Monday morning headspace clearance

[smokingboot]

Weird stuff this morning, plus reading castorlion's lj re a meme about lj 'tribes' got me thinking.

How I hate this tribal stuff. When I look at the communities I enjoy, they are just full of people who don't necessarily know each other but have so much to chuck out there into the aether, from amazing prose to photographs and pictures and ideas...it feels good, all that creativity, it sparks me up when I have none of my own.

But I laugh at those who need a defined tribe to make them feel special: Don't get me wrong, everybody needs friends; it's when the need for friends becomes a hysterical desire to create the 'we's' and the 'not-we's', to feel above and beyond, that a perfectly normal desire to be with others of like kind turns into self-aggrandisement and popular prejudice: I have had the unpleasant experience of witnessing the backward flips of those who will do anything and say anything to belong. One of the most corrupt people of my acquaintance would claim this as a necessary survival instinct, and it's a cogent argument if one is a chimp among chimps. As human society evolves, it manages to be dangerous, irrelevant and most of all, dull; quite an achievement really.

The only ones more embarrassing than those who need a gang, are those who need a superior gang; some kind of cognoscenti, a glorious illluminati to make themselves feel part of the brotherhood*. I never know whether to laugh or cringe. 21st century, and all that crap is going to die out or burn away. Chums are always great, let's swap ideas and stuff. We can like each other without gang approval. Let's do that.


In other news: Last night's Italian meal has infused me with so much garlic the cats won't come near me. This is embarrassing, I can almost feel the flowers wilt as I approach. Showering doesn't help, and neither does chewing copious amounts of parsley. Short of rubbing myself all over with a cut potato, or bleaching my bath water, I'm out of ideas.

And another thing: sensesmmm. Weird the things I forget. I've always loved sight and smell the very best; but touch, I recently remembered, is stellar.


*No, I don't know which part they feel.