reference book for every single mental disorder that has been classified, cover to cover. In one of the appendices, there was a list of axes proposed for further study. I wrote a 30 some question personality test that was designed to determine which seven defense mechanisms a person used most frequently, as a way to contribute to the DSM. I designed double blind experiments to determine the effects of caffeine on academic performance. I took an AP statistics course with the goal of study psychology in college in mind. I got a D in the class but aced the AP exam with a 4.

            I went to college and majored in psychology, only to be disappointed. The psychological dogma of trying to make people fit into nice, neat little labels and explanations became clear to me as a fallacy. I was an intern for a sexual assault advocacy group, and though I was happy to help some people that needed it, I discovered that the psychologists are usually more screwed up than their clients.

            I participated in many groups on campus for a while, trying to get experience "helping people." I even ran for student council and lost, only to find a way to start a student group to give me a seat on the council. After my short lived foray into politics and horrible depressing internship as a sexual assault counselor, I learned that I really don't care about helping people. I suppose it isn't that I don't care, but I've learned that I internalize other people's problems and their problems make my life horribly depressing.

            So here I am, about to graduate with a shitload of experience in counseling, the only field that I have any credentials in, and counseling is probably the last thing on earth that I would want as a profession other than politics. I've been exposed to "Colorado's Best University Experience," and have quite a negative opinion of it. It's not that college hasn't been the best four years of my life, or that I haven't made a bunch of lifelong friends, or that I haven't learned some of the most interesting things about the world, life, and myself...but I've learned that I don't like American Society. Throughout my life I have always rebelled against all of the institutions that have been forced on me, be it the education system, the police, religious society, or government. At each stage of my life, I always thought that things would be better when I got to "the next step," or that it was only that particular institution that was screwed up (at least in my mind.) In truth, any other college I could have gone to would have the same form of bureaucracy and what I call "edutainment" that I hate. Whatever city I lived in would most have policies that conflict with my libertarian ideals.

            To many, I might come across as a Holden Caulfield, as one of those people in high school who labeled himself with the obvious contradictory title of a "non-conformist." Until I leave everything that I own and hide away from every other human soul out in the woods by myself, I am just as much of a conformist as everyone else. Even if I did say "fuck society" and live in the woods, I would still take my language and the skills that I have learned from other people with me. So, for all purposes, I really can't escape society, and I can't escape American culture. This has become more and more apparent to me as I have matured. These feeling may be deduced to the same angst that every child feels when he realizes that he won't be a rock star or an astronaut or president of the world and that he will actually have to put forth some effort into life to get by on not very much money at all.

            My greatest fear is being miserable. I suppose this can be equated to the universal fear of "being alone." I am not literally alone, and I know I will never be because I have family and friends and a girlfriend that I will most likely settle down with at some point. The problem is the lack of connection with people, with society, with American society. I absolutely despise this culture which I was born into. This is not to say that Americans are all stupid, lazy people. I am one of them. I too am part of the problem. This realization just fuels my internal conflict even more.

            All of these technological advances that are supposed to make life more comfortable and connect people to each other do just the opposite of that for me. Cable television has seventy plus basic channels with nothing but "reality" shows of spoiled high school girls bitching about how they got a beamer instead of a range rover for their sixteenth birthday or newscast by "political analysts" who have never spent a minute in government talking about how they know what's right for America.

            Every institution in this society has been reduced to entertainment. Presidential candidates appear on WWE Raw, or the Colbert report during their campaigns. It's sad that most Americans get their news from newscast comedies, and these comedies seem to have more relevant news than the twenty four hour news channels. Our education system is all about edu-tainment—entertainment masked as a legitimate education—where masters level students are required to make posters for their research projects, or undergraduates are supposed to run statistical analyses on data they've collect from watching reality TV shows.

            American workplaces are crammed full of people who do nothing but sit at their desks all day and watch you tube videos, particularly in government jobs that burn through public money. Our country is in an economic crisis because every single damned person, business, government agency, and financial institution in this country (including, and especially me) has borrowed way beyond their means and just wants to borrow more and more and more thinking that that will somehow help their situation.

