puella
Posts: 2457
Joined: 12/2/2004 Status: offline
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I am still struggling to try to focus more on what was more of a general "I wonder...." than a fully fleshed out idea, NothernGent, so please bear with me I hate to drag this back into the realm of the political, as I think it is far more culturally wide spread than that, but the most immediate example of what I mean can be drawn from that medium. There is this constant methodology applied to anyone who speaks with any sort of passion about an issue, especially in the Houses of Congress (I think this also holds true in Parliament, some of the more passionate, and in my opinion interesting, speakers tend to get labeled as some how 'unstable') as being out of control or not stable or, extremist or angry... and the moderates, who tend to do nothing but appease, are labeled to be in control and respectable and suitably staid or some how more rational. (This is not exactly illustrating my thoughts well, but perhaps with some further poking around on the idea a more cogent train of thought will develop!) Also...perhaps I am falling back on my "elderly spinster shut-in" ways by going down the whole "the kids these days" route, but it really does seem to me that there is a general trend of apathy and emotional disengagement, both in music, movies, TV, etc. Perhaps I am wrong in thinking it is more acute now than it was a generation or two or three ago, I really have not researched this at all, it is just something I have personally noted on more than one occasion. Having lived in several countries, coming back to the United States, I do tend to think that we, as a culture are far more averse to fully experiencing and perhaps even allowing the more passionate of emotions than in other places I have lived. Now, of course, this is a generality not a defined truth, and can not be applied to every person. It just seems we value blindly accepting what ever we need to to keep at an even keel, even if that means cutting off the fullness of our responses. With that in mind, it seems that people get very uncomfortable with people who do actually embrace and accept passion within themselves and their own meme. Passion often is immediately dismissed as either anger or imbalance. Again, my apologies if this is still a bit less than tight, in terms of presenting something concrete!
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