Hidden in Plain Sight

On April 27, 2008 at 12:36 am, I began a post—this post, actually—but got no further than the title. I don’t know if that was because that title summed up my feelings so well that there was no point to writing any further about what was on my mind. Yesterday, those words came back to me at the conclusion of A Glimpse into the Eye of Paradox.

I’ve always thought of the truth as something that is hidden in plain sight, and approached it as something that we take so much for granted we really don’t know what to do with it. One might as well say that the truth that can be put into words is not the truth. Communication is more a matter of interpretation, and there is no singularity to interpretation.

The truth is out there, and every time we encounter it, we are seeing it from a limited point of view. When we come across it again from a different point of view, we still recognize it as the truth but it not only appears different, we ourselves understand it in a different context.

As I said yesterday, I consider myself to be hidden in plain sight. There are days when it is not hard to think of myself as a very high functioning autistic, because the person I really am has almost no connection to the real world; I rely on an artificial mental construct to interact with people around me. The better that construct is, the more disassociated I actually am.

As much as I hate the effect this has on me, and as much as I view it as evidence of my acquired distrust of people, I can see it as simply a more extreme form of social persona that is created by each person to deal with other people. We do not expect to be accepted for who we really are, and so we lie to gain acceptance. Little white lies, for the most part, and no one really thinks much about it.

Of course, they hurt us, and this manner of hurting ourselves gives rise to shame and guilt over the lying and the possession of undesirable traits. So, maybe we all try to hide in plain sight.

By that, I mean, we try to conform.

I obscured myself that way. The problem with conformity is that you have to believe in the existence of a norm.

In that vein, I once looked at social gender constructs and human nature and concluded that each of us must be heir to all of human potential, so it was perfectly normal for a man to have many feminine traits that had to be denied in order to become a man.

Because of social gender constructs, it was a natural if unfortunate consequence that men who possessed a number of so-called feminine traits would end up with dangerous inferiority complexes, both to conform to the social ideal of masculinity and to condemn in each other what they were insecure about in themselves.

The problem with this assumption was that it implied that we have to choose but we do not have a real choice.

In nature, any option that is not fatal is viable.

In honesty, society would probably benefit most from men who possessed more “feminine” characteristics, and the men would probably be happier and healthier as well.

I conformed to the expectations of people around me because it was clear to me what would happen if I did not. When I really thought about it, it became obvious to me that the thing that messed society up so much was the perception of social ideals that ultimately favored one tiny group of self-justified elites. But, if that’s not who you are, you can never be happy trying to conform to that false ideal.

I’ve seen a lot of people try to take advantage of these social constructs to pursue power, whether in the form of money, fame, or politics, but this is no path to happiness or enlightenment. This just reinforces the system that abuses the people under its influence. A warped social system is as responsible for creating and perpetuating the illusion of poverty as it is the illusion of prosperity.

If you cannot fit in and thrive while being true to yourself, you can never gain anything from taking part. I learned that the hard way. I played the part I was expected to, only to have the life sucked out of me. If I had been paid in proportion to the personal cost of my sacrifices, I’d have billions by now.

Instead, I’ve got a hole more than deep enough to bury myself in. I have been shocked awake, as if by some near death experience, and I can no longer deny the truth of myself no matter how much of a misfit it makes me. I have to be true to myself, even if that means I have no hope of stable employment, even if it means I cannot function in the environment that would provide stable employment.

I should be honest, I don’t want any job that I would have to lie to get or play a role to hold on to. I know that will only push me off the deep end.

I am beginning to think that there is no place for me in the world of deep thinking, though it’s probably where I belong. I have always known that people have to figure out the important truths for themselves. It never hurts to write about them, to give people food for thought; once in a while, what you can write down is enough to lead someone else to their own epiphanies, and I’ve had enough of my own to map out a few promising paths.

I would love to keep on exploring the frontiers of consciousness, but I just don’t have the right backing. I am not catching anyone’s interest.

I usually do not worry about the fate of humanity. I know that the truth is there for anyone who wants to see it; I know that people often see what they want to see, or use what they see to justify what they think, but as long as people are still curious and confront the paradox of death seriously, they can get past the usual mistakes and still get to the point.

I was originally more interested in finding my own miracles and being able to point out precisely how they worked in the event I was able to solve my own problem using them. I have to pursue transformation because failing to would mean living a meaningless life and dying a meaningless death. That realization is part of what undermined my attempts to write fiction simply to support myself.

I would much rather live the kind of story that comes to me than simply write it. I would rather be working actively toward my own salvation. I would rather be fighting for my soul. I would rather face the moment of my death with a smile and an understanding of what that step in the dance of life really was, and if necessary, be able to step around it.

I am not afraid of the prospect of oblivion, but I do find existence worth holding on to, even if I have to change it to make it work right. It’s a good idea and one that needs a lot of improvement, and while I may not be well equipped for that, I still want to work on it. I might have once tried to save the world, but it takes all of us to o that, so I am going to focus on ideas that might help people save themselves.

I once said, “if you want to make the world a better place, you need to make better people” but I’ve revised that second part to, “you need people who want to make themselves better” and since you can’t force people to be better, you have to give them what they need to improve on their own. Society does not serve that purpose, but people can work inside of society to benefit more people.

I was kind of hoping there would be people with resources and no ideas on the lookout for someone like me—I’m doing this one way or the other, with support or without, but… yeah, support would be nice—but I can see how hard it is now to believe in a single voice lost in the roar of the surf.

Thanks to the Internet, I simply have one more way to be hidden in plain sight. It’s not quite as bad as being the needle in a haystack, and at the same time it’s as bad as not being the only needle in the haystack. I really do not have much care for money, I have never been much motivated to make it since its not really the solution to the problems that really matter to me.

I could use money to transition, to travel and do research, set up a better studio and information system, but most of the money I’ve made in life has been only good for paying for rent, food and bills. Most of the people I’ve known on a personal level have been in the same position. I have taken whatever work I could get to keep up with the bills.

The problem is, I passed the point where I don’t care anymore. I want to keep working on some of the questions I am forever asking, and I want to share my observations still, but I am no longer afraid of homelessness and death, not enough to make the personal sacrifices I’ve made in the past for the privilege of starvation wages. If nobody sees me, if nobody hears me, if nobody really cares, that’s fine. If you didn’t notice I was here, I understand.

I have tried to ask for help. I’ve tried to catch people’s attention, and I’ve tried to put something worthy of interest out there for you. I have a lot more, but I am running out of time. I have to say that now, while there’s still a chance. I have to ask strangers for help like this because I am too inward bound to know how to get attention from the right people, people who can get what I am saying, who can see where I am going and who feel that it is as important as I do.

The truth is hidden in plain sight, and so we overlook it every day. I think it’s past time we stopped and looked into it. I think it’s essential for us to survive and grow. I think that anyone who has confronted the prospect of oblivion should know better than to ignore the implications that are all around us.

I think it is time we took our imagination and intuition as seriously as our reason. I think it is time we took our wishful thinking and stripped away the whimsy, and made a serious study of doing the impossible. Lots of people have dreams, but my dream has always been to achieve realization. The only way to do that is to be able to go beyond our normal thinking, and that is the stumbling block most people fall over. I can hardly get through the day without tripping over myself, but give me any other stumbling block and I can fly right over it.