On emotion
First, it seems awfully strange that the convention of indicating the content of a written work by entitling it, 'On X' seems to have fallen from favour recently. Most books on X are simply entitled 'X', or some variant therof. This, however, is tangential to my main point.
We, at university, are supposed to be, in general a more intelligent group. This is not to be disputed, it comes with the requirements necessary to gain admission and stay. It strikes me, then, that such a supposedly enlightened group has such a curious attitude towards the subject of emotion.
It is a curious observation that any display of emotion or weakness is written off in my social environment as 'emo'. This is distinct from chronic feelings of depression or long term moody behaviour- when I have observed one person I know showing signs of sadness or grief, another whom I thought above that sort of thing immediately referred to it as 'emo'.
This got me to thinking- what is emo? From contextual definition (which is the only sort of definition that can hold valid with slang terms like this one) it would seem to indicate the sort of behaviour I listed above in the first example- long term displays of moodiness or solemnity. However, any display of emotion of any sort tends to now be written off under the same perjorative label.
Not being one to show any emotions other than amusement in public voluntarily, this hardly hinders me at all. However, it seems telling to me that modern youth culture, by and large, views sadness or emotional pain as something filthy, something profane, something to be expressed anonymously in private only. We have no idea how to deal with it in public. Someone crying makes us uncomfortable far beyond what it should, because we feel that we should not be seeing it, that the person crying is somewhat lessened by the act. Any display of emotion (or, more accurately, negative emotion) in public, no matter the magnitude, seems to earn the title of 'emo'.
Does this not strike someone, somewhere, as wrong?
We, at university, are supposed to be, in general a more intelligent group. This is not to be disputed, it comes with the requirements necessary to gain admission and stay. It strikes me, then, that such a supposedly enlightened group has such a curious attitude towards the subject of emotion.
It is a curious observation that any display of emotion or weakness is written off in my social environment as 'emo'. This is distinct from chronic feelings of depression or long term moody behaviour- when I have observed one person I know showing signs of sadness or grief, another whom I thought above that sort of thing immediately referred to it as 'emo'.
This got me to thinking- what is emo? From contextual definition (which is the only sort of definition that can hold valid with slang terms like this one) it would seem to indicate the sort of behaviour I listed above in the first example- long term displays of moodiness or solemnity. However, any display of emotion of any sort tends to now be written off under the same perjorative label.
Not being one to show any emotions other than amusement in public voluntarily, this hardly hinders me at all. However, it seems telling to me that modern youth culture, by and large, views sadness or emotional pain as something filthy, something profane, something to be expressed anonymously in private only. We have no idea how to deal with it in public. Someone crying makes us uncomfortable far beyond what it should, because we feel that we should not be seeing it, that the person crying is somewhat lessened by the act. Any display of emotion (or, more accurately, negative emotion) in public, no matter the magnitude, seems to earn the title of 'emo'.
Does this not strike someone, somewhere, as wrong?