And Now For Something Completely Different
For the first posting of the year, Mr. R. volunteered to write a few words. And so we kick off 2008 through this e-portal to the world, making abstraction for just a few moments of my usual family of artistic, poetic, aesthetic, idyllic, balletic, operatic, symphonic, performatic, mystic, erratic, in short, epicurean wonders – So, without any further ado:
Until the domino effects of the credit crunch forces our employers to “inflict” freedom and Contingency on us; cowardly one may continue pursuing the predictable (yet fickle) corporate ladder. Taking part in the 24/7 corporate stage play unfolding in offices, Eurostar and airports, permanently connected by the Blackberry implants (or rather, “Crackberry”), these e-fragments and e-trails are nothing more than our Synthetic corporate e-identities. A virtual irreality stage, driven by perceived necessity (à la Sisyphus).
Outside of our work environment, communication can also remain Synthetic. When these friendly excursions into apparent existence extend beyond any individualist framework, we interface with the “Other”. Nowadays, through our “electronic footprints … and e-litter” (thank you Google, Facebook, MySpace, Second Life... our Big Brothers), it is easy to find electronic fragments of amiable “Others”. Such Synthetic exchanges, including through our daily e-mails or even Blogs, give us a virtual “e-Contact”, however parsimonious, a refuge nonetheless for one’s craving for some form of friendly connectivity.
While our toil, and simply modern times, affords one the wonders of technology, and provides us with immediacy, accessibility and the varnish of sympathetic “e-Contact”; it often lacks the Intuition… or Contingency (element of chance, spontaneity, the fall of the dice versus necessity or pre-determination).
Authenticity, Contingency: frameworks so dear to our existentialist and phenomenological masters (think Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Sartre…) or as illustrated in literature or movie, from Lewis Carroll’s Alice falling down a rabbit-hole to Alain Resnais’ Smoking/No Smoking (which incidentally was based on Ayckbourn’s Intimate Exchanges); not forgetting most of Buñuel’s work; Kieslowski’s intuitive Double vie de Véronique or Three Colours trilogy; and even Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise.
So as I reflect on the threat of the virtual fragments of e-Beingness, e-Otherness and Waiting for Godot; what might the solution be to reconcile one with Authenticity, Contingency and Intuition?
Do we need to undertake a radical rupture with the corporate world as advocated by Tom Hodginkson in How to be free? Is it just a question of reminding oneself of every moment’s infinite possibilities, in the maelstrom of 24/7 conference calls, Blackberrying, permanent business travel and meetings? How, within the confines of the spatio-temporal continuum, can we refrain from transferring our relationships with family and friends to the sphere of e-mails, Facebook, Blogs, e-Etc?
I have no answers… but a good start is to try focusing on the following challenge, and hopefully this will be a catalyst for more authentic connectivity with dear ones, reconciled with intuitive Beingness:
Reflections on “e-Beingness and e-Otherness”
As the year winds down; the wheel stops spinning for a few moments, we catch-up on sleep, reading, viewing our collection of movies, writing fragments of thoughts; all these delights cohabiting with the tediousness of tax returns and other administrative trivia and, and, and, and.
"We always find something, eh Didi, to give us the impression that we exist?"
S. Beckett, Waiting for Godot [exchange between Estragon & Vladimir]
Outside of our work environment, communication can also remain Synthetic. When these friendly excursions into apparent existence extend beyond any individualist framework, we interface with the “Other”. Nowadays, through our “electronic footprints … and e-litter” (thank you Google, Facebook, MySpace, Second Life... our Big Brothers), it is easy to find electronic fragments of amiable “Others”. Such Synthetic exchanges, including through our daily e-mails or even Blogs, give us a virtual “e-Contact”, however parsimonious, a refuge nonetheless for one’s craving for some form of friendly connectivity.
While our toil, and simply modern times, affords one the wonders of technology, and provides us with immediacy, accessibility and the varnish of sympathetic “e-Contact”; it often lacks the Intuition… or Contingency (element of chance, spontaneity, the fall of the dice versus necessity or pre-determination).
Authenticity, Contingency: frameworks so dear to our existentialist and phenomenological masters (think Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Sartre…) or as illustrated in literature or movie, from Lewis Carroll’s Alice falling down a rabbit-hole to Alain Resnais’ Smoking/No Smoking (which incidentally was based on Ayckbourn’s Intimate Exchanges); not forgetting most of Buñuel’s work; Kieslowski’s intuitive Double vie de Véronique or Three Colours trilogy; and even Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise.
So as I reflect on the threat of the virtual fragments of e-Beingness, e-Otherness and Waiting for Godot; what might the solution be to reconcile one with Authenticity, Contingency and Intuition?
Do we need to undertake a radical rupture with the corporate world as advocated by Tom Hodginkson in How to be free? Is it just a question of reminding oneself of every moment’s infinite possibilities, in the maelstrom of 24/7 conference calls, Blackberrying, permanent business travel and meetings? How, within the confines of the spatio-temporal continuum, can we refrain from transferring our relationships with family and friends to the sphere of e-mails, Facebook, Blogs, e-Etc?
I have no answers… but a good start is to try focusing on the following challenge, and hopefully this will be a catalyst for more authentic connectivity with dear ones, reconciled with intuitive Beingness:
“… for a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin - real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, or a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life. This perspective has helped me to see there is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way. So treasure every moment you have and remember that time waits for no one…” - Souza
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