Cinemorphosis

Category: philosophy

  • Thou Shalt Not Measure Thy Goodness Against Fools

    Thou Shalt Not Measure Thy Goodness Against Fools

    In eighth grade, Erika Jenkins was every boy’s favorite target—a tall, freckled volleyball player with legs that seemed to go on for miles and a face that couldn’t hide her fear. The boys called her Horse, Giraffe, Hyena, Zebra—an entire menagerie of cruelty. Every morning she had to walk the gauntlet from her locker to the corridor, clutching her books to her chest like a shield, her eyes darting from side to side as if she were trying to survive a nature documentary. She looked like someone bracing for an attack, because she was.

    Then summer arrived—and performed a miracle. Her grandmother took her on a Caribbean cruise, and somewhere between the turquoise waves and the buffet line, Erika Jenkins molted. When she returned that fall, she was unrecognizable. The boys at Canyon High buzzed with talk of “The Caribbean Transformation.”

    At lunch on the first day, she made her debut. Gone was the awkward, lanky girl. In her place stood someone who could have walked off a shampoo commercial. She wore a sleeveless white linen dress that caught the light, her tan skin glowing like toasted sugar. Her once-flat hair now tumbled over her shoulders in glossy brown waves. Her limbs, once all elbows and knees, now belonged to a young woman who had grown into herself.

    The same boys who had brayed at her like hyenas now worshiped her like pilgrims before a shrine. They tripped over themselves to compliment her, their awe soon sliding into the same loutish cruelty—just with a new vocabulary. The tone changed from mockery to hunger, but the malice was the same. By October, Erika Jenkins vanished—transferred, rumor had it, to a small private school where maybe she could breathe.

    I was furious—but not for noble reasons. I had finally worked up the nerve to ask her out. And now she was gone, like a dream that evaporates the moment you wake.

    That night, I asked Master Po why her story hadn’t followed the script of The Ugly Duckling. “Why wasn’t there a happy ending?” I asked.

    “Because, Grasshopper,” he said, “not all fairytales are true. The boys mocked her when she was an ‘ugly duckling,’ and they mocked her again when she became a ‘beautiful swan.’ Only their weapons changed—from insult to lust. They remained prisoners of their malice. It was they, not she, who failed to evolve.”

    He said this with a sharpness I wasn’t used to. “But I never teased her,” I protested. “Not once.”

    “Do not congratulate yourself for being less vile than the wicked,” he said. “You still measured your worth by their ugliness. You did not defend her. You simply waited for your turn to possess her beauty. Her radiance blinded them—and you as well.”

    “Are you saying I’m no better than they are?”

    “I am saying,” Master Po said, “that even a moth believes itself noble until it burns in the flame. I can already see you falling from the sky.”

    He was right, of course. My heartbreak wasn’t about Erika’s suffering—it was about my own loss. I didn’t mourn her pain. I mourned my missed opportunity to bask in her glow. Even in my sympathy, I was self-absorbed. Master Po saw the rot beneath my pity.

    He always did.

  • Thou Shall Not Confuse Franco Columbu with Thyself

    Thou Shall Not Confuse Franco Columbu with Thyself

    One sluggish afternoon at Canyon High, as Mrs. Hanson’s freshman English class shuffled into their desks and prepared to feign interest in Romeo and Juliet, I had something far more compelling on my desk: Pumping Iron. It was my sacred text, my adolescent scripture, filled with black-and-white photos of demi-gods flexing under the Californian sun. My favorite shot was of Mr. Universe Franco Columbu, hanging upside down from a chin-up bar like a bat carved from granite.

    Next to me sat Jill Swanson—tall, sleek, with the effortless grace of a swimmer and the smile of someone who had never sweated through a protein fart. I decided this was my moment. I turned the page toward her.
    “Hey,” I said, “check out this bodybuilder at the beach.”
    She leaned in. “Holy smokes, he’s huge.”
    I nodded solemnly. “That’s me.”
    She blinked. “What?”
    “That’s me. Can’t you tell?”
    Jill squinted at the photograph, studying the Herculean Italian upside down in all his vascular glory.
    “Oh my God,” she said slowly. “That’s you?”
    “Yep.”
    And just like that, I was Franco Columbu. I spun a whole mythology—how I’d been visiting my grandparents in L.A., hanging out with my “bodybuilding friends” in Venice, when a photographer captured me mid-workout.

