October 6, 2007
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The courage to Accept People
“The moment I set foot in Kousaka-kun’s room I realized that… ‘What I lack is the courage to accept myself for who I am.’”
Isn’t that an interesting idea? Accepting oneself. It seems so simple and yet it’s clearly pretty difficult for people to manage. And you know what? I think it is equally difficult and requires just as much courage to be willing and able to accept others for who they truly are. Both sides of the coin are necessary for peaceful and meaningful interaction and both are extremely difficult for we mere mortals to manage.
The quote comes from an odd manga series called Genshiken that I just started reading. I’m only a little past the first volume but this one scene really stood out to me.
The story is about the Otaku culture in Japan. That is to say it is about college school students who are obsessed with anime, video games, and manga. In particular, they are attracted to the more taboo aspects of those genres. Even the line “What I lack is the courage to accept myself for who I am” is a case of the character Sasahara thinking in terms of a quote from some anime series.
Sasahara is referring to the fact that as he enters Kousaka’s room he noticed that it is unapologetically cluttered with all kinds of anime paraphernalia and video games. In fact, the room is filled with a great many pornographic games and comics, which he feels no sense of uncertainty or shame about displaying and letting people see. This is despite the fact that outwardly Kousaka seems like what the rest of the world would call a ‘normal’ looking person in every way. This seeming contradiction seems like it will form much of the plot of the manga.
Here is a picture:
The irony of course is that Kousaka who everyone considers normal does not in any way try to hide his obsessions whereas others like Sasahara try very hard to appear normal but end up being seen as somewhat unusual. At least that’s the kind of message I think the writer is trying to get across. A big theme of the series seems to be learning to live with yourself even if your likes and desires do not mesh with main stream society’s expectations.
It should be no big surprise that a big part of that subject is the nature of our sexual inclinations. Society has long held as taboo a great many aspects of our natural desires with that regard and hence forced many people to feel ashamed of themselves and feel the need to conform to the expectations of others at the risk of their own mental stability.
Of course it is entirely obvious to anyone who has really thought about it that it doesn’t really matter where you stand on the great multi-dimensional scale of gynephilia, androphilia, ephebophilia, androphilia, gerontophilia, pedophilia, and asexuality. Not to mention the depths of one’s inclinations toward sadism and masochism and all forms of fetishes. One day we’ll get to the point where we stop judging people on the basis of where they fit into these categorical frameworks. Instead we’ll concern ourselves with what is important, that is ensuring that people act upon their nature, whatever it happens to be, in a manner that does not cause physical or emotional harm to others or to society.
But it will probably be three hundred years before we get there. Ten thousand studies and a hundred thousand papers later and we’ll realize what people have been saying all along: that they can’t help being the way that they are. So who are we to condemn them for it? It’s exactly like skin color, hair color, race, height, intellect, weight, gender, etc. Characteristics that describe who you are right now which you should not be condemned or treated in any way less solely on the basis of having those characteristics. Actions can form the basis of legitimate social critique, not characteristics.
It will take a while. Right now we’re still having an insane amount of difficulty removing the social stigma surrounding gynephilic women and androphilic men. But it’s clearly happening however slowly.
The problem is when society condemns ‘being’ in a state rather than condemning actions made while in that state it creates a scenario where people feel both ashamed of who they are and angry at the society for judging them and terrified that people might find out about their nature. They then struggle to change themselves or at least to appear different than what they truly are under situations of enormous pressure and stress.
Is it any wonder that people under these situations often turn to the underside of society? If someone can offer them a release for their desires without condemnation and without stigma and all they have to do is reject in turn the society that rejects them, (and shell out some cash of course) who wouldn’t jump upon the opportunity? The problem is of course that these black markets are not regulated by the society, meaning they can do things that are truly evil in the interest of earning wealth leaving the rest of the society to deal with the consequences. Even when under society does not develop, there is still a strong likelihood that a person who has desires upon which society places a strong stigma will seek to fulfill their desires secretly in any way they can. Often that may well mean some act that is illegal and sometimes very wrong.
It is very reminiscent with the brain dead way in which we deal with controlled substance abuse. Sure, we can do a lot to prevent people from ever getting addicted and I think thats entirely a good thing. The problem is when someone is addicted, we basic label them a criminal and a lowlife and we often lock them up for the mere ‘possession’ of the substance to which they are addicted. That’s just crazy. The natural consequent is that these people who can’t deal with their addiction will engage in increasingly dangerous and destructive activities in order to fulfill their needs. They, very literally, can’t help their desire for the substance once addicted. To stop could often lead to withdrawal symptoms significant enough to cause death. And yet we condemn them all the same and demand that they don’t use drugs at all. Why? Wouldn’t be so much easier to deal with a legitimate drug trade and institute programs designed to help people to deal with their addictions in addition to those programs that discourage addiction in the first place. Never mind how making something taboo can make it particularly appealing to the youth in your society who are looking for a way to distinguish themselves. Just condemning and abandoning adults already addicted to me already seems unconscionably evil for our society.
Well we aren’t going to reach a utopic state where we all come to accept all of each other’s nature any time soon. In fact I’m not sure that’s even a good thing to hope for. Social condemnation is obviously bad, but there’s nothing particularly wrong with not liking some aspect of a person and wanting people to change. Not really. That too in a way is a way in which people are that is difficult to change. We are ingrained over time with all kinds of expectations about how society should be and how people ought to behave and we naturally feel a discordance when people act out of sync with those behaviors. Sometimes its trivial things like the extent to which it might bother you that someone bites their nails. Other times its more substantive things where we actually feel that certain behavioral trends are actually strictly better or more moral than others, such as our inclination to be polite to others or to live neat and organized lives.
It certainly isn’t wrong to wish or want or expect people to be different than what they are. It’s just that the real challenge is being able to accept people when they, inevitably, don’t or can’t or won’t meet those expectations. To be able to put aside your own feelings on the matter and try to understand why it is that the ones you wish would be different can’t change, or can’t change right away, is a lot harder than simply condemning them for it. It takes a lot of courage to be willing to say that the problem is not just in the other but in part within you.
So that’s why I think this little message in this random manga that I read is so important. We need to understand how we lack the courage to accept ourselves and others so that we can start to try and develop that courage. We need to learn to live true to ourselves. If we can do that then there isn’t anything else in the world that we can’t accomplish.
