Normative Pain

It does feel good to be part of a large group that is working in sync. Look at the opening of the Beijing Olympics. China is exciting in that way. But we did not see the rehearsals.

Normative pressure, which pushes people into behaving according to the rules of the primary group of any culture, in our case, Conservative White Men, is always a painful process for those in the nut screw. Look what they did to women, Jews and African Americans in the past.

The Chinese continued to take over that middle-kingdom-area until they were stopped by a resistance that was strong enough to stop them. And the only strong enough resistance to stop any primary group is usually solid weaponry.

Women and Jews had no armies. Africans had inferior technology. None of these people could win.

Gays do have weapons. They are in the military. And they are subjected to this pressure. But they obviously cannot use their weapons to force people to “accept them.”

What is so disappointing and so infuriating is that if enough strong, self-serving people get together and take leave of their natural compassion, they will bully others into either being exactly like them or they will tell the “offending others” to SHUT THEIR MOUTHS.

This Don’t-Ask-Don’t-Tell law is a law written to appease bullies (in the name of cohesion). It is a strong finger of the two hands of anti-enlightenment and normative pressure. We are not Chinese. We will never have an opening ceremony that is that cohesive. Not being in sync in society makes for a certain kind of loneliness. But this is the price we all pay for being Westerners, brave individualists, Jews, Brown-Black-White-Red-whatever people, Women, Male Nurses and mano-a-mano sex dudes. You cannot be for individual freedom and for oppressing others at the same time. I mean, you can be---but then, you are a bully. What is that doing for you?

I found the opening ceremony of the Beijing games to be exciting and dull at the same time.