I never understood the urge to belong to something that didn’t matter — to chase trends, fit in, or mold myself into someone else’s idea of acceptable. Even as a kid, it seemed clear: most of what passed for “normal” was just noise, distracting us from who we could actually become.
. . .
When I was young, I occasionally caught flak for not keeping up with trendy things — wearing the “right” clothes, knowing the latest pop songs, or parroting the slang tossed around by the “cool” kids. I wasn’t sheltered, but I never cared about blending into the crowd, even though I found it relatively easy to do when necessary. If I was pretending, was everyone else faking it, too? My natural inclination for solitude didn’t help my socialization — a common excuse for many against homeschooling — though I wasn’t homeschooled myself. But that’s nonsense. Most of the “socialization” I encountered — and much of what I learned in school — turned out to be utterly useless in real life.
Not a single subject comes to mind that helped me after leaving the circus that was public school. I can only imagine how absurd it is now, with ideological agendas permeating academia — from K-12 to universities and beyond. What a waste.
As a kid, I spent most of my time outdoors. No phones, no distractions — sometimes not even toys. I could lose myself in whatever caught my attention, and some of those hobbies became full-blown obsessions, like music. When I got into soccer, I wanted to play all the time, with anyone willing. It was the same with hockey, even though I started years later than most boys — until I wasn’t allowed to continue playing. Tennis, basketball, martial arts — whatever the activity, the joy of learning something new and getting proficient at it was deeply fulfilling.
Growing up in a city, much of your socialization comes pre-packaged, even in smaller towns. By high school, the pressure to attend parties, drink, act reckless, and put yourself in dangerous situations is intense. You feel invincible for a brief, naive stretch of time. It’s a rite of passage for some — but a pitiful one, born of emotional immaturity and the lack of meaningful alternatives in modern Western life.
Those fortunate enough to grow up rural, perhaps on a farm, often have a starkly different experience. While extremes exist in any setting, people raised with daily responsibilities tend to be more stable, self-reliant, and resilient. They develop a natural affinity for self-direction and productivity.
City kids, on the other hand, are often entirely dependent on “the system.” This dependence stems partly from the prosperity of the modern era. While it’s not inherently bad, it’s fascinating — and troubling — how we create problems where none should exist. Victimhood is rampant. In places free from war, famine, or large-scale conflict, we still manage to manufacture struggle and suffering, much of it imaginary. Food is abundant, though often industrially processed. Clean water flows freely, though chlorinated or fluoridated. Electricity and fuel are cheap, though less so than thirty years ago. We can live with relative ease, and yet we squander opportunities to build character.
Some of this is by design. Curricula are tightly controlled, still adhering to outdated uniformitarian ideals, and society’s abundance has bred softness and narcissism. Hard times create strong men and women, but good times inevitably breed weakness. Successive generations, desperate for meaning and purpose, tend to spiral into stagnation, ultimately tipping the scales toward revolution and upheaval.
This freedom, though, could be a gift. With conscious awareness and discipline, it offers opportunities recent past generations could scarcely imagine. But for many, unstructured abundance unleashes our worst tendencies. Without outlets for growth, or good and healthy examples as models, we default to destructive patterns. Addiction becomes an escape route for some, while others grapple with an enduring sense of unease and dissatisfaction.
We seek solace in love, sex, and relationships, in raising children, in religion or spirituality — but too often, these become distractions, bypassing the root of our unrest. Unless we address the fundamental causes of our discontent, we inevitably pass them on to the next generation, just as they were handed down to us, while self-destructing our lives time and again, unaware of the hidden factors.
I don’t see much value in fitting into a society so fraught with guilt and shame, acting well out of balance with the natural and real. We aspire to ideals of democratic process and equality of opportunity, but all of this demands vigilance, compromise, and upkeep. Instead, we throw money, policies, and laws into the mix, hoping more investments, technology, and control will fix the problems they created in the first place. This wildly misguided philosophy breeds widespread corruption and scandal — and therefore, distrust in those very structural aspects of society we rely upon.
This grand, old, and annoyingly persistent idea of Empire has instilled an incessant and misplaced need for progress and growth, while tying itself in knots trying to make sustainability fit the faulty model. It’s madness. The would-be saviors of humanity aspire toward ideals that conflict with reality. The democratization of the world has subdued human ingenuity, forcing the untamable creative spark into the parameters of nonsensical ideology and a perverse attraction to sameness.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re in Kelowna or Nizhny Novgorod — the big-box stores are the same, selling the same products at the same prices. The cross-pollination has been successful, by and large. What remains now is to keep the “wars” going, to spread this gray nothingness to the last holdouts.
Don’t concern yourself with fitting in. Don’t give away your uniqueness or untamed potential. Look at the world for what it is — a game, a fabrication, and one that’s falling apart under the weight of its own denialism. Be better than what’s on offer in the endless sea of fakery, fabrication, and pretense. You really don’t have the time to pretend.
Temet nosce