On Becoming an Adult

Aldous Huxley was accurate in his claim that humans are conditioned from birth. His emphasis was the effect of media - television, radio, messages of mass comsumption as the ideal role of societal members - "keep the Big Wheel turning", so to speak. I realized today that we are also extremely conditioned by our parents. I know it seems a given, but bear with me. This is a train of thought that does reach a logical conclusion. Well, a conclusion anyway. I'll let you judge the logic as you see fit.

So. Either we act like our parents or we act the opposite of them. So great is their influence on our lives as social role models that virtually all of our beliefs are either parallel or pependicular to their own. This is most fully realized whn one reaches adulthood. Suddenly it is not enough to simply exist. One is expected to contribute and participate. All of a sudden one's opinoin is demanded, debated and processed by adults who before would have expected you (not long ago either) to simply be playing, gazing into space or walking away during their adult conversations.

In University, in particular, you find yourself spewing out opinions, ideals and prejudgments without even knowing they are your own. Then these get chewed up and flung back in your face. You are forced to defend them or, conversely, alter, reconsider or simply reinvestigate why you said what you did, how you came to think that or feel that way, and whether or not it is really what you, as an autonomous individual, truly believe. This has to be one of life's most difficult, onerous and exhausting tasks. Seperating, at the age of 21, who you uniquely are andwhat you uniquely believe from the reams of infiltrating messages that have been subtly moulding your viewpoint for your entire life.

In Aldous Huxley's A Brave New World, lab-created babies are hypnotized in sleep into accepting social norms before they can speak. Essentially, that's what happens to us. We go through such a large portion of life being taught what to think - about history, about war, about relationships - wihtout really having an objective view (if sucha thing exists), that when we are finally expected to have a definite opinion, it's someone else's; hundreds of other peoples' ideas that we spew out. Especially our parents'. The most interesting thing is finding, for the first time, that you are actually a very different person, with very different opinions, than your parent.

playing god

where my soul goes to breathe

Food Poisoning

Food poisoning and I have a very close connection. The first time I had it was when I was 9 or something. Old enough to be left alone in the hospital for two days, young enough to not like it. I remember the pain like it was yesterday. Maybe that's because I re-experienced it yesterday. The first time it was Aunty Marsha's chicken. I had to have an intervenus in my arm, which made it difficult to roll over. The only thing I liked about the experience was the attention, and being able to have someone cater to my every need at the touch of a button.

I think this time I food poisoned myself, by way of some innocent-looking lunchmeat. Stefania says I'm a bad judge of lunchmeat. I'm a good judge of character though, so I think it balances out. The worst part of my current food poisoning is that I was once again alone to suffer through it. All night I was writhing in pain. Stef was out of town, Steph was at Adam's, my mum's far away. Jason-the-man-downtstairs was the only one here to hear my screams of anguish, and he is technically not supposed to hear anything I do (sometimes I wonder about what he does hear...not that there's anything bad to hear...or much bad to hear...).

All I want now is a big bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken. That may sound disgusting, but when all you can eat is sugar water it sounds like the ultimate meal. All that greasiness is the very thing I couldn't have...so it was what I most desired. The human condition. We always want what we can't have. So the first KFC I have I am going to indulge. Judge me if you will.

Luckily I'm well enough to go to the David Gray concert tonight with Stef at the Carlu. Looks like quite the swank place, so I'm going to pretend I have class. And try not to run to the bathroom every two seconds. Nothing like food poisoning to bring you back down to earth.

I wonder how this blog thing works and whether anyone will ever see this.