Song of the South - Day 0 - Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah

3/20/15

Jackson, Mississippi

Winter has come to an end, and so too will my moping.  The title of this travelogue is “The Travelling Philosopher,” not “The Travelling Moper.”  As I’m sure my readers know, I do not have much of a sense of privacy.  In fact, I would go so far as to say that I only care about privacy to conceal certain pieces of information from people who might use it against me.  My ATM PIN, that’s private.  My saddest or most traumatic memories, I would not hesitate to share those with anyone I trust not to tease me about them.

In short, I am a rationalist (with both a small r and a big R).  If there is no rational information for not granting someone information, there is no reason not to do so, unless I believe it will cause me rational harm.  However, what happens when people are deprived of their ability to make rational choices for themselves in their own self-interest?  Well, then you have slavery.  I can think of no better place to explore these themes than here in the heart of the Deep South.  In fact, the title of this trip will come from the famed Disney film: The Song of the South.  Tonight’s entry will be ironically titled “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah” for reasons that should be quite obvious to anyone who has spent time with me this week, but I’m not going to talk about that in this entry, not because I am trying to hide anything, not out of a misguided sense of “privacy,” not it is for a more pragmatic reason.  I think my readers are tired of reading about it.

Instead, I would like to focus on a bit of philosophy that I have been reading.  It is Hegel’s Master/Slave Dialect.  It relates to how we can truly become self-conscious.  That may seem to be a trivial point.  Of course we’re self-conscious, right?  Right?  Says who?  Says you?  Why should I believe you that you are conscious of yourself?  Besides, you are never really truly self-conscious.  You are conscious of your memories and past thoughts.  Reader, try being aware of your thought as you have it.  It’s impossible.  Hegel’s solution is to divide your mind into two parts, “shapes of consciousness,” each of which attempts to annihilate the other and try to get the other to recognize his shape of consciousness.

I should note that I am witnessing right now a large fight that is starting to get very physical, but more on that later.  Okay, so the shapes of consciousness.  No, I can’t focus on Hegel, this fight is getting out of hand.  Alright, it looks like it ended.  I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed a physical fight since grade school.  The short of it (the shapes of consciousness, not the fight) is that one shape becomes the master, the other the slave.  The slave surrenders itself to the mindset of the master, believing the master’s thoughts are his own.  The master thereby becomes reliant on the slave for recognition of his thoughts, while the slave, believing the master’s thought’s to be his own, achieves that independence that the master so seeks.  In a complete role reversal, the master becomes the slave, and the slave becomes the master.  It should not be much of a stretch for me reader to figure out how to apply this to real life, and it is something I will explore in my personal journal.

For now, I want to focus on the idea how there is often a master/slave dynamic in many relationships.  In romantic relationships, it is said that one party “wears the pants.”  In friendships, one friend might be said to be “the leader of the group.”  In each of these examples, the “master” decides what happens, but he is reliant on the “slave” for companionship or for help in carrying out the plans.  Meanwhile, the slave who is agreeable to anything benefits from having someone plan everything for him, having someone taking care of him, and getting to participate in the plans that he comes to enjoy as his own.  It should not be hard to see the parallel here to Hegel’s master/slave dialect.  What is more interesting is why I just told a bunch of drunk college kids, “Dumbo is the one with big ears.  Pinocchio has the big nose.”  More on that later.

Okay, the events of Day 0.  Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah.  I had a 6 PM flight, which meant that I would have to leave work early.  I had gotten approved to come in early.  I had neglected to see if it would be okay if I did my pre-9 AM work from home.  I would need to make up about an hour or so before 9 AM.  I woke up at 7 AM and went right to work.  I was starving, and I had some leftover sesame chicken from last night.  Actually, it was the whole dish.  I had been planning on watching another Disney movie while I worked, but I couldn’t bring myself to put one on.  I just had no energy.  I was going to post something on Facebook to the effect of “Watching a Disney movie and eating Chinese food at 7 AM, when will my life begin?”  I just wasn’t feeling it, so I didn’t watch the movie.

“This guy is getting more than he’s bargaining for.”  “He’s writing a story about it.”  “Blogging about it.”  “Jackson, Mississippi.”  Oh, how accurate they are.

