About fireworks and the different kinds of people
This is an entry from my journal. It is a commentary on how people and societies are, as well as some relevant words of introspection.
It is minutes past midnight. I woke up to the sound of fireworks and the barking of my dogs. Now I cannot fall asleep. I am writing this to express that which took form in my mind; that which will not allow me to rest until I put it out there. Whenever there is a holiday or special event, I am reminded of the fact that I am not like most people around me. I do not share their sensitivities and they do not share mine.
I do not feel superior or inferior to them. I simply am different. What to me comes easily, to them is hard. And to what to them is effortless, to me feels alien and distant. The fact that I live at the margins of their society is ultimately not a choice of mine but the result of natural differences made manifest over time. Like how there is no mixing water with oil, no matter how forceful the blending is.
Society is an admixture of different types of people who are brought together through acculturation. The culture we are immersed in ultimately teaches us how to behave in each kind of situation. It is a playbook, else a set of scripts, that we apply to evolving states of affairs. Acculturation happens organically through imitation and feedback loops that create positive or negative reinforcement. While I was still in my homeland in Greece, for example, we would spend the minutes after midnight of January 1st to write SMSs to everyone wishing them a “Happy New Year” plus some personalised message. I did it many times without thinking about it. Why? Because that is what everybody was doing: it was normal as in “that which most people do by default” but also as “that which is expected of people to do”.
I left Greece at the age of 18 and have not been back since. Travelling and exposing myself to new milieux has had a profound effect on me, which can be summarised as the end of the aforementioned blending. It no longer applies to me or, at least, its power has greatly diminished over the years. Everything started to feel different, as I would interpret the world no longer as a mere participant, but also as an observer. I became an outsider who was somehow in the midst of events. Such is my conscience. My actions acquired a dual nature of lived experiences and observational data. Kind of “oh, look at me right now, writing an SMS to communicate something formulaic; something that at best already covers what my friend knows about me and which I continue to communicate through my genuine attitude towards them”.
Becoming a philosopher is a natural consequence of this underlying arrangement of factors. I ask “why” and proceed to understand the underpinnings of events. My character equips me to do so, especially the independence I have always had. I do not ask anybody for confirmation and seek no validation. If an idea stands to reason, I will my make up my mind accordingly and act likewise. My plainspokeness is a consequence of my eagerness to face up to whatever authority. I do not hide behind elaborate language and esoteric verbiage. In effect, I have the courage to say “this is as clear as my ideas get and I have no fear to expound thus”.
The underpinnings of character are predetermined. Environmental factors amplify that which is latent. As a teenager I argued against my teachers at school and openly mocked their “absurd” pretences to authority. They could not pacify me and I refused to accept “because I say so” as a valid answer. This was the philosopher in me before it came to the fore as conscious behaviour. Why would I be any different now that my powers have been augmented through continuous exposure to the rigours of life?
Being an observer as well as a participant is not inherently philosophical (“friend of wisdom” in the literal sense), let alone wise. It is easy for this perception to underpin a judgemental outlook or, worse, a sense of self-righteousness and elitism. Indeed, for a little while until the age of 20 I was like that. I was lucky to not cling on to my defined views and to ultimately remain dubitative and inquisitive. It is how I grew out of that phase to become contemplative and to withhold ultimate judgement.
Those who exhibit a huge ego have in them the potential to become humble. They are not a lost cause. Though they do need to reach the point of finding that which is greater than them and to recognise it in earnest. In a sense, only once you succumb to a superior force do you accept your place in the world. Ultimately, this is what we refer to when speaking of the divine: the power that no man can force into submission. Whether any given theology or school of thought is correct is ultimately a distraction. What matters is the visceral understanding one develops that there are magnitudes which are greater than their individuality.
A metaphor I have for the different kinds of people is to liken them to tools. Yes, this is simplistic, but is why we learn not to take metaphors too seriously. The point is that there is no such thing as the best tool. Each is appropriate for a specific task or in a given situation. For example, when we need to rest, a comfortable bed is better than an anvil. To cut down wild vegetation we need a sharp blade rather than a hammer. And so on. I too am a specialised tool. A sword, if you will.
I know my strengths and admit to my weaknesses. I cannot, for example, be the heart of the party. More generally, I will never be the right person to perform the functions of social reproduction, i.e. of bringing people together and of ensuring that values are preserved through yet more acculturation. I excel at opening paths and introducing new possibilities. In physical terms, I literally go where others fear to tread. For those tasks I am a one man army and feel inexorable. It is no coincidence that the hut project is a thing: to go beyond built-up areas, to pacify wild land, to work laboriously for what others take for granted, and to ultimately make a decent living that continues to improve over the months through my incessant work. The intellectual side is no different: I am eager to entertain ideas and will challenge anybody, no matter their standing, if I think I have something else to say. More broadly, I have the audacity to examine, which is again a metaphor of going where others dare not to be.
