The Raging Elitist

Dear Elite,

Of all the subelite shit that Christians cling to (western society’s foundational values, conservative social norms, a divine power greater than elitism, etc.), the historical accuracy of the Bible has got to be the absolute dumbest, and never is this particular form of idiocy more on display than Easter season. I mean the resurrection? Really, guys? Yeah, it says so in the Bible. Got it. The Bible is a book of material facts, and since we just celebrated the Easter Bunny and did egg hunts, now must be that time of year when zombie Jesus went around bragging about how he cheated death and busted out of his sealed tomb, showing himself off to all his disciples . . . all except Thomas that is. Thomas, as all we elites know, missed the disciple party when Jesus showed up, and when the others told him about it, he was all, “I don’t think so, bitches. Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe” (John 20:25). Despite this statement’s slight ring of necrophilia, you could say that Thomas was a bit of an elite hero, an empiricist who was committed to following the science. Like modern elites, he could never accept the blind testimony of idiots as representing historical fact. He knew that seeing is believing, that elites see and believe what truly is, and that therefore, to see is to know. The problem is that after Thomas swore allegiance to the certainty of the sensible world, that sub traitor saw Jesus and caved like a bitch, calling him “My Lord and my God!” (John 20: 28). Now, obviously, an elite would never make such a mistake, because we know from experience that until our scientists say otherwise, stuff that dies stays dead, but maybe two thousand years ago, they just hadn’t figured that out as well as we have now. Since we don’t yet have the power to go back in time and read Thomas’s mind, thereby seeing and knowing exactly what the fuck he was thinking, we have to rely on the next best thing to determine what might have happened to him and what it means as regards his would be elite status: logic. If Thomas was actually a subelite (which is the most likely case), we can discount whatever he says as utter bullshit; the tools of perception and language in the hands of a sub are like eating utensils in the hands of an infant in a high chair – worthless save for to make an obnoxious mess of whatever is presented them. If however, Thomas was an elite, then two possibilities remain. Either he saw the opportunity to benefit personally and decided to lie, in which case this story is one of the earliest instances of a kind of Trumpian misinformation designed to con the Christians, or he simply misperceived. It’s this last possibility, that of elite misperception, that interests me, because if to see is to know, how can we ever be wrong about what we see? I’m thinking of my wedding when my friend Dan ran up to our friend Stratton, beaming and shouting a happy greeting as he laid hands on maybe his oldest friend in the world only to realize, it wasn’t Stratton; it was some other tall guy with a beard. How the fuck could this have happened? We had all the ingredients for certainty – two elites in plain view of each other, and yet what we ended up with was a sort of asinine error. You would think this sort of thing would be exceptional, and yet, that very same day, Dan showed up to the ceremony wearing the navy blazer required of the groomsmen, having made another perceptual error: his blazer wasn’t navy. It was some other, lighter shade of blue. Does Dan not know what navy is? How can these apparently certain things be misconstrued and by an elite no less? What do these misperceptions say about our ability to be certain at all? Before we dive into the latest elite goings on, let’s try to address these questions and attempt to formulate some sort of theory that will satisfy our need for truth in this topsy-turvy world full of dumbs who would fully believe in the Easter Bunny if it were printed in the Bible.

