Holidayz!

Image by john curley via Flickr

Well its holidays finally! final exams were alright. hope i get some good grades cause i studied my ass off naah tell nuh lie.

well whats in store for this Christmas. Beach Bums tomorrow wil hopefully be great. love the beach! love the rum, and there will be no shortage of females so yeh, nutting to not like.


it wont be all play though, i still have to complete some interviews i agreed to do for one of my lecturers on behalf of some governemnt institution. Should have finished that already but i just got caught up in exams. Its a bit too late to finish before next year.

2010 here we come.

Narcissism: The Private is Public

I was being driving to work today as is the case everyday and I began to think about what my life would have been like if I had chosen to pursuer my love for architecture and buildings. I thought about what my style would be like and how I would create something close to the buildings that I see on television in the movies, you know those really ultra-modern extra chic and super-stylish houses or apartment complexes. Then I imagined myself living in one of those houses or apartments and just how cool I would think I was. In my mind I was looking at myself in the house form outside, through those large Window-walls that open up the house or rather superficially separated inside form outside. It was a bit surreal but then I realized something, all that I was doing is picturing how everyone would see me. Nothing in my imagination was about how comfortable I would be inside my house, or even a family to live in there. It was all about appearances, not just outward appearances, but also how inside my house would look appearing to an audience outside. A grim parallel began to emerge in my mind between the architecture that was fashionable, and how people live today.
An evolution of narcissism

Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter all have one thing in common. The run off a persons love for themselves. The building of a profile is nothing less than the construction of a shrine in respect of who we are and what we stand for. It’s the result of a cultural evolution beginning from the industrial revolution. The merchandizing and commercializing of human existence has reworked our mode of thinking and process to glorify objects. The strain and competition of production has placed us in a hierarchy of how much we earn and how much we produce and inevitably how much we consume. At the end of the age, the consumer culture had emerged and it was all about name brand clothes, expensive cars and large houses.

This new culture played out in the way we communicate. There has been an attack on verbal forms of communication. The language that was used to communicate efficiently and was kind of an art has been stripped and slaughtered. This break down of vocabulary has been displaced by a development and reliance on non-verbal communication, which is now done through displaying items that communicate for them self. Brand Names are one such item that can communicate without saying anything. Cars also communicate. So where there was a time when conversation would reveal certain things about us, modern culture has taken away the need to interact with each other. Branding of modern fashion has served such a purpose. The stamp of Louis Vuitton and Gucci on everything we own say enough - I have money; I am worth something. This superficial and consumerist idea of self-worth has had implications wider than just on fashion.

Reality TV was the logical next step to these narcissistic activities. At first a publicly staged show was the norm, however MTV – the consumerist cheerleader – came up with the Real World where nothing but the day-to-day life and drama of several young adults where put on cable television and broadcasted worldwide. It is the longest running program on the channel and is currently filming its 23rd season. Today, nothing comes out faster than news of a new reality TV show or spin-off. The demand to view personal lives of complete strangers has an appeal rivaled only by the demand to be noticed and viewed by complete strangers. This demand is being fulfilled through the use of social networking sites on the World Wide Web. Now everyone can be the star of their own show.

The invasion of the private and trivializing of the divine.
We can now transmit messages faster and more efficiently through cyber space. The posting of pictures, identification with certain people as friends and the showing of attendance at certain exclusive events on social networking sites communicate the same message that brand names, nice cars and big houses do. ‘My life is so exciting,’ ‘I have so many good friends,’ is really what is being communicated. This new language has permeated the social channels. But now however, the social channels are being transformed to communicate not just our public activities, but also our private lives.

Twitter has given us the opportunity to inform the world, our every move, thought, act, incident and idea. Every second a plethora of messages are uploaded with no real value of conversation. When a message is sent it is sent for an entire audience to read and any reply is not sent directly back to the intended, but to the entire world. The whole system has parted the concept of conversation from the concept of communication. It can be seen as a digression in the form of cyber communication. The rapidity and speed at which we send messages has become supremely important ever since communication has become a one sided activity. To hold the interest of any observer, you must be able to keep them continuously updated an informed. In this way, cyber communication has served quicken communication while further flatten the value of peoples exchange.

The private sphere has also become invaded. With a natural lack of extraordinary events happening to anyone that would serve to interest a large following of people, the sensationalization of personal experiences no matter how private, sexually explicit or even embarrassing, turns mundane happenings into cyber news. In some instances there is no boundary between the personal and public. A trip to the bathroom or trip on the floor gives one a compulsive urge to inform the world about what happened to YOU. Today, self worth has taken on another dimension, how much attention you are able to attract. This measure has been cemented through Forbes countdown of the 100 most powerful celebrities based mainly on media attention and net income for the past year. Taking the top two spots were Oprah Winfrey and Angelina Jolie-Pitt. Oprah herself is a Twitter fan and proficionado keeping her distant fans posted about her tear jerking moments and celebrity friends. LINK.

