I’m musing this eve on narcissism and its colonization of western cultural values. I’m thinking about the whole on line proliferation of easy access to self promotion and its fracturing of the self.
Identity has become fluid, coursing thru the bits and bytes, spawning multi representations of moments along our own personal timelines, thru photoblogging, self confession, self expression…
… given unbelievable latitude and longitude..
( ha! think cock pics)
In the lifetime of the average blogger here, the majority between 30 and early 50’s..technology has created a world wherein we have become our own front page headline, our own press and paparazzi, capable of extending our virtual viral vibes into the eyes and minds of a multitude, our reach, global.
The scale boggles the mind, if we stop to think about it.
But given the intimate settings from which many of us write, our own dens, living rooms, bedrooms, ect, do many of us really STOP to think about it?
I think perhaps we have become more cynical and jaded as a result, more isolated in our social contact, if we define social time as time spent offline, face to face, flesh to flesh.
Many people spend their working hours in office cubicles or oout tof the home, and then their spare time surfing..
We have developed new skill sets to deal with cyber intimacy, whether it be friendships with those of like affinities, or
lovers….we have sharpened our abilities to write of self as object,as our lives as quasi fiction..magical realism genre..as ourselves as brands.
Are we narcissists as per the old definition? Consumed by self?
Or is that definition somehow wanting, is there some new take, that perhaps sees liberation and the good in the democratizing of free speech, the democratizing of business, the extension of potential and reach beyond narrowly defined geographical and financial boundaries?
I’m not knocking the web, I am all over it, but at what point is it all over me?
I have always spoke to collective social values.
We built a nation on it here in Canada..we tend to the collaborative rather than the competitive, this however is rapidly altering.
I myself, remain collaborative in approach, reclusive though I may be at times, and solicitious of my own privacy in ways that may not be readily visible.
I spoke to Lucifer of my thoughts on this, and he had some interesting points to make which continue to flesh out this bird’s eye view of the topic..
The net is perhaps not unlike the splitting of the atom, can be used for unimaginable good and evil..neutral in itself if you take a post modern approach. Have we become as mini gods, fallen headlong into our own ever elusive images to the detriment of our worlds, or have they exploded expotentially?
Cat
Lucifer:
This is not a new pattern that is emerging or has emerged, we're, an
intelligent race, have been broadcasting our selves long before Ben
Franklin printed a news paper. However started with Ben Franklin as an
official form of public media, not everyone had access to a press, nor
Franklin, to advertise their services, wares or offers, but as ingenuity
in humankind progressed the print form of media began to grow, and
provide access to those people who had something to sell, share or talk
about...including themselves.
The marketing of self is as old as history can record, there has always
been a hawker, yelling to sharpen your blade, or shoe your horse. Sign
makers were told what the sign should say about Mary the seamstress and
this has not changed no matter how we evolve, what has changed is that
technology allows more access for the same behaviors...and reaches more
people.
From the print media to the radio, from the radio to the television.
Television expanding as megahertz grew and communications grew, along
with the cheapening of costs to make these marvels of modern technology,
so it comes to pass that the oldest of gratuitous marketing behaviors
became more and more creative, more and more revealing and more and more
received.
The net is only the next step in this typical human pattern of sell,
sell, sell...and it isn't only capitalism, it is selling one's life for
the shear joy of being able to obtain attention, it is the selling of
ideas and beliefs but it is no different when Franklin started printing
the first Philadelphia Newspaper some 200 years ago, and the reality to
that is, we as a species have always found a way long before Franklin to
market what ever it is we had to say.
Is it all a genetically predisposed narcissisim? Not by definition, but
who doesn't enjoy some type of positive attention? We will evolve
further in technology, to a point where maybe we will no longer need to
leave our homes to attain physical gratification, just slip on the cyber
suit and get laid from translation of data. Maybe we will have the
replication devices that make food from atoms, like in Star Trek, there
is no telling what the future will bring, but to believe that the
internet has proliferated this behavior is a mistake...we have been
doing it since man scrawled on a cave wall...
*
Musings from Lucifer and the cat
Listening to William Orbit and Beth Orton’s Dice this morning, an oceanic remix, trance, it’s beautiful how it waves like the swell of a roller at sea.
What is it that is so compelling about the human face?
, attempted to take shots whenever and wherever I could find a modicum of privacy..think…a voice going ..what are you doing in the bathroom for so long?…
Fetish 
art, creativity, language, marketing of the self, poecatt, poetry, writing, zen acceptance
What’s in a label? whether sex, medical, gender, disability, an opening thought..
In On Art/writing/creativity, Philosophy..sociological commentary on May 22, 2009 at 6:23 pmI ‘ve been thinking about the politics of identity lately, and when I say identity I am referring to all the qualifiers that we adher to. Our political persuasions, our sexual affinities, our brand preferences and status symbols, our socio medical labels, and the roles we identify with…parent, son, wife of, ect..
What’s in a label? Foremost there is freedom and there is constraint. Labels are a signifier to ourselves and to others…a signifier that points to a set of expectations based on our assumptions and experience with the word itself.
We may labor under the constraints of a label, or we may take flight within the kernels of realities attached.
However as I type this I’m staring at an orange resting on its side that I just bladed in half. And it came to me..as the ramble jam that is often the way I muse is want to do..
that a label is like an unpeeled orange, you pick it up, you can see its external properties, you have an expectation of what it will taste like..
bladed in half though the interior reveals so much more orangatastik detail.
Fat pulpy segments, a wagon wheel, light and dark shadings, the seeded center, the promise of punch…
I tend to be label sensitive. I agree that they are necessary, and expedite time and expectations.
Tonight , tho, I am reflecting on the downside of labels, and our drive to nail down our human experience like a coffin, labels often serve the establishment, unless reappropriated by a subculture as its own,
and the most powerful drive in labeling is to establish norms..
and norms as we all know or we should are culturally and historically specific and serve the power of the status quo.
I’m not advocating anarchy or a silence epidemic..haha, but perhaps that is why I find some of my most truthful sentiments are expressed thru art and the poetic..the inside view of the orange..
“Who are you, who the fuck are You, you you..”
Take away your labels this evening. Just for a night. Without them are you naked? And is that freeing or frightening?
More to come on this topic..I’ve just begun. Someone shut me up, please..laughing…I am not speaking to D/s here..I am speaking to the power of language across all spheres of internal and social experience, how we come to “know’ ourselves..and represent that to the world around us..
my next post on this will be speaking to the facsism and freedom inherent in language..with a focus on disability semantics..
cat