    For five glorious minutes, I was a god among freshmen. Then, as Jill flipped back to her notes and I basked in the afterglow of deceit, the truth curdled in my gut. The lie that had inflated me like a balloon was already leaking air. By the time I got home, I felt hollow and cheap. I stared into the bathroom mirror, splashed cold water on my face, and summoned my inner monk.

    “Master Po,” I said, “why am I such a compulsive liar?”
    “Because, Grasshopper,” he replied, “you wish to appear strong because you are weak. True strength is not forged in muscle but in mastering your inner demons.”
    “I have only one?”
    “No,” he said, “but let’s start with the demon of inadequacy—the one that makes you trade truth for applause.”
    “How do I kill it?”
    “You don’t,” he said. “You chip away at it. Great acts are made of small deeds. Each honest act is a strike against the demon.”
    “But where do I start?”
    “Stop gazing at your reflection as though it’s a sculpture to be admired,” he said. “When you cease to worship yourself, you’ll stop fearing imperfection. The sage who puts himself last finds nourishment. You, Grasshopper, are still starving.”

    I looked at my reflection—small, soft, and decidedly un-Franco-like—and realized Master Po was right. The hardest muscle to build is the one that keeps you honest.

  • Your Tears Won’t Change the World

    Your Tears Won’t Change the World

    When I was thirteen, I decided the path to popularity ran straight through Soul Train. I spent months studying the dance troupe Captain Crunch and the Funky Bunch, who could pivot from the robotic precision of the Funky Robot to doing splits so fast you’d think they were animated. I practiced every night in front of my bedroom mirror until my limbs clicked like clockwork and my expression was as vacant as a mannequin’s. I was ready to unleash my Funky Robot at the Earl Warren Junior High dance.

    The playlist that night was pure chaos. Whoever the DJ was, he seemed to be drawing songs from a hat. “Free Bird” dragged like a eulogy, “Walk This Way” felt like cardiac arrest, and “Midnight at the Oasis” was exactly what it sounded like—a languid romp in the desert. But when Stevie Wonder’s “Living for the City” came on, I sprang into motion. My body jerked and popped with righteous purpose. I was a mechanical deity in Adidas, a human jukebox powered by insecurity.

    By some miracle of social physics, I ended up dancing all night with Cheryl Atkins—the prettiest girl there—because her boyfriend Rick hated to dance. While we funked and twirled under the mirrored ball, I noticed the misfits pressed against the gym walls like condemned prisoners. They’d ask for dances, get shot down, and limp back to their corner of despair. Watching them, I felt an unexpected pang—an ache sharper than any muscle burn.

    Meanwhile, the popular eighth-graders were perfecting a ritual called “getting wasted,” which apparently involved puking and maintaining high social standing at the same time. As a Junior Olympic weightlifter, I found this baffling. I could clean and jerk my body weight, but I couldn’t comprehend how vomiting could make you cool.

    By the end of the night, Cheryl and I won the dance contest. Vice Principal Gillis handed me a trophy, but instead of basking in my Funky Robot glory, I felt hollow. The faces of the wallflowers haunted me. That night, I dreamed of a beach where a giant elephant seal handed each lonely misfit a beautiful radio, and as they tuned it, they glowed and vanished into the horizon. I woke up certain of one thing: radios were holy.

    “Master Po,” I said, “the world is cruel. I can’t be happy knowing people like those misfits suffer.”
    “Spare me your tears, Grasshopper,” he said. “Sadness feels noble, but it’s an addiction. It comforts the ego while changing nothing.”
    “But what can I do?” I asked. “Darwin was right—the strong thrive, and the weak pay the price.”
    “Indeed,” he said. “And in case you haven’t noticed, you’re one of the weak. So tend your own garden, Grasshopper. The misfit must save himself before he can save the world.”

