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? >>
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:
More chapters to come… I don’t want to overload this bloggy thingy :)
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment