The search for our macroidentity

[nolawitch58]

What's the first category you use to identify yourself? Are you primarily your sex? Maybe your main allegiance is to your religion. Maybe you consider yourself a citizen of your country first and foremost.

I read an article the other day, which I can't cite because I didn't think to bookmark it, that said we aging Boomers are the last generation to share a common culture. Post-broadcast media fragmented into specialized channels narrowcast through cable outlets providing smaller groups of people the entertainment or information they wanted, but isolating them from shared experiences that previous generations took for granted.

Back when there were only three networks, it was easy to keep up. Even if you didn't watch Star Trek all the time, you had a good chance of catching some of the episodes, if only during summer reruns. Thus, you could easily yell at the pool, "Last one in is a Klingon," and be understood. You knew which shows were on which network and formed some loyalties that way. Television has splintered into such specific niches that we have channels devoted to food, comedy, travel, shopping and so on. Now, could you even name three shows on the WB? On Fox? On CBS? On Animal Planet? Do you even have time to consistently watch three TV shows?

Therein lies part of the problem. We are all members of constricting cliques. Our allegiances to each other grow smaller instead of larger. Being a global economy with global entertainment doesn't seem to pull us together. Our politics and religions continue to become more and more divisive. We have fewer common experiences to make us inclusive. How can you feel familiar with someone if you don't recognize any of the musicians, songs, TV shows, websites or other links to popular culture? Worse, what if your reaction to whatever they would profess to like is visceral and negative? Maybe for some reason you can't stand Evanescence, for example, and someone you meet LOVES that band. You're less likely to befriend that person due to an initial negative contact.

We cannot become greater than the sum of our smallest group. People are unwilling to vote for somebody unless the candidate is Christian enough or conservative enough or fits into their narrow definition of whatever group to which they belong. Sometimes I wonder about the assertion that the only way the entire planet would be unified is if some alien species attacked us. Maybe that would be true...for a while, just as it was true for the United States after September 11th. Would the human race, like the American people, squander the opportunity to really form cohesive bonds with other countries and cultures in order to fend off the attack of the aggressive aliens? Would we be good for a while and then some global leader would try to rally us to attack Mars?

While commerce and the Internet connects more of the planet together, we are shrinking into smaller and smaller cliques until we'll all be experiencing life vicariously, huddled in fear in our homes like the lyrics from "Monitor" by Siouxsie and the Banshees portended.

Comments

[ms-issicran.livejournal.com]

I certainly feel as though blackbyrd2 and I are a clique of two. Then I remember our circle is a little broader with a smattering of friends and family. I know as I've gotten older I have less enthusiasm for trying to adapt or expand to others' eccentricities, either individually or in groups. For example I have less desire to understand the anger of young people, nor the inclination to breach that widening gap.

I feel because my clique is closing off increasingly due to aging, my first identifer is always, "I'm an aging...(short, white, working, feministic, single mother"...and the description goes on for awhile after that.

[nolawitch.livejournal.com]

That aging thing isn't working out so well for me. Every time I look in the mirror, I wonder who the hell that person is and what happened to the other person who used to be there. I also don't seem to realize that my future is more limited than it used to be.

OT

[ms-issicran.livejournal.com]

I hear that. This layer of gray hair looks funny overtop the dark brown stuff. And then there's the perimenopause. I wanted to ask you how you feel now that you've had your ablation.

I'm not there yet, but feel I soon will be. Is it all it's ummmm, cracked up to be? (sorry for the pun) ((no I'm not, not really))

Re: OT

[nolawitch.livejournal.com]

I love my ablation. I've had two really really short periods since then, no more than three days each, and no cramps. I would recommend it.

Re: OT

[sunfell.livejournal.com]

I think I'll get one then- if I can afford it. Even with insurance, the copay is amazingly expensive.

That's a difficult question...

[saminz.livejournal.com]

Or rather several difficult questions :-).

Me, I define myself as an European, even more so since I have a chance of experiencing the cultural differences. But the important thing here is that this is, also, a political category.

Might well be that we are the last generation, but indeed, lots of what makes up my "inner theater" has to do a lot less with pop culture but with growing up in the middle of this continent that had suffered such a barbaric war "shortly* before my birth - in the sense that my parents were exposed to much of it.

Example: That you like other music, other shows, different food than I do will make you more interesting, if anything! If your skin colour is purple with stripes, or you wear bones through your nose and your music consists of low humming through specific weeds (but you still speak a language that enables communication) I will be curious enough to make your acquaintance gladly!

But once you start throwing fascist propaganda around, or expect me to take part in any cruelty to living beings as a sport - even if I have known you for quite a while, this is going to alienate us drastically, possibly for good...

What I mourn is less the diversification of lifestyles and specific codes, but the erosion of sustainable values. It doesn't much matter whether you're a farmer or a pole dancer, a priest or a scientist - as long as you have a conscience and can keep your greed and malice in check, you're a constructive part of humanity, and we'll find a way to communicate and show respect for each other - and we might stand side by side in a fight against whatever threatens these values.

