The end of non conformity

The eccentric death of eccentrics


Eccentric media

There everywhere in our society, you see them on your TV screen, you see them on your computer games, You read about there exploits in books.
Lets face it eccentrics are everywhere from, day time soaps to Final Fantasy.

We'll there everywhere except real life, when was the last time you met a character like you see on or in any of our media. If you've met one your one of the few and if you are one your so rare your on the verge of extinction.

We practically worship so many of our fictional characters for there unique personalities, actions and often attire.

What would the Sherlock Holmes series be, if Holmes had been just the average man on the street?

What would the House TV series be like if he was just another man in a white coat?

What would Batman be like if he'd decided to just decided to join the police force instead?

Yet despite this, we resist those who are different, and those that truly cannot hide there differences are, straight jacketed, incarcerated and have their brains fried either by electricity or drugs.


Lock them up and throw away the key! [1]

The modern psychiatric industry, was born originally out of the medieval witch hunters.
During the middle ages medical Knowledge was in short supply, especially as the catholic church had placed a ban on scientific autopsies, so those Christians that were anything approaching a doctor were at best quacks at worst conmen.
The shortage of doctors left two options either hire a doctor that wasn't Christian (usually these came from Jewish or Muslim faiths), these eastern doctor were so expensive that only the nobility could afford to pay for there services or be blessed by the local priest.

Now for the average surf hiring a doctor was too expensive and asking the local priest for a blessing often did nothing ,so in there desperation they turned to a third group. The local wise woman (there were men that performed this service too but women were more common).

Now these wise women, used a combination of pagan magic, what later came to be known as science, folk lore and common sense to try to help there neighbours and while a lot of there methods were flawed or even down right wrong, some of them worked a few are even used today by modern doctors.

Now the catholic church quite openly admitted that these women were competition, the surfs were visiting them instead of getting blessings by the priests,and the catholic church decreed that witches that who healed people were more evil than the stereotypical, wicked witch.

Unfortunately, the witch hunters methods were far more insidious than simply hunting and killing.

When they caught a wise woman accused of witchcraft, they would begin to torture her, to help “cure” her of the “devil's influence” and help her see the light.
The hunters often honestly believed that if a witch truly repented and embraced god and forgiveness, they would still have a chance of going to heaven so the hunters often tortured the woman, for long bloody periods “for there own good” before burning them at the stake.

And so the idea of helping, people through incarceration and torture was born.

As fear of witchcraft slowly subsided, what was left of the hunters began focusing more instead of those of a “wicked nature” such as women who were pregnant out of wedlock and those that upset the status quo.

Now overtime these groups slowly developed, labels for what they eventually called the mentally ill and some of the groups slowly changed (although quite slowly, look how long being gay was considered a mental health condition for).

The one thing that has NEVER changed is there belief that those that are different should be separated from the rest of society and that it is acceptable to torture someone, even to the point of risking death and/or causing lasting damage (if you don't believe me look up electroshock therapy).


Emperor Norton

Now, I suspect a few of you may have heard of

him and one or two of you may even recognise him as the great man he honestly was.

Joshua Abraham Norton was born in1819[2] and was a resident of of San Francisco.
Norton became fed up with the corruption and incompetence of the federal government, so he decided unlike most people to act in 1859 he declared himself Emperor of the united states of America and lived the rest of his life acting out his title.

Now I ask you gentle reader, if you were to publicly try this tomorrow morning by tomorrow evening wouldn't the nice men in white coats come to take you away, even if you were hurting no one.

Now Norton became a local celebrity spent his life helping and improving San Francisco, he even went so far as to stop a riot!



Uniqueness through conformity

We'll there's the history and you probably think, well big deal what effect does that have on modern society well I'll tell you

“[eccentrics] They are willing to take on a hostile society in the hopes of discovering something beyond the status quo.”[3]

with more and more eccentrics being locked up, drugged or drowned out by the constant noise of our media, we have lost a truly important segment of our society.

