MISSING: Chapter 8

MISSING

Chapter 8: Wenn Es Muss Sein!

She hates herself. She truly believes that she is unequal to everyone else. She is envious of everyone and everything. She would rather be the hairbrush of one of her classmates than to be herself. This perverse inclination towards self-hate and self-destruction defies almost all of the presumptions above.

If I hate myself than I am not equal to you. If I am not equal to you, then all individuals cannot be equal.

If I am unequal to all others, people will not like me as well as others.

If I am unequal to all others, but make an attempt to appear equal to all others, people will probably like me more than if I made no attempt to hide my inequality.

If I am unequal to all others, I will be inherently unlike, unfamiliar, and unattractive to all others, and people will feel uncomfortable around me.

If I am unequal to all others and unlike all others, then inherently I cannot affirm the self of all others completely. If I am unequal to all others, I can only affirm my self. People may inherently consider me selfish for affirming my self as opposed to their self.

People take offense to selfishness because it proposes that one individual is unequal to all others. People feel more comfortable with equality (see #4).

All people are egocentric. All people are rooted in the unique perspective of being their self. Aha! So if I am different, then by affirming my self I can affirm the part in all individuals that are different from all individuals.

There can be many truths.

What can be true for one person may not be true for another person; this is due to the power of perspective. The null hypothesis here concludes that what can be true for one person – I am unequal to all others – may not be true for another person. 

Herein lies the danger of drifting too far away from the mean perspective on individuality.

Altruism is egocentric and rooted in the perspective that all people are equal and that all people have equal probability of finding any fate. One person has a statistically equal chance of being any one person with any one fate. 

If any given fate that befalls one individual could just as easily befall onto another individual, AND if I believe that I am unequal to others, I may believe that I have a statistical bias for receiving a certain fate. 

If I am unequal to all others I can believe my fate to be unequal to all others'. If I am unequal to all others while all others are equal to everyone else, then I am an outsider. 

If I do not want to be an outsider, than this is unfair that I was born into a life in which despair is my situation. If I do not want to be unequal and yet I am unequal to all others – for better or worse – my situation will be despair.

If altruism is based on the assumption that all individuals are equal, and all individuals have a statistically equal chance of befalling one fate, then I have no reason to be altruistic to anyone but myself if my fate is lesser or worse or unequal to others'. 

In a given situation, I will allow myself to think, “Woe is me. I physically attract doom and ill will. Therefore I am best – and all are best – if I invest all of my efforts into myself only.

And thus one individual closes out all others, believing the own self to be unequal to all other selves. And all other selves are warranted to begrudge the individual who believes the specific individual self to be worthy of salvation from all other selves. 

All other individuals may continue to believe that all individuals are equal, and so all individuals will continue to be equal in 99% of all instances in the universe. Thus our individual who believes him or herself to be unequal of all others commits a fraudulence of universal proportions. 

The individual who believes it’s specific self to be unequal to all other individuals' creates a truth where no truth previously existed. 

The individual creates a truth from a different truth. 

The individual creates a lie. 

The individual is cosmically dishonest. 

The individual is sin, or is the individual misinterpreted?

***

Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D. writes of a schizophrenic brother, “I [want] to understand why I [can] take my dreams and connect them to reality and make my dreams come true. What [is] different about my brother’s brain such that he [cannot] connect his dreams to a common reality and they instead become delusions?” (My Stroke of Insight: A brain scientist’s personal journey, 2006, Viking Press, New York, NY).

MISSING: Chapter 6

MISSING
Chapter 6: Es muss sein (pt. I)

Es muss sein!

An observation printed in the school bulletin after an interview: “everyone’s really nice. People will always lend you a dollar or change to get something from the vending machine – they just trust you will pay them back.”

She used to drive to work with her father in the mornings. She had a back room at his office all to herself. She would draw usually, or sometimes watch TV, but if he came back in between patients, he would make her turn it off. By fourth grade he had tutors come for her in the morning. This embarrassed her for 2 reasons: in the adolescent vocabulary, the word “tutor” sounds dangerously similar to the word “toot,” which refers to flatulence. Also, in the adolescent world of sensibility where one shirt costs too much to pay for two, a tutor indicates special needs. A tutor forges the assumption you struggle to keep up with your class work. You are probably dumb, and need extra help. You will probably end up with the special students next year.

This is not the case for the girl without a chance, but she desperately fears her classmates will decide otherwise. She despises the word tutor and fears ridicule. No one else in her fourth grade class has a tutor, no one. A boy at her bus stop is mean; he is a year older, and he bullies kids. He makes fun of her sometimes, but most of the time he is neutral to her because they share a bus stop. He will become relentless if he knows she has a tutor. He will be merciless. He is, after all, a boy.

MISSING: Chapter 5

MISSING
Chapter 5: The Girl Without A Chance

The girl without a chance materialized in 5th grade: scrappy like Di, but not blond. She enters on somewhat even ground. She is nice. She is quiet at first and then stronger, but attracts the attention of one of the more popular new boys. She comes in 5th grade because 5th grade is when The Academy of the holy trinity admits approximately 20 new students, expanding the class size to upwards of 50. She is not pegged as the new girl in any identifiable way. She plays soccer, but not with Anner and Rory and Lexa. She knows Lexa – I hear their parents are members of the same suburban fitness club, along with the Campbells. She knows the class pagliaccio femminile, clown: Paige, from kindergarten. Paige, whose bowl-hair cut lines her as an ally to the boys in games like tag; our pagliaccio has no affinity for romance or affection, but who declines an opportunity to affect a social status, even one’s own? Paige calls the new girl and offers to sit next to her at lunch on the first day of school. She has no malice. She does not manipulate. She has no mal-intent. She introduces the new girl like something she won over the summer.

The girl without a chance starts with one chance: she has the fortune to be paired with Di as her “buddy.” On the first day of school she is dropped off early and timidly finds the principal’s office. She is shuffled into the Old Gym for an assembly. She is shuffled up to a top section of the bleachers where she is seated near others her age. She is handed off to Mrs. Fraanzen who will be her homeroom teacher. Mrs. Fraanzen gestures that the children in this section are her classmates. After a long assembly, the children are herded into a room with green carpet where Mrs. Fraanzen introduces herself. The class will end in a few short minutes, so they will begin tomorrow with introductions. They will copy the instructions written on the board down into their assignment notebooks and when the bell rings they may find their next class.

Thank GOD she decides not to wear the uniform jumper she set out! Such a tragedy would be her fate while – sitting in the commotion of just-minutes-before-the-bell she overhears girls celebrate their freedom from the lower school commandment that prevents girls from wearing pants. A glance around the room reveals a couple of timid smart-looking girls wearing skirts. No jumpers. The girls who look the most confident and comfortable wear pants. Ugly, unflattering, unfashionable pants, she sighs.

Muss es sein?