Lifestyles
Yeah, I’ve been thinking about it lately, mostly because I’ve changed my lifestyle the past few days. Not permanently, I hope, but at least for now. I wonder if Wikipedia has anything interesting about lifestyles. Ahh, here we go, let’s quote a little for you then!
The term lifestyle was originally coined by Austrian psychologist Alfred Adler in 1929. The current broader sense of the word dates from 1961.
In sociology, a lifestyle is the way a person lives. A lifestyle is a characteristic bundle of behaviours that makes sense to both others and oneself in a given time and place, including social relations, consumption, entertainment, and dress. The behaviours and practices within lifestyles are a mixture of habits, conventional ways of doing things, and reasoned actions. A lifestyle typically also reflects an individual’s attitudes, values or worldview. Therefore, a lifestyle is a means of forging a sense of self and to create cultural symbols that resonate with personal identity. Not all aspects of a lifestyle are entirely voluntaristic. Surrounding social and technical systems can constrain the lifestyle choices available to the individual and the symbols she/he is able to project to others and the self.
The lines between personal identity and the everyday doings that signal a particular lifestyle become blurred in modern society. For example, “green lifestyle” means holding beliefs and engaging in activities that consume fewer resources and produce less harmful waste (i.e. a smaller carbon footprint), and deriving a sense of self from holding these beliefs and engaging in these activities. Some commentators argue that, in Modernity, the cornerstone of lifestyle construction is consumption behaviour, which offers the possibility to create and further individualize the self with different products or services that signal different ways of life.
Hmm, do we really agree to that?
Yeah, I think that most of it is pretty correct… even though the last paragraph is pretty uninteresting, at least I think so. I don’t know what you think, or do I? Hmm, hard to tell on that one, yes, yes…
I made the things that I thought was most important bold just to let you know, not that you care, but I care, and therefore I care. Simple, yes, yes… Hmm, I shouldn’t really write in monolog I think. It’s a little bit annoying even though just writing a blog and not on a discussion board or a forum is like a monolog. Especially here, where people only read, nod to themselves and don’t write unless I prompt them to answer. That’s too bad, but well, what can I do, you obviously are just mindless drones that don’t care to share your thoughts about subject unless someone really want an answer. Haha, enough with the insults, let’s get to the point!
Lately I’ve tried PB’s lifestyle one could say; a completely meaningless lifestyle without goal and purposes whatsoever. Though you could say that he’s working at least so differs a little. But actually I don’t think so. What is a life if you don’t do anything productive at all? Just do the same shit all days hardly developing as a person or anything? Work, well that’s just one way to make money, a good one at that when this life requires an income. But well, just watching movies, being alone doing in practice nothing useful at all. But hey, that’s a choice you make right?
It’s only that its soo empty and meaningless that it’s sickens me. Everything is just a shadow of its real self and nothing really matters. It’s like having a painting where everything is painted in white. It’s there and sure, it’s beautiful but it’s white so you can’t see it. You just know it’s there. The only thing that you do is keeping yourself alive. But without reason behind the actions it becomes very dull and grey.
I think this is why people like games and movies so much. Because while watching they don’t need a reason they only need to watch and listen and everything during those two hours or one and a half is occupied by something else. This is also why a game is so much better when it takes up more time than a movie and you can do so much more while doing it. When I thought of it today, it occurred to me that that was precisely what happened to me during eight grade.
It seems like I’m getting ahead of myself. Thinking but not spelling it out, which most of you seems to need when almost nobody seems to understand my deeper texts (though it’s actually impossible for me to know without asking you, but your reactions would tell if you knew or not…). But what I meant to say was that until eight grade I was so into games and distractive things without a real goal, though I had started to develop my goals already in fourth grade, which strange enough is about the same time as some certain… events occurred to me.
I did everything to be able to play as much games as possible and I pressed down the time I needed sleeping back then too. This is what I think made me realize how meaningless everything were without reason, purpose and goals. How empty everything would be and how little one could appreciate it without it. Life is about feeling good and you can’t feel good in this life if you aren’t able to do something that makes you feel good. It’s only kids that are able to appreciate life for its small things, and when we lost that ability around puberty, things got complicated. That’s why the easy way out, is the good way out.
But well, I hope you understood what I meant by this. Though the Empty Lifestyle ala PB, is nothing I would recommend. I’m just moving on.
Best regards,
Herid Fel
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