Dynamic Hypocrisy

Teenage pop stars are weird within our culture.

Disney has been churning them out every few years now. Being 30-ish now, I’ve lived through five-six-seven..ten generations now? I forget.

When I was in the key demographic, I remember the Britney/Justin/Aguilera generation. Followed by the Hillary Duff period. Miley followed. And then I starting losing track. 

What’s interesting though is our collective conflict to let them grow into adults.

We attach exuberance and innocence to these teenagers to the point that we don’t like it when they change. When they start to express sexuality.

Because they seem like our own children, and as parents–it’s hard to acknowledge their growth. 

So these teenagers are put into an awkward spot as humans popular within our collective. They are forced to disrupt our conception of them. Often forced to it drastically. Xtina, Miley, Bieber come to mind. They dramatically changed their demeanor, musical style, clothing, and perceived outings.

For at least a handful of news cycles, at least. Enough for the collective parent to scold, yell, and eventually relent. 

And only then do they re-emerge as something else entirely. Miley basically releasing soft pop single a while back. 

It’s a weirder dance within a weird circumstance that seems unnecessary on-paper, and yet this is what we’ve been doing to these teenagers/young adults for decades now.

We’re approaching an interesting Orwellian state where we volunteering a lot of data about ourselves. 

And our machinery is getting to a point where all of that data is becoming readable. Following reading will be comprehension of intent and meaning. 

At that juncture, we will have built a fascinating panopticon. 

A panopticon is an space devised by Jeremy Bentham. The notion being that all people within this space are visible, and yet are uncertain when others are watching them. And thus will regulate themselves as one does when being watched. 

So the retort would be to not participate in this data sharing. To remove yourself from the network.

But that reminds me of negative space in art.

Art students are taught about the space that surrounds an object of focus. So in a picture of a chair, the negative space is everything that isn’t representing the chair. 

I think about this when everyone is so highly engaged in the act of sharing. When there’s so much data, even when you don’t participate–you show up on the radar. Not by the data you share, but rather the space of where your data should be. 

If you end up in a photo that your friend at dinner takes, then there’s a negative space within your friend’s data. Or the cost of the postage stamp to send you a letter. Or the extra weight in their car when they took a road trip. 

These holes add together to form your shape. 

And that’s the exercise that we’re taught in art school. That you can draw chair by either drawing its seat, legs, and arms. 

Or you can draw a chair by drawing everything around the chair. 

One of the stickiest lessons I learned in college was about museums.

For paintings or sculptures or any object created, there was a person behind it with an intention or message. So they craft their object so it best conveys that message.

And at some point, a museum displays it.

But the thing that stuck with me was that a museum is also made by people.

That those people have their own intention and message, and they arrange objects accordingly.

Why is Monet next to a Van Gogh?

Why isn’t it by a different artist? Or in a different hallway? Or even selected at all?

There is a narrative that is being told by the spatial arrangement and explicit inclusion and exclusion of certain things.

That blew my mind back then, and something I hold dear to myself when evaluating a space.

One of my favorite existential horrors when waking up every day is “How much am I supposed to be doing?”

On the one hand, I haven’t done as much as Bill Gates or Oprah. I haven’t donated millions to charity. Maybe a fiver here-and-there at the museum.

While on the other, I’ve done a fair amount in life I suppose. I’ve been to more countries than, say, a rabbit. But am I more fulfilled or better than said rabbit?

How much is a rabbit supposed to do? Cure cancer? Or eat enough plants to run away from foxes? 

How many plants is Bill Gates supposed to eat?

I dunno, I’ll just stay in bed until someone tells me.

I suppose there has always been tiers of joke-tellers versus observational humorists. Nothing wrong with a good joke teller. But there’s something striking when a comedian hits a fundamental nerve. When they point out something that nobody had perceived in that way before.

George Carlin, Dave Chapelle, Louis CK tend bat higher at this. (Lots of others, but those come to mind.) And it’s a good time to have YouTube, and be able to go through the archives to hear their sets.

Something really special when they turn a mirror to our internal biases or blind spots, and go “have you ever looked at this?”

 

I’m not an efficient coder. I forget things. I make very simple mistakes. I google things constantly.

And yet if it’s something new, I can still get into a flow state. It’s neither fun or demoralizing, it simply is. I’m just coding. 

Now if I could only do that with exercise.

It’s weird to get feedback from a peer when you sense their framing is off. 

It feels like you asked a motorcycle expert to give their opinion on a car design. It could work out. But sometimes it’s seems like their statements are “Yeah I don’t know…have you thought about removing some wheels? I think there’s too many wheels.”

“But we’re making a car.”

“Yeah, I get that. But definitely too many wheels. Is even the steering mechanism…a wheel as well? I don’t know…”

 

I made it a goal this month to actively practice empathy, but I’m finding it difficult.

The daily trials of life is superbly distracting, and easy to be in my own head. Also, when you’re out of practice, it’s hard to see where you can practice it. 

It’s the first day of doing this, and I’m already a bit discouraged. But being active about it, and getting aware might be the more reasonable task at-hand.

I found one of my weaknesses with work.

It’s when it’s the tail-end of projects, and there’s cleanup to do.

All the tasks are so small, that they all seem unimportant.

So I end up not doing any of them. I sit there thinking that each one is so small that I could put it off until tomorrow. And I keep repeating until I realize I made a terrible situation for myself. 

I need to learn to take more deep breaths, and just dive in. Cleaning off the crumbs off the counter is part of the larger process of eating the sandwich. 

Moods are fickle, and ego is fragile. 

I get the worst hubris that my losses can be anticipated. And an ego that thinks it slip by quickly.

Both are terrible because it means I’m slow to start the recovery process. I think I can take a detour around the desert, only to learn that I have to deal with thirst regardless. 

It’s taking me a bit to realize my losses, and worst I’ve only started to process the thoughts. But have to start somewhere.