Avoidism

Avoidism is a new, optimistic philosophy designed to save modern man from himself. The principle of Avoidism is simple. An Avoidist simply avoids things.

He avoids because nonavoiding leads to Involvement, and all of man's troubles grow out of Involvement.

Descartes said, "I think, therefore I am."

The Avoidist says, "I won't, therefore I ain't gonna."

Why Avoidism?

Every methodology of ethical conduct or philosophy that man has so far evolved to guide his living and his thinking has proved to be based on the same major fallacy. Namely, the idea that man must "do something."

It is this peculiar notion which has kept everything all loused up.

Avoidism, The Argument For

Contemporary man is admittedly headed for Nowhere. This situation has occurred because man suffers from a compulsion to prove to himself that he is a unique and superior being; i.e., he works to make money so that he can buy things his neighbors don't have; he wears purple underwear to prove that he is sexy, etc., etc.

Naturally, such attempts can lead only from anxiety, through frustration, to Neurosis. (This is the second-best sentence in the article.)

And it's all unnecessary.

Avoidism tells us that man is perfectly all right as he is. Man is already superior by virtue of his belonging to the species Homo sapiens.*

Think how superior you are to a cherrystone clam.

Think how much more superior you are to the clam than the most important man who ever lived is superior to you:

Most Important Man Who Ever Lived

(Check one)

1. Julius Caesar

2. Albert Einstein

3. Plato

4. Roger Price

5. Napoleon Bonaparte

6. Pablo Picasso

7. Jefferson Davis

(NOTE: Numbers 3 and 4 may be checked together as a stable entry.)

You will see that the difference between you and any of the above is very slight. Now let us look at the difference between man and the clam. In order to arrive at a scientific estimate of the contrast, I recently compared my brother Clarence and an exceptionally fine specimen of Long Island clam. I conducted an exhaustive series of tests, and I append here a table showing the results, which even exceeded my hopeful expectations:

These tests proved Clarence's superiority over the clam beyond question.**

It is clear now that any man is infinitely more superior to a clam than any other man is superior to him! Think this over for a while.

Once this conspicuous comparison is sufficiently impressed upon your mind, it will satisfy your ego, and there will be no need for you to try to prove that you are a superior being or a member of a superior group.

Avoidism is anti-individualist and anti-collectivist.

Avoidism is pro-you!

The Argument Against

Many reactionary, energetic, ambitious types will tell you that Avoidists are nothing but slobs.

Answer to the Argument Against

This is true.

How to Become an Avoidist

Although most of us are inherent, though self-frustrating, Avoidists, we must remember that, in making Avoidism a part of our daily life, we must start out slowly. Begin by avoiding little things such as Luncheon Checks, your Brother-in-Law, Alcohol (except in medicinal preparations such as rye, bourbon, Scotch, etc.), and Cutting the Lawn. Avoiding will not be as easy as it first seems, and the eager beginner will do well to master the fundamentals thoroughly before taking any further steps. Here are a few basic exercises illustrating the technique of Avoiding that may be practiced by the novice:

Drawing (A) in Figure I shows the Basic Avoidist Position. Drawings (B) and (C) show two interesting variations. Practice these positions several hours a day until you have mastered them. Do not be impatient. Remember, "Easily learned, easily forgotten." Practice, practice, practice these positions until they are second nature to you. The New Avoidist should spend at least a year on the Basic Positions. Then, and not before, he may go on to the Advanced Avoidist Position (Figure II).

Aids for the Beginning Avoidist

I have been working on several Aids for the Beginning Avoidist, which I hope to have on the market soon. So far I've developed an Avoidist alarm clock. When it alarms, it vibrates a piece of limp liver between two sponges. It comes in three attractive styles: calf, pork, and baby beef. I am now working on an Avoidist watch, which is an hour-glass filled with cement.

(You may be interested in knowing that, shortly before this issue went to press, the editor and I were annoyed constantly by the clam which I had used in the intelligence tests with my brother Clarence. This clam, although he lost fairly, had adopted a very unsportsmanlike attitude and had become quite a sorehead. He had, we soon discovered, been taking ping-pong lessons from a professional player and kept demanding that he be given a chance to take the tests over again. He kept bothering us and complaining and causing trouble, until we were forced to take drastic measures. We hired an assassin and instructed him to arm himself with a jar of horseradish and a fork. I think we shall hear no more from this bad loser.)

Conversational Avoiding

Because of the volume of talk that constantly floods civilization, the Beginning Avoidist will sometimes be trapped into listening to what is being said to him. The following rule should be obeyed at all times:

The Only Thing an Avoidist Ever Listens to is Nothing.

Frequently, though, you will find it necessary to take certain steps to make sure that there is nothing for you not to listen to (this sentence must be read twice before it makes any sense). Hence, Avoidist Conversation.

Avoidist Conversation should be employed immediately when anyone inclines his torso toward you at an angle of more than ninety degrees, the danger increasing in direct proportion to the square of the angle of inclination (Figure III).

Whenever this sort of danger threatens (or any other time you feel like it), you may Avoid by employing Eight Tested Remarks of such extreme dullness that the Avoidee will experience a partial paralysis lasting approximately four minutes, while trying to think up an answer. These remarks are:

1. A girl I used to go with when I was in high school just got a job with the Telephone Company.

2. I got this suit three years ago in Pittsburgh for fifty dollars.

3. I went to bed real early last night, but I didn't get to sleep until after midnight.

4. I didn't hardly have anything to eat for lunch today, just a salad and some pie and coffee.

5. I read in the papers that Alf Landon is going back into politics.

6. My little boy will be eight years old next month. You oughta hear him talk.

7. I sure wish I'd kept up with my piano lessons when I was a kid.

8. I can take better pictures with a little Brownie box camera than I can with those real expensive ones.

(NOTE: When traveling, the following may be substituted for Number 5: "I used to live down that street." If you cannot remember the Eight Tested Remarks, just mutter. Try reciting the names of all the state capi-tols without moving the lips.)

