Our culture dictates for us the values that we are to pursue and cherish: beauty, prestige, money, and the acquisition of externalized power, etc. The truth is, we need attention and we go about getting attention in ways that are both conscious and. We are not evil for deceiving others we are merely surviving a cultural experience that necessitates the neutralizing of extremes, the modification of oneself towards a collective aim while, simultaneously, we are encouraged to shine brightly as an individual: a mindfuck for even the most consciously cultivated among us. We meet others with an expectation that our curated personalities will suffice for authenticity. We selectively emphasize what is preferable and diminish what is not. Similarly, we war within ourselves over what others may think of us if they really knew who we are. On the other hand, we are encouraged to express ourselves grandly, to be ourselves, to be identified for who we are.
On one hand we are instructed to be seen and not heard, to avoid too much attention, to minimize the potential for jealousy amongst our peers. We struggle to make sense of how we oscillate between extremes within ourselves. Truly, we are many internal pieces of often conflicting viewpoints.
We organize the fragmented pieces of our psyches into ordered composites that we represent to ourselves and others.
