what's Solon?

Information – > fear – > commitment (?) –> need (??) –> personal image (!!!)

I hope that concept of Emerging Adulthood is more or less clear by now. Evidently is not the first developmental theory in psychological studies. In my personal opinion, it’s not the most sophisticated one either, in spite of all those cross-cultural researches and millions of articles produced by Arnett and Co. since middle 90s. I guess I’m more of Erik Erikson girl, in terms of youth and its transformations. Erikson distinguished 3 forms of the developmental ethos – moral, ideological and ethical. The first one appears as a network of restriction [ information / fear ] in the preschool age. Ideological concerns (searching for reasons and justifications) are being revised in the adolescence [personal image ?/more information/ more fear ], and the ethical attitude (strong and harmonic ethical values) appears in the adulthood [ personal image at last ? ]. Although, if we combine those ethoses with the Emerging Adulthood idea (prolonged transition into adulthood)and Millennium Generation Y images, we would find present young people in their 20s and early 30s not only on the ideological and ethical turning-point, but what is more astonishing  - on the moral one! That assumption brings us back to the series of questions I have been posing since the beginning of that work:

-          Why till recently this new “empowered” generation was depicted as a sort of android species, population of computerized, self-aware cyborgs, prepared to be fooled and exploited – ready to be consumed?

-          Why young people are being targeted and “condensed” into few statistically efficient dimensions such as productivity, probability of success (which is?!), buying potential, company loyalty etc.?

-          Why most of us accept such treatment and try to please society’s expectations?

-          Why we play this suffering game, just to avoid long term choices, self-consciousness and [commitment ] ?

Is it overwhelming [ information ], is it undefined but very real [ fear ], is it anxiety caused by problematic [personal image] and fluid, flexible sense of morality (statements number 4 and 5 from “10 statements exercise”)?  

Benjamin Barber in his book called Consumed tends to blame popularized by empowered social and political forces “ethos of infantilism”, which is consistently killing the ability of critical thinking among us. Alain de Button sees the reason in Status Anxiety caused mostly by strong judgmental approach coming from contemporary society, which do not accept so-called looser and in the same time cherish so-called winners. He also remarks that we live under the one and the same vision of success. There’s no such thing as personal achievement and individual success – success must be recognized by society, therefore we have to obey the rules and fit into the patterns. Naomi Klein strongly insists on the importance of freedom and emphasizes the negative impacts of globalizations on youth. She’s not the only one. Despite the global influences which are supposed to unite us, Gail Sheehy presents the image of young people without a clear generational identity, thus with blurred [ personal image ] and lack of self-consciousness. In a book called Passages she brings fragments of interviews with young people from 90s. Among many complains, young people claim that there’s nothing left to discover – sex, money, work, even drugs, everything is done – the only thing which is being perceived as common and new, is development of intimacy in constant [ fear ] of AIDS. I guess not much has changed since. Only in the “fear zone” more common reasons to generate it - spreading unemployment, family expectations, peer’s successes and losses, basic needs of human proximity and connection not fulfilled entirely by virtual life, terrorist attacks, scary volcanoes, uncertain future in terms of every possible level… loneliness.

Loneliness is perceived as the most terrifying and anxiety causing scenario. Loneliness which is defined by yet another American psychologist, John Cacioppo, as “perceived social isolation”. According to his theory “feelings of loneliness can be intensified by illusory descriptions of human life, a tendency in a country where we subscribe to a myth of individualism and underplay the significance of family, friendship and community.” It is a paradox though, because in one way we are terrified even by the slightest eventuality of being alone, but in the same time we are already alone, closed up in our neuroticism supported by iPod headphones and prescriptions for antidepressants. Sometimes when we actually feel a [ need ] to talk, or to get closer with others, it is so much easier to turn on computer and watch some romantic comedy instead. It is easier because we won’t get hurt, because we won’t feel exposed, because we won’t have to answer those annoying questions “what’s next?”. That’s why we are safer in our unhappy mental bubbles. In Coupland’s Generation A there’s a special name for that state – it’s a drug called SOLON. Solon it’s not only the most popular tranquilizer in the nearest feature, it is the future.

