You know how people sometimes go to sleep thinking about a problem and wake up with the solution? I went to sleep last night doing a bunch of journaling and I just woke up with the clear realisation that I am different than most people. Not *unique*, but certainly uncommon
there are many layers to this and I have circled around it / aluded to it in many past threads, but I have never… felt it resonate through me like this before. Suddenly for a moment everything is clear, everything is obvious, all the conflict makes sense
I believe I went to bed thinking “I’m a spider that builds elaborate webs. people call me weird for doing it, and then say I’m lucky when I catch opportunities with them.” And I woke up with – we all have different psychic webs, psycho-graphs, and they catch the world differently
I’ve developed the realisation that people have different models of reality – and yet I never really sat down to appreciate and analyse *just how different* my model is from people around me. I think I feared that this inquiry would isolate me further
It’s interesting to look back and see all of the times I tentatively approached this idea, but wasn’t yet sure enough to come out and say it outright. I’ve spent years corroborating, reading, talking to 1000s of people, trying to get my story straight
“Ok Visa, we get it, you believe that you’re different, and you’ve spent a lot of time and energy over the years questioning it… taught yourself to be charismatic so that people will believe you… We believe you! Preaching to the choir here! But different how?” Err,,, hm. Uh
me: tell them! tell them the thing
visabrain: that’s classified
me: what? why!? we worked so hard to get to the point where we can talk about this
visabrain: we must keep Visa safe
me: goddamnit I didn’t ask for this
visabrain: people who are truly different in non-trivial ways know the truth: deviation from the norm will be punished unless it is exploitable
Ok let me try there are layers to this
I would say there were three things that deeply shaped me as a kid
1. being a highly visible minority (tall, dark, unique name) in syncretic Southeast Asia
2. being a book & library nerd (see: the library ethos)
3. my family running their own business
I am not axiomatic about any of this, words like “shaped” are stronger than I’d like them to be anyway by the time I had to go to school I had already read widely about space (galaxies, geography, atoms, cells) and time (dinosaurs, ancient civilisations) so school was hell
I oversimply this, but – relative to kids whose parents had bosses & paycheck, my parents lived as they pleased. They came & went as they pleased. They didn’t have to dress up to go to work. They didn’t have to speak deferentially. So, yknow, I never learned how to do any of that
I wasn’t the only book nerd in school. I had other co-conspirators, I saw them reading under their desks too. But they didn’t get singled out nearly as much as I did. Why? Because I’m the damn Schelling point. I’ve always been the most visible guy in 99% of the rooms I’ve been in
Anyway so let’s review
- I have a very feral knowledge graph that goes wide and deep
- I get singled out a lot, so I’m forced to learn to be comfortable with everybody’s eyes on me
When people talk about being afraid of public scrutiny, I can’t relate. I was raised in it
This itself strikes me as another one of the many odd dichotomies that I’ve been forced to embody. I have feral nerd friends, but they hate ~socialising~. I have glamorous socialite friends, but they don’t have the time or inclination to nerd out.
Different utility functions
(By ~socialising~ I mean playing the dominant game, the game that has no name because it’s the default. Nerds have their own status and social games, of course… we’re on twitter, you get it.)
I’m scrolling through this thread and asking myself, “is anything missing from this picture?” – it’s the syncretism. I don’t have a single centralised point of failure in my meaning graph. I am very comfortable experimenting with many meanings at once
Another thing: because of my multiple dichotomies and contradictions, I cannot entirely rely on any in-group to take care of me. Being multi-faceted means that people find you a little suspicious. I’m not Singaporean enough, not Indian enough, not Tamil enough… I’m expendable
Which is why I put in so much effort into making friends, into being kind, into building a rigorous social graph of people who care about me. To me it’s abt survival. I don’t have a social safety net. Have you read history? People get displaced and cast out, just like that
Which makes me realize another dichotomy – again I am somehow often both the most chill and most anxious person in the room. Chill because nothing ultimately matters, anxious because everything could get really horrible really fast. Suffering still hurts in the simulation
Anyway. The details and deliberations are numerous and will fill out an entire memoir. The point is that I have to find a way to joyfully surf the waves of this difference in a way that enriches and serves others, and myself, without hurting anybody