my overpriced education has emphasized this difference between modernity and postmodernity. annoyingly so sometimes. and though the differences between are somewhat amorphous and ambiguolus, like the majority of human concepts, there is some critical differences. at its core, the difference between construction and deconstruction.
i think the process of growing up, truly growing up, is the process of reconstruction. admittedly, i’m talking out of me arse for the simple fact that i ain’t all that grown up. i’ve done a lot of living, sure, but that doesn’t mean i’ve grown up. i guess i’m thinking about this because i’m trying to consider what it means to be a man, to be a citizen, to try to be a person.
we’re taught all sorts of things when we’re really and truly young, in those formative years before we’ve developed enough of a brain to question our reality, to consider that anything we learn may be false. admittedly, not everything sticks, but not every drop of water stays in the sponge.
age is such bullshit measure of maturity.
and yes, that seems abrupt. my mind works that way these days, even more so than usual, jumping about. i’m on a bus, a few miles out of the city, watching this fucked up little scottish movie named hallam foe, considering god and life and adulthood and continuation and all those important things. in another window i’m putting together a list of things that a person should know how to do before he dies, obviously building offa heinlein’s list in time enough for love. it’s a meandering sort of journey i’m taking. there can’t be any other kind when you don’t know where yah going.
and though i’m speaking at least somewhat metaphorically, there’s such a desire in my heart to just say fuck it, pack a bag and hit the road. start walking or hitching or just going anywhere but here, change my name and be anyone but who i am, if only for a moment.
now as i blink the sunlight out of me eyes, trying to make out the words i’m typing or the movie i’m watching, i wish i had a anti-glare screen. but i don’t. so shit out of luck once again.
but back to construction and deconstruction and reconstruction. we construct our world, our understandings of it. and if critical thinking and college and all that shite has its way, we’ll deconstruct the same. consider them, work them over, try to sharpen their edges and examine our prejudices, wonder whether what we’re thinking is right or wrong or somewhere in between. whether we may be mistaken in how we interact with the world or whether we’re just affirming what we believe. but the point is to question, cause we, each of us, have different enough inputs and different enough processors that we’re likely as not to ever be able to get the same results. which is why we aren’t perfectly rational beings and all that.
i think most folks, for one reason or another don’t deconstruct, don’t question. it’s fucking difficult. and scary. because if we question the foundations that underpin our reality, what have we to stand on? let’s face it, the human soul, it fucking yearns for certainty, for something to believe in, something it can hold onto as the waves of life wrack and rage. so most people don’t. they can’t.
i believe that those who deconstruct, however, always attempt to reconstruct. and that’s where the broad majority of those critical few get stuck. because once you break something, even if you have all the pieces ,it’s damned hard if not impossible to put it back together again or even to make something new.
oh and btw, bloody hell sophia myles is gorgeous.