I don't know if it's because I now know what I like and feel comfortable with that makes me realise what I don't, or if it's simply because I am older, but I can tell you this for nothing, some things just make me just want to scream.
Just like Edvard Munch iconic painting, when my spidey senses start to tingle with irritation, I feel the urge to claps both hands to the side of my head and open my mouth and scream in the general direction of those who are inflicting such social bête noires within the realm my own personal life space.
And, I believe it is going to get worse, before it gets better and I shall tell you why.
Frustration. One word that sums up the state mind of most of the world's population. And why are people so frustrated? Well ostensible in the west, because they are unhappy with their lot as they have been mis sold an idealistic unobtainable ideology of the expectations of how their lives should be (and look).
And when it dawns on them that it's all just smoke and mirrors created by marketing spin doctors, they feel cheated and unhappy and frustrated.
Or they are frustrated because they are unable to afford the lifestyle laid out before them in between the covers of the glossy magazines.
In the post Gordon Gekko years we have all been lured and seduced by this ideology in one form or another, which has lead us all to be manipulated into thinking that our lives wouldn't be complete without the latest must have item.
"Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures, the essence of the evolutionary spirit."
Gordon spouted out his famous “Greed is good” speech in the film Wall Street in the late eighties, an era synonymous with wealth and excess that would have made Dionysus both blush and cry with despair.
This was also a time that saw major advancements in technologies and would see the beginning of fantastical ideas like that of Captain Kirk's Communicator (minus the stun setting for now of course) starting to become a reality. And those massive 1950's computers that had taken up the space of a whole room, now were starting to be scaled down so that they could sit on your desk top.
All too cool for school, people adopted a Viv Nicholson attitude and went out and over spent, spent, spent money to acquired these items that they thought would improve their lives. Nothing new there then, but I believe this was the beginning of the end of individual social creativity and a time that laid the foundations of a much darker future regarding the way we would all eventually interact with each other.
It is after all, all about the social evolution of humanity and in the three decades plus that have lapsed since Gordon wore his braces, we find ourselves living in a Primark Nation with individuals who are void of creativity and who misappropriate the wealth of technology that Scotty would have found a much better use for by gaffer taping it to the Enterprise to enable warp speed in order to save mankind.
Social interaction via technology has replaced, well good old social interaction between actual human beings. A recent report claimed that texting has become the most popular method of contact between people nowadays. Isn't that odd?
Something went wrong somewhere post Gordon and that was the speed with which humanity was given these new toys to play with.
We are all still cave dwellers at heart that inhabit a world that is full of these toys that we do not really need or understand. Whilst I appreciate the positive attributes of technology, I do not appreciate the negative mis use of it.
My own personal displeasure with mobile phones for example, is never more apparent than when I am on public transport and a fellow cave dweller feels the need to engage in a conversation on their over expensive state of the art handset in an extremely loud voice. My mercury raises as I become an unwilling participant in their life as they feel the need to shout as loudly as possible. Social masterbation.
I once overhear a girl on a train discussing with her boyfriend what type of film they could watch that evening. “As long as it isn't any of that Star Wars rubbish, I don't care..” She ironically barked into her mobile. I stifled a Wookie yawn and continued looking out of the window.
In his speech, Gordon Gekko surmises that by embracing greed we captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit and the desire to better ourselves. But, in order to be able to embrace something, don't we have to first of all know how to use it properly?
I believe that we aren't evolving at all, but rather regressing like William Hurt's character in Altered States. We have become far too reliant on technology that we have forgotten who we all are and how to relate to each another.
Basic human interaction is paramount in our evolutionary path and yet it has been reported that more people live in isolation now than at any other time. Loneliness is probably more likely to kill you these days as smoking is.
Likewise, we live in a society now where people are defined more by their gadgets rather than their creativity.
In 1986, the now sadly departed director John Hughes gave us a gift, he gave us Ferris Bueller's Day Off in which the anti hero Ferris Bueller takes a day off school in order to cram as many experiences into one day as he possibly can. Accompanied by two friends (one a manic depressive and one a would be social princess), they embark upon a journey that characterises the real essence of the evolutionary spirit and individual creativity.
Juxapositioned along side Gordon Gekko, Ferris Bueller is our saving grace. Without the aid of an i-Anything, he uses his imagination to set up and pull off his day out. He fills his day will art, food, music and an appreciation for life. He encapsulates this ideology in his speech to camera in which he informs us that “ Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
In the end, creativity is what should defines us as greed and the desire to be something we aren't and to own trinkets that we do not fully understand, just leads to unhappiness.
Stop and look around, see the world, do something you have never done before, spend time with people you love, leave your phone at home, stop shouting on public transport and speak to a fellow commuter instead. Listen to tunes that your grandparents liked and not the ones that have no soul. Watch It's A Wonderful Life and Meet Me in St Louis every Christmas, wear what you like, visit an art gallery once in a while, and do watch all those Star Wars films whenever you can.
Now go and empty your bothered pockets and start the human revolution.
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