A Difference of Existence

How am I so different that I think 

if people knew how I thought, 

they would become hostile ---- ?

I think caring more about ideals than the present moment's impression makes me seem like an shortsighted zealot to others. I think finding purpose only in intellectual pursuits makes me seem inhuman and dangerously naive to others. I think letting on that I am truly indifferent on social acceptance labels me as a sociopath. I think thinking of emotions as undesirable makes others think I'm unstable and immoral. I think taking everything seriously would make me aberrant and ostracized because of the basic disconnect and misunderstanding. I think if everyone knew how I analyzed and reasoned everything it would make them think I'm unemotional and robotic.

Thinking death isn't inherently bad, emotion isn't inherently good, art isn't inherently valuable, sex/drugs are neither moral nor immoral, nothing is completely evil or good, sadness is to be cherished, to hate is always wrong, trying is more important than being right, happiness is not inherently valuable, science/math is thrilling.... that I hold ideals so highly, adhere to them despite conventions, don't have regrets.... makes me estranged. That other people do not agree, chills me. That I ask "why" is one of the things most important; but when it isn't considered irrelevant, it is considered dangerous, misleading and corruptive.

I'm aware most people would just be bewildered at me and then proceed to not care, but that is almost as bad.

So I go about, knowing that I fundamentally can't communicate what and why I think/believe/act/care and knowing that if I tried, I would appear to others as strange and better discounted, or a twisted creature masquerading as human.

This would seem to come some from my family acting/believing they aren't normal socially. Except it's beyond that. Instead, I believe I can get along with others as much as I want and even better if I wanted to any more than I do. No, this is about how I don't share (even the same type of!) thoughts, reasons, beliefs, emotions, ideals. In short, I do not have in common everything that I think makes me "me," with anyone. I like to learn and mimic and imagine others' sets of fundamental worldviews, but I keep finding that there is nothing fundamental to them. Importance and cares vary, are arbitrary, or unconsidered. I could accept it if they were unknown or developing or even just... missed.



No progress, no improvement, no goals, ignorance, irrationality, external validation, aesthetic values, emotional judgments, current religious values, no consistency, no permanent ideals, no reasons for existing, no importance of understanding, no permanent values for right and wrong, and no desire to find out what makes anything, true real, or the definition of ... anything. And even when pressed, there is no feeling of discomfort at these omissions. Sometimes there is just mild curiosity, sometimes there is pure dismissal, other times it is distrust or belittlement, but worst of all, I am the one in the wrong for caring.

Trying to do better is optional and not fundamental to just... living.

So that is accurate, but leaves out how I care.

I am the only one that wants to be whole, in a world of ever-shifting fragments. Calling them "Fragments" makes it sound disturbing, but it is not at all. In fact they are delightful and enticing. They only become frightening when I realize they are hallucinations. Constantly. Everywhere. Forever. Without a source, cause, or reason.
They cannot be avoided, and mock me with their presence.
I search for something to hold on to, to climb, to create, to see...and I can feel myself. But each time I polish something to where I am surprised and pleased, I notice I have chips and smudges I didn't see before.
I play with the apparitions and ignore their calls to never stop looking away from their shimmering color. I go back to working at my porcelain limbs, but it is a forlorn task. And I can't escape the suspicion that there is no way for me to tell if I appear like a flurry of sounds and color to everyone else too, and have only fooled myself into thinking I am made of solid glass prisms.


......
One of my ideals is that I reason, question, and correct everything, including what and who I am. Yet, my ideals also demand that I always adhere to them, so to discover flaws in the very foundation and framework for who I am, is troubling to say the least. Besides that, there is the problem of if I can even meaningfully validate, question, or think about such fundamental axioms that define who I am.

And still, I have left out perhaps the most important part of the picture. All of this, while true, ignores my intrinsic, instinctual rejection of even the thought of being understood completely.

