I have to learn to live on terms with the social, as opposed to the inter-human, to use Buber’s incredibly valuable distinction. I’ve tried to avoid and hide from and otherwise escape the social. I tried to pull a fast one and conflate the inter-human for the authentically social. I’ve tried to morally deny it (the old bitching about the herd/masses/mob move) behaving as if the inter-human is Good and the social is Evil, despite my professed but imperfectly practiced anti-moralistic method. And of course, I couldn’t help but abuse personality type again (an old habit) and typologically excuse myself from the social.
Most of my worst anxieties center around this theme.
- I hate to address a group as a group, which means speaking formally as opposed to conversationally.
- I hate reciting anything I already know, as opposed to freshly re-discovering truth in the act of speech.
- I hate, hate, hate parties and large gatherings where inter-human relations are eclipsed by human-to-group interactions.
- I hate representing any institution in the role of a representative of the institution. I prefer to be an individual who believes in the institution and remains entirely an individual who shares his thoughts on that insititution.
- I’m getting pressure on every side, at home (to stop being a curmudgeonly hermit and to voluntarily leave the house on occasion) and at work (to step into a leadership role and also to give lots and lots of presentations in distant cities), and I hate the hell out of it all.
These hatreds and anxieties are so intensely unpleasant there’s no way they aren’t my next practical-philosophical problem.
This is going to suck and suck and suck and I hate it to death. Here we go.