THE LUNCHLADY
In the world of Gymnasts, the “good life” was measured in materialistic terms. So Level 13, this fairly recent memetic code, began emerging about 150 years ago, out of the Ages of Industry, to declare that in all of these undertakings, the basic human being has been neglected. The focus shifts from personal achievement to group and community-oriented goals and objectives, for in the worldview of Lunchladies, we are all one human family.
Level 13 begins by making peace with ourselves and then expands to looking at the conflicts in society too, addressing the economic gaps created by Gymnasts, Defenders and Pitbulls, to make a brotherhood we can all share equally. Gender roles are dissolved, glass ceilings opened, affirmative action plans are implemented, and social class distinctions blurred. Spirituality returns as a nondenominational “unity.” The positives of Lunchlady thinking include multiculturalism, ecological awareness, civil and human rights issues. A Lunchlady provides extraordinarily positive gifts — all meant to keep us from hurting each other.
What Lunchladies accomplish, is the cleansing of the Gyrovolution system, declaring an equality of all the different experiences of life. It weakens the control of Defenders and Gymnasts, allowing Turtles and Pitbulls to have their time on CNN. It works to find equality and sameness and sensitivity. And it is doing so for a very good purpose: because without Level 13, we could not go to the fully-activated Level 21. The only questions that remain are why and how one should go about doing that.
Every Gyromon has its downside or shadow elements. The positive side of Level 13 thinking is its attempt to treat all people fairly, and to not marginalize or exclude any of them. The downside is a “flatland” pluralism that goes from saying all views should be treated fairly to saying all views should be treated the same. This flatland pluralism erases all depth from the universe — nothing is deeper, higher, wider, more integral, more compassionate, more caring, or more loving. Everything is merely the same. This is supposed to liberate all views from nasty judgmentalism, but it merely flattens all views into equally meaningless drivel. When all views are the same, no views carry merit.
The atmosphere of postmodernism is therefore endless irony. You say one thing, you mean another, but under no circumstances are you to be caught actually harboring a conviction. This attitude can be wonderfully funny — think of any comedian. You cannot expect them to state any sort of value, belief, or meaning — because in flatland, there isn’t any.
Baby Boomers were the first generation to introduce this flatland pluralism to mainstream culture, but the younger generations were brought up under its influence. Gen X handled it by adopting the slacker attitude. If nothing is worth believing, then why work for anything? And Millennials just buckle underneath it. How does one grow up into a culture that doesn’t acknowledge growth? The comment you hear most often from college professors is that you can’t get these kids involved in any discussion about the merits of a particular view, because all views are supposed to be the same.
This in itself is ironic, because it’s the Boomer professors who started the whole mess. They started this flatland pluralism largely as a way to advance an agenda to promote an end to social oppression. The problem is that pluralism is not the way to end oppression, but to cement it in place, because the notion that all views are created equal makes it impossible to criticize the present state of social affairs, because no view is supposed to be superior to another. Instead of producing a generation of political activists, they actually produced a generation of social inactivists, who are without any sort of sense in how to carry a truly progressive agenda. That would demand making a series of major judgments — and that is what flatland pluralism prevents.
So we have entire younger generations of stuttering Lunchladies. Social judgment, will , and magnanimity have been largely crushed — one of the main legacies of boomeritis and flatland pluralism. The Me generation has completely ignored the notion of the We. The kids of today are left only with irony. All views are the same, and any belief must be deconstructed. Kids are left with flatland depression everywhere, forced end-of-the-road Lunchlady values, irony in all directions.
This is where it gets a little tricky. In this Lunchlady world of flatland pluralism, you can’t even state an answer to any question without getting laughed off the stage. Any depth is met with searing suspicion. A spectrum of consciousness is out of the question — there can be no degrees of depth anywhere, just the protection of equivalent surfaces floating on a sea of meaningless irony. |
