Cycles Of Individualism & Cultural Segregation

One of those pieces I write mostly to exercise both my typing skills and my thought processes. Also I ended up ranting at TV again which I didn’t plan, but naturally am delighted that it happened.

I don’t have issues with the term identity, I’m just being cautious of using it in a title.

A thing happens.

SKOOL
In primary (elementary) school I became socially isolated because school was easy. I don’t want to speculate on the subjectivity of my intelligence because intelligence doesn’t come into it. School wasn’t easy because of my possible intelligence, school was easy because it was based primarily on memory and observation. Memory, because you didn’t have to actually comprehend anything in any dynamic and realistic way, you just needed to remember it by rote. Observation because anything slightly abstract and less procedural than math and science, ie., history, was about observing your teacher and figuring out how to deliver what they wanted. This required even less actual comprehension of the subject at hand.

That doesn’t necessarily mean I got a bad education, these days I value it immensely. The details I can catch up on. In school I hated history because it was taught poorly, but now I love it because I’ve come to my own understanding of how it’s alive and where its value lies. The lesson in observing people, in observing, examining and experimenting has turned out to be extremely useful.

Nevertheless I used to work on essays the day before they were due and get As while my classmates would toil at them for two and a half weeks and get Cs. I feel for them. They lacked the tools required to navigate school because the tools weren’t simply a long attention span and pragmatic understanding on a primary level, they were more about literacy and communication, and most of all pattern recognition.

So I became socially isolated. I was segregated because I was succeeding at the prime objective of school, though that’s slightly incorrect. The prime objective of education in this country at least is daycare, in that regard almost all of us succeeded in that we attended. I joke. Not really.
But we were all sent to this structured daycare and all expected to perform to some bizarrely (and illogically) uniform standard and it was laughably easy for me right through primary/elementary to high school.
Which makes it an interesting fact that I never went back to finish high school after recovering from illness, and have only done a one year technical certificate thereafter.

It stings a bit when you’re a kid. Enforced segregation isn’t that great a thing to happen when you’re developing personal social dynamics, particularly when you’re being punished for something that happens by accident. Honestly. That’s my perspective on education in this country which is why I refuse to accept any measure of my intelligence. I barely had to try… at all. In any way whatsoever. That it was so easy for me made me ponder what kind of upbringing my peers had that left them so incapacitated when it came to fairly basic procedural thinking. It’ll sound like I’m quite contemptuous (and make no mistake, often I am) but I wasn’t at the time and still aren’t now with regards to this particular subject: I truly felt sorry for my friends. Most of them did actually go on to tertiary education and that’s great, but in no way was I discouraged that I didn’t. I always knew I’d be able to do whatever I want and would be fine. Many of my peers were going into tertiary education almost blindly due to the immense social pressure (primarily from family/parents of-course) and I wonder how it’s worked out for them. I hope that regardless of whether they’ve stayed with it or left, that their lives are great.

All of that had a net effect on me though. I had no choice but to establish a strong sense of individualism very early on. This isn’t commentary as to whether that’s a good or bad thing at all, just an examination of history and development. In some ways it’s been terrible. It has meant that at times I don’t listen to the perspectives of my peers as early as I should be taking note of them. It means there have been times when I’ve tested my processes less or not at all before carrying out action. It means I have often completely bypassed any component of empathy when communicating and set forth my perspective without any sensitivity at all. I don’t blame anyone or anything for that, those are my decisions. Regardless of input and stimulus, I still consciously made those decisions (and still often do).

Naturally though there have been some stupendous advantages and I’m not really interested in exploring them, particularly since they’ve contributed to or formed perspectives and processes that I engage today.

ERT
I don’t know whether being socially isolated has a direct influence on artistic taste. Well, I don’t know whether it *always* does (sometimes I’m too lazy to html tag… but never too lazy for parentheses (which I love)). I don’t know whether it has for me as an individual. Did my tastes develop in a near vacuum, isolated from the machinations of art in society both primarily (among real people) and secondarily (via secondary experience: broadcast TV mostly, which is definitely a culture and one I abandoned early on). It’s worth noting that I wasn’t always completely isolated, I’ve always had at least my dad and brother as super close friends, then eventually I’d meet Rok and Kate and those three are and remain pretty much the most important people to me.

