Unscene
Although I was only at the Wired Women festival for about an hour and a half on Saturday, I was surprised how distant I felt from it all. Although not everybody there was a heart on their sleeve lesbian, there was a definite 'scene' thing going on that the isolated clusters gathered round picnic tables couldn't quite conceal. It's an old cliche, but it's true that even people who feel that they are different from everybody else seek like-minded people, even if they don't actually communicate with them.
My classic illustrative anecdote for this was from the Slimelight 'goth' club at Electrowerks, where a lone middle aged tranny could be seen wandering around it's scummy halls, past the cyber goths with their glowsticks and EBM, down through the old skool Siouxsie Sioux look-alikes past the assorted goth/metal groups who clog up the corridors and back up to the cyber goths. He never spoke a word to anybody and I never saw him with a drink, but he seemed happy to be somewhere he felt comfortable, where a middle aged man can wear a figure hugging, thigh length leather dress and black stilettoes and barely stand out from the fauna.
I didn't feel like part of the scene there either, actually I felt like I stood out more than the tranny, which I probably did.
I don't think alternative cultures should be little more than safe houses for outsiders, I think they should encourage people to question everything, even the scene they are a part of. Within these cultures a hierarchy is inevitably formed and the same inequalities are reinforced, except they are hidden away from public view and obscured by a veneer of liberalness.
That sounds quite bitter and harsh, doesn't it. I'm not quite sure why being different is even that important. Here's one suggestion though.
According to cognitive scientists, that the human brain is unique because of it's 'plasticity' - basically the reason we as a species have been so successful at survival is because of our inherent adaptability to our environment. What this also means is that technically speaking every human being is unique, because there are simply so many possible variations of connections that can be made between the billions of neurons that make up our brains.
Now there are two explanations of how this occured (actually there are probably loads but I'm just going to mention two) and I'm going to simplify them awfully. One suggests that language preceded this ability, and was probably conducive to the evolution of a brain capable of creating the unique, another theory has it that we were already capable of incredibly imaginative mental feats and that this gave us the capacity to speak. Now obviously both were implicit in early human socialising, but theory 1 puts sociability at the heart of the imagination, as speech could only be developed in a highly dynamic social milieu and theory 2 puts less emphasis on the social side, suggesting that huamn imagination is not wholly reliant on social interaction.
If theory 2 is right, then that would suggest that social pressure could unduly restrict imagination and creativity, because although the human brain is capable of making meaning out of the most obscure sets of words, not every individual would create the same meaning, hence it could be argued that social groups require a fixed set of prompts in order that everybody understands everybody else and cohesiveness is maintained.
So what is the answer? ... I don't know, in fact it may be that the Slimlight Tranny has it right, and that if you can find somewhere were you feel comfortable doing the things you want to do then that's all you need, but he still seemed a lonely soul and whether sociability came 1st or 2nd it is here to stay and an element of sociability should be the freedom to discuss ideas that differ from the norm.
My classic illustrative anecdote for this was from the Slimelight 'goth' club at Electrowerks, where a lone middle aged tranny could be seen wandering around it's scummy halls, past the cyber goths with their glowsticks and EBM, down through the old skool Siouxsie Sioux look-alikes past the assorted goth/metal groups who clog up the corridors and back up to the cyber goths. He never spoke a word to anybody and I never saw him with a drink, but he seemed happy to be somewhere he felt comfortable, where a middle aged man can wear a figure hugging, thigh length leather dress and black stilettoes and barely stand out from the fauna.
I didn't feel like part of the scene there either, actually I felt like I stood out more than the tranny, which I probably did.
I don't think alternative cultures should be little more than safe houses for outsiders, I think they should encourage people to question everything, even the scene they are a part of. Within these cultures a hierarchy is inevitably formed and the same inequalities are reinforced, except they are hidden away from public view and obscured by a veneer of liberalness.
That sounds quite bitter and harsh, doesn't it. I'm not quite sure why being different is even that important. Here's one suggestion though.
According to cognitive scientists, that the human brain is unique because of it's 'plasticity' - basically the reason we as a species have been so successful at survival is because of our inherent adaptability to our environment. What this also means is that technically speaking every human being is unique, because there are simply so many possible variations of connections that can be made between the billions of neurons that make up our brains.
Now there are two explanations of how this occured (actually there are probably loads but I'm just going to mention two) and I'm going to simplify them awfully. One suggests that language preceded this ability, and was probably conducive to the evolution of a brain capable of creating the unique, another theory has it that we were already capable of incredibly imaginative mental feats and that this gave us the capacity to speak. Now obviously both were implicit in early human socialising, but theory 1 puts sociability at the heart of the imagination, as speech could only be developed in a highly dynamic social milieu and theory 2 puts less emphasis on the social side, suggesting that huamn imagination is not wholly reliant on social interaction.
If theory 2 is right, then that would suggest that social pressure could unduly restrict imagination and creativity, because although the human brain is capable of making meaning out of the most obscure sets of words, not every individual would create the same meaning, hence it could be argued that social groups require a fixed set of prompts in order that everybody understands everybody else and cohesiveness is maintained.
So what is the answer? ... I don't know, in fact it may be that the Slimlight Tranny has it right, and that if you can find somewhere were you feel comfortable doing the things you want to do then that's all you need, but he still seemed a lonely soul and whether sociability came 1st or 2nd it is here to stay and an element of sociability should be the freedom to discuss ideas that differ from the norm.
posted by Nick at 2:14 pm
1 Comments:
Yeah, an interesting analysis of how "outsider" cliques are just as capable of excluding people as the mainstream can be. I distinctly remember meeting a whole bunch of people at a very alternative scenester bar a couple of years ago, several of whom were in bands that we might have heard of, but the majority of the world hasn't, and never will.
And I felt completely, almost deliberately excluded. My friend who brought me there did nothing to help, which damaged our friendship permanently. I wasn't actively mocked, but I could read between the lines, and I was actually a little stunned.
Here was a bunch of people who proclaimed the whole "anything goes, all are welcome" creed, but in practice were just as small minded and mean as any conventional mainstream types. I ended up with nothing to say to them, as they were completely inwardly focused, wrapped up in their own little world. I just stood there feeling awkward. It was the cultural equivalent of the rich and famous not knowing the price of a pint of milk.
The irony was of course that despite the fact i wasn't wearing the right jeans, drinking the right drink or sporting the right haircut, I had just as much passion and knowledge about the music they loved, but with a perspective based somewhere near reality. ie. The new *band name deleted* single won't be turning the world on it's head, sparking the downfall of society and the forming of a new world order.
Basically, purists are wankers.
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