“SOLON CR is indicated for the short-term treatment of psychological unease grounded in obsession in thinking about the near and distant feature. By severing the link between the present moment and a patient’s perceived future state, researchers have found a pronounced and significant drop in all forms of anxiety. As well, researchers have found that disengagement with “the future” has allowed many patients complaining of persistent loneliness to lice active and productive single live with no fear or anxiety”   

In my opinion, [ fear ] doesn’t exactly regard the general future of human species itself ( I guess no one really fantasize about alien’s attack or other type of big catastrophe anymore). We’re too self-involved for such concerns. Therefore, [ fear ]  that we perceive is rather connected with our personal future – future we eventually have to choose. It’s that choice, those big decisions that paralyze our “psychological development”.

Of course, extern influences do not exactly help to change that. Infantilism is highly recommended, because there’s no one more amenable for manipulation than children and teenagers – even those 30 year old ones. There’s also a strong element of misinformation. Even though, we tend to have access to every existing source, we’re being bombed with contradictory news, which instead of helping, confuse us and anesthetize us even more. We build our opinions on some fragmentary images and words, but in fact we feel nothing more than confusion. What exactly should we feel then, when 2 minutes after watching terrible reportage from tornado or war, broadcaster informs us that in some small village in the middle of nowhere random Madame Smiths gave birth to quintuplets? Should we be happy, or sad, or maybe somewhere in the middle? Angela McRobbie uses the term doubled entanglement to describe such co-existence of ambiguous impacts (actually, she refers to rather different examples, but still the notion fits perfectly, so I’m not afraid to re-use it).

I guess at some point our instinct of survival, or some other mysterious organ, sensed this world-wide developmental misunderstanding, thus some has started to search for answers and solutions (popular movie examples from recent years – Garden State,  Me and You and Everyone we Know, Unmade Beds, In Search for a Midnight Kiss).

More academic example is quite well depicted by Warsaw sociology student’s conducted by, almost legendary Polish professor, Hanna Świda- Ziemba. In the last chapter of her book, Świda-Ziemba concludes, basing on discovery of different communicational codes simultaneously existing in one population, that what we are witnessing now, are in fact two different faces of today’s young generation. The official one is circulating in the abstract media world, when the second one is more intimate, vulnerable, hidden from others.  We can assume that contemporary generation believes in the false world image. Individuals perceive their peers through the incorrect prism. This lack of authentic communication may result in so many ways - the senses of solitude, misunderstanding, problems with real deep socialization, wrong transfer of values, etc.

Thus briefly, either we break the silence by starting somehow to communicate more sincerely and honestly with one another, either we would have to wait for invention of Solon.

There’s always Woody Allen’s option “Whatever Works… as long as we do not hurt others”, but it’s really hard to say if it’s an ironical joke, or the old man has gone completely mad.

There’s also another option, which I consider as my personal invention: “LET’S BAN THE WORLD OF GUIDANCE”. Is it only me, or civilization has gone totally insane, and for one humble citizen there’s two or three personal guides, therapists, trainers, gurus and insurance agents entitled? Even when we look for job offers, you can either have an ordinary job with ordinary name, either you can manage to become something more - “a consultant”!

That is another pretty intense paradox. On the one hand we want to be seen as strong, individualistic and completely self-sufficient persons; on the other hand we cannot decide what to wear without professional advises. Those professional advisors and consultants earn millions on our indecisiveness. Business creates an illusion of [ need ], because in fact we really don’t need it. It’s worst than that - we desire it because those people tend to be perceived as an efficient luxury, which is fancy and which in any case could be blamed for  bad choice. Why even bother to develop when someone else can create us and take the responsibility from our backs?

But here’s the trick – even in such comfortable circumstances we always have to choose this perfect “helper”. Each “helper” also needs his own “helpers”, so the spiral of evil grows in power, and the minority on top profits from our society of lonely losers.