  • Care Less About Your Reflection–It’s Already Lying to You

    Care Less About Your Reflection–It’s Already Lying to You

    When I came back from Kenya and landed in the California hedonistic mecca of Earl Warren Junior High, I was less “student” and more “cultural oddity.” I joined the Olympic Weightlifting team and became pathologically devoted to squats—so much that I’d drop into deep-knee bends while the PE teacher took roll, earning myself the nickname “Squats,” which followed me like a bad tattoo. My ignorance of marijuana culture didn’t help. I thought a “doobie” was some industrial-sized cousin of a joint—like a weed burrito—and made the mistake of announcing this to the cool kids at lunch. The laughter was volcanic. Overnight, I went from “Squats” to “Narc,” a walking PSA in gym shorts.

    But my humiliation wasn’t complete until the day the snack bar opened and my friends bolted toward it for ice cream sandwiches. I stayed rooted in place, wallet empty, as a girl perched in a tree pointed at me and sang out, “Ha-ha, Jeff doesn’t have any money!” The shame hit me like the sting of the Portuguese Man o’ War that nearly killed me in Kenya.

    At home, sprawled on my bed, I consulted Master Po.
    “Grasshopper,” he said, “you must learn to accept disgrace with dignity. A self-image is a sword—sharpen it too much, and it snaps.”
    “Easy for you to say,” I muttered. “You never got laughed at for thinking a doobie was a family-size joint.”
    He continued, “If you care what others think, you become their prisoner.”
    “I just want respect,” I said.
    “When you stop chasing it,” he replied, “you’ll finally earn it.”

    That night, I resolved to rise above it all—to become a new man. Then I did fifty squats before bed.

  • Do Not Trust the Smile of the Sea

    Do Not Trust the Smile of the Sea

    When I was twelve, my family lived briefly in Nairobi, where my father worked for the Peace Corps. One school break, we headed to Mombasa, the coastal jewel of Kenya, where the Indian Ocean was as warm as bathwater and clear enough to read your reflection in. Leopard-spotted shells glimmered beneath the surface, and purple sea urchins decorated the shallows like jeweled land mines. I was a sunburned boy in blue terry-cloth trunks printed with white lilies—half Tarzan, half tourist—determined to conquer nature with curiosity alone.

    At low tide, I discovered sea cucumbers: bulbous, indecently soft things that looked like props from a B-movie. I picked one up and chased my younger brother along the beach, brandishing it like a medieval mace, laughing so hard I forgot to breathe. Then, mid-laughter, the ocean answered back. I fell into the shallow surf, and my back erupted in white-hot agony. My father sprinted toward me, wielding a stick like an exorcist, shouting that I’d been wrapped by a Portuguese Man o’ War. By the time he peeled the translucent tentacles off my skin, the jellyfish had already written its signature in fire across my spine.

    A local doctor, somber and leathery from the sun, told us a five-year-old boy had died from the same sting just a week earlier. He handed me pain medication and ordered a long, cold bath. As I soaked, trembling and pink, I asked Master Po why the most beautiful place I’d ever seen had tried to kill me.

    “Grasshopper,” he said, “Heaven and Earth show no mercy. You thought yourself Tarzan, but you are a fragile boy—a straw dog—easily crushed by nature’s indifference. Do not be deceived by beauty. It will destroy you.”

    “I’m not fooled,” I said, “but I still want to be close to it. Surfers in Santa Cruz watch their best friend get swallowed by a great white, and a year later they’re back in the same waves. Tomorrow my brother and I will be back in the Indian Ocean. Are we fools?”

    “Foolishness,” Master Po said, “is closing your eyes to the lesson and calling it courage. Tomorrow, you may return to the sea—but this time, you’ll keep your eyes open.”

