I went to sleep last night with something critical on my mind.... It was a rare spark of compelling and cohesive thought, but I was too comfortable and too tired to get up and give birth to it like I should have... Instead I nodded off to have strange dreams about my late father taking me through the drive through of a McDonald's and nearly running us off the road on the way home.
After I awoke and came to my computer this morning, as I sat down, the feeling came over my brain that something had been there. It's that feeling you get when you are talking about a specific point, get interrupted mid thought, and then try to remember what it was. It' right on the tip of your tongue like a mental itch you can't scratch and it just drives you nuts.
Thankfully I happened to put it out of my mind and ran my usual course of daily internet activities. I don't know why, but I searched for "Coffee is for closers", a great scene about...
Sorry, I have to pause for a moment and assess for myself what the hell that scene is actually about...
It suppose it could be looked at pretty negatively if you used to be a failing salesman, but I like to view it in a motivational slant along the lines of "accepting responsibility for high personal achievement".
Then I saw Ben Affleck's "I'm a millionaire" scene from Boiler Room next in the Que so I watched that as well. Not as awesome to me, but I still enjoyed it.
Then I decided to Google "6 Harsh truths that will make you a better person" because it had popped in my head for some reason. I had read that article some time ago and I loved it. I'm not sure why, but I had been thinking about it for the last few weeks and was glad to finally re-read it.
As I was nearing the end of the article, I was getting that brain itch again and suddenly it came to me. I had gone to sleep analyzing the old cliché about judging a book by it's cover. So let's investigate thoughts about that.
People don't like being judged by their looks. That's basically what that cliché is all about. It's definitely not "PC" to do so, but thankfully I don't care much about social non-sense like that. Treating people the way I would want to be treated works better for me. I'm responsible for my attitude, not someone else.
So anyways, "Don't judge a book by it's cover".
I see a clear reason to agree with that, although I instantly realize that I judge actual books by their covers (and titles) all the time. Funny thing is, isn't that the point? If there happens to be a sexy half-dressed lady on the cover and the title reads "Playboy", I can be pretty sure there will be lots of airbrushed chests proudly displaying overly perky saline implants. (Not a fan, can you tell?) Although the running joke may be "Honey, I read it for the articles!", Adult magazines have long since developed those articles to I guess "rationalize" some of it's carnality away?
But even so, I can't expect things to get too deep socially in a nude magazine versus a book titled "On Being and Nothingness". Anyone can notice that both books are displaying covers and titles that attempt to convey their contents, or at least allude to them. I think people attempt to do that too. In fact, I know they do.
People generally wear business suits with an intent to display a sort of discipline, professionalism, or status. Priests wear robes to convey modesty and rank or devotion. The point being, that when someone gets dressed in the morning they are purposefully piecing together an image that they like and also want to portray to those that will be seeing them. But it goes both ways. Often, we can build an image to hide what we don't like about ourselves too. And as a self proclaimed professional "Book Reader", I've spent over half my life reading between the lines.
In my opinion, books have it worse off than most people do in judging department. some books are so vaguely titled and presented that you just can't make an accurate assumption of what the point really is, thus you may be undermining the efforts of the author to judge that book by it's cover. However to play devils advocate here; perhaps the P.R. department is undermining the author with such loose identifiers.
Part of the problem with looking at a books cover, is that if we can't tell what it's trying to be we may not have the energy to figure it out. Time is our greatest asset and the less of it we have the more carefully we tend to use it. Thankfully, with books we have the convenience of being able to at least categorize them relatively easily. Humans, not so much.
Something occurred to me last night as I was staring at the back of my eyelids: Books aren't sentient beings with motives, and their contents have no real way of communicating what's on the inside. In the 6 harsh truths article I was reading today, a statement was made that probably happened to be the trigger to remembering this cliché running around in my head.
"who you are inside" is the metaphorical dirt from which your fruit grows. But here's what everyone needs to know, and what many of you can't accept:
"You" are nothing but the fruit.
To put it as plainly as I can, Just as books with tits on the cover generally come with tits on the inside... A humans outside image, can easily and often does, paint a similar picture to what is buried in the soil inside them. We display our fruits in so many ways. Often unintentionally and unbeknown to us.
I'm going to take a moment and really generalize here, but it's to make the clearest, broadest point I can.
If you look like a gang-banger, (Meaning neck tattoos or facial tattoos and such) the odds favor that you will display behavior of that type.
If you are obese, the odds are higher that you eat more calories than you burn.
And here in down town Salt Lake city, If you see two men in black and white suits riding bicycles around together, odds are more favorable that they are Mormon.
If you see a car with a dirty mountain bike mounted to the top of it, odds favor that person being active and therefor reasonably fit.
I think there is a direct correlation to people's "Covers" and the "Titles" they adopt, to who they are on the inside. The issue is, as our society is so focused on political correctness there becomes this illusion that those two do not correlate, or at least you aren't supposed to make that correlation if it's a negative one.
I've used peoples labels and covers to pre-judge them far more often than not, and it has served me well in avoiding people who have ended up displaying behaviors directly in line with their outward images. It's not to say that people who's fruits you find unappealing are Bad, and that's what I think this hyper-sensitivity has gotten so many people thinking... It's really simple: People don't like being not liked. But it is also a fact of life that not everyone is compatible and the more strict your standards, the less people will fit them.
It took me a very long time to throw away the concepts of "Better" and "worse", for the concepts of "Compatible" or "Incompatible". Those are two strikingly different ways to view human beings. One is about status and superiority, and the other one is about personality and compatibility.
I can easily tell you what my standards are for people I want in my life.
I prefer: People who are honest with themselves, honest with me, active and relatively fit, non-smoking, patient and loving people with (according to my values) a great sense of humor and common sense. Those are mostly arbitrary subjective values, but based on the idea of compatibility, anyone outside of that is neither a good or bad person to me. Just different. And being different is not only ok, it's the spice of life. It is the very contrast that exists by which to appreciate it's opposite.
I've spent hours now and could spend many more, but all in all I think the phrase "Don't judge a book by it's cover" is actually based on the exception, not the rule.
Peoples actions are indeed the fruit they bare, and their appearances can give us clues as to what kind of fruit they are likely to produce. I look at myself as a careful harvester of social fruit. I have very few plants around, but oh the fruit is sweet.
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