Being the One in Ten.

I said I was going to make a post about the descent (or ascent) into a reclusive mindset, did I not? I did. So here’s what seems to be a typical route.

Let’s suppose you’re an independently minded person, a free thinker who stands outside the cultural tram lines and looks back in. You begin to detect the sound of consensus, the hum of Mother Culture, and you realise that the hum operates at all levels and has a gently mesmeric effect on the great majority of people. Once you’ve heard it you can’t stop hearing it, and you find yourself increasingly viewing the consensus with a critical eye. In short, I suppose it can be said that you wake up out of the trance. That’s when the process begins:

… Once you wake up, you begin to lose common ground with those still under the influence.

… The more you lose common ground, the more isolated you become both emotionally and physically.

… The more isolated you become, the more you feel the need to create your own world with your own version of reality.

… The more dependent you become on that version, the more the encroachment of the ‘normals’ into your world feels and smells like pollution.

That’s the point at which you turn into the person who reaches for the shotgun as soon as anybody so much as leans on your garden gate.

It doesn’t always happen that way – I’ve known a number of free-thinking, hum-aware people who manage to co-exist perfectly well with the ninety percenters – but it’s what can happen, and I think the secret of avoiding it is support.

Family connections seem to help a lot, if you can maintain them. But you also need to gather about you as many ten percenters as you can and allow them access to your world. And you mustn’t lose sight of them, because they’re your buffer against the pollution.

To the recluse, isolation isn’t the problem. You get used to it and learn to be content with your own version of reality. It’s the bad smell at the interface that drives you crazy.