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Showing posts with label self-conscious living. Show all posts
Showing posts with label self-conscious living. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

age of self-conscious living

Watching some of the talk shows here, there was a time when I was sure I wouldn't be caught dead in those. No matter what, I wouldn't be able to appear before millions -- which included strangers, and worse, family and friends -- and air my dirty linen, so to speak. But now, I am not that sure.

Look at me airing my private thoughts and conversations online! In scraps, on say, an Orkut, myspace, or on the Wall of a facebook, in applications, in inbox messages to strangers who at the same time aren't strangers any more, in a way! I draw graffiti on walls. I do things which I haven't done in my other life. What is happening? We type up updates of our activities, our thoughts, our relationships, as if in a private journal. The one difference being that it is being read (and forgotten) by many -- strangers, friends, stranger-friends. The age of self-conscious living. We are all actors in a movie or many movies. We all want drama in our live and want to be seen and heard by many, appreciated and loved by many. Wannabe celebrities. No more happy being the voyeurs. Not at all satisfied with vicarious living. We are the center. The heroes. But we need others to validate it. Legitimiztion of our existence on this planet. If people in books and movies, be it on the big screen or on TV or on youtube, are another facet of reality, if that means they are real in the same way, then we are just another aspect of that reality or unreality. My magpie and another's Greenov are all real. Or unreal. Globalized democratization of the media surely leads to not just reality TV, but to self-conscious living, and more.



What I would also like to see is where this will lead to? Will the distinction between reality and virtual reality be blurred? What will these cyber relationships be called? I am not talking of old friends meeting online and continuing their friendships. It is important, of course, this newer convenience of keeping in touch, taking up from where they had stopped, getting a chance for some, to go back to the past and relive, rebuild or demolish old relationship structures, .... But I am interested in stangers who meet online. Some people who stick in your head or mind, somehow more than others. People who have never met each other, who will never meet. Like penpals. But different. This is more immediate, more in touch. Some do drop off on the wayside. But, say, 10 years from now -- I wonder how many of my stranger-friends will still be in my list? What will I call those friends? Of course, there is "facebook friend' or "orkut friend" or some other friend. But there are varying degrees in that too. Of the depth of my feelings for a particular person(s). Or the kind of feelings for another. How will I define that relationship? How will it evolve? Obviously, a new terminology,a new set of theories are needed.



age of self-conscious living 2



One of my all-time favorite movies is Before Sunrise. Those who have seen it will know what I mean when I say it embodies almost all those concepts of building, prolonging, maintaining the initial excitement of a relationship.

In my last note, I made some observations which I gather was not agreeable to some 'stranger-friends' whom I respect very much. Is there a certain way one is supposed to think? Is theorizing about certain subjects, taboo? The spirit of what I said was lost, I fear. Probably, my fault. But the ideas are still amorphous in my own mind. I am thinking aloud. Having fun in my own humble, idle, laid back way, respected friends. But I think I understand the reason you took umbrage or whatever it is that one takes in these occasions [that umbrage partfrom P.G.Wodehouse, btw ;)] . Recently I had an argument with a guy who is quite nice, and free in many ways, very smart and well read but has all the arrogance and rigidity of youth. He looked down upon my supepokes :( . I wanted to ask him to lighten up. That was what years ago, one of my teachers told me. And I was the clown of the classroom too! I am not as learned as my young friend. But I guess my friends here are asking me to do the same . :) But I do see a contradiction here -- I am being blamed for not enjoying life as it is, and also for wasting time in "idle wondering"!



The second part of my note was a natural extention of my appreciation for the movie, "Before Sunrise". Not necessarily, just the movie, of course. Strangers who meet online. If they meet, and enjoy life, it will be just another relationship. What we see around us everyday. It will not have the "fictional reality" that a FB stranger-friend relationship has. That is what gives it the edge. I am not saying that this is the ideal, or even that this is the best. But this could be a new form of reality, of relationship. It could be one way of making the "golden Ideal' tangible, in an intangible way.