Sushu Thinks.

[summercomfort]

On the walk to Midway, I was thinking... about what makes individuals. Are we the way we are because we're reacting to the people around us, the atmosphere, the environment, the need to distinguish ourselves in an organic society? Is there any bit of "individual" in us? Something that is not linked to the society (either by collective consciousness or by division of labor)? People behave differently when among different audiences/people. And people behave *very* differently when by themselves.

For example, now that my roommate's gone, I've been a lot looser about a lot of things in the room. Like window shades. I leave them up because I like waking to natural light (what little that passes throuh the cloud cover). And I finally realize how annoying the ceiling twinkle lights can be. When she was around, her excitement bounced off of mine and like mirrors, we kind of reflected and expanded that emotion... Really, I'm used to a little more light in my room in the evenings. But is that how mob mentality works? It's just an extension of basic social mentality, isn't it? People bouncing and reflecting emotions off of one another. This constant dichotomy between the need to individualize the self and the need to belong to society. DURKHEIM is RIGHT. He is awesome. I have half a mind to take him home with me.

Anyway, back to people acting very differently when there's nobody around. I thought I'd change a lot when I come to UofC. (or rather, I hoped I would). But I didn't. Why? Is it because I'm by myself too often? Or because I have so many ties back to PA? Because they saw me and had certain expectations, so I spend half my time fulfilling those ("studious", "doesn't know how to have fun") and the other half negating those ("weird","childish")? Sometimes I feel like a black hole and sometimes I feel like a mirror.

It's much easier to make a decision when there's a friend around to talk it through. Because they are mirrors, and when you have your decision mirrored back to you, it becomes stronger, more focused. You feel that it affects more than yourself. This works out on livejournal, as well. Even though I'm talking to myself, I still feel connected to ... something. maybe an invisible audience, or a community...?

One of these days I'm gonna take sociology just so I can rant about this stuff eloquently instead of confusingly.

Comments

[summercomfort]

hmm... I don't *think* I'm a comment whore... It's amusing when people give comments, but it's really up to them. And I don't necessarily do somersaults or post fanfiction or write something incendiary (like "OMG! Bush is like *so* smart!") just to get comments... Very often I forget about the fact that I posted something until I get comments for it. Of course, you can probably still argue that I'm a comment whore because I post in public and whatnot, and there usually is the sense of writing to someone, (but no one specific), and the fact that I comment so much can be construed as a vain attempt to get others to comment on mine, but ... =P. I don't think I'm whoring myself to get comments. Sure, I might lj-cut myself to annoy people less with long irrelevent entries, and I do write things that entertain me (and occasionally others), but I don't consider that whoring. Maybe displaying (like the models in figure drawing!), but not whoring.

Anyway, just my two knuts on comment-whoring.

[blackkeywaltz.livejournal.com]

One of these days I'm gonna take sociology

Or cultural anthropology! :)

I know what you mean about the "invisible audience." It always happens when you write something where people can read it, and then the writing is partially for you to express yourself but part of that process is sharing it and connecting with other people (regardless of whether they explicitly respond or not). That's what I love about writing, art, and performance of all kinds.

[summercomfort]

indeed! except that sometimes there's private stuff, too. Like I get embarrassed when I show some of my art to other people. And the art that's designed for other people (as gift or b/c they asked for it), they usually come out differently.

[conejita.livejournal.com]

*grin* read Montaigne:

Others form Man; I give an account of Man and sketch a picture of a particular one of them who is very badly formed and whom I would truly make very different from what he is if I had to fashion him afresh. But it is done now. The brush-strokes of my portrait do not go awry even though they do change and vary....I am unable to stabilize my subject: it staggers confusedly along with a natural drunkeness. I grasp it as it is now, at this moment when I am lingering over it. I am not portraying being but becoming: not the passage from one age to another but from day to day, from minute to minute.

Montaigne wrote to an invisible audience! now hundreds of revelle students worship/fear him ^_^v

some related thoughts

[cowofthemoon.livejournal.com]

... I get the general gist of your earlier questions, but I don't think I quite grasp them. Maybe I do, but don't have an answer or haven't thought about them enough. Anyway, I really liked your thoughts, and I have something on your last few sentences.

these thoughts address Blackkeywaltz and that thread as well.

(some of this is cut from my livejournal)

I think that Journals are ways of speaking to the void or intangible presence because in speaking we can reflect better. Only in Livejournal, it's not the void of course. You can speak to anyone with interest in you, your friends etc. Is this exhibitionism? Maybe, or maybe exhibitionism is the wrong word. A human need to be understood?

I think Livejournals are an interesting contradiction in terms. Journals were private thing. A journal used to be for self reflection. but this is a live journal.

Because of these two things, I think LJ fills two roles:
It fulfills our need to show others who we are or who we were.
It fulfills our need to show ourselves who we are or who we were.

In that sense Livejournal has a foot in both the two camps you outlined above, Individual Identity and Societal Identity.