On Hygiene.
Anyone who has met and been around me for a stretch of time of such a duration as to be reasonably considered "hanging out" knows that I am not a stickler for obsessive hygiene. In fact, one might go so far as to say I am an exemplary adversary of hygiene, in the form and standard society has placed it in today.
Before continuing, though, allow me to make a few things clear: I brush my teeth, I wash my hands after partaking in the act known as "dropping deuce" (a charming colloquial term, no?) and I bathe in frequency such that I am not repugnant-smelling or gifted with an overly grimy appearance.
However, I do not douse my hands in Purell sanitizer, I do not spray my counter tops with germ-killing disinfectants and I don't flood my body with antibiotics every time I catch a cold.
Why? Because I'm not a neurotic hypochondriac indoctrinated to think that the entire world around me is so terribly dangerous that my own, thoroughly well-equipped body cannot handle the very few microbes that might be out to do me harm. This entire country is a big bunch of pussies who are too damn placated into comfortable illusions, too damn insecure about themselves in every aspect that they can't even fathom standing on their own.
(Bear with me here.)
To be slightly political, it is the difference between blindly believing that the Police (antibiotics, disinfectants and the like) and their lovely hour-and-a-half response times are more fitting to protect you against robbery than, say, you, armed with and trained to handle a firearm. Sure, there's a bit more risk involved in taking your safety into your own hands (i.e. letting your immune system do what it's designed to do, and sucking up the occasional cold it takes to keep it in shape) than trusting it to the well-imaged "protectors of the people," but for fuck's sake, if you'd trust your own safety to the very fallible Government and far-from-philanthropic Corporations over your own "Hey, I've been evolving for millions of years just for this very purpose" immune system & instincts, you're already too far gone. I mean, GONE. NUTS. LOONEY. Or just sadly conditioned into believing you're anything less than the product of millions upon millions of years of evolution, someone whose ancestors survived much worse equipped with much less.
But enough of that. I'm ranting.
Because I goddamn can.
Now, on the subject of grooming. That's really all it is. Grooming. We've been conditioned such that we lump hygiene and grooming together as one. This is not truly a bad thing, but it's gone way too fucking far.
That said, as a facial hair enthusiast, I am biased.
However, the societal taboo against prideful bearing of one's facial hair is completely absurd. Yes, scruff and stubblies are loosely glorified in ads via models in their stuffed Calvin Klein briefs and god-awful cologne, but as far as the day to day every-man's facial hair goes, the underlying suppression is, well, depressing. It seeks to take a Man, who is a wild thing capable of wisdom and astounding depth, and reduce him to a tame cog who is only as wise and deep as his place in the machine requires. It is one part of a larger oppression of a man's need to be proud of being a Man, a hideous over-extension of the feminizing of men that took place in the sixties and seventies- a wonderful event that opened up men to get in touch with and accept the feminine aspects of themselves- but that trajectory has continued without the proper counterbalance, and American men are, regardless of societal stature, largely a bunch pussies*. The image of the lumberjack, the Indian brave, the sailor, the cowboy, are all still somewhat present, but only as caricatures. Imagery is not the whole of an ideal, just as an ideal is not solely its image, but they cannot wholly exist without each other.
Man must acknowledge that not only is there a lumberjack and a foul-mouthed, womanizing sailor inside him, but that there is also a sensitive poet or artistic hippy within as well, and that both can- and must- coexist and be felt.
You don't have sport an epicly rugged beard (though I'll likely get a small case of hero-worship if you do) to be in touch with the real Man inside you, but remember that it can be a symbol of it if you let it be, so long as the idea behind it is alive within you as well.
On synthetic aromatics; deodorant, cologne and perfume are all bunch of bullshit. A woman who smells like cigarettes and her own body odor, hot damn! Get's me going. But I suppose I'm a spot rare in that case. Along with alot of other cases too, now that I think about it. I am gifted with a potent, albeit not particularly awful, body odor myself, and it seems to have done more good than bad, so again I am biased and fortunate. However, if you smell truly fucking awful, then yes, you'll want to bathe or cover that shit up. But defaulting on dousing yourself in Axe because commercials tell you you'll be rolling in the pussy if you do is sheer idiocy. Now, my faith in humanity isn't quite slim enough that I truly believe most folks fall for that shit, really. But it's all conditioning. Humans have smelled rank as fuck and fucked like bunnies for millenia. Advertising and media have gone to great lengths to twist that around, giving you the image and feeling of refinement which, in all reality, is false. It's not natural. And it's disgusting.
