a killjoy post

I'm going to say something that's gonna contradict a greater portion of this blog (since my idealism is going all topsy-turvy this summer).

Postmodernism really fascinates me because of the ways I see this theory being [inadvertently] implemented in popular culture. The way I blog about trifle things such as what I ate for breakfast? I credit Andy Warhol and his penchant for painting Campbell soup cans for making me such a trivial individual ; )

Another example: one of the tenets of postmodernism is the idea of mini-narratives--the emphasis and value of each person's story; because one person's background is different from another's, everyone is entitled to claiming their own truth, their own inspiration, their own conclusions on life.

Even without getting into the moral paradox postmodernism causes with this particular application, I feel like our generation's earnest and hasty acceptance of this concept is more than enough to be concerned with. Earnest, because we love this idea no questions asked. Hasty, because we don't even correctly execute it most of the time. Instead, we love drifting from one bit of [another's] inspiration to another, using profound sayings and quotes as our lily pads. I'm not trying to say that the wisdom of Gandhi or the cheeky sassiness of old Hollywood darlings shouldn't be encased by quotation marks and thus acknowledged forever amen, but it's getting to the point where they turn us into little addicts, always jittery for an even more intense flavor of inspiration. The most popular are the ones laced with irony and paradoxes because we can't quite wrap our mind around these ideas, and the buzz is quite nice. We get to the point where we've such a collection of insightful ideas and phrases that the ones at the bottom are dusty and forgotten, their days of making our eyeballs sparkle or tear-up or daydream being completely over. Sometimes, the words aren't enough; they must be dolled up with dramatic or edgy or picturesque images to do the trick. We ponder and romanticize simplicity; we love rash declarations to forget responsibility and let our hair blow in the wind; we try a hand at philosophizing because it suddenly looks very easy (the classic: what is love?). And then our cup overflows with sophistry.

I know--this is totally gonna offend a lot of bloggers. But all I'm trying to say is that while we need inspiration, let's not intoxicate ourselves with its oozy goodness. Let's pick and choose our favorite sayings carefully so that we can realistically apply them to our days. An excessive need to discover ourselves clouds us from seeing reality and proclaims our privilege to those whose life conditions outscream any nice and profound quote. They don't have time to contemplate life because they have to live it. And so should we.