How Bad Are Things? Why Do You Care?

One of the  challenges of being young: it's impossible to have a sense of perspective.

Things seem very bad in our country and around the world today. Millions are starving in Somalia.  We are entering the 6th mass extinction event of species on earth. The most recent recession has put millions of people around the world out of work or in jobs that are below their education and skill level. Natural Disasters continue to wreak havoc on ill prepared states.

Closer to home, we are dependent on fossil fuels for our everyday life and yet know that they will eventually run out. Cities around our country sit mostly empty or neglected, vestiges of a manufacturing economy and a manufactured real estate boom that is long gone and will probably never come back. In culture, our most lofty aspirations are limited to becoming rich or being famous, preferably both. Being beautiful is another important goal. Children and adults are being pumped with psychiatric drugs at astounding rates as the incidents of mental illness continue to rise. The bewilderment and loss felt in the face of unemployment, debt and foreclosure plays out in vitriolic terms in our political sphere, where the public has completely lost all faith in its 'representation'.

But at 24, my worldly consciousness is just a baby. Are things worse now than they were ten years ago? Twenty? Are we headed towards imminent doom or have we always been, and I've just started paying attention?

I've asked these questions with more than a few of my friends over the past months. It's hard to answer. You can look to history for help, but it can only go so far. You can know the facts of what life was like then, but can you really know the feelings? Did people feel the same amount, same quality of uncertainty we do today, or was it of a totally different nature?

I'm not going to try and answer it. Mostly, I'm interested in why people ask. If we could definitively answer yes, things are much worse now than they have ever been, what would that change? What would you do differently?

I suppose everyone has different answers. I did believe for a while that the world was sinking, currently and rapidly, and because of this I must forgo any 'normal' course of life and seek the revolution where ever it is formed. I felt like things were going to happen, and I had to be a part of them. It was a motivating urgency--but it was also alienating. After all, if an individual didn't happen to share my conviction that the world was going to end, and soon, then why would they join me?

Now, I don't think that whether things are particularly worse or better at a given moment in the outside world should effect what you do with your own self. I've come to think that people ask this because there's something in them that they feel is wrong, not outside. The events of the outside world have to have a certain independence from what you believe is right for your individual life. This is the only way we can shield ourselves from being the Nazi sympathizers in Germany, slave owners in North Carolina, segregationists in Alabama.

My boyfriend and I have recently decided that we'd like to live off the land in the most sustainable way possible (a term that will only acquire its definition through experience). Of course this type of homesteading is most certainly a trend. It seems to be in direct response to the ambient, enveloping consumerism of the dominant culture and acute disconnection from nature and the tasks that comprise staying alive.

But it is also timeless. A way that people have lived for hundreds of years. While I believe that the world would be better off if everyone lived more sustainably, I can't deny that perhaps one day they'll invent a way of collecting solar energy that is as cheap and efficient as oil. I have to live the way I want to live for myself, not as a statement, not as a demand, not in service to an image.

So if you find yourself asking, are things worse now than they used to be?, maybe you can ask instead, if they are, what would difference would it make to me?

I AM A PROUD HIPSTER

...but hipsters seem to be on their way out. I first came to the realization after a 2 hour long gaze at LATFH (look at that fucking hipster) back in September. Because being a hipster has now become identifiable, being a hipster is against the hipster ethos. Those who are desperate to establish an identity that lies outside of the mainstream are going to have to turn somewhere else. So, then, where are the hipsters going to go? What's coming up next? I guess I want to make a suggestion. It might take me a minute to get there but bear with me.

I recently watched a documentary series that was broadcasted by the BBC called "Century of Self". If you've ever wanted to understand the 20th century through the lens of the psychological theories that dominated the times and its connection to consumerism, capitalism and democracy, this is the documentary for you. It's amazing. In Century of Self, the writer/director Adam Curtis explains how the beatnik/hippie desire for free internal self-expression became fulfilled by corporations and consumerism. The ego was coaxed away from the individuals duty to society and into the idea that the individual duty is to be oneself, Jerry Rubin perhaps being the best example. It is through marketing and the relentless engine of capitalism that we have become an individualistic society of sub-cultures, a vast array of lifestyles that we can choose from to express ourselves, buy the goods for, and be accepted by, all by a click of a button (as long as we are signed up for 1-click shopping on Amazon.com).

