Preamble: I wrote this last night, sidelined it because I wanted to sleep on it before I posted it. My main concern was that it might be 'too' disagreeable but I decided with a little bit of rewrite that it was worth putting out there. My main reason being - when people talk about gaslighting in our current culture I think it barely scratches the surface, ie. it's miles deep and almost seems to form the plate tectonics of societal interaction.
With that out of the way:
Difficult topic maybe but I'm bringing it up because I've noticed something.
If a guy shines brightly, and other guys actually hate him for shining brightly, it seems like many women will take lead that he's not an official part of the status hierarchy and avoid him as an anathema.
I think of being in college when there was a particular blonde I remember, she was close to if not over 6 foot, quite attractive (not insanely so but clearly enough to be noticed), and I remember the women around me - who normally seemed perfectly reasonable, getting animated as if in one accord almost like an immune response and cutting the girl down behind her back about how she was dressed, how she came off, etc.. Seems guys do this to their own as well but I've noticed that guys, maybe because they have less skin in the game in the Darwinian sense? Will more quickly take up a girl who all the other girls are jealous of because it's not really a direct threat when, the other way around, it's like society punting off would-be alphas in fear that they'll become what they can be - and in a way they might flower on their own but they'll always wear this sort of mark, like Cain without ever having killed anyone, where all of society just knows and agrees that they don't belong.
It's the kind of thing where, if there's nothing that you could want more than peace in the world and even active reciprocal giving and receiving with other people, it's really obnoxious because it's like a war constantly being brought to your doorstep seemingly over little more than having been born. It's like all of society having a massive narcissistic shutdown reaction and all without you having to even front an ego (the mark seems to be shyness and awkwardness in a guy who visually looks like that should be beneath him) and you have to prove - forever - that you're not a monster or that you didn't do anything awful to get thrown out there. What's worse, you often feel like you're getting yoked almost like a Hebrew scapegoat to be the sacrifice that the village can pour all of its abuses onto and send off into the desert and every bone in your body is screaming 'f--- your mythopoetic BS - I'm trying to live and I want to be helpful and useful like anyone else'.
Like anyone I have my strengths and weaknesses. I found out a while back that for as much as music seems to run in my blood my capabilities with making new content are limited below the talent that it takes to make new peaks in that space. Similarly, much younger, I found out that I wasn't interested enough in sports to compete - probably could have gotten competent if I had the interest but it was like no part of me wanted that and far more of me simply wanted to take existence itself and say 'what are you?' and I think that animates me far beyond what I think I could ever get out of learning to golf, learning about guns, cars, etc., it's like all of that's dross and even tired necessity made of other people's games.
I don't know who else can relate to the above and whether it's just an explosion of mid-life defiance on my part but it seems like I'm constantly being forced to view myself in a fun-house mirror by other people and if anything has made me more of an introvert than I'd otherwise be it's that.
It makes me wonder though - if I'm this threatening, without needing to show hostility, what does that say about the state of human interaction and people's capacities to tolerate variability in other people in line with their personal conduct? It seems to suggest that anything that shines in any way or seems different needs to, by necessity, be snuffed out. It's like our society's not making people so much as gene factories that simply see other people as gene factories, and if they might be perceived as better gene factories in some sense they're a threat. While I'm sure athletic prowess would receive the same type of ire it seems like athletic prowess can defend itself somewhat with its obvious tangibility whereas signs of intelligence can be resolved by ample quantities of gaslighting and other forms of social realpolitik.
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The loneliest part of life: it's not just that no one is on your cloud, few can even see your cloud.
23 Mar 2020, 6:55 am
