stranger
Yesterday I re-read sociologist Georg Simmel's illuminating and eloquent short essay The Stranger.
"[The stranger] is not radically committed to the unique ingredients and peculiar tendencies of the group, and therefore approaches them with the specific attitude of 'objectivity.'" But objectivity does not simply involve passivity and detachment; it is a particular structure composed of distance and nearness, indifference and involvement."
"Objectivity may also be defined as freedom: the objective individual is bound by no commitments which could prejudice his perception, understanding, and evaluation of the given. The freedom, however, which allows the stranger to experience and treat even his close relationships as though from a bird's-eye view, contains many dangerous possibilities."
"The stranger has only certain more general qualities in common with others, whereas the relation to more organically connected persons is based on the commonness of specific differences from merely general features."
While reading this, I began recognizing the personality traits of many of the people I know and work with around the world. My best friends are the ones who are always at least slightly removed from the culture, either aesthetically or socially, in which they are working. They favor distance, skepticism, and multiple perspective over regionality, certainty, and singular focus. It seems I do prefer the company of "strangers." No doubt that I often depend on their kindess.