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American Dreams

The Mean Season

by Rod Amis

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This is the time of year when, if you haven't already begun thinking about your Holiday shopping list, some advertiser or other will begin to remind you to get on the stick.

Put another way, this is the time of year, the Mean Season, when if any of your friends or acquaintances are questionable --- such that you will end up wanting to kick yourself for having wasted good money on buying them a gift --- now is the time to break off the relationship. You'll thank yourself later.

You can do this in (relatively) good conscience now and few people will notice the underlying motivation for the alienation. If you wait until the end of October, when the worse of the "giving" barrage and treacly sentimentality ramp up, your motives will be too transparent, if not suspect.

I know.

I recall the ignominy of dumping a girlfriend during Christmas week. Poor dear, she expected that I had come to her house in order to suggest that we "go steady." When I announced that I had come to dump her, she was shattered. Everyone else said that I had dumped her because I was too cheap to buy both her and my newest love-interest gifts. People will always talk. If you have half a brain or one modicum of Enlightened Self-Interest you will not let their opinions affect your decisions.

The simple fact is that most of us have more friends, family and acquaintances, by choice or happenstance, than we need to bear the financial burden of catering to during the Holidays. That is why September inaugurates the harvest season in America, when most Americans are prepared to prune their lists and make ready for the great commercial splurge. Shopkeepers rub their clammy palms together in anticipation of the bloodletting.

Thus, many of the shrewder among us Americans have begun to use this period, the Mean Season --- running, roughly, from mid-August until mid-October --- for cleaning up our list of contacts and obligations; we devote this Season to the manly art of dissociation. Men have always been better at it; it's something we learned during the hunter-gatherer phase of our evolution.

Later, when the entire species became more sedentary due to the introduction of agriculture and village life, the skill of dissociation was subliminally moved to the areas of sexual and social obligation.

The very roots of the concept of Social Darwinism, exemplified so well in all aspects of The American Way of life, are in this ability to dissociate from obligation with facile grace.

You Can Make A Difference

FEED THE HUNGRY. You can help someone else in this world and IT WON'T COST YOU A DIME. If you simply remember to drop by The Hunger Site every day that you surf and click a simple button ONE LESS PERSON WILL GO HUNGRY. The food is distributed by the United Nations World Food Programme and paid for through the sponsorship of companies that care. Do your part.

It is no accident that the eight million Americans "laid off," "down-sized," or "restructured" by large corporations during the last decade suffered this dissociative experience during the Mean Season. Only an idiot manager would want a bunch of long faces spoiling the general bonhomie of the annual office Holiday party by displaying a newly-minted pink slip.

One of the most fortuitous aspects of the Mean Season, from the point-of-view of an employer, is how nicely it coincides with the annual influx of eager Temporary workers and students in most major metropolises. For a fraction of what you would be required to pay that surly ingrate who touts his experience, you can replace that malcontent and potential "disgruntled employee" with a pliant and embarrassingly grateful Temp-sla---er, Temporary worker or student until such time as a modicum of expertise is again required --- if ever. That is what makes the Mean Season so sweet.

As to interpersonal obligations, the meat-axe approach acceptable today in America for the standard capitalist remains inappropriate in most social settings. A degree of guile and subtlety are still required to shed the ties of acquaintances, so-called friends, nonessential family members and lovers. The situation is more ticklish, as well, because of the proximity to the Holidays, as mentioned at the outset.

Mid-October remains far too late into the Season to dissociate. By then, tongues may begin to wag. The cut-off date appears to be some time prior to October tenth in order to escape opprobrium.

Most Americans know the ritual for this act of house-cleaning almost by rote, so I shan't waste a lot of space on it here. You structure your exercise to the sophistication of the intended victim.

With some people it can be as simple as gradually becoming more and more unavailable through such agencies as unreturned VoiceMail messages, unanswered e-mails, being too busy on a current project to get together. Our technological accoutrements are arranged in such a way as to make this process relatively impersonal and capable of taking on the appearance of mere happenstance. "We drifted apart." "We found ourselves moving in different circles."

With other people, of course, due to the necessity of remaining in "overlapping networks," the process requires much more finesse and delicacy. One useful strategy is to increase the scope of ones own orbit, temporarily, such that the intended victim cannot take direct offense at being deliberately snubbed.

But, as I say, if you are an American reading this account, you already know these strategies for shedding --- or simply ignoring --- certain social obligations like the back of your own hand.

The Holiday clock is ticking. Get on with it or suffer the inevitable regret of an expense you could easily have avoided.