Hello all. It’s been a good first few days at school. It’s so nice talking to people I haven’t talked to in a while. I don’t know why that feeling is so nice, but it is.

Sometimes, when I walk around campus, I walk with people. Other times, I walk alone. When I walk alone, I like to just listen in on random people’s conversations. I think you can learn a lot about people by simply listening to them. And after listening to enough people, you reach a large enough sample size to place theories on the human race.

Recently I’ve been becoming more and more aware of what seems to be this human need to disassociate. Let me show you some examples. Most of these are theoretical.

During an Ultimate Frisbee game on the field, this Frisbee was launched across the field, and a player sprinted down after it. He slowed down, the frisbee went by, he made a lunge, he managed to touch the frisbee, the frisbee slipped out of his hands, and he fell onto the ground in a way that wasn’t too admirable. “I thought it was gonna settle,” he said. What did he just do? He didn’t want others to think of him as a horrible Ultimate Frisbee player, so he justified his physical mistake by saying that he misplanned it. He wanted others to know (or at least believe) that he was physically able but simply mentally unprepared. Thus he associated himself with the group of occasionally mentally unprepared people, which isn’t that bad of a group to be associated with, because it is a fairly large group. At the same time, he disassociated himself from the looked-down-upon horrible Ultimate Frisbee players.

The guys are playing basketball, and this guy missed his fourth shot in a row, so he goes, “Aw crap this arm is killing me. You know last week I messed it up so bad longboarding.” He is assigning his physical incapability to an injury. Thus he is dissociating himself from people who suck for no reason. At the same time, he is associating himself with longboarding people, who are very cool people.

These are everywhere. And they’re so contagious. I’m on a roll with these examples. I’ll keep going.

In one conversation, people are talking about how hard this test was, and a girl would say, “Dude Billy Jean Chen finished the test like when I was on page two.” She just tried to dissociate herself from people who finish tests quickly.

In another conversation, people are talking about how easy this test was, and a guy would say, “Man last night I didn’t even study at all. I was up playing DOTA.” This person is trying to dissociate himself from people who study a lot.

In another conversation, somebody would say, “That’s what she said!” And everybody would laugh. But one of these laughers actually doesn’t understand why it’s funny, yet he laughs anyway. He is trying dissociate himself from people who suck at getting “that’s what she said” jokes. Also similar to this scenario is the very hip word or expression that flies over this dude’s head, but he laughs, and later that day he looks it up on Urbandictionary.com.

In another conversation, somebody decently smart would be watching Jeopardy with a really dumb girl. And the guy on Jeopardy answers this question correctly, and the really dumb girl goes, “What the heck? Does he have like no friends? How do you know stuff like that?” And the decently smart guy next to her would go, “Yeah I feel so dumb watching this show.” But in reality, this decently smart guy also knew the answer. He is simply dissociating himself from geniuses who have no friends.

There seems to always be this mentality to dissociate from the out-group and to associate with the in-group. And it kills. It produces pride. It produces ignorance. It produces masks.

Here’s a classic question. What would Jesus do? The exact opposite. Jesus, more than anybody else, purposely associated with the out-group. One of the reasons why the Pharisees were turned off by him was because he always hung out with the tax collectors and sinners. He chose to be associated with those others tried to dissociate themselves from. That’s counter-cultural. That’s radical. That’s revolutionary.

That’s not even all. Once upon a time, the Trinity was the in-group, and the human race was the out-group. And so God became flesh and dwelt among us. God came into the out-group and died for the out-group so that we can be in the in-group. There’s something to ponder about.

– Larry