We're so uncomfortable with our natural selves, not to mention other people's natural selves. My own attraction to the opposite sex is greatly warped and defined by societal standards such that, even with my ideology on the matter, my loathing of plastic surgery and of make-up (and subsequent preference for girls that wear little to none of it,) an excess of bodily hair (excess really only applying to the genitals, a bit of arm or upper-lip hair is actually kind of cute) is unattractive, to point of being a massive turn-off. I don't like that, I don't think it's "right." But it is the way it is, and I take comfort in the fact that things which are the result of conditioning can be reverse-conditioned, damage undone.
I just think people ought to be at least loosely aware of the fakeness, the falseness that pervades so much of how we define beauty, manliness and acceptability, and recognize the extent to which we've been condition to suppress, to cover up so many parts of our natural existence. In short, don't be afraid to stink. Don't be afraid to look like a rugged, haggard motherfucker. Naturally, you do, and somewhere inside, you are one at heart. We're all well-in-touch with our sensitive selves, but it's high fucking time we be okay with the unfortunately maligned wild man that should be an unabashedly beloved part of ourselves too.
*My definition of pussy, as a derogatory term, is as follows: Any person who is actively unwilling to stand up for themselves and, inversely, any person who is willing to submit to the easier path out of fear of adversity, or in favor of comfort.
"Adversity makes men and wealth makes monsters." -Victor Hugo
I am timid to indulge the "macho" connotations associated with the use of this word, but half the point of this writing is to recognize the merit of the masculine self and display of masculine characteristics; it is acknowledgment of duality. From imbalance is birthed excess, of course, so allowing both masculine and feminine to exist in whatever capacity is natural to the self brings balance, and thus, truth.
I'm convinced the eleventh commandment went something like this:
And God said, "Thou shalt keepeth thine orifices well-kempt, because nobody likes a jungle snatch,"
But Moses loved him some mouf, so he omitted it from the tablet.
Anyone who has met and been around me for a stretch of time of such a duration as to be reasonably considered "hanging out" knows that I am not a stickler for obsessive hygiene. In fact, one might go so far as to say I am an exemplary adversary of hygiene, in the form and standard society has placed it in today.
Before continuing, though, allow me to make a few things clear: I brush my teeth, I wash my hands after partaking in the act known as "dropping deuce" (a charming colloquial term, no?) and I bathe in frequency such that I am not repugnant-smelling or gifted with an overly grimy appearance.
However, I do not douse my hands in Purell sanitizer, I do not spray my counter tops with germ-killing disinfectants and I don't flood my body with antibiotics every time I catch a cold.
Why? Because I'm not a neurotic hypochondriac indoctrinated to think that the entire world around me is so terribly dangerous that my own, thoroughly well-equipped body cannot handle the very few microbes that might be out to do me harm. This entire country is a big bunch of pussies who are too damn placated into comfortable illusions, too damn insecure about themselves in every aspect that they can't even fathom standing on their own.
(Bear with me here.)
To be slightly political, it is the difference between blindly believing that the Police (antibiotics, disinfectants and the like) and their lovely hour-and-a-half response times are more fitting to protect you against robbery than, say, you, armed with and trained to handle a firearm. Sure, there's a bit more risk involved in taking your safety into your own hands (i.e. letting your immune system do what it's designed to do, and sucking up the occasional cold it takes to keep it in shape) than trusting it to the well-imaged "protectors of the people," but for fuck's sake, if you'd trust your own safety to the very fallible Government and far-from-philanthropic Corporations over your own "Hey, I've been evolving for millions of years just for this very purpose" immune system & instincts, you're already too far gone. I mean, GONE. NUTS. LOONEY. Or just sadly conditioned into believing you're anything less than the product of millions upon millions of years of evolution, someone whose ancestors survived much worse equipped with much less.
But enough of that. I'm ranting.
Because I goddamn can.
Now, on the subject of grooming. That's really all it is. Grooming. We've been conditioned such that we lump hygiene and grooming together as one. This is not truly a bad thing, but it's gone way too fucking far.
That said, as a facial hair enthusiast, I am biased.
