How Am I Not Myself?

While watching the movie I (heart) Huckabees last year a very interesting question came about when one character asks “how am I not myself?” While joking around about the movie at a party one night the answer to this question all of the sudden came to me.
When you go about trying to answer this question you have to look at the “person” as two completely separate beings.
The first is the “Organic Being”. This is what you would be like if you never came into contact with the social world, your “pure being”. The second is the “Social Being”. This is the being that has been raised in an influential social world in which the personality is a mix of the one’s you’ve seen in your life. After understanding these two separate beings you can begin to answer the question of, “how am I not myself?”
The only real way to be completely you is to have been completely isolated from any kinds of social behaviour and to not even know they exist. It is in this organic state that you will be (in your mind at least) completely original and completely yourself because there would be nothing human that would have influenced you. This however is not really possible making it irrelevant to the question of being one’s self.
It is in the social world that this question truly takes shape. In the social world it is completely impossible to actually be yourself, that is if you look at it from the perspective that everything that makes us the person we are has somehow been influenced by another person that we have met in our life. On the other hand the types of experiences that influence us would be completely unique from another person. No two people could experience life in the exact same way. So in this sense, being yourself would simply be you just living. The things in your life that you enjoy, and the things that you do, are what make you who you are. So long as you keep doing what it is that you want to in life you will never not be yourself.

Greatness is influenced by greatness. For example John Lennon had Bob Dylan…

Dustin.Concepts.Inc.

Awkwardness of Size

At an activity I participated in recently a concept came to mind. This concept of course was that of Awkwardness and how it seems to arise. First and foremost, I asked myself the question of what normally accompanies awkwardness. This vital element that I believed to contribute to awkwardness was a group. Can awkwardness really occur without some sort of group? I reflected this and believed that although it may not always come to mind, there may be some awkwardness towards yourself, such as not being comfortable with your body for say. There are other several instances where this could be used, however I believed that some form of group contributed quite significantly to the idea of awkwardness. Without a group, awkwardness may not even exist. I will now discuss three main concepts to do with this notion of discomfort: Size, Setting and Individuals. We’ll be discussing them interchangeably.

Use your imagination for a second and envision the following: You’re at a party at a friend’s house. You are the only one there so far and no awkwardness is present at all. You and your friend are just relaxing in their main living area, except for one thing. The room is largely spaced out and there isn’t much ‘filler’ in the room (such as tables, lamps etc.) Everything is going swell, until the first person besides you arrives to the party. The individual who arrives next is a friend, but one of the individuals who you consider a ‘friend’ but are actually usually just tagging along with whatever your group of association does. We’ll call him ‘John’ for now. John has brought another friend with him. One who was not invited, but just decided to come for a good time (‘Vladimir’). You perform to normal human greeting; Hi how are you John..Hi Vladimir, nice to meet you. Following the greetings, you all take a seat and its at this point when the awkwardness begins to settle in. The conversation has turned into a giant question congregation. So, where are you from Vladimir? How do you know John? Where do you go to school? Oh, you don’t go to School…you ran away from your corrupt parents?..Interesting. Along with the ‘question parade’, the room is not aiding the moment at all. You are having to use a higher volume of voice just to relay your messages across. To add to the situation, John and Vladimir have come extremely early and no others come for more than an hour. The short talk has begun to take a toll on you and awkwardness is clearly present. The stretches begin, yawns are tempted and you are getting quite bored of sipping that glass of water you have.

With that situation in mind, think about the cause of awkwardness. Is it mainly due to the individuals, setting or ‘size’ of the gathering. To begin, the individuals are not what you call the ‘easiest people to talk to’. They constantly give one word answers and seem to have no interest in what you are saying. They mainly just came to ‘party’, not socialize. Or does it have to do with the setting/size? Not only are you in a room whereby you have to use quite a loud voice just to get a point across, but the room is bare (very little visual stimulation one might say, besides that stupid disco light). I ask this now. Would the situation be better if a) it were different individuals b) the room was smaller with some tables and such or c) both. Personally, I can think of reasons to which both could contribute alone, without the other, and vice versa; occur as a result of the other. In other words, I am curious as to why only slightly different situations can change the outcome of awkwardness. Lets say for example that you are at a party with a bunch of close friends. For a number, we’ll say 50 of you. The only problem is you are in a 9x9 room, the windows are closed and its beginning to smell of body odour. Not to mention feeling the breath of anyone you talk to on your face. Awkward Or Not? Now the opposite. You and your friends (10 of you this time at a party of 25 people) are at a party. You know the other individuals at the party, except you choose to stick together to avoid what? Awkwardness. Not only this, but the party is at a giant house. Do you avoid the others by going to places where they aren’t? Or decide to socialize. This is dependent on whether you consider these new types of situations awkward and also what you decide is the key component to awkwardness; Size/Setting or Individuals.

