Some thoughts in my head the past few days.
One is on how we define ourselves. I recently joined MyCupid, which has thus far been fairly useless, but it did remind me of how we express our characters in our society and another way that I never felt that I fit in. Those chat rooms when I was younger, Facebook in its early days, defines people in two simple yet dehumanizing ways. Your interests, and your consumption habits.
When I was young, I always struggled to define myself through my ever-changing, often ambiguous interests. Only recently have I realized that this is not how I want to express myself. The same old categories – Music, Movies, TV, mean little to me, they are shifting, temporally specific, lacking context. They are so segmented, movies fit into a narrow screen, are of a certain length, and music has been forced to be the same. The written word, my preferred form of expression, I believe allows for more vibrant communication, and is less constraining.
We should be, instead, defined by how we treat other people, by how we treat the planet, not by our desires and consumption, but by our actions. But how do you describe actions on an online profile? You can’t, and there is the dehumanization process. We’re being synthesized into something less than who we are, when our true characters can only be expressed through action.
People always ask why I quit Facebook – and then claim that without Facebook, they’d never be able to “keep in touch.” But a medium that allows such superficial forms of expression cannot provide for more than superficial forms of communication, and I’ve found since I’ve quit, that less frequent but more personal communication actually has built stronger friendships – with those friends who most matter.
In that, I see why I’m drawn to people who are more about what they do and how they treat people, than those I was drawn to in the past. How do I turn this understanding into action? And how do I meet people who I can truly trust, whose actions are defined by their morals. Interests can rarely, if ever, show you someones true, inner heart.
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The undertaking of defining one’s self has also plagued me for some time. I have taken some philosophy classes in hopes of discovering some absolute methodology, but have not, I’ve only discovered more questions. I heard recently that artificial memories can be planted in one’s head if the subject is shown photographs and “urged” to “remember”. Our entire character being summed up by a piece of film or music really resonated with me, and the fact that apart from those things we don’t know how to define ourselves, something I’ve contemplated before, but it’s nice to get validated. However, I disagree that our interests cant reflect our “true” heart. Our interests are a reflection of our psyche/consciousness which in turn reflect our voids, strain of logic, subconscious labyrinth, etc. These things are our true heart, unless you feel that the mind is separate from the heart.
Hi Stephanie – i dont disagree either, but i feel that the problem is that in society (and on facebook) interests are defined into rigid categories that i think leave for no room for true self expression…though i think actions can also be tied to interests, if they come from the heart.
To add to that, I forgot to mention that I never have had a Facebook page…EVER! And for the same reasons you stated, but I go a little further in that I reject all convention that reek of culture/social norms. I like to look at things differently if possible, as I am a prisoner of Western civilization/culture. For example, I know that in Romania they are very superstitious, they often exhume graves in an effort to decapitate their dead, as a means of addressing the problem of vampires, which they feel is a real threat to their otherwise overcast utopia. I can’t help but to admire their superstition, and more than that the beauty of the niavety that produces such beliefs. I can’t help but thinking that if we all believed and were busy cutting the heads off the dead, the world would be a better place. But back to the original point, Western view of death is a little more boring and predictable, but having never been to a funeral, and I’m 31yrs old, I enjoy spending time in the cemetary foe different purposes; purposes of consciousness expansion. I try to apply this what some would call (macabre) and twisted mindset to all of my interactions with nature, people, etc. Always looking for the little things, things overlooked, but not necessarily the details, because I disagree that the “devil” can be found there. So in rejecting convention/popular opinion, trends, I always found Facebook to be ridiculous, contrived, and narcissistic, as well as twitter and other social media inventions. I long for the human element.
i wonder, then, if you also, like me, dislike how so many places in the world people just want to learn english, or how we all use the same two measurements systems when once thousands existed, or how we all use the same clocks, the same calendar, numbing our minds from what once was a world with so many different ways of seeing things? we all can only define ourselves so narrowly these days, that its really hard to find a sense of self…at least, that has been my quest, and trying to preserve the diversity that makes life interesting. and human.