Dance like a drag queen everyone is watching

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. They have no fear of honest self-expression. They dance not because no one is watching, but because they wish to be seen.

Drag queens are by no means the only people through history who have embodied 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 you down 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 out beauty.

It is important that some people are watching. Expressivity implies that the person doing the expression has an audience to express themselves to. I hope in writing this blog 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. That is the fulfillment that grants my life meaningfulness.

At the same time, the audience you need to appreciate you is small because we only relate directly to a small number of people. Becoming famous is an extreme detriment to your happiness because there are too many people giving you sparse, unreal attention. Indeed, connecting with people in that situation becomes more difficult, and for someone 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.

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

Honest self-expression is unconcerned with status. The drag queen wants to be seen, not ranked — to be appreciated as a unique, irreplaceable person. That is the difference between the Flower and the Pyramid — between honest self-expression and status ambition.

The Pyramid gets you to be concerned about status. But an ambition for status is always an ambition without love, and so it is always hollow and unfulfilling to our real human need to express our love. It is fool's gold.