Sometimes I Feel So Proud to be Maladjusted

I have — time and again, over the years — repeatedly expressed my wonder, amazement and immense awe at the awesomeness of martyrs. Each and every time I have done so, I have also expressed my belief that all martyrs are crazy. Although I find it difficult to hold on to both of these beliefs at the same time, I think the way I am able to reconcile the two is that whenever one such martyr is eliminated, such elimination does not actually disqualify the martyr or his / her character in any way … instead my hunch is that the process of elimination automatically invalidates anyone or anything responsible for the act of elimination. I can quite simply express this as an obvious fact: Eliminating someone is a cardinal sin.

(As an aside, see also “Cleansing Democracy“)

I think of the title for this post as a mashup of a song by the name of “Sometimes I Feel So Uninspired” (by Ten Years After Traffic / Steve Winwood) and a speech given by Martin Luther King in which he emphasized how in some respects he was “proud to be maladjusted“.

Yet the reason why I want to write this today is that I myself am somewhat maladjusted to ideas expressed in another episode of the “Braver Way” podcast (an earlier episode of which I mentioned a few weeks ago — see “Living Here“).

In this new episode (“How can I change their mind?” [ https://braverangels.org/a-braver-way-episode-14 ] ), Monica Guzman converses with David McRaney about a variety of topics, one of which is Mr. McRaney’s concept of “social death” (which is, roughly speaking, the feelings a person encounters when they become ostracized — or in more modern lingo: “cancelled”).

In contrast to the disdain I hope to have evoked at the social sickness of ostracization, the conversation in the podcast revolved more around understanding the phenomenon as if it were normal, healthy or something like that. In my opinion it is definitely not healthy (though it may be somewhat normal — in other words: a rather mediocre behavior).

Much like it seems to be extremely courageous to step into the role of a potential martyr, it seems to be extremely lacking courage to step into the role of a conformist (and a potential “Mitläufer”).