Earlier this week, I accompanied some good friends to a metal concert. Now, I've listened to metal music from time to time over the years, but had never immersed myself in the culture—instead remaining a distant appreciator. This concert was an outstanding experience which changed that. However, it got me thinking, how do communities work?
More specifically: how do they work in relation to ideas of judgment, and how does acceptance and genuine membership occur?
I doubt I need to convince anyone of the importance of community. The idea that humans are social creatures is widely accepted at this point. Community is a basic principle in human life which we all develop an intuitive understanding for as we grow, but it is probably helpful to give some kind of conceptual definition for community. To me, a community is a larger social entity which manifests from a group of individuals on the basis of shared qualities such as location, ideology, practices, interests, or behavior.
Under this definition there must be a near infinite number of communities in the world for people to participate in. Yes, that's the point. First and foremost, communities evolved to help give people a sense of identity in the world when they are young and organize a group of people to act in harmony to survive better. Now, in our globalized world which glorifies the individual in all her neoliberal glory, the role of community biases toward identity formation over coordinating group action for survival. Conformity and solidarity have become seen as contrary and negative qualities to the divine individual, and when individuals retain their illusion that their identities are constructed through external methods like community, we enter our current stage: judgment.
In all fairness, judgment is not a new concept; however, the current use of it is an extremified version of it. Judgment is now the blade of the individual to shape and maintain their sense of self through the valuation of the world and communities around them. It promises an unrestrained ability to control the shape of one's self, but at the cost of imprisoning its stature. When we define ourselves by judgment, by 'not I's,' we place ourselves in the eternal role of a soldier who must defend themselves against whatever front comes before them. Sometime, this front will be known as an ally and is granted passage, but the majority of times it becomes a matter of wielding judgment's blade against the new entity. I would rather be a vagabond who freely roams the lands with curiosity and an open heart as opposed to the stationary, closed-off counterpart of the soldier.
In my view, this widespread allegiance to judgment as the means of self-definition is symptomatic of a world where people are deprived of the methods of internal self-definition. But people need a sense of self, and so judgment is used as a substitute.
This invites the question, "what are the methods of internal self-definition which we are being deprived of?"
I mean in no way to avoid this question, but first must ask you to understand that by the very nature of internal self-definition, I—someone external to you—can only offer you signposts which point in the correct general direction, but that you yourself must traverse the path. That being said, the most important perspective shift one must adopt—relative to the current standard—is an inversion of meaning. Meaning is conventionally thought of as some abstract thing "out there" which we spend our lives "finding." My proposition is that meaning is something interior to the self which is bestowed upon things "out there."
However, thinking of yourself as the arbiter of meaning is a tremendous responsibility and we have been taught that such dramatic senses of responsibility are not fit to be handled by the average person, that only a select few who posses some quality we do not can handle that pressure. So, the first step becomes dissolving limiting beliefs that seek to place you as something the world acts upon and is created by these interaction, rather than your true nature as an agent who acts upon and creates the world.
When the beliefs are dissolved, the next task is to find trust in yourself. This one, in my experience, is an incredibly harrowing process. The modern man is born into a set of systems which benefit from him not trusting himself and instead looking to the world to tell him what to do. (We can thank the industrialists like Rockefeller for creating these systems for their own wealth at the expense of our agency.) This creates a lifetime of self-doubt and exacerbates the appeal to authority. For as much as I have had a reputation as a rule-breaker who has a problem with authority, internally the desire for an authority outside myself to simply tell me what to do was deeply rooted and terribly powerful.
Who am I to be the authority on my own life?
Well, when I phrase it like that the absurdity of the belief becomes apparent.
Yet, developing trust in yourself as the absolute authority on your own sense of self is much easier said than done. A common trap on this path, which I fell into, is narcissism. I became so self-absorbed that my relationship to everything external was tainted with a hint of hostility. If I was the one making the final call, then I was all that really mattered and all this stuff outside of me didn't matter and I could be an ass about it. Or so I thought at the time. The truth of it, as it often is, can be found in a middle way. Your relationship with the external world is not confrontational, it is dialectical. Two voices that both matter, where the final decision lies with the one impacted. Sometimes the world outside is right, but if you always meet it with hostility you will never see that.
Self-trust is rooted in humility. Sadly, humility is an idea which often gets misrepresented in the public mind and confused for a kind of selfless meekness. So, to clear the record I want to share a quote on humility from my favorite television show of all time, Ted Lasso:
"Humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less."
In the context of our discussion of narcissism, this quote perfectly represents the middle way. It does not say to think nothing of yourself and become an echoist, rather, it says to find the balance in between by remembering that you are only half the picture.
Yes, I get the final say in who I am, but to disregard the world I live in on account of narcissism is equally as foolish as thinking of myself as nothing more than a thing to be shaped and used by the world. A self worth trusting is one which embraces a dialogue with the external world and comes to understand both the internal and external through this continuous dialogue. As this two-sided understanding of life develops, one can become more comfortable in exercising their position as the arbiter of meaning in their own life, actualize the extent of their humanity, and fulfill internal self-definition.
Again, this is all much easier said than done and the work to follow these signposts is unique to you. I also make no claim to be at the end of this path, but I can tell you wholeheartedly that my journey thus far has been worth it.
Perhaps I should have split this into two separate essays, but with the discussion of internal self-definition concluded, I would like to return to community, judgment, and the metal concert.
My relationship to meeting new communities as a fledgling vagabond is distinctly different than judgment's soldiers. Let's talk about the differences.
Some soldiers adamantly oppose contact with new communities and go to the extremes of protecting their sense of self by never letting it be challenged; however, many others like to define their identity partly by excluding themselves from the community of 'closed-minded bigots' and will somewhat reluctantly drag themselves into situations of contact with new communities to protect their anti-membership to the 'closed-minded bigots' community. The former group's methodology is painfully simple so I won't discuss it, but the latter group I believe is more common and posses an intriguing method worth discussing.
This method works through judgments. Not the absolute negative judgments of the wholly static soldier, but an attempted plurality of judgments aimed at gauging whether or not they are comfortable adopting a membership with this new community and to what extent. They would see a metal concert and begin trying to develop an understanding of the community through their own lens of what values they identify with and begin passing judgment on this developing understanding. It is a process of observation and evaluation against an existing self image. The outcome of this process would of course be unique to each individual, but the methodology would be the same: does this community align with my sense of self and would I feel consistent in liking this and seeking membership?
My account is quite different.
First off, I try to actively seek out situations which bring me into contact with new communities not for maintaining an idea of anti-membership, but for the joy I find in engagement with the world as a way to develop my dialectic understanding of myself and the world, and appreciate the manifestation of other people's will that built the community. This may bring a quantitative difference in the amount of contact with new communities, but the more important difference is in the qualitative relationship to the act.
My method for the event of contact also differs. Rather than judgment, mine is based on experience. I seek understanding of the community so that I can fully immerse myself in it and try to gain the experience of a standing member. It is a process of engagement and appreciation against nothing. It is not a test of whether or not the experience "makes the cut" to be added or rejected from my self image, it is an open hearted addition to a vault of experiences where they are all appreciated and part of the continuous dialectic with the world from which my sense of self refines itself.
Speaking in the qualitative realms and that of phenomenology is a tricky subject rife with the possibilities for misinterpretation and confusion; I admit this freely; however, I believe exposure to these ideas—despite their murky nature—is beneficial as potential sparks of self-reflection or contemplation.
Thank you for bearing with me through this particularly messy essay and I am happy to clarify any confusions or engage in any extensions on the discussion which may have been brought up in your mind.
Until next communion, all my love! <3
Micah Xavier Probst