Bi-ness as eclecticism

(If this is the first of my recent notes you've read, go back and read the last one I did. This one will probably make more sense.)

As I said before, lots of people are into labels. They accept them, they give them, and they create them. Of course, intention must be taken into account when dealing with situations like these, but I feel that labels can do some good. It makes things easier to distinguish between. It lets our brain function closer to 100% efficiency.

Put bluntly, some people would fall apart if it weren't for labels. They wouldn't know up from down. Labels act like a security blanket in this instance, assuring us that some things will never change, that there will always be differences and there will always be similarities.

My goal, however, is not to persuade you to accept labels, and so now I quit my devil's advocacy. I want you, dear reader, to realize that labels have harmed you in the past, and they will in the future, and that there are steps you can take to keep them from having more power than is absolutely necessary. Of course, I don't expect you all to immediately embrace the concept and apply it to every facet of your life like I have. I don't expect the majority of you to have already accepted the fact that gender is fluid and there's much more to it than male, female, and "other", for example. What I do expect, though, is that you keep an open mind and try to take in as much as possible on the journey towards center-dom.

So I will start with some of the more relatable and entertaining portions of bi-ness. This leads me to a discussion of eclecticism. I consider the former to be a value that is, well, quite valuable. It's one of my favorite things and I strive to maximize it in my life at every opportunity.

For those of you who are new to the topic, I will give a few definitions of eclectic, all taken from dictionary.com:

1. selecting or choosing from various sources.
2. made up of what is selected from different sources.
3. not following any one system, as of philosophy, medicine, etc., but selecting and using what are considered the best elements of all systems.

And, my personal favorite: "making decisions on the basis of what seems best instead of following some single doctrine or style".

Those of you who know me well can see these tendencies in me, I would imagine. And I'm sure you can all see some sort of relationship between eclecticism and bi-ness. They're both broad terms used to define a style or manner or conduct, and in my eyes they both seem to diminish the virtues of a binary reality.

Let's start with some specific examples: style will do nicely. When we were all in high school, there seemed to be many more lines and barriers separating groups from one another, making it easier to define if someone was part of "them" or "us". What clothes one chose to wear was right at the top of the list of ways one could be discriminated against. This was made more troublesome by the fact that there's nothing one could have done to prevent it; In the first few critical moments of judgement, there's a small list of things that are readily observed, and those include race, gender, physical appearance, and style of clothing. It spilled over into social groups until it got to the point that it was impossible to tell if someone wore the clothes they wore because their friends did, or if they were friends only with people who wore the same clothes. There were preps, punks, nerds, jocks, rich kids, poor kids, black kids, white kids, and every combination in-between, and there was an expected uniform for every one. Overriding all these distinctions, though, was the theme of "cool" or "lame". Either you were one of us, or you were one of them.

This rubbed me the wrong way for a number of reasons, first and foremost being that before 7th grade I was mocked incessantly and mercilessly for the clothes I wore. I found that once I finally gave in to the "accepted" dress code, the teasing stopped and my peers treated me better. Of course, it wasn't that I was eager to become best pals with my past tormentors. Quite the contrary, I was only too eager to get the point where I could openly defy them, proving once and for all that the clothes do not make the man.

But in the mean time, the clothes that were in style grew on me, and I found that they were actually more comfortable than the sweatpants and t-shirts I'd been wearing before. This was the whole reason I'd resisted switching in the first place: jeans didn't feel right on my legs, and t-shirts were just so cheap and convenient. I found myself in a position where I didn't want to spend the time worrying about what was cool to wear and the money buying it, while at the same time I wanted to look presentable and remain comfortable.

Solution? Eclecticism! And I soon found that the final result was much more than the sum of its parts. Not only did I feel free to wear whatever I liked for the right reasons (utility, price), it became its own entity: a kind of "un-style", one built off the intentional rejection of emulation. What's more, I was able to get past the initial judgement of "cool" or "lame", making people wait until they actually had a conversation with me to realize I was, in fact, a nerd. (Teehee.)

"But isn't this all a bit mundane?" you may ask. "High school drama is completely detached from real-world issues of sexism and bigotry and the lot." And this is true. I use it as a very basic example, one I feel we can all relate to. Of course, fashion is a concern of the so-called "real" world as well, but I feel that its most important portions fall under the header of classism. The grand point was to give a sort of general overview of eclecticism, as well as a template that all further discussions can be compared to.

So as you go about your days, think about these issues. If you could relate to the above example at all, try to apply the same logic to other binaries: political party, gender, race, age, sexuality...the whole lot! I would wager that it would be more difficult than not to find something that is not a slave to the binary surreality we live in. In my future posts, I will be discussing these very issues, and exploring how feasible bi-ness is to accomplish--or at least conceptualize.