There's nothing to know #10.

Being properly socialized.



Overrated. At best.

But, oh, okay, let's dig into it...

So, 'round toddler ages to about five, your folks go to their friends houses, and throw you over in the corner with some other little goblins, and hope you'll "socialize".

And it's every bit the half-assed lab experiment it sounds like.

And the QUALITY of the specimens they toss you in with doesn't seem to matter a tit to them.

That always seemed strange.
It is.
No mystery there, don't try to crack it.
It is what it is.

And then that whole disaster is supposed to...I dunno, brace you for future disappointments, or something...

But it doesn't exactly work.

Then you're unceremoniously tossed into the public school system.

And that's another fucking mess, but at least there's a lot of laughs at the strangeness of it all, and at least there's recess, and I don't care what anyone fucking says, the school lunches are 95% palatable.

The kids always ragged on the fucking food, like their moms were gourmet fucking chefs.
Well, I had enough sleepovers to know, their moms weren't fucking gourmet chefs.

"Put some fucking pepper and garlic and oregano in the sauce of your fucking American Chop Suey, it's bland and lifeless, you should be fucking ashamed!!!
I wouldn't serve this swill to prisoners!!".

That's what you WANT to say, but they beat MANNERS into you, so there goes that option.

So, I guess there's that....

But yeah, the knocking school lunch deal, it's jive.
But it's the earliest form of jive.
It's the popping open seed pods of "cool".

That's where you're allowed, indeed encouraged, to be a rude little shit.
But only to other little bastards.
And behind the backs of adults.

Then you hit high school, and that shit REALLY sets in.
Ooohh, baby!

Then the exclusionary nastiness gets "sophisticated".

And there's an aura of "the ineffable", about it.
Indeed, some kid knowledge is downright "transcendent"!
And you have to grovel your way into the graces of the cool club to find out what it is!!
And you get in there...and you don't LEARN anything, but you're special now, and you FEEL it, and you "get", it!!

And if you lead the club, maybe you've even got "it"!!

And I guess this is the real process of "being socialized".

Downloading these big vomitous eruptions of extraneous data into your pliable little mind, to be a properly conditioned survival organism for this modern industrial society.

Or, so the theory goes.

But, as I showed last chapter, "cool", is a fleeting illusion that has nothing to with reality outside of the teeny-jail.

Well, Hollywood, maybe.

Then enough "cool", becomes "it".

By what scientific process does this transformation occur?
It doesn't, it's all fucking make-believe.

And it all kicks in at about 5th and 6th grade.
But, again, you have recess, so it's not so bad.

Then high school comes, and there's no more recess, and nothing's as funny.
There's study hall, but it's never quite the same, and there's some laughs here and there, if you're lucky to find some buddies, it's even better.
But those are flickering little bright spots, like stars in the darkness.

And all of the bullshit around the edges, fucking make-believe.

"Well, maybe you're supposed to figure out the rules of the make believe, and that process of navigating chaos is some character building exercise".

Nope.

"Well, maybe you just weren't good at it, and you're jealous!".

Nope.
I was actually fairly well liked by a diverse group of people.
And I never laid any jive bullshit trips on them.
I think they subliminally appreciated that.

Just try to do your own thing.

Fuck the rest of it.

There's nothing there to know.
No secrets.
It's all what it looks like.
Dumb.

And as for being "properly socialized", I got nothing for ya.
I got no idea what that phrase means.
The words make sense, but in combination, they're gibberish to me.

Well, looking back at it all, the concepts behind it seem to be incoherent gibberish.

Seem to be? Are.

Let's cut right to it.
It's a bunch of stuff to make dumb people feel good about themselves.
And for the dumbness to feel "normal".

It's not.
And it doesn't work anyway.
Most people are some level of insecure or alienated by the whole mess, just some are better at hiding it.
Sales of alcohol and antidepressants don't lie.

But we'll get into that "complex", adult shit in the next chapter.