what are us?
In today’s society, information, facts, and even concepts like “to be” are taken as concrete, but our intuition, emotions, and somatic response — what is our internal feel, what are our boundaries to manage the interior of our bodies — are all treated as “make-believe”. When we ask how we “should be”, we are given a scientific study or a statistical survey. This supposed to provide us with a “normal” life-generating response and stifle our desires, which is “OK” to develop companies and economies, but not humans.
Most of us try to live up to the images we associate with ourselves, and translate these visions into lofty plans. Without even considering it, we are manipulated into becoming preoccupied with what others want from us — into getting "likes". Acceptance through affection impedes our ability to agree with ourselves, but it also strengthens the assumption that we are in good standing. At the same time, others may think we are envious, unproductive, promiscuous, or that we are exercising noxious masculinity and patriarchy.
Many people would rather avoid forming their lives, they just want to know how to do everything. In this parade of compulsive hunt for knowledge, the search term changes, but the method of inquiry does not. We can begin to understand that knowing suggests intimacy with knowledge when we outpress the method and what we have contained, eager to reshape our notions. Once we stop clutching to the predefined plan, we can constrain ourselves back from being normal and self-determine our true values.