When I talk to them, most people don’t interest me simply because they are too proud. They are too proud of some language, a country, a faith, and in this pride, which they dub culture, they fail to see the big picture; they fail to imagine how none of this exists. Identity, at least in the regard people look at it, is either luck or choice. A red rose has no religion, and a yellow rose does not speak a foreign language. Both of them bloom. And often, they bloom around each other if given a chance. A group has culture; an individual has identity. A person who substitutes one for another is not attractive, only a copy of a copy. You may change your culture with a snap. It is not difficult; in fact, it is only most necessary. No, not for a better world or other hubris that thinkers spew, but because what a sight it would be, how glorious!
It would be refreshing for people to have ideas of their own, to think and explore and to question and doubt everything they are handed by the group.
Doubt goes both ways. People think it is heresy to doubt; it is only heresy when you doubt and fail to see the facts in front of you, regardless of whether they help you converge or diverge into the collective. A child must drop a ball to see that gravity works; irrespective of if it works, it is the dropping of the ball that is important. What a blessing we can think for ourselves; what a tragedy that most people don’t. They live identically to most that came before, not an ounce of it original or new. All for the ease of not having to think. I am not interested in saving the world or changing it for good, but I am interested in what we can do when all of us think for ourselves. The beauty of our differences makes me pause in awe, in astonishment.
My need to reject culture, or at least to not accept the culture I’ve been handed word for word, comes from a long time ago when I met someone who asked me, “what do you see when you look up at the stars?” Thinking it was some rambling about god, I said, “I don’t know; what do you see?” “I see fire,” they said, “so much of the universe is continually burning, and we are still here. That has to count for something, doesn’t it?”