Comment It's as hot as Heater in Hellmouth (Score 2) 319
Subtraction tells me I'm 30 now, but Junior High will never seem very far away.
I grew up Mennonite. Most of you who have even the faintest idea what that means are probably thinking "horse-drawn buggies and no electricity". Maybe this will clarify: Amish:Mennonite~::~Hassidic:Jewish The main point is this: my family had a slightly different set of values than that of most of the kids I went to school with in suburban Wichita, KS. I wasn't dressed in preppy clothes. I was taught that violence was unequivocally wrong. I was taught to treat others with love and respect. That made me just slightly different from those around me, in a not-quite-identifiable way.
Fine. Grade school was generally tolerable, though by the end of it I was starting to formulate some ideas about why the education system sucked so bad, especially for the creative individual. Isolated experiences with bullies started making me a bit cynical about the kids I went to school with, but it could be survived.
7th. grade -- the beginning of Junior High. Hell opened up its stinking, wretched maw and puked all over my little world. Instantly, and for no reason I could conceive of, I was singled out for systematic derision and abuse -- not by one or two people who happened not to like me, but by tens of people from all different cliques and social groups. People I didn't even know would call me a fag as I walked down the hall. Food would be thrown at me in the cafeteria. Stuff would be smeared on my locker. I was spit upon. I was shoved. This was not teasing, or good-natured razzing, but systematic abuse. I can remember screaming obscenities at a whole shop class.
It wasn't just because I was in the "gifted" program -- there were lots of others who didn't get the shit I got. It wasn't that I was some kind of teachers' pet -- I really didn't get great grades -- I was always more interested in my own projects than whatever it was the teachers happened to be saying. It wasn't just because I was into computers -- there were plenty of geekier geeks than me that weren't singled out in the way I was. Everyone I knew read science fiction/fantasy if they read anything at all, but they weren't called "space-cadet". I wasn't a racial minority, I wasn't the ugliest person in school, or the fattest, or the skinniest, or the richest, or the poorest. I wasn't gay, and though they called me a fag, I don't really believe that anyone actually thought I was homosexual. That's just the Junior High code word for "We f'ing hate you!"
The point was not that I belonged to the wrong group, but that I didn't belong to any group. Though we pay lip service to "Individualism" in the US, what we really mean is "selfism". Society doesn't really respect the individual as a social entity. The naked individual is truly the most hated, isolated minority there is. Racism, sexism, and homophobia, are all instantiations of the one great hatred: The hatred of the Individual by the Group.
I've played more fantasy/sf role-playing games than I can count. I've played Doom. I've played Quake. I've seen plenty of movie violence. I'm still committed to pacifism. What you get out of what you see in the movies or on your computer screen depends more on the values and experiences you bring to it than the content. In High School, my friends and I would play elaborate wargames with toy guns that shot plastic tracers and rubber bullets. Later we graduated to paintball. Did it desensitize me to killing? No. Paintballs can sting. You can pump up a lot of adrenaline and fear in a paintball game, even though you know the most that can happen is a little welt or bruise. But if you come to the game with a healthy dose of common sense, empathy, and respect for life and others, you learn how utterly unthinkable real violence is.
I learned something profound about the world one day in ninth grade when I was being taunted by a couple of the more popular girls in the school. There was a girl in our class who had skipped a grade or two and was developmentally behind everybody else (physically, at least). She was almost as much a pariah as I was and was dumped on unmercifully by the conformist majority. So the popular girls were goading me to ask her out to some dance or something. Clearly, the implication was that here were two geeky freaks that were perfect for each other. Not wanting to be associated with somebody that was so despised, I began insulting her. She wasn't present to hear it, but I later started to feel really uneasy about what I'd done. She had done nothing to deserve that from me, other than being another outcast. So why did I do it? It suddenly occurred to me that I could understand why the other kids treated me like shit. I had done the same thing to someone else (behind her back, at least.) It wasn't that they hated me as an individual. Some of the same people who trashed me in front of their friends were on occasion at least civil to me on an individual basis. It wasn't personal. It was all about the all-mighty Group.
I resolved to be the ultimate anti-conformist -- I wouldn't do what the f'ing conformists wanted me to do, but I wouldn't reactionarilly do the opposite, either. I would do exactly what I wanted to do and be exactly who I wanted to be. I had been through Hell. Nothing they could say anymore was worse than what had already been said. For me, it wasn't a choice of whether to conform to this clique or that, but a challenge to survive Junior High and High School without belonging at all.
