intellectual properties

too much food for thought

Way back in the day, I belonged to a very rigorous political collective, which contained several Marxists. They policed everyone, as Marxists are wont to do, proclaiming themselves the keepers of Advanced Political Thought and Revolutionary Consciousness, also known as Class Consciousness. I actually bought this for awhile. I was young and stupid.

And then, I found out several of these people were rich kids. Kids of privilege. Kids who were basically slumming. I had been utterly fooled by the boho, hippie lifestyle, the fashionable thinness that I had mistaken for semi-starvation, and the gung-ho talk of overthrowing the bourgeoisie and the government. I had never met people OF the class they wanted to overthrow; it made no sense to me. I was stunned. And: Class consciousness? I asked them (during one of their interminable meetings), wasn’t it impossible for rich kids to have the proper class consciousness? Aren’t you irreparably tainted? After all, one of their heroes, Chairman Mao, thought so, and sent the grown children of the rich to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution.

Rather than answer me, they kicked me out of the collective for other manifestations of political incorrectness.

Why, you ask, is she telling us this?

Because it was one of the turning points of my life, the moment I Got It: The reason these people thought they could be the Best Marxists of Them All, was because they came from families who communicated to them from the time of their birth, that they were the best, always right, the people who should be in charge. Thus, when they entered the Left, they took charge of that too, not missing a beat. Of course they did. You didn’t really expect them to let poor or working class people lead them, didya? They know best, they are educated, they can quote Herbert Marcuse and Antonio Gramsci at you. They looked down on me, rather as rich kids had always looked down on me. Of course they did.

–from feminists on high horses, part 1 (via)

oh my.
there is a lot to think about there, without even getting into the rest of the post about feminism, particularly while i’m reflecting on some of the things brought up in the comments on this recent post about me being high-and-mighty in my anti-consumerist ways. i didn’t grow up a trustfund kid, and i’m not slumming it, but a lot of it probably still applies. i knew a lot of those kids in college (e.g. those who used summer break to follow Phish around Europe because they didn’t need to get a job), and i still do now, and yeah: it took me a while to realize that it’s easy to preach revolution when you’ve got a cushy pad to fall back on if the world crumbles.

i have recently been more aware of how my own personal wealth has affected my morality (aside: interesting article/video on morality and intention here). i have even considered that perhaps i make too much money for my own good. that i am staying with my job not because i really believe in the work or that it is the best use of my time and energy, but because leaving would almost inevitably mean a pay cut, and taking a paycut would mean giving up a lot of extra benefits that i have in my life now. things i didn’t have growing up. that if i left my job to work for a nonprofit or somesuch and took a paycut, maybe i would remember some of the things that i have been forgetting about being poor, and maybe i wouldn’t be so bold about making statements such as that the financial collapse might be good for us as a culture. but oh, then, how privileged it that, thinking that taking a paycut would be good for yourself morally?

once again:

“nothing is more bourgeois than being afraid to look bourgeois.”
-andy warhol.

good friends, good food, good life

jay planned a low-key evening for my birthday after work yesterday. i didn’t know where we were going or what we were doing or who was coming, so it was all a little mysterious, which was nice.

first, we went to madrone, one of my favorite bars in SF, as it also functions as a small art gallery and community space. they hold a lot of interesting social events, encourage people to hold meetings there, let you bring in your own food, and it has been a venue for a great number of our friends’ bands and we’ve even had a couple of fashion shows there. it’s small so can get really crowded on the weekend, but we got there for happy hour on a wednesday so it was empty and we had a few cheap and delicious drinks. they even have a really good non-alcoholic beverage menu.

then we went down the street to metro kathmandu (6 out of the 10 people in our party had been to kathmandu), where the food and wine was delicious and the ambiance perfect and the service good. i love nepali food!

then, we went to our dear friend whit’s house for some hottubing, including inebriated discussion about the current financial debacle. ah, the bourgeois: discussing politics whilst sitting naked in a hottub drinking champagne.

so while i didn’t find anything quirky or adventurous to do yesterday (no climbing mountains or jumping out of planes), it was a great evening and i fell asleep very grateful for my friends and my life, and especially for jay. i hear that part of growing older is learning to be happy with what you’ve got. i think i’m starting to get there.

