I am a fan of civilization. The comfort of this Starbucks, the soothing background music, the efficient and professional-polite barista, and this “just right” hot cup of delicious coffee, all appeal to me. Is this what is meant by civilized, polite society? I mean a society calibrated to ensure security and comfort for those like me. I have dedicated many years to learn the “rules,” the language patterns, the comportment, “how to color inside the lines” achieving success, a good measure of the benefits of polite society.

Nietzsche writes that I am an example of what all mammals do. They (I) will learn to control, to suppress the most extreme desires, any inclination to “color outside of the lines” because obedience to social convention comes with benefits. Benefits? Nietzsche writes that becoming a member of the herd means that the odds of escape from a competitor are greatly improved. Further, one easily solicits aid when one has a purpose to plunder. I guess “aid” would be the service of lawyers and accounts.

How deft is my self-deception! That education, that record of professional success – is one more garden-variety, merely another animal making itself powerful and fascinating…

The rules insisted upon in polite society,
such, for example, as the avoidance of everything ridiculous,
fantastic, presumptuous;

the suppression of one’s virtues
just as much as of one’s most violent desires,
the instant bringing of one’s self down to the general level,

submitting one’s self to etiquette and self-depreciation:
all this, generally speaking, is to be found,
as a social morality,

even in the lowest scale of the
animal world
—and it is only in this low scale
that we see the innermost plan
of all these amiable precautionary regulations:
one wishes to escape from one’s pursuers
and to be aided in the search for plunder.

…we may easily find the animal equivalent
of all those subtle means
of making ourselves happy,
thankful, powerful,
and fascinating.

The Dawn of Day by Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. J. M. Kennedy, aphorism 26

All of us aspire to belong. Homo sapiens are social mammals. Life comes down to making common cause with others of our tribe. On occasion, an individual breaks away, assumes the risk of an outlier, that of a pathfinder for the tribe. Artists in particular are examples of this role. Elvis Presley comes to mind as one who brought the sensuality of Blues music into American mainstream.  Here is one of my favorite Elvis tunes, Kentucky Rain, – simple storytelling, powerful, persuasive…