A maxim is more than just words to live by, it’s an expression of a general truth or principle or a rule of conduct. This is the second in a series of maxim’s I’ve found useful in my life.
When I first embraced this maxim the ideology of “inversion” was very popular. Younger LGBT folks like me were embracing words like “Queer” and ‘inverting’ them to polarize their meaning from something bad to good. The pink triangle was inverted from a symbol of discrimination and shame to one of pride and community.
Blacks and African Americans had been using the same technique with phrases like “Get Down” which inverted to mean “Get Up And Dance” among other things. Hip Hop and then Rap seemed to accelerate many inversions so that adjectives like ‘bad’ were used to describe things that were ‘good’ in the 1970′s and through the 80′s and 90′s there was a succession of such inverted adjectives with ‘dope’ ‘sick’ ‘ill’ and many others all finding favor for a time.
Originally this maxim was, “Everyone Needs To Have At Least One Slutty Friend.” Even back then it revealed the general truth that we can stretch our comfort zones more and maybe even live vicariously through the lives of others.
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