If you’re not entirely sure what I mean by “Political Aesthetics” neither am I.

But if you think that you haven’t considered your own, I’d like to briefly remind everyone of the not so distant memory of the ever coercive culture of SelfBranding concerns specifically regarding the to-post-or-not-to-post, and if-you-did-post-did-you-delete, because-this-isn’t-about-me, but-I-need-you-to-know-that-I-know-that-this-isn’t-about-me-but-oh-no-did-I-make-it-about-myself-again? all about a photo of a black square on instagram.

We all know that making sweeping assumptions about a whole person and a whole life is wrong based on limited information, but also, (Guilty) if you showed me one person with a specifically blue color of loose fitting blue jeans who loves to go on cruises for vacation, and another person wearing Doc Martens and smoking American Spirits and said, “one of these is the Democratic Socialist, could you guess which one?” By golly, I’d still bet some dollars on it.

Now think of all of the things, from metal “testicles” on the back of pick-up trucks, to the degree to which the ankle is visible between low-top sneakers and high-hemmed pants. Think of tattoo styles and coffee orders and favorite kinds of beers and cocktails, and the tone you use to speak with service workers when you are in a large group of people.

I think, basically, I’ve been driving myself crazy thinking about all of the ways in which I worry that I am shrinking the already narrow field of people that I might find easy connection with, who I could “signal to” in a way that doesn’t take thousands of words and lots of dependent clauses.

I happen to be in a dangerously confessional state right now, and honestly, no matter how embarrassing this is, it’s true, I thought for a while that as a straightwhitecisman from Tennessee, (and, yes, unfortunately, this is all kind of about THAT) maybe at least having a slightly longish hair cut would maybe possibly help me do some outward visual signaling of some kind.

As anxiously, self-absorbed as I am, I was not really emotionally prepared, on my literal final night to say goodbye to friends before moving away from Memphis, to respond to the question:

“Have you thought about what your response is going to be, when you move to Hawaii, as a white guy, married to someone in the military, about how you’re, like, doing the bad thing?”

And I thought to myself, no, in fact, I have no response to that “question”, because it is not really a question at all, it is just a series of facts that have quite a few connections to some upsetting historical truths. But, I laughed, and said something pretty awful and dumb that I regret, about how I guess the only option I would have to display some good intentions to a new group of people would be to not even meet them at all, but of course I said it in the bad way that you’re imagining.

Essentially, I am talking about a sort of small, but mourn-able loss of identity I am experiencing, despite feeling too clever to worry about sunk costs, after deciding not to drink and not to work in any liquor-industry related jobs.

——-WORK IN PROGRESS——- I want to write about cultural signifiers of identity, and the ways in which extremely in-group critical online culture makes you want to not express anything at all if you can’t do it perfectly, and most up-to-date—-

SEE ALSO: Aesthetic Consumerism and the Violence of Photography: What Susan Sontag Teaches Us about Visual Culture and the Social Web

~~I want to turn all these spirals into short story characters. I’m currently all tell and no show, you know what I mean??~~

I am very much regrettably prone to binary thinking, knowing that intelligence may just be an ability to hold conflicting thoughts at the same time and that wiser people than I hold more space for nuance and specificity, I still love a good rhetorical “take this thought to its extreme end and see if it still sticks.”

In the past, this has proven useful in deciding who “I am” and what my opinions are. Usually, in an argument, I will take the other’s point of view, dial it up to 10, and “show them” that they can’t possibly really believe what they just said they believe at the level of a 5, because, when taken to the extreme, they would no longer believe it.

I go on to prescribe some more rigorous self-searching and encourage them to develop a more robust point of view, and we usually get along quite nicely after they have submitted to my role as the wise and thoughtful teacher for whom they have been desperately searching.

BWAH, WRONG! It does not go well.

Although this tactic has helped in determining what I don’t believe in, ideas that don’t hold when turned up to 10, when I take any small example of an even slightly complex idea, my real opinion lies inevitably on the gauge somewhere between 1 and 10, and never exactly 1 or 10, despite the ever-dissonant thinking, usually, in either/or terms.

The idea of loving friendship, for instance, done “properly,” is a relationship of mutual support, care, and genuinely curious pursuit of the other. (Maybe?)

Therefore! Self interest, individual benefit, and Transaction should have absolutely no place in a friendship! It’s a zero! Not even reading on the gauge! Not even a 1!

Surely, that remains true, forever, or until the day you need help moving a very heavy object, but you aren’t necessarily comfortable asking a stranger on the street to come into your home and carry your couch.

So, you call your capable friend, who, in completely good faith, agrees, when she has some free time this week, to come over and help you with your couch. And, funnily enough, a fleeting awareness does happen to cross her mind, of the upcoming end of her apartment lease, and the possible utility of the pick-up truck that you, yourself, could offer to her free of charge. But! Of course, that’s not why she’s coming over to help move your couch this week.

No, not at all, it’s just that at the exact same time that she happily agrees to help you, she just so happens to have the not-on-purpose intrusive thought of how exactly you might help her in a very similar manner in the near future, which the relationship has now opened itself up to receive as an absolutely appropriate request.

If she had that explicit thought, and expressly decided to help you, if-and-only-if, you too, would help her similarly, then that would be bad, a 1 out of 10, and she is no friend at all!

OR, the distinction is just that she happened to have both of those thoughts, separately, and not on purpose, and with no expectations, so it’s good, and the Trasactional-ness in Friendship barometer is restored, and functioning, and the gauge reads somewhere between a 2 and a 4, and all is well, and neither party is “using” one another, and love is still real! Phew! That was close!

So, then, the prior, naive version of myself believing things to be either good or bad or 1 or 10, with nothing in between, goes back to the drawing board, and separates, now, into three separate categories: Friendship, Transaction, and Mutually Beneficial Helpfulness, and draws another 3 individual gauges, marking 1 to 10, and adding some arrows pointing toward the 2’s and 3’s and 4’s and the possible scenarios which may be in-bounds for some relationships and out-of-bounds for others, and realizing that I essentially do not know how to be a human-being-person-in-society in a way that comes naturally at all.

So!

Having spent quite some time deciding that I am the kind of person who is absolutely not like This, and will always be definitely exactly That, I am in pursuit of slowing down, moderating some beliefs, looking for some new opinions, and basically, asking myself and everyone else if that is okay? Because for some reason, at some point, I drew a little gauge in my head that said “Good Person” and I wrote down who I’d like to be in the future, squarely and perfectly, above the number 10, and then I subtitled it “Lovable Person” and all of the addendums and caveats and sticky notes and duct tape have accumulated over the years, and have rendered this gauge to be absolutely useless and unreadable.