However, the societal taboo against prideful bearing of one's facial hair is completely absurd. Yes, scruff and stubblies are loosely glorified in ads via models in their stuffed Calvin Klein briefs and god-awful cologne, but as far as the day to day every-man's facial hair goes, the underlying suppression is, well, depressing. It seeks to take a Man, who is a wild thing capable of wisdom and astounding depth, and reduce him to a tame cog who is only as wise and deep as his place in the machine requires. It is one part of a larger oppression of a man's need to be proud of being a Man, a hideous over-extension of the feminizing of men that took place in the sixties and seventies- a wonderful event that opened up men to get in touch with and accept the feminine aspects of themselves- but that trajectory has continued without the proper counterbalance, and American men are, regardless of societal stature, largely a bunch pussies*. The image of the lumberjack, the Indian brave, the sailor, the cowboy, are all still somewhat present, but only as caricatures. Imagery is not the whole of an ideal, just as an ideal is not solely its image, but they cannot wholly exist without each other.
Man must acknowledge that not only is there a lumberjack and a foul-mouthed, womanizing sailor inside him, but that there is also a sensitive poet or artistic hippy within as well, and that both can- and must- coexist and be felt.
You don't have sport an epicly rugged beard (though I'll likely get a small case of hero-worship if you do) to be in touch with the real Man inside you, but remember that it can be a symbol of it if you let it be, so long as the idea behind it is alive within you as well.
On synthetic aromatics; deodorant, cologne and perfume are all bunch of bullshit. A woman who smells like cigarettes and her own body odor, hot damn! Get's me going. But I suppose I'm a spot rare in that case. Along with alot of other cases too, now that I think about it. I am gifted with a potent, albeit not particularly awful, body odor myself, and it seems to have done more good than bad, so again I am biased and fortunate. However, if you smell truly fucking awful, then yes, you'll want to bathe or cover that shit up. But defaulting on dousing yourself in Axe because commercials tell you you'll be rolling in the pussy if you do is sheer idiocy. Now, my faith in humanity isn't quite slim enough that I truly believe most folks fall for that shit, really. But it's all conditioning. Humans have smelled rank as fuck and fucked like bunnies for millenia. Advertising and media have gone to great lengths to twist that around, giving you the image and feeling of refinement which, in all reality, is false. It's not natural. And it's disgusting.
We're so uncomfortable with our natural selves, not to mention other people's natural selves. My own attraction to the opposite sex is greatly warped and defined by societal standards such that, even with my ideology on the matter, my loathing of plastic surgery and of make-up (and subsequent preference for girls that wear little to none of it,) an excess of bodily hair (excess really only applying to the genitals, a bit of arm or upper-lip hair is actually kind of cute) is unattractive, to point of being a massive turn-off. I don't like that, I don't think it's "right." But it is the way it is, and I take comfort in the fact that things which are the result of conditioning can be reverse-conditioned, damage undone.
I just think people ought to be at least loosely aware of the fakeness, the falseness that pervades so much of how we define beauty, manliness and acceptability, and recognize the extent to which we've been condition to suppress, to cover up so many parts of our natural existence. In short, don't be afraid to stink. Don't be afraid to look like a rugged, haggard motherfucker. Naturally, you do, and somewhere inside, you are one at heart. We're all well-in-touch with our sensitive selves, but it's high fucking time we be okay with the unfortunately maligned wild man that should be an unabashedly beloved part of ourselves too.
*My definition of pussy, as a derogatory term, is as follows: Any person who is actively unwilling to stand up for themselves and, inversely, any person who is willing to submit to the easier path out of fear of adversity, or in favor of comfort.
"Adversity makes men and wealth makes monsters." -Victor Hugo
I am timid to indulge the "macho" connotations associated with the use of this word, but half the point of this writing is to recognize the merit of the masculine self and display of masculine characteristics; it is acknowledgment of duality. From imbalance is birthed excess, of course, so allowing both masculine and feminine to exist in whatever capacity is natural to the self brings balance, and thus, truth.
I'm convinced the eleventh commandment went something like this:
And God said, "Thou shalt keepeth thine orifices well-kempt, because nobody likes a jungle snatch,"
But Moses loved him some mouf, so he omitted it from the tablet.
And I would totally grow an epic beard if I could. Like Gandalf. He was a rugged fothermucker imo.