Of course, these 'choices' are empty once they have been externally produced and marketed to us. After all, corporations do not accept us for who we are in ourselves. Instead advertising must insist that there is something wrong with who we are, something missing, something that will only be restored by whatever product they are peddling. Marketing preys on our insecurities, and it is only through the perpetuation of our insecurities that the overconsumption necessary to maintain our economy can exist. Seen in this light, the hipster is something of an implosion of consumerism. The successful hipster is a viral insecurity creating machine, perhaps their most unifying attribute being their ability to disdain, disapprove, dismiss and anyone around them that has not been able to appropriately signify their individualism. As such, they perpetuate feelings of insecurity that fuel consumerist behavior, while at the same time condemning the conformist tendencies of any consumerist society. So, on one hand, hipster-dom is a corporations wet dream: the consumer who is constantly and ferociously determined to find and purchase the goods that will define them to others as themselves--no matter how obscure or useless that good is. On the other, their commitment to individuality and free expression are values with teeth, and hearkens back to the legacy of other powerful, anti-materialist social movements throughout history.

This is only the way to define the hipster in economic terms--hardly the only way to look at it. Another, perhaps more important lens is that of the hipster psychology. A primary attribute of hipsters is their pervasive lack of definition, and refusal to associate with their obvious group. An aspiring hipster at times myself, I know that hipsters like it that way. They joined the movement so that they would not be a member of any movement. Groups lead to conformity, a fakeness and inauthenticity that is inherently uncool. They wanted to be hipsters to show everyone else around them that they could be exactly themselves, with no affiliation to any particular group. And so, their movement has no advocates. I admire and emulate in a lot of ways individualism that is attempted through the hipster ethos. Through them, anything can be 'cool': homosexuals, sexual experimenters, the hula hoopers, the crisp organic farmers from Vermont, the biracial, the broken family, the anti-social, the trendy, the OCD, the depressed, the drug addicted, the intellectuals, the country bumpkins, the obscure, the old, the very very young. The voracious pace at which music, books, art, clubs, bars, restaurants, themes, trends, travel destinations, charities, objects and clothes are discovered and then discarded as they are popularized demonstrates the desperation to create an individual identity. I think think this goal is worthy. Unfortunately, any successful expression of individuality becomes eclipsed once the society identifies such a person as 'cool'. Then, the individual expression becomes motivated by societal acceptance, which is where, I think, the hipster was born.

And so, my prayer for the progression of hipsterdom: that individuals will decide to be themselves for themselves, not for the group. That hipsters will believe in themselves as the powerful arbiters of cultural, societal and political change that they could be, if only they stopped caring whether it was cool or not. That it will do away with irony in order to better achieve what I think was its broader goal: free self-expression and individualism. That it won't succumb to the quick fixes that consumerist culture provide to be accepted, but instead be committed to the difficult, frightening and staggering work of trying to be precisely who you are in a society full of messages and opinions and demands explaining how you should be.

In the "new" hipsters search for individual expression, they should not dismiss or disdain others, but embrace them. For, the more you learn to embrace other's differences in a non judgmental way, the easier it is for you to embrace yourself. Cool could actually become a dirty word, meaning someone who was too concerned with other's acceptance of them to worry about what they actually cared about.

I hope there is some way for this to be a non-ironic goal. After all, it does not take much looking around to realize that our earth is increasingly and increasingly getting fucked up. That's certainly not ironic, it's reality. But I also firmly believe that individuals united in a movement can be arbiters for a new order, and be catalysts for real change. And personally, I believe that movement already exists, in hipster-ness. It just needs a little self-confidence, a big lack of irony, and the courage to stand up for what it believes in, no matter if its cool or not. I also think Lady Gaga is the leader of this movement, and a leading proponent of its philosophy. But that's for a different post :).

The United States Social Forum

Last week I attended the United States Social Forum, which was a week long summit of 15,000 progressive individuals from around our country and around the world. 'Progressive' in the broadest sense possible: the term as appropriated by many who associate with the democratic party was not intended, rather individuals who are committed, in some substantial way, to social/political/economic change.

It was inspiring to say the least. One of the first shockers was the absolute diversity of participants. I have never been in a group of individuals with such diversity of interests, socio-economic class, hometowns, ages, skills, educational background, ethnic background and political opinion (besides general 'left'). In one workshop, I sat and listened to representatives from the Nigerian River Delta decry the exploitation of their environment. In a discussion afterwards, a middle aged Colombian woman argued with an older white sociologist from the University of Kansas who had been researching the relationship between native governments and the World Bank. A young gay rights activist from California mediated as me and a girl from Eunice, LA tried to make the connection between Nigeria and BP spill. In another, where an extremely passionate man from Move To Amend explained that a law that is 'legally' instituted that gives corporations the same rights as people contradicts democracy and is thus illegal by nature. An 80-year-old man, clearly hard of hearing, raised his hand to say, "Thanks so much for telling me about this issue! I had no idea there were people out there trying to amend the constitution". An 80 year old discovering new causes, new ways to look at the problems at hand and figure out one's place? To say inspiring hardly does it justice.

