optics-internet-salon

optics-internet-salon

Optics in the Digital Age

R:art

  • What does “be yourself” even mean

    • Even when you lie and bullshit, you are doing that in an idiosyncratic way that’s unique to you

  • When you’re conscious of how you come across ‘in the moment’, it demands a lot of processing power

    • And that reduces your ability to process the moment, listen or receive things
    • Model serves you better from the subconscious, where you can ditch the script and operate

  • The issue with “authenticity” is that it implies a central selves

    • There’s actually multiple selves anyway. Every person/circle sees a different version of us

  • What does it mean to say “I wasn’t being myself”

    • Alignment with values?
    • Sometimes you mean “You are not who you want to be”

  • Knowing every part of yourself can be a daunting task

    • Teenage anxiety isn’t visible until you’re way past that, for example

  • So perhaps, be moderately self-aware and audience aware

  • Taylor Swift documentary Netflix

  • When you have a large enough audience around your art, there are always some people unaware that the whole thing is a construct

  • If you want a rigorous understanding of some public persona, you basically have to be scientific in your approach

    • Verify your sources
    • Reconcile conflicting evidences, and the corroborating ones

  • Important to have relationships with people who don’t give a shit

    • Helps to be grounded

  • This idea where someone has a proclivity to do cool things while also admitting that they aren’t cool

    • There is fundamentally some humor in everything

  • What if you are a performer for the audience of you?

    • Journalling can be a method of investigating, or even indulging in that
    • What do I think about stuff?
    • What am I signalling to myself?
    • You can change your identity in tiny ways by doing slightly different things
      • By enforcing ideas of “I do X and I don’t do X” can end up boxing your identity

  • “Learn to dance sarcastically”

  • People often don’t state their goals outright because it suddently seem banal

    • But once you joke about it, it is somehow more pallatable
    • Embrace irony

  • Strategically forget parts of yourself

  • Every coming of age story - a core theme is that you find out that the adult that tries to protect you inadvertently lies to you.

  • Which parts of your personality are transient? And which parts are consistent?

    • Not every relationship has to confront the catastrophe of personal growth.

  • Collapse of meaning when you leave a system and have to build back up

    • Leaving a collective matrix?

  • If you’re truthful, you’ll find your people

  • We are given expecations of reality, which are flawed in the first place

    • The moment of disillusionment hurts when it hits you

  • Now the vapid cliche has meaning, because it’s grounded in your pain

  • How important is it for kids to have age-diversity?

    • Kids should be exposed to ideas from people that aren’t responsible for them