Dropping out of society.
I don’t recommend everyone else do it because it’s lousy, but some of you might have to as its the better or two choices. Bottom line is if you are living a non-conventional or nonconformist lifestyle, you are simply going to have to drop out of society in a sense – you will have to mentally drop out of society.
You can still have a job, make money, own a car and even a home, even wear suits and fly on airplanes, but in a very real sense, you simply need to drop out. The reason is because if you don’t mentally drop out, you are going to get pummeled constantly for not doing what you’re supposed to be doing (which is bullshit anyway). Once you drop out, people can say whatever they want, but they will hit a brick wall because they are talking to someone who doesn’t care. Your basic attitude will be one of more or less defiance towards one and all – sort of like, “I’m going to do whatever I want to, and I dare you say anything about it!” It’s a good pre-emptive attack and it tends to shut down a lot of criticism before it even starts.
Dropping out simply means you don’t care about society’s norms and values in terms of lifestyle anymore.
Obviously, you will still need to care about appropriate behavior on and off the job. You need to behave in a society-approved way when you are on the job not because it’s right but because if you don’t, you will get canned, and you won’t be able to survive anymore.
You will need to conform to quite a few of society’s rules, but not all of them, when you are out in public. The reason you need to go along with a subset of rules is that those rules are tied in with social skills and people who violate them are seen as being social clods. In other words, pretty much the whole world is simply going to reject you in some pretty bad ways unless you conform to a certain subset of societal rules.
One of the areas in which you can break the rules in public is in hairstyles and clothing. You can even violate them on the job to some extent anymore.
All the rest of it is pretty much, go along get along. There are some very severe punishments for those who blow off too many society’s rules. Basically it’s a lonely place to be.