Architecture: A return to nakedness

Today our lives are so fashioned around the exposure of intimate details to prove that we have nothing to hide. It is a shameless embrace of our deficiencies that is the ultimate spit in the face of humility and the showing of narcissism that has come to be common throughout modern culture.

When we look around us architecture has taken a certain style. In affluent cities and metropolitan areas the use of a skeletal steel frame and large windows is pervasive. Large open spaces, clean cuts and glass facades are a dehumanizing element that is key in modern architecture. The extreme detailing of the external walls and artistic features of buildings have become too distracting. They distract the public from what lives within the building. Modern Architecture has refocused the attention of the public to those who reside within the building. It has done so first by dehumanizing the buildings and then by exposing the internal workings of the structure. The private activities of each other at our most intimate and revealing moments, when we think no one is watching, or rather when we want others to think that we don’t think that they are watching us.


The pervasive use of glass Windows on the exterior is as much purposeful for letting light in as it is for allowing light to flow out. The shade-less presence of windows gives the inhabitant the thought of being watched, the feeling of being the star of their own show. A life completely on display to anyone interested. Even the interior is stripped of almost every ornamentation. A perfect confusion and mixture of public and private realms. Our house can become a nude body, a shameless embrace of the crude inner workings of our private lives. In becoming internally exposed, we then become obsessed with looking presentable at all times. The riddance of the superficial trappings on the exterior of our buildings while bringing it inside is indeed an irony in itself.

The love for ourselves and the struggle to keep up appearances has found form in our architecture. Whilst man has become more self-obsessed, it has been reflected in the increased transparency of our buildings. A scene in the Sex and the City movie at Samantha’s apartment in LA shows how the design facilitates easy spying and showcasing of intimate activities to onlookers. The Cullens’ house (Hoke House) in the blockbuster Twighlight also showcases and there is a door in his room leading to a small banister-less balcony translated to mean that there is no where to lead to because when you are in the house you already outside the house. Inside is outside. Private is now public. This is the new culture of a modern world. A world that revolves around ‘me’.

It is the ultimate form of narcissism.

01.

So the first day is over. What a drag, but what did I expect… All I did today was to read some documents and Vienna conventions and Jamaican law having to do with diplomatic immunities and all. The people at work are cool and because of the document they made me sign before I started working, I cannot reveal any information I may get a hold of because it may be a matter of national security.

Right now I have no computer at my cubicle, but I saw another woman with a Mac that I’m sure isn’t being to the office so I think it should be ok for me to carry my computer and use it for work related activities. And since there is no wireless I would have to find a Ethernet cable to get connected.

There is this one girl who I see becoming sort of a problem, productivity wise. She seems to like me and she’s starting UWI in September, hurray… =|. She drew up to my table uninvited to ask me for the document I was reading so that she could make a copy for herself. I was ready to give them over to her even though I was obviously reading them, as I am sure she realized. Then seeing as I was entertaining her at this moment for the sake of civility, she choose to take full advantage and pull up my neighbors chair so she could engage in a full blown one-sided conversation with me. Why couldn’t she be mildly attractive, or at least interesting. Call me shallow, but 3:30pm after a full day of work is not the time for half dumb conversations about school in the middle of my SUMMER!!!

So eventually after the 5-second-request-turn-30-minute-delima was over, the girl went back to her cubicle without the document! How annoyingly unproductive was that?

I have a serious problem though, I always want to fall asleep whenever they give me something to read, its like even though I’m not tired my eyes just start to close and I wonder off into nod! Please somebody, are their any cures for this, let me know asap!

Work Tomorow!

Yours truly has an internship and will wake up at 6:25 tomorrow to get ready and head down to new Kingston to start working. Its a 9-5 job, well really a 8:30-4:30 job at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Not quiet sure what exactly i will be doing but whne I did my interview the HRM hinted that she might place me in the Protocol Department where I would get to meet a lot of people and interact wih diplomats etc. Thats pretty cool with me and what would be even better is if I get to travel. That would be amazing.

The only thing that bothers me a bit is that I don't get paid. No stipend, no gass money, not even lunch. So I have to depend on my parents to foot all these costs which I really hate to do even though I am still in University. This will be the first smmer in years that I won't be getting paid for my work. Some call it slave labour and wikidness, but guess you just have to do what you have to do sometimes. I guess the upside is that it will count as a course next year and i get 3 credit hours. What i think would be really messed up is if i have to pay regular tuition for registering for that course. Absolutely rediculous!

Anyway, there is the serious posibility that i would be hired straight out of university if I perform very well so I'll definately try to impress. So excited people!