FOLKS – Primary self-awareness is as members of a Group; a Folk sees itself as a piece within a whole. The Group is religious, ethnic, or regional, into which the Folk has been born. The Group offers a pre-determined set of values that a Folk has more or less accepted as a lifestyle template.
DICKS – This is the active scaler of corporate, political, or social ladders, for the express goal of dominance. The values and goals of this person are socially imposed (e.g. more is better), yet glorify the imperial individual. This is the common but essentially conflicted life template of the Dick.
The group is named after the common slang for male genitalia, implicating the overwhelmingly masculine content and character of almost all power structures of recorded civilization.
DUDES – Place greatest importance on individuals. Prefer to develop Individual Characteristics (either imposed/manufactured or discovered/inherent), through creative involvement with Culture, as information/object/commodity and/or social community. This has its positive aspects, such as creativity and innovation, and its negative aspects, such as social alienation, empty novelty, universal irony, cynicism, and dead-end nihilism.
These three classes form a kind of “trinity.” The Dude emerges from a national cultural struggle between the dominant Folk and Dick class identities, which are naturally polarized, much as the traditional masculine father and feminine mother. The identity qualities of Dick and Folk are so predominant in our historical social landscape that we suggest all dudes lean one way or the other, and evidently tend to congregate with the like subsets. There are also:
MONSTERS – Monsters don’t fit into any of the three above categories. There are many types of Monsters, but all have a personal fixation that tends to incessantly draw the majority of a human’s energy and focus. Monsterism is generally identified as an extreme version of a personality type - a personal quirk blown up into untenable proportions. [see below: Monster Types]
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An individual is never 100% Dude or Folk or Dick or Monster, but possesses and demonstrates qualities of each as he moves within different aspects of his life: self-development/cultural involvement (dude), inherited social relationships (folk), arenas of wage-earning (dick), and obsessions (monster). However, every person will display a primary alignment with one of these classes, basically to whichever one it gives the most energy and effort. This is referred to as a “strong” association. A person may change their class alignment within their lifetime.
1 comment:
In Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Spiccoli, the most dudely character, calls the least dudely character, Mr. Hand, a "dick," in response to Mr. Hand sending him to the principal's office for tardiness. Culturally, this is an important moment that defines both "dudes" and "dicks." So while I don't disagree that dicks are strivers and acheivers, I believe that there is an element of authoritarianism, anti-fun, uptightness that is also involved.
Also, dickishness is associated with selfishly pursuing one's one interests (or enforcing rules) at the expense of someone else. This goes right along with being materialistic and a striver, to a certain extent. Being a dick is taking the last beer or slice of pizza, or not letting someone merge in ront of you in traffic, or carding someone trying to buy cigarettes even though they totally have bought from you a bunch of times before. Many people don't want to be a dick about it, but they are going to have to ask you to pay rent right now or face eviction. That kind of thing.
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