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The Wall of Crossed Arms

Socializing is a game.  If you want to integrate, you have to play it well.  People who are naturally good at the game might not ever realize they're playing it.  The game is ritual, posturing, and pandering.  It's competitive, like every human system.  Every move occurs on a razor's edge.  The penalty for bad play is exile.  If you opt not to play at all, you become invisible.  This game is going on all the time.  Everyone you meet is playing it, even people who think themselves especially welcoming.  Genuine care is earned on the merits of one's performance of normalcy; there's no haven wherein it's given freely. 

In an ideal world, anyone would be welcome anywhere.  Care wouldn't be measured and controlled.  If you wanted to float an idea or to participate in a conversation, you'd only need to speak your mind and you'd find everyone listening.  But this ideal world would have no humans in it.

Humans have to play this game.  There's seldom malice here; this is the only game in town.  Incidents of genuine altruism comprise the exception that proves the rule: human social systems aren't naturally equitable.  Equity is anathema to humans.  The socializing game pushes those with disintegrative problems to the fringes.  That's the point of the game, in fact.  From a Darwinian perspective, individuals with problems integrating might engage in anti-social behavior.  It makes sense to marginalize bad integrators because there might be something wrong with them.  They might be dangerous.  I can accept that.

I'm not integrated.  My natural affect marks me for exclusion in every situation.  I can't play the game.  I don't identify with my society's norms, and I never have.  Accordingly, I'm marginalized.  I have no standing or agency anywhere.  But I'm not a bad actor.  I'm forced out by a system that is meant to block people who may harm society, but I'm not such a threat.  The system is simply imperfect.  It's not meant to be perfect.  It's a filter.  Sometimes, harmless things get caught in it, but it's worth that price to stop harmful things.  So, I'm on the outside.  I can't get help, and I can't arouse care about my predicament in anyone.  Even people who have jobs that require them to care can't help but look at me as an inconvenience.  The world before me is like a wall of crossed arms, disapproving people judging my dysfunctional social acumen, protecting their concern the way a predator protects its prey from scavengers. 

I'm mixing metaphors here trying to describe total social disintegration.  Every door is closed to me.  That isn't hyperbole.  I'm dismissed out of hand in every situation because I'm fatally different.  I'm a complete social failure.  There are millions like me, but we don't appear to exist.  We're outside all concern.  We're even estranged from each other by virtue of our social dysfunction.  We have no banner.  It's a painful existence.  I want this to be a matter of record, even if nobody cares.  I want to show the kinds of academics that study minds, behavior, society, and consciousness that there is a whole suffering stratum of people who aren't welcome anywhere.  I don't know what change can happen, but someone should see us.  Someone on the inside should know, finally, what it's like to be a constant outsider.  I want to disabuse people of the frankly risable notion that everyone will find acceptance somewhere.  

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