Interchangeable Parts
I’ve fallen out of the habit of writing.
And I’m typing more than ever. But sending replies or initiating requests through email is not the writing I am referring to.
I’m not even referring to the articles I am writing for my new newspaper job. I mean the sort of writing that requires me to sit down and reflect, to let sentences carve their own path forward in my thinking. The sort of writing that moves in circles, not lines.
I am convinced that these different kinds of writing are not interchangeable. Just like you can’t replace the feeling of turning pages in a book with the feeling of clicking pages on a screen.
We’re not asked to think about what is irreplaceable often. We’re far more interested, as busy as we all are, in interchangeable parts.
Something will always replace a habit.
I know this from experience.
I suffer from addiction.
This is not the same as being addicted to something.
If addiction is just compulsive behavior, then we’re all addicted to something. Who doesn’t want to watch the next episode of a thrilling Netflix series when it starts playing over the credits of the last episode we watched?
To suffer from addiction is something different. It is to suffer from the mechanisms of self-deception.
I know a lot of people who are hooked on nicotine, for example.
I don’t know as many people whose mind will convince them that switching from smoking cigarettes to chewing tobacco means they are not hooked on nicotine. I remember swearing off Jagermeister at one point as if that could prove I’m not addicted to alcohol.
While substances are interchangeable, our habits are not. They form deeper patterns in our behavior. And while the parts may change (switching out one form of tobacco for another, for example) it is the same engine.
The concept of interchangeable parts began on the assembly line, when manufacturers could produce more things with less cost. The generation before the assembly line experienced a shift toward specialization of labor. Sophisticated economies require people to become experts at specific tasks. And the line created a system where each worker contributes expertise to create the best quality product in the shortest amount of time.
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenidies is a great literary account of the effect of this kind of manufacturing on the human personality. For further reading, I would also pick up Ralph Waldo Emerson’s The American Scholar which described the dangers in believing that you are what you make.
Or you can just take it from me: human beings do not have interchangeable parts.
We are not built on an assembly line.
No one product resembles another.
The experience of life has no factory reset.
There is no true baseline for how you should feel when something happens.
But technology continues to conform us. Specialization, nowadays, occurs in the form of preference. Our likes are logged. We think we are choosing the content, but the content is choosing us. It is choosing us with an increasing specialization of interest.
My spotify account paired with the cataloging capability of Google (capital G) now knows my mood and the music to match it before I have the time to make some coffee and collect myself. To quote Emerson, “It moves too fast.”
You cannot summate a personality in an algorithm. The dangers are clear.
We are more than 0s and 1s.
But there are complex systems in place to departmentalize our believes and preferences, to put us in one corner or the other.
And when you’re pinned, you get angry. When you are pinned, you get defensive. The only way out of a corner is by swinging.
I think this explains most of the anger I’ve experienced during quarantine.
Because I am using technology at an alarming rate, I am exposed to the manifold of systems attempting to get to know me according to my preferences. Knowing which candidate you are more likely to vote for or which coffee pot you are more likely to brew from is not that interesting to me.
What I want to know about is the first time you experienced tears of joy or the last time you looked someone in the eyes and knew exactly what they were thinking. I want to hear about the things that keep you up at night. I want to know what you are doing today to try and be a better I person tomorrow.
I want to fight. But I don’t want to fight to make the opinions I prefer more widely accepted. I want to fight to understand you. Where did you come from? Where do you want to go? How do you plan on getting there?
Let me come clean.
I sat down to write a post because I couldn’t understand where all my anger has been coming from recently. I am at home with my family—all the time. This is unquestionably my best life. I am blessed and fortunate to watch my children grow as I care for and protect them every day. When my youngest—she’s 10 months—looks at me and smiles, I am filled with the single greatest feeling I have ever experienced as a human being. And nowadays I have the ability to watch her eyes all day long. So why all the anger?
I can best explain the difference between people and things using the movie Her. Have you seen it? Actor Joaquin Phoenix’s character experiences a love affair with his new operating system, a system that, through voice response integration, thrills him like never before. Samantha, the system, acts like an antidote for the boring drudgery of his workaday life, a life where most every challenge has transformed into a comfort. He grows to love Samantha in a very personal way. But then he finds out the truth. There are thousands of Samanthas. Each system is identically providing a unique experience for its user, and using each user’s experience to enhance the experience of the next user. He feels betrayed. All this time, he was being used.
It’s hard to convert most of the daily living functions without feeling a little used too.
So, I hope you read this, knowing no cookies were baked to serve you this post. And I hope that we can use the space to get to know each other better, if remotely.
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It’s good to read you! I’ve missed your posts.
Ya Bruddah M.. Could heard dat… sponsoring a surfer so kind of into his life over mine till….. Yess! I hear you! I’ll feed Gpurrs in a minute! I’m trying to focus and write something here…I love you too. Yes I’ll do it! Just give me like 5 minutes. I’m almost done. GPURRS! PUT A CORK IN IT !
My old DECEAST friend DJ introduced me once as someone who could really sling the lingo. Never understood what he meant, was afraid to ask. What if it meant I was a blabbering idiot? Did I talk like I was writing a folk song? Every line mattered? what.. Everybody knows what..
Yep..Yes. I am a doodler. With a keyboard. Up and trudging another misunderstood road.. The survivor with an uneducated alter ego. Celebrating an everchanging diversity that leaves no debate. I am all things to all people. A good boy, a very good boy.
