The Open Matt Project

High School Mirror

Liz called me from her Cooze Bay college the other day, and expressed her exasperation with the environment there. It's like high school all over again, she said. I can't wait to get into the real world, she said. I laughed and put on my old person voice. Sweetheart, the only difference between high school and life is how much you have to pay for things.

I'm reading Ebert's review of "Mean Girls" and hit the point where he writes, "Will teenage audiences walk out of "Mean Girls" determined to break with the culture of cliques, gossip and rules for popularity? Not a chance. That's built into high school, I think." And I think that he's being too limiting. Cliques? Gossip? Rules for popularity? Sounds like my last job. Sounds like recent the Democratic Primaries, or any Presidential election. Sounds like Iraq. Sounds like my overall experience of people in the world. The culture of cliques? Look at a map.

I'm watching The Sopranos a few weeks ago, and the episode is about trust, social ties, and their related perspectives. In it, Tony's wife accuses him of having no friends, which he rejects, replying that he's surrounded by friends. She tells him what is likely the straight truth, that he is surrounded by cronies who pretend to be his friend out of fear. His response? "I'm not running a popularity contest." This is true, for him, and it's obvious that his existence relies heavily on ensuring everyone's loyalty through that fear. But you can also see in his face that he knows he has no friends and it's an excruciating burden for him, as it would be for any of us.

We are taught, and shown, and forced to accept in various degrees the size and contour of our social boundaries. It started when we started, and ends just as abruptly. It's the interaction between these bubbles that we see as culture, as society, and as ourselves.

Immediately, I thought of one of my favorite models - Indra's Net.

"The Hindu myth of Indra's Net provides an allegory of this interdependent organization. This net exists in Indra's palace in heaven and extends infinitely in all directions. At each node of the net where threads cross there is a perfectly clear gem that reflects all the other gems in the net. As each gem reflects every other one; so are you affected by every other system in the universe."*

Following that, I remembered a Thomas Carlyle quote that I live by, "No man lives without jostling and being jostled; in all ways he has to elbow himself through the world, giving and receiving offence."

I hope Liz and Ebert will find comfort and vindication, respectively, in the knowledge that they are not alone in their observations, either in time or in space, since these ancient and old Eastern and Western philosophies describe high school pretty damn well. Perhaps that is what is to be learned there?

* Indra's Net quote taken from this site. Credit where it's due.

Posted by Matt at May 6, 2004 02:41 PM