What a wonderful perspective. Maybe we actually should wait for that Solon…    

how I met Barney

Remember my shameful “Dentist Story”? Well, now I can say without a doubt that I was right to feel so bad after the visit. In fact, I felt soooo bad that almost directly from the plane I got into the hospital in Geneva with a fever, horrible pain and of course with completely destroyed tooth. Good bye Bora Bora, good bye rich husband with private practice, good bye new car and welcome to the world of young overeducated but still incompetent doctors.

However, I cannot say that I wasted all the time I’d spend in bed after this very unpleasant events. It’s one week later and I am proud to announce that…

… wait for it…

…wait for it…

…wait for it…

…that I’ve seen each and every episode of How I Met You Mother! I’ve done it in the name of my research (you know, young people struggling with life in American kinda way / how television is making us even dumber etc.), but mostly because I felt in love with that guy Barney. I have this thing going on for fiction characters. I just can help myself. It’s been always like that since the early childhood, when I had a crash on Blake’s evil brother in Dynasty, but I guess I shouldn’t be especially proud of it now (daaaaamn ! now everybody knows my secret !)

Anyways… have anyone noticed how romantic plots targeted at people in their 20s / 30s changed? It probably started with my favorite When Harry Met Sally movie, now appreciated more than ever, cause it all about confusion. However, today let’s look closer at two very popular American sitcoms  -> Friends and this How I Met Your Mother stuff indeed.

As I’m seeing it, the main idea is the same  – bunch of young people in their very late 20s struggling to make it through in New York City. Main difference, when first sitcom is based in 90s, second is very recent. Let’s say that we have a 15 year gap between two facts I want to emphasize.

1.      Who exactly doesn’t know Rachel and Ross’s story? I don’t think I have to go into details with that one. What is important here is that we have a guy madly in love with a girl since high school. He’s quietly suffering watching her jumping from one relationship to another, looking for true love. Finally, she realizes his existence and what we witness is a veeeeery cheesy, but nevertheless traditionally romantic love connection. And by that I mean the first time they started dating, cause than it just got lame. It’s always like that when TV show is just too long on air.

2.      Barney and Robin from HIMYM. Sniffing around each other for months, but instead of showing a slightest sign of a real interest, instead of doing a smallest move they just sleep around and have a long talks about funny sex things that happen to them. Both have problems with commitment. Both don’t want to have children. Both desperately trying to make a career, leaving themselves just enough time to get laid occasionally with some strangers. And when suddenly they connect they make a real scene out of it. When Rachel just get’s up, runs to Ross and kisses him in “dirty dancing style”, here we have a neurotic conversation, jumping from “I think I love U’s” to “no no no it’s better to stay friends”, circulating around the room like wrestlers, moving forward and backward and a final quick bizarre kiss ended with disturbing “we will talk about it later” phrase. I mean what? Emotional rollercoaster that’s one, but secondly we have to take under the consideration the fact that this is exactly what today’s viewer wants to see. No cheesy love letters, no lame Celine Dion video clips, but two neurotic, terrified, uncertain, confused, emotionally disturb people with parental issues and sex drive of a bull. I truly believe there’s something in my theory, cause it’s not a secret that such relationships between beloved characters are deeply researched before performance. It’s like with that Avatar chic. Why she was sooo…am… so blue? Cause majority of researched “average viewers” claimed that they would hit that.

One question remains – is it that we want to see people like us in television to comfort ourselves, or is it that media are making us believe that this is an only right way to live? Hell yeah neurotic style!

Actually two questions remain - if I'm so critical and distand and cool and awesome why exactly I felt for Barney? 

damn...

