You behave like you’ve seen in films

Everything you know about how to act in life, what will happen in life, and what the possibilities are in life, you got from stories. Books, comics, films, pop videos, television, adverts. All the interactions, all the characterisations, all the ways of speaking looking and posturing — all written and imagined by writers. True, they’re often observed from life, and often not, but such scenes to play, actions to perform and attitudes to strike are also abstracted and distorted for dramatic effect. All the behavioural transactions we exhibit are inherited from those we’ve seen other people perform, otherwise it’s not a valid currency. The most memorable and vivid examples of such transactions are often those transmitted through mass media.

The boring sections of life, any interstitial inconsequential ‘glue’ in-between the notable parts, is edited out while dramatic situations are exaggerated. This is then passed on via contemporary culture through generations until the original direction or observation is lost. These snippets and expressions and communications become normalised as “the” way to do things. But we can’t actually invent any of these things ourselves in isolation without being heavily influenced by what we see and experience around us and most of what we experience in volume is stories. In todays terms, this means stories transmitted in mass media. Everything we know about how to act in life we learned from films and television, comics, books, etc.

You might be doubting me right now, ready to deny this and ready to argue back but consider the way in which you are picturing yourself retorting in your mind. You got that catalogue of moves and facial expressions and ways of speaking from somewhere. Maybe some children’s cartoon series, maybe a graphic novel, maybe a film you once saw. Maybe not. Maybe someone down the pub or at a party or club, who in turn got it from a cartoon or film or an advert on telly. Your lexicon of expressions and attitudes and actions are a validated mashup of the most vivid transactional moments in your media consumption.

How old are you? No, not you, but you. Everything you know is wrong pt 1

How old are you? Since the clock was punched the moment you popped out, that age clock has been ticking away. Seasons, years, winters, summers, holidays in the sun, holidays in the rain, christmases in the grey, school days all fabricated and fictitious, work days one after the other we’d rather forget. How old are you, then?

Well, you yourself might be that certain age on the tip of your tongue (or if you get to a certain point, you have to think to yourself whether that was actually plus or minus a decade, I forget). But many of us have encountered that urban legend floating around our infosphere that states that as our cells are under a process of constant renewal, our bodies are no more than about seven years old.

This is a nice thought. Wrong, but nice. Like most things you thought you knew, this is of course nothing more than consumer-grade bullshit. Nobody questions it, because nobody wants to. It’s a nice cosy thought to think that we’re fresh and young and anything wrong will repair itself in a few years, hence, the myth is kept alive because we want it. Well, there’s nothing wrong with a little utilitarian bullshit applied here and there — there’s obvious value in it, in this instance. It makes you feel better — warm, cosy, radiant, healthier, and to continue the stream of denial, makes you able to face situations you might not otherwise feel up to. After all, you’re almost brand new. That’s valuable — a delusion that’s of value — nothing wrong with that. Except that it’s wrong, of course, but a lot of things are wrong. So what, it feels good.

Scientifically, we do age, cells do get replaced, but to say that we’re a whole new person every seven years or so is false. Some cells are replaced entirely, within weeks. In the stomach, for example. Other cells are replaced almost not at all, in the eye, for example. Our brain is a network of cells forming neurons, most of those once dead are not going to make a return. We are born with more brain cells than we will have for the rest of our lives. On average, yes you might be able to say, ‘a mean of something like every seven years’, but it’s a fairly useless average, if the range is so wide.

It is more useful to think that the brain itself, although constantly dying, is forming new information connections out of what remains. It is forming new levels of information from the incoming information, in the form of understanding. However, sometimes those things we thought we understand turn out to be not the case, and we have to change our mind about some things. This is kind of like what we thought was appealing about the body renewing itself ever few years or so. Except this time it’s true. If you accept the stance that everything you know is probably wrong (and we’ve all been there) then it’s a nice notion that what we knew that turns out to be wrong is, if we wait a short while, going to be replaced by a new idea that’s closer to being correct.

What about our attitudes and responses? The same thing applies. You might have had a response that has been reiterated over the years, for example, the way you respond to your partner in an argument. Who knows, it might turn out that the way you were responding was actually wrong all along. That can be replaced with another new fresh response, probably a bit better and more recent, new and advanced than the old one, which, as we realise, was wrong.