SWPL: why is it funny?

thousands of people have linked to, laughed at, and discussed Stuff White People Like. enough to get the author(s) a book deal and lots of press. most people i know take it with about a pound of salt and just laugh. and i agree. if you can get past the hypocrisy and emptiness of modern life, it’s hella funny. white people - specifically middle class white people - are america’s favorite new joke. but is it really new? television sit-coms have focused on making fun of white people since TV started, and the dorkiness of white people has been a target of black comedians for decades. i think Weird Al started the current trend of focusing on this specific group of white people with his epic White and Nerdy, which lampooned everything from suburbia to wikipedia.

most of the critics of the site i know have pointed out the obvious - SWPL targets things that bourgeois white people like, and it’s really more about class than it is about race. there’s no mention of NASCAR or Kenny Chesney or monster trucks or even regular sports like the NFL. it’s about a niche culture that exists mostly only in the white upper middle class of large urban cities like SF and NYC. it completely misses the flyover states. do white readers in Oklahoma City think this site is funny, or do they wonder what the hell is being talked about?

is it somehow inappropriate to assume that ALL white people like this stuff? is it perpetuating a stereotype, or fostering alienation of those not in the upper white middle class? i don’t think so. this stereotype of the hybrid-driving-coffee-snob has been perpetuating itself, with jest, way before the Stuff site existed. see: the berkeley food pyramid, which has coffee, the #1 thing white people like, at the top. but what about the tone and approach? is it destructive to make fun of people for recycling - a habit that should be promoted, not joked about? if you’re going to make jabs at a subculture for being hypocrites, shouldn’t it be a bit more biting and a bit less “oh, those silly white people. look at all the stupid things they do” in order to make a constructive point?

honestly, i really don’t care to consider it that deeply, and while i am usually on the side that nothing is meaningless and everything has an impact, i’m sort of with the ‘get a sense of humor’ camp on this one when i hear people start to deconstruct whether this site is ‘funny’ or not. the site targets a niche culture in which i live, i get all of the references, i see the real world examples every time i go out to get lunch in berkeley, and that’s why i think it’s funny. sure, it’s trite and oversimplified, but isn’t that what makes the humor?

more broadly, why is that seeing someone else point out patterns in things that are mundane, average, and actually not that interesting so entertaining to us? Seinfeld made millions off the everyday quirks of human nature pre dot-com ; i have seen attempts to modernize his sort of humor but they all seem to unfortunately fall flat. i think XKCD is as close as we’ve got right now (of course given that i don’t have television i could definitely be missing something, but, for example, i find The Office to be completely not funny.)

recognition of commonalities in preferences and behavior is something that has always been interesting to humans and a foundation of all forms of literature and art for centuries. i think the expose of the ultra-mundane in modern life has become increasingly attractive to humans in this totally frantic and weirdly connected world in which everything seems to be compartmentalized and isolated. forms of media and art that narrow the niches into sharp focus are sort of a throwback to small town living, where knowing that you have almost everything in common with your neighbors is a comfort. for the (sub)urban dweller or Urban Tribes type, reading a site like SWPL is kind of like a gossip circle at a small town coffee shop - you can read and talk about everything everyone in your ‘community’ likes and dislikes and what they’re up to these days. SWPL isn’t pointing out anything i don’t already know, but yet i find it engaging because i relate, and it’s in a format i understand.

outside of the niche, i think the appeal comes from the plain overall oddness and uncontrollability of human nature perspective. from genetic engineering to performance enhancing steroids to birth control to mood-altering drugs to ecosystem changes, modern culture has been working hard to change, deny and subdue nature most vehemently since the industrial revolution. i think the more computerized we get, the more odd human nature and our cultures seem to be compared to the inorganic, rational, logical functioning systems we have artificially created. that was the point of the Spock character on Star Trek - as a comparison to point out how illogical humans are in their ways. the more homogenous and uniform we try to make the world, the weirder we seem by comparison. human nature is weird, and no matter how GAPified it might seem, people are doing weird things to themselves and to eachother all the time despite our best attempts at conformity.

however, there are certainly other categories of observational or cultural humor out there that i’m sure are really funny to other people, but because i don’t relate to them, they don’t make me laugh, so it’s not a surprise that SWPL doesn’t float everyone’s boat.

so, even if it’s not the smartest thing ever written and flawed in its narrow scope, the Stuff website is blatantly calling out things that people do that are so predictable, yet at the same time odd and miscalculated, and with a good enough sense of humor that it doesn’t feel totally derogatory. for the targeted demographic, because we see ourselves in it, it’s funny, even though it’s us that’s being made fun of. if you can’t laugh at yourself, what can you laugh at?