So there was influence, but not the kind of nebulous cultural consumption of media that tends to happen in larger social groups. Art was always introduced to me with a greater level of detail and context based on what those close to me knew of my tastes, likewise I did the same with them. It has meant though that I’ve delved into different subjects in art on my own more willingly than others seem to or be able to. I find those around me are often quite similar.

That nebulous cultural consumption forms a culture. It’s one that TV land seeks to establish in modern society from a very early age and succeeds with dangerous efficiency. Our children sing along to Children’s Television songs. Then they watch edutainment together while parents discuss what shows they permit their children to watch, becoming a social discussion. Then they start watching live action shows with long-term thread narratives, discussing them at school. Then they do the same through high school. Then they do the same in further education and their work places. You see the pattern. While programs may seem to have evolved from fictional narratives to the (hilariously insipid) ‘reality’ format, the function stays the same: to keep watching TV. Reenforcing this is the illusion of shared primary experience when everyone watches live events, be they sports, fame-culture events, political gaming or disasters. I talk to my parents who talk about where they were when they heard the news that John F. Kennedy was shot. I talk to almost anyone about where they were when the towers came down in 2011 and the majority were in front of the television, myself included.

How can you not, right? How are you supposed to not feel like you’re participating by observing?
Right.
That one there will precipitate a whole other discussion and that’s not what I’m here for today, but one day I might.
2011 was an interesting one in particular because that was probably one of the earlier instances after which I really questioned what it was we were doing, and more importantly what *I* was doing, what my role was, what my contribution was and how my thoughts might be shaped, determining my language. If you’ve never done that, I strongly suggest you do, and I’m talking as much to myself as I’m the one most likely to read this (again in the future). Not just about television, but board games, video games (which is something I’ve done to a high degree over the last twelve months), anything you engage in culturally at a higher level or even a base level regularly. How is your participation in a culture affecting the way you communicate and the frame with which you perceive the world around you?
You should pause to do that right now.

US AND YOU
Once upon a time, ignorance of General Knowledge was frowned upon. We had this ideal of everyone knowing a little about a lot and I like that. It comprises a fair amount of my modus operandi. It’s not just about knowing ‘random useless facts’, but it’s about comprehending them and having them exercise and develop your thinking. Consciously or subconsciously, you start linking pieces of knowledge, especially knowledge of dynamics and systems, and it improves your critical ability. Critical ability and language isn’t just about criticising stuff and/or writing long diatribes about it, it’s about developing a tool that lets you evaluate things with better efficiency and precision. It’s about honing artistic skill and appreciation, about improving communication, learning and teaching whenever they happen (which happens almost daily by the way, as most of you will be aware of by now).

Now high levels of literacy in particular cultural aspects is often frowned upon. I suspect early on this is what contributed to establishing ‘geek’ and ‘nerd’ cultures, which have since turned into the contemporary monstrosities they are now. Even geek/nerd cultures tend to have common mediums and works though, and they’re developing in a way not dissimilar to how general contemporary society does. General modern society is literate in television. Geek/nerd culture is literate in geek/nerd culture, a selection of specific sub-cultures that have been deemed acceptable. Anyone who expresses outside of those established norms is segregated.

Rok & I have certainly been segregated from larger sub-cultures for most of our lives, and that’s probably part of why we gravitated towards one another. Yes, we form a micro-culture of our own and then begin to gravitate towards others as they do us, but we’re certainly not a movement common enough to be included in any significant social movement. Until lately. (With board games, though what we’re doing with them is a little different. Also the individual members of the groups don’t interact with either one of us about board games to the same degree that he and I do with each other, which is pretty much daily). As a segregated micro-culture, we’ve ventured far and wide when it comes to articles of art and made some wonderful discoveries. We do this as individuals and share, and we do it as individuals and keep some of it to ourselves.