In the end, as I have somewhat indicated throughout the concept of Awkwardness, you can see that the obvious determinant is what you want it to be. If you do not care about the size/setting, then individuals may be your main deterrent. No matter what anyone believes, awkwardness will be present at times whether we like it or not. The possibilities for this concept are virtually endless and I have only presented a couple of concepts to which I believe are the main ‘motives’ for Awkwardness. The others come from you. Utilise ta tête.

Jay.Concepts.Inc.

Ottawa Chapter Update

Ottawachapter.concepts.inc. has been in full swing so far this quarter, having regular gatherings and filling pocket glen after pocket glen with valuable material soon to be published. We had an exceptional time at the past Kingston meeting, and this only fueled our thoughts about having the next meeting in October or November, depending on the response we get from those who have to worry about travel. We believe there are some great things to be discussed which will only further the productivity of concepts.inc. in the near future, and our Ottawa location is a great environment to generate dialogue of ingenuity and debate. Thank you to Pete and Lisa, who played major roles in making the September meeting a great success.
Here are some things we’ve been thinking about…

· There is a brand new Concepts.Inc. meeting room at Ottawachapter.concepts.inc., inspired by Peter’s at the 379 Earl St. address. The same rules apply for this office.

The Ottawa Office.

· We are anticipating the advent of Autumn so that the Autumn book can start to take form. Please start thinking about this as the more content we have, the better the book will be.

· Thanks to Pete for taking a lead role in making ratification.concepts.inc. a reality with the help of Queens University.

· This May/April production of the Concepts.Inc. pilot television show was in progress. If anybody would like to submit video footage to be included in the show, please contact Glen to inform him of the nature of the video and how you can get involved.

· Some Concepts.Inc. members stumbled upon a local Ottawa band called The Acorn in the spring season. Check to see whether they are playing in your area soon and go to see them. If you can, obtain a copy of their cd from somebody and listen to it because they are really good.

We hope to hear some feedback about when people can attend an Ottawa meeting, but we feel that the sooner we can talk about some important issues, the better.

Conceptually.inc. yours,

Trevor.concepts.inc.

Call for Papers

Dear board members of concepts.inc.

As some of you know, I am a student at the University of Toronto. One of the very few perks of atttending this school is that there is a newspaper called The Gargoyle that will publish anything and everything that is submitted to it - no questions asked. Because of their lack of censorship and blatant disregard for 'human feelings' it happens to be one of the best papers on campus. Despite their liberal disposition, one of their main problems is getting students to submit work (writing, comics, etc.).

With concepts.inc. in mind,I obviously saw their misfortune as an opportunity for exploitation. I would ask anyone who would like anything printed in this fine newspaper to email it to me and I will forward it to them. You can sign it your real name and everything (ie. bruce.concepts.inc.).

The Gargoyle is a safe haven from the Human Rights-Ethics commissioners/self- righteous bastards that have decided to violate the Canadian Bill of Rights by limiting freedom of speech in Coach's Corner. To see exactly what law was violated:

http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/c-12.3/28161.html

Anyways, do send me your articles and they can be filled with as much gratuitous drinking and sexual behaviour as you want. It would be awesome to get a couple of articles signed 'concepts.inc.' in every one of the bi-weekly publications because people would begin to get confused and wonder what it is. This, to me, is funny. I'll be sure to grab a stack of copies of any issue that concepts.inc. is published in.
Hope to hear from you,

ross.concepts.inc.

ross.mcintyre@utoronto.ca