The mystery to how people exist in "their own world" is quickly solved when you realize that culture is not a monolithic, all encompassing entity that dominates our life from birth. All of us experience the dominant culture uniquely. We ultimately experience a culture of our own creation. When we decide how to spend our time, we're forming the culture that forms us. Study or hang out on the street? Play a sport or do theatre? Work in an office or work outside? Big corporation or small business? TV or radio? Novel or the internet? Passive reception or active creation? Each of those choices ends up providing the raw material that creates each individual's world.
Spend all of your time doing the same things that everybody else does and you'll be pulling from a common cultural experience. You will all exist in the same world. Spend your time pursing something a little less expected and you'll end up existing in a different world. Your expectations will change, you won't share assumptions, and you won't simply shrug your shoulders and meekly apologize when something you create is dismissed by some faction of the culture.
Mass culture is an anachronism. Your creation does not have to appeal to the broad mass of a culture. Reaching that little niche that resonates with your vision does not require millions of dollars or a team of marketers. That resonance is valuable and special. We no longer need to settle for adequate or mildly amusing. Each of us is free to spend our time seeking creations that provide significant emotional meaning. Finding that resonance is a special experience. The resonance is what matters. The dismissals are just meaningless background noise.
No comments:
Post a Comment