Before I started public school, I was protected from the fear inherent in society. I was encouraged to nurture my creativity and curiosity, allowed to freely express my honest joys and sadness, and wasn't burdened by unnatural states of mind. I wasn't afraid of people; I wasn't afraid of feelings, even negative ones; I wasn't preoccupied with the prospect of potential losses or gains; I felt no pressure to subscribe to any performance or other criteria of anyone else (except in the case of trying to bring happiness to those I loved, for the sole sake of that love). I was as all humans are supposed to be in their natural habitats: peaceful, without needing to be still.
School changed all of that for me.
I remember feeling violently physically ill on the first day of 7th grade - my first real day of public school since Kindergarten. I didn't know why at the time. The anxiety was completely paralyzing. Being around these kids made me feel... bad, in a very fundamental way. I knew I wasn't meant to be there, and I was consciously aware of being caught in a process of change that was not only fundamentally wrong and backwards, but also somehow beyond my control to stop. It was the first time I can recall ever being aware of the physical component of other peoples' fear, and I hated the way it felt washing over me.
It took me a few months to understand what it was, exactly, that everyone in that environment was so universally afraid of: rejection of self. They all resented the fact that a choice had to be made between honesty and acceptance, and they were all confused because there seemed to be no comprehensible reason for this conflict. Why was everyone afraid of what everyone else was thinking - even while having no idea what that might be? That question exists beneath the problem itself, though, and—because this is a problem that our society still refuses to acknowledge—it wasn't approachable.
Before this time, I had never experienced this foreign, inhuman notion of "acceptance," because it wasn't relevant. In my natural state of being, acceptance was implicit, internally and externally. On some level I was aware that this new notion of belonging was a false dimension being added to reality without my consent - yet I had no choice but to adapt myself to its restrictions and laws, or else be ostracized completely. No young person's psyche can absorb that kind of cognitive dissonance; it's not really a choice, as I know now in my wiser years. So, I did all that I could. I fought to survive.
For the first few months, until the numbness set in, I thought only of escape. Every thought in class was focused on the bus ride home; every thought on the ride home was of the walk down my driveway; and when my feet finally struck gravel on the last quarter-mile, all I could think about was retreating to the solitude and safety of my room for as long as possible.
School was my first exposure to hell. Even once I'd learned how best to manipulate the environment to minimize my discomfort, it was never more than a crude tourniquet.
Only in retrospect, many years later, have I come to truly understand exactly how the experience has shaped me, and how it likewise shaped and marred the adulthood of the other kids that went through it at the same time.
I have come to understand that an absolutely essential part of a human's natural habitat is simple space, empty of other humans - and that the more of that you fill up, no matter who with, the less its inhabitants can be human. At a certain critical point, too many humans in a too-small space are all reduced to the lowest common denominator of their existence: their shared fear and discontentment. Forcing hundreds or thousands of people to co-occupy the same space is akin to starving them all of a nutrient fundamental to their survival... and then this "space," a thing that would and should otherwise be unspoken and unconscious and unremarkable, instead becomes a rare and precious resource. The fact that nobody can ever have enough of it at any given time creates a permanent disparity of personal power, in which everyone is in constant violation of everyone else at all times. Everyone hates and fears this powerlessness, but because the source of this unnatural rape is ubiquitous, it cannot be localized or abstracted; fear and hate must have an object, and the only obvious contender is the person next to you.
We do everything we can to obfuscate this reality and the people who are too close to us. We cordon off even smaller spaces, build walls to separate us from the people outside of them, and fill up the space between the walls with things to separate us from the walls themselves. As Switters once said:
I know that my physical self, in an extension of that idea, is just another thing.
For not just this reason, I have come to resent the current human obsession with bodies - particularly mine. I have always identified myself, to myself, as a collection of ideas that are simply confined to a physical volume. In those moments where I am nothing—where I experience existence outside the limits of my body or any definition of "self"—I know that my physical form is completely irrelevant to what I really am. Being that I am nevertheless literally attached to it for the vast majority of my life (and conscious engagement with said life), naturally I have grown somewhat figuratively attached to it, as well - and have even managed to incorporate its limited scope into the lesser joys of life and the lesser forms of expression. That said, however, I cannot in good conscience allow myself to invest more than an absolute modicum of value in the idea of my body. Beyond simply ensuring it has what it needs to maintain my incorporeal self in the state I prefer, I feel that paying it any more mind only detracts from the core of what I actually am. It's a distraction at best, and—being that perhaps my only social goal in life is to eventually be completely understood by another human being—while I find it to be a useful tool from time to time, I nevertheless feel false, and lonely, when others fail to see my ideas in light of whatever arbitrary physical attribute usurps their attention.
I have always felt that my body is merely incidental to my humanity, only essential because my primitive existence cannot yet transcend into a purer form - one in which thought and idea wouldn't require the physical anchor. The truth is that my appearance doesn't matter at all to me, and I don't want it to matter one way or another to anyone else. My truest understanding of myself doesn't include any physical characteristics... which means, to truly know me, any other person would have to completely ignore them all.
In a world where we are in constant, increasing dissonance with each other and our natural environment due to in part to a profound lack of personal physical space, I believe that spending less time interacting with our physical selves—and spending more time focusing solely on and sharing the raw contents of our consciousness—might in some small way mitigate the damage we cause ourselves and others by living how we do. I couldn't respect myself if I didn't embody (hah!) the change I want to see in the world, so I have taken a sort of vow to never spend more time or energy on my physical self than is absolutely necessary, unless that time or energy is also of some tangible non-physical benefit. Hardly an attractive stance, I know - but I can honestly say that attractive is an adjective I care nothing for in the physical sense.
