We are losing our ability to wait. As our modern world becomes ever more responsive to our every need, and is able to fulfill our every wish almost immediately 24/7, we have come to expect instant gratification and get stressed when we don't receive it straightaway. We want it all and we want it now and you know what...we can have it (subject to status, terms and conditions apply)!
In today's marketplace, companies compete on time. We live in an era when product quality is pretty standard and most things have become commodities, where globalisation has shifted the costs of producing things to the cheapest possible places, where a lot of things we buy are not 'things' in the traditional sense at all (where we buy time in the real world so we can spend more of it leading virtual lives in virtual worlds), and where our rate of consumption continues to accelerate. We can have it good, we can have it cheap, now if only we can have it faster...
And so the treadmill speeds up all the time: we cycle through more stuff at ever increasing speed. And as we do so, the things with which we have an ever more fleeting acquaintance (buy, use, dispose) lose their solidity, their magic, their 'thingness' as they light up our lives for a nanosecond before scattering in a shower of evanescent sparks. As the essence drains out of the things that once gave meaning to our lives, the things that had duration and staid with us sometimes for generations, the things you really got to know, our relationship with our physical universe is changing too.
In the old wisdom veiled by the mists of time (well, twenty to thirty years ago at least) we were led to believe that things were worth waiting for. The very act of waiting, whether it was for a new toy, losing your virginity or deciding on a major life change, imbued that experience with a kind of otherworldly magic, gave it some real intrinsic value. The mere fact that there was a gap in time between a wish and its fulfilment gave you the space to reflect on what it was you wanted; the length of the wait was often seen as an indicator of the importance of what you wanted: did you really want this thing, how badly did you want it, was it a real need or just a want?.
Of course, this process of anticipation, of deferred gratification, often led to frustration and ultimate disappointment ("is that all it is? - not quite what it is cracked up to be!".) but it also gave an aura, a mystique to the universe of things and experiences. The very act of waiting for something gave intrinsic value to the thing we were waiting for.
Sometimes, life forces us to pause, to spend time waiting for our lives to start moving forward again - we need to respect this. The major turning points in our lives will often require us to stand still for a while and reflect on where we are going next: preparing for parenthood, grieving over the death of a loved one, periods of convalescence, depression, loss of faith, loss of confidence. These are the moments of pure waiting. We can't even begin to think about what we are waiting for; the future is still unformed, pregnant with possibility but deferred, still gestating, awaiting (re) birth.
Doris Lessing wrote very powerfully about these experiences of pure waiting, of the waiting for something to happen, in her Martha Quest series of books. Martha gives herself up to the waiting, embraces it and uses that breathing space to discover what really matters in her life. And in this vacuum, invisible unfelt energies are battling, coalescing and scattering to gradually bring forth a new life and a new direction. In this seemingly empty space between wishing and doing, Martha lives in the realm of being, waiting for her true life to reveal itself.
As we continue to squeeze the waiting out of our lives, as we continue to spin faster and faster in our daily rounds of busyness, we risk losing these opportunities for insight and growth simply by refusing to wait.
Sunday, 27 November 2011
Friday, 14 October 2011
Third Culture Kids
I am a third culture kid or TCK or 3CK, also sometimes referred to as a global nomad or existential migrant.
I didn't know I was a tck until I met up with my friend Kate on Paignton sea front a few weeks ago, and as we caught up on the last few months' news, she introduced me to this concept. She is a 3ck herself and so is her husband Per. There are thousands of us across the UK and the number is always growing.
So what are third culture kids? They are simply children who did their growing up in more than one country or culture and whose national and cultural identities are, therefore, rather more complicated than single culture children who did all their growing up in their culture of origin.
The term originates from the 1950s and was first used by American sociologist/anthropologist Ruth Hill Useem. Another American sociologist, David C Pollock, has given us a working definition of the third culture kid as "...a person who has spent a significant part of [their] developmental years outside the parents' culture. The TCK frequently builds relationships to all of the cultures, while not having full ownership in any. Although elements from each culture may be assimilated into the TCK's life experience, the sense of belonging is in relationship to others of similar background."
In essence, third (or trans- or cross-) cultural kids take elements of all the different cultures they experience and create a unique personal identity which reflects that particular mix of influences.
I intend to revisit my own life experiences from time to time to throw some more light on this question of identity, of personal narrative, of the many different autobiographies I could write.
