Poppy Seed in a Muffin

The Different Among Pawns
Image by podpad.

In a little over a week, I’ll be heading east to New England to spend a week in the mountainous forests of New Hampshire among a thousand anarchist and libertine lovers of philosophy, morality and freedom. The Porcupine Freedom Festival is a week-long event that takes place at a campground in northern New Hampshire, bringing together free thinkers from across America, as well as from around the world. Sound like my kind of people, right?

On paper, these people are my kindred spirits; people with a deep and mutual understanding of my worldview. It seems like an ideal experience for me to have, however I wonder how I will end up feeling about such an experience. I’ve never been among the majority. I’ve lived my life thus far being a minority member of the social world; engaging with the majority, but always standing apart as a distinct individual. I have always been a poppy in a lemon poppy seed muffin. For my grade six talent show, I sang Louis Armstrong’s What a Wonderful World.

I will be venturing into uncharted waters, placing myself among such a large group of like-minded thinkers. At my hometown bar, you’re far more likely to engage in a conversation with a local about how dickered he and his buddies got on the May 2-4 weekend than one concerning the violent and coercive nature of the state, and of the many absurdities of fiat monetary systems. In a group of people who all stand out as distinct from the norm in their own communities, how do they assert their individuality as a member of this constructed peer group? Having become so comfortable in the role of the functioning, and welcomed outsider, – a member of the philosophical minority - how will it feel to find myself a member of the majority – a mainstream thinker?

Those are some questions I consider in advance of my trip, but I attempt to enter this experience with an open mind, and to allow myself to go where freedom can take me.