This is about spaces - geographical, physical, social, psychological...
In complex ways they are related, they are interdependent, mutually determinate. Most obviously, they have manifested similar characteristics - the duality of apparent availability and access, and the contradicting fact of underlying extinction and exclusion of these spaces.
Each of these spaces are scarce nowadays, and getting increasingly so... yet there is the impression, or rather delusion, of more openness, more options, more freedom - to express, to luxuriate, to move, to be accepted, to think...
Yet, these are actually the times that i feel uniformity and sameness get rewarded like they have never before. Everyone is expected to follow the same fashion trends - in clothes, in hairstyle, in accessories; appreciate the same things - same artists, same authors, same musicians; achieve the same things - material wealth, same educational degrees, same careers. It is always logic and rationality over emotions; evidence over instincts; rules over rights; the strong over the weak; and the masculine over the feminine....
These are choices, if we are all making the same choices, then we are also thinking the same thoughts. This only goes on to imply that we have lost our individualities and hence, our SPACES.
Only if you subscribe, do you belong. And your relinquishment of your space to think, decide, live gets rewarded with this sense of belongingness.
Since we have already let go of our spaces, there is no individual thought or emotion left. Without this, the belongingness even, is not an emotional one. With the lack of spaces and their short supply, we are only competing with each other (even, rather more so with the people we 'belong') - competing to look better, younger, more fashionable, competing for the same jobs, the scores, the universities and the finite wealth.
In this ruthless competion with the ever decreasing spaces, we feel alone...lonely...scared... bereft. And its precisely these feelings that lead us to this urgent and growing need to belong, in more and more superficial ways, with each other. We all know each other's insecurities and fears (because we all fell the same way!), but we still see each other as threats, and we still mask our emotions - we donot have the space to express, no space to feel! For this would make us vulnerable, and there is no space for vulnerabilities!
It is a sickening mix of all these realities, this vicious cycle, that makes us escape from freedom...!!
