Dear wonderers,
It’s been a tough month. I won’t delve into the big fractures that plague our times, with all puns intended. I will, however, urge you to read this personal essay and take what you will from it.
And since we’re on the topic of meaning and interpretation, I thought I’d share something I’ve been working on with my cultural studies students in the last few meetings: the question of making sense of something.
There once was a brilliant mind that highlighted our relation to what we experience. His name was Stuart Hall and he was a critical theorist of mass media. What he referred to as encoding-decoding, a process that is now common sense, led to a productive debate about dominant, negotiated, and oppositional readings.
In brief, when watching a commercial, for example, the producer’s intended meaning can be the same as what an audience understands. Or the audience can “read” it with their own twists to it:
Negotiated views, partially accepting the intended meaning.
Oppositional views, completely rejecting the intended meaning.
Or, as this guy put it — always ask yourself: What am I supposed to think/feel/understand? and What am I really thinking/feeling/understanding?
I believe we can take these concepts and constantly apply them to our experience of the world - not just popular culture.
It’s not just a healthy introspection exercise, but also a way to uncover our own beliefs and biases when making sense of our surrounding environments.
I think if more people were able to pinpoint the why behind their thoughts and feelings, we would be so much better at empathy and real communication.
It sounds a bit utopic, I admit :)
One can start as simple as articulating the reasons for liking or disliking something.
So, if you want to experiment with the introspection bit, these are two great resources to try:
The School of Life + their passion for questionnaires like this one.
The Art Assignment for some creative, observational fun.
What other introspection materials do you recommend?
we believe what we believe not because we have good reasons to do so but because we trust the ones who told us so https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMvJhR-WQfw ; if we want to get a little bit closer to the truth we need to start questioning the sources of our beliefs ;