There’s something odd about white people of wealth. I perceive it as weird because I share so much in common with them, yet when I’m around them in a social setting, I feel like an ethnologist. But that’s not quite right either, because I speak the language and understand the customs. I know the rituals, the symbols of authority, and if I need to I can blend in.
Sort of.
I can pass, for sure. But I can’t take it seriously. I have that privilege.
One of the weirder aspects of being able to see your culture as if you were playing a role playing game, is that the NPCs (Non-Player Characters, for those of you not up on gamer lingo) are ever so slightly more complicated in groups, in real life. Sure, if you catch them one-on-one, they can demonstrate some nuance and humanity, but groups are weird.
Families, friends, neighborhoods, towns, cultures, and species are strange epiphenomina.
Then you start to ruminate, meditate, or zone out while stoned (and where are the differences there?), and you start to wonder if you are actually one of the NPCs. And then, on some occasions, you are almost certain that you are.
OK, so granted; from everyone else’s point of view, you’re sort of a NPC. But what happens when you start to become aware that you are one from your own point of view as well? Not all the time. Well, actually, yeah all the time. But you’re only aware of it some of the time. Then you sort of forget.
Why is it easier (for me at least; I cannot speak for other weirdos) to build a conceptual map of groups of people but not the groups of proto-people in your head? All the potential thoughts, decisions, and other psychological phenomena are, in some metaphorical sense, fighting for control. I mean, they aren’t actually fighting, because they are not aware of each other. At least I don’t think they are….
What would it be like to be a set of patterns in the brain which were trying to compel you to eat that whole carton of ice cream? What if that set of patterns became “aware” of another set of patterns, which, in this case, is trying to compel you to take a walk and stretch your legs, this evening? Does it hate that set of brain patterns? Is it jealous? Is it in love, with a love necessarily unrequited, because they can never merge?
How many people are in your head? I’ve got a few, at least. I have a feeling they don’t tend to like each other very much. And isn’t that the weirdest way in which you have ever heard someone admit they might hate themselves?
But that’s not all that weird, right? Everyone does, sometimes, right? Perhaps the word hate is too strong; a word with so much linguistic meaning, that to invoke it usually indicative of a feeling being too strong. Way to emotion-shame, brain.
We are legion. Perhaps the royalty figured this out years ago, and have been trying to explain it to us through the “royal we” (who are definitely not amused) in a way that we have been hearing as some aristocratic arrogance which turns us off and makes us susceptible to wanting too eat the rich, behead them, or at least try to make them feel bad by talking about the realities of poverty in the world.
That got dark quicker than expected.
And that, ladies in gentlemen, is why I shouldn’t refer to myself as we; I don’t want you to misunderstand me. I’m not sure that eating the rich is the solution. I know, I know…I’m such a bad Leftist.
What does it mean to be right if a part of your mind disagrees?
Hell, what does it mean to have an opinion, if a part of your mind disagrees?
I’l have to think about that. Translation: I will let the proto-people in my head fight that one out.
How are you?
Yes, all of you.
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Postcript:
I wrote this without thinking about it at all. I just let thoughts fall out of my brain, and only mildly edited for typos (I almost certainly missed one or two). New project; write even when you don’t know what to say. Let’s see what’s been shaking around in there, while doing life shit.
I’m out
Skepticism, Properly Applied 