Kid Oakland Say in an article on autism, specifically, a mild form designated "Asperger's Syndrome":
On some level, isn't it just the truth that while we profess to work for the dignity and potential of every single one of our peers and citizens..so often, it takes someone victimized by our system standing up and pointing out how we don't even see them and what they go through to make us notice how fucked up our "normalcy" really is?
Which brings the following quote to mind regarding a hypothetical person of indubitably refined and higher tastes, one able to rise above normalcy and mob standards:
He was not made, he was not predestined, for knowledge. If he were, he would one day have to say to himself: "The devil take my good taste! but the rule is more interesting than the exception-- than myself, the exception!"
Why is "normal" the standard? Why is it common? It is tied into people's feelings of sanity, they desire to assign "sanity" to themselves as their own state. As an iconoclast by nature I have never had much love for the main way, the common way. If all I know of something is that it's popular, then I begin with a bad impression of it.
To feel a disgust at mankind is a long traditional characteristic of the underground, but also of ruling elites. But while the ruling elites have endeavored to study the masses, knowing their power involves, even without democracy, pandering to and satiating these masses with circus' and bread enough to live, the underground has been more vocal, and has managed to overtake the culture of artists, presenting vocally its philosophy, sometimes cynical and sometimes critical.
So we are known as enemies of the common man, and their kings and rulers are "their friends". We who are concerned about their freedom and health are their adversaries, and those that send them to war and argue that the best government ought to be indifferent are also those they imagine drinking a brew with at a back yard barbecue.
My nature is to present this as a question... to leave you with yourself now but the day is growing late so I will start a new characteristic, and I will instruct you with my own answer.
The rule is more interesting than the exception... mind you it's more interesting to BE the exception, but to know it is more interesting to know the masses. They are the condition.
They. There you have my feelings of separation... my personal value system in which the popular holds no attraction to me. And this is the root of accusations of elitism for the assumption goes that to be wontonly different and prefer your differences to their samenesses must be a feeling of elitism. Of course, we feel only separate, and we often say to ourself "well, indeed, that might be a better thing they prefer, but I still prefer this". My feelings of preference in no way would deny them their preferences, but this is not good enough precisely because THEY DO WANT their popular things to be considered better, and they have their conservative allies telling them this because of the conservative alliance with the economic game system in which success in economics means value. They project on us the same desires and we are easy victims for this because if asked, "ought Blackalicious or Tupac" be more well known, I will of course offer that my own taste deserves popularity.
So one is stuck... yes, I think my taste for NPR really does deserve to be more universal... we would be better off as a nation. So assuming I have my allies in this, what is it we want after all? A mere revolution in which our culture becomes the popular one in ever respect? Will I, in a distant future, be a regular person? Will my taste and tendencies be regular? Will it be common to look for fault in one's self when engaged in conflict? Will introspection be the rule? And at that point will I advise respect for the popular after all? Will I undo a lifetime of advising ignoring the popular and looking at the self?
No.
Because I hope for a popularity for iconoclasm. I seek a day when Questions are more popular than Answers, and a day when social justice is assured by the type of questions asked, rather than the kinds of answers which are popular. In my world being yourself is popular. There is no herd to run with, to be fashionable you have to show up in something no one has ever worn before, to be with the in crowd you have to contribute something new and yourself to the world. In my word everyone is an artisan or innovator.
Can such a world come to be... likely not, perhaps for the biology of society to function, we need specialists which do not innovate. Perhaps it's crucial that they know how to adopt the standards passed to them, and I suspect this is the case. And so we arrive at what sort of world I can stomach for us in our future, and it is one where toleration is finally invented. So the study of the average man is important, because the average man is needed for survival and is certainly nothing less that the ultimate sort of man. The average man is the type of man we need the most of.
But still... I hope the average man finds a little time to make art, a little time to celebrate his differences. When we all celebrate our differences as preferences, when we all create enough to understand the value of creation, then we will not be free of banal popular art, far from it but we will be free from fascist conformity. We will be free of superiority altogether.
So oppressive is mankind's past that to do work that one enjoyed, be it build businesses, be an engineer, a professional whatever, has long been felt as feelings of superiority. "We loggers are tough men, best of the Earth, a great type, I, like my father's father..." "We men of the sea, we are strong hardy men, best of the Earth, a great type, I, like my father's father..." these are loaned to the common man by his king, "We royals are fighters and builders, the source of justice, best of the Earth, I like my father's father rule my country with love and wisdom as so my children shall." This game breaks down as global communication puts feelings of superiority in contact with it similar opposite.
Of others "they do not do what they want, therefore they are weak"... and today a crisis arose when these children of the blessed realized... "wait, I don't want to be a logger, I don't want to be a fisherman, or a lawyer or ... " and they want, instead, to be...
The coming world can not have room for superiority. A schema where "superiority" provides the foundation for self esteem is obsolete, it's moribund, what remains of it cannot be allowed to rise and escape, it must be finished off and chased from the world. Make no mistake, the conservatives understand this as the battle and laugh at liberal denials (as well as at the way I approach the issue). The irony of the accusation of "liberal elitism" is merely attacking at the strong point of liberalism, so that even liberals stand stunned, "but wait... we are against your airs of superiority, we are not elite (but then, we are better than you to think this way)". We are stuck tongue tied on the issue, stuck between our values and their implications in classic underpinnings of morality.
Classic underpinning are what must give for us, new underpinnings which cannot be used by fascists must be created. And that is the criteria for these underpinnings... they must be unable to serve demagogy, they must be poor tools for the jingoists, for the manipulator of the populace, because these are our enemies and we cannot afford to rearm them even now as their ancient arms begin to fail from attrition on the battlefields of sophistry.
It must become the rule of the common man that we follow our own desires. There will still be normality and the common which arises statistically, to put it one way, which arise from the trends of contemporary culture, and there will still be some pressure, from friends, from family, to adopt certain tastes and habits. But adopting them cannot give one airs of superiority, and neither can bucking it to "be one's self", but rather, it must be merely a pathos of distance, a feeling of enjoying ones unique location in the pantheon of archetypes. To enjoy being one's own archetype.
This distance between us must be celebrated as the space we need to live and breath, these are the areas that separate us, and we shall use this space for playgrounds instead of battlefields.
Subtitled: The art of collaborative dissassociation.