School changed all of that for me.
I remember feeling violently physically ill on the first day of 7th grade - my first real day of public school since Kindergarten. I didn't know why at the time. The anxiety was completely paralyzing. Being around these kids made me feel... bad, in a very fundamental way. I knew I wasn't meant to be there, and I was consciously aware of being caught in a process of change that was not only fundamentally wrong and backwards, but also somehow beyond my control to stop. It was the first time I can recall ever being aware of the physical component of other peoples' fear, and I hated the way it felt washing over me.
It took me a few months to understand what it was, exactly, that everyone in that environment was so universally afraid of: rejection of self. They all resented the fact that a choice had to be made between honesty and acceptance, and they were all confused because there seemed to be no comprehensible reason for this conflict. Why was everyone afraid of what everyone else was thinking - even while having no idea what that might be? That question exists beneath the problem itself, though, and—because this is a problem that our society still refuses to acknowledge—it wasn't approachable.
Before this time, I had never experienced this foreign, inhuman notion of "acceptance," because it wasn't relevant. In my natural state of being, acceptance was implicit, internally and externally. On some level I was aware that this new notion of belonging was a false dimension being added to reality without my consent - yet I had no choice but to adapt myself to its restrictions and laws, or else be ostracized completely. No young person's psyche can absorb that kind of cognitive dissonance; it's not really a choice, as I know now in my wiser years. So, I did all that I could. I fought to survive.
For the first few months, until the numbness set in, I thought only of escape. Every thought in class was focused on the bus ride home; every thought on the ride home was of the walk down my driveway; and when my feet finally struck gravel on the last quarter-mile, all I could think about was retreating to the solitude and safety of my room for as long as possible.
School was my first exposure to hell. Even once I'd learned how best to manipulate the environment to minimize my discomfort, it was never more than a crude tourniquet.
Only in retrospect, many years later, have I come to truly understand exactly how the experience has shaped me, and how it likewise shaped and marred the adulthood of the other kids that went through it at the same time.
I have come to understand that an absolutely essential part of a human's natural habitat is simple space, empty of other humans - and that the more of that you fill up, no matter who with, the less its inhabitants can be human. At a certain critical point, too many humans in a too-small space are all reduced to the lowest common denominator of their existence: their shared fear and discontentment. Forcing hundreds or thousands of people to co-occupy the same space is akin to starving them all of a nutrient fundamental to their survival... and then this "space," a thing that would and should otherwise be unspoken and unconscious and unremarkable, instead becomes a rare and precious resource. The fact that nobody can ever have enough of it at any given time creates a permanent disparity of personal power, in which everyone is in constant violation of everyone else at all times. Everyone hates and fears this powerlessness, but because the source of this unnatural rape is ubiquitous, it cannot be localized or abstracted; fear and hate must have an object, and the only obvious contender is the person next to you.
We do everything we can to obfuscate this reality and the people who are too close to us. We cordon off even smaller spaces, build walls to separate us from the people outside of them, and fill up the space between the walls with things to separate us from the walls themselves. As Switters once said:
"Things. Cosas. Things attach themselves like leeches to the human soul, then they bleed out the sweetness and the music and the primordial joy of being unencumbered upon the land. Comprende?"
I know that my physical self, in an extension of that idea, is just another thing.
For not just this reason, I have come to resent the current human obsession with bodies - particularly mine. I have always identified myself, to myself, as a collection of ideas that are simply confined to a physical volume. In those moments where I am nothing—where I experience existence outside the limits of my body or any definition of "self"—I know that my physical form is completely irrelevant to what I really am. Being that I am nevertheless literally attached to it for the vast majority of my life (and conscious engagement with said life), naturally I have grown somewhat figuratively attached to it, as well - and have even managed to incorporate its limited scope into the lesser joys of life and the lesser forms of expression. That said, however, I cannot in good conscience allow myself to invest more than an absolute modicum of value in the idea of my body. Beyond simply ensuring it has what it needs to maintain my incorporeal self in the state I prefer, I feel that paying it any more mind only detracts from the core of what I actually am. It's a distraction at best, and—being that perhaps my only social goal in life is to eventually be completely understood by another human being—while I find it to be a useful tool from time to time, I nevertheless feel false, and lonely, when others fail to see my ideas in light of whatever arbitrary physical attribute usurps their attention.
I have always felt that my body is merely incidental to my humanity, only essential because my primitive existence cannot yet transcend into a purer form - one in which thought and idea wouldn't require the physical anchor. The truth is that my appearance doesn't matter at all to me, and I don't want it to matter one way or another to anyone else. My truest understanding of myself doesn't include any physical characteristics... which means, to truly know me, any other person would have to completely ignore them all.
In a world where we are in constant, increasing dissonance with each other and our natural environment due to in part to a profound lack of personal physical space, I believe that spending less time interacting with our physical selves—and spending more time focusing solely on and sharing the raw contents of our consciousness—might in some small way mitigate the damage we cause ourselves and others by living how we do. I couldn't respect myself if I didn't embody (hah!) the change I want to see in the world, so I have taken a sort of vow to never spend more time or energy on my physical self than is absolutely necessary, unless that time or energy is also of some tangible non-physical benefit. Hardly an attractive stance, I know - but I can honestly say that attractive is an adjective I care nothing for in the physical sense.
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