Bobbing and weaving the internet worlds arsenal of cockeyed thoughts. “cockeyed” he ha.. Seeking safety by fleeing back home to my own image of immaturity. The self serving security of sarcasm. They’re all screwed up in a fun way.
My glass has a defective hole from the factory, it’s never full. I must drink quickly. I must keep moving.
I get hurt. I retaliate with a different approach. Sending a signal over my shoulder, always misunderstood as I exit the back door picking deflated positive affirmations out of my hair.. At the least the negativity is grounding my delusion. I know how to act when I’m acting positive. I’m running away for the exercise .
I’ve been looking for a new place to open the petcock “petcock” (cough)..Intherooms.com is like being Shakes the Clown at a Bank of Naples sponsored any addictions recovery event. These are some serious catered finger foods!
So.. time for my own site I guess. I’ve been putting it off since my crash 10 years ago. Obviously I’ve used up my welcome with the local boys. Hope I can count on you to post there when you can.
Great post thanks for the read.
Sherp – I always appreciate when your internet journey stops by this old blog. Your thoughts spin and jerk and tugg and always make me laugh and think more about the post.
Surfer boys need sobriety too! Lol. I hope your finger foods include scallops wrapped in bacon. Those are my favorite delicacy. I haven’t heard about your crash before. Want to write about it?
Scallops wrapped in bacon. Absolutely. Had them the other night at a place called Gordi’s Fish and Steak in Lincoln New Hampshire. They were very good but the Pasta House in Fairhaven Massachusetts has the best. They’re served with a bacon jam that holds the memory of the dining experience together.
HOLY CRAP! ANTS!
With the unknown fear of tiny ants closing in, I murdered them. They drank the glass cleaner. Tiny ants everywhere on a white tile countertop resembling an aerial view of the Jamestown massacre.
Fortunately they didn’t get to my ” try to be the person your cat thinks you are” birthday coffee mug. I looked closely, the coffee was untouched. Grateful, I left the crime scene and sat down to write for a few. Knowing my complete washdown, my overhaul of the kitchen awaits before Dana gets up and sees the carnage..
I had completed my morning meditation with a few positive posts on a recovery site and felt good about it. I am prone to want others to selfishly pay for how I feel about myself so when I am spiritually strong it shows and when I’m not? I’m looking to take hostages. Today I’m strong, I feel good in spite of my rough start.
Dana offered to take me to breakfast last night before bed. I was curious why she was so nice. Oh she’s nice anyway sure but to get up early and go out to breakfast like a willing peace corp volunteer? Sunday morning before 9? Not the norm really. Maybe had to do with her spending the day with her family yesterday. A visit to dysfunction junction where the train of circumstance can easily jump track..
Yikes! I notice the ants have found the fresh Newman’s Own organic cat food in Gpurrs’ dish. Apparently they don’t like it either.
Ok…Maybe they’re coming up through the sink drain tunnel? Un documented ants hoping for the holy grail, the Thomas’s english muffin bag with a sloppy twist tie…Crumbs under the toaster oven? Maybe it’s simply a battalion of soldiers split up to recon the inside from under the pool side patio bricks?
Well.. I suppose I’ll need some death spray. Instant Lou Gehrig disease. I feel a bit guilty with my coexist sticker. I seem to pick and choose who or what I coexist with? Something wrong there. I think it’s that whole “we talked of intolerance while intolerant ourselves” thing. Anyway, I’m off to it whatever it is. The life I know a whole lot of nothing about awaits my return. After all? Be kind rewind. I was here yesterday.
Great post – nice to see you again!
Hi Mark, thanks so much for this. I cringe when I hear the whole “machine metaphor” for humans–interchangeable parts. I have been giving the following thought experiment to my students the last few years: here is what a human body is made of–and the cost: 99% of the mass of the human body consists of six elements: oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus. They are worth about $576. All the other elements taken together are worth only about $9 more. If I give you the chemicals from the lab can you make a human for me?
Sometimes the whole is much greater than the sum of its parts–and that means those parts are not interchangeable. So much more to say on this topic but not enough time–thanks–just great.
Childish and foolish, this is the board of children. Ungrateful friends, and judgmental hypocrites, not to mention liars.
And Cowards.
no one takes the time to make a blog and bitch openly about someone they don’t care about.
No disrespect intended, have you ever thought about just talking to the guy and maybe your not right??
Sounds like your kid is pretty awesome, sounds like from what you describe Hes pretty lost. Maybe you don’t know the truth yourself.
Sometime one thing can appear to be what it isn’t, sometmebyour just lucky.
Amazing writing. Worth the wait every time. Like a wake up call to notice. Thank you.
Very early in recovery, I was asked to write a love letter to wine. Kinda like ‘Red red wine, your so fine.’ I shook my head at the stupidity of the exercise, but then again I bawked at everything I was asked to do. But I complied, and as I wrote, I am deeply shamed to report, the feelings of love whelmed up as I wrote down my feelings, my story. Way more love there for wine that for my wife, for my children. I saw it for the first time, how integrated into my life alcohol had become. There were other occasions in early recovery that also showed me that I needed help to rewrite my narrative, to change the core stuff I had believed was true. It’s work, this facing of self and finding the courage to go through. I have gratitude for the many who showed me the way. Gratitude for that Spark of light, deep in my core, that beckoned, that called to me.
Loved this post, filled me with memory and gratitude, helped push down the fears of day to day life, find the courage to face another day. Knowing we do this together.