It has become increasingly apparent how out of touch with the world I am. I feel as though I’ve been disconnected from the channels that virtually everyone else is locked into.
What drives modern society? Politics, celebrities, fashion, sports, finance, etc. None of this interests me. It makes me feel like a pariah because there is nothing in me anywhere that drives me to seek these things.
Politicians have fully sapped my faith in humanity. The past 6 years have been a truly exhausting gauntlet of terrible behavior on full display in Washington and at the state level. How can I be bothered to give a fuck about people who clearly have zero connection with the reality of their constituents?
Celebrity is a common aspiration but do you honestly want that life? Privacy would be impossible and you’d have to be hyper considerate of every move you made for the rest of your life. Imagine a room of 100 people you don’t know staring directly at you, hoping you’ll look back. Now multiply it by 100,000. How quickly do you want to leave this imaginary room? But you can’t, because that’s your life now.
Fashion has never interested me because I am too utilitarian. Even as I wrote this I was going to mention it as a part of my particular form of masculinity, but it is a little more than that. It isn’t just because I’m a man that I could give a fuck about my attire looking smart at all times. I live a simple life and that requires simple choices with clothing. Does it serve a function? Then it can be included. Is it for looks alone? Then it can be safely placed in the mountainous “never” pile. Makes me sound old and boring, two distinctions I’m not afraid of.
Sports have been an axe I’ve never stopped grinding. What in the actual fuck is with our collective obsession with sports? People base their entire identities around teams of talented, athletic millionaires who have nothing in common with them. I live in a college town in the Midwest. Notre Dame is a prestigious university catering to super qualified candidates from all over the country. The people I see sporting Notre Dame gear around here have never set foot in a college classroom but they have this imagined sense of entitlement. Like their proximity to something great makes them greater. It doesn’t. This form of insanity is one I will never be able to wrap my mind around, I fear. It is only a fear because it makes it harder for me to relate to a huge portion of the population.
Finance quickly places all of us into the categories of “have” and “have not”. The articles and news I see are almost always about imaginary people living imaginary lives. It always feels like an angle is being worked to sell something to the exact people who don’t need to be buying anything. If it’s about retirement, then it leaves a whole bunch of us out because I think that ship sailed long ago. Want to talk about finance? Let’s talk about how many people spend their entire lives with car payments. Or about how even the fortunate few who pay off their mortgage still have to rent the land it’s on from the government forever. If money is your god you picked the wrong religion and hell is on earth.
I am happy not to be a player in these insane games. But I do look out and watch the world go by and wonder if any of them feel the same.