Dancing Life Away

Come out of the womb. Learn to walk and talk. Go to school. Get a job. Work. Get paid. Raise a family. Get old. Die. Through my experiences I have come to believe we are socially enmeshed within a collective unconscious that brainwashes us to believe this is what we essentially must do in life. Under this assumption, living seems similar to dancing to your favorite song.

I love dancing. It is one of the most natural and euphoric activities I have ever taken part in. It’s not something I have to think about. When I hear a great song, I become consumed in the rhythm: I feel the good vibrations pulse throughout my body. Many times chills run down my spine from the ridiculous amount of serotonin and dopamine being released in my brain. I feel this instinctual drive to move my body. I flail every appendage of my body around in motions synchronous with the beat without logical analysis. I do without the need to be consciously aware of my actions: I am purely consumed in the act – not distracted by any form of cognition in my brain. As long as I don’t overwork myself, I am able to sustain these tantric motions.

Congruently, if you follow all of the social norms, i.e. complete your education with a bachelor’s or post-graduate degree, obtain a career, and subsequently raise a family, it seems one may achieve this without ever really “thinking” about it. By this, I mean that we are – to some extent – programmed to desire obtaining an education, working, and in the end raise a family to continue on our legacy. Going along with these social norms, like dancing to your favorite song, seems so natural that you don’t really have to put any real cognitive effort into it.

From observation of my own behavior and that of my fellow humans, it seems that we have a natural inclination to assimilate with other humans around us and work toward a common goal. Those who dissent – the “minorities” – become the outcasts: condescended and alienated from all the “normal” people. Some examples of groups we have labeled as outcasts due to their lack of desire or inability to obtain an education and/or career are: homeless people, prostitutes and gigolos as well as pimps, and drug addicts/drug dealers. These groups may not “dance” as most other people do for many different reasons, but the main idea is that these groups consist of small populations of people comparatively to the population of the United States. Consequently, the most-practiced form of “dancing” is to conform to the social norms. Thus, just as I love to dance, most people love to follow these social norms because they feel so utterly natural – to the point that it seems irrational to even think about deciding to live one’s life otherwise.

The majority of people love to dance together. They prance around in the same fashion, spinning and twirling all in unison. I too enjoy dancing with everyone else. Assimilating with the greatest amount of people seems most natural and most entertaining, so I’ve decided to dance with the conformists as opposed to the anti-conformists or outcasts. I am under the impression that the others assimilators I dance with have a similar point of view because their actions and behavior speaks volumes in supporting this (I cannot fathom how many American families have 2.5 children and one or both parents are working college graduates). In the end, I dance with these conformists without the need to analyze or think about it: I feel so at ease and so normal in performing the dance that to stop or change my dance would feel alien and absolutely absurd.