loftyeric2 wrote:
Winston Smith wrote:
Since we're on the subject of labels what do posters think about "sub cultures". The "youth of today" have emo and chav and skater but what about punks and rockabilly, Psychobilly and Mods.
What differentiated a mod from a punk and why?
I've never known what to make of it all really. On the one hand I think it's great. Teenagers finding an identity, having a style to link with a type of music, making friendships with other folk & enjoying their youth. On the other hand it all goes a bit stupid when everyone starts fighting because one lot don't conform with another lot, like warring tribes, which shouldn't have a place in a civilised world. Of course I'm the wrong person to comment really, never having subscribed to any of it, and gone my own way......OK, I'm an eccentric
I suppose your right... to be an individual you inevitably come to feel like an eccentric. That’s what interests me if I'm honest. Do people find "themselves" in a sub culture or do they conform to a external locus of control?
I personally believe its the latter. I mean take Punk as an example. Started off with a few eccentrics doing their own thing.
A statement of alienation from a repressive commoditised society. For me, all well and good, creativity finding its way. Fast forward six months and we have tartan bondage trousers on the Kings road twelve months and you have Sex Pistols t shirts in the freeman’s catalogue!!
People jumping on the band wagon! Which is then about conformity to the external locus.
As soon as punk became punk it had the seed of it's own demise inherent within it!
Or go back to the sixties with the Mods. The birth of mass market commercialism, advertising and the aspirant desire to be "more sophisticated" all generated in some boardroom as the scope of marketing embraced the American corporate mindset.
How free are we? How controlled are we?
And why are we surrendering our valuing of intrinsic human worth to an external locus of control which makes the irrelevant seem essential?