there is this concept of 'old wisdom' that gets really haphazardly thrown around, that people and societies that are older, less advanced, more rural or more 'in tune with nature', or just happen to be asian, have some sort of natural sageness that you just get from being ... with the earth for long enough, i suppose. weird vibes-based religious undercurrent to the concept of wisdom in general. so like one might say 'old japanese proverb' and because it is old, japanese, and a proverb, the natural inclination is to brace yourself for some hot wisdom, or some really annoying clickbait simalcrum of wisdom. so anyway there's this old japanese proverb that goes like 'the nail that stands out gets hammered' and hmmmmmmmmm maybe it is just that i am young american and QUITE literal-minded, but it puts me on the defensive immediately.
this will not come as a shock to anyone coming from the guy with a neocities page that (at the time of writing) opens with HI BITCH, but i am RATHER FOND of my individuality. anyone who tells me to stick out less, to be less weird, will immediately be treated with anger at their audacity, sneering amusement at their sensitiveness, and a harsh suspicion of their intentions. above all i value brutal honesty. if you can't handle swearing, there's the door. if you don't want aimless rambles, get a new friend. do not beat around the bush. talk CLEARLY or stop talking to me at all. this is the internal law of my being, to be wholly and unabashedly myself.
i do not leave my room.
i do not really believe there will be space for me outside of it, outside of my circle on the internet. so i do not bother.
unfortunately for me, one not a very big fan of my country, i am philisophically american. rude and modern, individualist, existing crassly in disrespect of Old Wisdom. i suffer from an baffling strain of suburban agoraphobia where i feel i must be ready to physically fight any stranger i encounter on the street. i am not strong and i do not fight, but i figure "they" would seek easier prey if i were the one that bites.
so you can imagine the sort of existential dread that comes from being told that in order to get the companionship and sense of belonging that i seek, i must compromise- look nice, smell nice, play nice, do the social dance of meeting people, entertain company who may not 'get' me. by which they mean, PRESUMABLY, get the fuck back in the closet and go talk to my mid-50s polite little lady neigbors. i think about these sorts of things all the time, because i don't want to be biased and selfish and capitalist in my worldview. i understand full well that america is not an enlightened country. speaking to your neighbors is how you build a COMMUNITY, isn't it? so the possibility that they're RIGHT? that the only way forward is to hide a part of myself away, be nice, and speak to NICE PEOPLE?
THAT TERRIFIES ME.
BECAUSE NICE PEOPLE. ARE BY FAR. THE MOST DANGEROUS.
Did You Know: Humans are unusual in the animal kingdom! For all other creatures, showing teeth is a display of threat!
YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND, DO YOU??
PRETTY LITTLE MOTHERFUCKER SITTING UP IN THEIR PRINCESS TOWER, SMOOTH AND INOFFENSIVE, ALWAYS WITH A SMILE!! SWEET, POLITE, HAS NEVER DONE ANYTHING WRONG IN THEIR LIFE!! YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT YOU ARE CAPABLE OF! YOU CAN KILL, NO BLOOD EVER STAINING YOUR HANDS!! DO YOU UNDERSTAND?!?!?
YOU PROBABLY DON'T!! so let me become sane again.
statistically, the vast majority of physical or sexual assault happens within families or other communities on supposedly friendly relations. and in these situations, REPUTATION IS EVERYTHING. social standing is the BE-ALL-END-ALL of who gets thrown out when the deed is discovered. the kindly, the polite, the provider or the sweet little victim- without strong will among the crowd, they will always win out against the degenerate, the crass, the lazy, the disobedient. this extends FAR beyond the realm of such dramatic things. as a child, i was targeted by school staff over dress code violations on the regular. it did not matter that my older brother did the same. he was a good kid, and i was a bad kid. bad grades, back-talker, always drawing or falling asleep in class. if someone has a bone to pick with you, the sort of person that nice people think you are will determine your fate. the smallest things become grevious sins when they are done by someone who's also a little raunchy or impolite. and for Nice People, all they need to do is cry wolf to the right person, and hell will descend upon the offender.
and this is why RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIES are so fucking fucked up all the time! piece of shit holy places where the biggest priorities are to BE NICE and FORGIVE AND FORGET. it breeds EXACTLY the kind of people who can do this shit with no consequence, and EXACTLY the kind of people who will ALLOW THEM TO DO IT. if you are a Christian or perhaps one of my Mormon relatives reading this, and you take offense to my jaded atheistic bitching, i invite you to take this essay, convert it to flaming text at a hundred point font, shove the ENTIRE thing up your ass, and suffer a very embarrasing hospitalization as the doctors try to figure out how you got .gif files lodged in your lower digestive system. you do not know any great kindness for having your deluded wet dreams, fantasizing about the great big bitch in the sky calling you his good little lamb! SHITHEAD! SHITHEAD! SHITHEAD! SHITHEAD! SHITHEAD!
so you might be wondering. brak, if being polite would give you so much swag and epic cred, why are you being such a rude little shit?
to which i say, easy! i don't have a choice!!!!!!
i am not nice! if i pretended to be nice, i'd be a fake bitch! and NOT being a fake bitch is the only thing keeping me alive, for multiple reasons! for one, if i have to cram myself into a little box just to get company, then this world is not worth my time and i'll just kill myself, thanks! and for two, WELL, let's just say the only reason my dad didn't touch me is he KNEW I'D TALK! it's a matter of survival! and not only this, i'm autistic and social rules give me brain damage! i do not know why everybody does the things they do and communicates in the way they do, and i KNOW people will not take well to my incredibly stilted and blunt approach of friendship where i am just Really Really Really Upfront about Everything from the get-go!! but that is the only way i know how to navigate!!! it's been SEVEN YEARS since i last ""got out there"" in any meaningful sense at all!! city people do not take kindly to unexpectedly being talked to, MYSELF INCLUDED! i don't know how to do this!! i feel deaf, and blind, and so fucking afraid!! i can't speak to my neighbors!! my neighbors know where i fucking live!!
this is not an essay, i am having an existential crisis!!
it's not JUST that i want to be free from meaningless social rules, though i CERTAINLY do, it's that i have to protect myself! i don't see myself as the type of person that is generally palatable to others, NOR do i want to be!! what's the point of relationships at all if i have to keep up a pretense this whole time?!?! i can't just give myself away like that!! myself is ALL THAT I HAVE!!
