Northern Insight
Last night, on the recommendation of C, we attended a showing of the 1922 documentary, Nanook of the North at the Creative Alliance down at the Patterson Theater. C's friend Scott is in the band The Anomoanon, who supplied a real-time soundtrack to what is considered the first documentary (and also a silent film). The music was good and clever, with a lot of frontier-esque yearnings somewhat reminescent of Neil Young, and the film informative.
Being an eskimo on the Hudson Bay, fighting every day just to eat and survive 10 months of winter, was very humbling for me, as someone in the modern age so removed from the earth. Was their experience, living in the moment each day, more authentic than mine is now, one in which I'm free to create a any persona I'd like to suit myself? It's an interesting topic that relates to my entry yesterday. Does leisure lead to a lack of authenticity? I think so. We cannot create who we are, but because of modern society, we'll never know who that is.
I remember being excited about going to New Mexico a few months back because it'd be barren and there'd be no filters to hide in. So what happened when I got there? I freaked out. I felt naked—I felt like when you wake up in the middle of the night disoriented and panicked. I was so scared to let go of the person I'd created, that I'd taken so much care in creating. But she's not me. I have to understand that to be totally free. But what reward comes from being totally free? Eating walrus blubber?
posted by Jen @ 8:38 AM
6 comments
6 Comments:
Can you explain what you mean by authenticity? I'm not sure I understand the concept in this context.
As for the interview you linked to in your previous post, wouldn't you agree that we have the option not to live in a media saturated culture, and, therefore the problem the author identifies is not such a significant problem? Maybe that's what you were getting at when you wrote that we do have solutions (such as meditation)?
I agree somewhat with his premise that living in a "world of representations" can be "haunting". But I think this is only the case because older institutions like community, ethnicity and religion are no longer there to firm up an individual's sense of identity during youth. So much of marketing promises self-validation through consumption but if the individual already has a valid sense of self independent of her shopping habits then she's immune to this marketing, right?
There was an interesting article in a recent Harper's magazine about how leisure actually helps one determine a sense of self, which is why as a society we tend to distrust people who don't have conventional jobs and more time to themselves. They use the example of George W. Bush "relaxing" on his ranch by clearing brush . . . how he is celebrated because he's always moving, doing something, and displaying no inner life. Meanwhile, if one of us takes an afternoon off to lie by a lake and think, we're seen as shiftless. Yes, I think our society has a fear of those who think and act differently, in ways that are more true to themselves, and thus creates a smokescreen of media and consumerism to filter and categorize the world. But this was always the case, all the way back to the early days of civilization and religion. We're no different than primitive humans emotionally, but we do have more options for expressing ourselves. We can hide behind our current smokescreen or use its components as tools to enhance who we are.
Anyway, I don't think Nanook's life was INTRINSICALLY any more authentic than yours. What makes for authenticity is honesty, integrity, discipline, and original thought—qualities just as easy (or difficult) to come by whether you're ice fishing or buying a filet at the Whole Foods. Don't mistake survival techniques for authenticity, or comfort for artifice. If you're feeling uncomfortable with life, a good place to start (in my very humble opinion) is pinpointing the values you feel are being violated and move more in integrity with those.
But I think you are not alone in your feelings, and that the more sensitive among us are reacting to the true, irreconcilable insanity of our society . . . not its structure and trappings but the perversion of such. Society has always provided the elements for a successful sublimation of self. That's what society is and does. But now more than ever those elements are being used not as tools but as weapons.
Hi Kevin,
By authenticity, I mean a life in the present that is free of persona and role-playing. I think we do have the option of living in a culture that is not satured by media and role-playing, although it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, on Western terms. In addition, even those people with a strong sense of self still fall prey to marketing, as you and I both have, even as we understand the effects of it (buying the popular car, buying clothes that are fashionable albeit ugly, etc). I guess we're all surrender monkeys on some level.
It makes me think of the difficulties I will face when raising a child. I don't want my child raised on a life of Disney necessarily, yet my mother is a Disney freak and, rest assured, everything that child receives from my mom will be from Disney. In addition, my friend's kids are brought up with Disney and McDonald's and sugar, and probably every child my child will meet in his or her life will have been branded to some extent also. At some point it's almost detrimental to a child not have let him or her assimilate a little, if only so that the child doesn't feel like an absolute outcast his or her entire life. Besides, once they are old enough to know better, they (like I did) will figure it out that they are not what they own and then have to wrestle with it (as I am). At least, with my intervention, I hope so.
You make very good points, David. I still struggle, however, with the notion of an individual "me" that exists beyond the outside notions that define her (ie, the clothes I wear, my dislike of black liquorice, etc). I often wonder if I'm headed in the wrong direction in this hypothesis and that the things that differentiate us as individuals are only superficial, that we are the collective oneness without them. Maybe I'm just struggling to maintain a sense of cosmic self when there actually isn't one.