Let’s begin with some theories that we know are wrong. Since certainty is our quest, certainty about the wrongness of others seems like a good place to begin. First of all, Christianity – let’s get this one out of the way. The Christians’ answer to the apparent difficulty of interpreting our sensible world is simply to deny it. I know Jesus resurrected himself, because it says so in the Bible, and that’s all the proof I need. It has got to be super convenient to not have to accept things that are apparently true, like dead things staying dead, based purely on religious dogmatism. Perhaps this ability to deny apparent truth explains the Christian right’s attraction to Trump. Not sure how they’d explain mistaking some random beardo for their best friend, but the beautiful thing is that they don’t have to; when in doubt, just pound the Bible. Similarly convenient is the idea of relativism, the rejection of absolute truth in favor of the Protagorean doctrine that whatever one man sees, so it is for him. Nothing is anything in itself, only what it becomes in the eye of the beholder. Taken in this light, beardo really was Stratton for Dan even as he was simultaneously someone else for me and became someone else for Dan in another instant. If everything truly is relative, there is no one Stratton, only an ever-changing bundle of sense data whose coming into existence depends upon the different perceivers it encounters, and the same thing applies to every other thing in the universe. This notion is slightly more interesting than religious dogma, but it’s also quite dumb on its face. For one thing, saying everything is relative is an assertion of an absolute truth, and while relativism has the attractive quality of dispensing with uncertainty by making everyone right about everything, it makes correctness a private event, which is really of no use to us. Someone else judges you to be wrong, and they’ll be right too? Fuck that. It’s not relative certainty that we crave; it’s absolute certainty. There is one thing about this whole relativism deal that I find somewhat irresistible, though, and it comes not from the relativity of correctness but the relativity of experience. In simple terms I’m saying that I agree that everyone’s perception is unique. Even our own perceptions are constantly evolving from moment to moment. One second a guy looks like Stratton; the next second he doesn’t. One second my kid is an angel; the next he’s an asshole. I perceive the world differently than anyone else, and over time, even small amounts of time, my own perception can dramatically change. The question is, which perception is the real thing? The Christian does away with the question by simply yelling mine! The Bible says so! while the relativist lounges on his dorm room bean bag chair surrounded by bong smoke and croaks all of them, man. We elites are a bit more thoughtful, a bit more mature. Our theory is this: we embrace the fact that there is not one perception of the world but infinite, even as it relates to the individual. As such, we embrace the notion of Heraclitian flux, that nothing ever is the same thing even for an instant but rather everything is in a constant state of becoming. Now, when taken to the extreme, the logical implication of this Heraclitian flow is that nothing is definable and language is meaningless¹, yet we maintain that the elite are able to transcend relativity, land upon absolute truth, and communicate it among other elites. How is this possible? Not with religion or relativism or even a weak-minded appeal to common sense that simply eschews the unseemly difficulty but with the Great Man, of course! Faced with an infinitely changing world where one man both is and isn’t Stratton, where one jacket both is and isn’t navy, where one kid both is and isn’t an asshole, the elite achieve knowledge a.k.a. certainty by sending the world’s flow of sense data all the way down to the Great Man within for processing and then retrieving it back to the surface in real time, i.e. as we continually interact with it. This simultaneous and ongoing occurrence of perception, processing, and retrieval that is necessary for the production of knowledge only occurs when the distorting elements of elite ego and other psychological complexes are kept off the internal information highway. In this way we achieve knowledge and the communication of it amid an infinitely changing world. It’s a bit like a surfer staying up on his board while simultaneously dropping down a wave and running on a treadmill. If it sounds impossible, that’s because it is, but infinitely self-aware elites like us eat impossible for breakfast, and I can prove it. If you’re afraid of math, and you’re bursting with anxiety to know what’s been happening around elite HQ, go ahead and skip the next paragraph. If, however, you can spare a moment in the name of absolute truth in an infinite universe of constant flux, allow me to introduce you to the theory of the Jim Carrey doors.