  • The Double-Minded Man on His Exercise Bike

    The Double-Minded Man on His Exercise Bike

    Thoughtful theists often find themselves backpedaling from the most odious doctrines of their faith until what remains is no longer recognizably orthodox. Some manage this theological detour while keeping their faith intact. Others slide further down the slope until their religion becomes something more universal, even Unitarian—a faith stripped of dogma and distilled to moral simplicity: love thy neighbor, serve the poor, practice charity, and call it good.

    Within Christianity, the spectrum is wide. On one end stand the infernalists of the Augustinian school, firm in their vision of eternal punishment. On the other are the universalists who, following Origen, imagine purgatory as a place of cleansing rather than damnation, with the possibility of post-mortem salvation. Some, like Martin Gardner and H. G. Wells, found orthodoxy itself to be a spiritual illness in William James’s sense—a sickness of the soul that required liberation. Others, like Dale Allison, hold to faith but jettison the Augustinian vision of perdition. And then there is philosopher Elizabeth Anderson, who takes orthodoxy at its word and concludes that if God authored it, He cannot be moral.

    As one nears death, it would be comforting to have these matters settled—to face eternity with the theological equivalent of a neatly tied bow. But such closure eludes those of us who remain agnostic, chastising ourselves as James’s “double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.”

    I do, however, possess a few fragments of certainty. I reject Rousseau’s sentimental fantasy that human nature is innately good and can serve as our moral compass. I’ve seen enough of humanity to know we are corrupt, self-deceiving creatures who must wrestle with our yetzer hara—our bad inclination, as Jewish tradition calls it. Yet I’m not entirely convinced, as Paul was, that we are hopelessly depraved. Perhaps Paul and I are lost causes, but that doesn’t make the condition universal. The Jewish notion of meeting God halfway—using the strength He gave us—differs sharply from Paul’s portrayal of helpless man collapsing before the mercy seat. One path is desperate; the other is disciplined.

    Whether I write these reflections out of genuine spiritual torment or simple procrastination before an hour on the exercise bike is unclear. Either way, I’ll mount the Schwinn Airdyne, pedal furiously, and try not to think too much about eternal damnation.

  • Your Status Drifts Like the Waves of the Sea

    Your Status Drifts Like the Waves of the Sea

    One grim Tuesday in fifth grade, our entire class was herded into the nurse’s office for the Ishihara Colorblind Test—a bright little carnival of humiliation disguised as medical science. Each of us took turns peering into a glowing lens, where we were supposed to spot numbers hidden in a mosaic of pastel dots. My classmates breezed through like they were decoding divine messages. I, however, saw nothing but decorative oatmeal.

    The nurse grew impatient. “Can’t you see anything?” she barked, her voice slicing through the sterile air like a paper cut. The class erupted in laughter. My fate was sealed: I was the day’s designated leper, the monochrome freak in a Technicolor world.

    At lunch, I sat alone with my half-eaten cheeseburger and tater tots, brooding over my sudden fall from grace. “Why,” I asked my internal life coach, Master Po, “is everyone making such a big deal about me being colorblind?”

    “Do not worry, Grasshopper,” he said in that maddeningly tranquil voice. “Today you are mocked, but by tomorrow you will be first picked at kickball, for your mighty legs will send the ball over the fence. People’s judgments are like waves upon the sea—brief, noisy, and forgotten.”

    “I’m not so sure about that,” I said. “Teddy Leidecker smelled like pee in kindergarten, and he’s still called Pee-pee Teddy. That wave’s been breaking for five years straight.”

    “Nature does not hurry,” Master Po said serenely, “yet everything is accomplished in its time.”

    “Try telling that to Teddy Leidecker,” I muttered.

    “You must not manage the gardens of others,” he said. “You have your own plot of weeds to clear.”

    “Really encouraging, Master.”

    He nodded. “You must clear them to reveal your original nature.”

    “What if my ‘original nature’ isn’t that great?”

    “Even if you dislike yourself,” he said, “you must nurture yourself. The sage helps even the repulsive.”

    “So what you’re saying,” I said, “is that even when I do stupid things, I can be a moral lesson to myself?”

