People are strange when you're a stranger
Faces look ugly when you're alone
Women seem wicked when you're unwanted
Streets are uneven when you're down
When you're strange
Faces come out of the rain
When you're strange
No one remembers your name
When you're strange
When you're strange
When you're strange
The Doors - "People are Strange"
I have recently found myself in another existential dilemma, the latest in a continuing series that has foisted itself upon me several times throughout my life.
These internal conflicts typically occur when I am forced to admit that my evolving personal identity doesn’t fit neatly within the confines of an intellectual ideology I hold (or am trying to hold on to.)
In this case, as has happened in the past, it isn't even really about the ideology in itself, but about my desire to feel a sense of community with others who share my philosophy and principles. Perhaps it was naive of me to expect to have finally found my "tribe" among anarcho-capitalists (ancaps). After all, simply sharing an opposition to the state and an affinity for the free market doesn’t mean the ingredients for genuine connections and friendship are there.
It seems stupid now, as I write this, but I guess I hoped it could be. Maybe I was desperate to experience the phenomenon called "fitting in" with a group of human beings.
I've never felt like I've fit in anywhere, and even though I accept that about myself, there's still a part of me that seeks out this feeling of community over and over, invariably ending in disappointment.
I've been plugged into the ancap Twitter community for a few years now, and I've found tons of great information and learned a lot from other ancaps. Not to mention a place to commiserate with others about the sea of statism that surrounds us. But over time, I've come to realize that I have little else in common with many of the ancaps in my social media sphere.
In retrospect, I realize that I spent a long time trying to conform to many views expressed by other ancaps in an effort to fit in, and as a result, I wasn't being true to myself. At times, I was even being self-hating; joining in on juvenile mocking of my own identity and values that predate my discovery of anarcho-capitalism. Part of me hoped that going along with the crowd would make me change my ideals to match theirs, all for the chance to feel like I belong in their tribe. I thought I needed to vanquish the vestiges of leftist sympathies from myself in order to be accepted.
It's taken quite a while for me to find the guts to stand up for myself as a unique individual, and feel comfortable following the beat of my own drum, rather than pretend I'm something I'm not in a desperate attempt to win acceptance.
The common wisdom is that the vast majority of ancaps come from the "right" or the conservative side of the conventional paradigm. Many ancaps I've encountered believe leftists rarely or never can be brought over to anarcho-capitalism.
I guess I'm in that small minority of people who found their way over to anarcho-capitalism from the left. I don't know if this is a factor in my feeling like a misfit among ancaps, but it would make sense. I've found most of the ancaps I've followed and/or interacted with to be more socially conservative, religious, traditional, and overall "normal" than me and most of the people I'd hang out with in real life. Many ancaps have gotten sucked into the "culture wars" and tend to side against leftist social justice types. This has resulted in a reactionary position among many to reassert and bolster traditional views about gender, sexuality, and morality. This ties in with some prominent ancaps and libertarians promoting the idea of using non-governmental social pressure to exclude undesirables and "degenerates" from their ideal society.
Of course, as an anarchist, I have no problem with anyone expressing their freedom of association. I just wonder what this means for my own personal quest for community, friendship, and genuine acceptance.
Sometimes it seems like most people I share this political and economic philosophy with would sooner view me as some kind of degenerate heathen to be avoided, rather than an associate in Ancapistan.
The question is where I go from here. It feels liberating to be true to myself and accepting of my individuality, but the dilemma remains.
I've never been very good at making friends, which makes searching for them in the general population really hard for me. But I will have to broaden my horizons beyond the limited scope of ancaps.
Maybe a good place to start would be the often maligned left-anarchists, even the -God forbid- anarcho-communists. I actually have had some cool people in my life who are self-described commies.
Maybe I'm even more degenerate than I thought...