This message came to me just in time. I had been feeling less positive about being weird. I am a Democrat in a very red part of Tennessee. That's weird enough, but sometimes I'm weirder even than the other Democrats, and I feel as if I'm the only person like me in the world sometimes. Which is obviously true of everybody!
I think children until about the age of 12 are more accepting of the fact that everybody is weird. It's when you get to be about 12 or 13 that it starts to be important to be "normal." People reject their Weird Inner Child Artist and become normie bullies.
Erich Fromm wrote that the most important guiding value for our lives should be: human solidarity. But how can we have this kind of human solidarity with people who think we are too weird to be even human? (Yes, that book "Unhuman" is really scary.) How long should you be loyal to the humanity of people who hate you? They're human; the most important value is human solidarity; but they definitely don't agree with you on that. Their most important value is: we're right, we're normal, you're wrong, and so we deserve all the power and all the space in the world.
I think it's naive of Democrats, liberals, and Buddhists to try to keep being Braver Angels in the face of this; to keep trying to "see the humanity" of the haters. We are the only ones doing this. What did the Ukrainians do when the Russians launched an unprovoked attack on their democracy? They just fought back. No regrets, no second guessing themselves. They just did it. That's what we have to do. We just have to do it somehow while retaining our belief in human solidarity, and the sacred value of the Weird. It's going to be hard to remain ethical while fighting this war. Sometimes I just want to run away to some place where the war doesn't exist, like another country, or a place so small and quiet that it's off the radar screen of the gun nuts.
My greatest fear is that it turns into an actual shooting war, not like the last Civil War, but more like Northern Ireland in the 1970s. But until then, it's a kind of cold war for hearts and minds.
Great piece, Jay! I'm with you in weirdness, but of course the guys Walz has tagged are weird as in dangerous. And the label is effective for many reasons.
I'm thinking you might really enjoy the piece that the connoisseur of weird, Erik Davis, put out on Substack today. He, too, has to give up the word -- for a while at least -- and as the author of the excellent book High Weirdness, he's got something at stake.
This message came to me just in time. I had been feeling less positive about being weird. I am a Democrat in a very red part of Tennessee. That's weird enough, but sometimes I'm weirder even than the other Democrats, and I feel as if I'm the only person like me in the world sometimes. Which is obviously true of everybody!
I think children until about the age of 12 are more accepting of the fact that everybody is weird. It's when you get to be about 12 or 13 that it starts to be important to be "normal." People reject their Weird Inner Child Artist and become normie bullies.
Erich Fromm wrote that the most important guiding value for our lives should be: human solidarity. But how can we have this kind of human solidarity with people who think we are too weird to be even human? (Yes, that book "Unhuman" is really scary.) How long should you be loyal to the humanity of people who hate you? They're human; the most important value is human solidarity; but they definitely don't agree with you on that. Their most important value is: we're right, we're normal, you're wrong, and so we deserve all the power and all the space in the world.
I think it's naive of Democrats, liberals, and Buddhists to try to keep being Braver Angels in the face of this; to keep trying to "see the humanity" of the haters. We are the only ones doing this. What did the Ukrainians do when the Russians launched an unprovoked attack on their democracy? They just fought back. No regrets, no second guessing themselves. They just did it. That's what we have to do. We just have to do it somehow while retaining our belief in human solidarity, and the sacred value of the Weird. It's going to be hard to remain ethical while fighting this war. Sometimes I just want to run away to some place where the war doesn't exist, like another country, or a place so small and quiet that it's off the radar screen of the gun nuts.
My greatest fear is that it turns into an actual shooting war, not like the last Civil War, but more like Northern Ireland in the 1970s. But until then, it's a kind of cold war for hearts and minds.
Great piece, Jay! I'm with you in weirdness, but of course the guys Walz has tagged are weird as in dangerous. And the label is effective for many reasons.
I'm thinking you might really enjoy the piece that the connoisseur of weird, Erik Davis, put out on Substack today. He, too, has to give up the word -- for a while at least -- and as the author of the excellent book High Weirdness, he's got something at stake.
https://www.burningshore.com/p/political-weird
Thanks! And thanks for letting me know about that - I have "High Weirdness" here on my bookshelf. Reading his piece right now!