I have to Say that this essay made me chuckle a bit. It made me think of the notion of a Social Suit I’ve learned to put on after 66 years that helps me be social comfortably and fit in…meaning I applaud you for pointing this out. I think we all have our own inherent strangeness that our Modern psychotope’s socioplasm en-structurates our behavior around that our individual selves emerge from. I notice it in how many of my younger friends find putting on make-up, wearing a suit, or, conversely, being incredibly strange makes fitting and being successful in the workplace reflected in the new psychotopic norm of Everyone is Queer.
Looking back on it, this wasn’t always the case, and I was fortunate having spent most of my working years in the edgy academic environment of a San Francisco General HIV/AIDS clinical where being weird was the norm. What I think I finally learned from a cultural theorist friend, who’s spent his career reflecting on the Philosophy and Psychology of the Machine, is that there’s nothing inherently wrong with this normative psychotopic structure that’s built into the edifice of Modernity’s rational edifice as long as you recognize it as the stage-prop it is. The problem is remembering it’s an artificial mean of central tendency as a ratio of a central perspective that we all deviate from in our humanness. Today when I look at the left and right in terms of Wokenstanism or Christian Nationalism, I see this Social suit as a way of conforming towards a totalitarian unity.
Meaning I hope the younger generations continue embracing individual differences as what makes up the diverse social background we all emerge from as individuals…
I have to Say that this essay made me chuckle a bit. It made me think of the notion of a Social Suit I’ve learned to put on after 66 years that helps me be social comfortably and fit in…meaning I applaud you for pointing this out. I think we all have our own inherent strangeness that our Modern psychotope’s socioplasm en-structurates our behavior around that our individual selves emerge from. I notice it in how many of my younger friends find putting on make-up, wearing a suit, or, conversely, being incredibly strange makes fitting and being successful in the workplace reflected in the new psychotopic norm of Everyone is Queer.
Looking back on it, this wasn’t always the case, and I was fortunate having spent most of my working years in the edgy academic environment of a San Francisco General HIV/AIDS clinical where being weird was the norm. What I think I finally learned from a cultural theorist friend, who’s spent his career reflecting on the Philosophy and Psychology of the Machine, is that there’s nothing inherently wrong with this normative psychotopic structure that’s built into the edifice of Modernity’s rational edifice as long as you recognize it as the stage-prop it is. The problem is remembering it’s an artificial mean of central tendency as a ratio of a central perspective that we all deviate from in our humanness. Today when I look at the left and right in terms of Wokenstanism or Christian Nationalism, I see this Social suit as a way of conforming towards a totalitarian unity.
Meaning I hope the younger generations continue embracing individual differences as what makes up the diverse social background we all emerge from as individuals…