    “Precisely, Grasshopper. You are blossoming before my eyes.”

    “Yeah,” I said, stabbing a tater tot. “Into what, exactly—a dandelion?”

  • Do Not Assume There Is a Bridge Between Life and Death

    Do Not Assume There Is a Bridge Between Life and Death

    When I was ten, I made the catastrophic decision to watch an ABC Movie of the Week called The Screaming Woman, based on a Ray Bradbury short story. The premise was simple: a woman buried alive, screaming for help. But to a ten-year-old with an overactive imagination, it was psychological napalm. For two weeks I couldn’t sleep. Every creak of the floorboards, every gust of wind was the muffled plea of a mud-caked corpse clawing her way out from under my bed.

    One night, trembling in a sweat-damp cocoon of sheets, I turned to my imaginary Zen tormentor, Master Po, and asked, “Why am I so stupid, Master? Why did I watch a movie designed to murder my sleep?”

    “Ah, Grasshopper,” he said, with the unhurried calm of someone who’s never paid a utility bill, “the woman buried in a shallow grave is not your enemy. She is your teacher. She shows you the short bridge between life and death. You imagine the bridge as long, but in truth it is a nub, barely the length of a thought. Horror films remind you that you are always one bad turn from the dirt nap.”

    “That’s profound, Master, but I still can’t sleep.”

    “You mustn’t flee from the woman under your bed,” he said. “You must reach into the grave and pull her out. In saving her, you save yourself.”

    “I’m not going near a grave,” I said. “I have claustrophobia.”

    “Life and death,” he replied, “are the same thing seen from opposite sides of the same coin.”

    “I prefer the life side, thank you.”

    “You cling to your vantage point because you think it’s fixed,” he said, with the patience of a man lecturing a doorknob. “But it will shift. When you accept change, death will no longer frighten you—and once that fear is gone, nothing can stop you.”

    “Nothing? Like I could hit a baseball five hundred feet like Reggie Jackson?”

    Master Po sighed. “No, Grasshopper. You will stop wanting to be Reggie Jackson. And that will be your home run.”

  • Master Po vs. My Perfect Alibi

    Master Po vs. My Perfect Alibi

    In 1972, on the dust-choked battlefield otherwise known as the Independent Elementary playground, Miguel Torres and I were locked in a holy war over an alleged clipping penalty. Gary Kauffman—self-appointed referee, rules committee, and prophet of doom—had flagged me during tag football, a call that would hand my team the loss. Words got hot. “Cheater” ricocheted between us like a stray bullet. Then Miguel’s fists did the talking—left, right, a percussion solo on my jaw.

    I cried—not because I stood there like a department-store mannequin while his knuckles composed a sonata on my face, but because I was blind. I hadn’t read the storm system building in my friend—barometric pressure falling, hostility rising—and I was stunned that my protest could yank that much fury out of someone who’d traded Twinkies with me at lunch.

    The recess bell shrieked. We jogged back to class, me sniffling, my face a throbbing geography lesson. Mrs. Eckhart opened My Side of the Mountain, but I heard only the drumbeat in my skull and the soft crush of my pride underfoot. I retreated inward to the place my imagination had been furnishing for months: a quiet stone courtyard outside the Shaolin Temple, the same one that glowed from our black-and-white TV. The river whispered nearby. Incense drifted like daydreams. And there stood my spiritual guide, Master Po—blind as justice, sharp as a scalpel.

    “Master Po,” I said, still tasting the copper of humiliation, “you once taught me that weakness prevails over strength and gentleness conquers. Yet my team lost, my friend rearranged my face, and I stood there helpless. Where was gentleness then?”

    “Grasshopper,” he said, “you mistake stubbornness for virtue. You are the rigid branch that neither sees the distant hills nor hears the cooling wind—and so you snap. Begin by seeing. Begin by listening.”

    “What am I not seeing? What am I not hearing?”

    He tilted his head. “For one, you did not hear the expletives cannoning from your mouth—shrapnel of spit landing on your friend’s cheeks. For two, you did not see your own finger spearing his chest, drilling his solar plexus as if mining for a confession.”

