Far From the Maddening Crowd
There's a fundamental part of human nature, a survival instinct that wants us to form tribes and groups. I'm on team Edward. I'm in the Harry Potter fandom. I'm a gamer. I'm emo. Etc, etc. I have always found a certain revulsion for this concept - partly because I seem to lack the drive to group up with my fellow humans, and partly because groupthink can be so ugly when it gets out of control. Kurt Vonnegut, one of my favorite authors, describes it so well in his book Cat's Cradle-
A Karass is a network or group of people that unknown to them, are somehow affiliated or linked, in the case of the book by a higher power. But they are the individuals who, upon meeting, you feel like you have known forever. Who help you in some tangible meaningful way to fufill your purpose in life, and whom you help do the same. And then there is the Granfalloon - which is a false Karass a group of people who affect a shared identity or purpose, but whose mutual association is actually meaningless. This includes "the Communist Party, the Daughters of the American Revolution, the General Electric Company-and any nation, anytime, anywhere." A proud and meaningless association of human beings.
Perhaps it is partly my aspergers that makes me particularly resistant to the idea of false karass, to granfallooning it up for the sake of feeling connection. I can't feel that connection. I like a movie or show, but I have no desire to be part of a 'fandom'. I play games, but I don't consider myself 'a gamer'. I wonder if it relates to my troubles with executive function - placing things into categories has always been difficult for me. I get words like 'pan' and 'pot' mixed up, for example- and have a hard time understading what defines a cooking container as either. It puzzles me to try and sort the clutter in my living room into meaningful groups. What belongs together? What should reside where?
Yesterday we were at the GameStop, trading in a group of video games that we'd finished playing to get store credit for a game for Aus's birthday. We had a coupon for 50% increase in trade in, which I thought was rather nice, and was pleased with the timing of. The reason for said timing became immediately apparent, as everyone in line before us was using their trade-in to get a new game that had just come out- some version of the Madden football franchise.
The clerk asked if we were trading in for Madden, and of course I blurted the honest truth "No, we have no interest whatsoever in Madden." Collective gasp from the crowd, who suddenly looked at us like we'd grown two heads. Literally every other person was there specifically to trade in to buy this game on its release day. Some had pre-ordered the Super Deluxe version. I asked, knowing Madden to be a long running game series, what made this one so valuable.
The clerk went on about some targeting tackle system, and about how it was likely to be the last one released on the older systems as we move to Ps4 and whatever the newest Xbox is calling itself, etc. So newer, shinier, and so forth. Much better than the older version, really. Totally worth sixty dollars to buy brand new right rightnow. The other clerk, who was wearing an Eagles jersey, chimeed in "I don't even like football but I'm picking it up because I'm going to be bored this weekend with my wife and kids out of town."
Clearly he felt the call of the granfalloon, wanting to be part of the Maddening crowd, rather than be the outsider who was purchasing used games with their credit to get a better deal. We got a lot of looks as we brought up two older ps3 games and a DS game from 2008. Gasp! No Madden! Outsiders, not one of us!
I am comfortable from my position as observer, and much freer I believe, than if I wanted to be part of the granfalloons that surround me. I have aspergers. You have aspergers. Does that make us a karass? No, nope, not at all. And I say this as a person who is staring a group for folks on the spectrum. If we find connection in that group, that will be great. But must we have connection because we have the same condition? Of course not. If you've met one person on the spectrum, you've met one person on the spectrum . Long live the individual.
A Karass is a network or group of people that unknown to them, are somehow affiliated or linked, in the case of the book by a higher power. But they are the individuals who, upon meeting, you feel like you have known forever. Who help you in some tangible meaningful way to fufill your purpose in life, and whom you help do the same. And then there is the Granfalloon - which is a false Karass a group of people who affect a shared identity or purpose, but whose mutual association is actually meaningless. This includes "the Communist Party, the Daughters of the American Revolution, the General Electric Company-and any nation, anytime, anywhere." A proud and meaningless association of human beings.
Perhaps it is partly my aspergers that makes me particularly resistant to the idea of false karass, to granfallooning it up for the sake of feeling connection. I can't feel that connection. I like a movie or show, but I have no desire to be part of a 'fandom'. I play games, but I don't consider myself 'a gamer'. I wonder if it relates to my troubles with executive function - placing things into categories has always been difficult for me. I get words like 'pan' and 'pot' mixed up, for example- and have a hard time understading what defines a cooking container as either. It puzzles me to try and sort the clutter in my living room into meaningful groups. What belongs together? What should reside where?
Yesterday we were at the GameStop, trading in a group of video games that we'd finished playing to get store credit for a game for Aus's birthday. We had a coupon for 50% increase in trade in, which I thought was rather nice, and was pleased with the timing of. The reason for said timing became immediately apparent, as everyone in line before us was using their trade-in to get a new game that had just come out- some version of the Madden football franchise.
The clerk asked if we were trading in for Madden, and of course I blurted the honest truth "No, we have no interest whatsoever in Madden." Collective gasp from the crowd, who suddenly looked at us like we'd grown two heads. Literally every other person was there specifically to trade in to buy this game on its release day. Some had pre-ordered the Super Deluxe version. I asked, knowing Madden to be a long running game series, what made this one so valuable.
The clerk went on about some targeting tackle system, and about how it was likely to be the last one released on the older systems as we move to Ps4 and whatever the newest Xbox is calling itself, etc. So newer, shinier, and so forth. Much better than the older version, really. Totally worth sixty dollars to buy brand new right rightnow. The other clerk, who was wearing an Eagles jersey, chimeed in "I don't even like football but I'm picking it up because I'm going to be bored this weekend with my wife and kids out of town."
Clearly he felt the call of the granfalloon, wanting to be part of the Maddening crowd, rather than be the outsider who was purchasing used games with their credit to get a better deal. We got a lot of looks as we brought up two older ps3 games and a DS game from 2008. Gasp! No Madden! Outsiders, not one of us!
I am comfortable from my position as observer, and much freer I believe, than if I wanted to be part of the granfalloons that surround me. I have aspergers. You have aspergers. Does that make us a karass? No, nope, not at all. And I say this as a person who is staring a group for folks on the spectrum. If we find connection in that group, that will be great. But must we have connection because we have the same condition? Of course not. If you've met one person on the spectrum, you've met one person on the spectrum . Long live the individual.