This is why, people every day and in every way become more and more sheeple.

We all remember the tale of the emperors new clothes, the eccentrics in society are the ones who would point out that he's naked.

On a last note

Eccentrics are often longer lived and happier than there sheeple brothers[4]


[1] The manufacture of madness, Thomas S Szasz

[2] Wikipedia

[3] House and Philosophy edited by Henry Jacoby

[4] findarticles.com...

We're rare?

What is my market value. then?

reply to post by SpectreDC


priceless

whats a deck of cards without a joker?

Originally posted by SpectreDC
We're rare?

What is my market value. then?

Yeah, maybe its just me, but my life has been filled with kooks, freaks, and eccentrics of all stripes since day one...And just because somebody dresses "normally" and behaves themselves in public doesn't mean they don't act veeeeeerryyy differently behind closed doors.

I don't think I've ever even met anyone who is truly "normal."

Originally posted by silent thunder

I don't think I've ever even met anyone who is truly "normal."

I'm not just talking about the normal range of diversity, even the most normal person has eccentricities, I'm talking about people who uncompromisingly march to the beat of there own drum.

Oh, I've met quite a few eccentrics. You just need to get to know them.

It's just that the hollywood vision of eccentrics is as distorted as the hollywood vision of beauty.

RUN FOR THE HILLS!!! RICHARD D. JAMES IS COMING!!!

www.youtube.com...

[edit on 25-5-2010 by thaknobodi]

I love eccentric people.. here are some of my favorite quotes regarding the subject, I think they're apt:





"Eccentricity is not, as dull people would have us believe, a form of madness. It is often a kind of innocent pride, and the man of genius and the aristocrat are frequently regarded as eccentrics because genius and aristocrat are entirely unafraid of and uninfluenced by the opinions and vagaries of the crowd." - Edith Sitwell


"To seek understanding before taking action, yet to trust my instincts when action is called for. Never to avoid danger from fear, never to seek out danger for its own sake. Never to conform to fashion from fear of eccentricity, never to be eccentric from fear of conformity." - Steven Brust


"Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character had abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and courage which it contained." - John Stuart Mill


"No one can be profoundly original who does not avoid eccentricity."
- Andre Maurois


“The world thinks eccentricity in great things is genius, but in small things, only crazy.” - Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton


"People of uncommon abilities generally fall into eccentricities when their sphere of life is not adequate to their abilities."
- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe


"The sound principle of a topsy-turvy lifestyle in the framework of an upside-down world order has stood every test." - Karl Kraus


"They enjoy thinking. They enjoy being creative. They enjoy having ideas. Most people do not enjoy thinking at all." - Edward de Bono


"I always was a rebel... but on the other hand, I wanted to be loved and accepted... and not just be a loudmouth, lunatic, poet, musician. But I cannot be what I am not." - John Lennon


"Be virtuous and you will be eccentric." - Mark Twain


"Maybe he was crazy. Maybe crazy is what they call anybody who's got magic in them after they're no longer a child." - Robert R. McGammon


"What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?"
- Ursula K. LeGuin


"Eccentricity comes from the mind and a playfulness about life and language, manifesting itself in real individualistic character."
- Coulter Watt


"The painter must be solitary. For if you are alone you are completely yourself, but if you are accompanied by a single companion, you are only half yourself." - Leonardo da Vinci

"Creativity is at the heart of eccentricity." - David Weeks


"I dare affirm that any artist... who has nothing singular, eccentric, or at least reputed to be so, in his person, will never become a superior talent."
- Michelangelo


"The artist's task is to become a successful eccentric, a strange but wise duck able to venture out of solitary confinement and mingle among society." - Eric Maisel


"I am getting so far out one day I won't come back at all."
- William S. Burroughs


"Society doesn't need that everybody is behaving in the full normal way... like people in a Buddhist monastery... But eccentricity may also connect with the irrational." - John Muir


"Sometimes people say I should see a therapist, but I don't want any therapist wrecking my weirdness." - Peter Wolf


