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.
