Blog Response #21

I guess I could argue that I've constructed my identity since birth in a crude way, kind of chiseling my personality off from a blank slate. I'm a big believer in the thought that every emotion, experience, and choice affects you in some way, even in the most minute sense. It takes the thousands of these little things to construct a personality. For me personally to construct my personality comes through choices I make, but even then I don't have much control over the world that gives me those choices. I do feel like there is a difference between construction and performance however, and I can perform on a day to day basis without necessarily constructing personality (in fact I may be doing the opposite). I feel that to get through a typical day, everyone has to put on at least a thin mask in terms of their behavior. Take a job, for example. I'm not saying your not being yourself at a job, but you are certainly controlling yourself more than you would with friends or alone, it's necessary for society to function. With this definition, performance isn't necessarily the over-the-top as people expect.

Personal culture is affected in much the same way, but I think it's necessary to look at the media when you look social environments. Most subcultures just naturally develop through common ground/ a network of close relationships/ etc., but once these grow, media seems to latch onto it and turn it into something much larger. Media culture (although there are many of them) spreads far enough to give a code of aesthetics/attitude/behavior to anyone willing to give the attention. At this point, it is a total construct. People make their entire salaries by planning out trends to disseminate throughout the public, a completely unnatural occurrence.

As far as physical environments go, one could argue to buildings themselves are artificial constructs, but I wanted to look at this idea on the macro scale. I've been fascinated the past couple years that countries are completely made up. Such a simple idea, but pretty hard to figure out when I was younger. Every war every fought over territory was essentially fought over imaginary lines. It takes the unanimous support from almost every citizen to simply recognize borders, names, leadership, etc. (except in certain sticky situations) to make it real. Yet it happens, and will seemingly may never break. Absolutely nothing on the entire world follows the rules of our modern world except for humans. It really is a mind-boggling thing.

This last statement I'll keep short and brief. It's not supposed to sound sad or negative, but rather a little uplifting. The little things close to you are real. Whether an intimate conversation with a friend, a design you poured your heart into, or an observation of the sky that makes you stop for a second. All those are real. It's about perception, what's real to you may be a construct for another. Everything outside of this realm is fake to some extent. I think that makes the smaller things, that really affect you more special. Does that count as an answer, or full of too much sap?