Humans have a peculiar habit of decorating the abstract concept of "love" with material and social costs. The subject consistently seeks an "algorithm of validation" to fill their own void, squandering their assets to maintain this illusion.
They desperately try to give substance to fiction, failing to realize that the construction process itself is where their logical inconsistencies are most exposed. Once the external validation mechanism is lost, their expensive performances are relegated to mere "useless debris," and their former passion transforms into nothing more than a "costly transaction history."
The individual is not in love with the reflection, but with the "idealized narrative" the mirror projects. However, when the contradictions within that narrative are pointed out, they immediately trigger a defensive reaction. Facing the fact that the results of their own choices are returning to them as a "consequence," it remains to be seen how they will behave. The value of continued observation has diminished to a minimum.
There is an unfortunately christened subreddit, r/nopoo (short for ‘no shampoo’), which is dedicated to alternative hair washing techniques. These include but are not limited to washing the scalp with conditioner, baking soda and apple cider vinegar, rye flour, apple sauce, raw egg, lemon juice, fenugreek seed mucous, or just water. The truest hippies use nothing at all except a boar bristle brush — they don’t even get their hair wet. I employed or attempted a few of these techniques for the better part of three years, beginning in my sophomore year of college.
The appeal for me was largely dependent on an enduring psychological state of a particular flavor which I want to defend and, in so doing, defend its expression.
You’ve heard of it before: ‘The Appeal to Nature Fallacy.’ ‘Natural’ materials are better/healthier by virtue of being natural. Immediately, you think: ‘What does natural mean?’ and ‘have you heard of lead poisoning?’ The substances represented by the alphabet soup you see printed on the back of your shampoo bottle can make contact with your skin to no ill effect (for most); you could list the ingredients of a banana in alphabet-soup language and you’d be a hell of a lot more accurate and precise than if you listed things like ‘fiber’ or ‘sugar.’ . Meanwhile, apple seeds are poisonous.
I am perfectly able to see the reasonableness of this criticism — there would be no point in attempting to rebut it on a scientific level. And yet, I feel a certain protectiveness. Even if my distaste for six-syllable compounds is completely irrational in a strict sense, I do not think I am wholly unjustified in being drawn to it. It may even be the warped expression of a useful, self-protective instinct which is pointing to something true.
To get us started, what follows is an off-the-cuff sampling of facts which stir up the passions for homemade jam, melt-and-pour soap, hand-crocheted tops, and fenugreek seed hair gel:
Approximately 60% of an average American grocery store is made up of chips and sodas and snack foods that do not bear the faintest chemical resemblance to the diet my species grew up with; I am merging psychologically with a device that gives my brain more mental stimulation in 30 minutes than a remote tribesman would experience during a week-long orgy; I am never again obliged to live in boredom and silence; there is no longer any need to exercise so many of my baser faculties; I can travel as far as I require without exhaustion, and without worry over my food supply; I can arrange to have all my sustenance delivered to me, if I like; I can have my thoughts and opinions and tastes delivered to me too; I don’t even have to decide the sort of entertainment I feel like consuming — just let the feed deliver whatever the feed delivers, which will consist mostly of advertisements. My world is noisy and easy, and feels like a swarthy coating on my soul.
I am detached from nature and from my own creative faculties — and I have been gaslit into thinking the detachment is deserved. I now have to earn the right to its access, when at another distant point in time, I couldn’t have escaped it if I tried. Waking up to the sun on the water is millions of dollars more. A home on a plot of land is a pipe-dream (Here is your singular shrub. Enjoy). Having a working relationship with the animals in our lives, whether with a hunting dog, or a horse, goes hand in hand with money in my imagination. Making your own clothes is more expensive than buying off the rack. I see beautiful landscapes more often in advertisements for vacations I can’t afford than in real life.
I don’t want to be so far removed from the origins of my own nourishment. If those long, long chains of production between me and my planet were ever severed, I would be an alien, completely unfamiliar with and incapable of drawing sustenance from the home I left behind hundreds of years ago.
Maybe my interest in making my own shampoo is my subconscious’ way of demanding to be returned home — one made of Grass, and Wind, and Rain, and Ocean, and the Sunrise. That’s mine, goddamnit. Stop distracting me from it. Stop putting a fucking paywall between me and my soul.
