On difference
A few years ago the BBC did a joint project with an academic, in which they put online a lengthy survey, the aim of which was to identify if you were a psychopath. My friends all joked about it on Facebook, revealing and revelling that they were "20% psycho", or "30% psycho" like that was the proudest moment of their lives, so high their scores. I scored 87%, and stayed quiet1.
And yet, I had the good fortune to grow up in a loving home surrounded by a strong sense of ethics. I remember clearly an instance of this: at my 8th birthday party (the one and only birthday party I had, possibly because of what happened), an unreasonably popular kid came along, took my new bike2, and refused to give it back; riding it around and around our garden. I rewarded them for this by sticking my brother's lightsabre into the spokes of the front wheel, with the distinct calculation that they'd go over the front and stop, injuries be damned; a prediction which panned out perfectly. Fortunately for the world, my parents taught me this was not at all a reasonable way to behave, and I didn't do it again3.
And yet, I didn't generalize this experience to not sticking a plastic lightsabre in the rest of life. Psychopath tests notoriously highlight a range of personality traits, only some of which (not least criminality) strongly indicate psychopathology. If you asked people who know of me, they'd say I was the furthest thing from a psychopath. I help organise community groups, I'm supportive of young people, I'm genuinely caring, at least at a societal level, and value social and environmental justice. Nevertheless, in terms of a general lack of sympathy for social norms, I'd probably still, objectively, score higher than would be generally acceptable; I'll quite happily push situations way beyond the limits of society – which for someone who has always suffered from chronic anxiety, seems unhelpful. The truth is, I frequently fail to recognise what others consider normal4.
I have always felt somewhat out of kilter with the world. I assumed everyone felt like that, but I've learnt two hard lessons in life: the first is when people say they're different, they rarely actually are. The second is that the chief way you can tell you're genuinely different is that, with some rare exceptions, if you expose your difference to the world, society will utterly destroy you. I see a lot of nonsense online about "celebrating your weirdness" or "being proud of your quirks", well, I'm here to tell you that if you're genuinely different, likelihood is the kinds of people that say that stuff will be in the queue to burn you at the stake just like everyone else.
My advice, built on hard experience, is this: titrate your difference to the people who will stick small measures at first, and build up their love over decades; they'll be the only ones not carrying fire.
21 Apr 2024
Notes:
1 Funnily enough, the only other person I know who came close was a female friend, also from Sussex, who got 67%. Maybe its a southern thing.
2 The bike was a Raleigh Grifter, surely the greatest bike ever made. At the time, all the cool kids had Raleigh Choppers, but anyone who understood actual quality and utility had a Grifter. Choppers looked great but were basically horrible to use and impractical. Grifters were everything a rural kid could want: being the prototype of BMXs, but built like a Challenger tank. They had big wheels that actually worked on rough ground, good grippy handles, easy-twist gears, a really well cushioned seat and (amazing when you went over them) cushioned handlebars, along with great mudguards and a rock solid thick steel frame. I used to regularly throw mine off seawalls to no effect. My friends over the road had Choppers, and they rode them once. I knew a Grifter would take a stick in the wheel.
3 I must have learnt something, because when I was nine I remembering trying to strangle my baby brother into silence and realising that maybe this wasn't appropriate before it actually worked.
4 This isn't just me saying this: recently, when asked what "eccentric" meant by our youngest, my partner just pointed at me – which I was genuinely surprised by, as I don't feel eccentric at all.