I once watched a movie with the famed rapist and actor James Dean, it was called “Rebel Without A Cause”. The plot revolved around a stylish high school rebel who ironically was not much of a rebel. He wore a leather jacket but was morally rather Puritanical. He semi-killed a guy and then wanted to confess to the police, but his parents said he shouldn’t. His friend was nicknamed Plato. So basically he was an emotional teenage Socrates in a leather jacket. I forget how it ended, I think an innocent member of a visible minority got shot and 1950s American society was restored to it’s natural equilibrium. But as I sit here ‘wallowing in my own obesity’ (a phrase I used alot in high school) I wonder how rebelious James Dean was in said film. He was fairly rebellious to stand up for some kind of Aristotelian virtue ethics in a Utilitarian world. Anyway, I was thinking, who are we ‘supposed to be’, according to our culture.
I think there’s two simple answers to this much asked question:
1. the american dream – young, healthy, optimistic, attractive, successful – be all those things, live in suburbia, etc.
2. the anti-american dream – young, healthy, rebellious, attractive, independent. – this would be the “Into the Wild” type of thing where the young man goes off on his motorcycle and fights “the man” and “society”.
Those are the people you “Should” be.
But what kind of a person “Shouldn’t” you be? Here’s my list
-Ugly and/or Fat and content with it
-Disabled
-Opinionated
-Pessimistic
-Lazy
-Awkward
-Insane
Imagine Louis Anderson in a wheelchair with the multiple personalities of Rush Limbaugh, Whoopie Goldberg, and the Wrestler Goldberg.
and you could add Jewish to the list, because apparently everyone I know (except me) hates Jews.
And then I looked in the mirror and realized that i’m alot of the things nobody likes. So I was thinking I should start a club or something of unwanted hated people. But they’d all hate each other so much that it’d be problematic. But it could be called like “The Corpulant Fraternity of Lost Souls” and we could wear capes and stuff, and wallow in our numerous faillures and social flaws.
CFLS wants You!