Okay, maybe I'm a hopeless idealist, once more :-p.

(Never mind the "alien species" invasion. Capitalism running wild is alien enough for me :-).)

Re: That's a difficult question...

[nolawitch.livejournal.com]

That idealism is what I adore about you. I admire that you stay true to it because I cannot. I constantly vacillate between loving and loathing humanity, between wanting to improve society and to destroy it utterly.

Your comment about values really hits home. Yesterday, after I went to the polls and then to work, I came home to watch some of the primary election coverage. Some idiot was yammering on about "values," which is code for Christofascism. I finally began yelling at the TV the way my dear hubby does and said, "I have values and they're not hateful bigoted ones. Why don't my values count, you motherfucking bastards?" Of course, the moron on TV didn't hear me, but I felt better anyway.

Re: That's a difficult question...

[saminz.livejournal.com]

Well - I'm not above acting pretty nasty to certain individuals, so I don't really "stand true" to every word of my convictions all the time ;-). No grounds at all for adoration, let me assure you....

And sorry about that - things here haven't got as bad yet, with the term "values" being used exclusively by middle-age* biblical staff -p.

Quite the contrary. Some rightists have minted the term "value-conservative" to describe leftists who don't see the pressing need for re-feudalisation ;-)!

I can completely understand your impulse to "destroy it utterly" - probably just the temperamental flip-side of my own impulse to "utterly" leave for good :-D.

_{*medieval, of course, only on re-reading did I realize that this was in fact german (Mittelalter!)}

[blackbyrd2.livejournal.com]

Moving into cliques of isolated interests is not all bad, so long as you don't completely isolate yourself from other people with varying interests.

This is something picked up from my friend's list which explains how acquaintances can be more valuable to broadening your mind and increasing knowledge than close friends. Seems basic enough on the surface, but sometimes overlooked.

And yes, hermit is a decent identifier, even though I am socially active online. Although, as ms_issicran says, we're more active than we think, and in more ways.

That's pretty cool!

[saminz.livejournal.com]

Wow - scientists, mathematicians even, being actually *helpful*, here :-D!

*runs. (FAST)*

[nolawitch.livejournal.com]

I agree, but cliques are isolating themselves as well as their interests. Worse, some of them are trying to force their interests onto the general public by political fiat. I've got a HUGE problem with people like Mike Huckabee wanting to go AGAINST the Constitution and enact legislation to establish his religion's tenets into law.

[nolawitch.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've got a couple of shows I like. I always catch House. When it makes it across the pond, I watch Doctor Who. I couldn't wait, though, so I watched the Christmas episode on YouTube. TV is still pretty good for sports coverage, such as NFL and arena football, basketball and baseball.

I'm hoping you're right, that because we're all in smaller and smaller boxes, we're transcending boxes. I can't wait until the demise of the right-wing talk radio idiots over here because they've been most effective at dividing the country. Anyone who is pissed at the USA need look no further than the nattering nabobs of negativism plaguing radio airwaves here. They call anything they don't agree with liberal, including people in their own party, and stir up the authoritarian-leaning rabble to frothing hatreds of anyone daring to promote progress.

[voxwoman.livejournal.com]

I don't know how to identify myself anymore, ever since I watched Babylon 5, specifically, the episode where Sebastian interrogates Delenn with the repeated question "Who are you" and punished her for repeating a previous answer, and using answers that referred to her lineage or career.

Just as I have an impossible time defining my music as a whole (and a somewhat easier time with individual songs), I have a much more difficult time attempting to describe myself with one word or affiliation when that doesn't even scratch the surface.

I suppose I'm a female of the homo sapiens species from the planet we call Earth. I am the sum of my experiences and the result of my decisions. I don't think I can get more specific than that without a Vulcan Mind Meld.

Identity

[kitten-goddess.livejournal.com]

What I say depends on who is doing the asking. If it's a fellow pagan/geek/etc. etc., I am a Thelemite first. If the other person is from mainstream American culture, I state what I do, since that is what's expected.

I have found my experience to be opposite Nolawitch's. When I was in school, I was an outcast. After college, I deliberately shut myself off from mainstream culture, interacting only with "normal" people minimally. I thought that no one outside the pagan/geek/whatever culture had anything in common with me and assumed the mainstream world wanted nothing to do with me.

I am now finding out that is not true. I have friends at work now, and am even socializing with them outside of work, which I have never done before. I am very happy that my horizons are broadening.

[sunfell.livejournal.com]

What 'clique' do I belong to?

I have no clue. The 'Unboxed'?

Yeah. Unboxed. There is no 'box'. I can't be outside it, like everyone wants and claims me to be, because there's no inside. No. Box.

Heh. So there.

:wanders off, grinning:

[alagbon.livejournal.com]

Well put.

[lionsphil.livejournal.com]

I AM GEEK, HEAR ME ROAR!

Although, apparently, it's "PhD student" [1, 2].