Saturday, July 04, 2020
Autonomous-Zoned Roommates
(A video version of this essay can be found on YouTube).
During college I had, at one point, lived in a house with four roommates. Most were nice people and some became good friends. They were sane and decent. They paid their bills, compromised on issues regarding the home environment, and were respectful of the fact that there were other people living under the same roof with them.
Since there was a total of five people living in the house, some would move on at some point. It probably wasn’t completely surprising that there was always one person who was ...insane, rude, selfish, and generally troublesome.
I’m a pretty neat and organized person. I like an environment that’s comfortable and pleasant to the senses. I prefer peace, quiet, beauty, and order over, turbulence, noise, messiness, and chaos. That’s just me. I don’t care how others choose to live. A lot of people don’t share my views of living in a pleasant environment — or country(!).
You could, I suppose, call one’s predicament living with the less-refined, an encounter with a kind of “multi-culturalism.” Everyone has a personal culture regardless of whatever social or ethnic group they may belong to. When you visit the neighbor’s house, you temporarily visit another culture. They “do things different over there.” That’s all fine. As someone with a strong libertarian bias, I don’t really care how other people choose to live. My views change however when a “culture” very different from my own, one with attributes I don’t particularly like, is imposed upon me.
I’m reminded of my encounter with the individual “cultures” of former roommates as I ponder the insurgent enclave in Seattle, now known as “CHOP” — an institution which has finally been closed down after weeks of filth, chaos, and turmoil (including violence and a few murders). ‘ ‘Disneyland for spoiled brats masquerading as social justice rebels.
If one didn’t confine their perceptions to what CNN and other establishment news reporters were telling us, CHOP appeared to be populated by a lot of people who were similar to that roommate most sane people were not comfortable around — rude, selfish, and sketchy. A lot of drug addicts, alcoholics, and victims of mental illness, as well as the usual freaks harboring pathological hatred for their parents. The type of people you see in avant-guard coffee shops. Unbathed white guys with dreadlocks (culturally appropriated from other suburban pseudo-rebels). They steal your food (because they believe in “sharing”), they pay their share of the bills late — if at all. They completely ruin the environment for everyone while musing about their superior compassion and empathy for the underprivileged. The whole time, they convey their feelings of victimization from your simple desire to have some semblance of peace and order.
When I remember the kitchen microwave encrusted with eons of exploding Lasagna or looked for my portion of butter that the creepy roommate “shared” (with themself), I immediately recognized the inhabitants of the former “autonomous zone” in Seattle. Slobs are soft imperialists. While touting their credentials as “progressives,” they manage to spill their unkempt chaos and dirt into your path while assuming that you should savor their values and conditions.
The controversial Canadian psychologist, Jordan Peterson, notes in his overview of personality types that there are people who naturally prefer order and those who strive for a perpetual lack of equilibrium. On the plus side, this can be called, “openness.” There is no standard in nature that determines one perspective to be “better” than another but it’s reasonable that such people would not prefer to be forced into each others company for an extended period. This isn’t “fascism” but a reasonable tendency for people to want to be around like minded people. We don’t don’t chastise a hippy for avoiding recreational environments frequented by lawyers and upscale business people. We don’t look down upon someone using a dating service and stating their preferences for “XY and Z” and not their polar opposites.
None of what I’ve noted is meant to be a commentary on police brutality or injustices that Black citizens have encountered in our history. The Seattle autonomous zone was initially a product of protests against individual instances of black citizens killed at the hand of police officers — which, in spite of media hype and leftist propaganda, is actually remarkably rare.
Like any movement that progresses (no pun intended) into mob action, the result has diverged from the initial issue. So it is that Black Lives Matter was initially a justified response to cases of obvious injustice. Like so many “movements,” it has now become just another highly funded established organization with celebrities and corporate giants playing lip service and homage to its title. To read its leaders’ take on what they represent, it can accurately be labeled a Marxist movement (their self-description) with a host of demands that differ considerably from a mere desire to rectify problems in the criminal justice system. Like any Marxist (communist) movement, the result of their “revolutionary” fervor would be to enslave all of society to an overbearing state with equally distributed destitution and considerably energy directed at punishing anyone that would dare oppose the “new world” they imagined they were creating. Any past comments made that differed from their stated goals would subject one to severe punishment, imprisonment, or death.
More than a few budding tyrants in CHOP’S psychopathic mix had made references to the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror. Others simply promised violence and retribution if their “demands are not met.”
Like many among the pampered rabble, self-styled “revolutionaries” are on a mission to impose their lack of consideration on us all and force us into a commune with compulsory membership where we have to endure chaos, declining standards of living, lack of freedom, and enforced affiliation with the worst of “roommates.”
Living standards....matter.
Justice means never having to say you’re sorry for things you never did, and freedom means living in an environment of your choosing.