I was taught not to hate others, and after seeing that I was fully capable of being just like them, it was a little easier not to. But I had to have some object for the hatred that my classmates were pumping through me, so I hated the Group and the System. I constructed an elaborate fantasy world where Weird Energy would ultimately triumph over the numbed, mindless army of conformists.
I can't say that I emerged from Jr. High/High School without a scratch. I can't say that I always perfectly lived up to my ideals. Despite my convictions about violence, I beat the shit out of one kid a couple times. But I can only imagine what I would have done if I hadn't had some pretty strong moral beliefs restraining my hand.
I never had a date till my sixth year of college (out of seven -- I was still more interested in my own projects.) We've been very happily married for 3.5 years now. But it took a revolution in my thinking before I could ever ask her out. I was so afraid of rejection, and I'd built up this idea that I was such a unique, nonconformist individual, that only a few, extremely rare women could ever see me for who I was. So I'd get infatuated with a girl, and think "this is the only one who could understand me -- this is my only chance for a meaningful relationship, so I'd better not screw it up" -- and would be parylized into inaction. I would think that I would have to make her want me, by being so charmingly quirky that she would come to me. It was bullshit and it never worked. I finally had to decide that this one shot was not my only chance, and I could take a risk.
But before that were many hours of "The Wall" on video and as a midnight movie. There was lots and lots of misery, self-pity, wretched poetry, and "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" in those college years. Yet I did not kill myself or anybody else. To do so would have been dumber than a shitsickle stick. It would have meant that the bastards had won, that the System had ground me under it's wheels. Finally, I learned that wallowing in self-pity wasn't the most attractive trait I could have, and after I dumped that, things did get better. I still listen to Pink Floyd though.
The Politics of Exclusion is what creates homicidal lunatics. Conformism is the root of all evil. It's certainly why Uncle Bill is so filthy, stinking rich. Ultimately, we have to hold people accountable for whether or not they give in to the assumed desires of the conformist majority and become part of the problem, or think for themselves.
That's part of what makes the Open Source movement so compelling. Generally speaking, it's not filled with a bunch of me-too consumers, but rather people who have at least half a brain, and are interested in being part of a better solution, popularity-be-damned. It's about thinking for yourself, being creative, and being inclusive. No wonder this issue has generated so much traffic here.
So what's my point? I dunno. There's hamburger all over the highway in Mystic, Connecticut.
I grew up Mennonite. Most of you who have even the faintest idea what that means are probably thinking "horse-drawn buggies and no electricity". Maybe this will clarify: Amish:Mennonite~::~Hassidic:Jewish The main point is this: my family had a slightly different set of values than that of most of the kids I went to school with in suburban Wichita, KS. I wasn't dressed in preppy clothes. I was taught that violence was unequivocally wrong. I was taught to treat others with love and respect. That made me just slightly different from those around me, in a not-quite-identifiable way.
Fine. Grade school was generally tolerable, though by the end of it I was starting to formulate some ideas about why the education system sucked so bad, especially for the creative individual. Isolated experiences with bullies started making me a bit cynical about the kids I went to school with, but it could be survived.
7th. grade -- the beginning of Junior High. Hell opened up its stinking, wretched maw and puked all over my little world. Instantly, and for no reason I could conceive of, I was singled out for systematic derision and abuse -- not by one or two people who happened not to like me, but by tens of people from all different cliques and social groups. People I didn't even know would call me a fag as I walked down the hall. Food would be thrown at me in the cafeteria. Stuff would be smeared on my locker. I was spit upon. I was shoved. This was not teasing, or good-natured razzing, but systematic abuse. I can remember screaming obscenities at a whole shop class.
It wasn't just because I was in the "gifted" program -- there were lots of others who didn't get the shit I got. It wasn't that I was some kind of teachers' pet -- I really didn't get great grades -- I was always more interested in my own projects than whatever it was the teachers happened to be saying. It wasn't just because I was into computers -- there were plenty of geekier geeks than me that weren't singled out in the way I was. Everyone I knew read science fiction/fantasy if they read anything at all, but they weren't called "space-cadet". I wasn't a racial minority, I wasn't the ugliest person in school, or the fattest, or the skinniest, or the richest, or the poorest. I wasn't gay, and though they called me a fag, I don't really believe that anyone actually thought I was homosexual. That's just the Junior High code word for "We f'ing hate you!"
The point was not that I belonged to the wrong group, but that I didn't belong to any group. Though we pay lip service to "Individualism" in the US, what we really mean is "selfism". Society doesn't really respect the individual as a social entity. The naked individual is truly the most hated, isolated minority there is. Racism, sexism, and homophobia, are all instantiations of the one great hatred: The hatred of the Individual by the Group.
