There is a special infatuation I have with inefficiency. I’ve never particularly liked the cleanliness of modern society, or at least the desire for it, given the idea of clean, efficient models of the world. There is a great deal of beauty in our ability to be unable, in our ability to be gross. To some extent, it’s what most models miss in an actual society of human beings, rather than the established model that we should be robots and happy for it. I like staring out the window and watching the rain rush down gutters, creating small pools of water, gleefully splashable. The sun is a point of sadness, not for the life it brings, but for the grossness it lacks.
In a sense, the things which fascinate me most, and which I spend the majority of my time with, have little to do with using my time wisely, or trying to feel good, or trying to be better. It’s why we spend money and consume products we don’t need. It’s why we make entertainment and have our throwaway foods. It’s not just because we wish to rush back to work when we scarf down our McDonald’s, it’s because we enjoy feeling bad about ourselves. That’s contradictory, but humans are rarely as straightforward as logic tends to dictate. There is a constant idea of just making everyone act in rational self-interest, but rationality and self-interest are boring, and what turns us into greedies.
At some point, the acknowledgement of the grime is what drives cleanliness, our love of the grime is what keeps it around. Slowly, as society attempts to become cleaner and more efficient, we’re losing our respect and appreciation of our own ability to roll around in dirt. Not just the physical dirt, but the metaphorical junk food all around us. Oftentimes we speak of these things as though they are evil, and they are, to a certain extent, but they are also part of our sewage lifestyle. Oftentimes the reason we consider ourselves rich is because we have an appreciation of how poor we are, intellectually, culturally, time-managementally. Secretly, we lust after inefficiency, even as we staunchly beat our chests for its end.
We’ll jump right in again at the nearest opportunity though. When people aren’t looking, when we believe we’re in a private space, when we believe we’re safe. Our gross inefficiency will pop back up again, and we’ll smother it with affection, because we know how much we want it, but we simply aren’t allowed to articulate it. The cleaner we get, the more enthralled we are with a time when such pretense was unnecessary, and we were allowed to enjoy playing in the snow simply for the act, rather than the reason. One might call this grossness an idea of play, but play is often argued as pure, and no adult is ever pure, thus all we have by the time we arrive where we are is our grossness. And we will love the shit out of it, defend it, fight over it, even protect it. It is both our greatest weakness and our greatest joy. Our secret, which we must clean up afterwards so we can continue to pledge ourselves to mechaniacal effeciency.