What a Performance!


What is Happiness and Self-fulfillment?

Society calls out:  Success!

MoneyPowerLoveRecognitionFame


For us mortals (skip the divas here), that comes down to a kind of “Have it All” and show we’ve got it together at every and any moment.


You know:  good job + nice place to live + fiery romance + polite smart and tidy children + family-life group of friends + exciting enriching weekends + “original” hobbies + an on-line following + good health + slim figure + beautiful looks + right clothes + youthful energy + dynamic libido + always in the know…  In other words, Performing.


Keeping up with the Jones’ used to be status via material goods.  Now it includes your remastered body, your mastered children, your wired brain, your wow-effect experiences.  Achievement must now include a bit of “surprise and delight”. 


To make it all work, men and women are rising to the challenge… and are exhausting themselves keeping up appearances.  So much that it looks like life is becoming a Performance, a show to convince others of our success and a tallied score of happiness.  Hasn’t it always been that way?  Maybe but today it’s worse thanks to our 2.0 capabilities which both enable us to make it happen… and enslaves us to having to be sure of it… though always just a bit behind the ball. 

This “What a Performance” category builds on current and budding trends to investigate whether we have so assimilated Performance (both play-acting and showing astonishing results) that it is jeopardizing our actual acts of Living.


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What Are the Unintended Consequences of How We Are Living?

What progress! The woman’s movement has changed society profoundly.

When a girl is born, she has the possibility of becoming President of her country. She can lead her life as she pleases, she can “have it all” or “have it small”, it’s just a question of choice. The Pursuit of Happiness is at last her own to pursue and achieve. If she doesn’t, she only has herself to blame.

Right?

This expectation of, or even entitlement to, liberty and self-fulfillment has hit a new wall: up against 21st century Western postmodernism and crisis, there are new challenges within the home, the workplace, and the social circle that are altering Gen Y women’s access to their objectives and expectations. While some poster girls are making it to the top and having it all, the vast majority of women are coming up disappointed and/or resigned despite what should be a fortuitous context.

Could it be that the ways we are pursuing our goals of self-fulfillment (autonomy, liberty of choice, and control over one’s life) are precisely what will prevent us from achieving that fulfillment? Could this be our new feminine mystique?

This blog’s intention is to converse with you, women and men of the 21st century, in order for us, communally, to gain awareness of our acts, their consequences, and to sketch a new form of society we wish to build together. Laws will not make the change but we will. It is no small task but if ever there were a more pertinent time or context, it is now.