Safety in numbers?
One of (in my firm opinion) the best interior designers in the world has landed at number 42- bringing along with her a photo of us together many years ago. In the days when one went to parties wearing Regency ties. And rings with rather important stones.
Something extraordinary happens to the mind when one is surrounded by (enough) members of one’s own tribe. Almost like anaesthesia. An emotional variety of anaesthesia. Safety in numbers?
My Mazamet 
Do enjoy your ‘stone’. .. 🙂
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That wasn’t a metaphor! 😛 I did mean diamonds 😀
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Tribe. Good word. 😘
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As she said to me today: You can go as far as you like, but at the end of the day you’ll still be the person who lived your life. A person of your tribe.
And she’s right.
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Tribe itself connotes community. Like mindedness. You choose your life, but the joy, I find, is in finding the souls who share the choice with you. I’m glad you have found her.
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Well, I spent most of my life rebelling against the haughty, egocentric, snobs of my world. Then when I ventured out I discovered it seems I was one of them all along.
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That’s called “self awareness” and “authentic”. It’s all in the spin.
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Oh you look happy dear, merry, and elegant of course. Lovely picture.
– Esme a big fan of old and new photographs upon the Cloud
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2005 or 06. Party at the house of a director of Chanel. The world was my oyster. Then I discovered oysters could cause food poisoning 😀
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Oyster revenge! God is a chicken, but her left hand man is an oyster. So, think yourself lucky you survived.
– Esme knowing the oysters keep their poo hidden for emergencies upon the Cloud
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Does that mean Jeremy Clarkson is an oyster?
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No, he’s a horrible pie-faced oik. But I can see why you might get confused as he’s an oily git an all.
– Esme having no room upon the Cloud for such an oily fathead.
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I once sought safety in numbers but was soon covered in letters so I ran away and joined a monastery where I live today. Jesus loves you, my child. And he loves your fuckin’ ring. 😉
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Then kiss it! If you can locate it. It was sold at Sotheby’s when the crisis happened…
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Well, since I can’t kiss your ring maybe should kiss your….finger? 🙂
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😛
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We are pack animals, but within that, also highly intelligent and (I’d say) somewhat free to define ourselves, and therefore our tribe. Our instinct is to be accepted and also to contribute, our brains and freedom let us do that in a creative way.
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Free, yes- but doesn’t our childhood create the outline? Take us as an example. Our ideologies are in opposition, yet we read each other’s thoughts. How do we explain that?
What do we see that says, wait, maybe there’s a link here?
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It is always hard to tell the lines between nature, conditioning and freedom. Each of us takes a jumble of impressions, observations and alliances and tries to stitch them together into a coherent whole. Anyone who is honest about it knows there are mutually exclusive but internally coherent interpretations of the same realities.
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I don’t think I’ve ever had a tribe. This salon, my blogging friends and my online gaming communities are probably the closest I have ever come to belonging anywhere.
When I was younger it bothered me. Now, I really don’t give a flying fruit bat. 🙂
I do like that photo though. And the cravat?
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I’m not sure we’re always conscious of our tribes. We belong to a number, sometimes without even knowing it. The people who live on your street, in your neighbourhood, people with whom you share ideas. I imagine our instinct to defend or attack, to agree or disagree, is largely tribal.
As for the cravat, I was a young eccentric, and it was a black tie event, so I wanted to be both difficult and different 😛
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-grin- in that case, I guess my tribe is made up of smart people from all walks of life. 🙂
And yes, you succeeded. 😀
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The anodyne effect of feeling ‘at home’ amongst one’s tribe; the comfort of clan – you’ve conjured so much here Mr. M in those few words, and in that very spiffy photo. When you think about it, this piece of (innate) human behaviour explains much about the world, which makes much of what happens both predictable and largely unavoidable. We can even be anaesthetised by a sense of belonging to a phantom tribe i.e. Facebook. Now that is a worrying thought.
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It goes incredibly deep. My working theory is we’re constantly (subconsciously) searching for the best mechanisms and rationalisations for survival. And we do that within groups. Groups that confirm specific notions of what is success or failure. Once you step away from the group, all the certainties are gone.
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V. fascinating stuff. And full of irony too. Believing certainty is within the group and not outside it, when the opposite might actually be the case. But you are right. This runs very deep – right down into our residual reptilian brain parts – fear of the unknown; the need to be able to identify those whom we believe are with us rather than against us; people who will ensure/confirm our sense of well being however fabricated. You can see how important it was in our nomadic past, but I wonder how well this mechanism is serving us now (just pondering that in the virtual world we have created, it might also make us extremely vulnerable?); and can we overwrite our hard drives and become happily autonomous beings…
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You’re 100% correct, the internet has turned everything on its head.
I was looking at it in basic terms recently after someone told me that it’s a major social achievement here to live in a particular neighbourhood. Which is of course true of everywhere. And that pattern of thinking applies to every single area of life. In our groups we lay out standards of everything, beauty, knowledge- and what trinkets are the trinkets we should have because the most successful people we observe have them, and so emulating them increases our chances of succeeding. Or so we think!
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And the more we are so diverted, the more we miss doing the things that actually need to be done to further all our futures. Hmph.
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@Tish
As Sheldon Cooper (Big Bang) once remarked:
”I have 210 friends on My Space!”
Leonard: ”And you’ve never met one of them!”
”But that’s the beauty of it.”
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I do think that “white tie” is the most flattering outfit a man can wear.
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Absolutely! 😀
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I am afraid I have about another 30 lbs to lose before I can get into mine again. :o(
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