    “So I was ticking off Miguel without even knowing it?”

    “Precisely, Grasshopper. You cherry-pick facts to star in your favorite film—You, the Noble Victim—while everyone else auditions for Villain. Myth-making is a miraculous tool for preserving self-esteem. It is also the shortest road away from The Way.”

    “I don’t myth-make.”

    He raised an eyebrow in the patient way only the blind can. “When you were six, you slept at your aunt and uncle’s and wet the bed. Instead of accepting the weather report from your own bladder, you blamed…the Pee Fairy.”

    I winced. “I remember. It was quick thinking.”

    “What else do you remember?”

    “That I repeated the lie until it became embroidered truth. I argued anyone who doubted me into silence. The Pee Fairy did it. Obviously.”

    “Exactly,” he said. “When you muddle truth long enough, you lose your own outline. You become your costume.”

    “How do I follow The Way?”

    “Do not costume yourself. Do not curate a personality for the world like outfits for the first day of school. Let time carve you. Emerge by erosion, not construction.”

    “I’m eleven,” I said. “Time carves slowly. Also, if I don’t finish my social-studies questions by sixth period, I’ll be carving them in detention.”

    He smiled. “By doing nothing, everything is done.”

    “Try that on Mrs. Eckhart.”

    “You have much to learn, Grasshopper.”

    Back in the fluorescent glare of fifth grade, Mrs. Eckhart’s voice returned, turning pages into wind through trees. I pressed a cool palm to my cheekbone, felt the ache, and wondered if wisdom always arrived late—long after the bell, after the punch, after you realize you were yelling at a friend and mistook your echo for righteousness. Maybe gentleness isn’t an instant shield; maybe it’s a habit you grow, a small current under the noise, the kind that keeps a rigid branch from snapping when the playground becomes a courtroom and you’ve already sentenced yourself to innocence.

  • The Temu-ization of Everything—Again

    The Temu-ization of Everything—Again

    I’m reading Cory Doctorow’s freshly minted Enshittification. Early on, he revisits Facebook circa 2010: the honey pot that lured billions before curdling into a slurry of compulsion loops, conspiracy gristle, and industrial-scale data mining. It’s sharp, it’s punchy—and it gave me déjà vu. Then my stomach dropped: I like the coinage, I like the thesis that we’re living through the Enshittocene, but the insights feel old. Jaron Lanier mapped a lot of this terrain eight years ago in Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now, a book I’ve taught over the last seven years.

    Doctorow’s Amazon chapter triggers the same shrug. The platform seduces us with convenience, tightens its talons, and gradually morphs from glossy marketplace into Temu-adjacent bazaar. True, and thoroughly litigated across a thousand essays and think pieces. We’ve been warned about the house always winning; we don’t need another tour of the casino floor.

    What I wanted—and didn’t get—was a deeper dive into the anthropology of the rot. Black Mirror’s “Nosedive” or “Joan Is Awful” doesn’t just wag a finger at platforms; it autopsies the psyche and the systems. New Yorker writer Kyle Chayka nails the gap: Enshittification is “pointed and efficient,” but reads like “professional blogging extended for three-hundred-plus pages,” leaving you hungry for a larger cultural x-ray that goes beyond the usual suspects.

    To be fair, packaging a messy discourse into one memorable term matters; not everyone read Lanier or binged Brooker. Doctorow’s snark has its uses. A clean label can move an idea from seminar rooms to dinner tables. But once you’ve named the disease, the next move isn’t to repeat symptoms; it’s to map vectors, power centers, and countermeasures with fresh cases outside the Big Tech pentagon.

    So yes: I love the word. But the book left me underwhelmed. Doctorow has given us the bumper sticker; I’m still waiting for the field manual. The Enshittocene doesn’t need another catalog of platform sins—it needs a blueprint that shows how to break the flywheels, where policy and design can bite, and why our appetites keep refilling the trough. Name the era, sure. Now show us how to survive it—and, if we’re lucky, how to end it.