My wife wondered out loud this morning: Why do they promote the wearing of two masks? To which I replied: Because it's funny. Then I expanded my answer with a reference to Portugal's feudal past.
Imagine the rulers in their castle high above the village. They look down on the people there, and they decide to play a prank on them. They tell them that a terrible plague is on its way, but wearing a sock across our nose and mouth will keep the plague at bay.
The villagers are scared by what they hear, and do as they are told. Pretty soon everybody but the village bum is wearing a sock across their faces. This is such a funny spectacle that the elite decide to up their game by telling the villagers that one sock is not enough. Only two socks worn across our faces will save us from the plague. As the villagers don their second sock, the elite rolls around in laughter.
The power play and psychology in all of this is fascinating. There's all sorts of things going on. One of them being the urge for conformity among people. There's a desire for rules, because rules make things predictable and controllable. The insecure take comfort in this. No longer do they have to think. They can simply follow the rules. They can even grow powerful by telling everyone else to following the rules as well.
My success in confronting hobby fascists who hang out of their car windows, yelling at people for not wearing their masks correctly, derives at least in part from this desire for conformity. There's a script that everyone tacitly accept. There's the heroic hobby fascists, and the freedom loving non-conformists. These people yell at each other at a comfortable distance. Everyone feels the rush of adrenaline. There's tension. There's strife, but no victors. However, this all changes if we deviate from the script. Not only did I comply to the latest request, I drew closer to the fascist. He got to have a good look at his creation, and it was evidently not to his liking. Hopefully, he's still having second thoughts about continuing his heroic effort to enforce the sock rule.
Illustrated in all of this is the power of eccentric behaviour. I'm eccentric by nature, so it comes naturally to me to break the rules of convention. Inherent in this is my deep seated curiosity about all things. I like to see things from multiple angles. I like to know what most people believe, and I like to know the alternatives that fit just as well, or possibly even better. Surprisingly often, I find things to be quite different from what is generally believed, and the fact that I've been able to save myself a small fortune based on this type of insight tells me that I'm onto something.
This means that I'm quite aware of what's considered normal. I'm not eccentric out of ignorance. I'm eccentric due to my insights. My eccentricity is my superpower. I can fold into society, or I can stand out as the odd one. It all depends on what I feel like doing.
Going out for a walk today, I wanted to try out a method for keeping the hobby fascists away. Rather than surprising them with my eccentricity after they stop and shout at me, I wanted to keep them away so that they don't even try. The strategy I was looking for is one often used in nature. Many animals come across as more dangerous than they really are, thereby keeping predators at bay. But I didn't want anything too outlandish. It shouldn't look scary, just odd and unpredictable. The fascists should be forewarned that I'm not following the generally accepted script, and that something out of the ordinary might happen.
That's when I got the idea to keep an umbrella above my head despite the sunny weather. An umbrella can be used as a hat. It has a function, even when it's sunny. It's just not done anymore. No-one walks around with a parasol. To do so would be eccentric.
A further advantage of the umbrella is that it gives a pretty clear message about the general insanity of our current situation. People are wearing masks for no good reason, so why shouldn't I use an umbrella against the sun? Me using an umbrella against the sun is less idiotic than them wearing a mask. The only reason I'm eccentric and they're not is convention.
This is what distinguishes eccentricity from madness. The mad person does weird things for no good reason at all. The eccentric does weird things due to a disregard for convention. The mad man is scary. The eccentric is merely odd. But the fascist would rather stay away from both, because neither the mad nor the eccentric follow the tacitly accepted script.
To underscore my eccentricity, I brought out a coat that I've rarely worn due to it's anachronistic look. It has a steam punk feel to it that has rendered it somewhat useless until now. But it's perfect for this latest stunt, so I went out wearing my mask under my chin, pilot sun glasses to protect my eyes, a 19th century coat and an umbrella.
The effect was twofold. A lot of people seemed to get the joke. It's clear that quite a few resent the idiotic mask wearing rules. I came across one of my down and out "bum" friends down the road, and he most definitely got the joke. Secondly, it worked as intended against hobby fascists. One guy was about to open his window to give me a verbal scolding, but thought better of it even though I very much encouraged him to do something by smiling cheekily in his direction. One lady yelled at me, but not about my masks. She told me to drop the umbrella. This woman had no doubt told me to wear my mask properly, but my umbrella protected me against this.
The umbrella highlighted the insanity of our times while at the same time deflecting people's attention away from my non-compliance. It worked so well that I'm definitely going to continue this for a while longer.
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| Umbrella |
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