Watch closely, I am going to show you something.
Nietzsche, Ecce Homo:
Make a list of the places where there are and have been gifted men, where wit, refinement, malice are a part of happiness, where genius has almost necessarily made its home [...]
Zvi Mowshowitz, Slack:
Slack enables doing things for your own amusement. You can play games. You can have fun.
Slack enables doing the right thing. Stand by your friends. Reward the worthy. Punish the wicked. You can have a code.
[...] Slack is life.
Morpheus in The Matrix:
You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes.
Sirius Black from Harry Potter.
Many, many poets. Here is one: Robert Bly, A Little Book on the Human Shadow:
The drama is this. We came as infants “trailing clouds of glory,” arriving from the farthest reaches of the universe, bringing with us appetites well preserved from our mammal inheritance, spontaneities wonderfully preserved from our 150,000 years of tree life, angers well preserved from our 5,000 years of tribal life—in short, with our 360-degree radiance—and we offered this gift to our parents. They didn’t want it. They wanted a nice girl or a nice boy.
Nassim Taleb: anything. Penn Jillette: anything. The Last Psychiatrist: anything.
I am also going to show you the opposite of something.
Hermione from Harry Potter.
Your therapist. Your parents. Probably your mother specifically. That friend of yours who represents civilization, at least in your head. It is not who they are, but who you are around them.
A collection of assorted observations:
I move towards that something when I am drunk, or when I am alone. I am also that when I tweet into the void. The essence of that is being against the whole world. Psychopaths and some poets are at the far end of it.
Begging to be understood is the opposite. Being an agent of the society, even a poor one, is also the opposite.
Keeping a diary and being alone are both acts of malice.
I was always afraid of aromantic people, those who could just live their lives without needing love. Now I understand why. Not needing others is also an act of the same malice.
Since I'm doing pop culture references: Michael from The Office would rather die than be himself. When he goes into the woods to be completely alone, he takes a camera with him. When he has free time, he goes to an improv class. He hates Toby not because Toby is the opposite, but because talking to Toby requires temporarily going into one's own shell/head.
In the society's eyes, the society is the only good thing. This takes many forms. Here is one offered by my dad in an argument we had ten years ago: "classical music is good because it passed the test of time". Me: "except that it doesn't sound good, so the test of time ain't worth shit". He hated it.
When I am thinking with words, the words are not me. The words are the society. Thinking with words is like going into the woods and taking a camera with you.
Nietzsche again:
And in what does one really recognize that someone has turned out well! In that a human being who has turned out well does our senses good: that he is carved out of wood at once hard, delicate and sweet-smelling. He has a taste only for what is beneficial to him; his pleasure, his joy ceases where the measure of what is beneficial is overstepped. He divines cures for injuries, he employs ill chances to his own advantage; what does not kill him makes him stronger. Out of everything he sees, hears, experiences he instinctively collects together his sum: he is a principle of selection, he rejects much. He is always in his company, whether he traffics with books, people or landscapes: he does honour when he chooses, when he admits, when he trusts.
When I run away from it, when I can't stand it, when I have to get drunk just to be it — that's where the trouble begins.