(thx to b2 for the conversation starter)

mountain escapism pt. 2

(this is related to part I: the yosemite trip report, but is separate enough in content to be its own post.)

“nothing is more bourgeois than being afraid to look bourgeois.”
-andy warhol.

comment in response to a long and very involved thread (see below) about some of the (sub)cultural issues in my little community. thread probably not interesting to much of the general public, but that quote is fabulous and pretty much dead on.

it also dovetails nicely from the recap of my weekend, as one of the things that was incredibly obvious, sitting on a patio of a campground where “tent cabins” are $100 a night in Yosemite valley, is that being “outdoorsy” is a hobby only afforded by the Affluent.

part of the reason we chose to do this trip now was not only because it was my birthday, because i’ve wanted to climb Half Dome for a while, and it was a less-crowded time to go to Yosemite, but also because jay and i needed to get the fuck out and spend a weekend doing something else, something outside, something away from internets and cities and parties and work and the world we live in most days.

the discussion that references the Warhol quote centers around cliquish behavior in this small community that is more or less based on fashion choices, some of which are only attainable with ample amounts of disposable income, and what that means or represents about the community’s values as a whole (valuing “hotness” over “goodness”, valuing doing something “artsy” over doing something “real”, etc.). this is, of course, a subject close to home for me, as someone who thinks a lot about what clothing means to our culture, it’s hard to get my head out of that specific thing and into what the greater issue is, because honestly: it’s not the fashion that the problem.

as my friend stephen pointed out, and with a lot of community comment, and as i have written before, particularly after burning man 2006, there is a lot of tension in my community (in simplest terms: the burning man community) as we all struggle against classism, white privilege, affluenza, and, i guess, one of the great weights of privilege, existential angst. i think this weighs heavily on all of us. what do we do with all this opportunity? all this time, all this money, all this freedom that we have as members of the American upper middle class, most of us without children? year after year it’s discussed in the burning man community: what is the best use of this context we were so lucky to have been born into?

while it is a privilege and a gift to be born into this and i’m sure many question “how can you worry about this when there is so much else to worry about in the world?”, as we’ve seen with many a celebrity who has lost it all via excess and has been culturally documented in hundreds of Great Gatsby/Less Than Zero type pieces of modern art and literature, wealth does not mean happiness, and often, it brings a great amount of stress and weight (which often also leads to apathy/ennui) to those who are conflicted about what to do with it. many a rich kid has gone down the path of excess to the point of no return, and many a person of disposable income in my community is severly conflicted about what to do with it. do you spend your hard earned dollars on hedonistic adventures like burning man, fancy clothing and travel because you deserve it? or should you be doing something else for the world, and if so, OMG - WHAT?

it’s a heavy question, and we then start to quibble and judge each other on the choices made in this context: judging those who choose to spend all this time and money on their own personal art and leisure (calling them vain and hedonistic) vs. spending it on, say, working for or developing a non-profit that services those outside of your own circle of artists/dancers/musicians. and then those who invest in art and leisure and not public service defend themselves with the (valid) argument that art is important to humanity and if it were not for art, life would be incredibly utilitarian and boring and so much beauty would be lost - and beauty does indeed have great value in this world.

these tensions start to show up in the sort of conversations that happened there - many pointed out, and on some levels i agree, that even HAVING such a lengthy discussion about such a subject as “the cool kids aren’t being nice to the not-as-cool kids on the dancefloor” is sort of silly on the surface, but stephen’s point was that the way we are treating each other within our community is symptomatic of how we treat those outside our community, outside our class, outside our culture, and that it is not good.