A little history:
It used to be, for me, that .... everyone is alone. It's the way life is, that we do the best we can with what we know... What we know of the world around us, of the people around us. You just do what you can, acting alone, because that is all you can work with. Trying to force in things existing beyond and between us results in distorted beliefs like ghosts, gods, and glory. One of the reasons truth is valuable is because it is permanent, unlike everything else. The only reason emotions, passions and ambitions have value are because they are attempts to reach beyond ourselves or motivation to understand truth and reality and what is and what makes things be. We all have the same shared reality, but we all are different in how we apprehend, approach, and deal with it. We are all individual, in every sense of the word. We think individually, act individually, want different things, and communicate on different levels. Art then, only serves as a way to record one's own section of reality in a better way than other mediums or methods. Works of art are inscrutable, just as we are basically inscrutable to one another.

And then a lot of that changed. I started to think that even the basic, incommunicable things that we experience might be shared, taught, and communicated with some luck. I thought that art wasn't just a personal task, but a message replete with meanings that could be teased and discerned. I thought that maybe we shared a fundamental desire and dream as human beings. I thought that philosophy might actually examine and begin to give some answers that everyone could agree upon, even if the answers were only what the questions were. I thought of society not as something that existed by requirement for allotting needs, but as something that could improve the lives of each of it's members many-fold their abilities individually.

And I found myself riddled with flaws I didn't know were there and abilities and cares and sentiments I didn't know I had.

I like the way I think. I wish other people thought like me. So what is it about the idea of someone else knowing how I think that is shudder-inducing?

If someone knew my thoughts, they could hurt me. They could manipulate me. There would be nothing to stop them from destroying me. My mind is all I have. If the world turned upside down tomorrow, I would still be who I am because I would still have my thoughts, my cares, and my values. If everything stopped making sense and became irrational and meaningless, then, even though I would be crushed with confusion and chaos, I would have something to rely on. Some place to begin putting the pieces back together. I would not go insane.
My mind is both the only thing that I can control and count on, but it is also the only thing that links me to the outside and lets me do, think, apprehend beauty, truth, meaning. But if someone knew me, really understood how I think, they could rip my ideals to shreds, tear down the framework from which I can think, act, and exist within. If I lose myself, then I might become everything that is wrong. It isn't like I would become evil, but... everything I understand, know, care about .... everything that makes life worth living could be taken from me. And I might not even know it was happening. Everything could become meaningless. Not in the "universe contains no meaning sense" but in that I couldn't notice what meaning was in front of me, nor would I be able to create or imagine meaning of any kind. If I can't count on having my own mind, then yes, yes all my values, everything I know, count on, believe could be destroyed and everything I fear, hate and think is wrong could become true.

While I've been shedding the security of leading a life that was founded in the unchanging geology of practicality, I am astonished at how ideals, emotions and spirituality can enrich and shed new kaleidoscopes of experience. But they are new and infantile and I cannot be sure they won't turn on me. I don't fully know what they are. While my practicality is perhaps the only thing dependable, it is shallow compared to ideals.The pillars I build upon are not things I can do without. I can question them, but only just. If I lose them, if they were subverted damaged or dismantled, then I don't know what will happen to me.

I'd have wrong values. I'd have no purpose. I don't know what I would be. I'd stop being me. I might not notice, I might not care, but to me, now, that is worse than death. To have no control, to hate myself, to not know I was so wrong. I guess it wouldn't matter, I would have stopped existing, at least in what I perceive to be "I." If I stopped being, thinking, as I do now, then the "I" now would be gone.


Do I have so little self confidence and self understanding that I think someone could do that to me? I don't know. I don't know myself completely. I don't know which values would trump the others. I don't know the reason for many things I do find so important. I'm not infallible. I can only begin to fathom, begin to speculate on who I am now. Beyond that, if someone changed who I was, (or changed how I change who I am).... I can't trust myself. I could not trust myself. Once my core values fell. Once my reason was sabotaged even for a moment, then everything that built upon that would unwind. I'd say you can't sabotage reason except everyone around me doesn't even notice how much they lack and violate it. So either I am cut of a different cloth, or I am a few steps from a slide into nothingness. Nothingness that I wouldn't even notice I was in, nor would I have any reason to climb out of.