Kevin wrote: "As for the interview you linked to in your previous post, wouldn't you agree that we have
the option not to live in a media saturated culture, and, therefore the problem the author identifies is
not such a significant problem?"
It's true to some degree, that it's not such a significant problem. I stopped watching tv in April
2003 and I stopped reading "female" magazines in September 2003. I now only read paper newspapers
about ten times a month and I get my news from the BBC every night (the BBC has better African coverage than
Canada's Globe & Mail).
I noticed a real difference in my moods based on the blips of time I returned to either of those. So in
that way, I do agree that I do have the option to turn off the media.
"But I think this is only the case because older institutions like community, ethnicity and religion
are no longer there to firm up an individual's sense of identity during youth."
Despite my bouts of depression (it's genetic—everyone on my father's side has it) and dips in
self-esteem, overall I am a very buoyant person. I know I am a stronger person than most, i.e. with my childhood most people would have been junkies by now, but I think part of it is that I have some innate eccentric in me. I know I am already a crazy hamster spinster and I know that I don't do what everyone else does and I am pretty stubborn about doing exactly what I want. I have had religion (Catholicism) form my moral outlook (except for the abortion crap—I am
pro-choice all the way, baby!) and ethnicity is a big part of my life.
Community, no, I went to ten schools by the time I graduated from high school, lived in four countries
(now it's six) and moved eleven times (until I was 18). So taking myself as an example, I have no idea
how I came up with an identity which, I am told, is such a strong one. (Unless you meet me for the first time and I am all shy. Or unless someone steps on my toes and I become some sort of Fighting Irish Demon.)
Obviously I am not immune to market forces. I still panic about cellulite and my growing wrinkles. And because everyone around me is still living with the media, they give me opinions all the time on me. So the media is still affecting me.
In response to David's comment ("Don't mistake survival techniques for authenticity, or comfort for
artifice."), in the Gourevitch book I read about Rwanda, the journalist talks about his own parents who
survived the Holocaust and how they and other Holocaust survivors only recount their lives until liberation or until they got to the US and led sedate lives like everyone else in North America.
Gourevitch figured that the reason they left out their American lives and all Holocaust stories ended there is because first of all the experience was also common to the listener and because, during the Holocaust, despite the privations and the daily threat of death,
one had never felt so alive, never more conscious of the act of living.
Perhaps, with the Inuit, it was the same thing. Life was so tenuous and a blizzard or a fall through the
ice could instantly change the balance, that life came to the forefront.
Oops, you've already addressed the thing about people like me still falling prey to the clutches of the
media. I decree "surrender monkeys" to be work of the month!
Jen, you wrote "By authenticity, I mean a life in the present that is free of persona and role-playing."
But I think that the individual is not just one thing. No one will ever be whatever label is foisted on them - "shy" or "nice" or "bitchy" or "masculine" or "impractical" - all the time. There is some role-play if it's someone like Madonna or Cindy Sherman who
actively act like that. But even Madonna will act, in her spare time, hidden from the public, like the
personas she uses when she performs. Of course, it gets tricky, in separating the acted roles and the
authentic roles.
What I mean is, too many people think personality is set in stone. That doesn't take into account moods, practical issues, and outside forces. Pop psychology insists in our culture that people be solid inside and not to be affected by what other people say about them
or do to them. But we are only humans and not robots. (And who aspires to be unattached since that also indicates a bit of disinterest and lack of passion?)
But there are minute shifts and sometimes earthquake-strong shifts in personality. Who doesn't know someone placid who, in cases of extreme emergencies, suddenly becomes a stoic superhero who
directs traffic and cauterizes wounds?
--Matktaaq
Maktaaq, I agree that even if we shun market forces that most of our friends and family still use them. In fact, I find it fascinating to hang out with people and, because I don't watch TV, feel out of place when five or six shows are discussed at length. It's strange to see people relate to each other not as people but by what they have absorbed into their lives externally. Of course, is that any different than sitting around and talking about one's favorite books or bands? Not really, and I do that all the time.
As I mentioned to you previously, I think the fact that you moved around a lot in part gave you a stronger sense of self. Because you could not identify for long periods with your exterior landscapes, being as you left them quite frequently, you were forced to identify with your internal landscape and build that up. As a result, you probably feel "at home" anywhere.
I also agree with you that personality is not set in stone, which is one disadvantage of developing these "personas"—once you are "locked in" to how you think you should act, as yuppie, as outcast, as whatever, it becomes increasingly more difficult to have opinions contrary to what you feeel that persona dictates.
As for me, I've bought clothes recently from Lands End and curtains from Wal-Mart. I shop at Whole Foods and don't eat much red meat, yet last week I had a quarter pounder. I am an indie music purist yet downloaded a Justin Timberlake song a while back. I eschew celebrity culture but devour People and Star whenever I'm at my mom's house. And I think, for all of us, we'll never fit into any sort of persona. But we should also never try—and I'm seeing so much of it and it kills me.
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