i’m gonna leave the discussion of that subject at that right now, but how this all ties back into our trip to yosemite is that when we were looking at photos of Half Dome earlier this summer, it looked like a frickin’ REI convention. everyone is dressed the same in the ubiquitous hiker uniform: khaki shorts, North Face fleece, hiking boots, sun hat….and often with lots of hiking-specific gear and gadgets attached to them. i realize that much of that is due to functionality, but does it have to be so predictable? isn’t there just as much of a wardrobe cult among the outdoor-gear heads as there is among the trustafarian peacocks? sitting in Yosemite Valley on Saturday afternoon watching the crowds of mostly white families herd through the campgrounds, i was hard pressed to find ANYONE who wasn’t wearing the Hiker Uniform and everyone looked Upper Middle Class. before we left, jay and i had repeatedly half-joked that we were going to wear some of our more outrageous but still entirely functional disco-camping gear to the top of half dome out of rebellion against this conformity and throw a little mini-rave when we got to the top. because the weather was so cold when we did the ascent, i wasn’t able to fully put on the outfit i had packed for that occasion, but was wearing my furry fleece hat and the bottom part of an outfit by Bad Unkl Sista. on the hike down that afternoon, i was able to wear more of a non-traditional hiking outfit, but due to wearing my backpack wasn’t able to fully buck the Hiker Uniform then either.

why so much resistance to this? why so much resistance to the “mainstream”? as i get older, as many other people can also attest, you get more and more pressure to “conform”. maintain a regular job. buy a house. get married. have kids. look normal. i guess i’m feeling that pressure more and more, not from any particular source, but just….from society…and the more i feel the pressure and am not conforming to it, the harder it is to make choices about things without feeling conflicted, especially when it ties back into this idea of the privilege/responsibility of my class. is spending our time,energy and money doing the things we’re doing just a juvenile sort of rebellion without any real impact on the real problems of the world, or is being part of a counterculture contributing to the world in a meaningful sort of way? (interesting side-link: The Rebel Sell: Why the culture can’t be jammed)

when i got back and read that quote by warhol it really struck me: is my fear of appearing to be one of the American Bourgeois - whether it’s the version that is the hikers on Half Dome or version that is the Feathered Hat Mafia at burning man - just a huge sign that i AM part of the bourgeois, and that brings so much weight i can’t deal? (this reminds me: after having a similar discussion to all of this at a campout with this subculture earlier this summer (Raindance), we had (jokingly) assigned two complementary essay topics to some of our campmates: Part I: “What is Real?” and Part II: “What’s Your Damage?”)

being out in the wilderness did nothing to resolve this for me, by the way, as i more or less opted not to think about anything much while i was out there except how beautiful it was. ah, the luxury of escapism. something else the white and privileged are really good at.

werk and maturity

remember the thing about G’rups, which determined that Gen X/Yers are refusing to grow up due to various changes in cultural expectations and influences? and then there was the conversation i had about how adolescent the club scene is, despite the majority of clubbers being well into adulthood, and THEN there was the article on memory that concluded “wasted youth” is no longer such a bad thing because regret is held onto long after indulgence guilt has long faded away in your mind.

so now there’s this: “…to so many peers I encounter, work is worse than a four-letter word: it is psychologically troubling, a squirming emotional sore spot they live in denial of and avoid discussing. With unsettling frequency, I find that my generation can only identify and embrace success if it stems from self-expression, to such an extent that people are numbing and abusing themselves through drink and drugs to suppress frustration and a crushing sense of failure for having a job.” — full (~via)

his theory is that the baby boomer generation was the last to have to work real hard for a living, and they were on the cusp of seeing that the World 2.0 was going to offer opportunities to NOT WORK - IF you were smart enough and had the right opportunities. formerly a privilige only for “old money” and royalty, now anyone who did the right things could work for themselves or not really work at all. think the rise of pyramid schemes and Amway in the 80s. they themselves were born a little to early to take advantage of this globalization benefit, and so from the time our generation was born, we were taught to believe that if you’re special enough and smart enough, you can find a way to get out of having a job. and, of course, all parents believe their children are special. so now that Gen X is nearing middle age, there’s this expectation that if you’re still working for The Man, you missed a turn or something. you should be working for yourself by now, either as a proprieter or an artist or by playing the stock market on the internet. working a 9-2-5 is for suckers!

in many ways, i agree. i just had a conversation the other day about how so many of our friends are self-employed, and how amazing it is. and inspiring. and, if you’re not one of them, a little depressing.

in addition to this theory of baby boomers rearing their children with these expectations, along with every American’s feeling of entitlement, i think there are definitely other factors in play in determining how the younger generations feel about working. for example, on NPR yesterday they were talking about Ford buying out over half their US workers in order to become profitable. like many blue collar union workers, these employees began working for Ford with the expectation that they’d be working there for 30 years, and then taken care of for the rest of their LIVES with big fat pensions. now, many of them, middle aged and with limited skills sets, are out of jobs and have to find new careers. my uncle worked for a factory in indiana for the past 20 some years and was recently forced into early retirement. now, despite a bad back, he’s painting houses to help pay the bills as his pension doesn’t cover his costs of living.

