The Clash of Worldviews

Have you ever noticed that people insist on degrading others in order to prop up their own self worth? It seems like a good quality can't stand on its own; it will inevitably be compared with someone else, some Other, in order to paint itself as superior. I was always the loser, growing up. I guess I still am (though at some point you outgrow labels), and I see why: the winners are winners because they need to manufacture losers in order to have their status. They can't be winners without seeing humanity on a spectrum of worth.

How do you speak out against that kind of thing, when it's so ubiquitous, insidious, and any opposition is ridiculed as mere fat-guy defensive action? That's just something ugly people say. If you try to speak up for the downtrodden, suddenly you're the hateful one, the person who's trespassing in the goddess's realm, stepping on her right of free speech. How do you point out hypocrisy?  How do you find your place in a world that rejects the open-mindedness you stand for, and makes you feel uncomfortable everywhere you go — and either ridicules you for your discomfort, or patronizingly tries to help you overcome this "flaw."

Expressing these things is hard. When you're single, it often feels like nobody has your back. [It's not necessarily a Single Person problem, and I don't really consider myself Single in any case—'single' implies 'searching/available'—but it's approximately the position I'm viewing it from.] Society is a non-single entity that doesn't understand or respect your needs, wants, and values, because they're so foreign from its own. This world that superficially preaches "embracing yourself" truly believes that the You that you've embraced is nothing more than self-delusion, than flimsily justifying a lifestyle that nobody would choose. Nobody is really there for you when you need them most. They're there for you when it suits them, and when it doesn't interfere with their real obligations.

And that's kind of the crux: you're not real. You don't inhabit the world the way others do, and therefore you don't have the right to comment on it. At the same time, the world you do inhabit is not permitted to be real, your life and needs and preferences and habits are not permitted to be normal. Your life experience is discounted.

How can you find a place in this world when everything in your life is dismissed as incomplete? How can you be fulfilled when society tells you that you simply are not? No matter how fulfilled you truly feel?