One question I ask is: when did it become unacceptable to have emotion? To discuss emotion? To feel? Early on "emo" was typically used to refer to listeners of music described as belonging to the emo genre (what constitutes emo music is heavily debated). It also became a label for a certain fashion style commonly worn by listeners of emo music. More recently the term has become derogatory and been used (both in jest and seriousness) to label anyone who mentions their personal feelings, especially if those feelings are ones of pain, loss, depression, sadness, etc. This is a trend that I would rather not see. It encourages people to keep their emotions bottled up and that sharing their feelings is socially unacceptable. This is especially problematic for people who actually have a reason to be depressed, as letting this out has the high probability of bringing scorn and jeers from their peers. I probably don't need to point out that this is not very therapeutic.
Another consequence of the taboo that being upfront and honest with your emotions has become is the self-denial of emotion. According to some critics of being "emo," your average middle class white American youth has no valid reason to feel anything on the lower side of the emotional spectrum. I don't understand how this makes any sense at all. There is only one person on the entire planet who is the worst off, so for the rest of the 6 billion, there is always somebody who has it worse. That does not disqualify those people from feeling depressed. I agree that perspective is important, but when taken to such an extreme is (like most extremes) unhealthy.
I should point out that I agree with some of the criticisms of "emo kids" and the melodrama that accompanies them. But my main point here I guess is that the criticisms have become too large of an umbrella, creating the taboo I mentioned above.
Can you stake me before the sun goes down?
2 comments:
Interesting post. That linked article was by quite the sophmoric hack of a writer. As for middle-class Americans not having problems, I'll just sum it up in a succint phrase without having to write the 300 page book to properly do it justice: due to the inherent nature of human existence and brain structure, everyone will continue to have problems and we'd never want it any other way.
Yeah that article pretty much sucks, but I hate citing arguments without providing at least some sort of source (even it it is a shitty one). That site was the first one I found using Wikipedia and shows at least one person, albeit a moron, thinks that way.
Post a Comment