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Been pondering the meaning and implications of being He Who Walks Through Walls.

Not physically, of course. Socially. Psychologically. Philosophically. What price have I paid for my much vaunted ability to see through to the truth all the time? What was it that made me able to inherently understand how the walls of social reality were nothing but puffs of smoke, as easily bypassed as a line painted on the sidewalk? Where has my extreme independence of mind really gotten me? When you can casually disregard the rules others live by, the very pillars of their consciousness of the world, what do those people think of you? Do they hate you? Admire you? Disregard you entirely because you’re mentally indigestible to them?

Mostly that last one, in my case, I think.

I am not sure if I was born with this fanatical need to be independent of mind or whether it’s a result of traumatic damage to my social antenna. Certainly I was very bright from the beginning, and I have theorized in the past that this might lead to a developmental bias towards intellectual growth over a more concrete social understanding of the world.

But perhaps that also leads to taking things far too literally. I have also talked here about how us nerdy intellectual types completely misinterpret social interactions because they take them far too literally and end up missing the social context entirely.

You know, one kid walks up to another, insults him,  and slugs him on the shoulder. Where he comes from, that’s a standard play entreaty. He expects to get the same in return, followed by maybe some play-fighting.

But the kid is from an entirely different social context where there is no such thing as playful violence, so as far as he knows, he was just randomly assaulted by a stranger. He reacts accordingly, crying out in pain and looking at the first kid like he’s a monster.

The first kid doesn’t know how to interpret that, so he reacts to it as a rejection. So he does what his social context tells him to do, which is to call the other person a wimp for reacting to a simple greeting-punch like it’s a brutal karate chop to the nads.  In his social context, that’s meant to solicit the proper play-fighting response.

But devoid of social context, this seems to the punched kid like a further assault, and one that is brutally (and brutishly) unfair.

And so forth and so on. I’ve been through this before.

The punch to the shoulder is, I admit, an extreme example, but I think the basic misunderstanding between the two sides of the intellectual coin runs through all the problems that we nerdy types run into. By being ignorant of most of the social reality that defines the lives of people of average intelligence, the nerds constantly misunderstand what is really going on around them and end up viewing the world as more arbitrary and cruel than it really is.

Whoops, I started off trying to talk about myself and then wandered off into the academic again. How intellectual of me!

Back to that ferocious independence of mind. It really feels inborn to me. Like it’s the other side of the coin from my passivity. I am passive and tend to go with the flow, which is why despite my intellect I was mostly a well-behaved kid. But I am also very strongly opinionated and quite capable (and a bit too willing) to defend my opinions. And I simply cannot abide anyone trying to control me via force. I won’t accept it.

So it’s more like I am passive unless a certain line is crossed. I couldn’t exactly define that line because it’s very much an internal thing. I know the line has been crossed when the alarm goes off, basically. And then the other side of my personality comes out.

And I am pretty sure that is part of my basic temperament. I find it hard to imagine a version of myself that follows the rules because they’re the rules. Maybe if the rules had actually protected me, I would sing a different tune.

But they didn’t, and so to me, rules are agreements and nothing more. To me, they are no more real than the lines on a map. I follow the rules, for the most part, because most of them make sense to me and seem necessary for social cohesion.

However, I also feel no moral compulsion to follow ones I think are pointless, stupid, or downright destructive. I might follow them for practical reasons, but never moral.

Maybe that interfered with my social learning, though. Perhaps people learn social skills and social consciousness by fitting themselves into the rules and by sharing that experience with others doing the same.

Me, I remained the same no matter what. I did not allow myself to be socially constrained or defined. And therein, I think, lay the seeds of my downfall.

Even then, though, I might have fared better had I been a proud and haughty person. But I am sensitive and eager to please. I really want people to like me. I want to get that feeling of approval and acceptance.

I’m just tragically lacking in the basic cognitive skills that would let me get it. No wonder I am drawn to show business!

And the combination of being eager to please and socially clueless basically makes a person pathetic, and that’s the worst thing you can be. You can be a raging asshole and still get some respect. But pathetic people disqualify themselves from respect and automatically end up at the bottom of the heap.

Once again, I ponder whether I would have been better off just listening to the side of me that wanted to go the intellectual elitist route.

But I couldn’t do it then. And I couldn’t do it now.

So maybe I am the person I am meant to be.

Then what am I so depressed about?

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.