One degree of separation

I was walking around in the North East neighborhoods of Chicago amid the various fancy shops selling everything from Thai food to antiques, tiptoeing around the multitude which had came out to enjoy the fine summer evening when I felt the sting of the disconnect that I have felt time and again in myriad different forms as I have traversed the snaking path that life has taken over the last several years. It's a disconnect which prevents me from sharing in the various concerns which other people seem to have, enjoying the sources from which others seem to be able to derive happiness, and sympathize with their insecurities and belief systems. I have turned around and found upon closer examination that my experience of social interactions is often a degree removed from immediacy and is of a separation which is wide enough to ensure that the effect on me is at best a secondary one where everything is slightly muted, slightly subdued, slightly incredulous, and slightly cynical. The meta-investigation of what really lies behind the words and the faces is never too far for me and I cannot help but take things within the context of personalities which were perhaps created to especially suit the conversation. This is not to say that I feel that people need to be distrusted or that I am trying to uncover a deception. It's just an acknowledgment of the many insecurities that we all have, of the millions of faces that we put up to appear prim and proper, of the infinite little lies that we have convinced ourselves of. It's all very harmless and cute actually when you think about it, in a heartless sort of way and is the stuff which makes life and people colorful. And yet it is the sort of realization which prevents me from taking most things and most people too seriously, and the incredulity that I find myself experiencing when others appear too confident, too hopeful, too happy, too sad, or too serious. At these moments my incredulity springs not only from the knowledge, which I think is mostly correct, that life is fluid, almost meteorically fluid, and provides for such changes which are difficult to envisage beforehand and absolutely unknowable in their effects on us, but also from what I perceive are lacks of perspectives, spatial, temporal, and universal.

As hard as it is to take people too seriously, it is absolutely impossible to take groups of people with absolutely any degree of seriousness. I find that conversations with individuals are often very interesting and very colorful. There is always something to learn from them, even if it's just their experiences. Sometimes you can also come across those who even make sense. And even if that does not happen it is generally fun trying to find our ways in the night with a blindfold on. Groups of people with shared ideologies, however, have little going for them. Everyone seems to have sacrificed their identity in order to belong and what is left is a bland concoction of the lowest common denominator, very proper and very efficient, generally powerful and driven, but devoid of all qualities that may interest a sane (or insane, depending upon where you look from) person. It is this general blandness that I feel while walking around when I see people trying to fit in a certain lifestyle with their ridiculous buffed up gym bodies, their fancy glasses of cocktails, their expensive handbags and their stupid little rats of dogs. It is the precise blandness which I presume would permeate huge gatherings of religious people, or high powered financial offices with their jet-setting managers, or people who are fanatical supporters of issues so far removed from them that it's not even funny.