Originally formulated in response to the prevalence of subelite dickheads and basic bitches on social media proclaiming to live their “hashtag best lives,” the theory of the Jim Carrey doors explains how a desired outcome can be achieved in a universe of infinite possibilities. First, consider the likelihood that someone is living their “best life.” That means that at all times they are making exactly the right choice that will lead to the “best” outcome, because like certainty, “best” implies singularity. There aren’t multiple best lives. There is only one, and that one “best life” exists in an infinite sea of foregone other lives. To demonstrate the point, consider that as you read these words, you are foregoing an infinite number of other things that you could be doing. If you are living your “best life,” then reading these elite musings is the ultimate thing you could be doing right now. In other words your choice to read this elite mishmash of epistemology and ontology is the one and only correct choice. It doesn’t just look like Stratton; it is Stratton. It isn’t almost navy; it is navy. It’s the one true choice. What are the odds? I tell you that they are both zero and 100 percent and that they ride entirely on communion with the Great Man. Here’s how I know. Elites of a certain age will remember the movie The Truman Show, in which Jim Carrey gets duped by everyone into believing that his made for TV life that exists inside a giant dome is “real.” As the plot unfolds, our boy Jim’s doubt grows, and by the end we find him in a little sailboat courageously crossing the fake sea amid a storm whipped up by the demonic false god studio producer played by Ed Harris. Jimmy wants answers. He wants to know what’s out there. He wants the truth, goddammit! Well, after Ed Harris nearly kills him, his little vessel bumps up against the inner wall of the dome, and little Jimmy finds a door there. Ed Harris takes advantage of the PA and makes one last attempt at keeping our hero locked inside the dome, but Jimbo boldly opens the door to the unknown. I fucking love it. This guy has lived his entire life inside a manmade hell full of demons trying to trick him. A false god is speaking to him from on high and intentionally misleading him. He has no idea what’s on the other side of that door. The possibilities are absolutely infinite, yet he walks through it with conviction, knowing that it is the only correct choice. What a metaphor. Hashtag best life, indeed, but what if it wasn’t? What if when the pet detective walked through that door, he discovered that what was on the other side was actually worse than being in the dome, and to his horror the door behind him was shut forever. What if at this point Ed Harris got back on the PA and told him, “Sorry, Ace, if you want back in my dome, you’ll have to choose the correct door out of an infinite number of other doors, each of which have an infinite number of other sides.” Oh shit, you’re not Stratton. Now, we’ve arrived at the math. We elites know that the probability of selecting one correct or “best life” door out an infinite set of doors is exactly zero. This mathematical fact is illustrated by the equation p=1/∞=0.In case you need a refresher on precalculus, here is an explanation for why this is true. If you hold the “1” in the numerator constant and increase the number in the denominator, the value of the fraction approaches zero. Consider the series 1/2; 1/3; 1/4; 1/5; 1/6, and you should see what I mean. Now, if the number in the denominator is infinitely large, then the value of the fraction actually is zero, which means that the odds of Liar Liar finding his way back into the dome are exactly nil, as are our odds of living our best life when we could be doing an infinite number of other things besides read these words, as are our odds of finding absolute truth a.k.a. certainty in a world of infinite change. Cue the red-eyed college freshman mid bong hit: I told you so, man. Yes, you did, little bitch boy, but simply by deploying your own relativist bullshit theory, we can say that you are wrong, and we would be right about it. Moreover, we weren’t finished with the proof yet. In this scenario in which Jim Carrey is now faced with infinite doors and must choose the one and only best life door, the total probability of all the doors must equal 1, i.e. 100 percent. Such is the nature of probability. That means that the probability of each door added together must equal 100 percent, i.e. p(a)+p(b)+p(c) . . . =1, where p(a) is the probability of one door, p(b) the probability of the next, p(c) the next, and on and on into infinity. Ok, now let’s apply this property to all the non-best-life doors. Each one of them has a probability of zero, because they are all one in a set of infinite doors (p=1/∞=0). Add up all their probabilities, and it comes to zero, so the chance of JC selecting any of the non-best-life doors is zero, which means his chance of selecting the best life door is given by the equation p=1-0=1 or 100 percent. This is the mathematical representation of why what is impossible for a subelite (hasthag best life, absolute truth in a world of infinite flux) is inevitable for an elite. Where the sub gets rag-dolled by all the brutal waves of deception in an infinite sea, the elite perpetually drops down the face of the one true wave at the same time as he types up a philosophical blog with one hand and sips a piña colada from the other. Where the sub is misled by his pathetically cloying ego and myriad other foul complexes into selecting a false door, the elite clears the information highway of such debris, thereby allowing communion with the divine being at his core, the being we know as the Great Man, who guides said elite to the one true door. If you’re one of those feeble-brained relativists saying that you could apply the same mathematical proof to any of the other infinite doors, yes, that is correct; however, we elites don’t care about all the wrong doors. We’re only interested in the probability of discovering the one true door, the one that leads Dumb and Dumber to the eternal sunshine of his heart’s desire, the one that reveals the divine thread that weaves all infinite change together into one thing, the one thing that allows us to reach down into our souls and communicate with one another exactly and correctly. You say impossible; I say unstoppable, and by your own reasoning, I must be right, and you must be wrong, so pipe down and let the adults talk. Now, since as far as we know, time doesn’t stop, and each tiny moment of time is infinitely divisible into even tinier moments, to stay upright on the surfboard, an elite must be forever choosing the one true Jim Carrey door in order to remain in the world of absolute truth and avoid the disorienting tumble into the sea of illusion and despair. If that sounds slightly more daunting than the mere task of choosing correctly a single time, take heart at the fact that your odds always remain the same, totally independent of all the wrong choices you may make. At every moment, your odds of choosing the right door and popping back up on the board are simultaneously zero and 100 percent. Now, with this insanely long build up completed, I would like to thank you elite readers for your patience and to regale you with the story of the week of the springtime baby’s fifth birthday, during which time I mostly attempted to remain calm and hold my breath while getting rag-dolled.

