MetKiller Joe
January 14th, 2009, 08:23 PM
I wrote the following as extra credit. We've recently read James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist of the Young Man and had a discussion about cliques and how one conforms to them.
This contains my reflection on Joyce's thoughts on conformity (only small parts), cliques + individuality, and myself.
Definition of Clique:
a narrow exclusive circle or group of persons ; especially : one held together by common interests, views, or purposes
Expression:
an act, process, or instance of representing in a medium (as words) : utterance (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/utterance) <freedom of expression> b (1): something that manifests, embodies, or symbolizes something else <this gift is an expression of my admiration for you> (2): a significant word or phrase (3): a mathematical or logical symbol or a meaningful combination of symbols (4): the detectable effect of a gene ; also : expressivity (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/expressivity) 1
Individuality:
total character peculiar to and distinguishing an individual (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/individual) from others b: personality (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/personality)
Micro-cliques (primary and secondary education mainly):
In general, people tend to group with friends. They think that this is less risky than joining other groups and risking their current friendships. They feel their friends will abandon them for going outside of this group mentality.
With Joyce, this was always his stand, but he felt that in order to join a group you have to loose some of yourself. You get absorbed.
Now, each individual clique has its own style, language, methods, essences, and whatever else makes them unique; these are their characteristics and they dare not trade them because they wouldn't be that anymore if they did. Often, cliques form because of this insecurity of “who am I”. Well, a clique will fill that void with love and care, but what it won't do is make your mind open. It will not let you explore different human experiences and become more mature and knowledgeable about society in general.
If you join a clique, and that clique, for example, has a taboo on something. That is a force which you must obey. The threat of doing something else is that you have no idea of the returns of that social or intellectual investment, and, hey, you've got a perfectly good set of ideals right there. These ideals have filled the void. Why not repay them by obeying the rules?
Joyce would be all to experienced with this kind of scenario. He begins by not getting involved, but slowly, and however more painful, he creates his own persona.
I am not saying that becoming an artist is something one has to do in order to become individual. One need not even put an effort in the act of becoming an individual; that is, you do not have to be an artist, molding your persona to be rebellious against these external forces of the cliques. No, nature will take its course, and you will simply see that the way any clique is formed is biased on only a few set of characteristics.
You will find that your characteristics, you remember, the ones one loses after entering a clique, come back to you. You are yourself again, and it doesn't matter if you are black, white, Latino, red head, blond head, short, tall, have an IQ of 100 or 90, artsy or not, you will find yourself by experiencing others and reacting. You will find that not only is the concept of a clique completely counterproductive to individualism, but once you get out of it, you realize that you never had much in common. Trying to fit in is like a square pipe inside a cylinder; you may manage it, but I guarantee that something will get cut off, and that will be what makes you you.
Myself:
I'll be the first to admit that I've joined a clique, so I'm not completely excused from Joyce's accusations (and from my own).
Have I lost individuality by joining a clique? Probably, but there will always be a price to be paid. I came from Europe, and there are many things we do over there that over here would automatically be tagged as “gay” (I know that this is an extreme perversion of the definition, and I abhore anybodies use of it this way). So, as a human, and needing to be social, one has to give up some of that old world charm. I conformed to an extent, but obviously not enough to be this, that, or the other thing.
I'll admit, I do not like Joyce's “you are conforming, you are bad” philosophy. It seems that in being extremely individualistic, he abandoned the part of the himself that was inexperienced and insecure (this part also contained cautiousness and wanting to learn). He became arrogant in that sense. Joyce's line in Portrait exemplifies this, “I will forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of society.”
When people started appreciating how I acted with the minimal amount of conformity I needed to be assimilated into American culture, I stopped. Why put more effort into something I am not? I have grown since my coming in the states. If people, even my friends, had seen what kind of a person I was 6 years ago compared to now they wouldn't have give me a second thought. I would have been that backwards Slavic kid, as I was in elementary and middle school. Even now, by being myself, an artist and a programmer/computer geek, I somehow have become undefinable and therefore unknown and somewhat dangerous (I'm just relying on simple psychology); this is not exactly what people say of course, I have no idea what is people's heads, but I know that my deariest friend and my parents simply cannot classify who I am or what I am (to them, the word artist and programmer cannot be the same person, or rather they've never experienced it before). This made me depressed for a while, but then I realized it is what makes me, myself and I was overwhelmed with joy (and started expressing myself in ways I never even thought possible).
Culture in General:
Culture and status quo are limits that are to be respected for their contribution to the sanity of oneself, but once one has achieved this sanity, once you have thought about who you are and realized it your friends will respect you rather than chastise you. This is not when you turn your back on them, as Joyce did with his country (and then continued to write about it), it is when you turn back to them and say, “Hey, now that you know who I am, I'll show you who I really am.” If they stop being your friends, they never were in the first place. But if you can wheedle out of the status quo and then let others realize that expression is not a bad thing, you make them happier, you feel better because of this, and, in the end, you have just made society that much more equal by letting expression and individuality reign supreme (within the limits of liberties of course).
