How Sincerity Became Irony: The Gen X Apathy Lens

Gen Xers may be keen to define the new kids on the playground but their method of ascribing attributes is skewed by the cultural perspectives of their time. Irony is the result of adulterating iconic objects sincerely valued by those at the forefront of "New Sincerity".

Recently, Princeton professor Christy Wampole wrote a guide for the New York Times on "How to Live without Irony" which basically took a dig at Generation Y and its alleged poster child - the Hipster. Every good point deserves a well framed counter point and so came "Sincerity, Not Irony is Our Age's Ethos" by Jonathan D. Fitzgerald - a piece that suggests we are in the period of "New Sincerity".
 
When Wampole points to hipsters as evidence of the "age of irony" she rests her case on the assumption that the "mechanisms (fixed-gear bicycles, portable record players) and hobbies (home brewing, playing trombone)" are no more than mere cliff notes of history rather than sincere interests.

Perhaps the desire for physical manifestations of the past, picnics in the park, and board game cafes speaks more to a response to the Digital Age then a sense of irony?

Fitzgerald, is reasonably annoyed with the idea of jumping to quickly define "kids making their way from young adulthood to the rest of their lives." To him Millennials are reviving a strong sense of morality - "All across the pop culture spectrum, the emphasis on sincerity and authenticity that has arisen has made it un-ironically cool to care about spirituality, family, neighbors, the environment, and the country."

A study by the Pew Research Centre somewhat backs up this claim by showing that 52% of Millennials are concerned with being good parents, and helping others in need is a higher priority than having a high-paying career.

Wampole and Fitzgerald do agree that New Sincerity is a response to "postmodern cynicism, detachment and meta-referentiality." Where Wampole thinks it failed, I side with Fitzgerald in that New Sincerity is very much alive and is the true ethos of our age.

Wampole was right about the existence of irony, but she didn't peg the cause. Generation X grew up when being detached was in. Now as adults trying to stay current they apply the same apathetic lens to what they perceive as trends of authenticity. They are out of their element, being sincere used to be un-cool. So naturally, the Gen X interpretation of Gen Y results in irony.

Wapole describes her own Generation X mentality best:

 "The ironic frame functions as a shield against criticism. The same goes for ironic living. Irony is the most self-defensive mode, as it allows a person to dodge responsibility for his or her choices, aesthetic and otherwise. To live ironically is to hide in public."  

By-products of the overlap between the apathetic and the sincere are causing the Franken babies of ironic nostalgia because sociological boundaries are fuzzy at best. With every innovation comes an adoption curve, and Instagram - or as Wampole puts it, "[the attempt to] inject the present moment with sentimentatlity" -could be read as trend towards sentimentality. 

Regardless, I think that the tension between the sincere and the apathetic will continue on with slightly different variations achieving alternating brief ages of stability. 

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 Being a civic-minded Millennial myself, I had to share Wampole's warning of the "social and political risks" posed by irony:

"For such a large segment of the population to forfeit its civic voice through the pattern of negation I’ve described is to siphon energy from the cultural reserves of the community at large. People may choose to continue hiding behind the ironic mantle, but this choice equals a surrender to commercial and political entities more than happy to act as parents for a self-infantilizing citizenry."

 

What does meeting the Millennium Development Goal on safe drinking water mean and what does KONY have to do with it?

For one, it is a reason to celebrate given that 6.1 billion people - 89% of the population and 1% more than the target - have gained access to improved drinking water sources ahead of schedule.

The Unicef joint monitoring programme for water supply and sanitation (JMP) cautions that data does not assess the quality, or reliability of the water supply, or whether water sources were sustainable. JMP also noted that  11% of the world's population – 783 million people – are still without access to safe water, and the MDG target to improve basic sanitation, such as access to latrines and hygienic waste collection, is still far from being met.

We also have to be mindful of where the improvements have happened, that being rapidly developing nations like China, India and urban areas vs. chronically impoverished and rural regions. More than 40% of all people globally who lack access to drinking water live in sub-Saharan Africa.

Roughly 2.5 billion people still lack basic sanitation and it is predicted that the target will not be reached globally until 2026. Sanitation remains a difficult issue to package in an attractive campaign despite affecting more people, and leading to more deaths (2 million people die every year due to diarrhoeal diseases, mostly young kids).

Other barriers include: lack of financial resources, lack of sustainability of water supply and sanitation services, poor hygiene behaviours, and inadequate sanitation in public places including hospitals, health centres and schools.

Meeting the target means that the MDGs can be met, we just have to keep on going. Unlike the KONY campaign, this is not flashy, there isn't one single bad guy we need to conquer to make it all better, and it will take more effort than wearing a bracelet.

Creating

Never having had formal art training, I am compelled from time to time to return to an often neglected talent.

Recently I resumed with a series of fowl in watercolour and ink. Mediums have varied over the years. Below are some of my pieces. Sorry for the poor photo quality, my apartment is poorly lit and I snapped the shots in a bit of a hurry this morning.