MORE THAN ERT
Sharing, appreciating and maintaining a broad palate for art is one thing, but I can’t help but think that doing that as individuals and also sharing some of it helps Rok and I develop our micro-cultural dialect, and I mean that both metaphysically and literally. We do speak often and at length about deeply personal things in deeply personal ways. The breadth of our appreciation, understanding and exposure to art contributes to our ideological and literal vocabularies and while art won’t be referenced directly, the abstracts explored therein are often those relevant to our perception and experience. I guess that might seem like a convoluted way of saying more art makes you talk good and I may more or less be saying that, worse, simply celebrating it, but I’m not above that kind of indulgence. We should bloody well indulge. We should celebrate, because we don’t have a whole culture to celebrate it for us.

HEY I DON’T UNDERSTAND YOUR BAG BUT YOU’RE PRETTY COOL
I’m not a prick. Much. No no, I’m not a prick most of the time and Rok definitely isn’t. He’s the soul of approachability. I’m… different, charismatic enough but still embracing and welcoming. I’m less of a bastard about television (not much, but a little less), popular cultures and media than I have been and that’s something I continue to try and be aware of at all times. I don’t show it often but I’m extremely impatient with people. It’s a terrible myopic device of mine that I hate it when folks just want to tip-toe around things and test the waters. When I love something I dive right into it, consuming as much as I can, meditating on it and researching it as I go. I expect others to do the same and keep up but naturally everyone processes things differently.

Still, I don’t often actively segregate myself from others. I still do, mostly because I haven’t let go of certain elements of elitism but also I believe some of it is justified. There are some cultures that I believe to be dangerous and downright evil (insofar as a moral term serves as a representation of a personal subjective one), or at the very least, irrelevant and uninteresting and sometimes there’s no saving it. Still, if an individual from one of those sub-cultures engaged me on something interesting – and not necessarily something I find interesting, just not something stupid, then I’m happy to reciprocate and often do.

ERRYONE
I still won’t pay you that ‘everyone’s different’ platitude as a means to excuse bad culture, and there is definitely bad culture. What should be encouraging and compelling is that there is so much good culture, art and humanity on offer that we shouldn’t have to homogenise quite so much. While I won’t fly too far in the other direction and say ‘we should celebrate our differences’ (because we should, it’s just not as romantic as that), I will say that we should do more to appreciate things that other people find engaging, with the exception of seditious commercial mechanisms such as television. (You know my bag, if you like a show, be patient and get it on DVD or watch it streaming/on demand, in your own time, under your control. We can talk about the show, I’m happy to – be passionate about the show – just don’t be beholden to an airing schedule. As soon as you are, you’ve bought it and they’ve bought you – you are without question owned).

Of-course the fact that everyone is different is an important one, regardless of how flippant we are in using the phrase. We know we’re all different, yet we still get tribal about stuff. We become exclusionary as we establish rituals and traditions. We form dialects that reenforce the norm and don’t embrace new contributors (shameless self justification, particularly with board games, Rok and I are *always* keen to share our activities and articles of art with people, even when they don’t like it. The whole reason I’m now running groups is to share wonderful experiences with people and nurture a culture that wants to share with newcomers).
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A big part of my job then is to stop instinctively jumping on cultural elements I find heinous when they come up in discussion. I don’t always, but sometimes my approach isn’t one conducive to good discourse and any kind of progression and learning. There are times when I won’t hold back and don’t feel like I should, but there are definitely better ways of communicating certain things with certain people – real, actual people that may not have ever tested their own cultures before. There’s something dangerously compelling in being socially combative, like any aggression, in that it feeds itself. You feel really good bringing your will to bear on some cultural criticisms but the method of communication can really lack empathy.

WOW A POINT ACTUALLY EMERGES
I had no objective for this piece of writing, but I like that this is where I’ve landed. We all like to think we exercise empathy daily but I don’t think we do. Not so much in a horrible way, though for me it probably is horrible more often than not, but probably not to the level of cognisance that we should. Board gaming has definitely influenced this discussion, in examining people and acceptance. Board gaming also intrinsically includes elements of teaching, even among players who never run a game or session. Something I keep coming back to is the organic process of players that learn faster instinctively helping out others around them. I don’t think we really see this dynamic anywhere else in life, particularly when so many of our activities (including employment) contain higher levels of competitiveness.

I wonder if I can translate some of the dynamics I observe in a board gaming session to my daily life. I suspect I won’t have the patience for it in many instances, and sometimes I’m blocked by whatever assumptions I’ve made about a person given my historical exposure to them. I guess we’ll see.