Like all tools, my skills are not better than those of others. What I do best is complementary to instances of social reproduction. A society needs people like me who will identify open vistas and map the horizons; people who will not conform with the status quo exactly because they feel an irresistible urge for adventure and the discoveries it may bring about. There is a part to us as a species that is concerned with staying back to work with what we have and then another part which is eager to take risks and rise up to any monster. A society thrives when it can accommodate both extremes of the spectrum and their permutations, which I may schematically represent as the modes of preservation and exploration. One could liken those to the archetypical feminine and masculine, but I find that such metaphors are ultimately misleading, while they beget avoidable role-playing and virtue signalling.
Societies oscillate between those modes throughout their history, depending on their material conditions. When they feel emboldened to experiment, such as during an economic boom, they reach out to do commerce with people in foreign lands and are receptive to novel thoughts. Conversely, when societies are gripped by fear, like during an economic downturn, they fall back to what they perceive as their baseline and become sceptical of others. Their reflex is to hesitate and to stay back. It is why an economic crisis transmogrifies into a crisis of values. Such is the dynamic between preservation and exploration. Those correspond to “conservative” and “progressive” outlooks, respectively, though not in their political sense as ideologies but in their basic expression as modes of behaviour: to retain and to keep risks at a minimum versus to risk virtually everything for the sake of gaining more in the end.
There is no inherently superior paradigm that works optimally no matter the prevailing conditions. Optimality exists within constraints or given specific parameters. There is no such thing in abstract. Those who believe that their mode is the only viable or beneficial way ultimately stand at an extreme position. It is how one inflates their ego: they believe that they represent the best there is, else that which is inherently superior to others. Once we understand people as tools, each with its scope of application, such an egoistic thought clearly stands as misguided.
Societies that operate too far in either end of the preservation-exploration spectrum lose their edge. If they explore too much, they fail to do the groundwork of establishing unassailable norms, and of having a modicum of stability that contributes to predictability and thus peace. In effect, too much exploration is the equivalent of experiences that are a mile long and a millimetre deep. At the other extreme, a society that is preoccupied with just preserving what it has does not keep up with the demands of life, such as through technological innovation to accommodate growing material needs. Too much emphasis on values, for example, as in a theocracy ultimately means that there is prevalent fear and hesitation to think outside the box.
Societies are organisms in the same way an individual human being is. Just like with individuals, a society that is not working towards something greater than what it has is lacking an inertial frame of reference, else the lodestar in the sky. It cannot orient itself and has no built-in sensor for when it is going off track. When people I talk to share with me their frustration and sense of feeling lost, I encourage them to think in terms of what is their mission in life: what is the grand goal you are working towards? By this, I do not mean mere wishes that we make frivolously, but actual commitments and thus projects that are realisable and we are actively engaged in. Those who are not working towards something great are, fundamentally, not content with their life. This is because absent the fixed star in the heavens, they easily get lost in trivial things. Their inevitable inconsistency undermines their confidence. In the end, they rationalise their inertia as inherent inability to act.
I do not try to persuade people to be like me because I understand that this is not a viable social order. We need diversity of skills and perspectives. I share all my works in freedom, hoping that somebody will find them useful. Though I understand that I will never be a pole of attraction for a community. In effect, my path is that of loneliness. Such is the fate allotted to me and I have accepted it. I am thus empowered to work to the best of my abilities and to not feel the need to fit into some mould. There is no such distraction, no resentment or grief, no pressure to become another, and no stress whatsoever.
Some people, men to be specific, have asked me how it is to live the way I do. I explain that it ultimately is not a choice. You either accept who you are or suffer indefinitely from the mismatch between the norms you have internalised and the reality you are experiencing. I can live this way because, at my core, I am capable of it. And I do so since everything else did not make me happy. I tried for a while to fit in by suppressing my natural adventurer, or the untamed force within, only to feel miserable and broken. If I ever find a wife, it will have to be someone who essentially is like me or, at the very least, does not make the mistake of trying to control me: there is no taming the wolf within. Not only is such a woman rare in global terms, it is extremely unlikely that one exists within the confines of my locality and is even looking towards my general direction. In practice, this is a numbers game that I cannot win.
I thus tell men who ask me about such topics to be yourself: do not pursue something that looks fancy stylistically. I understand the lure of adventure and I know how it is to feel a burning passion for challenge. And yes, I also recognise that some forms of living seem more badass than others exactly because you observe the cool parts while not dealing with any of the costs. The badass quality is stylistic though and you will err lamentably if you choose according to such a criterion.
If you cannot be contained, then you will have to free yourself from whatever container you are in. Though know that there is no inherent superiority in so doing. Forget about role-playing and looking cool. The masculinity merchants who demand from you a certain way of living are ultimately talking about their own self or are just shrewd and unscrupulous businessmen who are taking advantage of you. Be who you are, for all tools are useful. I am a lone wolf and a sword because nature made me so. I never chose my character the way we do in video games. Such is life and the diversity of our species.
On days like this I make the appropriate wishes to everybody I meet even though I personally do not feel anything about those words. Happy New Year it is!