"PREJUDICE & PEOPLE-WATCHING"
Prejudice aborts experience. What ills does this phenomenon exacerbate? I'm so tempted to put this proposition into context. But I'd prefer a more universal model, an analogy of sorts, over laying out the peculiarities of my subjective state as I write this.
What do we want to know before we domesticated bourgeoisie "go out"? And am I insulting myself by saying "we"? I am not talking about the socioeconomic thing -- that's where my membership in the bourgeoisie ends, I'd like to think. What I am trying to get at are cofamiliar patterns of behavior; things "sociobehavioral". Classes of people (if we are to suppose that mores are there) coadapt in life to standards of approbrium and opprobrium. There are standards of hygiene and personal appearance, tone of voice, a few utterances for the sake of politeness (of the sort they might teach in an introduction to a second language), even less notably the body language of affirmation, and finally the readiness to employ a variety of the combinations of facial muscles that produce subtle emotional cues. (The latter especially takes time and atmospheric fluctuation to assess with a confidence that goes beyond prejudice. The idea is to size up the poise of a potential mate or ally.)Social change has accelerated. Have we reached an inflection point? Is the hope for one a conceit? What would it look like? Have we missed it? I worry that we Occidentals are still in a state of severe sociobehavioral imbalance. My observations in many ways indicate that we are defaulting toward the accumulation of various inhibitions without much-needed catalysts of candor necessary to affirm the good. Consider the connotation of the phrase "the public sphere". I think of public eminence only in the sense of the popular media, and of mostly scandal at that. There's a preponderance of sorts of cartoonish role models representing explicit civic functions, but a dearth of those with conventional street wisdom to share. Indeed, street wisdom is not perceived as wisdom, but "smarts". "Street smarts" has a connotation these days as little more than a set of "survival skills" possessed more by even criminal opportunists than people who aspire to some idea of a mainstream. It is not unusual for an affluent mother and father to be willfully ignorant of street wisdom on account of a rationale that such wisdom enables little more than deviance of a frowned-upon type; they might wholly do without it and neglect to impress it upon their children besides not transmitting it to friends. If I didn't know better, I'd say people avoid political challenges by and large. And I don't know better much! I find myself at a relative loss for examples to the contrary. And I'm surely not alone, so thus is the default toward defining one's social identity through dreaming up hypothetical situations in which to self-inhibit egregiously rather than eminate.
Cleverness over substance becomes a badge of legitimacy in everyday conversation, conversations tainted with animal fears that demand exercise. We savvy ourselves and others out of phantomhood. When we don't we confirm prejudice and encrust our guard, whether rightly or wrongly. But the social transformation from normatic perception to an issue of "comfort level" has evolved into something progressively more native and biological. How this relates to breeding, race and selection I am not quite sure. A conjecture? Well, it would be a pessimistic one. Because I would ask if we as a population desire to shed the superfluous formality that stunts all the uncertain and experimental measures to reclaim the social capital lost in the last century and prior ones. Less and less trust is given freely; it seems no one has the benefit of the doubt on solid ground.
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