so, in yesteryear, going to work for The Man paid off. it meant a solid future. it meant healthcare and not having to worry about what to do when you got too old or sick to work. now, no one has that security anymore. US employers are outsourcing to asia and laying off people all the time. no one i know goes into a job thinking it’s going to be their lifelong gig. so why should we be expected to commit to working for corporations when really there’s not a whole lot of reason to anymore? why not see if you can work for yourself? if you can’t depend on a corporation to pay your pension when you’re old, why give them your youth?

so many of my friends are making their living as independent photographers, clothiers, web designers, hoopers, jewelers, massage therapists, writers, and all other kinds of trades. while i agree with a lot of what mr. ott wrote on his blog there about a shift in how we view work, and perhaps i also agree somewhat with why, i have to disagree that it’s taking the easy way out or some kind of spoiled-brat, trust-fund, bobo privilege. most of my friends work their asses off, and while i technically work for someone else, i help to run a small business, and it’s no easy feat keeping it afloat. i have to disagree with his statement that says “Ultimately, our parents’ drive to deliver a better childhood is proving a mistake, if a well-intentioned one. We are a generation embarrassed to have day jobs, embarrassed to work for a living. Embarrassed not to be kings and queens.” i think it’s just the opposite. seeing all the long years our parents and grandparents put in at factories and offices and in fields so that one day we could work less than 40 hours a week for a living, and then seeing how that turned out for them has made us realize it’s not worth it. it’s not that we are “embarassed to work for a living”. we’re embarassed to work for companies and employers that don’t care about us, that don’t care about our futures. instead, we’re taking that into our own hands, and to me, that seems pretty damned grown up.

V

back to V for Vendetta for a moment. (WARNING: spoilers.)

editorial note: i’ve been trying to finish this in a well-written manner for over a week, and it’s so complicated and i keep bringing more things into it that i just can’t. it’s one of those topics that makes me feel really inadequate as a writer and a thinker, and i’m not very happy with how it’s shaping up. i definitely don’t know as much on these topics of war and history and politics and socio-anthropological studies as i could, and that many experts have written and debated about this already endlessly. i realize i’m not writing anything new here but organizing my own thoughts, so i’m just going to finish it half-assed and put it out here for discussion, knowing it’s not well developed, and mostly because i think orange’s thoughtful post deserves a response.

i’m generally not an action movie kind of girl. i don’t get turned on by watching things explode or having my pulse race out of artificial excitement. i’m not into villians and heros, storybook endings or dramatic reinterpretations of historical events. i have very little suspension of disbelief, and often find myself verbalizing thoughts like “that is so ridiculously impossible” and annoying my fellow movie-watchers. so why did i rent V for Vendetta, especially after hating on natalie portman earlier this year when the film came out for her bourgeois intellectualism? because orange told me it was good and thought-provoking, and that it’s more of a dystopian story than an action flick and i’m into dystopia.

while i did enjoy most of the film the first time, i think it was probably due to the fact that i haven’t really WATCHED a movie or much television in 6 months, so i was just enjoying the experience. when i watched it again, it wasn’t quite so good. as for the film itself and all of the political interpretations and commentary that have been written since, i have a few things to say. and no, i haven’t read the illustrated book, and yes, i do realize that the filmmakers took some liberties with the text, particularly with Portman’s character, because i watched the DVD extras that enumerated the differences.

first, the film: sadly, your average action-adventure-flick rating, and certainly not what i would call any kind of masterpiece. however, as i said, i did enjoy it, particularly the part where she discovers that he is the one behind her torture to see if she’d break. i found her backstory a bit contrived, but other than that i was with it up to a certain point.

and that point is when she kissed him.

Continue reading »

g’rups

Up with Grups

“This is an obituary for the generation gap. It is a story about 40-year-old men and women who look, talk, act, and dress like people who are 22 years old. It’s not about a fad but about a phenomenon that looks to be permanent. It’s about the hedge-fund guy in Park Slope with the chunky square glasses, brown rock T-shirt, slight paunch, expensive jeans, Puma sneakers, and shoulder-slung messenger bag, with two kids squirming over his lap like itchy chimps at the Tea Lounge on Sunday morning. It’s about the mom in the low-slung Sevens and ankle boots and vaguely Berlin-art-scene blouse with the $800 stroller and the TV-screen-size Olsen-twins sunglasses perched on her head walking through Bryant Park listening to Death Cab for Cutie on her Nano….”

