Happy Birthday, Lizard King. Jim Morrison turns 71 this week.
We’ve come to realize that there’s nothing a woman hates more than an arrogant know-it-all. Guys can banter back and forth about ‘expert’ opinion, no matter what the subject, and even bond with each other while doing so.
Women, however, immediately grow suspicious of “experts” in the flesh. Women tend to be defensive about their intellectual clout to start with, and when ‘expert opinion’ is thrust upon them by their friends, they grow impatient very quickly.
To make up for this, however, women tend to grovel before “experts” validated by other “experts;” women, no matter how brash and cynical they are to their friends, cannot resist authority speaking from the pulpit of social acceptance: Mainstream Entertainment, Media, Publishing, Politics, and Institutions toy effortlessly with their souls and minds.
If they’ve seen it in a mainstream, well-reviewed movie with a major star, or two, or have read it in a mainstream book, or seen it in any sort of widely desseminated context, a woman is certain it is true, and whoever attempts to contradict it in person is simply an asshole.
There will always be these two levels of human life: the personal one, in which non-experts make decisions and choices about everything under the sun: how to perform every imaginable task, how much credence to give absolutely everything, the proper way to speak, to hate, to love, to laugh, to judge, and do dishes, and then the public one, in which every area is owned and contained by experts and professionals: no decisions here; this is where existence plays out in its inevitable manner.
Both realms, it is understood, are complicated and ephemeral and ever-changing, but for many, especially the constantly irritated woman, these realms are enormously different.
One, the private realm without expert-police, where you and I live our daily lives, is where the know-it-all wriggles free of all higher authority, sometimes in triumph, sometimes in humiliation, censorship, rebuke, and shame, as the humble and obedient watch either indifferently, or in pain, or in shame, or in horror.
The other, the public realm, is where the mainstream expert-police prosper, passing judgment smoothly and from on high. This is where the obedient sagely nod their heads, buying into the higher expert-wisdom—even if it makes as much sense as a homeless person rant on the back of a bus.
Some feel that all opinion, all knowledge, all wisdom, should come to us from the public expert-realm, and that mere private citizens, people in our orbit, our family and friends, may cite expert-sources, but they may not produce, intuit, or proffer any original ideas of their own; nor may friends cite experts too thoroughly—in such a way that makes them appear to be a “know-it-all.”
The key word here is “appear,” for all opinion lives in the world of appearances, and ‘being smart,’ when it comes to words—and opinions formed by words—is purely a matter of appearance—and this is true whether the opinion is offered by a non-expert friend speaking to us privately, or a “true” expert in the field speaking to millions.
The annoyance with a ‘know-it-all’ friend stems not from doubting the opinion itself, but from the work necessary to determine whether the opinion is true, or not. The far-away expert cannot help us during the private conversation and we are no help to ourselves—and this is why we grow annoyed; our own inability to discern the true worth of the opinion (without an expert’s help) is the true source of our annoyance.
Private annoyance with our friends’ private opinions occurs all the time, and is considered normal, and is even thought to be a good thing: that know-it-all got what they deserved!
But the annoyance felt is actually a terrible thing.
It hurts people, hurts the nation, harms social relations, interferes with happiness, promotes incivility, hurts democracy, and tramples free thought and intelligent conversation.
All of us are aware of this fact: Experts in the same field hold opposite views of the same thing.
A private (non-expert) opinion, precisely because it is private and immediate and non-expert, precisely because it lives in the realm of practical, tangible, personal experience, and precisely because it is forced to discern between two or more conflicting expert opinions, should be regarded as important and sacred, for such an opinion, no matter how clumsily conveyed, is finally more valuable, and more deserving of respect, than one expert’s frozen, recorded, subsidized, and removed opinion, no matter how mainstream and publicly embraced that expert’s opinion appears to be.
The feminist woman—because naturally and justifiably alive to fears of being thought inferior to men, and being taken advantage of by men—unfortunately takes a strong role in perpetuating this evil, never missing a chance to challenge and crush every private opinion a man has; and so baffling, attenuated, ethereal, removed, and impractical expert-ism, the kind which divides and silences and provides extreme power to insanity and hate, reigns over our republic with the help of throngs of otherwise good and intelligent women.
Jim Morrison, at 27 years of age, was such an alcoholic and drug-infused mess, that, despite his phenomenal success as a rock star, couldn’t perform at concerts, had no social standing, had no home, no family, no friends; the only girl he loved, Pam Courson, was shacked up with someone else (a Frenchman in Paris—where Jim hurried off to, to die) wrote in his last song lyrics, “Girl, you got to love your man. Take him by the hand. Make him understand.”
In his final agony of fashionable decadence, decay and helplessness, Morrison (d. 1971) expressed the social ill that afflicts so many today in the wake of the feminist, 1960s pied-piper, revolution: The woman is expected to make the man understand, to take him by the hand, and love him.
But women don’t love helpless men, men without self-respect, men without any ideas or will of their own; or if they do, they regret it.
The process, going on for generations now, becomes a vicious, self-fulfilling prophecy: those who think for themselves in private are punished by expert-ism (which feeds an increasingly ugly, crass public arena) which, despite the glory of its expert-ism, is just as false and misguided as that harsh rebuke in private by those who should support, not punish and harm, the attempt by private citizens to express their own thoughts earnestly, and freely.
We need to really listen to each other—and doubt the experts—as we pay attention to all opinion.
