Wednesday, January 04, 2006
Identity Crisis
I was thinking about this while I was home over break. Teenagers are constantly re-inventing themselves, trying on different personas. Well at least some teenagers -- others just copy their friends. These people are called 95% of the world. Most people get over this stage, accept that they are uninteresting, and move on.
ANYWAY, I was thinking about how so much of how a person thinks of his or herself is in the form of the negative. Negative not in the sense of having a poor self image, but in terms of what what you are not.
A good example is if you ask somebody what kinds of music they like -- this is basically a lazy way of the questioner putting the subject into a group. Most people will give some bullshit lazy answer that they think the questioner wants to hear. Then, at the end, usually, comes the best part, "everything but ____." In this neck of the woods, the blank is usually country.
By quarantining that hee-haw shitkicker music, the subject is saying a lot if things about himself. It's a shorthand way for defining yourself in the negative by telling the questioner what I am not.
People find it a lot easier to say what they are not rather than have define what they are. And sometimes the negative quality can get pretty abstract.
Red-stater? What does that mean? A plateful of blind patriotism with an aftertaste of homophobia, racism on the side? Don't get me wrong, I hate those backwards bastards too, but come on. Blue-stater? Those people read the New York Times, right? So what if they wet the bed long into adulthood and enjoy the one movie Woody Allen has made 50 times? (Yes, all of his movies are exactly the same.)
I'm wary of people who "hate" a certain politician who must not be named. Why? Do you know him? Hate is a pretty strong word. Are you trying to tell me what you think I want to hear? What your friends want to hear? Grow a brain and some courage and form a genuine opinion for fuck's sake.
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ANYWAY, I was thinking about how so much of how a person thinks of his or herself is in the form of the negative. Negative not in the sense of having a poor self image, but in terms of what what you are not.
A good example is if you ask somebody what kinds of music they like -- this is basically a lazy way of the questioner putting the subject into a group. Most people will give some bullshit lazy answer that they think the questioner wants to hear. Then, at the end, usually, comes the best part, "everything but ____." In this neck of the woods, the blank is usually country.
By quarantining that hee-haw shitkicker music, the subject is saying a lot if things about himself. It's a shorthand way for defining yourself in the negative by telling the questioner what I am not.
People find it a lot easier to say what they are not rather than have define what they are. And sometimes the negative quality can get pretty abstract.
Red-stater? What does that mean? A plateful of blind patriotism with an aftertaste of homophobia, racism on the side? Don't get me wrong, I hate those backwards bastards too, but come on. Blue-stater? Those people read the New York Times, right? So what if they wet the bed long into adulthood and enjoy the one movie Woody Allen has made 50 times? (Yes, all of his movies are exactly the same.)
I'm wary of people who "hate" a certain politician who must not be named. Why? Do you know him? Hate is a pretty strong word. Are you trying to tell me what you think I want to hear? What your friends want to hear? Grow a brain and some courage and form a genuine opinion for fuck's sake.
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