The Alienator

I'm in the middle of a conversation with one of my fellow Counter-Strike clan members about growing up, and I was talking about my motivation for the rapid expansion of my intellect. At the current moment, however, I am not depressed, I am merely examining my own motives for why I started on this journey, and how I might have gone too far.

Most people who know me know that I wasn't a happy camper in high school and middle school. I will spare the details, but that is a gross understatement. What ended up happening was that I did the exact opposite of what everyone else did for two reasons of equal importance: 1) I learned vicariously and paid extreme attention to the consequences of their actions, and 2) I hated them. I did what I did to separate myself from them, and according to some reports from sparsely-seen friends, I was an asshole. I actually am glad I know that, in order to avoid it now. It was one of my good friends in high school, and I really should thank her for telling me.

I continued this behavior into college until I had a real group of friends (this did not take long), but I was still disappointed in my freshman and sophomore years when my classmates expressed blatant disinterest in what was going on. This is where I excelled, but I was upset that people could be so far behind, because I wished to meet people like me, though there were none. Sure I met good people, and I still like all of them, but I need more people who can really go toe-to-toe with me on my beloved topics.

It wasn't until junior and senior years in college that things really began to take shape in this essential area. Two major things happened:

1) My roommate in junior year, chosen by another great friend to whom I am eternally grateful for having selected him, was my first true equal, and at times he was actually smarter than I was, and was able to refine and discard rough--and sometimes altogether undesirable--views from my system. It was a long process, but it ultimately paid off a million-fold.

2) My classmates--the lesser ones having been filtered out from my classes, having gone their separate ways--were more active in class, and I began to finally value other people's opinions. Senior year was the greatest year in this regard, because that's truly when other people truly cared about what we were doing, and were as engaged in the material as I was.

I have, however, replaced my motives for my behavior from simple rebellion into something more constructive, if only just as alienating. The search for meaning, the inverse of Walter in The Big Lebowski, who plants meaning where there is none; great is the ability to recognize were there is no meaning. This is my gripe--at its core--with most American media generally. It means nothing to me. What may surprise some people is that I extend this to music--and even video games (hence my love for Gabriel Knight)--as well: I expect the same as what I get out of books and foreign or old movies from music and games. This is ultimately why I would give BE, 01011001, The Human Equation, or 10,000 Days (by an American band, but as they say, the exception proves the rule) "album of the decade."

Here's the problem, however:

I think I've gone too far. I think I have a hard time relating even to people my own age because of what I did/do. Hell, I talk to people in their 40s and 50s about The Brothers Karamazov; most people my age don't even know how to respond when I open my mouth. But much like any transformative life change, you can't be happy by regressing. I can't be happy listening to Lady Gaga, or watching comedy movies. It just isn't who I am.

I ended up, in a way, not only alienating those I did deliberately want to alienate, but I alienated even people my current age as well, and I'm sure quite many more as I grow older. Hell, even in jury duty, I was like that girl in the live-fire exercise in the first Men in Black movie, the girl Smith's character shot because she was holding an advanced physics textbook. What business does a 20-something have reading War & Peace and quoting Plato or Camus?

Is there any other way I can be seen other than as a potentially dangerous anachronism?

"Eewww...what's wrong with this kid? Doesn't he have a life?"