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Amaros -> RE: The Lifestyle Shouldn't Define You (8/25/2006 6:00:36 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: KatyLied
I have to get this out of my system.
There have been so many threads lately about whether people should work or marry or how they should take care of each other during illness. When did the lifestyle become an excuse not to live as a *real* person? The lifestyle does not define me in my entirety. I am many things...sub, mom, daughter, sister, employee, responsible adult. Can people live without living for the lifestyle? It seems to me that many are not capable of this. Yes, the lifestyle is important to me, but I also like being *real*, not living every moment for the lifestyle.
Comments? Reactions?
The first step in solving a particular problem is to identify by definition what the problem is - identifying the problem is not the solution, but it clears things up, and allows one to objectively assess the problem and propose solutions that satisfy the desired outcome requirements of the problem.
I happen to think a big part of the problem is the term "lifestyle" itself - not everybody means the same thing when they say it.
This might get a little long.
Technically, there are two aspects to any relationship, which I'll call a dyad to avoid confusion - I may want to use the term relationship in another context for example, and dyad simply means "two units regarded as one", or in Sociological terms: "two persons in a continuing relationship involving interaction".
The dyad exists in a figure-background relationship within a larger context of a community, a social matrix with certain expectations and practices, mores - in short, the entire social fabric: legal, moral, ethical, etc., and typically this fabric is seldom homogeneous outside very isolated populations such as the Japanese.
The dyad must conform to soem degree to these expectations, and in a more homogeneous culture such as Japan, behaviors that might be called "deviant" (in spite of the fact that they occur in practically every culture, in every age), are integrated into the main fabric.
In the US, by contrast (and possibly in the UK), where there is a great deal of lingering influence from dualist religion in the common culture-consensus in the broadest sense, and very evident in the dominant cultural consensus - the dominant culture is the one that makes the laws, and assumes the use of force majeure.
Subcultures emerge to regularize these behaviors, which include sexual and social behaviors outside the dominant culture's definition of "normal", thus "deviant".
Such subcultures arise out of neccessity: social censure leads to social death, which is crippling in a number of ways: from making it difficult or impossible to earn a living, to mental illness, all the way up to spontanous death from sheer stress - persecuted minorities around the world typically score around ten points lower on IQ tests: African Americans, Irish Catholics, Palestinians - recent reports indicate declining mental health among American Muslims, greater incidence of depression, suicidal behavior, etc.
Dominent culture often operates in ways consistent with mob psychology: the image of a Dom sodomizing a sub tied to a bedpost while calling her a worthless slut is an image unaceptable to common culture, but there can be, and probobly is, more often than not, more empathy and understanding flowing between the individuals in this dyad than there is in the shocked disaproval of the dominent culture: the dyad may be utterly objectified and abrogated of human identity iwth no attempt to understand the dynamic involved, or recognition that it is essentially a ritual of normalization and defiance of the dehumanizing forces of dominent culture itself, flouting through exaggerated mimicry, it's own conventions (yes, I'm a a slut, and I like it)
Forming subcultures of common interest is a protective mechanism against the objectifying forces of a dualist common culture, in which one is either "in" or "out", and creating pockets of approval for "differently experienced" (like that one?) individuals and dyads. The experience sets the members of the subculture apart - very few people can understand and acid trip unless they've taken one, pornstars complain they simply can't date people outside the industry because there is simply sucha a vast gulf of perception between their respective modes of sexual identity.
Ideally, the cubculture exists within the context of the common culture, it obeys the same laws, with some notable differences, but generally confoming the most important ones - drug use, for example, the act of altering ones consciousness through chemical means is illegal, but it is arguably neither unconstitutional nor unethical, provided some kind of social controls are being provided to keep others from being harmed by it and may be tolerated withing the subculture, while murder will probobly not be, as it constitutes a threat to everyone in the subculture, just as it does in the common culture - exceptions exist of course, in criminal cultures, which also tend to overlap other, non-criminal subcultures, mostly for econiomic reasons, but nevertheless tend to be treated as entirely seperate subcultures - Owsley was "in" the psychedelic subculture, La Cosa Nostra, which probobly supplied a lot of drugs to the same psychedelic subculture was a seperate subcultural entity.
Apologies for the divergence, the point is this: the subculture exists within the common culture - aspects of them may be at odds, but a feedback loop forms between the cultures where they are not utterly incompatable - drug use - or at least the use of drugs that tend to promote modes of thought inconvenient to the dominent culture - is utterly incompatable with dominant culture, but became integrated to some degree within the common culture, and made deep inroads into the dominent culture, where dissaproval is often little more than a facade (somebody is importing the shit, and it ain't Willis).
Similarly, only a couple of decades ago homosexuality was actively and openly persecuted, now body culture, which arose originally from gay culture, is practically ubiquitous, and there are helpful homosexuals on network television offering sartorial tips to us fashion disasters.
It's withing the space created in this feedback loop that the term "lifestyle" emerged I believe, and it refers to ones identity with the subculture: both external things like velour leisure suits and gold chains for the swingers, as well as to some degree, behavioral expectations withing the dyad, and encompasses it's overlapping of the larger common culture - materialist values for example: big house, nice car, good job, etc.
The subculture itself, if large and diverse enough, may fragment into subcultures itself - lamenting the changing of the "old gaurd" is simply a reflection of the same nostalgia the common culture feels for a Golden age that never really existed - humands are creatures of habit and have a fairly substantial provincial streak - Paleolithic Northern European culture existed for almost ten thousand years with almost no detectable change - The Roman Catholics burned books, and tortured and murdered thousands upon thousands of human beings rather than admit change for nearly ten centuries - thus, the term "lifestyle" is itself so variable and subject to change as to defy concise definition.
Loosly, I believe it refers to current fashionable standards of behavior within the dyad, but also to it's context in the common culture: when I see "10 years experience in the lifestyle", or "seeking X established in the lifestyle, both dyad expectations and cultural/subcultural context are being referred to - to my mind more the dyad in the first example, and more toward the social context in the latter.
Heh, I haven't answered your question, just tried to define the problem - I'll have to fall back and regroup.
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