Against the Current

“Because woman lives vicariously she need take no moral responsibility for her behavior: because she has no responsibility she has no morality and no ego.  Because of the lack of ego and the variety of roles that women manipulate, they have no identity, as one may guess from their willingness to give up their names.  Woman is never genuine at any period of her life.” – The Female Eunuch Pg 120

Woman is never genuine at any period in her life.

Not for lack of trying, but because she is not allowed to have an identity. If one has no identity, no sense of self, sincerity can not be. Everything is a show, a mask is always on, for only with the masks that others hand a nameless being is it then named.

I would like to say that this isn’t the case anymore. But honestly in some ways I think its worse. Because there is clear lack of individuality in our society today. Individualism true is prevalent, but individuality is not.  Every one is supposed to put on face and be a rock, and island and happily pursue whatever this years American dream is. Meanwhile free thought, critical thinking, curiosity and imagination are being squandered, and all these things are essential in being a self actualized individual.

I don’t know how any one goes through life with out curiosity. With out wondering why it is that one person thinks this way or that. Or why it is that this group of people seem so taken by some smoe who doesn’t even know their history. With out curiosity and critical thinking, charisma and charm win out over integrity and justice. With out curiosity and wondering how things work, or why things are the way they are, innovation ceases. With out curiosity imagination consists of dreaming about the next object to fill the garage with, rather than inventing stories and creating, well….anything.

I see this in men and women, even children. A childhood with out curiosity…humans with out curiosity….we might as well as be fragile coral fixed to some rock…Barnacles, living forms that depend completely on a fragile environment never moving any where, longing for anything. The most movement we get comes from the involuntary sway with the current.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be a sponge, barnacle, or a goddamned sea fan.