I am a sociopath.
My philosophy teacher last year put pins in my extremities and spread my inequities along the wall. From the first smile I cracked in his class, he was asking me to drop the course.
"I don't want cynics in my class."
All I'd done was smile...
He called me a sociopath, reading from the battered and outdated copy of the sinister manual of psychology, he explained looking pointedly at me, the crimes of choosing to live by one's own set of laws and morals rather than bowing to society's "laws for the common good", he warned us of consorting with "people" who often express feelings of 'disjointedness' with the world...
He stood there, in his sweat-stained white linen jacket and stared holes into my forehead (expecting to see horns grow under his gaze, I assumed) whilst declaring his litany against people sick enough to sometimes feel antisocial.
ANTI-SOCIETY, he said.
My immediate reaction was "NO SHIT."
No shit.
I'm an escapist. I'm escaping to a better world. I scream my litanies against television, half in intentional ignorance - half in fear...
The wracking terror that plays dice with my brittle bones as I watch meaningless lights flicker on vacuous faces.
(only sometimes I begin to understand them)
I step back, often. I step back, and open my eyes just a little wider, and try to bite holes into my cheeks to burst myself out of this haze of produce-produce-produce that I work myself into, lathering and snarling.
I step back and I look at excuses.
I step back and I look at entertainment.
I step back and I look at myself and I look at Tony and I look at all the potential and I look at all the wasted space and all the blindness and all the pain and...
And I get angry again.
I look at some of the gamers that I grew up with, who took the creation of worlds too far and withdrew, taking their brilliance with them, away from me. They're happy and far from hurting anyone (though the new WAVE program thinks otherwise) but they're gone.
I look at the web and how many hours I've wiled away reading, reading... I look at Everquest and how many hours I've wiled away, laughing and building a life out of pixels and experience tables.
Then I look at television again. At the slackness of John's face that makes him look like he's growing jowls then and there...
And I get angry again. No matter how many hours I waste away on the web, I am thinking, I am learning, hell, half the people that the TV-watching middle-class claim are wasting away online... Are out there creating new lives, new realities, new accomplishments...
...They're reaching out and building a new society...
And that's why people are afraid of the internet, but not of television.
And that's why I hate teeveeeee more than I should. That's why, when I am outraged or irritated with the slight tilting and shifting in the streets, I lash out at television.
Because when you watch TV, you do not create. You do not change, you do not build, you just re-iterate the status quo.
Which is nice, so maybe I am a sociopath because I don't like it.
I'm torn. One leg suddenly tethered to the middle class, one leg firmly sunk into the mud and congealed vomit of where I've been, one arm flailing to slap sense into Gen who "wants to work as a problem-solver in the hotel/resort industry", one arm clutching at airport counters so that I can go to burning man and experience a TAZ that I didn't create entirely on my own.
I read the books, I've done the drugs, I've danced myself to my knees, chains clanging. I've reached out and you've touched me back.
I've even lost a year to television.
So now what?
How does any of that change anything? I'm still standing outside, making life difficult for people who've worked harder than I have so that they can buy a bigger television set, I'm still singing songs to people that have been places no one should have to go...
...but they do, at the expense of society.
Of course I'm a sociopath. So are you, so are all the artists and builders and inventors and lovers. But we're still a despairingly small percentage.
Why?
Because it's easier that way. People are content that way. The greater happinness for the greater good, but if we were all living in a Brave New World without freedom but also without pain...
Sometimes I wonder if I wouldn't trade that in. Sometimes.
Then I realize that I can, and that too many people have.
Unfortunately, they've done so at the cost of too many other people, and to me the icon of this intentional distancing, is television. More specifically, prime-time, and all the nature shows that don't really show you much but the pretty cool-sounding parts.
Listening to my dad tell me about the world, you see he knows so much better than I, because he learned it on tv.
They told him so, it must be true, and everything I stand for and believe in is wrong...
...Worse than that, it's bad.
And you, and I, and everyone who didn't follow the beaten-and-decorated-path, are bad.
Bad bad bad bad.
We bad.
BECAUSE I DON'T WANT YOUR MONEY AND YOUR WEEK IN THE BAHAMAS BORES ME. Because I'm an escapist, but not the same kind you are.
I'm escaping, to where I want to be.
No more running, I'll say it again and again and anyone who'll stand and build with me is welcome to kiss me and throw bricks with me.
NO MORE RUNNING.
And Leon, and Dad, and Mr. Diamond-rapist-fucker, and Rabbi White and all the snooty doctor friends of my parents that gave them a hard time because I had pink hair and all the reasons that my parents are still ashamed of me, ALL OF YOU.
I'm stayin' escaped. Nyah nyah, Mike, you take the gotta-prove-myself-to-the-people-we-went-to-high-school-with and go play manager and wear a tie and watch Ally Mc-whoever. Have fun, but you're not proving anything.
Did I mention that I've escaped?
Almost. Or I wouldn't be yelling about it still. But I'm getting there.
Comin' with me?