Antisocial Reflections
Small talk is for killing time or manufacturing artificial familiarity. My personal motto, or self-motivation mantra, is “I don’t waste time,” and few things are more intrinsically repulsive to my character than artificial familiarity. Therefore, small talk is anathema to me.
If you cannot understand what I am doing with myself, or why my habits are what they are, that is none of my concern. I would prefer, incidentally, if it were also none of your concern.
Make your daily life and habits your own, which means: no performative rituals, no concern with how it would look if observed, no attention to others’ attention, no attempt to act like a person of a certain type. If you are a type even in your own mind, then you lack your own mind.
Be sure, when you brand someone antisocial, that this is not merely your way of hiding from the discomfiting possibility that you do not belong to the kind of society that person prefers. How many so-called antisocial individuals are merely exhibiting high standards? And you would have them abandon happy hours in the company of Plato, Austen, or Bach — for you? What makes you think you are worthy?