I didn't know I was a tck until I met up with my friend Kate on Paignton sea front a few weeks ago, and as we caught up on the last few months' news, she introduced me to this concept. She is a 3ck herself and so is her husband Per. There are thousands of us across the UK and the number is always growing.
So what are third culture kids? They are simply children who did their growing up in more than one country or culture and whose national and cultural identities are, therefore, rather more complicated than single culture children who did all their growing up in their culture of origin.
The term originates from the 1950s and was first used by American sociologist/anthropologist Ruth Hill Useem. Another American sociologist, David C Pollock, has given us a working definition of the third culture kid as "...a person who has spent a significant part of [their] developmental years outside the parents' culture. The TCK frequently builds relationships to all of the cultures, while not having full ownership in any. Although elements from each culture may be assimilated into the TCK's life experience, the sense of belonging is in relationship to others of similar background."
In essence, third (or trans- or cross-) cultural kids take elements of all the different cultures they experience and create a unique personal identity which reflects that particular mix of influences.
I intend to revisit my own life experiences from time to time to throw some more light on this question of identity, of personal narrative, of the many different autobiographies I could write.
Imaginary Biographies
In Paul Auster's 1992 novel Leviathan one of the characters is a conceptual artist called Maria Turner, who throughout the novel engages in a series of art projects. Two of these projects engage with the idea of imaginary biographies.
In one, she follows random strangers as they move around New York and takes scores of photographs as she tails them on their journeys. She then uses the photographic record of these (non-)encounters to construct an imaginary identity for each person, creating a personality from a sequence of discrete objective visual images. There has been no contact or conversation with the subject, all is imagined from outside observation.
In the second, she takes a job as a chambermaid in a hotel and creates imaginary biographies of hotel guests purely from the random objects they leave in their hotel room. This time, the subject identities are constructed from physical things, but again, no contact, no conversation.
In the first instance, the subject is present as a series of snapshots; in the second, the subject is completely absent other than through the traces of their passing through that particular time and place by the things they have strewn around the room.
In a previous post, I discussed the notion of social media as autobiographies without a subject, a life chronicled from the inside out, from the author out towards the world. In Maria Turner's case, we are talking about biographies which are constructed from the outside in, from the observer in towards the subject.
Identity through our relationship with ourselves and identity through our relationship with things - two sides of the same coin. What is missing is our relationship with others - the core of any true record of our lives.
In one, she follows random strangers as they move around New York and takes scores of photographs as she tails them on their journeys. She then uses the photographic record of these (non-)encounters to construct an imaginary identity for each person, creating a personality from a sequence of discrete objective visual images. There has been no contact or conversation with the subject, all is imagined from outside observation.
In the second, she takes a job as a chambermaid in a hotel and creates imaginary biographies of hotel guests purely from the random objects they leave in their hotel room. This time, the subject identities are constructed from physical things, but again, no contact, no conversation.
In the first instance, the subject is present as a series of snapshots; in the second, the subject is completely absent other than through the traces of their passing through that particular time and place by the things they have strewn around the room.
In a previous post, I discussed the notion of social media as autobiographies without a subject, a life chronicled from the inside out, from the author out towards the world. In Maria Turner's case, we are talking about biographies which are constructed from the outside in, from the observer in towards the subject.
Identity through our relationship with ourselves and identity through our relationship with things - two sides of the same coin. What is missing is our relationship with others - the core of any true record of our lives.
Saturday, 8 October 2011
Stuff
Last weekend, we had a good clearout and took a lot of stuff to a car boot sale. It left me strangely unsettled to bag and box up the accumulated clutter of years, take it to a different place, unbag and unbox it again, put a totally arbitrary price on each item, and then see a part of your life slowly trickle away as each item is added to the clutter of other people's lives instead.
You spend the first half of your life acquiring, collecting and slowly accumulating all kinds of objects, shoring up your own corner of the universe of things with fragments to give yourself some solidity, substance, identity. Then, when you get to a stage of your life where you feel you have reached that state of independent personhood where you no longer need material possessions to bolster your sense of self (if you ever get there...), you can't wait to eject the detritus of the life you built up during all those years.
When my parents moved from their flat to an old people's home last year, my sister and I spent three hours inspecting and grading the stuff they had left behind so we could decide what to do with it. In the end, we kept almost none of it. My parents had already said goodbye to it all, had no further need for it in their new place. And even though some of it resonated with both of us because it had been with us when we were growing up, we also realised, with some sadness, that in the end it was all really a load of old tat.
