Meta Monday

Building a personality entirely around opposition to crowds, and the "the thing that is popular" is not necessarily a recipe for happiness.  I enjoy feeling superior, inferior, independent and weird, but at some point denying fun that is popular is counterproductive to having fun, is it not?

Which is to say, the problem with standing apart, is it doesn't make one popular at parties.  And problems which require a group effort and a good network become substantially more problematic.  Which is to say, the problem with standing apart, is that I am standing apart.  The problem is this is also the awesome thing about standing apart.

At what point does the meta-analysis of a thing consume any enjoyment of the thing?  At what point does a world-view focused on the abstractions of life diminish, detract from and otherwise overshadow the actual lived experience of life?  Is it possible to enjoy a story while deconstructing it down to its forms and shapes?  Do I like Community because it is funny or because it is ironically telling me that it is inhabiting the forms that the masses typically think is funny.  *wink*  Is a milkshake best consumed ingredient by ingredient or processed into a pleasing sludge?  I intend to bring a centrifuge to the malt shop and test this theory.  My hypothesis is that my hypothesis is flawed.

I was a hipster before it was hip.  We just called it "being a loner" and "socially awkward" and "wildly projecting our insecurities onto outwardly happy people" and "unable or unwilling to distinguish between reading the story and diagramming the plot."   I would say "you wouldn't get it," but you probably do.  Breathing is so passé', I only drink water through my ear.  I'm afraid I'm going to skip spring and go straight to summer, unlike the rest of you sheeple, this year.  Wake up sheeple people.  The seasons were invented by invisible, angular forces mean to keep your head tilted off-axis.

The problem with ironic distance is that the inability to enjoy an experience is not an improvement on the human experience.  It's just the refusal to have one.

The Usual Route

I just want to walk into the desert and returned changed.  Is that so much to ask?

I don't really want to start a cult afterwards though.  I'd be really proud of it until it spawned a massive religion that eventually lost the plot and lost track of the core principles in the name of perpetuating the organization at any cost.  My heart just wouldn't be in that kind of cliche, you know?

Alternatively, 6 months on an island floating on a small, quiet lake with its own waterfall would do just as nicely.  Although I suspect the cult-appeal lies in the heat and starvation.  Coming back from a tropical island, tanned and refreshed just doesn't have the same spiritual cachet. 

Although I suspect, somewhere in an alternate universe, I make a fabulous cult leader.