"True elegance is for me the manifestation of an independent mind."
- Isabella Rossellini


"I used to think anyone doing anything weird was weird. Now I know that it is the people that call others weird that are weird." - Paul McCartney


"Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence; at odds with the majority; in short, unusual. It is noteworthy that persons are pronounced mad by officials destitute of evidence that they themselves are sane."
- Ambrose Bierce


"When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him." - Jonathan Swift


"Be daring, be different, be impractical; be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary." - Cecil Beaton


"Eccentric people have these happy obsessive preoccupations, and a wonderful, unusual sense of humor, and this gives them a significant meaning in life. And they are far healthier than most people because of that." - David Weeks


"I was intrigued and enormously drawn to extremism by people who had blown their lives or who had taken their lives outside the normal conventions of society." - Brett Whiteley


"Men are of necessity so mad, that not to be mad were madness in another form." - Blaise Pascal


"What am I in the eyes of most people, a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person--somebody who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low. All right, then - even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody has in his heart." - Vincent Van Gogh


"Since the age of fifteen poetry has been my ruling passion and I have never intentionally undertaken any task or formed any relationship that seemed inconsistent with poetic principles; which has sometimes won me the reputation of an eccentric." - Robert Graves


"Poets and monks... We're both sort of peripheral to the world."
- Kathleen Norris


"It's far too easy to qualify as an eccentric nowadays." - Stephanie Mills

Eccentrics and eclectics

We are the ones who shaped mankind's future and brought about the best advancements in science, philosophy, religion, technology, literature, etc. Name one "normal" individual that is known for a great contribution to society.

Eccentric just means odd. Nothing wrong with being odd, though not all eccentrics are to be praised. I'm somewhat of an eccentric, but at the same time, can't stand many eccentrics whom I've encountered. Some of them are amoral scum.

Oh also, eccentricity is sort of a meme going around. Everyone wants to be different. When I was growing up (jesus I sound old!) being a freak and wearing black, having long hair, and defying authority was way outside the norm. Now a days, there's trendy fashion for everything that at one point in time could be considered eccentric. It's now cool to be emo, or whatever they're calling this nonsense these days. None of this is being original, or being eccentric. These people are insecure dimwits.

[edit on 26-5-2010 by unityemissions]

reply to post by unityemissions


I know exactly what you mean, I'm eccentric by todays standards but most wouldn't know without knowing me.

I live in a town where there's a big kind of 'subculture' and everybody goes out of their way to dress 'alternative', failing to realize they're all carbon copies of each other.

"To seek understanding before taking action, yet to trust my instincts when action is called for. Never to avoid danger from fear, never to seek out danger for its own sake. Never to conform to fashion from fear of eccentricity, never to be eccentric from fear of conformity."
- Steven Brust

I know I hate the type of conformity that comes from cowardice.
People that are afraid to speak their minds.. rubs me the wrong way.

reply to post by TheLaughingGod


"be unique by copying everyone else"

that could practically be the motto of today's society, everyone seems afraid of standing out too much, in case they turn out to be wrong.

I look at a lot of historical figures and wonder what would have happened to them if they'd been born into today's society, these are my guesses


Winston Churchill -Labelled a mentally ill (depression) and an alcoholic. He would barely be considered fit to lead himself never mind a country.

Jesus -Either completely ignored or if he began talking about being the son of god to openly and annoyed TPTB to much a mental health asylum.

Vincent Van Gogh -would be pretty quickly drugged or locked away

these are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head but I'm sure they'd be others

This theme is quite well worked out in M. Foucault works - especially in "The History of Madness". Tension between "normal" and "eccentric" is driving force of development. If everybody is normal (wet dream of every totalitarian system), then there will not be any development. Normality = Death.

reply to post by monkofmimir


Yeah I've heard Winston was manic depressive, called the depression his black dog.
Most people say Van Gogh was bipolar too.

reply to post by zeddissad


Thanks for the tip, it's now on my far too long list of books to read.