Social Politics

I wrote this a while ago, maybe a month, but I thought I’d wait for a time when I actually felt it was relevant enough presently for me to post. Well, now it is. The school’s new dining table allocations came out and so this string of thoughts began again. So, here it is, something that I wrote in the heat of the moment in one of my notebooks:

Social Politics

This whole topic is a great big sigh for me. Just like Universal Syntax, this is a term I coined up to explain what I have observed. I feel like this one doesn’t need an explanation, but for the sake of clarification: social politics, I believe, is fundamentally the way the world works when it comes to people’s relationships with other people. It comprises of things we all know: favouritism, bias, exploitation, our perception of others, our knowledge of who is in a relationship with whom – you name it.

Some things about social politics frustrate me to no end. Even some of the smartest, most levelled people I know have been observed to be guilty of some of its negative aspects. Even I am not innocent.

Again, in the community in which I find myself, groupings – compulsory ones – are frequently assigned. Cue the complaints of “Ew, I’m with X, Y and Z, and they’re so boring,” as well as the jubilations of, “Oh my God, I’m with A, B and C. My group is so much fun!” And what have people done to be assimilated in this way? Simply exist. I know by now the idea of reciprocation is way, way too abused, but it’s still important. Someone else, somewhere else, is sitting down also saying, “Ew, I’m with D,” and you, my dear, are the D – connotations intended.

I find it hard to believe that people can be so closed to the idea of socialising with people they don’t usually do it with. The possibility of exposure to another kind of individual is so foreign to them. (People like me, of course do not count; I dislike people generally, and people dislike me specifically.)

The same kind of factors apply when, perhaps, deciding with table to sit at after you’ve received a plate-full of food from the cafeteria. If there are five people who want to sit together and they bypass a table with only four unoccupied spaces on it, that’s fine, I suppose. But if there are two people and four free spaces on a table, why do they still pass by it and all its current inhabitants and look for another table? Are the people on it repulsive?

Comfort zones. We love them. Mine is where I am on the sidelines of life, observing people while wearing all-black, and being as tired of them as they are of me.

-Akotowaa