http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sp3fmAYbiO0
After watching this short clip, do others shape ourselves or are we free to create what we want from our minds? For instance, in House of Leaves many of the characters become alone or isolated. Is this isolation a cause an effect that ultimately leads to their twists on reality? Within the house, are their decisions and thoughts provoked by the hallway, stairwell, etc. that leads to the monster within.
-Josh K
“You don't have your own image. Too vague” reminds me of the idea of the author, who authors us, and what we as individuals have the ability to author. However, this also touches on the individual versus mass conformity topic we discussed in class when reading Mao II. “[Everyone's] existence is fading away” due to mass media influence and social expectations. Regardless if we want to accept it, our thought of being individual, or unique, is a lie. No one can truly be their own individual self as we are influenced by other people, objects and moments, and we influence others in the same way. How we imagine ourselves to be, and believe ourselves to be within society is learned. Everyone's image is learned “through seeing the shapes of others” and thus restricting our individuality by relying on those besides ourselves. We, as individuals, or supposed individuals, cannot “see [ourselves] unless there are others.” We attempt to make differentials of what separates us from one another, but it cannot ever completely be determined. Individuality is a part of mass conformity, or mass understanding, even if we believe the understanding is we are unique. As an individual, as a person, we can be unique in our conscious desires, but everyone's uniqueness is formed through surroundings that others can experience as well. “Because there are others, [we] can exist.”
ReplyDeleteI found the video interesting and entertaining Josh, and very true when applied to the concepts we have discussed in class.
The part of this video that got me thinking was the line(s): "My existence is fading away. Why? Because there is nobody but you."
ReplyDeleteI can't find the origin of this idea (in my mind where I heard it, or on the internet) but those lines bring me back to the idea of each person (each consciousness) as an individual universe. Because there is nothing that really interconnects about our perception of the world on a very basic level, we force ourselves to accept that we experience the same world, that you actually touch my arm when I see you do so. Which is where Jess' point comes in on the level of society, and also the question Josh asked in his original post: do others shape us? I think the answer is yes, because we let them (or possibly make them). I think Jess is right to bring up Mao II and say "No one can truly be their own individual self as we are influenced by other people...", but I also believe it's because we choose to be influenced. We choose to join the masses in conformity because, as the character in Josh's video is discovering, without anyone else there is complete freedom. This is a concept we cannot understand because we base every action, every thought, every moment off of the society we cling to and need to define ourselves by.
My question is, what if we decided we didn't need it anymore? Not in a "walking to the beat of my own drum", doing the same thing as everyone else but with different flavor way: in a complete and utter switch. If it can be accepted that we each perceive the world through our own eyes, ears and skin, (the information from which is then processed by our brains) why can't we choose to analyze the world's stimuli in an utterly different way than that which we've been taught? By this theory, I could walk on the ceiling if I chose to lose my faith in gravity.
This is also falls back to the self-help principle of "power of the mind." Example, if you have a positive outlook and believe you are going to feel better, you can stop being sick, whereas if you wallow in it and think this will never end...well, it will never end. The same idea is applied to career goals: if you believe you'll never be published, you never will. In that case, it's more because you won't try as hard as if you firmly believe you will be published, but the principle is intact. We just don't understand the minute workings of our bodies that can reverse sickness.
Blind studies are excellent examples of power of the mind: if I feed you a placebo and tell you it's a hallucinogen, you will likely hallucinate. All hallucinations are creations of our minds, but in this case they are specifically created out of your belief you have ingested some kind of toxin.
To bring all this back to postmodernism, there's the obvious correlation with everyone being a text to consider, as well as the death of the author as a singular entity. Everyone is a text that has been informed by the texts of everyone we interact with and base ourselves off of. Therefore, the author is just another such text of texts, writing a text that is authored by him but also by everyone who has authored him.
Chelsea