Regarding Parrots, Oversocialization is Not the Right Word

To be fair it is something like oversocialization. Omni-ritualization. Slave socialization. 

Theocratization. Everything in the religion, nothing outside the religion, nothing against the religion. Omnidogmatic.

The Parrot reveals that nearly every non-child has severe social anxiety and has to frantically search for the approved ritual for interacting with a parrot.
They find there are obvious rituals but using them would de-legitimize other rituals. There are errors in the error codes, eliciting more error warnings.

Like bro you don't need to interact with a parrot at all. 

It does not have the ostentation of the peacock, the imposing presence of the ostrich or the latent lethality of a falcon or hawk.[...]

Yet, the parrot is not a threat, so you clearly cannot panic or be overwhelmed.

You can very safely ignore it. Even if it decides to attack you, after a moment of disorientation and dismay you'll have plenty of time to react to it. 

Americans are so desperately afraid that they can't ignore it, just in case that's heresy.  

 

Here in Reality, the only reason to look at it or otherwise interact with it is sheer idiosyncratic taste. There's no political or economic or reproductive ramifications whatsoever. You won't even be the next to pick your friend group's outing destination if you correctly ritualize the parrot, and nobody is going to ostracize you for ritualizing it wrong. 

In other words, doing it because you want to. If you want to, you can. Everyone can afford it. If you don't want to, then don't. Everyone can afford that too. 

That's it. That's all there is to a parrot. 

 

To my list of profundities, I will add the following: a free mind is one which the parrot can occupy easily, and stay in as long as it chooses. 

Now, the little black children engaged the parrot as completely as the little white girl. So if the little kids are born free and demonstrably remain free until at least age six

 

The adult American, however, has to reconcile the parrot with their vast system of cognitive dissonance. "How do I a world with a parrot without making this even worse?"

We are therefore forced, out of sheer necessity, to look at it.

"Oh shit I have to interact with the physical world instead of the social world." 

Rao doesn't know what he's 'supposed' to do with a parrot. His first and last instinct is obedience to a stronger power. Does he want to be tyrannized? I suppose he must. It makes him boring and fake 99% of the time, though. Why would I talk to a human-parrot about bird-parrots when I can talk to their master? And indeed their master is blasting NPC command codes all the time, so I already know what he said. No need to repeat it.

The parrot slightly jogs him out of this. He forgets, for a moment, that it's all lies by hacks, and accidentally takes some of the political exhortations literally.

Would it occur to him that whatever lofty abstractions it triggered, the parrot qua parrot would not make an appearance in the edifice he was building? Sadly, I must suspect that the thought would not have occurred to him.

[...]The parrot would again have been lost, subsumed here by the Absurd. As far as the parrot is concerned, Camus and Hegel differ little.

He wants to react to the parrot 'authentically' as a way of denying that authenticity, as he understands it, is yet another artificial ritual. 

A mind with ‘parrot’ on it should not look like anything recognizable.

Rao cannot imagine someone who doesn't have to ritualize and model the entire world.

Imagine someone as such: "Huh, a parrot. I don't know what's going on. That's okay. It doesn't matter." Rao cannot imagine it. 

That said, he's not wrong: none of the non-child New Yorkers could react to the parrot. Only to the politico-religious implications of a parrot.
It reminds me again of Fussell: there aren't any, which is their problem. There's no way to dunk on a Twatter by pointing out a parrot was in Ithaca today. You can't "score" any "points" by using that parrot to virtue-signal. And if you aren't scoring points, aren't you falling behind? Your mortgage is twitter-follower indexed, right? Right?

the “Awww!” you might direct at a puppy. A puppy is a punch you can roll with.

There's something you're 'supposed' to do with a puppy. You don't have to go off-road to deal with a puppy.  

When an American sees A Parrot, they suddenly have to be themselves instead of who they're 'supposed' to be. 

 

I think I'm onto something with omnidogmatism. It is not merely that you must obey the 39 strictures or whatever. Every situation has a stricture and you must obey it. Truly omnityrannous.  

P.S.

Mothers are too engaged in scripting the experiences of their babies to experience anything other than the baby themselves.

The baby, however, seemed entirely uninterested in the parrot.

Mom is interested in teaching baby what they're supposed to be interested in. Mom neither knows nor cares what interests the baby. The Han are soulless bugmen and Americans train strenuously to achieve that exulted state. 

Imagine having to know what your fellow citizens are like. *shudder*
Much easier if they're not like anything, and merely obey.

 

The parrot doesn't need to ritualize the obsessive ritualizers. The parrot, much dumber and poorer than any human, can nevertheless get by without all these crutches.

The parrot, without its owner, was sitting there, qua parrot, indifferent to its impact on passersby.

The ritualizers imagine their social mirages are inherent properties of the world and what's important is arranging the mirages correctly. No overlaps or loud clashing. The parrot has no mirages, is fine anyway. 

though, I suppose, most communities would be hard pressed to generate a legitimate response to an ostrich. 

Accidentally confessing that the community has no legitimate owner.
The legitimate action on your property is defined by you. If there is a legitimate owner, any response is legitimate as long as they sign off on it. If arbitrary decisions are not legitimate, then it must have an illegitimate owner. 

Something something procedural responsibility laundering.

 

Commons is crafted for the American liberal, a cocoon that gently reinforces her self-image as a more evolved, aware, and thoughtful creature than her parochial suburban, beer-guzzling, football-fan cousin.

Reminder that Americans know nothing about each other. They have some politically-relevant and politically-gerrymandered stereotypes about each other. 

There is no useful way a constantly active subtext of race can inform your engagement of a parrot.

This ignorance is necessary lest they realize they have little or nothing in common with one another except a shared abuser in DC and Boston. Then they might have to accept less abuse, which would upset everyone. Couldn't get away with pretending it's not intentional anymore.

It's particularly easy to see when you run across dated stereotypes of completed or defunct political campaigns. The American haven't changed but their factional fault lines, and therefore their images, have changed drastically.