CJ the X is a video essayist i respect a whole lot and they make me feel like i'm going to DIE. if you will forgive me for using a really long-ass quote,
"There are rules and limitations in shared social spaces that make those spaces what they are. It's true getting a license and obeying traffic law involves conformity and suppression of your instincts! [...] If you see someone expressing themselves originally and creatively and spontaneously on the highway, you should AVOID THEM that's a dangerous person! [...] Social rules limit you to being only a small slice of yourself instead of your full self, but we value these limitations because they instrumentally lead to things that we could not otherwise achieve. [...]
"The satisfactory working of a social life depends upon entering into relationships with other people, not with the whole of ourselves but only with part of ourselves. It depends on suppressing, for the time being at least, the fullness and wholeness of our natures." - Reason and Emotion, John MacMurray
A mistaken conclusion that you could draw from this is that society is nothing but a set of chains, cages, and lies, and you are only truly yourself when you are alone. [...] This theoretical version of you that is uninfluenced by anybody or anything doesn't exist. [...] Believing that society is a priori opposed to authenticity flows freely into believing that all relationships inhibit your authenticity and the only way to truly be authentic is to coldly hold on to what your ego thinks you are, and reject or defeat everything else. Either as a hermit or a tyrant you can finally be honest! [...] It's not only a bad way to think, it's not true. Your personality is birthed out of interactions with other people, and your integrated socialized Capital S Self is always being revealed to you. And that's much more you than your indulgence in your every self-centered impulse and resentment of all the things that have created you in your life." - 6 Shapes of God, CJ the X
AAAAAAUUUUHUUUUUUHGHHHHHHAAAAAAAGHHGHH
this is not a critique of The X, not really, this is a very personal reaction. but this.. really gets to me in a bad way. the traffic metaphor is horrible. this is not a good-at-all example to illustrate the ways we compromise with society. obviously youd be dangerous to swerve around in traffic, but this is not true of most other social situations, is it?! or i should say, most social situations at all, because cars are EXTREMELY antisocial as a piece of infrastructure. and then the rest of this piece of shit quote is just like, suck it up! you can't get everything you want in this life!! which feels rude in general and unnecessary in a section about how spending time with friends is .... good. yeah thats the overall point they're making here.
and i am not at all in disagreement with that but ffff
theyre always talking about ego, and indulgence, and being humble and connected instead of hedonistic and self-serving. being a part of SOCIETY, serving something greater than yourself. and the fact that they, too, are a mentally ill self-isolating loud and abrasive queer person with Opinions, makes me really want to take them at their word. but i am an athiest, and i don't understand this sweeping romanticism at having a job!! we are all put on this planet without consent. i don't think anyone, intrinsically, has any right OR any obligation to anything at all! where we are born is random, when we are born is random. what IS there to seek but pleasure?? meaning in life is just a broader kind of pleasure. if there is no money involved, art is an activity you do exclusively for fun, if you are sane. even seeking improvement at art is just another kind of pleasure, like what one might draw from grinding out a challenging speedrun. this is exactly the adversarial mindset that they keep talking about!!
i'm just NOT CONVINCED that it's not the truth!! and the fact that i'm not convinced scares the shit out of me!! because if theyre right, and i have to let go of this way of thinking in order to be happy, i'm just not going to be happy!! AAUUUUUUUUUUUGHHHHHHHHH
i am not a very big fan of shame. shame is delineated from guilt as follows: guilt refers to condemnation of the act, shame refers to condemnation of the person. near as i can tell, shame is strictly not useful, SHORTLY followed by embarrasment. shame is a curse carried by apparently everyone: to beat themselves up when things go wrong, to deem themselves annoying, to isolate, or to spend all their time avoiding shame: deflecting, morally obsessing, lashing out. shame is our deep set instinct to submit to shaming, a group abusive tactic to punish unwanted behavior. we are wired to submit, to conform, to please. it sucks, it's horrible.
but if it weren't for that, we 100% wouldn't be here!!
it's a social emotion!!! why would we have this extremely volatile and horrific self punishment machine if it did not further our species' capacity for cooperation!? obviously a world where anyone could do anything to anyone else and never feel bad seems obviously unfunctional, but those who have committed wrongs are INSTEAD currently being thrown in jail or sending themselves in circles of self hatred or just doubling the fuck down on the fact that nothing theyve done is wrong cos if it WERE theyre a bad PERSON and if theyre a bad PERSON they deserve bad THINGS and oh my god get rid of it!! out!! out with you!!
are humans just wired to create cults???? fffuuUUUUUUuUuuUuUuuUUUUck
despite all my rage, i am still scared of breaking the rules. i am still scared of just going up to someone and saying hi are you also lonely do you want to be friends? i wish i could try, maybe it would work! i wish i could be shameless! but i'm not! and if people did not feel the need to conform to the crowd, to be Normal, what would even happen?? would culture fray beyond recognition into a dysfunctional mishmash of mismatched individuals, or would our mutual interests and tastes hold us tenuously together in the absence of customs, traditions, norms?
is what i consider my personality now just delusional and antisocial?
i don't know.
brak 5-12-25