An Itch to Niche or a Niche to Itch

by phil on Saturday Jan 17, 2004 9:20 AM
Me Me Me

It seems I'm niche-ifying myself.

In my desire for uniqueness and in the quenching of my thirst for novel information, I feel like I'm isolating myself further and further away from others.

In Junior High, all it took for me to "identify" with someone was that they either had some indian or philipino in them, or they were good at math like me.

In High School, being into technology, and/or also having the same humor interests that I had (repeating stupid phrases a million times over), and/or also sharing the same activity interests, like raquetball, was what it took.

Then in College, early on at Stanford, I felt "at home" with these people simply because they were all smart. I never felt uncomfortable bringing up a contemporary or advanced topic because they could all speak the same language.

However, my language has gotten more and more obscure, and I even now feel intellectually alienated from the intellectuals at Stanford.

For me now, I'm interested in this mixing of art, science, technology, and enlightenment into an antidote for boredom. The only people that seem to come close to that were the "Quantum Theologists". However, half of them are just there because they love alternative *.*... which is great. I'm all into mind-bending hippie funsterism. But I don't mix well with those kinds of people, it's too much of a culture to me. Others have their own specific field, like linguistics, semantics, or epistemology, that they would talk exclusively about. And likewise, I'm probably the same, I exclusively want to talk about philosophistric mind candy, especially where its related to technology. // I'm NOT saying I'm better than these ppl, just that I don't EVEN have enough in common with these guys to identify with them...

I made an observation about myself early on that I have a tendancy to at first be intimidated by a space, then I swallow it, and then I transcend it. It's borne of a habit of number-one-ism. This is my strong internal pressure to rise to the top. Plus my easy tendancy to get bored.

And so, at first I came to Stanford and was intimidated by the tall buildings and tall kids. Eventually I became a fixture of it. And then I quit it. ... but I'm back now to finish business... but I'm more or less a floating ghost on campus.

Anyways, I wanted to paint this picture of what happens when you run a maximization routine in life... you have a tendancy to break through the system that you were initially trying to maximize in and find yourself on an island...

// SIGTRAP... I think also, I need to do a better job seeking out like-minded people. My blog is helping me do that, so is drinking beer every Wednesday at EBF (a house called "Enchanted Broccoli Forest"), and living in the Bay Area.

// OTHER NOTE, I think this is indicative of the beginning of a transition to a more integrative Phil, one that likes to play with others and is willing to team up to build huge, colorful flotillas of intellectual splendor... (if that's what I'm truly after)

// Yeah, woah, WTF, it seems my prejudgments and presuppositions about people setup huge arbitrary walls between me and others. I consider myself a tolerant person, but I'll still write off people just based on the way they dress... this is not cool.