Peregrine Falcon, 2012, watercolour and ink

Saw-whet Owl, 2012, watercolour and ink

Long Beach,  2009, oil on canvass

untitled sketch, 2008

"Radical Environmentalists" and Other Hyperbole

So, I did not jump into the fray when in January Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver proclaimed that opponents of the oil sands pipeline are "radicals" who "use funding from foreign special interest groups to undermine Canada’s national economic interest".

Since, Public Safety Minister Vic Toews grouped critics of a Conservative bill with child pornographers. The bill would allow law enforcement to access Canadians' electronic communications without warrant.

Anyhow, this graphic was just too on point not to share.

The Drive to Belong

Rather then being neurological wired to compete we are actually empathic. This means that we can't fall prey to the usual shrug following diagnosis of war, or selfishness, or greed because "the human condition" is not inherently a Machiavellian one.

This empathic drive is described by Jeremy Rifkin as something that allows us to extend our "families" to religious or political or national association. He goes so far as to say that empathic potential, combined with the internet and technologies that connect us to people all over the world, means we can extend our notion of "families" and rethink our human narrative to include empathic socialization. In other words, if you are familiar with the in group bias this means that we would extend our in group to all of humanity by accepting our primary nature to feel compassion for one another.



For more on cooperation instead of competition see here.

Honesty as an anecdote to political apathy?

The Public Policy Forum's Annual Gordon Osbaldeston Lecture was delivered in November 2011 by Allan R. Gregg on the topic of authenticity as a means of restoring faith in politics and government. Gregg makes his point resonate by referring to Rob Ford and Naheed Nenshi, two radically different mayors, who equally galvanized the public with their "what you see is what you get" approach.

Given that one of my earlier blog posts A Lesson in Deceit: Admit, Thank, Boast, Repent, Move On spoke to the lack of honest dialogue in Canadian federal politics, I decided to come back with a more positive piece on how naked truth can make good politics.

The entire lecture by Gregg can be read here.

Pages 21-22 hold some bluntly honest policies (excerpt below).

What if someone stood up and said:

"We must invest in new environmental technologies and alternative energy but no one should expect this to be a panacea or wholesale replacement for fossil fuels. This is the reality of our economy and a major part of a lifestyle that we have come to enjoy and expect. But if we are to take our responsibility - seriously as stewards of the planet and parents to our children - we must commit to reducing our carbon emissions. For the foreseeable future, there is only one way to do that and that is to monetize and tax carbon." 

Bottom line, honesty is not political suicide, people desire politicians they can believe. This thinking even dates back to Sun Tzu.

I'd also go a step further and say that honesty is the best catalyst for forming meaningful connections in relationships, regardless of their nature.

New Obsession: Quora

Quora, the more thoughtful version of Yahoo Answers has me glued to my chair. Why? Check out this crowd-sourced gem on the answer to "What are the most gripping stories in human history?"

In Search of Lost Time

Recently watching La Captive, I was enthralled by how gently the plot was allowed to unfold, not without event but without judgement. Like in life there was no overt narration or curation that encouraged a definitive value judgement on the moral make of the characters. Watching the string of experiences woven together was both liberating and burdensome.

The film is based on Maurice Proust's "La Prisonnière". The work is the fifth volume of Proust's definitive work In Search of Lost Time. The role of memory and symbols as a means of capturing time are developed throughout the novel and most prominently evidenced with the madeleine episode.

The madeleine episode reads:

No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory – this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me it was me. ... Whence did it come? What did it mean? How could I seize and apprehend it? ... And suddenly the memory revealed itself. The taste was that of the little piece of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray (because on those mornings I did not go out before mass), when I went to say good morning to her in her bedroom, my aunt Léonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of tea or tisane. The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it. And all from my cup of tea.

The excerpt is a striking example of instances of involuntary memory. In life these moments possess a powerful ability to transport us back to the past. The sensation of slipping on an old pair of shoes - ones which have not been worn since a summer vacation years ago - triggers a muscle memory of a past time.

A silly notion of time travel would be collecting these sensational artifacts as gateways. In another final moment we would savour these captured essences before they too are forever lost to time.

Getting Engaged

I haven't blogged about anything directly personal in a while, though my thoughts are as personal as it gets.

I got engaged a few months back to a wonderful man. We both want a wedding, and a life, that reflects our ethic. For starters my engagement ring - that item of envy and girlish giggles - is 100% conflict free. It belonged to his grandmother AND it is a pearl. Not only is it crafted in such amazing detail - unlike some of the more ubiquitous designs of today but by not getting a diamond, even an ethical diamond mined in Canada, we helped by not contributing to the market for diamonds with our demand for them.

If the argument about blood diamonds, or other minerals mined to finance conflict in a far off land, isn't convincing then maybe the fact that diamonds are not all that rare will do the trick. The market for diamonds was created by De Beers by artificially restricting the flow of diamonds and manipulating the market to drive up price.

So if you are contemplating getting engaged, or hinting at a ring for your sweetheart consider an antique ring (where no new metals were mined) or something unique like pearl.