And now something completely different – next part from my essays :

According to American Psychologist, J.J. Arnett the question of importance could be linked with the idea that we cannot simply refer to ourselves as “a generation”, but the changes that in a way created us, are here to stay, and so are our most common characteristics. What was perceived as generational threats is in fact a phenomenon of prolonged transition into the more responsible adult roles in society. In other words, Emerging Adulthood can be defined as a developmental stage which consists such attributes as:

-          the age of identity exploration

-          instability (exploring the over-stimulating environment and revising projects and plans regarding future and adult roles, which can be confusing and which can even effect on anxiety and on doubts in self-efficacy)

-          the self-focused age (searching for satisfactory answers on  “who we are” and “what we want form life” kind of questions, egocentric stage)

-          feeling in-between (not an adolescent any more, but still not a “full-time” adult)

-          the age of possibilities (this feature is vaguely explained by author, so I guess we can agree on lots and lots of choices and opportunities to create our own individual and completely original paths of life, which are given to us by our humble environments)

What is necessary to emphasize, is the term of “indecisiveness” which comes with Emerging Adulthood as a whole package. Back at the University in Poland, my professor of social psychology, Augustyn Bańka, has created a special authorial questionnaire (The Career Indecisiveness Scale), prepared to examine this particular characteristic among young people. It’s a pretty interesting, but general tool oscillating around career issues, where “indecisiveness” is treated as a behavioral, emotional and cognitive response to the life obstacles and its character is multifactorial. Bańka distinguished 4 main factors – General Indecisiveness (typical reaction, almost a personality feature, which depending on circumstances may become even pathological), Informational Indecisiveness (the lack of satisfying information caused by overwhelming existence of information as such), Fear of Commitment to the Well-Defined Career, and Need of the Further Crystallization of the Personal Image.

I guess if we erase “career” from the picture, we can surely manage to use it in more extended way (General Indecisiveness factor is too weak as a single feature), however what is intriguing is a compilation of information – fear – commitment – need – personal image key words. 

To be continued above...

pretty random statements

First a quick reminiscence from Artistic Practice classes and then theories, names, assumptions will follow.

-          Why?

-          Because it’s my story!

So, we have this really eager young artist-couch who’s trying very hard to make our sessions even more interactive and fruitful than they’re supposed to be. He’s making us participating in lots of group games and exercises, and he seems pretty disappointed when we aren’t doing so well, or when we don’t express our “hurray” enthusiasm out loud. I guess sometimes we’re taking our projects too seriously and it’s hard to appreciate information and tasks not directly connected with our interests. It is a pity though, because our resistance to wider horizons could gravely limit our perspectives. However, I see and experience some progress in this matter.

Once, we were given a task called “10 statements”, which has probably something to do with the actual 10 statements that, according to the content of this drill, we were supposed to write in a short period of time. As they were ordered to be radical, problematic and immediate-opposition-rising, I created mine as follow:

"ON GENERATION (wh)Y"

1. We are not Generation Y, cause we stopped asking questions a long time ago.

2. We are talking about "the quality of life" without an actual, personal conception what does it mean for us.  

3. We are using different notions, expressions and terms in our communicational daily life code, than we use in our inner self-talk. 

4. We feel lonely even if we are surrounded by friends.

5.We feel free to do everything which is accepted by our closest environment, without a sense of guilt…

6.... but we feel that guilt somehow after, so we are fixing it by cheap and unconvincing rationalization.

7. We are not particularly happy in general.

8. We're looking for advices and directions how to live, but instead all we're getting is a lame bank consultant or insurance agent.

9.We don't have time to think.... I mean REALLY think.

10. We need help (or just grow up and get over it?)

Unfortunately, there was no time left to get a proper feedback, so maybe I will try inventing the most probable feedback and support my arguments with some suitable theoretical background, leaving of course some space for personal immersions.