~via mighty.girl, who is irked by the article.

i found this article interesting because i’ve recently come into a place where i go into Old Navy not to buy anything (ohhellno), but to see what NOT to wear. i don’t actually WANT to appear as though i’m trying to look 17, or even 21, but how does one dress fashionably, or SHOP fashionably, without looking like a Gen Xer trying too hard? my recent answer to this question has been to start making my own clothes, or buying clothes that my friends make. “off the shelf” looks are so… off the shelf.

and it’s not just clothes - i completely refuse to walk around with those white iPod buds hanging out of my ears, and if you ever see me with clothing with an obvious label/brand on them, i’ll be embarassed. i’m not into looking like a young mallrat. however, according to the article, lots of other “yipsters” are, and those old conventions about “how to dress in your 30s” (as opposed to how you’re allowed to dress in your 20s), are out the window, and it’s causing confusion amongst those who like to think of humans in terms of their age, not to mention marketers and advertisers.

the article is long and goes on and on about all the various trends aka status symbols that 30-something yipsters/yindies/grups are into these days that were designed for teens&20s, so if you’re one of them who notices you and the 14 year old girl at the bus stop are wearing the same sweater from H&M, it’s of mild interest. the article also references the exactitudes project and how everyone trying to be “alternative” still ends up looking the same, which i blogged about … what? 3 years ago?

anyway, there’s a point in the article somewhere, although it’s hard to find, about generation gaps and expectations and all that….i think it’s a great thing that people in their 30s are no longer feeling forced to look/act/smell/eat/think/taste like a “grown up”. if you ask me, it’s how rock and roll has saved the world from becoming full of suburban robots. or …wait…. do they just dress differently now? i can’t tell.

irrisistable

on the topic of “individuality” being a myth, and in particular what seems to be a forced attempt at individuality in places like northern california, where “alternative” lifestyles are celebrated, but on a wide scale:

i’m going to steal this from IP for a moment:

i do not think that those who are trying to be “individual” are trying to do so in order to distinguish themselves. each of us individual by nature, no matter how we might appear on the outside, and we all know that. what we wear, who we hang around with, what we buy or drive or eat is all a PART of who we are and a rough representation of our inner personality.

we all have to make choices about what to wear and what to eat and where to work and where to live- we HAVE to, otherwise we die. so given that there is a finite set of those things to choose from, then yes, no one is a complete individual as far as their lifestyle and logistical choices go. those who try to achieve outward individuality get disappointed quickly.

but on the inside …you don’t believe we are all unique? and don’t we all know that?

when i go back “home” to northern michigan, i stick out like a big pink thumb, as jay once put it. here i find people who are into the same things i always have been - it didn’t just “adopt” a liking for performance art and dancing and nature and music and philosophy and alternative lifestyles when i moved to northern california.

i was also thinking, however, that part of the reason i think northern californians get so targeted for their behavior, as opposed to say, people who live in Boulder, which is just as much a hippie commune as berkeley if not more, is that perhaps there is some serious bipolarity to our culture. i say perhaps because i know many NorCal types who live as they speak - in the santa cruz mountains with compost toilet, diesel-driving bus types. but for most living in the city, when it comes down to the numbers, a good chunk of “us” are yuppies.

young. urban. professionals.

who buy expensive food and expensive coffee and expensive clothing, fair traded and organic, but still 25-50% more than what the average joe pays at Safeway or JC Penney. so to make up for it - our indulgent lifestyles, however you spend your money - we overcompensate by spiritually slumming it, building sod houses and driving biodiesel Mercedes, buying hemp Adidas instead of regular, giving money to local artists instead of Disney. The Bohemian Bourgeois.

again, i say that this of course does not apply to everyone - some people amazingly, through a lot of grace and effort, live perfectly aligned with their stated beliefs - but i know it does me.

what does this have to do with individuality? i think human nature downright prevents it. we are creatures of both habit and herd, and our lifestyle choices are confined to those instincts. what’s truly unfortunate is that our instincts apparently don’t prevent us from mimicking bad behaviour.

If you ever get close to a human
And human behaviour
You’d better be ready to get confused

There’s no map
And a compass
Wouldn’t help at all
~bjørk