Ruminations on image
There is something I would like to talk about, but I am not quite ready for that idea so I am gonna try to flesh this one piece of it out first.
As human beings we seem to want to be seen. We want to be seen and heard. Yet the caveat to that is that it has to always be on OUR terms.
For instance, you get a new pop culture t-shirt, you wear it not around the house, but on the street, in the hope that others who get it can comment or, at a glance, get you. Our style is sometimes supposed to indicate who you are, and what you value, immediately. It evolves so that we demonstrate that we aren't dated, or it doesn't, to testify that new motifs of self are somehow inferior. We might rely completely on the items provided to us by family and friends to provide us our clothes or style like an immigrant relying on a grandchild to translate what they intend to say. In fact pubescents play with style and language the most as their first true attempts at self-expression.
Like language, style can be misunderstood. Just as words carry assosciations, so do elements of clothing. One man's "cool" as an indication of praise, is another man's cold as an appraisal of temperature. So too, one man's self-respecting suit, may be another's rigidness or conservatism. We therefore put effort in what we wear. At the very least, even if we have nothing to say, we dress as non-descriptly as possible, being as mute as possibly so we don't say the WRONG thing.
That is one aspect of image. The other part is behavior. May I venture to postulate that our every day behavior is also communication? What does that then say about us? Timeliness. In the common behavioral parlance showing up on time demonstrates how much your meeting or arrival to work is a priority. You want to be there. You NEED to be there. So the earlier you show up, the more important it is. EVEN IF IT ISN'T! You are communicating that it is. To you. To another it demonstrates that you didn't have anything else to do. May be you are temporaly affluent and can afford to arrange your schedule with plenty of time between meetings. Yet before folks get on me that I'm building a cop out or that am speaking subjectively, how about I discuss something that is actually personal.
Back in March I was at a Congregation that is renting a facility to worship. The rented facility happened to have a playground, and on the one warm day that entire March we, the parents, let our kids go and play on the playground. The parents were outside, casually talking, watching our kids, enjoying the fact that we could stand outside and casualy talk and watch our kids. We then noticed some Indian women, replete in Sari's, walk onto the grounds, and while I may not recall if I saw any children precede and then assimalte amongst the cacophany that was already on the playground, I did notice the women. All the parents did. Their style, they're clustered walk spoke VOLUMES. They did not belong. They were other. No one said anything. No one greeted them. No one invited them to join us. No one disuaded them in an effort to leave. We continued our own conversations, verbally. Our behavior starting a new one concurrently. Some of the women of the congregation were sitting at a table when the Indian women pushed their way onto seats at the table. At that everyone started to wrap up their differant conversations and make their way home.
I still think about the instance because however one looks at it we were wrong. We as humans want to be seen. We want to be acknowledged, even if it is to subsequently be forgotten. That is why time out is used as a punishment. To be removed from the group, to be unacknowledged is painful. That's perhaps why none of us said or did anything. When NO ONE said anything to these women we non-verbally told each other THAT was the necessary behavior at that moment.
We live in a time when the innanimate objects we use communicate more deeply, efficiently, and frequently than we do to each other. When we do, we find the inefficiencies in our communication to spawn more division than unity. We look for political candidates that "speak" their "mind" or witty memes to say the things we are either to scared to or developmentaly incapable of. So what is our image when we can't speak properly through style, or behavior, or words. Who are we and what does our mutedness say to the world.
I'm k5H4w and me trying to get you Kreemed. Look at that!
As human beings we seem to want to be seen. We want to be seen and heard. Yet the caveat to that is that it has to always be on OUR terms.
For instance, you get a new pop culture t-shirt, you wear it not around the house, but on the street, in the hope that others who get it can comment or, at a glance, get you. Our style is sometimes supposed to indicate who you are, and what you value, immediately. It evolves so that we demonstrate that we aren't dated, or it doesn't, to testify that new motifs of self are somehow inferior. We might rely completely on the items provided to us by family and friends to provide us our clothes or style like an immigrant relying on a grandchild to translate what they intend to say. In fact pubescents play with style and language the most as their first true attempts at self-expression.
Like language, style can be misunderstood. Just as words carry assosciations, so do elements of clothing. One man's "cool" as an indication of praise, is another man's cold as an appraisal of temperature. So too, one man's self-respecting suit, may be another's rigidness or conservatism. We therefore put effort in what we wear. At the very least, even if we have nothing to say, we dress as non-descriptly as possible, being as mute as possibly so we don't say the WRONG thing.
That is one aspect of image. The other part is behavior. May I venture to postulate that our every day behavior is also communication? What does that then say about us? Timeliness. In the common behavioral parlance showing up on time demonstrates how much your meeting or arrival to work is a priority. You want to be there. You NEED to be there. So the earlier you show up, the more important it is. EVEN IF IT ISN'T! You are communicating that it is. To you. To another it demonstrates that you didn't have anything else to do. May be you are temporaly affluent and can afford to arrange your schedule with plenty of time between meetings. Yet before folks get on me that I'm building a cop out or that am speaking subjectively, how about I discuss something that is actually personal.
Back in March I was at a Congregation that is renting a facility to worship. The rented facility happened to have a playground, and on the one warm day that entire March we, the parents, let our kids go and play on the playground. The parents were outside, casually talking, watching our kids, enjoying the fact that we could stand outside and casualy talk and watch our kids. We then noticed some Indian women, replete in Sari's, walk onto the grounds, and while I may not recall if I saw any children precede and then assimalte amongst the cacophany that was already on the playground, I did notice the women. All the parents did. Their style, they're clustered walk spoke VOLUMES. They did not belong. They were other. No one said anything. No one greeted them. No one invited them to join us. No one disuaded them in an effort to leave. We continued our own conversations, verbally. Our behavior starting a new one concurrently. Some of the women of the congregation were sitting at a table when the Indian women pushed their way onto seats at the table. At that everyone started to wrap up their differant conversations and make their way home.
I still think about the instance because however one looks at it we were wrong. We as humans want to be seen. We want to be acknowledged, even if it is to subsequently be forgotten. That is why time out is used as a punishment. To be removed from the group, to be unacknowledged is painful. That's perhaps why none of us said or did anything. When NO ONE said anything to these women we non-verbally told each other THAT was the necessary behavior at that moment.
We live in a time when the innanimate objects we use communicate more deeply, efficiently, and frequently than we do to each other. When we do, we find the inefficiencies in our communication to spawn more division than unity. We look for political candidates that "speak" their "mind" or witty memes to say the things we are either to scared to or developmentaly incapable of. So what is our image when we can't speak properly through style, or behavior, or words. Who are we and what does our mutedness say to the world.
I'm k5H4w and me trying to get you Kreemed. Look at that!