Some Observations About People I've Met

In the past, I was the kind of person who sought out friendships with strangers. I thought that if I joined this club, or did that activity, or went to one place or another, that I’d meet people who were like me, and that I’d be able to form meaningful friendships. I never remained in contact with people I met in such indiscriminate ways.

At one point I realized that the best way to meet people is through personal social interactions with very specific people, for whom I felt an intellectual or emotional attraction. Generally, these people will introduce me to a friend or two of theirs, thereby expanding my personal network in small, select increments. That’s not to say that you can’t randomly meet perfectly nice people, but I’m talking about the best way to meet them.

Today, I’d say I have limited contact with people, because I don’t meet many new people on a daily basis, and even if I am introduced to friends of friends, I’m still very judicious about who I want to include in my personal circle. Even so, I have been able to draw certain conclusions about people, based on my interactions with them, and I‘ve been meaning to write about my observations.

It seems that most individuals can be divided into three camps. First, there are the retards, who have long since given up using their brains, and neurotically hold on to some ideology they nebulously regard as right, in the face of serious questions about the dubiousness of the ideology and their motivations for choosing it.

These people live with fear of the ever-present threat that with a single pull of a string, their faulty ideological constructions, already falling apart at the seams, will unravel completely. They can only hope that others will not notice the flaws in the mess of contradictions they wear, with a self-righteous air of superiority as a metaphoric pin used to flimsily hold everything together.

Second, there are those who think and do the right thing despite constantly being told they‘re wrong by the contradictory nonsense proclaimed in academia, in popular culture, in politics, in the media, at religious congregations, and even by their own friends. They are overwhelmed by the conflicting, conflated, contradictory concepts that are tossed, like confetti, all around them, and are unable to see the source of the pseudo-celebratory debris being poured on them from above.

These are the individuals who once knew, perhaps when they were younger, on a pre-conscious level (what Ayn Rand termed, a Sense Of Life) that they were right to pursue their values. However, they have consigned themselves to being “immoral,” according to everyone else, which really means that they value themselves and their own lives, and refuse to view themselves or others as the sacrificial fodder to some invisible god, or a threat like “Global Warming,” or an abstract entity like “The Environment,” or a vague “social problem” like “Poverty.”

I find these individuals to be the most tragic because they seem to comprehend, on some level, that their way of life is the right one, and they work hard and do well, yet they allow society’s prevailing morality to loot their minds and accuse them of “selfishness,” a term used as a weapon of intimidation in order to disarm them and diminish their self-esteem and sense of moral worth. They are like Promethean heroes, showing lesser men the light and goodness of the world, yet condemned, in their own minds and the minds of others, to suffer for their virtues. (Their vision of a hero is embodied in representations like that of Batman in the movie, Dark Knight, which ends with Batman fleeing the very people he risks his life to defend.) I should add that this type of person is an psycho-epistemological jump, hop, and skip away from becoming like the first type, completely retarded.

The third types are the ones that give me hope, because like the tragic individuals I just mentioned, these individuals also know, but in a less abstract way, that their way of life is the right one. However, I have found that these individuals have not yet given up hope. They have a clearer idea of the difference between right and wrong, but under the same barrage of attacks on their self-esteem, their problem lies in their lack of confidence to believe the indubitable conclusions they have reached via their own observations. They seem unable to rely completely on their own judgment.

I find that these people are desperate for validation. They need to hear someone they trust say to their enemy, “No. You’re the one who’s wrong.” They need that same trustworthy person to tell them, “my friend, you’re absolutely right.” (That is, if they actually are right.)

It seems I've unintentionally achieved that position. The third type of person trusts me. He wants to hear what I have to say. He is eager to hear--because he feels the same way but has never been able to articulate it quite so well--my opinions on topics ranging from Shakespeare to sex and beyond.

The retards are intimidated by the things I say, and protest or act out against me, literally. The tragi-heroes listen with slight indifference because they’ve already accepted their fatalistic view of life, and they believe that whatever happens was gonna happen anyway. But the eager, happy, joyous people, who either become my friends or simply like me upon meeting me, will listen to the things I say and usually laugh with the most genuinely happy laughter, reveling in the validation of their values.

Although I know that I think and say the right things, because I trust my mind and have confidence in my intelligence, it’s still very nice, almost congratulatory, to hear someone’s laughter when I make a joke. Their laughter tells me they approve, and agree, and that they like me, which is very good, since I’m SUCH a lovely person, and they SHOULD like MAYE!

;-)