            And here I am, a melodramatic soon-to-be college graduate who basically doesn’t want to work a day in his life, who instead wants to play like a college freshman for the rest of his life, is forced to make an immediate decision on how he can conform and assimilate to working life in this country and still maintain his sanity. I fight this thought more and more every day. Why should I have to contribute to society? I didn't ask to be born, I didn't ask to be a part of a "nation-state," I don't agree with the way human society is organized. I was never consulted about these matters.

            As much as I would like to live in the woods an own lots and lots of guns and have a giant barbed wire fence warning people to stay out of my libertarian fortress/paradise, I can't. I am still an American, as much as I don't want to be forced to be defined by an institution, I am, and there is no escaping this. So how can I integrate in to society's institutions while still maintaining my sanity? When am I going against the grain for the sake of being different and when do I really have better ideas than everyone else, at least as it relates to my own world view and my own happiness.

            I'm reminded of a conversation I had with a true anarchist. This guy really said "fuck society." He rode around on freight trains and never contributed to society a day in his life. As a young, socially integrated, “proud-to-be-an-American”, I argued that submitting to the will of society and government allowed for the most freedom for the most people. He replied, "What freedom? The freedom to consume?"

            That comment has stuck with me for some time. We are in the land of the free. We are free to do whatever we want. But to do whatever you want you have to have the money to do it. And usually, what we want to do is consume material things because that has been beaten senselessly into our heads by every aspect of our culture since we were old enough to understand language. Our culture equates consumption with happiness. I am just as guilty as the rest of America. Sometimes I am so antsy because I can't think of what I need to put into my body to be entertained, be it an energy drink, a cigarette, a glass of whisky, etc... I even know that consumption is not what leads to self satisfaction. It is expressing our humanity that makes us human. This does not mean that you have to be a great artist, or writer, or musician. It can be as simple as taking a walk at sunrise, or running the park, doing those things that truly make us human. So much of human intelligence and creativity and emotion are wasted on entertainment and useless technology that ruins our attention spans and keeps us further and further detached from what is going on right in front of our faces.

            How much emotion and talent must be wasted on pointless endeavors? I ask this to myself as I prepare to leave the best four years of my life behind—a four years filled with the constant flow of ideas and virtuosity—and dive into the ever-so-nostalgia-hyped working world so that I can struggle to convince people to buy shit they don’t need with money that they don’t have.

            The conclusion that I have come to is that expressing humanity, or finding “the true self” is the only way for me to be content with this society that I am forced to participate in. In writing this memoir, I look at my way of thinking about the world and determine that it is flawed, not in the sense of my opinions about what is wrong with American culture, but flawed in the way that I approach these opinions. A middle school counselor once told me, “Our greatest strengths are our greatest weaknesses.” As cliché as that sounds, it is true. I believe that one of my greatest strengths is my desire to challenge every piece of information I encounter, yet my greatest weakness is that same desire can cause me to haphazardly reject information that could be beneficial to me, or to dwell on how much is wrong with the world rather than making the best of my little piece of it.

            As I finish this writing, it occurred to me that the criticism I have of the psychologists is the same method of thinking that I have about my place in the world. People don’t fit into nice, neat, little boxes, but society will never fit into the boxes that I want it to. It’s like going swimming. If you fight the water, you are most likely going to drown. Complaining about how horrible the swimming pool you’re in won’t save you, nor will whining about the lifeguards who are supposed to be paying better attention, nor will bitching about how you put yourself in the situation. The only thing you can do is accept your circumstances and swim. The water doesn’t care about your problems. The only way the water will listen to you is if you speak its language and become one with it, gliding to safety. The same goes for society: I can’t escape it, and the more I fight with it, the more grief it will cause me. I don’t have to like every part of it, and I don’t have to participate in every part of it. The greatest difficulty is discernment, something many cultures refer to as wisdom. I choose to waste my time watching TV. I choose to let the negative parts of my culture “suck away my soul.”

            I am guilty of the black-and-white thinking that characterizes these United States. I don’t have to be society’s tool, but I don’t have to go live in the woods by myself. For those who wish to integrate completely and try and make the world a better place, you have my blessing. As for me, I can’t save the world yet because I’m too busy trying to save myself from it.

And memory insists on pining

For places it never went,

As if life would be happier

Just by being different.

—Dana Gioia