September 23rd, 2005

You know what kids these days are strangely obsessed with? "Owning" others. This includes taking pictures of themselves holding their testicles against the face of their drunk and passed-out buddies (thereby "owning" them) or, in Internet terms, breaking the security of a website and replacing home pages with new ones and writing somewhere on the page, "I own you."

Fine, whatever.

What they are doing is putting into words something that is a concept as old as social structure itself. Here's something I wrote the other day in a slightly different context:

Everyone wants to dominate someone or something. Even if it is just one's own little world or one's self. Everyone feels threatened by the prospect of being dominated by anyone or anything in any sense. We are such helpless creatures and we can normally live our little lives convincing ourselves that we are in control of them and a bit of other peoples' as well ... and when something comes along that challenges our perceptions, or reminds us of how powerless we really are, we are at our worst. We are dangerous ... we need to find someone or something to dominate.

Well, I think I overstated it a little with all those absolute statements. But I think the basic tenet remains true. Especially painful for us lucky white Western people to have to hear is that we are not Masters of our Own Destinies, despite what we may think ... or spend our lives trying painfully hard to believe. We can fall from grace no matter how righteously we think we live, or no matter how carefully we plan for disasters social, physical, or intellectual. The truth is that we are just as susceptible to the blowing winds as the Fall leaves are.

You know you can see this in so many little ways: A man in front of me at the hockey game refuses to sit down because I asked him to ... You roll an army into a country to control it, and the people go underground, surfacing only long enough to perform unspeakably horrible things to "the enemy" and fellow citizens alike ... People speed up when they are behind you in traffic and slow down when they are in front of you—and you probably do the same with others.

Or how about this study: A telephone booth was observed in an urban area for several weeks. The average time of telephone calls was compiled under the following two scenarios: 1) With people waiting to use the phone, 2) Without people waiting to use the phone. The resultant data clearly indicated that when someone was waiting to use the telephone booth, the length of the call increased by about 50%.

It's all about living our lives convinced that we are steering the course ourselves. And we really don't like the "pressure" from other people (who already represent competition for resources) when they remind us that we cannot do entirely as we please and take exactly all we want.

Hell, even our kids feel the burning sensation of needing to dominate: Even pesky ankle-tapping pain-in-the-ass shit-disturbing is an attempt at some form of control. And let's never forget that the bottom sometimes has the Real Power over the top ...

* * *

It's a thought for another rant, but there is an interesting conflict in all humans: We must huddle together for safety and strength, but we also must compete for resources. Just like wolves, worms, and warthogs.

No wonder we invented tribes.

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