The most probable feedback goes like this << WHAT?! GET A LIFE GIRL! >>

My intellectually colored arguments go like this:

<< WOULD YOU JUST LISTEN TO ME FOR A MOMENT YOU… YOU… YOU CONSUMED ANDROIDS? >>

And Immanuel Kant is like: <<  Immaturity is the incapacity to use one's intelligence without the guidance of another. >>

So we all go like << KANT? Shouldn’t you be dead by now? >>

 THE END 

Statement number one is an obvious provocation meant to bring up a stormy discussion on how young people perceive contemporary external influences, such as official media-talk, commercialization and overwhelming race to success, or economical mechanisms targeted on the growing need of instant gratification. Simultaneously, we could wonder, how it is possible to cope with the other side of the same “contemporary life coin” – standards and norms influencing us from previous generations, ethics and religion classes at school, grandma’s and grandpa’s WWII stories, traditional archetypes of “the proper behavior” continuously reproduced in literature, movies, tv shows etc. In other words, do we even consciously sense these impacts and question our own reactions in that context?

Personally, I like to summon two notions that lately appear very frequently in the configuration with subjects containing present youth – neuroticism and sarcasm. Both of them connected on some level of psychological understanding, but generally when the first one is being associated with the personality disorder, the second one is often wrongly linked with inner strength and self-awareness (Dr. House figure is a perfect example). Therefore, what can and should be seen as an open reaction to the inside conflicts and ongoing decisional crisis when one’s facing a problematic of his existence and future, is being transformed into a fashionable trend and a generational label. In the extreme cases it leads to such oddities as Hipsters and Emo Kids, and is there anyone here who actually believes that those “movements” have generated themselves spontaneously from the real rage and frustration?

The real frustration though, is being camouflaged and locked in therapy groups, hidden from the world, when the fake one is being emphasized and cherished as a reflection of “coolness”. And yes, I believe we stopped asking questions, cause otherwise why we would even consider being unhappy as a coolest way to live? Therefore, statement number four is being proven in a way too, because obviously unhappiness appears when we perceive loneliness, which tends to be a frequent consequence of sense of not being understand enough.

Welcome to my beautiful “world of simple thought”!

According to my statement number ten, we don’t have time to conduct a real thinking process. If I start on this subject now, we would end up not with 15 pages but at least 150, so for now a word of advice:

>>> Thinking about ourselves is not an expression of egoism, as long as we try to change in order to become better humans (not super humans, not heroes, but more “human humans” “people for people” kind of way). Do not over think and do not make things more complex than they already are, because you can end up like this:

 Foretaste.

More chapters to come… I don’t want to overload this bloggy thingy :)

Intro 2010

Suddenly, in the space of couple of days, I found my vein again. Or maybe it was the other way around, and my vain found me for a change? Generally I’m not a superstitious person. However, it seems like all chaotically spread elements of my life make sense all together now, as a whole, as a path, as a story… When I’m looking back I can see the logic in it, and I’m pretty convinced that everything that happened, happened for a reason. I guess we often have this feeling of totality, when we think about our past, but in the same time, we experience our present randomly in the expectation of those “cool memorable moments”, those that we could recount without a shame to our grandchildren someday. Why shouldn’t we change it and create a story while it’s lasting? Why waiting for something that could never come, if here and now we have a real possibility to act and prove ourselves? I found my vein, I found my inspiration and I want to grow in it. I don’t want to be this bitching and moaning self-distracting, neurotic person anymore! For the first time I actually believe that the change is possible. Small scale transformation of attitude is my personal goal, and lately I’m finding my work in this context very stimulating. At the beginning, I started with the general who-we-are and what-we-want questions, because somehow, subconsciously I screamed for help myself. I didn’t realize that till now. However, what I also realized recently is that I can manage to solve my dilemmas without a „professional guidance”, which is a kind of a strange statement coming from a psychologist. Although this concept is very clear to me, it won’t be so easy to spread it further. By presenting Big Brother celebrity figures, our society made us believe that we are special and we deserve our dreams come true - each and every one of us can be a star. However, the same society concurrently imposed on us a stigma of ADD, arrogant, disloyal, illiterate almost children with a huge technical addiction, but without any virtues and values. So, here we are hurling with contradicted emotions, trying to conduct an existence of almost semi-gods, and turning our neurosis into a fashionable trend, but in the face of a slightest eventuality of failure we turn ourselves back to our parents, or we look for private coaches and professional image stylists. This mess it’s quite a story. It really is!  