As the conference went on, the energy among the participants was palpable. Everyone there was doing something, wanting something, imagining something, pleading, arguing, debating, listening, participating, rejecting. It's not to say that everyone was doing the right thing, but just to have so many people fully engaged with this whirlwind of life: it demanded that you consider your role. Where do I fit into this society where this person is oppressed, that person is suffering, exploitation is here and here and here, communities are falling apart, individuals are fighting for their rights, artists are putting their images to the cause, photographers, dancers, puppeteers? Most people there, I would say, were already set into their cause/purpose, had been fighting the good fight for something for a while already, so it's not to say that everyone was having this experience. But I do think that even for those deeply entrenched in their cause the sheer variety and conviction of participants in a variety of causes would make anyone stop and think for a second: why my cause, now? Why not something else? How can we collaborate? In what ways are we fighting the same fight?

I kept thinking over and over about some talk that I thought was glaringly missing from the discourse: what about all of those upper to middle class Americans who are not overtly complicit in oppression or destruction or exploitation and yet do nothing to fight against it in their societies? There is a common parlance among these activists about 'waking up', realizing the contradictions within ones society and becoming increasingly willing to do something about them. But where was all the discussion about how to get everyone else to wake up, about what to do with the overwhelming sense of helplessness, pointlessness and eventual apathy that can result from a full investigation to how truly wretched so many aspects of our world actually are?

Being interested in psychology, and someone who in many ways has just recently 'woken up', and in many ways is not fully awake yet, I thought about this a lot. I think I'll write about this more as time goes on, but like so many things, the questions have lead me back to myself. I must do what I am meant to do. I must fight, and fight hard, against the constant bombardment of messages, images, expectations, second-guessing and fear that I have within myself that prevents me from being myself. Until I have made progress in this fight, all my external battles will be for naught. As was a quote by Archbishop Oscar Romero in one of the official USSF t-shirts sold by Liberation Ink,

"We cannot do everything,
and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something,
and to do it very well"

Why I Gave My Coat to Death Bear

So, there is more downtime on my job then I thought there'd be. Good. As a lot of you know, I invited Death Bear over to my sister's house a couple of weeks ago as a way to part with the Northeast before I made my move to the south.

As we were searching for parties to go to that night, we came across Death Bear's number. In one sense, Death Bear is a performance artist. His concept is to dress up in a ridiculous outfit, come to your house and take things away for you to put into his 'cave', where you will never see them again. Once he takes these things, he says, they will be gone forever. My friend Olivia suggested that I give him my winter coat, since I was going to New Orleans and wouldn't need it anymore. My instant reaction was complete resistance, how utterly ridiculous it would be to give away my coat, so I realized that I had to give my coat away.

A note on this coat. For one thing, I really loved it. I had gotten it 2 months earlier at a thrift store in North Philly, and as soon as I saw it I knew I had to have it immediately.

It was that rare winter coat that was both stylish and incredibly warm, who's previous owner, Diane Sague, had written her name inside the pocket. To me, the coat was a symbol of my integration with north: after a 4 year struggle with winter, I had found a coat that was both functional and stylish, and all winter long, when I had it on, I was comfortable in my environment.

So why give it away? Well, for one, since I valued it highly, I thought giving it away would give my experience with Death Bear more weight. Plus, without a winter coat that I liked so much, my incentive to return to the Northeast would be a lot lower, my exit more final. The truth is, my arrival in the northeast was fueled mostly by my own geographic insecurity: growing up in New Orleans, no matter how much I loved it, I felt that if I wanted to do something important or interesting in the world I had to get out of the South and go to the Northeast. This myth was a very difficult one for me to shake, as both Northeners and Southeners perpetuate it.

When I was a kid, my teachers pushed me to leave the south to get an 'real' education, and while adults lamented that 'all the good students go away', they seemed to accept its inevitability. Once my sister left for college and spent time in New York, she would return laughing at the Times-Picayune's living section, as articles on 'trendy' Yoga seemed hilariously outdated. Clearly, New Orleans was not where it was going on. I needed to get out if I wanted to get anywhere.

Once I arrived in Connecticut, this continued. My classmates assumed I was racist before I even finished a sentence that had the words 'black people' in it, and they lectured me on the absolute stupidity of anyone on the right, especially those in the South, who at the time were running our country. People would constantly ask, "Oh, why don't you have an accent?", meaning, usually, "Oh, you're southern? Why couldn't I immediately tell you were an idiot?".

