No place to hide? Admit it: man has probably always, since the ban from paradise searched for his identity. To do so he compared (and discriminated) the image of his own to that of others. His quest has, we might gather, always been propelled forward by the imminence and possible threat of criticism of others. So probably from old times on he made himself vulnerable. He must have been needing ways to fight back or to hide. But where and how? The new thing is not this. The New Thing is that modern man is with so many. That limits have gone. No more privacy. No more shame. No more morals. The new thing is: man knows this. Man knows about almost everything now. He has the means for this knowledge, therefore he cannot be innocent. Man wants to hide. He becomes a follower in the shadow of shared Role Models, men all over the world follow the same Icons. The new thing is that the craving for social security is Massive and in the same Direction. The new thing is: it’s not hunger or thirst that threatens his life most, not even physical danger, but the threat of social isolation. In a civilization in which he cannot avoid the confrontation with his own species, either in real life or either in an imaginary digital domain, somewhere, magnified, glorified, perfectionalized, he almost never escapes the excruciating demands of society, that puts him (the normal person, the adolescent, the émigré, the fugitive, the exile, the descendant from many races and many cultures, the traveler, the tourist, the host, the child, the member of a group, the worker in the organization, the social climber,) in the crucial dilemma, that is marked with two promises, on either end one: to adapt or to come out, at the other. Safety on the one hand (but nothing happening) or personal growth and development (and risk): Translated the choice in everyday life, many times a day, is: To be or not to be To avoid confrontation or to elicit one To hide or to appear. To camouflage or to glitter To follow or to lead To obey the rules of make/break them. Sometimes it seems you do not have to choose, you can do both. Thats the point of current entertainment. You can legitimately ban a person out of a show, a game or an adventure, as is offered by many reality programs on TV, using sms or internet. Fun the more because you can come out in safety, pronounce yourself in anonymity. As almost everybody knows in real life the Social Game is not so accommodating, you have to choose. And the choice brings one often to the edge by the confrontation of others, peers even, or by news events, or by phenomena as mobbing and pestering especially in closed communities like work, at schools, in neighborhoods and prisons. So, there is no time for hesitation: Who will you be, what will you stand for, what will you do? You can be wise and follow the message of the Zen-master: “To be caught in a notion of self is bad. To be caught in a notion of non-self is worse….” But living with this outcome takes courage. No wonder a hiding place is called for these days. Take a normal day. What about the saturday morning, your first leisure day in your single existence? You sleep long and coming out of bed you discover the lack of coffee in your kitchen. Oh, how desperately would you like to be invisible in the supermarket. Could you be the Invisible Man, could you wear Faust’s Narrenkappe, is there urban camouflage clothing available? It can be extenuating, to be hunted in having to choose all the time. Where or how can you feel the safety of protection and the opportunity to look out, at the same time? Wouldn’t it be nice to have a private sanctuary, a place where you can hide, not only from others and from the rat-race, but also from this choice. A place where you can be silent, think about who you are, completely private. Enjoy the scene, enjoy the sight, without being hunted. A holy place, an asylum, a refuge. The uterus reinvented. Just a place where we can hide and see(k) at the same time. It can be anything: a cloak, a building, a life story, a concept…..Objects and places have already been hypes because of that function: The wrapping of shawls, the burkah, the conservatory, the digital identities, the myths, the stories, the tents and caravans, the cloisters, the religion, the brand-community, the cars, the sunglasses, the smartphone serve as security shields and safe havens: sanctuaries. (you can see more in a small film of Omar Pasha:) click susannepiet/p/136.html
Posted on: Wed, 24 Dec 2014 11:49:42 +0000
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