When I was a kid living in central Queensland, my (adoptive) father was one of the local bank managers, and wound up approving loans for a lot of local marriages - which were large events because of cultural reasons. As a “reward”, he got invited to the wedding - which also came with an expectation of us going as well ... and that led to several hours of boredom with complete strangers (except for the time I found a densely written scientific text on soil chemistry for growing sugar cane). It was something I loathed, and eventually I refused to go, using homework as an excuse.
I broke “the rules”, and couldn’t care less. I understand the need for sufficient social cohesion for groups and societies to function, but that has grown beyond that to an elaborate and controlling mechanism of obligations and offence - something that actually harms the cohesion and wellbeing of groups and societies.
This is a particular problem in workplaces, which is something I have written about previously (and have another article touching on this underway), but I will mention here that going to one event exposed me and my then partner to a notorious bigot, which is why we re-introduced the policy of not going to such events (and that was compounded by companies deciding that staff should pay for such events).
Given all that, I was absolutely delighted to read Jessica Wildfire’s post along a similar line today - especially as hers is more elegantly and coherently written than my diatribes.
I strongly urge you to have a read; you can find it at:
https://jessicawildfire.substack.com/p/its-okay-if-you-dont-want-to-hang
If you appreciated this post, please consider promoting it - there are some links below.
Finally, remember: we need to be more human being rather than human doing.
