postmodernism

a post-War generation of baby boomers confronting disillusioned middle-age

Postmodernism is

"the décor of a room"

"the design of a building"

"the diegesis of a film"

"the construction of a record, a television commercial, or an arts documentary, or the ‘intertextual’ relations between them"

"the layout of a page in a fashion magazine or critical journal"

"an anti-teleological tendency within epistemology"

"the collective chagrin and morbid projections of a post-War generation of baby boomers confronting disillusioned middle-age"

"a new phase in commodity fetishism"

"a fascination for images, codes and styles"

"a process of cultural, political or existential fragmentation and/or crisis, the ‘de-centring’ of the subject"

"an ‘incredulity towards metanarratives’"

"the replacement of unitary power axes by a plurality of power/discourse formations"

"the ‘implosion of meaning’"

"the collapse of cultural hierarchies"

"the dread engendered by the threat of nuclear self-destruction"

"the decline of the university"

"broad societal and economic shifts into a ‘media’, ‘consumer’ or ‘multinational’ phase"

"a sense (depending on who you read) of ‘placelessness’ or the abandonment of ‘placelessness’ (critical regionalism) or (even) a generalised substitution of spatial for temporal coordinates"

...when it becomes possible to describe all these things as ‘postmodern’ (or more simply ‘post’ or ‘very post’) then it’s clear we are in the presence of a buzzword.

country casual

Which is the original?

Reflection

Reflection ~ Tool
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6CywF3tnEI

pop psychology!

Stephanie is indifferent to your indifference. (Facebook status)

A: ...but not indifferent enough not to need to make a status out of it?

S: I know, right?

A: So the question is: are you sure you're really indifferent or are you just telling yourself that?

S: I'm fairly certain it's the latter. I find myself unable to lie to you. You should be a psychologist.

A: I mean, chances are...if it's on your mind...you're not indifferent. Sometimes I pretend I'm a psychologist, but that's as far as I'm prepared to go with psychology at this point. If I were a real psychologist I would probably not be talking about myself, I'd be focusing on you.

S: Well pretending you're a psychologist to your friends can be more worthwhile than a session with a real one. And I didn't realize you were talking about yourself prior to that comment.

A: "Sometimes I pretend I'm a psychologist, but that's as far as I'm prepared to go with psychology at this point in time."

I considered that talking about myself. If we were having an actual therapy session I probably would avoid saying things like that. It's not professional.

Oh and totally. Pretending to be a psychologist is worthwhile and fun, that is until you get something completely wrong...then you just feel like an assuming jerk.

So you have to be confident, but at the same time try to come off as unassuming as possible.

S: LOL Thanks for the advice on how to be a successful psychologist

And your assumptions have not been wrong up to this point. I'm just not sure how comfortable I feel with being that see-through when it comes to my statuses lol. I wasn't prepared for your eye-opening insight.

A: Ah, that's an interesting point. We all wonder how see-through we are.

And what's even more interesting is that you probably have a desire for someone to guess/figure out all your mysterious statuses. Why else would we put them up. We always know that there is the possibility someone will figure out what we mean. And that's really what we want. It's a way of expressing something that we don't feel comfortable expressing (or don't know how to express) to people in person.

S: That's very true.

authenticity

I’m sure there are infinitely many insights to be had; so while every insight is a nice temporary high (some greater than others), I don't think that there exists some End where you have had so many insights that everything becomes illuminated. I do think that insight makes living life a richer experience and, somewhat ironically, reveals that things are ever more mysterious than we previously thought, as insight, generally speaking, brings with it new or more sophisticated ways of seeing the world, giving reality more depth. Life really is a struggle, in my opinion. But I think I can appreciate that. I am never more satisfied than when I have run my heart out or overcome some challenge. But I don't necessarily think of overcoming as "conquering." I mean, first of all, it seems rather superficial to just conquer things and people purely for the sake of conquering them. Besides, in the scope of the universe, whatever "conquering" we can do is negligible. So, instead, when I talk about overcoming a challenge I mean something more akin to a triumph of the "self," however that is to be measured.

Because of some recent reading, I'm inclined to believe that every decision we make can be as significant as we want to admit. (In what way a choice or decision is important is another issue altogether.) So while the "small potatoes" attitude might be appropriate after the fact to avoid excessive mental and physical stressing about a choice made (we shouldn’t dwell forever about a mistake we’ve made!), the choices themselves are where we encounter the self. The idea is that who we are and what we do are consequences of the choices we make. I am neither essentially evil, nor essentially good -- I can, in fact, choose to act in either way. And nothing stops me from acting either way. That is our great freedom, that nothing stops us. We are free because nothing holds us back.

We can choose to evade or deny our freedom by living “un-authentically” in any number of ways: we can just do what everyone else does, we can do what others tell us, we can do what has been done in the past, we can deny that we have any control over our action, we can claim that who we are is a product of sources outside of ourselves, etc. All ways that people often avoid the “burden” of thinking for themselves. All ways that people avoid living authentically. I think it is especially difficult this day in age to break away from being just a cog in this civilized machine. There are so many rules and expectations we are born into and that we are never encouraged to question (only to accept); we are expected to perform our social function in society, which is often how the value of our personhood is determined. So if we follow precedent without thinking because we're so used to conforming then we're not exactly exercising our own freedom. A large part of thinking for yourself includes realizing how your life is controlled or laid out for you. Once you're aware of all the little things you do like wear a suit because that is the only acceptable style of dress at work, or eat meat because you've always eaten it, or go to church because you've always gone, then you can start to consider whether any of these things is acceptable to you. Hence, it is a struggle to live authentically. Living authentically means acting not out of fear or conformity, but for reasons that you believe and can hopefully justify. This way of thinking has convinced me that life can be as deep (authentic) or as shallow (unauthentic) as we are able to make it.

I have to credit Irrational Man as the source for most of these ideas.

selling out

<SELLING OUT>

"I think the term "product" has a bad rap. I blame Walmart."

"I think Walmart is evil enough to dwarf the combined sin of the rest of mankind to nothing (in comparison). Walmart is "selling out" incarnate. Sold out and morally bankrupt."

Yay for shopping at Walmart
because the ethical implications of doing so just don't weigh heavily enough on the average middle-class American conscience (conscience? what conscience? that would involve some mechanism of internal reflection. we are too approval-seeking to have developed anything like a conscience.).

Yes, I "center" my posts because I am THAT pretentious.
"LOOK,
I HAVE SOMETHING REALLY REALLY IMPORTANT TO SAY!"
(I hope that's the implicit message I'm sending.)

Barack Obama - the nation's 44th

Love it or hate it, for better or worse, this is it. History made in a day. But the power to make history is always there.

I voted 3rd party.

re-model

the same, over and over. that is me.

dead disco
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEsr5Mm3JfE