My interests

My activity on this blog has been in decline (for me, at least). Ever since I got back from my vacation awhile back it has been hard for me to focus on certain things. Since it has been a whole week (!) since my last post I have decided to share with you some of my new-found passions: fun, lobster racing, snipe awareness, touching my nose with my_______, making dirty thoughts pop into people's heads without doing anything dirty, dust bunny rancher, likes a wide variety of hats (does not wear hats), bonsai tree liberation, taco cart maintenance, fish bowling, star gazing with Bob (imaginary mentor--I'm all grown up now).

Aside from these new pursuits and hobbies, I have been busy deconstructing my milieu. See, I had this dream. In this dream I was involved in an activity where the adult men and young men were gathered into a gymnasium. We were told to bring a gun. When we were all present, the leader told us to stand apart from each other a certain distance and then to fire our guns in turns. I kept asking the leader why we were doing this. He told me that it was better to be obedient and assured me that no one would die or get hurt badly. I was rather nervous in the dream because I was only ten feet away from a boy pointing a double-barrel shotgun at me. I pretty much knew that I would be wasted with one shot. I persisted in questioning every grownup in the group and everyone seemed to ignore me now, instead laughing with each other and acting rather casual--this was all going to be fun. End dream.

This impressed upon me the futility of warning a body/group of the foolishness that they are engaged in. A group is an organism. It will do many things to protect itself.

I've been thinking about the collective state of mind versus the individual: happiness. I really believe that a member of the collective will sacrifice their individual self for their collective self out of the need for security and comfort over autonomy and truth. The collective will rarely, if ever, truly listen to an individual who threatens the state of the collective; whereas, the individual can become completely absorbed by the collective.

Collective/group reality seems to be just as subjective and prone to credulity as that of the individual, if not more. Group think is prone to depersonalization as well as a lack of critical thinking. The responsibility of scrutiny is dispersed completely. It is no wonder that large groups of people have taken in claims, concepts and myths in confidence from jugglers of perception and emotion.

This all takes me back to the days when I was studying social psychology. It is nice to shut the brain down and make everybody happy, but I don't think that they understood what it was that made me unhappy. The more I think, the more it seems to unravel who I am. My real interest in life is thinking. I am a thinker. Speaking in general, if what I think about makes you feel uncomfortable, then that is tough shit. I am a big enough person to handle your mind garbage, why not you mine?

PS. I love my blog and my bloggies.