Caricatures of Communality

As I mentioned a couple of entries back I've found myself living with twelve other twenty somethings in a huge old house in Berkeley and working on an urban farm. This is the largest group of people I've ever lived with and not to mention the most insular as well. We are almost consistently surrounded by one another and as you can imagine the month that we have spent together triples within the mind's internal clock. I think we all feel as though we are getting to know one another on a "deeper" level with each passing day and I would say that sentiment is correct to a degree. I'd like to offer up the idea though that maybe we're actually doing the exact opposite - that instead communal living has reduced us to caricatures of our fuller selves.

Here's how I see it, from my own internal vantage point: these relationships have a deadline. Sure I hope that we will stay close and connected, but circumstance just isn't going to allow for the same sort of proximity that we've been experiencing. What we have is three intense months... to do what? I suppose to make an impression, it's the sort of impression that we want to make and our ability to manipulate it that is interesting. Let's say we did want to express who we really are, in order to do that given the scenarioI believe that we feel the need to become "hyper authentic." It's as if we were shouting "This is who I am! I am this sort of a person! Look at my quirks! Know me! PLEASE!" I think we all in a way experience his desire to an almost overwhelming degree, I mean, what's a better feeling than to be understood? And not just understood, but known, loved, and respected for all those self-declared oddities that make you, you.

The other instance of caricaturing that I see happening is the communities need to place people. We were asked to this in a more formal setting under the "Eight Shields Model," but I believe that this is something that we are constantly doing in the house anyways. It's been my experience that for one reason or another certain descriptive traits, anecdotes, or hobbies are latched onto depending by the group and those become a person's definitive qualities for the allotted time of relation. Why we choose what to focus on is probably a larger question.

Well I am sleepy, long days doing manual labor that my poor post-thesis body isn't used to have encouraged 9pm bed times. There's a lot more that I'd like to write about, but I think in order to do so I'm going to have to switch to a more conversational tone for the time being. It's just I haven't had much time to write and a lot of what I'd like to write about is general "life stuff", which I didn't initial intend to be placed on here. (That's what we have livejournal for, immaright?!) But we'll see anyways.

Good night ya'll.

Smiling for Whom?

After having entered an intense communal living situation and being faced with the ever presence of another, I've begun to wonder about the differences between smiling to yourself and smiling with others.

The thought was that smiling to yourself is a particular form of pleasure that we not only experience far less frequently, but which also illicites a greater joy than mutual humor would.