I wanna be a wheel some day
Thursday, 2. July 2009
This thread is to raise a theme we often overlook with our independent minds and brave now world sensibilities – acceptance and rejection, by groups and by authorities.
I speak as a person who has been a large fish in various small ponds in this life but never really progressed to any of the -in-crowds where you get to have it all.
Once in a while contacts have pointed me at the “right” people and everything that was formerly impossible happened in an instant. I am not talking about noddy networking to build contacts who are no more well-connected than I am here – once or twice life started to open its golden doors of priviledge and power to me, but they closed again quickly when I somehow failed to become part of whatever “freemasonry” it was.
This is immoral, of course, to all of us on the “outside” that small overlapping circles of “insiders” by and large control our world, our opportunities, our media, our politics and our corporate environments. Not to mention the oil reserves.
Clearly this is undesirable. but on those rare occasions when I thought they might invite me inside where everything is easy it felt like winning the lottery and I would have been delighted to accept…
A friend of mine used to run a workshop series called the Bliss of Being Ordinary. I love the title but I hate the sentiment. Like Patti Smith I prefer to think I’m special.
Obviously I am being immature and deceiving myself but I expect that’s true of many of us…
Abdo Says:
Of course you’re special Steve, just like everyone else
- Abdo
Vincent Says:
What I would like to know is
1) what you think being ordinary means, as opposed to being special – taking into account Abdo’s comment.
2) what it means to “have it all”. What would you have, that you don’t have? Or, what does it mean to you to have “privilege and power”? Is knowing and being known in these circles an end in itself, or a means to an end? If a means to an end, what is the end?
3) your reference to “immoral”. Are you saying that you would like to be on the inside so as to participate in acts of power which seem to you immoral whilst you are on the outside? Is morality then relative, to this extent?
Cora Says:
Everyone wants to be special, in their own way.
What does it mean to get invited to a circle of people with power and priviledges, and learning after a while that one does not really fit…
Does such an awareness mean for instance that a free, independent spirit has to be a solitary, always…
and does it mean that an independent mind can’t work together with other independent minds…
Steven Holmes Says:
Is someone expecting me to be consistent? Heaven forbid that I ever stop seeing at least 3 facets to every question simultaneously and heaven forbid that I ever should start nitpicking the meaning of words when the sense is in their combination.
Vincent Says:
Perhaps heaven forbids that I should get an answer to my questions.