Unorthodox Behavior and Courage

If you wish to live an unorthodox life, then you must accept that your life is unorthodox — and that it will be perceived as unorthodox. If you cannot accept being unlike others, and also being disliked by them, then it seems to me that you have only two practical choices: give up being unorthodox, or coerce others into “accepting” and “liking” your unorthodox ways. The first response indicates ordinary moral weakness, specifically a lack of courage; the second indicates tyrannical infantilism, which is to say a cowardice so debilitating that its humiliation can only be assuaged by killing all the witnesses.

To the person who would be unorthodox, but only if others will accept and like him for it, I ask, “Why do you care so much about their approval? Why do you need to force them to accept you? Are you, perhaps, not so unorthodox after all? Are you, perhaps, just another all-too-normal comfort-seeker — or not ‘just another,’ but rather one hell-bent on the comfort of the normal, maniacally obsessed with the safety of the collective?”

 

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