I have never been a joiner
I simply don’t feel the need to belong to a group outside of that group called humans to which we all hold membership.
The idea of groupthink has always rubbed me the wrong way it has always seemed a lazy, dangerous way to go about your life and I have watched as groupthink has more and more become an American way.
I, however, have always kept my own council and done my own research, the reasons for this is part of my path through life and is owed to a number of incidents and experiences.
Not that I am needlessly contrary but if the group is walking one way it is almost always my impulse to go another way, even though we may all be trying to reach the same place.
I’ve reconciled myself to the truth of this long ago and once I realized that I never needed anyone’s ok to do a thing or be a thing I have been much better off.
Keep the above in mind as I lay out the following ideas …
It is because of this personal stance that I have never, for even a moment believed that I am excluded from anything, while I understand that some would have me excluded for some reason or another, I have always known that is a fault in them and not one in myself.
Rodin, Shakespeare, Baldwin, Hughes, DaVinci and countless artists & creators who’s names I will never know ALL created for me, ALL their works benefit me… inform me!
We all create for the human race and I am that.
I am, we are, the greatest and most horrible thing this planet has produced to date… human…
Not a God…
Not a King…
Those things are falsehoods that flow from our flaws, they are things to which only a fool would aspire, in my opinion, further, desire for them points to a very large character flaw.
The groupthink tells us something much different, doesn’t it?
It cautions us not to ignore the thoughts and the flow of the group, it tells us that to live outside the borders of the group will surely bring us low, it tells us the flow of humanity is what it never has been, a consistent, knowable, hard line that must be followed.
Let me cite a few examples what this all means to me…
As a lover of comics, I have long had the ability to put myself in the story, I’m sure most readers do this, it adds to the enjoyment of the form to immerse one’s self in the stories personally I cannot see how it could be any different.
While I am reading Green Lantern…
I AM Green Lantern when I read Star Wars…
I AM Luke when I read Batman…
I AM BATMAN!
From time to time I have had conversations that have been confronting to my truth that says that there is nothing on this earth that my coloring will exclude me from if I have the will and desire I will make any thing, MY thing because it is and always will be my thing!
Sadly there are always a few people hanging round that do not see the world and it’s people as it/they are and stubbornly refuse to accept them as they are.
Let me say that I believe that you have to be an incredibly recalcitrant bigot to cling to the idea that some people are less human than some others or are that they are born somehow different but it seems ignorance is eternal.
Come along with me, back to a conversation I had in 1983 after seeing “Return of the Jedi”, it was one of the handful of times that I viewed a film in the company of a group, this was not so much my group, I was then and still am mostly an adjunct to any existing group.
I do love my little groupings but if I’m being honest… in a very short time I find them entirely tedious.
I can remember being just a little uneasy at the prospect of having to submit to the rules of the social group think even then, my experience has taught me that these situations were to be avoided at all costs!
I am quite sure one of the major reasons I hold on to my resistance to groupings can be traced back to that one time after an evening recreation session at my elementary school when innocent stargazing somehow morphed into a crazy star-lit circle jerk!
After my swift retreat from that scene, I resolved to limit my associations with groups of men.
Back to the film.
As I remember, I could not think of a legit way to bow out of this particular film session without relating the “Circle Jerk” story and the many other reasons I kept my fraternal associations minimal, so… I went along, making the small talk you must but I have always despised before the film and worse during the film but it was the cinema post-mortem that held the kernel of wrongness …
While, as I have said, I was not a formal member of this group, if asked I would have told you these men were friends and if trouble came our way I would surely stand with them and stand toe to toe with any adversary!
I know now though that friendship can take on so many forms.
It was during that filmic Post Mortem that I learned a thing or two about groups & groupthink…
While we went through the film and characters I suppose it was only natural that we began to place ourselves in the story.
This one thought he was much like Boba Fet, that one felt like Chewbacca and another Han Solo… I felt an affinity with the story’s hero Luke…
Quixotic, a bit clueless, not always aware of the gravity of the events until safety is secured … yeah… that’s me!
However, I was astounded …
Appalled?
To find that the group was secure in the belief that I would, of course, be cast as … Lando Calrissian!?!
WTF!
So, now I have an idea of the group's relationship with its privilege ( remember… this is 1983 a time when only POC knew what white privilege was ) and how it was going to affect me, of course, I had no choice but to tilt my lance at the evident injustice of the situation.
I found the more I pushed the more heated the group got and the more it dug its feet in and when I queried just what “race” they thought Chewbacca was … and why it mattered well… let’s just say a ridiculous conversation got even more so.
At no point did I ever find my coloring a blockage to connecting with the characters I love because the characters and stories are human stories and being human I find them familiar as any human would.
However, I have very often found that so many never get past what they think my coloring means.
Now anyone that does not realize that that Group called Americans will most often see POC in a particular light and that that light is about as unflattering as light gets.
I know, as you do, that there are some that would have you and I exist in a place outside humanity …
Below humanity,
But that is more a fault in their humanity and not mine and so it is not my humanity but theirs that needs correcting.
Accepting all of this I have had a few issues with the shape of the time we are currently living in.
I have always heard ideas that run contrary to my beliefs ( even more so here in The Trump Error ) but luckily I have been able to, as my uncle Bill was fond of saying “ know shit from shinola” unfortunately Bill was not everyone's uncle and so they have not had the benefit of his wisdom.
Group Think has truth on the ropes these days and it is increasingly hard to be sure where all the lies are trying to lead us but only the truly foolish doubt that we are being lied to and for some purpose.
For the most part we are lucky that the lies are so bad that we can see them coming a long way off but even those lies tell us something about how broken the system is, for so long people of colour and ALL disenfranchised people knew that the system does not serve them well, if at all but now it is becoming clearer that it means to do them harm, not neglectful harm but real “we’re going to keep you in your place” harm.
It seems the only way to combat the evils that our systems, political & social would oppose upon us is to get together in a real effort to live the phrase E Pluribus Unum
