Conventional thinking and common ideas, mainstream fashion, regular relationship, normal friends and ordinary job make for a Standard Life, the name of a British insurance company. Safe but dull.
I am so sorry if this triggers you. Well… actually, I am not. I don’t wanna be mainstream, I wanna be niche. I like the Pareto principle and don’t need the approval of the 80% as long as I belong to a 20%. I wanna be niche because it’s more interesting, creative and fun but also healthier and ultimately conducive for a better life on the way to self actualisation.
If ethics involve understanding what you value in life and naturally prioritising certain values over others, I start with a big dose of scepticism for mainstream pop culture. Beyond trivialities, obvious and basic understanding, what the 80% does must not be it, by definition. As a result, I look more and more to develop my own hierarchy of what’s important and what’s not.
I am sure, convinced and secure in this choice, I do so firmly, happily, publicly. My value system comes from the culture I was brought up with, growing up environment and decades of mainstream indoctrination. More and more, I keep the bits I like and discard the rest. I do this by elevating myself spiritually, gaining a holistic perspective in life and refining a philosophical view of the world and myself in it.
I am a relativist and I lean towards empiricism, what feels right is true, what I see and experience first hand, the highest truth available to me. I keep a very open mind but, among the many mysteries of life, I don’t believe in anything, I either know or don’t know. Everything else is second hand news if not outright propaganda, someone else’s version of reality, a black and white photocopy, an unproven thing, a mere possibility, a maybe. Even when it’s true, I apply a holistic, strategic, big picture view and if it is not important in my value structure, I don’t care for the details, I don’t waste my energy on it.
I don’t like the news, limit social media and expose my brain to nourishing sources of stimulation. I actually read Tolstoy and Hermann Hesse, even Steinbeck and Marcus Aurelius. If that’s not niche enough, I also love the Sci-Fi of Isaac Asimov and Aldous Huxley, Osho, Tantric Yoga, energy healing and the chakras.
If you think I am not sensible, realistic, reasonable or appropriate, if you don’t like me, you can watch CNN, read the Guardian newspaper or the Daily Mail, that’s OK. I am counterculture by definition, we don’t belong to the same, we are not one, you keep your mainstream ways, your manufactured identities, I wanna be organic, artisanal, integral and unprocessed, I wanna be creatively niche.
I don’t watch TV, don’t do reels, don’t like Bill Gates, Tucker Carlson or Greta Thunberg, Trump or Biden, Nestle’ or Coca Cola. I am not religious, not LOHAS, I don’t support the woke left or the conservative right. You can try to put me in a box, you are free to judge me, categorise me, but it’ll be a small category, a side drawer, a fringe show a unique experience.
I wrote about risk taking vs the culture of safe, I wrote on being eccentric and I feel ready to go to the next level. If you wanna play identity politics with me, I am part of a minority that holds minority views. Not the constantly endorsed, popular minorities, the ones they bang on about everyday in the New York Times. It needs to be real in my life, community or sphere of interest.
Taken singularly, every cause has some merits, it is morally relevant. I value many things in life but, necessarily, there needs to be a scale where I prioritise certain values over others.
Why would I value something I am only remotely related to above what I truly resonate with or my family and neighbour’s wellbeing? I don’t care if the BBC insistently endorse it, push it, broadcast it with governement’s experts, Harvard professors and celebrities. I don’t trust their reductionist approach, their divisive narratives. If it makes the news, it doesn’t mean it’s important to me as many things I value don’t make the news.
I am, but I am not white, straight, male, in a common sense, the enemy of a popular narrative. There are minority identities, minority ways, minority lifestyles, beyond the categories of currently popular ideologies. I wanna be an individual in an increasingly collectivist, homogeneous, Americanised, mass market, standardised, mainstream world. I wanna be niche.
The above is a tongue in cheek preamble to a wonderful theory I kind of new but I had to properly study to really realise. More humour to come, so make yourself relaxed.
Carl Jung explains the Persona as a social face the individual presents to the world, “a kind of mask, designed on the one hand to make a definite impression upon others, and on the other to conceal the true nature of the individual.”
To me Jung is explaining it rather well, I like this theory of Persona. But I wanna be niche so my Persona will be more elaborated and authentic, more theatrical and eccentric. If you live a standard life, with corporate meetings, long commutes, convenience food and grey skies, you can still have a laugh, act out of character, sleep with a colleague, have a midlife crisis. What’s stopping you to tap into a sense of vitality, take a risk and feel truly alive? The judgement of others.
Maybe you are struggling to fit in, you desperately want to be mainstream, always require everyone’s approval and validation. Do you suffer if you are left out? I am proudly a black sheep, a drop out in the fully glorified Osho sense, not out of fear, out of awareness. I am special, original and I wanna be niche.
Do you say hello and shake hands? I wanna hug you for 10 seconds or bow you Namaste. Do you wear black and grey? Look at my pink shorts. Are you combed and shaved? I have a beard and man bun. Do you live in a city? I live in the jungle.
This blog post represents the definite, public, candid disintegration of my conventional Jungian Persona, the official death of “the shallow, brittle, conformist kind of personality which is all persona”, keeping up with the Joneses, the excessive concern for what people think, the homologation of the soul.
If you think I am introverted or a loner, think again. I like people, at some level I love all people, even mainstream people, parroting the slogans of contemporary ideologies, so open to ahah moments, easy game to my jokes. I might love you spiritually, theoretically, but I don’t need you.
I am unenlightened, never perfect, but a spiritual seeker consciously and firmly on the path to growth and greater awareness.
This writing is a sign of personal development and spiritual progression. It is a mature, conscious attempt to a Persona restoration, the aim of Jungian individuation. I had my dark night of the soul, rejecting, destroying, that’s over now, not what I need anymore. My mainstream, conventional self is gone forever, a previous life, a long forgotten memory and that is true.
But I don’t want to be “blind to the world, a hopeless dreamer, a spectral Cassandra, dreaded for tactlessness”, always against the flow, eternally misunderstood. That’s not fun, nor smart, it does not represent a good life.
This article is therefore also the manifesto of a new, restored Persona.
I am a free thinker who lives on a new age island in Thailand with other bearded men, holistic healers, fruitarians and tantric goddesses, yogis and creatives. This is part of my new identity, a new Persona, not me but certainly my community, playground and natural environment. As I learn to let go and transcend, I also consciously identify with a set of values I hold dear above others: I am holistic, spiritual, alternative and creative. I love Nature, wholefood, mysticism, meditation, literature, philosophy, the performing arts. And yes, I like being niche.
I know how you feel, I won’t, criticise you in front of others, make you lose face, I know you care and so do I. If you meet me at a dinner, on the beach or at an airport gate, I won’t be mean, offend you, purposely discredit your ideology, make fun of you.
My aim is to keep a free spirit along with a free mind, as much as possible in harmony with the environment I happen to be in. Not needing everyone’s approval or validation, I still want to be present, aware, clued in, not rude, uncouth, or alien. My goal is to increasingly become accepting, humorous, charming, good energy and refined. In the theatre of life, I wish to play with this restored Jungian Persona, cultivate it, flow with it in a positive way.
Who am I? I accept whatever I am, a part of nature, God’s creation. Not just a lone ego, a connected spiritual being having a conscious human experience, together with other spiritual beings.
Well, at least 20% of them. 😉