Dance like a drag queen everyone is watching

It's an intentionally provocative title — but it gets to the point of this. Drag queens are, from a status point of view, somewhat reviled and ridiculed for ostentatiousness. You can't imagine the President of the United States would ever be a drag queen.

In my way of looking at things, they actually have a superior attitude well suited for the attainment of a meaningful existence. Drag queens are actually looking at the world in the right way — they are happy to express themselves openly, and they don't care what you think about how they do it.

Drag queens are by no means the only examples of people through history that have been emblematic of this way of being. Think about the joy of Marilyn Monroe, or the exuberance of a figure skater dancing at an exhibition. That type of radiant energy gets at the things that truly matter in this world — joyous, unfettered expression.

Such expressivity is at the heart of what makes life worth living. The hierarchical structures of society seek to grind down individuals through measurement and competition — did you win the race? were you better than someone else? Comparison to someone else is the death of honest expression — and the evaluation process strips some of the beauty out of expression.

It kind of is important that some people are watching. Expressivity implies that the person doing the expression has an audience to express themselves to. I hope that in writing this book that it might have a positive impact on people's lives. But even so, the audience in the moment could be an abstract one — for myself I could write for posterity instead, and still gain meaning from the activity of having expressed my innermost convictions and thoughts in an authentic way, and that instead is the fulfillment that grants my life meaningfulness. At the same time, the audience that appreciates you that is necessary for happiness is only a small number because we only relate directly to a small number of people. Becoming famous is an extreme detriment to your happiness because you have no connection to many people. Indeed, connecting with people in that situation becomes more difficult, and to demand the attention of complete strangers on that level is a kind of moral desperation, that cannot be fulfilling in any way.

The fundamental unit of meaning in life is the expression of love. So, that expression can take many forms. So there are two aspects to that — the linguistic side, and the social side. Humans beings are linguistic creatures — we manipulate concepts and the world with our linguistic capabilities. You can even see it in a painting, a computer programmer, or an electrician. We understand the world through our linguistic capabilities that conceptualize the world in order to grasp it and manipulate it, repurposing those capabilities to whatever endeavors are available.

It can be solipsistic and solitary — making a garden. But, human beings are social creatures. So often, our expressions of love are directed towards other living creatures, usually other humans.

And that is the problem of the Pyramid. The Pyramid gets you to be concerned about status ambition. But an ambition for status is always an ambition without love, and so it is always hollow and unfulfilling to our real human needs to express our love. It is a fools’ gold.