I find books the hardest to get rid of. Like many readers, I experience a book to the full, I love the feel of it, the smell of the printed paper (each book subtly different from any other), but mostly the thoughts and feelings that each book evokes when reading it. I can often recall the whole feel of a holiday through remembering which book I was reading at the time. So to me a book captures a whole experience, a sense of time and place, as well as what story it has to tell. A book, and by extension, any other things that have such a keenly felt presence in our lives, becomes a repository to anchor a particular set of thoughts, emotions, perceptions, place, time, weather, whatever.
We must learn how to preserve those experiences whilst at the same time letting go of that physical shell that contains them, that book, that record, picture or object. That way we can fight the tyranny of things and keep our lives pure and simple. In the end, all things are just stuff...
You spend the first half of your life acquiring, collecting and slowly accumulating all kinds of objects, shoring up your own corner of the universe of things with fragments to give yourself some solidity, substance, identity. Then, when you get to a stage of your life where you feel you have reached that state of independent personhood where you no longer need material possessions to bolster your sense of self (if you ever get there...), you can't wait to eject the detritus of the life you built up during all those years.
When my parents moved from their flat to an old people's home last year, my sister and I spent three hours inspecting and grading the stuff they had left behind so we could decide what to do with it. In the end, we kept almost none of it. My parents had already said goodbye to it all, had no further need for it in their new place. And even though some of it resonated with both of us because it had been with us when we were growing up, we also realised, with some sadness, that in the end it was all really a load of old tat.
I find books the hardest to get rid of. Like many readers, I experience a book to the full, I love the feel of it, the smell of the printed paper (each book subtly different from any other), but mostly the thoughts and feelings that each book evokes when reading it. I can often recall the whole feel of a holiday through remembering which book I was reading at the time. So to me a book captures a whole experience, a sense of time and place, as well as what story it has to tell. A book, and by extension, any other things that have such a keenly felt presence in our lives, becomes a repository to anchor a particular set of thoughts, emotions, perceptions, place, time, weather, whatever.
We must learn how to preserve those experiences whilst at the same time letting go of that physical shell that contains them, that book, that record, picture or object. That way we can fight the tyranny of things and keep our lives pure and simple. In the end, all things are just stuff...
Monday, 26 September 2011
Social Media: Autobiographies Without a Subject
When I was in my mid-twenties and living in London, I often used to plan an alternative autobiography in my head as I was walking to work. In this autobiography, there would have been no personal narrative - no dates, no sequence of life events or achievements. Instead, each chapter would have given an objective description of a particular strong influence on my life.
I already had outlines in my head for sections on my family history, the local geography and social history of Tilburg, my education, my relationships, the books I had read and loved, and the ups and downs of Willem II football club. Somehow, the reader would get an impression of the person that was sitting, hiding, at the centre of all these things, gradually being revealed as more pieces of the jigsaw fell into place.
Needless to say, this idea for a subjectless autobiography just stayed in my head and never saw the light of day. Real life takes over, and the reimagination of your own life slowly dissolves.
Thirty years later, there are thousands of such anti-autobiographies out on the web, as people publish fragments of their lives through social media: each Facebook, Twitter or blog posting reveals the likes and dislikes of their authors, what they are doing at that very moment, who they relate to and how they relate to them. And yet, they remain shadowy fleeting presences in cyberspace, evading any attempt to grasp who they really are.
If you were to follow a web author's every internet posting for a few years, you would be able to create one of many possible biographies of that person as you make a collage of their random texts, messages and photographs as they communicate their existence to the universe - as they piece together their own organic subjectless autobiographies.
I already had outlines in my head for sections on my family history, the local geography and social history of Tilburg, my education, my relationships, the books I had read and loved, and the ups and downs of Willem II football club. Somehow, the reader would get an impression of the person that was sitting, hiding, at the centre of all these things, gradually being revealed as more pieces of the jigsaw fell into place.
Needless to say, this idea for a subjectless autobiography just stayed in my head and never saw the light of day. Real life takes over, and the reimagination of your own life slowly dissolves.
Thirty years later, there are thousands of such anti-autobiographies out on the web, as people publish fragments of their lives through social media: each Facebook, Twitter or blog posting reveals the likes and dislikes of their authors, what they are doing at that very moment, who they relate to and how they relate to them. And yet, they remain shadowy fleeting presences in cyberspace, evading any attempt to grasp who they really are.
