{"id":106,"date":"2004-04-25T05:02:06","date_gmt":"2004-04-25T10:02:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/?p=106"},"modified":"2004-04-25T05:02:06","modified_gmt":"2004-04-25T10:02:06","slug":"the-root-of-all-evil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/2004\/04\/the-root-of-all-evil\/","title":{"rendered":"The root of all evil"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As epiphanies go it wasn&#8217;t very impressive; no lighting bolt, no clap of thunder, no parting of the clouds to the accompaniment of angels singing Hallelujah, just the simple realization during a routine walk to the subway that all the emotional pain, all the stress, all the disappointment, and much of the anger, I&#8217;ve ever experienced in my life is a direct result of the clash between my expectations and what is actually rendered unto me either as a result of my own labor or action or as a result of the action or, quite often, the inaction of others.<\/p>\n<p>Society is, in fact, built on expectations.<br \/>\n<!--more--><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>There is the expectation that members of a society will follow agreed upon laws for the good of the whole even if it means inconvenience to the individual.<\/li>\n<li>There is the expectation that members of a society will abide by prevailing moral and behavioral norms, or if they don&#8217;t at least do no harm to others in the violation of those norms (after all, what someone does in the privacy of their own home with like consenting adults is really their business for the most part).<\/li>\n<li>There is the expectation that if you work hard you&#8217;ll be rewarded.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Increasingly, however, I find that these expectations have become invalid.  So-called &#8220;common courtesy&#8221; doesn&#8217;t appear to exist any more, &#8220;quality of life&#8221; laws &#8211; small things like actually stopping at traffic lights or, perhaps, not trying to kill the pedestrians &#8211; have fallen by the wayside in Americans&#8217; incessant naval gazing. Working hard, seemingly, gets you no where as those who kiss ass and &#8220;know the right people in the right places&#8221; at all levels of society reap the benefits while others sweat and toil and play by the rules. And while these things are particularly annoying, they are less scary to me than a trend I&#8217;ve noticed in my personal life.<\/p>\n<p>I find that even in my most intimate relationships I expect things which I believe to be reasonable but which I am consistently denied or rebuked for having expected.  What then are my options?  To expect nothing?  To expect to be disregarded?  To ask for exactly what I want but not be surprised when I don&#8217;t get it?<\/p>\n<p>It really boils down to the two basic ways in which life can be lived: the reductionist method or the expansionist method.<\/p>\n<p>Reductionism works on a theory of diminishing risk.  Make yourself small, think things through and try to look at all the angles before making a request.  Request only those things that you can not live without (the logic being if you ask for three small things you&#8217;re more likely to get them than if you ask for five or six or ten medium sized, or even big, things).  Reductionism is about diminishing your exposure to pain.  Expansionism is quite the opposite.<\/p>\n<p>Expansionism works on a theory of big risk for the possibility of a big return.  Ask for exactly what you want, be bold about it, if denied and you think there&#8217;s room press for what you want again because you just might get it.<\/p>\n<p>In many ways, expansionism and reductionism are equally cynical: one tells you to expect nothing thereby opening the door for you to ask for everything while the other tells you to expect to get fucked over so why bother wanting anything anyway.<\/p>\n<p>Neither one seems workable to me (truth be told, I&#8217;m a living example of reductionism) but I&#8217;ll be god damned if I can think of a third alternative.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As epiphanies go it wasn&#8217;t very impressive; no lighting bolt, no clap of thunder, no parting of the clouds to the accompaniment of angels singing Hallelujah, just the simple realization during a routine walk to the subway that all the emotional pain, all the stress, all the disappointment, and much of the anger, I&#8217;ve ever [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-106","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-thoughts","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}