A Brief Word:
My writing is blocky and disheveled. I may, like a small frog, hop from lily pad to lily pad of these vaguely connected thoughts without much flow. I expect this to be the same for some time until I get the hang of publishing my thoughts. No apologies.
The Man out of Time Problem & ‘bunkness’ of certain social conventions
At some point in life, I became aware. Just as one becomes aware that they take up physical space, I became aware of my presence in a social space. The more I worked to co-exist on the same plane of this social space as others, the more I felt like I was less myself. I think a lot of people will understand this somewhat. Changing a less-popular hairstyle for the sake of fitting in, even though you enjoyed it— this would be the same, although on a smaller scale.
Eventually, I’d sacrificed so many parts of my own self to blend in (though poorly), that I didn’t recognize who I was trying to be. My self-image didn’t match my circumstances. Maybe I bonked my head one day, or maybe I got frustrated enough with this personal disillusionment that I set about to figure out who I am.
Now, conducting such a rigorous self-examination of this nature is like stripping away a disease, like cutting out rot from a home during renovation, or rust from a classic car. I got to the point where I figured, I may as well take it down to the bare metal and see what I’m working with. In the process of doing so, I needed to understand what makes a person: Goals, Dreams, Values, Boundaries, Opinions, Lived-Experiences, Debts, Figures of Admiration, and more. These all sounded good, so I went about writing mine down.
Committing to paper who I am, as genuinely as possible, then doing my best to live by those things made me realize that I was vastly different. This isn’t an “I’m more special than anybody else and therefore more valuable” type of different. I am one amongst the masses, and I see the worth of my fellow man. But when it comes down to analyzing the missions we set for ourselves within our short excursion on this planet, I see irreconcilable differences. So much so that there is this undercurrent of non-belonging that runs through my life.
It sometimes feels like engaging with others is like two people working on different Operating Systems and trying to collaborate. Both are valuable additions to the world, yet they either can’t communicate across the divide of their OS, or do so with great difficulty. I think that if someone were to crack open my headcase to compare with that of other people, you’d find the blueprint was written in a different language.
It is important to note (and im sure I repeat this ad nauseum) that the MooT Problem isn’t just a basic feeling of not belonging. This is [1.2] the sense that one’s own state of existence, values, or opinions, motivations, and reasonings are so wholly unrepresented by peers or general society that he feels as though he is in the wrong time or by doing additional research into the past, finds he fits in no times and becomes exactly as the title of the RCP would suggest – The “Man out of Time“.
When we hear “Man out of time” we usually think about a character like Captain America: frozen in ice for decades, only to wake up and find he lives in what has essentially become a foreign world. This would be correct, but he does have a time which he belongs to (which he gets to go back to and enjoy at the end of the movie franchise). When I look at my own time, and even those before me. I don’t see my values being matched (and it would be a bit egotistical to think of myself as being “before my time”).
Let me try to show my side. Look to how people characterize and group each other in our society. ‘Republican vs. Democrat’, ‘Left vs. Right’ black, white, rich, poor— the list goes on. People create these categorical boxes that mean diddly (‘BEHOLD A MAN’ says Diogenes) and then put too much weight into their own judgement of who goes where. I can’t tell you the amount of times I’ve been asked if I’m autistic or ADD, ADHD, RIPD, etc. People can’t live unless they have you pinned down to something they can disagree with.
Once these asinine boxes are dropped, it can be seen just how much of our daily lives are built on baseless assumptions. Assumptions of us and others, assumptions of how life should be. It gets ridiculous. The most egregious offenders have become the subjects of some of my later RCP’s.
Here is a good one. I want to stop and smell the roses— literally. While this is a common saying, it is far from a common practice, and I have been verbally berated by individuals who have the audacity to plant exceptionally beautiful arrays of flowers along a public pathway and expect me not to give them a whiff.
Common society has taught us that every piece of ourselves should be monetized or put out into public —That we always need to maximize our output or production —That we need to have immediate reactions to news or drama —That ‘abberant behavior’ amongst our peers means we should ostracize them. It’s a jumble of societal mess that I hope I’ve now reached escape velocity on. That’s what I think MooT is .
BrandonKeck.NET 