You don't know me, so let me be.

Before, we were able to treat people as masses.  People were a sea.  But now we see them as they are.  At least the good ones do. 

Individuals. Different, distinct, idiosyncratic.  Peculiar and personal.

Emotional, seeking inspiration, love, and to be affected.  To be unaffected.

Struggling to further define themselves, they chase connections that make them more whole.  They are smarter, more curious.  Investigating and probing, they are constant explorers, discovering their own truths.

They are self-defining, afflicted and powerful, self-assured and vulnerable.  Questioning themselves, their friends and leaders, all the while confirming, amending and reconfirming their own opinions and ideas, wrongs and rights.

They are communities, and communities of communities, tribes and creeds. They filter their thoughts through the perceptions of these denominations, allowing these groups of groups to distort, but not confuse their own experience, as they are a confederation of these experiences, liberated and unconfined.

They are people, human and flawed.  Biased and slanted, open and closed.  They respectfully demand to be shown the courtesy to not be mass-culturalized, to not be seen as mass-minded.

They are the product of certain things, demographic, psychographic and otherwise, but the things that make them what they are the most, are not the things we know or can easily recognize. Know that and adjust for it.

Comments

[Lori Magno]

Dude, you are getting dangerously close to requiring low light and incense. Why so contemplative? I rolled out of the hay bitter and ready to fight and you present reasonable and thoughtful stuff (with a nice Banksy touch!) You doing yoga in the morning?

[Paul McEnany]

LOL. I may have had a few drinks in me before that one. Don't worry, I'll reel it back in. :)

[Gavin Heaton]

Paul ... I am loving the storytelling aspect to the entries you do in this format. The way you break up the text with images is like pausing for breath while reading.

You should collect them all under a single category so that we can get to them easily.

And, hey, if it takes a couple of drinks for a few more entries like this, I will send you a bottle of wine ;)

[Paul McEnany]

Nice, I will be waiting for it, then. I love me some Australian wines.

I think I can take care of that. Expect some categories this weekend!