Your thoughts?
This contains my reflection on Joyce's thoughts on conformity (only small parts), cliques + individuality, and myself.
Definition of Clique:
a narrow exclusive circle or group of persons ; especially : one held together by common interests, views, or purposes
Expression:
an act, process, or instance of representing in a medium (as words) : utterance (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/utterance) <freedom of expression> b (1): something that manifests, embodies, or symbolizes something else <this gift is an expression of my admiration for you> (2): a significant word or phrase (3): a mathematical or logical symbol or a meaningful combination of symbols (4): the detectable effect of a gene ; also : expressivity (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/expressivity) 1
Individuality:
total character peculiar to and distinguishing an individual (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/individual) from others b: personality (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/personality)
Micro-cliques (primary and secondary education mainly):
In general, people tend to group with friends. They think that this is less risky than joining other groups and risking their current friendships. They feel their friends will abandon them for going outside of this group mentality.
With Joyce, this was always his stand, but he felt that in order to join a group you have to loose some of yourself. You get absorbed.
Now, each individual clique has its own style, language, methods, essences, and whatever else makes them unique; these are their characteristics and they dare not trade them because they wouldn't be that anymore if they did. Often, cliques form because of this insecurity of “who am I”. Well, a clique will fill that void with love and care, but what it won't do is make your mind open. It will not let you explore different human experiences and become more mature and knowledgeable about society in general.
If you join a clique, and that clique, for example, has a taboo on something. That is a force which you must obey. The threat of doing something else is that you have no idea of the returns of that social or intellectual investment, and, hey, you've got a perfectly good set of ideals right there. These ideals have filled the void. Why not repay them by obeying the rules?
Joyce would be all to experienced with this kind of scenario. He begins by not getting involved, but slowly, and however more painful, he creates his own persona.
I am not saying that becoming an artist is something one has to do in order to become individual. One need not even put an effort in the act of becoming an individual; that is, you do not have to be an artist, molding your persona to be rebellious against these external forces of the cliques. No, nature will take its course, and you will simply see that the way any clique is formed is biased on only a few set of characteristics.
You will find that your characteristics, you remember, the ones one loses after entering a clique, come back to you. You are yourself again, and it doesn't matter if you are black, white, Latino, red head, blond head, short, tall, have an IQ of 100 or 90, artsy or not, you will find yourself by experiencing others and reacting. You will find that not only is the concept of a clique completely counterproductive to individualism, but once you get out of it, you realize that you never had much in common. Trying to fit in is like a square pipe inside a cylinder; you may manage it, but I guarantee that something will get cut off, and that will be what makes you you.
Myself:
I'll be the first to admit that I've joined a clique, so I'm not completely excused from Joyce's accusations (and from my own).
Have I lost individuality by joining a clique? Probably, but there will always be a price to be paid. I came from Europe, and there are many things we do over there that over here would automatically be tagged as “gay” (I know that this is an extreme perversion of the definition, and I abhore anybodies use of it this way). So, as a human, and needing to be social, one has to give up some of that old world charm. I conformed to an extent, but obviously not enough to be this, that, or the other thing.
I'll admit, I do not like Joyce's “you are conforming, you are bad” philosophy. It seems that in being extremely individualistic, he abandoned the part of the himself that was inexperienced and insecure (this part also contained cautiousness and wanting to learn). He became arrogant in that sense. Joyce's line in Portrait exemplifies this, “I will forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of society.”
When people started appreciating how I acted with the minimal amount of conformity I needed to be assimilated into American culture, I stopped. Why put more effort into something I am not? I have grown since my coming in the states. If people, even my friends, had seen what kind of a person I was 6 years ago compared to now they wouldn't have give me a second thought. I would have been that backwards Slavic kid, as I was in elementary and middle school. Even now, by being myself, an artist and a programmer/computer geek, I somehow have become undefinable and therefore unknown and somewhat dangerous (I'm just relying on simple psychology); this is not exactly what people say of course, I have no idea what is people's heads, but I know that my deariest friend and my parents simply cannot classify who I am or what I am (to them, the word artist and programmer cannot be the same person, or rather they've never experienced it before). This made me depressed for a while, but then I realized it is what makes me, myself and I was overwhelmed with joy (and started expressing myself in ways I never even thought possible).
Culture in General:
Culture and status quo are limits that are to be respected for their contribution to the sanity of oneself, but once one has achieved this sanity, once you have thought about who you are and realized it your friends will respect you rather than chastise you. This is not when you turn your back on them, as Joyce did with his country (and then continued to write about it), it is when you turn back to them and say, “Hey, now that you know who I am, I'll show you who I really am.” If they stop being your friends, they never were in the first place. But if you can wheedle out of the status quo and then let others realize that expression is not a bad thing, you make them happier, you feel better because of this, and, in the end, you have just made society that much more equal by letting expression and individuality reign supreme (within the limits of liberties of course).
Your thoughts?