The story begins at the Restaurante Vallarta at the corner of Washington and Berckman’s Road in Augusta on the Thursday of the Masters. With a head full of sinus infection, and prednisone and azithromycin coursing through my veins, I trudged up the final hill of the day alongside Danyelle to where the minivan sat waiting. A few hours earlier, after two U-turns in traffic and a failed attempt at gaining the sympathy of the attendants outside one of the free lots, we had luckily driven into the restaurant parking lot just as an oversized truck was leaving, backed into the only vacant spot, and been greeted by a stout waiter who informed us in a thick accent that “I need fifty dollars.” Now, after lugging a sinus infection around for miles in the heat and failing to have made it to the designated meeting spot with Dad on time, we climbed into the minivan, and the phone rang. It was Mom, calling from our home in Mount Pleasant where she was watching the kids. José the carpenter, who was there building a new fence in the back and making what we thought was a small, cosmetic repair in the patio area (the project that never ends), had discovered rotten wood underneath the newly installed windows. It would seem that the window and siding company that had done a job for us a year ago may have gipped us. Our Masters trip was off to an inauspicious beginning. An expensive phone call to José’s boss mid dinner at T-Bonz ensued. Four days later on Monday morning, we pulled back into the driveway at home. We’d survived Augusta, scoliosis pain, sinus infection, sleep deprivation, evenings spent with my father and his oft combustible wife, all of it. Thanks Big Pharma and delta 8 loophole for all your help. Sick, aching all over, and exhausted, it was time to reunite with the kids, but first, I needed to talk to José. Around the side of the house and into the courtyard I went. There, I found one whole exterior wall without siding, and I listened as José attempted to explain to me what was the problem, what he felt needed to be done, and what our options were. Over the next 24 hours, I recovered from the guilt, shame, and disgust I felt at having allowed the previous crew to take advantage of me; I coordinated with José’s vacationing boss to approve the necessary repairs; and I learned how to effectively communicate with José. For the remainder of the week, elite HQ was filled with the sounds of nail guns, pry bars, and power saws. Welcome home! Adding to my sense of rag-dollish powerlessness, my elite sinus infection required a second round of antibiotics, this time of the four-pill-a-day, ten-day variety instead of the one-pill-a-day, five-day kind, and the springtime baby’s birthday approached. Saturday was the day. Somewhere in the deep the Great Man waited patiently as the infinite sea of randomness and deception roared overhead. Stay calm. The true door will reveal itself.

