Bars, Politics, and Transcendence

Most people in bars tend to be affiliated with political parties, and even though bar people are inclined to be only loosely affiliated with those parties, their politicized state prevents them from being self-actualized. So most people in bars are not self-actualized.

But even so, many of them are looking for something better, although some are unaware of that motivation most of the time. A few will even admit that they recognize the shortcomings and absolute corruption of all politics, even theirs. They sense a certainty that politics makes us all inferior, even as they submit to its demands.

A small number of self-actualized among the bar crowd have risen beyond and openly voice their disapproval of politics. They're not living for votes or for the opportunity to vote. They have many casual friends and acquaintances, but they are not driven by friendship or social factors. They are driven by a personal appreciation for truth, and it is extremely difficult for them to find others interested in the same, but sooner or later, if they show up at a bar and seek each other out, they will find one another.

Here, in the stink and noise and the mess, they sense the presence of self-actualization. Here, among the various lonely, depressed, joyous, loud, and outrageous people, they find some who are looking for better company, and they find one another, and they gather.

They are a very small crowd, but they are persistent. They are among the "regulars." Oddly enough, one of the principal reasons they go to the bar is because they seek truth and excellence in one another. They go to the bar as others go to church, to bolster their faith. More explicitly, they go to follow their bliss, and it is not in the alcohol that they find bliss; theirs is the bliss of communicating with others who are self-actualized. Oh, they may have a beer or two, or even more. They may get a little too much alcohol now and then. But among their crowd, that doesn't happen often; the companionship is the important thing.

They talk of the strangest matters. They talk of what they are reading and the messages that the authors seem to be expressing through their work. They even see serious themes in some works of popular fiction. They discuss history, mathematics, literature, music, various forms of art, and other academic topics. When they discuss politics, they talk of it as a phenomenon, just another thing to be observed and studied, certainly not their answer to the great questions of life. They discuss very seriously the way society has politicized history and has failed to learn by it. They both talk and listen intently to one another. Watch for that little crowd next time you go into a bar.