Squares within Circles
If you take seriously the notion of radical contingency, that your experience of reality is potentially wrong, you know what true existential horror is, and that madness lies just around the corner.
I like to think I am consciously non-society. That is to say, I march to my own drummer. I don’t choose to follow the fashions and norms of society, but neither am I anti-society; I do not deliberately look at society and choose the opposite. I try to choose “me”, not “society”, and not “not society”.
But what if my attitude to society is simply a manipulation? Of course, that is ascribing conscious thought to a collective, which isn’t true. But it is fair to say that the collective unconsciousness of society has certain long term goals. And what if my attitude to mainstream society is just a part of a greater plan? That would make my “non-society” identification at best a hollow joke, and at worst meaningless. or possibly vice versa.
A friend noted once, “this reminds me of a talk I had with a marketing dude once. I told him that I wasn’t influenced by marketing schemes. You know what he told me? “well, we know how to reach people like you, too.”
Creepy, huh? Your thoughts are not your own. They have been implanted by advertising executives. Even though you may try to ignore the hype, adverts will reach you and influence your thought. I am not me. I am the results of countless manipulations by advertisers. I have enough awareness of self to realise that this is happening, but not enough to escape from it, and not enough to recognise what I would have been if I had not been exposed to this virus.
So I seek to find what I might have been. But it is an impossible task, because nowhere has escaped. It’s part of why I refuse to wear any clothes that are ‘branded’. Then along comes mujin with its ‘no brand’ hype. It’s part of why I like to travel. But multi-nationals ensure I cannot escape the global reach. Much as I want to avoid being shaped by society, I cannot escape being shaped by it.
Sometimes I wish I were a moron. Not in the clinical “can’t live without a full-time carer” sense, but in the sheeple sense. Content to be one of the crowd. Ignorance is bliss. Life would be a lot less complicated and far easier if I didn’t care about what is affecting my mind.
My life is inherently ridiculous. It’s a motto of mine. Sometimes, in the darkest hours before dawn, when I truly believe I have gone crazy, I look at my life. It’s like, you can look at most people, and summarize their personality in a sentence or two. The best most people manage with me is “strange”, or “weird”. And I agree. People look at me, and say, “you’re weird”. And I look at me, and say, “you’re weird”. I’ve snapped, and my perception of reality is suspect. But is it society manipulating me that way? Or is it simply a natural result of my fighting against society? Or is there just a basic chemical imbalance, or too many knocks on the head?
I guess what I’m kinda saying is, I know what existential horror is. I think I want to say it scares me, but I don’t know if that would be the real me speaking or not.