Socialcaterpillar’s Weblog

I can’t help but feel a little ashamed of my inability to interface with other human beings. On select afternoons, I take to sitting in on a circle consisting mostly of upper-class older women. In the words of Conor Oberst:

“No, I don’t ride, I just sit and watch the people there;
and they remind me of wind-up cars in motion, the way
they spin and turn and jockey for positions.”

The problem seems to come when I find myself with people who are just like me: they speak of politics (and throw fundraisers for the politicians I support); they reject the mainstream media; they take real steps to become more sustainable human beings. Somehow, despite this, we’re different.

People are fascinating: there are impatient psychologists, intolerant social workers, and everything in between. Am I really so conceited as to think I’m better than most, or is it that I just prefer to keep my mouth shut, and try not to relive the failings of the rest of our species?

Sometimes I feel no better than Proust’s good old Monsieur Swann, glaring down his nose at the bourgeois dinner parties of the Verdurins, secretly disillusioned with the whole of society, and taking to seducing underage peasant-girls.

Maybe I can just never live down the fact that I come from the working class, that I have little understanding or patience for those who have more; or maybe I’m just as John Lennon said:

“You think you’re so clever and classless and free,
but you’re still fucking peasants as far as I can see.”

Now, I must be off to a new crust of this social Earth: I must go to meditation.