On Eavesdropping

To paraphrase Oscar Wilde (I think), the first duty in public conversation is to be as boring as possible. Nobody has figured out what the second duty is yet.

I can't remember the last time I overheard people talking--in a coffee shop, in a bar, in a restaurant, without wishing I could stop overhearing it. The stories people tell go on forever, seemingly without end, with details that go on forever without adding to the story. A story about someone else's camping trip unfolds in what feels like real time. A cat that lived at the campsite came into their tent. A girl in the tent was allergic to cats. Sniffling occurred. The cat kept coming in. The night passed. Morning arrived. The group went hiking. A list of things they saw is recited, in order, without any real elaboration or poetry. We saw this. And then we saw that. As if all life were prosaic.

I'll stop there. I can't help wondering if the past 15-20 years of living in what is, essentially, a surveillance state, has created a society where we have internalized the idea that we need to watch what we say in public. Americans have, in the words of Bush Press Secretary, Ari Fleischer "watch what they say, watch what they do" in the wake of 9/11. Maybe it would be more accurate, and more fair, to talk about people's fear, rather than their boredom. The fear of being exposed--as a social/political/cultural deviant--creates the need to be as bland as possible. We live in outwardly bland, conformist times, surrounded by bland architecture, bland fashions, bland culture, bland language. And yet our private lives are marked by deviance. Consider the ubiquity of internet porn, or drug use. I live in a town of approx. 125,000 people, and this town has more sex shops than book stores, more paraphernalia shops than record stores, but nobody talks about sex or drugs in public spaces. We can hear people talk endlessly about Game of Thrones (well, I can't, not a fan), but we can't hear them talk about all the fucking in Game of Thrones, or all the violence. That kind of talk isn't fit for public consumption. I don't know. Maybe it's the cultural gentrification, bougie people wanting to participate in music/film/art/etc. that they used to look down on.

I just think any time there's a profound disconnect between your private self (hedonistic, freer) and your public self (repressed, polite to a fault) you're creating a conflict that's going to be hard to resolve, a split consciousness of the self that becomes a hyper-self-consciousness which can only breed anxiety when one ventures out into a public space.

You can feel free to draw your own conclusions about the need for medication, self, prescription, and otherwise that would be necessary in order to live such a life.