History of Avoidism

Fifty-four years ago, two brothers were running a bicycle-repair shop in a small town in central Ohio. One day, one of the brothers, Wilbur, was looking out of the window and happened to see a swallow soaring effortlessly through the air. He watched a moment and called his brother to the window. "Orville," he said, "someday men will fly through the air like that bird." A speculative gleam came into Orville's eyes, the beginnings of a dream. And only seven years later, those two brothers, Orville and Wilbur Hammerslip, were bankrupt.

They wasted no time in trying to invent a flying machine. They Avoided the whole ridiculous idea. And if the Wright brothers had only done the same, the world would certainly be a lot better off today.

But the true Father of Modern Avoidism was Clayton Slope. Clayton Slope was my step-uncle-in-law on my mother's side of the family. The first time I ever saw him he was sitting in a rocker on the back porch of his sister-in-law's house in Charleston, West Virginia. He had been sitting in the rocker for twenty-two months without moving. (True, he had rocked once, but inadvertently, as the result of a slight gastric upset.)

There was something about his weak, watery stare, the shifty set of his tiny chin, the way his small shoulders slumped forward, almost touching across his narrow chest, that fascinated me. Here at last, I felt, was a happy man. At the time I didn't know it, but Clayton Slope was a man who lived Avoidism. In addition to the physical advantages mentioned above, he had developed the limp, repulsive handshake to a point of perfection seldom reached by any of us today. He had a clever trick of saying any conceivable sentence so that it sounded like, "I had one grunch but the eggplant over there." And for years he had avoided changing his socks (he just put Sen-Sen in his shoes). Also, he pretended to be stone-deaf.

He was the most avoidable man I ever saw.

This is his story.

Clayton Slope was destined to become an Avoidist. (He was an eleven months' baby.) From the very beginning he was subject to all of the frustrations of modern life. His family didn't have a big fancy house. They didn't even have a little simple house. They lived in a chicken coop.

They didn't mind living in the chicken coop, except in the mornings when the farmer would come around and lift them up to look for eggs.

This caused a draft, and Clayton suffered constantly from colds.

As he grew older, Clayton became a shy, timid introvert. He was frightened of everything, and everybody always picked on him. He grew up with his back to the wall. (See Figure IV.)

Clayton's early life was filled with confusion. For one thing, people used to make fun of him because of his feet. He thought this was unnecessary and uncalled for because, as you can see, his feet were perfectly normal. He had ten toes, like anyone else. (See Figure V.)

In consequence of this, at a very early age Clayton began to reject his environment. And vice-versa. He began to formulate, unconsciously, the principles of Avoidism.

Clayton began to avoid making good grades in school. This was easy. He simply avoided going to school at all. His family tried to interest him in studies, and one time they hired a tutor, and Clayton started to learn how to write. However, it took the tutor eight months to teach him how to make a period, and he finally gave up in disgust.

After this one non-Avoidistic retrogression, Clayton never again looked forward. He began to avoid people with mustaches, people without mustaches, spinach, Hoot Gibson movies, and soap. He began to sleep on an Ugly Rest mattress (a mattress he designed himself for "People who don't care how they look, they just want a place to lie down.")

By the time he was eighteen years old, Clayton had developed a primitive Avoidist Position (still used by some of the older members) that he assumed during all of his waking hours (Figure VI).

This position worked fine and kept Clayton from having to talk to a lot of people, but it worried his parents, and they took him to a doctor, who found that there was a physical reason for this position of Clayton's. The doctor found that Clayton had a very weak spine and a heavy beard.

Although the position was effective, Clayton eventually had to give it up, principally because he was living with a large family which included a number of rather playful cousins.

When Clayton Slope was twenty-two, he suffered his biggest and final frustration. He fell in love with a girl who was a twin. She worked for the Toni people, as a matter of fact. Both of the twins were the same height, weight, and had the same color of hair, and some embarrassing mistakes arose, and people used to tease him about this. So he studied the twins very carefully, and in about six weeks he got so he could tell almost every time which one was Mary Jane and which one was Herman.

But it still worried him. So Clayton finally decided to give up girls altogether. And Herman, too. And today Clayton Slope is a complete Avoidist. He is still sitting on the back porch in his rocker, not watching the world go by, a man with no worries, no cares, no problems, no troubles, no nothin'. A Happy Man.

And the sooner more of us get in that position the sooner we'll have a little peace and quiet.

*If you do not belong, write me at once, including name, address, and color of eyes and hair.

**One uninvited observer, a Dr. Carl Gassoway, claimed that the differential in Clarence's favor was due entirely to the inclusion of "ping-pong" in the test, which he said was unfair. This is destructive thinking. I think this man should be put away somewhere.

(A) Avoidist Avoiding Reading Story in Saturday Evening Post

(B) Avoidist Avoiding Answering Doorbell

(C) Avoidist Avoiding Phoning Friend to Make Date on Wednesday to Discuss Business

(D) Avoidist Avoiding Women (NOTE: This technique hasn't quite been perfected yet.)

FIGURE III: Non-Avoidist Conversationalist

FIGURE IV: Clayton as a Child

FIGURE V: Clayton's Feet

FIGURE VI: Avoidist Position (Slope's Stoop)

FIGURE II: Advanced Position (Not for beginners)