TNG Flashback: Get Real

The work day is almost over. We hope you use your last ounce of concentration to revisit this year-old TNG article. Originally published by Ben on 3/05/2008.

Every day around 5:30, Dick Cheney’s motorcade leaves the white house and drives down 17th street on its way to the Naval Observatory. There’s always a police presence at the corner to stop traffic, so occasionally I’m stuck waiting on I street while it passes. Whenever this happens I take the opportunity to get as far into the street as possible, extend my arms, and show him both middle fingers. It makes me feel better. Last week, a guy on a moped turned onto 17th street after the motorcade passed, stopped in the middle of the street, smiled, and gave me a thumbs up. I guess it made him happy too.

There was a brief moment when I considered not drawing attention to myself or possibly offending those around me, or causing one of the metro cops to stand right behind me until the motorcade had passed completely. I could sit this one out and let him drive past without a symbolic protest he probably wouldn’t even see, but when that moment presented itself I sucked the doubt back down into my gut and let my intestines smother it.

There was a time when I would not have felt such pause. As I get older, I’ve become increasingly aware of how the reckless and feral impulses of my youth and blue-collar upbringing have been muted by the socializing influences of business, culture, and age. While I think I’ve fought convention and protocol longer than most in some ways, I’ve recognized them as necessary and even proper, accepting that what makes wild animals beautiful doesn’t necessarily make human relationships and social organization function in a way that allows us to thrive, or at very least, make us less likely to destroy one other.

Regardless, I'm troubled by the dark side of structure, whether in regards to cultural, business, or moral life. What happens when climbing the ladder becomes running on a treadmill? What happens when an understandable desire to fit in leads to censoring your opinions, values, and eventually your own instincts? When an honest desire to become a better person results in a politically correct, self-censored life that neuters your ability to be spontaneous, honest, and real, is perfection worth it? I'm asking that question, because from every angle of my life I feel the insidious undulation of utopian socialization--pacifying, emasculating, making me soft. I don't know how to fight it. Much of the leeway life gives us is calculated by the amount of percieved freedom our jobs and our culture allow us before threat of punishment. How does one maintain their individual integrity when so many forces seek to submit it to a collective will? I don't know fully, but it probably starts with reflecting on our own position in a system of social forces, and excercising force of will against the tide.

In other words, I’m going to give the VP the hard finger. Every time.