With all the attention New Orleans got from Katrina, New Orleans became a unique or interesting place to be in the eyes of the nation, but it was my renewed snobbiness after 4 years in the north that kept me from returning immediately after I graduated---yea, New Orleans was a good place to stop by for a bit but it still wasn't a place where 'real' things were going on. So, at the time when I gave my coat to DeathBear, I thought these were the reasons. I was shedding this insecurity that I had, and feeling confident that New Orleans is a place where I can do interesting things.

But I've come to realize that giving up the coat was more complicated than that. I think being in the Northeast, at an ivy league college, had given me a confidence I needed to shed. It gave me a false sense of self-importance that could only be sustained by staying in that general area, where the Ivy league is most revered. It's always difficult to let go of the one that rejects you, and the Northeast, New York and Yale in particular, is filled with opportunities to feel less-than. People are almost completely segregated by money, education, ambition, sub-culture affiliation, and ideology, and these gates are very difficult to pierce. Luckily, being from an Ivy League college and having friends and relatives who were successful in New York made it easy for me to feel cool when I visited. And there's nothing quite like feeling cool in 'the City'. And there was nothing that I owned, right then, that made me feel cooler than my coat.

And so I decided to give it to Death Bear, and all that came with it. I think I'm going to save what happened when Death Bear came for another post. But I think it's funny to point out here that even calling Death Bear was something that I did, in some ways, to seem cool. So it was paradoxical in that sense, but the experience was so realistic that it transcended my baser motives for it. And now, I see that shedding the coat really represented shedding the external structures I had constructed to ensure me that I was cool, accepted, alright.

Of course my impressions of the Northeast that I expressed above were in some ways just manifestations of my own insecurities. But I do think the North's cultural emphasis on ambition, status, and class and the inherent competition based on the increased population make it a uniquely difficult place for an insecure person. Now, being back in New Orleans, I still feel hampered at times by the biases and snobberies that have blocked me from seeing past the arbitrary social measures of college attended, future plans, etc., to determine value. But I'm getting better at judging for myself, and it feels quite good.

Starting a Re-Education

Almost three weeks ago, I quit my job. It was very hard for me. For, I had grown very used to do doing things that didn’t really feel right to me, because they were ‘good in the long run’, or I believed that ‘you have to work hard/do things you don’t want to do in order to get the things you actually want’. I think this lesson starts in elementary school. Children are born with the desire to learn who they are. But school does not foster this exploration. Instead, school creates an environment where children learn the set of expectations society is going to have for them because of the categories they happen to fall in—in other words, who they are suppose to be. Kids are often being told to ‘grow up’. But this does not mean, learn to focus on what you feel most passionate about. To grow up, in our society, means to start sacrificing the things you like to do in order to work hard on things the society values. Eventually, children lose track of what they care about and start to fully buy into the dreams that our culture makes for them. When we come across people who are happy and enjoying their lives, we judge them as immature and unsuccessful, because we believe that only through sacrifice and struggle will we succeed. We reward those who have sacrificed their existences for work with high salaries, and punish those who chose self-expression as their career with labels of lazy or self-promoting.

I’ve been in school for the past 17 years, and was always an extremely dutiful student. This sense of duty got me to Yale University, where the conviction that one needs to basically suffer in order to become successful was stronger than any other environment I’ve ever been in. Students there would take enormous pride in the sheer amount of work they did, bragging over how many hours spent in the library, how many days they’d gone without sleep, how many pages they had written out of sheer willpower, and how impossible, because of their enormous time constraints, it was for them to enjoy the little things in life. In my freshman year, I took up knitting. One Saturday afternoon, as I sat knitting on the couch, a roommate of mine walked in, clasped her hands and sighed, “Oh Kezia! It’s so nice that you have time to knit”. The sad thing is, she didn’t mean to sound like a condescending bitch. She really thought it was amazing that anyone in this school that she could respect could possibly have a spare moment on a Saturday afternoon to knit a scarf. At the time, I was mortified, and I never knit again. It seemed to me that if I was going to be at Yale I needed to be taken seriously, so I could waste time with pointless hobbies like that.

When people would ask me what I thought about Yale, I would always say “it’s intense”. I knew I was miserable there, but I did not have the courage to reject the environment because Yale is one of the most respected universities in our country. Thousands of children every year put their sights on coming to Ivy League colleges and I felt that it was ungrateful, weak and pathetic of me to want to leave there just because the place didn’t make me feel good. Of course this place doesn’t make you feel good, I thought. This is what it takes to be important and successful in life! If you can’t cut it, it’s your problem!

