Over the past little while, I have been trying not to worry about how mainstream culture thinks. For the longest time, looking at its "quick to judge, slow to understand" nature or its bizarre deification of its rules left me feeling isolated and alien. This led me down a path of a sort of de facto nihilism wherein I still knew that communication was important and valuable, but I was starting to doubt that it was possible. (Hmm, reminds me of how I felt about polyamory when I was around 30 before I met someone great).
More recently, I have been trying to think about this differently. Societies build laws and cultures build rules, and that is just how they always work (this has more to do with in/out group identity than anything noble). One should never surrender to this, but also not waste time fighting it. When the water rises, do not lament that you cannot breathe it, nor stare it down and fight it, just seek higher ground. I concluded that this will never be for me, so why bother? Instead, I need to find those places which could be for me where people want to have the discussions I find interesting.
On a related note, many people will say/do hateful things, either loudly and out in the open, or quietly and in secret. The quiet ones don't really bother me, partly because those things may form the basis of another form of social belonging, explicitly through their secrecy and, ultimately, impotence (these are rarely true hatreds, anyway). The loud ones are more of an issue, but aren't these just an example of the above point of why cultural rules exist? Or, to take a different and more relevant perspective, some people need to say hateful things or prop up these terrible institutions. I don't know why and it might not be permanent. All we know is that they need to do this and the rest of us need to merely state that this is wrong but then let this wave crash upon us, knowing that the truth is in the right place and we can bear their fury. Maybe once their hatred is bled away through this rage something new can grow or be understood (as I suspect some understanding may be all that is required - this may be a twisted need to be heard).
I recently heard someone say something about Kierkegaard's view on the morality of crowds, which I think inspired some of this thinking.
Thinking about all of this, I realized that this reminded me of how I described my ideal work environment: Something to spend my time investigating, only to go deeper every day. It would be a place where every day could be described as "finally getting to the good part", and be completely true every day.
The connection here is that I realized that this is what I want in social interaction and conversation, as well. I want to keep having the conversations which go deeper along a path of thinking/questioning, bouncing ideas between us as we slowly, and eternally, dig deeper into the idea.
In both situations, every day gets closer to an end-point we will never reach, but we are closer, nonetheless. A 1% improvement one day might seem great but a 0.1% improvement one day a year later somehow seems even greater since you have followed the path into such a more interesting place.
Alas, my lack of such deep connections means that I am left to wander on this flat part of the curve, ever longing for that steep ascent...
At least I know that I shouldn't get too upset by what I see around me. I wasn't interested in those conversations so does it really matter that they seem so banal. I am not sure that they even interest most of the people having them as they are, I suspect, much like I was before remembering to keep my eyes raised higher.
...Nights