* Photo Credit: Kicks on Fire
Lately, I have noticed a couple of emerging trends. My ideas and opinions always seem to be on the fringe of what’s popular and as a result there has been an increasing degree of fragmentation in my life. What do I mean by Fragmentation?
I find myself unable to relate to what other people are going through as my life experience is anything but normal. Yet, I suspect there is no normal to compare myself to… neither do I find the measuring stick of “this is what should happen”. No, I find this disconfirming. That isn’t even a word… I hope my point is clear.
Have you experienced this? Fragments?
Fragmentation is when you find yourself disassociated from the whole. In systems terms it means you are a loosely disjointed from the group, moved into a space where you find yourself disengaged. I must admit, this is probably not an intentional move on my behalf… yet it is increasingly so. Some of us look at big trends whilst others of us find the bits that sticks the glue together in everything and wonder why we pretend it’s not there… is it a conspiracy of silence… I can’t say.
Fragments. Yeah fragments.
I wonder often if my mind is able to deal with disassociation. My grandfather was like this too… he spent a great deal of time by himself. Isolated… and loving it. The end result? He died. I am not sure however, if this isolation and his death are related… though I am sure I could manufacture some statistics… if I knew how to count.
Fragments…
I think that the idea we are joined together in the human race is an interesting one… if not a little misguided. We are joined by common things. Yet in all the joining we are not joined. In our lives we are largely disconnected. We participate vicariously in our actions and our real selves are hidden even from our partners. Yet, this won’t apply to everyone because a fragment is a small piece of something that fits somewhere or nowhere. There is no generalisability in fragmentation… except that the disjointed nature of things is highly inconsistent. In that we can generalise. I think or not. So we can say that disconnections are general but there shape is novel in each incarnation?
Ok, I am going to watch Australia’s funniest videos to cheer myself up. I tend to laugh at the bits that nobody laughs at. So maybe I should watch Robocop 3? No, that would make me cry.
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August 21st, 2008 at 9:57 am
Do we have “real selves”; do we know them well enough to hide them?
Perhaps our selves are fragmentary but, as in any system with a suitably large number of agents, the distribution of fragments becomes significant. Economic systems, biological systems, corporate cultures and personalities… all emergent phenomena with no obvious connection between the fragments and the wholes.
See the world in a grain of sand and love the whole in loving a fragment.
Hmmm…time for me to write some poetry?
Not in a word of fractured concept,
Assembled in an analytical phrase,
Nor in the moments of disordered silence
Punctuated by incisive clarity of deed,
Does understanding dwell.
But in the verse of structured precept
Dissembled in a synthetical phase,
And in an instance of re-ordered sentence
Obviating my decisive charity at speed
Till understanding swells.
Take care, Luke.
August 21st, 2008 at 10:20 am
That is a cool poem. It reminds me of the turn of the century work of Dewey. He struggled with the exact same idea as did Rorty. He didn’t like the picking to pieces we do but thought it necessary and he had a totally different concept of synthesis than we do. It’s interesting… if not a little hard to get that core concept you so aptly capture above.
Nice.
Luke