More on Difference

I've been thinking often about the experience of oddness, these days. Will be leading a public discussion on the Flemish film, Ben-X, at a local training institute ... about a high school kid who has Asperger's AND is bullied. It was a famous Doctor from Vienna who, in talking of one of his well-known cases (the Rat Man), opined that had the patient not come for treatment early (he was 28, I think, when he started with Freud), the illness would have eaten up his normal personality. This is one of the risks Ben faces in the film. Difference is not the killer. But my experience with animals is that when one pet, particularly cats, becomes ill, the instictual wish to dispose of the ill from our midst kicks in. Indeed, thinking back to my own differences and oddities from "the kids on the block," I wonder how much I pulled away and how much I was ostracized by the Others. Is it Einstein's theory that says that it's hard to tell which is happening or is it just good common sense. I was no Ben, growing up, but certainly didn't fit in, either. Fat when I was born, skinny growing up with a speech impediment (stuttering) that lasted into my twenties. Like so many first-gen kids born to families that immigrated to the States (actually, my Dad was born here in the teens to immigrants and my Mother came by boat), there was always the sense of difference ... subtle differences. I still don't have what I feel to be typical (notice the judgement I make on 'the typical') reference points and metaphors, in my thinking. My metaphors are towards bibical stories and religious images ... I sometimes wish I knew the names of the Beatles or the characters on Friends ... then, I tell myself, I'd be part of the crowd. Right. I once wrote that the Group does one of four things to the Other: 1. The Group seeks to destroy the Other without asking for change; or 2. The Group offers the Other the choice to conform or die; or 3. The In-Group pays lip-service to the right of the Other to be different in their silly/stupid/wrong way; or 4. The group welcomes the other in a first among equals way (primus inter pares, just like the Pope who'll be chosen from a sea of Cardinals, each of whom could be Pope) recognizing that the Other also sees their way as best or first. Difference ... the sense of difference ... festering, betimes, into alienation and a sense of not beloging ... in the case of the killers whose names we didn't need to know to lead a rich life here on Earth ... that we could have lived without hearing about ... from Oswald (we know even his first and second names) just 50 years ago to the killer (whose name and whose brother's and Mother's name we know) of Newtown a few months ago ... one can only wonder what would have happened had they been able to feel more accepted by the crowd. I was blessed to find a non-destructive group of similarly odd people hanging around Math Departments many, many years ago. I and M still hang out with one of them and his wife ... Hell! He's as odd as I. I do recommend the film ...