Rob, Rambling - A lot of things interest me...

Greek yoghurt and honey is an ideal way to start the day.

Following on from my last post, I’m a big fan of both the word and the concept of “anomie”.

It’s fun to say, as are similar words like anemone, phenomenon and so forth. It rolls of the tongue easily. Hegemony is another word which I guess fits the theme of anomie and sociology as a whole.

I studied a bit in this area whilst I was at university, with a big lean towards legal issues courtesy of it being taught in the law faculty. The course was called ‘law and social theory’ and we covered everything from feminism to communism, from anomie to Nazism. I thoroughly enjoyed it, both as a break from studying standard law, and for the opportunity to read some modern-day philosophers.

As I mentioned in the previous post, anomie is the term given to the rejection or erosion of social norms, producing a somewhat apathetic nature in the individual. I’m not so sure about the requirement for the individual to become apathetic, depressed or develop a sense of purposelessness.

Anomie isn’t necessarily a trend towards lawlessness, depravity and the collapse of society. It’s about the rejection of norms, of labels and of hegemony. Revolution through apathy, maybe.

It’s perfectly understandable for the breakdown of social norms to be viewed in negative terms, because we don’t know any different. But look how many advances have come from the breakdown of old norms: civil rights, the renaissance, the end of the feudal system, of dictatorships. These are all positives.

For me, the wikipedia article on anomie, especially the Literature/Art section, confuses it with nihilism and existentialism. Anomie isn’t that bad. It’s the rejection of societal norms, not the rejection of everything.

And the same goes for men/male identity, too. How do you operate in post-post-modernity?

jgh

Read Jessica’s post for her (and Dacia’s) opinions on the issues facing feminism as a whole nowadays.

My personal take on it is that feminism as an identifying label is obsolete and archaic. But so are so many other labels: feminist; misogynist; leftist; rightist; centrist; and so on and so forth.

I think we’re in an age nowadays where the individual is the label, not the group or belief to which you identify yourself. People are complex, in so many different ways, and to use a label of any kind is to fail to realise this.

I’m not saying that we’re more complex nowadays than we were in the past. Not as individuals, no. But society is more complex. It’s less rigid, less stratified, less divided by the labels which used to define us.

Take race as an example. That simple facet of an individual caused so many problems in society, including dividing it and treating people of different colour in different ways, both good and bad. But look at the issue of race today: it’s not perfect by any means, but people are a lot more accepting of race, and are even ignore it in many walks of life.

Race has become much less of a defining feature of a person, and nowadays is merely one part of an individual’s make-up. Individuals choose whether to let it define them, or how important they make it in their lives. And society as a whole regards race as much less important.

We can’t ignore what these labels have done for society, be it building walls or knocking them down. But in modern western societies, they are no longer relevant. People don’t identify with “society” any more, and the sense of community has also been lost.

Some bemoan this, usually those who liked the status quo that labels gave to society. Others thrive in this newfound, wider anomie that allows us to be individuals without these norms and labels to govern what we can and can’t do.

We don’t need a “male identity” to love or loathe; to live by or refute. We just live. That’s it.

I don’t want to be identified as “just another guy”, as a misogynist or a feminist. I’d rather be listened to as an individual, as me, as Rob.

Because that’s who I am, and that’s who everyone else is too.

I swear my microwave works on a different timeframe to reality. I put some of yesterday’s curry in there for 2 minutes to re-heat, and by the time I walked to the sofa and sat down, it dinged.

To top it off, the food wasn’t even particularly hot. So I whacked it back in for another minute, which seemed to take twice as long as the first two, and it was positively scalding when I took it out.

I have no idea how microwaves work, but I think they open a portal to another dimension. Possibly hell, which explains why the food in there gets hot.