Generical Man despises affectation in all its forms. He is bored by celebrities and uninterested in the celebrity culture, because its foundation is virulent affectation.
Political conventions are orgies for celebrities who don’t even have the good grace to be ugly anymore.
He cannot stand the State of Union and cringes at the naked manipulation and affectation, which he despises even more than the banalities.
He knows the difference between ceremony and spectacle.
Ceremony is important and beautiful. Why do men always ruin it?
He does not like marketing and fads have no hold on him, especially fads in marketing. He does not need to drive a certain car to show that he is an independent rebel just like a million other people.
Evaporated cane juice is sugar, my friends.
Generical Man is a distruster of nostrums but has a certain respect for shibboleths. He believes in the accumulated wisdom of humanity, if only we could figure out what it is.
We have free will and we have none. Both assertions are true and cannot be reconciled.
He is not a seeker of Truth but a seeker of the truth of things. He is delighted to be shown a novel way to look at the world, and thanks you for destroying his misguided conceptions.
There is good and there is evil, but men are not divided between the evil and the good. No man is evil in his own mind but some of us are whistling past the graveyard.
He does not waste time looking for a solution when there is none, he does not try to heal all wounds, and he does not feel your pain. He respects you too much for that.
Generical Man does not trust most schemes but he abhors those which attempt to fix man. Man is, he does not need to be perfected. Man needs to be left free to work out his own salvation.
Reality has no obligation to follow anyone’s scheme. Life is not tricked by our schemes, but often we are. Run from those who deny reality almost as fast as from those who claim it for themselves.
He is always wary of the true believer and the easy path, and will not traffic with anyone who doesn’t acknowledge that every human action involves a tradeoff.
Just because something is not easy doesn’t mean it is worth doing, and a job worth doing is not always a job worth doing well.
Generical Man may seem to be a loner and misanthropic but that is because he avoids cliches like the plague, and an organization is a cliche.
He is not a joiner, and resists any efforts to make him part of a group on the group’s terms
Walk away from groupthink and be aware of the doublethink it makes necessary.
The only religion worth following is one that promises hard work and pain. And some redemption at the end.
Generical Man knows that if someone pays his salary it gives them a certain right to tell him what to do, but why when he gives others money do they assume that right?
Even the best and most honorable doctors, preachers, and politicians are unconscionably arrogant.
Generical Man can’t stand the manipulation of the officious or the tools of language used to support it. He knows that cynicism is a valuable bulwark against a manipulative society and assumes he will on balance be correct when he distrusts those who preach against cynicism.
“Change for change sake” is a standard tool in the belt of the manipulator.
He believes that it is altogether right and good to demand a certain amount of consistency from everyone, but most especially from our leaders. If you think consistency is not demanded from us, says Generical Man, try giving two different stories to a prosecutor.
A foolish consistency may be the hobgoblin of little minds, but quoting Emerson is the last refuge of demagogues.
Generical Man knows that life is messy. Every moral question is on a sliding scale and sometimes where we draw the lines is arbitrary, but draw the lines we must.
“We had to draw the line somewhere” is a perfectly legitimate defense.
Generical Man 