#can you not

I was at this bar on what happened to be karaoke night when one of the singers, who had also worked as a DJ in her day, asked me if I was going to sing. I said no, I’m not a singer. She replied, “Well, why not, you look like a singer.”  After that, she actually argued with me for a bit! I know I’m being rude, but what in the Disney princess fuck?  No way was she a good DJ if she did not have an understanding of the difference between audio and visual. That was one of the many thoughts that went through my mind.  Yes,  I was triggered, mainly because I hate when someone argues with me about me. I’ve lived with myself for 53 years and I know I can’t sing, it’s no great mystery to me.  Great metaphor though, on the ridiculousness of judging a book by its cover.  Oh I get it, I’m a sucker for good packaging at the grocery store.  I love beautiful art and calligraphy and cool hair.  Realistically, the outer appearance of some commodities can give clues to what lies below, but for the full tale? Not on your life.  Try an Instagram purchase if you don’t believe me.

Yes, life is filled with light and shadows and a good helping of manipulation factors.  Judging a person’s character based on their reputation is a common mistake.  What about those pretty photos of food that are really constructed of cardboard by award winning artists instead of bakers?  It’s no wonder there are so many Pinterest fails.   I don’t know who puts up with TV commercials anymore but they were famous for the bait and switch. They engaged our senses to create a feeling of longing,  then provided a purchasable product, tricking our minds into believing they were one and the same.  Since the marketing industry in the US is about a $150 billion behemoth, I’d say that shit works. Basically, any marketing strategy is begging you to judge a book by its cover and not always its cover, but some cover. But people aren’t objects and words don’t create reality.

Prejudice is the top tier example of judging a book by its cover. I am not specifically referring to racial prejudice at the moment, but rather the definition of prejudice across the board, which is, “a preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience.”  It gets tricky in the real world because generalities do exist.  IDK, maybe there are a lot of women who sing country who also have long, high-lighted hair and a little style (ha) and so in the DJ’s mind I was a good fit for a singer.  It’s just so infantile to make that leap from a generality to a specific person standing right in front of you showing you who they are.  You have to let that other stuff go when dealing with actual live subjects, ya know?

Mario Sanchez Nevado

Other forms of prejudice; identity politics, religious affiliation and the like are also judging a book by its cover.  More specifically, making a decision about another person solely based on a group they claim membership in or one they decry and avoid like the plague.  I believe this one is so prevalent because it harkens back to our American obsession with doing instead of becoming.  Meaning, we spend so much time trying to fix the American dream for ourselves, we don’t realize where we are ignorant about ourselves.

You know I’m not judging here, I’ve spent six years writing about my journey out of being stuck in a false reality.  The interesting part about identity politics in particular is the common misconception that individuals come to their conclusions in a vacuum.  Better said, political leanings are partly a function of innate personality.  Full stop.  There is plenty of logic and literature to back this up.  If you think psychology is a waste of time, or need a government stamp to believe something, the last exposition I waded through on this was put out by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Beyond that, public displays of dedication to an ideology or whatever do not tell the whole story either.  I’m remembering all the dyed-in-the-wool conservatives who were offended by the women’s march and the pussy hats a few years ago.  That’s not my thing so I wasn’t there but just two seconds of consideration and any offended person would remember that the rate of sexual abuse of girls in America is 1 in 4.  Just that one thing that is a reality of women’s lives in America speaks volumes. That is what I saw, girls and women and their mothers and sisters and friends who suffered, or were close to someone who suffered.  Wouldn’t it have been cool if  all the emotional energy that went into certain men’s disdain of them could have been spent processing the level of shit that has rained down on their sisters in humanity at the hands of your brothers.  It’s not on the cover, it is in the book!  Finally, as Richard Rohr puts it, the fact that  “Wild beasts and angels reside in the same wilderness,” cannot be denied on any level of group orientation.

I’m the writer so I’ll be the example.  Can you look at me and tell how many times I have been evicted? Rejected? Elated? Fired? Triumphed?  No you can’t.  That’s my point, we think we are so goddamned smart but don’t even realize the depth of our own presumptions.  On the other side, I’ve been plenty judged for not being a joiner of causes and that’s just the same shit backwards. Can we not?