Sunday, June 22, 2008

People in a Seething, Roaring Mass!

"Do you really want to be the kind of person that the masses understand?"
--Seneca

First of all, I'm psyched that people are interested in stickering! I'll definitely be doing it too! Just don't tell the authorities.

Well, I said I'd talk about the stony-faced, unbelieving people. Daria had Sick, Sad World and I suppose that I have Serious, Sad World. This is a post I made on Apositive (edited for length):

In short, the ignorant masses really bother me to the point of distraction. When someone makes a false statement about asexuality, even if I don't know the person, it upsets me. For as long as I can remember, I've been extremely overwhelmed with all the ignorance, intolerance, and injustice in the world...Even if someone's not talking about ME, I tend to take all statements about asexuality personally. Educating all these ignorant people seems like an overwhelming, if not impossible, task. I know there will be bigots everywhere, no matter what, but the fact that they are out there, not just for asexuality but for every group, disturbs me greatly and makes me paranoid. Sadly, there's no level of self-security that you have to have to be "made" asexual (or any queer person)... I can't be the only person who struggles with this, and I think it might be a reason why people are afraid to come out as asexual. These "ignorant masses" can be extremely hard to tune out if you're not secure in yourself, and sometimes even if you are.

Relevant and brilliant image from xkcd:

I'm not sure what I was getting at with this, except to raise an issue that I don't often see raised. However, it is a large one. How can we know that people are terribly wrong, accept it and go to bed? And how can we find other members of our small group without the fear of being told we're wrong? I don't know; questions are free but answers are valuable. I like to think of what everyone else says and does as a river flowing past me. If I see something I like going by, I can grab it, and everything else goes away and disappears. But sometimes I still feel like the ignorant masses are coming, like anacondas from the water (or something), to suffocate me with constant worrying about things I can't change. Freaky, that.

5 comments:

ACH said...

Personally, I guess I try to accept that the majority of people will be ignorant on whatever it is that you or I happen to be particularly interested in. Some random thoughts a.) not everybody has time to learn about everything. b.) the govt. spends huge amounts of money to teach people things and a large part of the public doesn't even understand those things. c.) Ideas can take a long time to spread: I'm study linguistics and can tell you that most of what's taught about grammar in school is wrong. d.) The existence of ignorant loudmouths is an unavoidable consequence of right to free speech, and easy ability to spread ignorant nonsense is an unavoidable consequence of the same technology that gives us the ability to spread our ideas. I don't think this gives any answers and isn't really comforting, but maybe it can give a bit of perspective?

Ily said...

Those are good points! (...and I think the fact that there's a TV show called "Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader" proves point B.)

Anonymous said...

um, did you just reference Daria and xkcd in the same post? because I think that officially makes you my hero. awk-ward. ;)

(fyi: someday, I want to change the header on willendork to the last panel of the xkcd "mattress" cartoon.)

per your actual topic... my own most recent experience with this kind of idiocy may have been around homosexuality instead of asexuality, but I think it's pretty universally true that... the ignorant folks... they suck. I wish I had something more groundbreaking than that to offer, but alas, I don't. just hang in there and make sure to get to sleep eventually, in spite of the st00pid people on the Internet.

Ily said...

Yay, I'm glad you enjoy my random references! (Daria fo lifez!)

Superquail said...

I know what you mean about the ignorant masses just stressing you out. It happens to me all the time. I admire the fortitude with which Heresiarch seems to just be able to handle it all. For me, on occasion, I just have to turn my computer off and pretend that the world doesn't exist. It is easier to disconnect here in China than it would be in the US, and I definitely take advantage of that.

It pisses me off on an enormous level when people are wrong about Judaism, but I have learned after so man years that there are just a lot of stupid people out there. They have the same power I have, they can look shit up on Wikipedia or go to a library or something, and there's a reason why they don't. If people really want to know the truth, they will. And if they are too lazy or too disinterested to figure it out, then they just piss everyone off. Fuckers.