Saturday, November 08, 2008

People are strange, so it gets stranger

Alcoholics are said to experience a moment of clarity when they have finally reached the point when a life spent nuzzling up to liquid escapism is no longer tolerable. They lose their taste for the drink, or can no longer bear the consequences of their need for inebriation, and find a new way to cope with their internal struggles. In some way, maybe that is what our anti-hero is trying to do, find that new way. He does not imagine himself an alcoholic, in that his way has not been destructive, but it has been dysfunctional in a way that leaves him desiring the alcoholic's clarifying flash of personal insight.

For most of his life, certainly all of his adult life, he has depended on abstract ideals and high concepts of existentialism as sources of justification and validation for what can only be described as an odd nature. He held fast to these ideas when almost no one could see any sense in doing so. In many ways, he lost touch with reality and spun off into a world largely of his own making. On one level, this invisible exodus was a means of seeking out some coping mechanism. The world around him did not make sense, in that many of the people around him seemed mentally or morally deficient. He began to believe very strongly in his own mental superiority and used this as a means of pulling himself up and away from a mass of humanity that began to exist in his mind as the "unwashed masses". This is how he came to see the word "average" as an insult, or even an excuse for acquiescence to the tireless drive of social conformity.

"These people have to be stupid. There is no other reasonable explanation. They are stupid, there is no point in fighting that. There is no point in being any part of that. There is no point in being a part of 'them'". That was the thought process that made alienation more attractive than normalization. By most accounts, this made him stronger psychologically, but left him with a glaring emotional deficiency. When one disconnects willingly, there is little to keep you tethered to the shore, so you begin drifting out to sea.

He began drawing conclusions based on intuition, rationalization, and in some cases, blatant supposition tinged with the pungent musk of prejudice, but almost nowhere was experience to be found in the foundations of his thinking. In practice, life became an exercise in seeking out comrades who would validate his thinking, while progressively closing his own eyes to alternative conceptualizations of what it means to be alive. He drifted, eventually finding himself very far from anything he recognized, and he set himself to pondering his situation.

What he realized encouraged and scared him. He had meandered so far into the distance, he had become something of a strange, distant animal. He was unwanted, and did not want anyone, so that his situation became both discouraging and empowering. In one hand the shame of not being desirable, in the other, the freedom of having no specific desire. The Buddha would say that he was probably in a transitional state, or taking his first step on a long journey that would lead him right back to where he started; nowhere and everywhere. Others would probably say he had moved a few inches closer to losing it. Can one suffer a slap to the ego and a spiritual affirmation in the same moment? The question lingered tantalizing and ominous, as he realized just how tired he had become...it is time for some rest.

Posted by Erik @ 11/08/2008 03:00:00 AM