Eco-logical

Greetings My Friends !

Spring, new possibilities, changes... beautiful time.

Today I'm gonna tell you how I was profiting intelectually, by reading wise books in my work place, and how I was changing my attitude towards master thesis during ciggy breaks. 

So I'm sitting and reading right? And... 

[writing style slightly transforms into more appropriate formal one]

...Among many other things in his essays regarding Superman in mass literature, Eco analysis the phenomenon of the “periodical novel”, using the extraordinary example of Eugène Sue’s The Mysteries of Paris. [Umberto Eco - Il Superuomo di massa (1976)]

There has been lots of talk on the origins of the French novel of the 19th century: Stendhal, Balzac, Dumas, Gautier, Sand or Hugo. One often forgets Eugène Sue. Still, The Mysteries of Paris occupies a unique space in the birth of this literary genre: it entranced thousands of readers for more than a year (even illiterates who had episodes read to them) and was also a major work in the formation of a certain form of social consciousness. One often hears that the 1848 revolution was partly born in the pages of the Mysteries of Paris or, more appropriately, that the Mysteries of Paris helped create a climate which allowed the 1848 revolution to occur.

wiki

However, it wasn’t just a work in the formation of a social consciousness. As Eco presents it, it was also a more or less conscious form of social, we’d say today - collaborative/collective, work.  During years of writing his novel, Sue himself transformed from shallow bigot into the devoted socialist and working class hero. After the eye-opening accidental meeting with local worker, Sue left his house yelling “Je suis socialiste” and started to write this serial novel regarding the situation of the lowest class in Paris. He created an intriguing plot, colorful, morally confused personas (workers, prostitutes, priests, bourgeoisie etc.) and established an emotional roller coaster that any respecting itself soap opera wouldn’t be embarrassed of.  It was only a matter of time before the novel started to live its own life, inspired by thousands of letters and suggestions from fascinated readers. Of course the main author remained the same, but weekly publishing form encouraged readers to start some initiatives, to share their insights and desires.

 In his essay Eco partially explains how to build a plot that creates curiosity of a contemporary mass, but it’s not a time to focus on that.

Briefly speaking, using Sue’s story as an inspiration, I activated a creative thinking process and came up with an idea so original and fresh, as Dr. Ronald Chevalier  an author of all ten harpies’ trilogies , would say: „that as though the atomic bomb has gone off in my brain.” [BTW -  I highly recommend the movie „Gentlemen Broncos” to all of You who has a secret desire to become a geek]

…but now

...without further ado I’m a glad to present you an…  

                                 Interactive participatory novel (idea)

At first, I thought I discovered it myself, but come on! Let’s be realistic. As far as I remember I was inventing stuff which was already existing, so why it should be different now? And of course:

 The interactive novel is a form of digital fiction. While authors of traditional paper-and-ink novels have sometimes tried to give readers the random directionality offered by true hypertexting, this approach was not completely feasible until the development of HTML.

wiki

Thank You God for a gift of HTML.

However… HOWEVER ! It’s not only hypertext which seams innovative.

This fiction allows readers, who can also become writers, to explore the novel from a list of characters given at the site. The novel is intended to be read randomly, as the reader chooses to follow various directions.

wiki

Alors ! What we have here it’s a classic reader-writer situation taken from the simple fan letters, forum discussions and transformed into the real possibility of collective creation. Maybe I didn’t invent the idea, but still why couldn’t I at least try to redefine it for my personal purposes. I guess, not thinking about it would be like saying “no you cannot write a book, because someone already did it”.

Why I want to take this road, you may ask. Especially, why I am so stuborn to pursuit my dreams using the tool which is sooo 90s?  

Well, my dear readers, that's a completely different story saved for another occasion, but since we're all here maybe you can share with me your comments, questions, insigths?