Illustration Credit: Aaron Cooper
Note from the informational ether: “Nosedive” is a collection of essays and narrative prose written by Ben Lee over the course of a year prior to his death. Per his will, I am posting these on his behalf with no changes made to his original text. He’s not that Ben Lee. He’s also fictional.
Part 1: Is Suicide Punk?
Chapter 6
Pardon the brief deviation from my story of bullshit, but important to the main question here (is suicide punk?) are quite a few secondary questions that will inform the answer to the primary question. In my case, the act of suicide will have been built on top of the foundation of these secondary questions and their relative impact upon my life.
Is Marriage Punk?
No.
I’m pissed off I’m even going to provide an explanation for this one as marriage is so unpunk that it pretty much proves the Punk Reflexive Property all on its own. But fuck it, the reason marriage is very much unpunk is that marriage is the ownership of another person (or people), either implicitly or explicitly. It could be the ownership of one person in the marriage over the other(s) or it could be the ownership of all people in the marriage over each other. In terms of being punk, it doesn’t matter what that situation is because ownership is so aggressively unpunk that the idea of punkness collapses when ownership is applied to people.
Even if one were to generously redefine marriage as simply a declaration of everlasting love between two or more people, the punkness of marriage falls apart under any scrutiny at all. Love is definitely punk and while declarations aren’t specifically unpunk, they’d go into the category of “don’t push it”. At any rate, there are better ways to declare love, should this be a thing one absolutely cannot refrain from doing, and marriage as a declaration of everlasting love is one of the worst ways to do this.
The key sticking point here is the word “everlasting”. Punk makes no promises of anything lasting forever because most things corrupt or decay over time. It is punk’s job to destroy those corruptions. Time gives power to anything, and power, even benevolent power, is corrupt by the mere existence of its power.
Listen, people need to be able to shape their own decisions and futures. I don’t want some person or thing-of-great-power shaping my life into the best series of happenings because a best possible life is dependent on me being the one to make my own good and bad choices. A bad choice I make is better than a good choice someone or something makes for me.
So giving power to anything forever scares the shit out of me and is extremely unpunk.
In a third case, marriage can mean a declaration of love without the promise of it being forever. To that, I ask – what is the point? That makes marriage a waste of time, and waste is unpunk.
The last case isn’t a variation on types of marriages at all but the concept that someone can “just get divorced” if the marriage doesn’t work out. I’m of two minds on this one:
- Divorce would, indeed, be punk if it weren’t dependent on getting married in the first place, but…
- Getting divorced means the marriage was a waste of time, so it is unpunk.
Clearly, there is no case where marriage is okay.
Is Being a Parent Punk?
Absolutely. Fostering punkness in society starts with fostering punkness at home through raising a few little punks who will grow up to forge ahead in society with a fist in the air and a bottle of spray paint clutched in the other hand. Systems only want us to have children if they’re going to blindly follow along with the masses, but they are frightened of punks having children and their children having children and a whole generation of punks refusing to bow at their feet.
Even if no societal revolution occurs, it’s still a good idea to offset the prep school kids with some punks. There’s still hope as long as a punk is alive.
Is Getting a Job Punk?
Oh, Jesus no. But not in the way one might think. As I’ve said previously, money is needed to survive. The least punk way to receive money is for parents or common individuals to give one money for no earned reason. The most punk way to receive money is to take it from corporations, but since that’s not likely to happen any time soon, a job itself is the most pragmatic way to receive money in our current system. Yet pragmatism does not make things punk – just understandable.
So the onus on who is unpunk when someone gets a job becomes the next issue in play. The understandable nature of having a job means that blame shifts depending on the situation.
The general rule is that if one is getting a job begrudgingly as an act of pure survival, the fault of unpunkness is on the system in which we exist. A punk may prove this unwillingness to adhere to the system for the sake of survival by taking actions to counteract the system both within the work place and out of work. While that wouldn’t make the situation punk, the person comes out of it in a neutral state.
But if one gets a job and loves it, that’s another thing. That’s unacceptable.
An open question is what happens when one gets a job begrudgingly and works to counteract the system but grows to enjoy the job. (Or more to the point, enjoy the act of being at work and doing the work even if this person would never support any entity who would do something as abhorrent as creating a business and hiring people.) It’s almost too foggy to see which side of the scale has tipped in this case: punk or unpunk?
Misery isn’t specifically punk. Happiness isn’t specifically unpunk.
I can almost piece together the thought that enjoying a job, yet still working to bring down the system despite that enjoyment, makes the thing more punk. I can almost get there. Not quite, but almost.
For some reason I cannot fully articulate, the enjoyment of being at a job just feels wrong even if all the other circumstances surrounding it feels so punk. Sometimes the call must be made completely on a gut level and no amount of ponderous delay will change that gut reaction.
Any amount of enjoyment at work is unpunk.
Is Becoming Too Happy Unpunk and How Much Happiness is Too Much?
This, I’ll answer over the next few chapters.