Life has taught me that some people will like me and others will not.

I don’t need to believe people who dislike or disrespect me are bad people. It just means I am probably not supposed to socialize with them, which includes working too closely with them. I’m sure that given the right setting, most of them are somewhere in the range of okay to awesome. They’re just not for me, and I’m not for them.

Others will like me right away — at first, as long as we do not exceed a certain depth — but past that point, they will like me even less than people who instantly dislike me. By “others” I mean everyone.

Of course, if my etiquette were better, fewer people would dislike me immediately. But that would require focusing on other things that I consider far more important than universal likability. In fact, it would require betraying those other things, since likability is something between real or feigned commonality of faith, and etiquette is the art of hiding difference. I’m out to differentiate, and deep disagreeability is the best means to that end.

One of my more pessimistic beliefs is that past a certain depth, we all diverge in faith. Deep down, we are all un-alike and perplexing to one another, and need to suppress this essential difference in favor of commonality. If you automatically drive to the maximum depth with every friend, you will be a friend-losing machine. I am understanding that my depths are just for me. Nobody’s going down there with me. Not only is that reasonable; it is good. I’m not going down into their depths with them either! Fair is fair.

(Oh, you’re different? You respect debate and difference of opinion? Debate and opinions are shallow. Perhaps limiting discussion to depths that debate can resolve is a weird sort of etiquette. Perhaps someday some Francis Fukuyama type of pop political theory will write a book that casts liberalism as some sort of etiquette of the public sphere. See, this is the kind of rude shit I try to keep to myself, except here on my perverse public diary, this anomablogue. Abandon hope all ye who enter here and eavesdrop on my private thoughts.)

If you have talents in etiquette, that is, social grace, you can reveal more of yourself without irritating or offending others, but I am untalented in that area.

For now, my primary use of etiquette is keeping the few friendships I value.