Today, I am talking to you.
It doesn’t matter whether you agree or disagree with me because you don’t get to respond to me anyway. You may say, “Well, I can respond by ‘commenting’ on this.” The comment may spawn back-and-forth discussions and long-winded conversations with many, many participants but I will not be one of them.
(This is protocol. A columnist cannot comment on The Chronicle website, whether under their own names or anonymously.)
So, in a way, I’m talking at you.
Now, let’s pretend there’s no consideration of whom I “am” in terms of my race, gender, sex, sexual orientation, political affiliation, ethnicity, religion, national origin or age. Did I miss anything? Let’s pretend there’s no consideration of whom you “are” either.
To be perfectly thorough, I want to try to remove all context—what has been taught, what has been read, what has been heard and so on. We’re constructing a foolproof vacuum of being, and we’re all alone, you and me. We’re all alone—two individuals, two bubbles in a bigger bubble.
I’m talking at you and you’re listening. You are not reflecting on your relativity to whom I am (which is null and void at this point) or what I say. Nor are you constructing a response or a responding argument.
All of “society” has been taken out of you and me, as has society’s power to categorize, rationalize and debate. Are we empty, hollow shells now? No, we are ourselves — kind of like how babies or drunks are themselves. Suddenly, there is so much potential in us babies and drunks because … We. Just. Don’t. Care. Anymore. I can talk and think and opine and you can’t do or say anything. We can turn it around and switch roles. And we don’t give a s***.
We are no longer representatives or members of constructed communities or constructed societys. Today, I am not talking to society. I am talking to YOU.
Let me tell you something about my greatest fear. I’m afraid of people who agree with each other, people who listen to a speech or read a book and effusively nod their heads. I’m afraid of people who are part of similar or competing collectives or –isms.
Convenient, unavoidable labels reduce people into ideological representatives. Agreement and collectivism smack of the appropriation of other people’s arguments as one’s own. The knowledge that one has a live, responsive audience brings forth the need to pander, provoke and rationalize.
I’d like to be a child again. I’ve hated growing up. I want to be able to ask innocent, insightful questions again, and I want to be able to say whatever the f*** I want to say. I want to think for myself, but I’m suffocating under a mountain of books, media, parents, teachers, peers and distant, influential figures. I’m suffocating under your gaze whether you are my friend, acquaintance, relative, enemy, professor or a complete stranger.
You want to think for yourself too; you want to come to your own conclusions through your own insight and personal experience. But you stop yourself because you know that I’m crazy. Or maybe you just can’t think for yourself anymore. Today, I’m the idealist and you’re the realist.
We have lost all the potential we had within us when we were born. We are no longer made up of our own thoughts, observations and perceptions. We now exist for the benefit of the greater good; we have been appropriated.
I talked to you today. Talk to me when you are rid of the weight of the eyes and ears upon you. Talk to me when you have let go of all that is around you, all that you are made out to be. I want to hear what YOU think.
Pi Praveen is a Trinity freshman. This is her final column of the semester.
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