Interest-ism

Interest-ism & interest-ists

Interestism & interestists are to me as bad as racism & racists. A racist only wants to stay with his own race and avoids crossing-over to interact with any different race. Likewise, an interestist only wants to stay with those sharing his one interest and avoids crossing-over to interact with any group of a different interest. My wife & I are involved in a very wide range of interests, but our efforts to get any group to venture out of its one interest and explore one or more other interests, usually meets with a deafening silence.

BODY

We do halfathons from time to time, and have discovered that many runners seem to go from 1 race to another, often traveling long distances, and spending the major portion of their time, money, & conversation talking about training-regimens, running-shoes, personal-bests & races they did & are planning to do. Suggesting to them to try some other form of recreation once-in-a-while is like asking them to convert from their religious-practice of going to sleep very early so they wouldn’t be able to always train for that next race.

BRAINS

For mental exercise we periodically interact with Toastmasters (every Tue), a book-club (once a month), Mensa-club (once in a long while), and in every case when we invite any of those people to join us in a different activity, we face blank-looks of confusion as if we were inviting them in some unknown language. Toastmasters seem to often attend other Toastmaster-clubs & an unending array of various area, division, district, region, & world Toastmaster-events. It’s like Toastmasters is their whole life. Same with Mensans – just brain-activity, never mind exercise or grooming. And they too have a busy calendar of brunches, lunches, dinners, MG’s (Monthly-Gatherings) RG’s (Regional-Gatherings), AG’s (Annual-Gatherings), & WG’s (World-Gatherings). The World-Gathering I attended in Orlando was actually very interesting & diverse (there was even physical activity – dodge-ball). Also my experience with Mensa in California was diverse & interesting. Sadly, every other area I attended (NY, CO, FL) was boring, consisting mostly of eating unhealthy food. To give an idea of what kind of reputation Mensa has, I’ve often worn my Mensa T-shirt when doing marathons, and you wouldn’t believe how many exclamations of shear SURPRISE I heard from spectators that a Mensan is actually doing something physical. On paper Mensans have many SIG’s (Special-Interest-Groups) to become involved in, but I found that most of them exist only in the virtual-cyber-world.

BREEDING

We are also active in the Order-of-Eastern-Star. In fact we are officers in that fraternal-sorority. Those wonderful ladies & gentlemen also attend other chapters in the district, other districts, & of course the Grand-Chapter for the state. When they read announcements, it sounds like an endless litany of dinners, visits, inspections, proficiencies, honorings, fashion-shows, garage-sales, fundraisers, etc. One can attend some OES event almost every night somewhere, and seems that quite a number of the active ones do that. But when we suggest that we have a dance or go to one, again we’re faced with looks that say, “That does not compute. What planet are you from?”

BOUNTY

Entrepreneurs we know only talk business and have zero-to-no interest in much else.

BONVIVANCE

Our dancing circle of friends just go from dance to dance to dance.

Our Hash-House-Harrier friends are part of 4 overlapping circles with swingers, fetishists & nudists, and pretty much stay within those 4 overlapping circles.

Our Christian-outdoorsmen friends, of course, couldn’t possibly partake in Hashing, and we all know that Baptists are against premarital-sex because it might lead to dancing.

Our Human-Awareness friends overlap with nudists. Both these groups are so militant against “body-shame,” that they seem to go overboard on being as physically-out-of-shape as possible. They are 180° from the runners mentioned above. Obviously these 2 groups will never have anything to do with running.

BEING

And don’t even get me started on our friends who are in a particular religion, or paranoid of all religions. Heavens would collapse and holy-water would boil-over if any would ever set foot in a group of different mythological beliefs. We visit any & all faith-groups indiscriminately as recreation and as a chance to interact with people who are trying to better themselves & the world through whatever mythology works for them. Even the ones who claim to be all about interfaith, are still very reluctant to venture into some other group. I’ve tried so, so, so many times.

There were a FEW – VERY FEW – exceptions to this trying to get our various social circles to do some crossing-over and trying different things. Once I was able to get a Mensa girl to come on a Christian-outdoor adventure. A couple times I was able to get about 4 Mensans to come Swing-dancing. We were able a couple of times to get about 3 Swing-dancers to come with us Hashing & to a couple of Human-Awareness events. A number of times we were able to get Swing-dancers to sample some other religions. So yes, there have been exceptions to this deep-rooted interestism we keep encountering. But whenever we succeeded in bringing a few over to sample something different, it always took A-LOT, A-LOT, A-LOT of inviting & inviting many people to get a very few to venture out of their own interestist circle.