If you were to follow a web author's every internet posting for a few years, you would be able to create one of many possible biographies of that person as you make a collage of their random texts, messages and photographs as they communicate their existence to the universe - as they piece together their own organic subjectless autobiographies.
Monday, 19 September 2011
9/11: A Fearful Symmetry
On 11th September 2001, the Islamist militant group Al Qaeda launched a concerted attack on the United States by hijacking four passenger planes and crashing two of them into the Twin Towers in New York and one into the Pentagon in Washington. The fourth passenger plane was forced down by its passengers before it reached its intended destination. The total death toll resulting from these events exceeded 2,750. The Al Qaeda attacks were portrayed as an assault on Western democracy.
On 11th September 1973, the Chilean army staged a military coup to oust the democratically elected Marxist president Salvador Allende, with the support and endorsement of the United States. This led to the brutal regime of Augusto Pinochet, during which at least 3,190 people were killed or 'disappeared'. The military coup was portrayed as an attempt to save the country from economic ruin and safeguard its future development and prosperity.
Isn't it strange how one 9/11 was commemorated at great length last week, whilst the other 9/11 has almost been consigned to oblivion?
On 11th September 1973, the Chilean army staged a military coup to oust the democratically elected Marxist president Salvador Allende, with the support and endorsement of the United States. This led to the brutal regime of Augusto Pinochet, during which at least 3,190 people were killed or 'disappeared'. The military coup was portrayed as an attempt to save the country from economic ruin and safeguard its future development and prosperity.
Isn't it strange how one 9/11 was commemorated at great length last week, whilst the other 9/11 has almost been consigned to oblivion?
Sunday, 11 September 2011
Riots and Uprisings - Spot The Difference
I have been struck by the uncomfortable parallels between the way Arab despotic governments and our own oh so much more enlightened government have responded to unrest on their city streets in recent months. Replace the word 'riot' with 'uprising', as I heard one speaker do on Radio Five Live last week, and you may get a different perspective on Britain AD 2011.
What was the first official reaction to the discovery that the British anti-government protesters used social media to mobilise? We must block them from using Twitter - maybe even suspend the networks altogether for a while... Now where have we heard that one before?
Next we must 'criminalise' the perpetrators and stamp hard on the suggestion that these protests may have been political in origin. Maybe the ultimate political protest in a hypercapitalist society like Britain is to have a consumerist riot...
Then, the way to crack down on these insurgents is to indisciminately dish out summary justice to avoid any repeat in the future. Attack the syptoms of the problem, ignore the causes. Stifle all reasoned debate. Create a climate of hysterical overreaction through state-sponsored media propaganda (avoid any objective news coverage and make sure every news report adopts a moralising tone). Introduce martial law by suspending any separation of powers between the legislative (the government) and the judiciarly (the judges), and by directing police operations agains the intifadists. And then hope against hope that everything will die back and that all this unpleasantness will simply go away, and everything can continue as before.
One final comment on British justice in the world at large today. If you brutalise, torture and kill an unarmed, defenceless civilian in a far-off middle Eastern country, you will serve one year in prison. If you make an innocuous comment on social media about a British riot that doesn't even happen, you get sentenced to four years.
Are we heading for a British Spring?
What was the first official reaction to the discovery that the British anti-government protesters used social media to mobilise? We must block them from using Twitter - maybe even suspend the networks altogether for a while... Now where have we heard that one before?
Next we must 'criminalise' the perpetrators and stamp hard on the suggestion that these protests may have been political in origin. Maybe the ultimate political protest in a hypercapitalist society like Britain is to have a consumerist riot...
Then, the way to crack down on these insurgents is to indisciminately dish out summary justice to avoid any repeat in the future. Attack the syptoms of the problem, ignore the causes. Stifle all reasoned debate. Create a climate of hysterical overreaction through state-sponsored media propaganda (avoid any objective news coverage and make sure every news report adopts a moralising tone). Introduce martial law by suspending any separation of powers between the legislative (the government) and the judiciarly (the judges), and by directing police operations agains the intifadists. And then hope against hope that everything will die back and that all this unpleasantness will simply go away, and everything can continue as before.
One final comment on British justice in the world at large today. If you brutalise, torture and kill an unarmed, defenceless civilian in a far-off middle Eastern country, you will serve one year in prison. If you make an innocuous comment on social media about a British riot that doesn't even happen, you get sentenced to four years.
Are we heading for a British Spring?
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