Fringe Culture, Anger, and Maturity: Or, It's Okay To Be Cool Now. No, really. You just need to get the fuck over it.

Ashley F. Miller has a great post that on one level is about “geek culture,” but is really about any fringe culture going through a process of growth into mainstream culture. It is truly insightful and you should go read it. What I want to touch on here, though, is something that she doesn’t quite come out and say in her post. She quotes at length a commenter on her blog, who basically says that if a person has not earned the right to be called a geek, has not had to fight through the high school experience of being bullied and shunned, then they should not be allowed in the ranks of geekdom. And he is bitter about that, and angry. The hurt he went through is palpable in his screed comment. This is understandable, since the self-identification as geek was and still is, for many people, a sort of psychological defense mechanism, the badge of honor, that one wears in a community of only a very few. Military Vets can be that way, too. Even among ourselves, there can be other subdivision. Like, if you didn’t serve in combat, then you aren’t really a vet. Alcoholics can be that way, too, in some weird way. “Look, son, I drank more in a week than you have in your entire life.” (I even have to wonder if, perhaps, all communities have something like this. Even the “popular” peoples. “Look, you don’t know what hard is until you’ve done two-a-days in 100 degree heat all fucking summer to be on the football team.”) So I think that this line of thought is perfectly natural and allows people to make it through some very difficult things and in that way forge a place for themselves, a belonging to a community.

Geek Culture can be very... thorough

But you can’t stay there in that mind set. It will implode in a messy cloud of dust and noise, and you will be left with a complete lack of identity; just a hole where the structure of identity that you struggled to build once stood. There’s another line of thought among alcoholics that I think may be applicable here. They say that during your drinking/using time, you basically stop developing, emotionally and mentally. I don’t necessarily buy that wholesale, but nonetheless, I do think that there is some truth to it. I also think that the sort of anger grasped onto by the commenter and so many other bullied and fringe social groups is just as poisonous and stunting as any drug or alcohol. When nurtured like that, it excludes and inhibits all other possibilities for growth and development.

This is not to say that anger is not a healthy emotion. The whole idea of “healthy” vs. “unhealthy” emotions is completely overrated, to begin with. Emotions just are. They happen for perfectly valid reasons. Anger is just anger. It is useful. It serves a purpose. It can even, on occasion, be intensely satisfying. But when clutched to the breast and petted and fed and nurtured, it turns into something vile. It turns into hate, and turns from something that you clutch for survival into something that seemingly takes on its own vile life and claws through your ribcage to take possession of you.

Ashley Miller closes her blog with some truly good advice:

Being a geek shouldn’t be about a persecution complex.  It shouldn’t be about being better than other people.  It shouldn’t be about bullying people who want to be your friend now because of what you think they may have been like in high school.  It should be about embracing people for being themselves and being grateful that they can be themselves when they are with you.

In order to do that, one has to mature as a person. The immature anger that allowed for survival in high school or whatever other environment, must be released; if it is not released, it takes over. And then that poor demon-possessed person is stuck there, in high school, never progressing beyond those juvenile emotions, that juvenile intellect. No matter how many other bits of knowledge they collect and cobble together, they will be stuck in that tar pit of misery.

So, in order to truly open up and enjoy the community of Others, we have to let go of all of the anger and hatred from all of the bullying in our past or present. That anger has served its purpose, it has outlived its usefulness, and it’s okay to let it go. And, really, if you can’t find shit to get angry about in a much more positive and useful way these days, then you just aren’t paying attention.

I want to grow. It is never too late to grow. I think I’ve been stuck long enough in a lot of my own tar pits and sand traps. I’ll do whatever it takes to get out of those, and scour all of that poison off till my skin glows and breathes the fresh air. And then I’ll keep walking out into the world. Let that world be wide, not narrow, and let it be populated by whoever is there, and let me, for once, dance with them instead of holding myself back and just watching. (More on that in some other post down the line. I know, I say that a lot. I mean it every time.)

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