Okay, so I lit up a Winston Churchill and heated up my Chinese food, both of which were delicious first thing in the morning, but I couldn’t finish it.  By the time I got to the office, I was completely out of it, but I managed to get done what needed to get done, barely having the appetite for my traditional pre-departure Hop Won lunch.  Oh, right, that Churchill cigar.  Well, by the time I had to shower and get ready, I wasn’t done with the cigar.  I figured I would bike or walk with it and then drop it off at the cigar.  Well, first of all, my winter coat was still in the office, and it was like 30 degrees outside.  Second of all, I couldn’t bike with the suitcase.  Third of all, it was too late to walk.  I had to put the cigar in a tube and the tube in a plastic bag.

At 3:45 PM, I went to the cigar store to finish the rest of the cigar, get some new ones for the trip, and catch a taxi to LGA.  It was the first day of spring, and it was snowing.  Okay, so the other thing going on was that I had a philosophy paper due by the end of the day, and I hadn’t even done the reading.  Well, I finished the first of the two readings as I was getting out of the taxi.  Security was practically empty.  I tried to get on an earlier flight to no avail, afraid that my flight might be cancelled like so many of the other ones.  I sat down and started the second reading, finishing it on the plane.  I was about halfway down with the writing by the time we took off and almost done by the time the served dinner (I was flying first class).  I planned to finish the last paragraph after dinner.  When I opened my laptop, which I had just closed and not put to sleep, I was down to 7% battery.  I wrote quickly, but I still had one sentence left when it died.

My phone was almost dead, too, by the time that I got to Atlanta.  They had smoking lounges, but there were no outlets in the smoking lounge.  I went to the one nearest my gate and lit up a small cigar, a Headley Grange, but it was unsmokable.  Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah.  I ditched it for a Santana, which was not smoking great, either.  I was Snapchatting back and forth with Ray and Connor, which drained the battery.  At 1%, halfway through the cigar, which I was no longer enjoying, I ditched the cigar and headed to my gate, getting a cookie from Atlanta Bread Company, and charged my electronics as I finished my paper.

I slept on the flight, which was less than a hour.  However due to the time zone change, we landed before we took off.  I got my car, and plugged in my GPS, which I hadn’t used in quite some time.  I don’t know if the maps were out of date or if the roads were just badly marked or rerouted or something, but I kept getting lost.  I got to my hotel, and I was greeted as somewhat of a celebrity.  Jackson does not get tourists and everyone wanted to talk to the New Yorker, telling their stories about when they went to New York.  I went up to my room charged my electronics a bit as I changed into my pajamas, listened to more Disney music, and rubbed out my tobacco.  There was no view from my room, and it was nice enough outside, so I headed down with my laptop and pipe.  I got some Fritos, too.  Damn, it’s going to be 2 AM by the time I get to sleep.

Well, that was when things started to get interesting.  There was an outlet outside, and the guy sitting by it offered me his seat.  He was being a little too helpful.  Sure enough, he asked me for help getting something to eat.  I offered to share my Fritos with him, but he wasn’t interested.  Oh, right, the other thing.  This is St. Patrick’s Day weekend in Jackson, and it’s kind of a big deal here.  There were a bunch of college-aged kids, including a few girls who reminded me of the girl who has been for three years my biggest crush.  “A town full of K----s,” I thought to myself, thinking her name.

I sat down, lit up my 2013 Christmas Pipe, and proceeded to write this entry, but the evening was just beginning.  That pipe has not had much use, and this was quite possibly smoking of the pipe.  Well, there a bunch of black guys and bunch of white guys, everyone drunk.  One of the white guys had hit on the black guy’s wife, and they were arguing about it, almost getting physical.  Every time the fight escalated, someone stepped in to calm them down, and then that person got involved.  Two of the white guys brothers, started getting physical with each other, as the black guys walked off.  The security guard, who had earlier told me about how she wants to move to New York and work for the NYPD, was just watching on in amusement.

Then the college kids came back, including one who really reminded me of my crush.  It’s funny, two months ago I wrote about how I referred to her as my best friend.  Now, she’s just back to being a crush.  At one point, one of the drunken guys came back, and it looked like he was about to do something.  These college kids were perfect strangers to me, yet I knew with absolute certainty that, if he did something, I would fight to protect them.  Why?  Quite simply because one of them reminded me of my crush, someone whom I love so dearly.  Actually, one of the group who was upstairs even had the same name.

Well, he walked away, and the college kids drank beer and chatted while I watched on in amusement, wanting to be a part of their world.  I finished my pipe and finished the entry, which I will now close.  I am kind of chilly, but I don’t want to leave this scene, so I think I might write my WIJG entry before I go to sleep.  Maybe I’ll wait to publish in the morning, or I can get a cigar.  Yeah, that’s what I’ll do.  Now, the question is, do I trust them to watch my computer.  Yes, I do, but it’s not worth the risk.