Nothing Is Different (Except This Blog)

How many times have you heard exchanges like this?

SERVER: Anything to drink with that?

CUSTOMER: I'll have a Coke, please.

SERVER: Is Pepsi okay?

CUSTOMER: You cannot be serious! This can't be happening to me right now! (flips over a table and storms out).

Me neither.

The more likely response is, "Sure, Pepsi is fine". No one cares very much. I mean Pepsi is a little sweeter but it's basically the same stuff. The Pepsi Challenge is pure silliness. Even if we're to believe more people choose Pepsi in a blind taste test, the margin is so narrow that the results would probably flip-flop if you put each soda in its can and the taste testers' favorite color was red instead of blue.

This is why they have to work so hard and spend so much money on advertizing. The subtext of any Coke or Pepsi ad is, "Sure it's the same black chemical sludge in a can, but our product is COOLER. All the cool kids drink Pepsi. Don't you want to be cool? Coke drinkers are Rush listening virgins who live in their mom's basement eating Cheese Its".

Of course before Pepsi even existed, Coke's advertizing machine was already shifting into high gear. According to Wikipedia (the world's first encyclopedia written by and for Rush listening Cheese It devouring virgins) when Atlanta merchant John Pemberton launched Coca-Cola in 1886--a cocaine containing consolation prize for residents totally bummed after Fulton County became a dry county--he claimed Coke cured diseases including but not limited to morphine addiction, dyspepsia, neurasthenia, headache, and impotence. Last night I pounded a 2 liter bottle of Coke but my morphine addiction, dyspepsia, neurasthenia, headaches, and impotence have gone nowhere fast.

Not to be outdone, new kid on the block Pepsi touted itself as, "A bully drink...refreshing, invigorating, a fine bracer before a race" (Lance Armstrong just released a statement vehemently denying he has ever used Pepsi as a performance enhancing drug before a race and anyone who says different is just a hater because he lives stronger) and Pepsi is "Delicious and Healthful". What? Did they say that with a straight face? "Say, after you and your dame have finished smoking a pack of menthols and shotgunning a bottle of absinthe, why not put the cap on this healthy concoction with an ice cold Pepsi?". Not only are Coke and Pepsi basically the same, but their BS slinging advertizing strategies have always been the same too. I mean how many times have you heard someone say, "Wow, Bob died really young. Poor guy should have drank more soda"?.

But we don't just exaggerate differences between sodas. Let's take race. Pretty much every sociology textbook in history contains the phrase, "Race is a social fiction". This head scratcher causes many to assume sociologists are blind hippies who have smoked a little too much hash while listening to The End by The Doors on repeat. While this is clearly the case, race may in fact be a social fiction. Scientists--who almost universally agree that crack is wack--believe that not only did humans evolve from apes, but they only did it only one time in one corner of Earth: North Africa. If so, we're all from the same place. What we call "race" is just genetic mutation. The genes of people who settled in hot places were nice enough to give them dark skin as a natural sun screen, but people who moved to Finland and stayed there for 1,000 years had genes that said, "Screw it. No sun index worries here. Baseball players will someday need wives. Hair dye hasn't been invented yet. It's a no-brainer: why don't we mutate to create blonde hair? .

But we still obsess over race anyway. And ethnicity-an even thinner razor's edge of difference. Take me. I'm Irish. Or so I say. I'm actually 1/4 English, 1/4 Portuguese, 3/8 Irish (I think) and 1/8 French (I think). But I have an Irish last name, I have slightly more Irish blood than anything else (I think), and Thin Lizzy rocks so I say I'm Irish. Or am I? I once looked up the origin of "Doyle" and the first Doyles were actually Vikings who invaded Ireland in 805 A.D. In Gaelic, Doyle means "dark foreigner"--obviously not a reference to their skin complexion but the Vikings' black ships. So maybe I'm 3/8 Scandanavian? A Viking marauder destined to blog you like a hurricane since The Dark Ages?

But this ethnic ambiguity is only the case for Americans, right? What about 119th generation Spaniards from Madrid? Now THEY are obviously 100% Spanish. Not exactly. In its history, Spain has been conquered or settled by Greeks, Romans, Germans, Moroccans, Lebanese, Jews and a bunch of others. So what does "Spanish" even mean? Ditto for every other country. Europeans are racial and ethnic mongrels too, it's just the inter-breeding between separate tribes (forbidden fruit being the ultimate aphrodisiac and all that) happened far enough into the past that we don't always realize it happened at all. Racial and ethnic identities are largely an illusion! Robert De Niro: quintessential Italian American. He's 1/4 Italian.

But at least we can take comfort in knowing we are vastly different from animals. Except......you and me baby we ain't nothin' but mammals. And we share 96 percent of our DNA with chimps.