Elite surfers and body surfers alike will understand what I mean by being rag-dolled. It’s when a wave takes you under and slams you toward the ocean floor. For what feels like a very long moment that only gets longer the bigger the wave is, you are transformed into a rag doll. It’s really the best description there is. There’s nothing you can do to fight the power of the wave as it tosses you about beneath the surface, disorienting you completely. Even for those of us with experience, it can be unnerving. Really, all you can do is try to protect your head and fight against panic until you’re released. What makes it worse is that it’s not like you had time to prepare and suck in a big breath beforehand. You might be down there on empty. With José’s infernal racket pounding against my eardrums all day, an annoyingly persistent sinus infection swimming around inside my head, and a 5-year-old birthday party at an arcade with a bunch of acquaintances looming, I was reaching the point of desperation when you think, “I’m gonna need to come up for air pretty soon.” That’s when my phone lit up and buzzed from its station on the kitchen counter. It was Matt, my best friend from high school, texting: “Hey bitch you around this weekend?”

Honestly, I would prefer for my friends to see me dropping down the face of the monster wave of truth while simultaneously juggling my wife and kids as if they weighed the same as tennis balls as opposed to beaten down by a sea of randomness and harboring an evil sinus infection. It just rarely seems to work out that way. The next day, Friday, after pulling two three-point turns on Broad Street during peak traffic with Danyelle vocalizing her displeasure with my driving from the passenger seat, and the kids making all kinds of noise in the back, I had to look at the street numbers to reorient myself and remember which fucking way Matt’s parents’ house was. This is the house where I spent nearly every other weekend from the age of 12 to 18, yet somehow in my exhausted state, I still managed to get lost for a fleeting moment. The Great Man was still holding his breath down below. It’s worth noting that Matt’s parents’ house, a.k.a. the Broad Street Mansion, is probably the coolest house I’ve ever been in. Set way back off the street and shielded by a massive grand oak, you’d never know it was there if you were just passing by. Matt’s mom took the boys to the deck upstairs that overlooks the sprawling garden in front while Danyelle and I talked to Matt below. She told them it was a tree house. Cartter, elite halfling that he is, was skeptical. I’m not sure how many years it had been since I walked up the steps to the bedrooms on the second floor in that house, but as I did, it was like stepping back in time. Some furniture was different, but the Broad Street Mansion and the people who lived therein, were exactly the same. Yes, there had been some updates, and yes everyone had aged, but through all of the unstoppable change, some unalterable truth remained, the impish carrot-topped kid who befriended me as a seventh grader, his quick-witted father always with a gleaming smirk in his eye ready for a laugh, his kind-hearted mother ready to take care of everybody. Standing around with this cast of characters in the Broad Street Mansion, a former refuge for my tortured teen self, the wave that had been rag-dolling me seemed to be about to dissipate. Then, Cartter pooped in their downstairs guest bathroom, and we excused ourselves to go to dinner.

There was still some breath holding to go before the inevitable pop up back onto the board of truth. That night Cartter had nightmares, because Matt had apparently told him there were ghosts in the mansion’s attic; tension rose as we prepared to go to the springtime baby’s party at the arcade and fun park the next morning; and the knowledge of a later meet up with my friend and the need to perform was near the front of my mind. Turns out that the venue was actually an amazing idea by Danyelle. Not that we will ever do it again, but as far as awkward little kid birthday parties go, this was the best one I ever went to. Everyone was free to roam the whole time, we kept the pizza and cupcake eating gathering in the little side room to a minimum, and people were generally happy and very friendly. Go figure. Still, after navigating the arcade scene, sitting through the Super Mario Brothers movie (which was the height of mediocrity), and listening to my tired kids whine on the car ride home, I was ready to escape. I texted Matt “free.” He sent me a picture of our mutual high school friend Ben, and I said “What are you two doing? I need to get the hell out of here.”