And so, when I started my job in September, it’s not surprising that I had a similar attitude. When I thought of quitting because I wasn’t connecting with my work, I again felt shameful and weak, as I had when I considered transferring from Yale. My peers confirmed this, as some reminded me that we all have to do things we don’t like in order to ‘become adults’ and be successful. Now, I no longer think that this is true.

I’m not saying that in life one will never have to do something that they do not want to. Learning to understand and accept others desires as you do your own is an essential aspect of growing up. I do think, though, that when you feel passionate about something, the work you must complete to achieve your goal that could at first appear monotonous or unpleasant becomes easy and enjoyable. I don’t think it should just be accepted that most of the time you will not want to do you work, or you won’t enjoy it. Instead, I think that if you are dreading your work then you should take that feeling as a signal that you aren’t doing the right thing. Becoming an adult, for me, is no longer going to be about learning to ‘suck it up’ or ‘bite the bullet’ or ‘be realistic’. Instead, I’m going to put all my efforts into learning, as well as I can, who I am and what I care about most. And I hope, through this education, I can more successfully choose a new job.

Why Is Privacy Important?

I don't know if I've ever seen an article be so popular on nytimes.com: "The 3 Facebook Settings Every User Should Check Now" sits pretty at #7 most emailed, and it was published almost two weeks ago. Clearly there are thousands upon thousands of people who are highly concerned about their privacy on the internet.

I'm not immune to this--I've set all of my Facebook controls to "only friends". But, like a lot of things, when I try to determine exactly why I want to keep my facebook private, it's hard to come up with reasons that make a lot of sense. Mainly, it's because I get a feeling I can only describe as the 'jeebies' about anyone who wants to look at all the shit I post on my profile.

Here's what pops up off the top of my head: 1. Identity theft, as best evidenced by the citi bank identity theft commercials 2. Stalkers, as in people sending you annoying messages or worse coming to your house and 3. Companies using the information to market products to you 4. Bosses, as in your future/current employer rejecting/firing you for incriminating evidence found and 5. The "Jeebies" I mentioned above

Upon closer inspection, these reasons don't really stand up. 1. From what I can understand about identity theft, thieves need your SS number or some other official private data to really succeed, if all it took was your name/address/phone number, identity thieves could just use the phone book. 2. Fear of stalkers is maybe a bit more legit, especially if you are really hot or something, but I think it's safe to say that the risk of acquiring a truly dangerous stalker (this is stranger stalkers I'm talking about) is pretty freakin' low, and having a public facebook profile and being out in public are probably the same amount of risk. 3. As for companies, having more directed advertising...well...how is it so different from the aimless advertising we have now? Granted the advertising might be more annoying, but probably just because it will be more persuasive. But I think it's mostly your job to try to combat the messages corporations send you about what you want (not that it's easy..). 4.As for bosses, this is a toughie. We sometimes want to have different personas for our work and persona lives. I don't think there's necessarily something wrong with that, but I do think that in general jobs that jive well with our personalities/lifestyle make people more happy.

So there are some risks involved in putting all our cards on the table, but I still think the main reason I don't it is these 'jeebies'. And when I try to determine what these 'jeebies' are really about, I can only think they are some combination of insecurity/shame/idea people will think I'm an exhibitionist. Since all of these feelings stem from fear, it doesn't seem like a legitimate reason to stay private. But what am I afraid of?

Let's imagine for a moment that most people weren't very private, that it wasn't valued or seen as important. This would mean that vasts amounts of information about your day to day life would be public domain, accessible as quick as it is to type your name into a google search bar. Ah! How vulnerable it would make me...but if everyone was doing it, how vulnerable is one measly individual? Instead, I think there would just be an increase of understanding between individuals, and a decrease of all the insecurity and shame that stems from our conviction that we are in some definitive ways different from most people. One can imagine through search engines we could instantly become connected to thousands of people who are really similar to us, and the creation of valuable networks would be even easier than they are now. And as a bonus, there might be a healthy dose of deflation for those who, because of external markers, have been lead to believe that they are significantly better than others, as there would be an increased recognition of equality. Also, as a bonus, I think the amount of inane reality television would be squelched by an increase in the amount of freely available "reality", a la Internet Killed Television.

I think the internet is already heading in this direction, but there is still significant resistance to things becoming public. And even after writing this whole damn post, I dunno if I'm quite ready to get over my jeebies and make my facebook profile public. It's a difficult thing to do when there are few others who do it as well. But I always think it's worthwhile to really consider why something is valuable to you, and whether the reasons make sense. And when it comes to privacy, I don't think the reasons stand up. Unless some of yall have others?