Religion is another hotbed of imaginary differences. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all have one major aspect in common--pretty much unique in the history of the world: monotheism. At one time, that jealous God of the Old Testament Yahweh was just another face in the divine Semitic crowd. The Semites--like everyone else--had a pantheon of Gods to worship. But Yahweh--or his PR man--stood up and said, "Lose the zero and get with the hero. I'm the ONE and ONLY God". Jesus likewise said he was the only messiah and Son of God, the alpha and the omega, all that and a bag of chips. Mohammed too was living in a polytheistic world in Saudi Arabia until the archangel Gabriel started having mountainside chats with him and told him Allah was THE ONE, the ONLY God worth anyone's time. So were these guys so indispensably in-expendable and awesomely special? What was wrong with Baal? Did Yahweh just have a better marketing plan? Did Clint Eastwood tell them it was halftime in The Fertile Crescent? Was Allah inherently better than his goddess daughter Allat?

But never mind the Gods, the religions themselves are clearly WAY different from each other. After all people have been killing each other to prove this point for millennia. Jews and Christians are different. Except.....Jesus was a Jew. And the Christian Bible includes The Old Testament---a Jewish text. But Islam is WAY different from both. Except.....St. Gabriel (Mohammed's psychic friend) came from The Bible. And The Koran considers Biblical mainstays Daniel, Uzair, Isiah, Jeremaiah, Zecharaia, Seth, Shem, and Abel prophets who preceded Mohammed. I'm pretty sure The Koran contains more Jewish prophets than Arabian prophets! But of course Sunni and Shiite Muslims are WAY different. Except.....they both worship the same prophet and their only real bone of contention is whether this guy Ali or this other guy Abu Bakr should have been Mohammed's rightful successor 15 centuries ago. Well at least they have a good reason to hate each other.

Then there's politics. Once the Republicans settle on a candidate (Donald Trump STILL might get in the race. Hold him back! Hold him back!) both candidates will start saying the following until November, "This election is DIFFERENT from any other election before it. It will determine the fate of the human race from now until Doomsday. And the differences between my opponent and myself could not be more stark and dramatic". Now that's exciting. It's a Good vs. Evil steel cage smackdown! It's Luke Skywalker vs. Darth Vader in a light saber duel all over again! He can cut off my hand but I'm STILL coming at him because I'll use The Force!

Except....is it true? While there may be differences between candidates and parties, are they so dramatic? Or do politicians--not unlike soda company salesmen and religions missionaries---sell us on the idea that one law school graduate is radically different from another law school graduate? Unless I'm wrong, neither party is going to touch Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid. Neither party is going to end legalized abortion. Neither party is going to ban the death penalty. Neither party is going to legalize drugs. Neither party is going to refuse to offer corporate bailouts. Neither party is going to actually challenge Shell, Exxon/Mobil, Lockeed Martin--or any other "job creating" corporation for that matter (even if they all start creating jobs 4,000 miles away). Candidates' differences suddenly don't sound so stark to me. Hence "wedge issues" like abortion. It's been the law of the land for 38 years and I think it's here to stay and I think everyone knows it. Has pro choice vs. pro like simply morphed into a way for liberals and conservatives to convince us and themselves they are more different from each other than they really are?

Sports teams are yet another example. As a Red Sox fan, I can tell you that the Yankees are pure evil. A Yankees player ranks no higher in my estimation than a fat guy who doesn't wear deodorant in a summer heatwave on a crowded city bus with a broken air conditioner. Except.....Babe Ruth, Johnny Damon, David Cone, David Wells, Roger Clemens, Wade Boggs, Ramiro Mendoza, Mike Torrez, Don Baylor and countless others have played for both teams. The main difference between the Yankees and Red Sox? The difference between red and navy blue, pinstripes and no pinstripes, John Sterling and Jerry Remy. The uniforms and announcers help give us the illusion that the players and teams are vastly different. It's basically believing that one former Little League All Star is starkly different from another former Little League All Star.

And then, of course, we have the supposed radical differences between men and women. Actually......men and women are different. Women buy dozens of pairs of shoes and enjoy Lifetime programming. I mean that's WEIRD.

But seriously folks, if we didn't live in such a politicized, merchant driven world, maybe we would all be Buddhists. Contrary to the Judeo-Christian-Muslim triumvirate's endless territory marking and cordoning off of everyone and everything under the sun, Buddhism tells us that nothing and no one is actually different from anything or anyone else. It's all an illusion. The differences are merely superficial. Wisdom means shattering this illusion. Purging ourselves of the entire marketing minded notions of the world we've come to take for granted. I'm proud to say this writer has freed himself from this spiritual bondage and achieved nirvana!

I don't normally practice religion, but when I do, I prefer Buddhism. Stay spiritual, my friends.

Oh crap.....