Tattooing and synchronicity: Is existence mental, or what?

Traveling via subway from Brooklyn to midtown Manhattan today for a business meeting, Malcolm Pollack, who sometimes comments at VFR, realized to his shock that major tattooing, including on women, was much more common than he had previously realized. What he found particularly disturbing was not just the tattoos themselves, but the fact that otherwise normal-looking people, people who presumably have normal jobs and normal lives, have large parts of their anatomy defaced by tattoos. He returned home thinking of writing about this at his blog. Then, opening his computer, he loaded VFR and saw our discussion about tattoos, posted this morning, where, among other things, I had made exactly the same point that had most bothered him, that major tattooing, large-scale mutilation of one’s body, is being done by middle-class people.

Mr. Pollack lives in Brooklyn; I live in Manhattan. We had had no prior communication about this subject. I had never written about tattoos before. Yet both of us conceived/wrote/posted the same thought about the same subject on the same day.

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Gintas writes:

And what about this coincidence? Yesterday I got a large tattoo on my chest that says “VFR” superimposed over an image of a clenched fist!

Hannon writes:

That graphic from Gintas of his new chest tattoo is such a peculiar composition in its color, style and arrangement. It looks more suitable as a T-shirt or baseball cap adornment. You could sell such merchandise but I don’t think the people who would wear them would inspire others to follow suit as a matter of social status (like tattoos). Typecasting/off.

LA replies:

I think you’re taking it too seriously. Agreed that it looks more like a T-shirt, not a tattoo.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 11, 2012 04:56 PM | Send