I've played more fantasy/sf role-playing games than I can count. I've played Doom. I've played Quake. I've seen plenty of movie violence. I'm still committed to pacifism. What you get out of what you see in the movies or on your computer screen depends more on the values and experiences you bring to it than the content. In High School, my friends and I would play elaborate wargames with toy guns that shot plastic tracers and rubber bullets. Later we graduated to paintball. Did it desensitize me to killing? No. Paintballs can sting. You can pump up a lot of adrenaline and fear in a paintball game, even though you know the most that can happen is a little welt or bruise. But if you come to the game with a healthy dose of common sense, empathy, and respect for life and others, you learn how utterly unthinkable real violence is.
I learned something profound about the world one day in ninth grade when I was being taunted by a couple of the more popular girls in the school. There was a girl in our class who had skipped a grade or two and was developmentally behind everybody else (physically, at least). She was almost as much a pariah as I was and was dumped on unmercifully by the conformist majority. So the popular girls were goading me to ask her out to some dance or something. Clearly, the implication was that here were two geeky freaks that were perfect for each other. Not wanting to be associated with somebody that was so despised, I began insulting her. She wasn't present to hear it, but I later started to feel really uneasy about what I'd done. She had done nothing to deserve that from me, other than being another outcast. So why did I do it? It suddenly occurred to me that I could understand why the other kids treated me like shit. I had done the same thing to someone else (behind her back, at least.) It wasn't that they hated me as an individual. Some of the same people who trashed me in front of their friends were on occasion at least civil to me on an individual basis. It wasn't personal. It was all about the all-mighty Group.
I resolved to be the ultimate anti-conformist -- I wouldn't do what the f'ing conformists wanted me to do, but I wouldn't reactionarilly do the opposite, either. I would do exactly what I wanted to do and be exactly who I wanted to be. I had been through Hell. Nothing they could say anymore was worse than what had already been said. For me, it wasn't a choice of whether to conform to this clique or that, but a challenge to survive Junior High and High School without belonging at all.
I was taught not to hate others, and after seeing that I was fully capable of being just like them, it was a little easier not to. But I had to have some object for the hatred that my classmates were pumping through me, so I hated the Group and the System. I constructed an elaborate fantasy world where Weird Energy would ultimately triumph over the numbed, mindless army of conformists.
I can't say that I emerged from Jr. High/High School without a scratch. I can't say that I always perfectly lived up to my ideals. Despite my convictions about violence, I beat the shit out of one kid a couple times. But I can only imagine what I would have done if I hadn't had some pretty strong moral beliefs restraining my hand.
I never had a date till my sixth year of college (out of seven -- I was still more interested in my own projects.) We've been very happily married for 3.5 years now. But it took a revolution in my thinking before I could ever ask her out. I was so afraid of rejection, and I'd built up this idea that I was such a unique, nonconformist individual, that only a few, extremely rare women could ever see me for who I was. So I'd get infatuated with a girl, and think "this is the only one who could understand me -- this is my only chance for a meaningful relationship, so I'd better not screw it up" -- and would be parylized into inaction. I would think that I would have to make her want me, by being so charmingly quirky that she would come to me. It was bullshit and it never worked. I finally had to decide that this one shot was not my only chance, and I could take a risk.
But before that were many hours of "The Wall" on video and as a midnight movie. There was lots and lots of misery, self-pity, wretched poetry, and "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" in those college years. Yet I did not kill myself or anybody else. To do so would have been dumber than a shitsickle stick. It would have meant that the bastards had won, that the System had ground me under it's wheels. Finally, I learned that wallowing in self-pity wasn't the most attractive trait I could have, and after I dumped that, things did get better. I still listen to Pink Floyd though.
The Politics of Exclusion is what creates homicidal lunatics. Conformism is the root of all evil. It's certainly why Uncle Bill is so filthy, stinking rich. Ultimately, we have to hold people accountable for whether or not they give in to the assumed desires of the conformist majority and become part of the problem, or think for themselves.
That's part of what makes the Open Source movement so compelling. Generally speaking, it's not filled with a bunch of me-too consumers, but rather people who have at least half a brain, and are interested in being part of a better solution, popularity-be-damned. It's about thinking for yourself, being creative, and being inclusive. No wonder this issue has generated so much traffic here.
So what's my point? I dunno. There's hamburger all over the highway in Mystic, Connecticut.
