Ideas fit quite well inside one’s brain, especially when nestled comfortably against rabbit-fur-soft dreams and fantasies and illusions. When those very same snug and serene ideas slam against the coarse realities of action, though, illusions leave contusions. Actions have sharp edges that can scrape against creativity’s soft, smooth lining. leaving bruises and scabs and—eventually—scars. Life, in general, is like that. The slightest movement of an eagle’s delicate, lacy feathers enable the raptor to steer through the air with stunning precision. Yet even while the bird engages in airborne ballet, its talons transform its prey—a frightened ball of trembling fur—into blood-soaked carnage. The earth is a rough, brutal place. Humans have taught ourselves to judge the pain and gore of predator-versus-prey terrifying and offensive; as if pain has no rightful place on the planet. Pain is a natural physical and mental experience; its avoidance…an outgrowth of fear…is just as natural. But the complexities of the cycles of life are far too tangled for our primitive minds to fully grasp. We are not far removed from being terrorized by darkness and the oceans. If our species were to survive for another thousand millennia, we might begin to comprehend a tiny fraction of what we do not—and never will—know. By then, we would have lost almost everything we once knew, though, and would have to start over. Clever ideas, battered by forgotten experiences, repeated in a perpetually unsatisfactory cycle. Will we continue to stare, in morbid fascination, as the eagle tears at the flesh of her freshly-incapacitated and soon-to-be dead prey? We do not want to think about these realities. The only other option is ignorance. And we go on making competing choices. Ad infinitum.
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A conflict exists between certain ideas involving “moral behavior.” The conflict makes no sense to me. Some people find the concept of hiring a maid or a housekeeper offensive, as if the act of engaging the services of a person to clean one’s house is equivalent to judging the person so engaged to be inferior to the person who makes the engagement. Why is that idea offensive? Is the idea of engaging an automobile mechanic to repair one’s car equally offensive? I see the two situations as quite similar. Both the service providers (I’ll call them contractors) bring certain skills to circumstances requiring those skills. Why would one be judgmental in hiring a maid, but not as judgmental in hiring a mechanic? Consider the tutor who is contracted to help a parent’s child better understand mathematical theories. By engaging that contractor, is the parent judging the teacher to be inferior? Of course, I realize the attitude the person hiring the contractor may vary from one type of contractor to another; but why would we differentiate between them? Is the work of a maid/housekeeper any less valuable than the work of a tutor or auto mechanic? Perhaps. If one defines Value as the ratio of Function to Cost, an argument might be made that certain functions have more value, based on what we are required to pay to acquire those functions. But isn’t our willingness to pay more (or less) a matter of judgment? Philosophies often are used to justify thought processes. And value judgments. Is there a legitimate way to remove judgment from the equation? Maybe. Maybe not. Hard to say, without introducing morality into the equation. Value. Morality. Cost. Function. Thinking too hard about such stuff can cause one’s brain to fracture into a million misshaped slivers.
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Time for another fistful of pills. And a Boost ( much to my chagrin). And whatever else I can convince myself is appealing. A cinnamon roll sounds especially appealing. Unfortunately, there are no cinnamon rolls in the house. A damn shame. A damn CRYING shame. I could go for my version of congee, too. But at least one of the ingredients is missing. Ach. I feel a bit better than has been the case of late, but I am tired. Sleepy. I got up too early or went to bed too early or otherwise broke my circadian rhythm into fragments; actually, I shattered it into pieces so small I may find it impossible to put it back together again. But sleeping is becoming more appealing with each passing day. I still cannot control my dreams, but I may keep trying.
Unfortunately, Bev, you are right. Chauvinism is alive and well. I hope, though, its prevalence is not as common today as it once was; nor will it be as common tomorrow as it is today. I hope.
I think men can hire maids and housekeepers without anyone thinking much of it. However, if a woman hires housekeepers, that is a reflection on her inability to keep the house tidy. Same deal if a house is messy — who gets blamed — the wife and not the husband, even if they both work at outside jobs. I saw a good meme recently. It read something like, “A woman does the housework, drives the kids to their sports, does the grocery shopping, etc.. but then we’re told she doesn’t work – she’s just a housewife.” Sadly, that’s the truth. We would not say that about a man because he doesn’t do his own car repairs, or because he hires a plumber to fix some problem. Why one and not the other?