Let's talk about what we don't know!
Yes, I can hear you saying, "Like every week?" But this time let's do it consciously! We'll get all psychological, and then we'll relate it to what's happnin'.
I've invented a word to describe my own orientation to the Unknown. I call it "xenomania." I am a xenomaniac, as contrasted to a xenophile, who likes or even loves what is unknown. A xenomaniac likes to roll in it.
You have xenophobes, who fear the Unknown, AKA Conservatives. Xenomania and xenophobia are logical opposites, but psychologically they're twins. The real difference between them is the size of the gap between the fingers -- to peek through -- and whether you laugh or scream when the dead body falls out of the closet amidst the screeching violins.
Being a xenomaniac is the better of the two, because it's the eyes-open approach. A recent case in point concerned Governor Sanford of South Carolina, a xenophobe. Had the poor man been a long-time xenomaniac like me, he wouldn't have been caught so off balance by his own overwhelming attraction to the exotic. He's just lucky Maria turned out to be a woman, so far as anyone knows.
When I'm excited by the exotic, it's just another minute in the day.
One more reason to prefer xenomania is that the more you surround yourself in what you know little of, the more material you have in your life to hang wild speculations upon. Which brings us to another thing that's happnin', which is that Uyghurs in Xinjiang province, China, have been protesting and the protests have turned to rioting. What, what? Weegers? Zing Jang?
Some of you know who Uyghurs are because you pay attention to the news and a lot has lately been devoted to the fact that we've had "Chinese nationals" of the "Uyghur ethnic group" at Guantanamo Prison for several years and finally had to admit they shouldn't have been there, so some of them are now living in Albania, and some of them are on extended vacation in the Bermudas. Some others are expected to wind up in Palau, which you would know about because the 10th season of "Survivor" was held there, sandwiched between "Survivor: Vanuatu - Islands of Fire" and "Survivor: Guatemala - The Maya Empire."
In the course of listening to news anchors slap their mouth-flaps about our captive Uyghurs, you might have easily picked out that they are Muslim, and that they were captured in the course of our attacks in Afghanistan by virtue of being there, and that they were there because if you're a Uyghur trying to escape the Chinese government in your homeland, Afghanistan is pretty much where you're going to end up. Or, anyway, one of the Stans. That's all they got around there. There's China itself, and there's Stans.
"So what does all this all have to do with what we DON'T know, Wes?" Well, first of all, "we" DIDN'T know any of this when "we" SHOULD have known it, namely when we charged into Afghanistan and rounded up Muslims. It would have been nice if we knew the Uyghurs had a reputation for being terrorists in China that Chief Joseph would have been proud of.
Oh wait, did I say "we" didn't know any of this? I should have said, those of us non-xenomaniacs didn't. Some of us had been entertaining ourselves for years with ideas about Uyghurs, hanging fun speculations upon them since first hearing about them during the Reagan administration.
What I really want to do is convert all the xenophobes to xenomania. I can't convert the rest of you, I'm sure, because you're just indifferent. But I want you xenophobes to open your fingers a little and let yourselves laugh hysterically, lured, at first, by the entertainment value.
Then, once you've been sucked in by the sheer fun of wallowing among incomprehensibles, you may discover survival value in having attained at least a shallow familiarity with everything.
Yes, I can hear you saying, "Like every week?" But this time let's do it consciously! We'll get all psychological, and then we'll relate it to what's happnin'.
I've invented a word to describe my own orientation to the Unknown. I call it "xenomania." I am a xenomaniac, as contrasted to a xenophile, who likes or even loves what is unknown. A xenomaniac likes to roll in it.
You have xenophobes, who fear the Unknown, AKA Conservatives. Xenomania and xenophobia are logical opposites, but psychologically they're twins. The real difference between them is the size of the gap between the fingers -- to peek through -- and whether you laugh or scream when the dead body falls out of the closet amidst the screeching violins.
Being a xenomaniac is the better of the two, because it's the eyes-open approach. A recent case in point concerned Governor Sanford of South Carolina, a xenophobe. Had the poor man been a long-time xenomaniac like me, he wouldn't have been caught so off balance by his own overwhelming attraction to the exotic. He's just lucky Maria turned out to be a woman, so far as anyone knows.
When I'm excited by the exotic, it's just another minute in the day.
One more reason to prefer xenomania is that the more you surround yourself in what you know little of, the more material you have in your life to hang wild speculations upon. Which brings us to another thing that's happnin', which is that Uyghurs in Xinjiang province, China, have been protesting and the protests have turned to rioting. What, what? Weegers? Zing Jang?
Some of you know who Uyghurs are because you pay attention to the news and a lot has lately been devoted to the fact that we've had "Chinese nationals" of the "Uyghur ethnic group" at Guantanamo Prison for several years and finally had to admit they shouldn't have been there, so some of them are now living in Albania, and some of them are on extended vacation in the Bermudas. Some others are expected to wind up in Palau, which you would know about because the 10th season of "Survivor" was held there, sandwiched between "Survivor: Vanuatu - Islands of Fire" and "Survivor: Guatemala - The Maya Empire."
In the course of listening to news anchors slap their mouth-flaps about our captive Uyghurs, you might have easily picked out that they are Muslim, and that they were captured in the course of our attacks in Afghanistan by virtue of being there, and that they were there because if you're a Uyghur trying to escape the Chinese government in your homeland, Afghanistan is pretty much where you're going to end up. Or, anyway, one of the Stans. That's all they got around there. There's China itself, and there's Stans.
"So what does all this all have to do with what we DON'T know, Wes?" Well, first of all, "we" DIDN'T know any of this when "we" SHOULD have known it, namely when we charged into Afghanistan and rounded up Muslims. It would have been nice if we knew the Uyghurs had a reputation for being terrorists in China that Chief Joseph would have been proud of.
Oh wait, did I say "we" didn't know any of this? I should have said, those of us non-xenomaniacs didn't. Some of us had been entertaining ourselves for years with ideas about Uyghurs, hanging fun speculations upon them since first hearing about them during the Reagan administration.
What I really want to do is convert all the xenophobes to xenomania. I can't convert the rest of you, I'm sure, because you're just indifferent. But I want you xenophobes to open your fingers a little and let yourselves laugh hysterically, lured, at first, by the entertainment value.
Then, once you've been sucked in by the sheer fun of wallowing among incomprehensibles, you may discover survival value in having attained at least a shallow familiarity with everything.
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