Two hours was all it took. I broke a lengthy period of abstinence from alcohol (because of the sinus infection) and had three beers knowing that later I would suffer indigestion due to the antibiotics. I didn’t care. Among the things that the three of us discussed were an acquaintance of Matt committing suicide the day before after said acquaintance’s wife had called a friend to come over because the guy was acting weird (Matt promised to punch me right in the dick if he ever got a call like that); suits that had been required of us as groomsmen and Dan’s odd choice to wear not navy at mine and Danyelle’s wedding; and occasional weed-induced panic attacks highlighting the guilt and shame swirling beneath the level of regular consciousness. “It makes you a better person,” said Ben. Ah, respite. As I drove up onto the Ravenel bridge back towards Mount Pleasant, Maurice Ravel’s Valses Nobles et Sentimentales for solo piano playing through the speakers, the sky darkening from pink to purple, I felt myself walk through the ultimate Jim Carrey door and drop down the face of the wave of absolute truth. Twice I’d visited my friend down for an impromptu visit, even braving his parents’ house with my family in tow; I’d endured stimulus overload at the springtime baby’s party and acted like a sociable adult; I’d managed the situation with José; the Masters was in the books, and I actually went the whole weekend without pissing off George (Dad’s wife); I’m pretty sure I actually made her feel better while I was there. My sinuses were still infected, but the rag-dolling was over for the moment. The real medicine I’d been needing was a few beers with Matt and Ben. That’s what sent me through the one true door again.

With that story of my most recent privileged struggle now told, I have a final parting shot for the Christians who would argue that for the resurrection to mean anything, it must be interpreted as a physical, material, not symbolic resurrection. It seems a shame to me that you, who would attest to have some special attunement to the spiritual world, would be so committed to shutting it out. If all the disciples had been visited by the same dream of Jesus after the crucifixion, would that not have been a miracle? If you and your family were all visited by the same dream one night, would you not suspect something real was afoot? If you really believe that the material world in which we live is subordinate to the spiritual realm, why are you so hell bent on its greater importance and reality in this matter of the resurrection? I’m afraid that you might be knocking on the wrong Jim Carrey door and missing your chance at real communion with the divine. To this point, I’ve borrowed the following passage from Jung: “Christians often ask why God does not speak to them, as he is believed to have done in former days. When I hear such questions, it always makes me think of the rabbi who was asked how it could be that God often showed himself to people in the olden days while nowadays nobody ever sees him. The rabbi replied: ‘Nowadays there is no longer anybody who can bow low enough.’ This answer hits the nail on the head. We are so captivated by and entangled in our subjective consciousness that we have forgotten the age-old fact that God speaks chiefly through dreams and visions.”² Wait, so you’re saying that our conscious experience of the world is subjective and therefore relative and that a deeper truth dwells beneath the surface in the depths of our souls? Sounds like a pretty Christian idea. Sadly, as regards Easter season and the symbolism of the resurrection, the modern Christian’s response to this argument from Jung would probably go something like nuh uh, that’s not what the Bible says. What a shame. I guess you don’t believe in the Jim Carrey doors either, huh? Well, I tell you it is written in the pages of The Raging Elitist, and therefore it must be true. Hush now, ye of little faith, while I give you my testimony. As I swilled beer and talked of drug use on the patio outside of Ben’s apartment, I felt myself able to breathe again as the wave of disbelief subsided, and driving home to my family that evening I passed through the one true Jim Carrey door. An invisible force led me to it, something you can’t see or smell or hear or taste or touch, but I swear to you it exists! It is something more powerful than even your belief in the Easter Bunny, I mean God, something with the power to save! Would you believe there is such a thing as this power that I call friendship? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.³

References

1. For a more in depth analysis of the deterioration of infinite flux into meaninglessness, see Plato’s Thaetetus.
2. Jung, C.G. Man and His Symbols. Dell Publishing, 1961. Pg 92.
3. Those are Jesus’s words to doubting Thomas in the book of John, but you already knew that.