"i am society"...buying in or opting out???

I am society and I know it and I don't try to hide it either. I felt for a long time that I had no real place because one wasn't made for me and then one day I had to realise that I had to make my own place. And guess what, I was not as different from a lot of people as I thought I was. Once I stopped allowing myself the comfort of the anti-social outcast role I found that people actually like me for who I am when I am being my true self.

"If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?"

i like what azblue said. i am just beginning to tackle my anti-social tendencies, but am realizing that it's not a rare thing. i think a big problem with a lot of people even wanting to be considered part of society is that a lot of the time the society is not a desirable thing. "why would i want to be part that?". when there is a face to society, it generally is one that is corporate, a borrowed stereotype that is 'normality'. sometimes it's hard to remember that just a few high-paid individuals put this image together and that it is not actually society, just a prototype. remembering that other people are really as confused as you often feel is hard, especially if they haven't a similar lifestyle, but is an amazing revelation when you really start applying it to all your interactions. people are generally nice. a lot of folks are just lonely. it's really hard to take that first step, especially when you've been through anything that is viewed as negative. it's easy to feel pushed to the outside. not as easy to feel accepted back in.

and the whole dignity thing - if we all just allowed ourselves and others to make mistakes, maybe feeling that you need to 'regain' anything wouldn't be such a hard process. it's amazing how our choice of language can make a situation seem so much more strenuous than being just the moment it is.

blahblahblah - http://rathergrrl.blogspot.com/

thank you for the thought-provoking topic. i do think that the social contract, for lack of a better descriptor, is inherent to the experience of anyone and everyone who ever has anything to do with anyone else at all in any way. you can violate said contract, and you can dispute the contents of said contract, but it's still always there informing our lives. humans are social animals, and even if you're a hermit in the alaskan bush, your very privilege of isolation is part of a larger social context.

in that light, i would also say that exile from society is one of the possibilities of any social contract. in more isolated, endogamous communities and times, such exile could mean physical death, and at the very least, it could mean figurative death in the eyes of the community that exiled you. i think the marginalization that many of us experience is connected to that. in this day and age in most of the world, exile doesn't generally mean physical death, and it often doesn't even involve a formal expulsion, but overcultures and dominant aspects of counter/subcultures stil communicate their disapproval in a variety of ways that can effect our sense of worth and well being.

then, all that gets even more complicated by the sort of forked-tongue of the american insistence that we are a nation of rugged individualists, a yummy melting pot of "diversity", and a punishing monolith of xenophobic {foreign = any Other in this context} citizenry. this is where i begin to struggle with "i am society" philosophy.

on the one hand, i have chosen to insist on my right to my own way of being, on the centering of marginalized identities, and i have been glad of the nourishment that i have been offered by others who have done the same and of whatever i have been able to offer in my turn. so, in this sense, i'm down with "i am society" insofar as folks need to be able to name themselves and their experiences as real, valid, and worthy withIN the larger social context.

on another hand, i am still aware that the margins i'm centered around are still margins in that larger social context, and that is a necessity for said context. for example, i'm almost certain that the extension of full marriage rights to same-sex couple {which absolutely should happen} will mean that many, many folks who used to live in one of my margins will move to the center without a backward glance at those of us who cannot or will not follow, and the larger social context will be largely unaffected by that change 'cuz the margin will still be comfortably present.

my ma, who has been pissing me off a lot lately but who has said many wise things, told me when i was a kid that the extremes exist to make room for everyone else. the fewer or lesser extremes present in a given society, then, the less room for everyone withIN the margins to live and express and choose there. of course, extreme is a hella relative concept, and i think that's what i try to keep in mind, though i probably don't always succeed. in some contexts, i'm extreme. in others, i'm so very middle of the road. so, on yet another hand, i think we are all simultaneously withIN and withOUT, margin and center, society and exiled therefrom.

damn, i am SUCH a libra that i don't think i actually drew a conclusion at all, but i enjoyed the process . . .

"if i pass for other than what i am, do you feel safer?" ~ lani ka'ahumanu

dragon knows dragon