Wednesday, July 7, 2010

not a unique snowflake

This post ended up pretty long and covers a lot of topics, but after reading the whole thing. I think that line from Fight Club is apropriate.

Some people talk about a shared "collective unconsciousness". It's a neat idea that we're all psychically connected and our feelings, thoughts and ideas are shared with other people around the world. I get that people would feel comforted by that idea, since in a way that means you're never really alone. But until we observe some kind of a broadcast signal from our brains that other people could receive, or find ANY evidence for ESP, I think that "collective unconsciousness" is just a fun fantasy.

But I am going through something of an existential crisis because of a similar idea. Years ago during my batchelor's degree it occured to me that given how many people are currently alive and have ever lived on earth, every thought I'd ever had, must have been thought of before. Adding to this effect is the growth of globalized media and the internet. The more similar all of our lives are, the more similar our ideas must be.

I'm not saying that no one has ever had an original thought. Lots of people do. (Eistein comes to mind first for me.) And I'm not saying that the internet is stifling creativity. On the contrary I love how the internet allows a rapid distribution of countless unique ideas every day and must stimulate countless more.

But I also see a lot of trolls and fanboys. I see huge amalgamations of news and marketing, conditioning us all to know who michael jackson is and what a pair of golden arches mean.

Although, finding out that there are hundreds of people out there who are just like you isn't all bad. Youth growing up gay in small towns can learn that they're not freaks. People around the world can create communities around common interest instead of location, and accomplish great things and form life-changing relationships. Believe me, I love the internet and I will write about how transformational I believe it has been and will be for the world.

But when I realized that in my life, I hadn't had a unique thought, I craved it. It seemed important in terms of my identity as a human being to have a unique thought. (Instead of some combination of repeated experiences, like a mosaic of people who had come before me.) What middle-class white kid hadn't moved out of his home, lived in rez, tried some drugs, got laid, traveled in Europe, crammed for exams, got drunk, and thought about profound philosophy (with and without the aid of the previously mentioned drugs).

Sure we're all unique, but I'd liken our uniqueness to how bolts off of a production line are unique. You take a bunch of inch and a half M8 machine screws and look at them under an electron microscope. You'll find subtle differences in the crystal structure of the metal, impurities of the alloy, micro-cracks in different places. At that resolution of detail, EVERY screw is unique. On the atomic level each screw HAS to be unique. But in practical terms those millions of screws are identical. I realized that people are essentially the same. We all love to convince each other and ourselves how important we are.

Some of us come off of different production lines, moulded to fit into different parts of the machine of society, but there's a million other people right now, JUST like you that can take your place. (Okay that was a little depressing. I will write other posts about changing the machine and rejecting the intended slot where you are supposed to fit. But that's not for today.)

So I'd mentioned an existential crisis. In my pursuit of a unique idea, I went into grad school. One of my major motivations for doing research was to get to the leading edge of scientific knowledge and take a tiny step forward. I wanted to think of something that no one had ever thought of before.

Yeah I'm kind of naive that way. Don't laugh. Everyone is optimistic when they start grad school. That was an unrealistic goal which lead inevitably to the existential crisis I'm having now. Every day as I stare at my computer, trying to write up my thesis, I know that I didn't accomplish my goals. And these aren't just professional goals, I've wrapped so much of myself into this work, that it's personal. I don't want to let go of my project so I'm very reluctant to finish it.

But I realized that my unique idea, (if I'll ever have one) isn't going to come from this project, and I have to wrap it up. But it's a terrible feeling documenting what essentially feels like a failure.

No comments:

Post a Comment