Consumption, Loneliness, and Personality

An unfortunate series of events has brushed on an old mental scar of mine. With that, I think the situation has beautifully highlighted my personality type as well as revealed the power of self reflection as should be experienced in loneliness. First I intend to explain the situation as a vantage point for digressing into a dabble about my personality type which will somehow lead to a critique on contemporary consumer culture and capitalism. Yes, I am still on that rant and some people like let's say Marx and Fromm carved a life out of these subject matters. Not to mention the contemporary experts on consumerism who exist and write about the matter today. This is me verifying my right to vent in these terms.

Go! In my proactive actions to alleviate my immediate college debt, I sought employment. I have long put off this "necessity" of modern Western living in a protest against what I learned to be called exploitation. Before I had the words exploitation and commodity, I just decided I didn't like the idea of working. I think when people complain about their day jobs, they really mean to say they don't like the feelings of alienation and exploitation for the purpose of turning a dollar. So, I guess you are curious as to what I decided on for employment? I decided to be a part time custodian. This job would be fantastic if it wasn't for one minor detail. Getting up at 6am! When seeking counseling last year I made a note that sleepiness was the primary provoker of suicide ideations. So, I was preparing for a mental mind-storm to come as I embraced getting up super early to sweep and mop the stairs. This is not to mention the extra stress of needing to pay off a significant college debt.

Last year I wrote a beautiful article on the topic of suicide and its complications from a sociological perspective. Rethinking - Is Suicide Selfish? With my own habit of thinking this way as a direct result of the conflict between my faith and sexual orientation, I had formed a cognitive pattern which I discovered last year would be a life long battle. In reaction to this problem I sought solutions. One of them was to apply for a medical single (dorm room) which required communication with disability services and a doctor's note from the counselor I saw last year. This would allow me the space I needed to reflect and primarily sleep as a preventative strategy to reduce self-harm thoughts. As predicted, I was denied placement on the premise that I had never been formally diagnosed with depression and hadn't been on medication. Hmm, the reasoning for that is another book length topic. Personal ethnography anyone?

During the progression from talking to my counselor and the disability's services the concern of isolation as a provoker of further ideation troubles came up. This illustrates to me a scary trend and also gives way to an important aspect of my personality type. I am a classic INFP - Introverted, iNtuition, Feeling, Perceiving. These two experiences put together in conversation give me a theme where mental well being is somehow contingent on being around people. The Intuitive part of my personality is working here - "Memory recall emphasizes patterns, contexts, and connections." - Personality Pathways I have seen this summarized another way where the INFP takes slivers of information, of experience from their world, and puts it together as a broader implication. To me, mental health practices are starting to adhere to the notion that good mental health is contingent upon being around people, even if that means lack of sleep and suicide ideation. In a mad society, as Erich Fromm has pinpointed in The Sane Society which depicts the insanity of the western ideals, this idea of isolation being damaging is actually true for those who don't have a true sense of self.

See, here is the transition, my summary of Erich Fromm's work in both The Sane Society and a posthumously published The Essential Fromm: Life Between Having and Being point out the problems that occur when one is lonely or experiences isolation. The problem is that due to people's lack of sense of self, when they are alone they experience a crisis by which they realize they don't have an identity. An Interview With Erich Fromm illustrates this crisis.  People's sense of identity is contingent upon purchasing and on hanging out with friends in purchasing settings. However, as this is put in conversation with Loneliness: How to Deal Constructively with Feellings of Loneliness by Moustakas one discovers that loneliness is key to self discovery, reflection, and personal growth. These items are also the INFP's obsession as they serve to the INFP's love of genuine interaction, truthfulness, and authenticity.

I have found that in navigating the Western ideals of success and these illusions of happiness which are contingent on purchasing and the pursuit of money, there's a constant conflict between my commitment to my own moral, ethical, and emotional principles which serve to hold up authenticity and honesty as rubbed against the illusions, lies, and facades of modern capitalism/consumerism. For example, I couldn't be a tour guide or student ambassador for the college on the principle that I would be forced to lie to students about the reality's of college costs and the negative changes of higher education.

I turned my need to deduce my debt into a cause. Turning my life's narrative into a cause is the story of my life since a very young age, "When an INFP has adopted a project or job which they're interested in, it usually becomes a "cause" for them." Portrait of an INFP My custodial position, as seemingly causeless this work environment may be, has become a cause to prove one can work in blue collar positions and still maintain intellectual and artistic interests considered to be high culture. There is this notion that blue collar workers/working class has a disinterest in such matters and doesn't have the capability to pursue such frivolous things. Plus, I also aim to prove that one can also balance the notions of book smart - street smart or physical work, mental work. The two are not opposites so much as they just are.

Ironically enough, going back to the problems of conflict, I am not conflict friendly. "Unsettled by conflict; have almost a toxic reaction to disharmony." - Personality Pathways In a world full of conflict, a religious/orientation conflict, an authentic/illusion conflict, and on top of that the forced labor to pay off a debt in the purchase of my own production, it is no wonder that these terrible thoughts have been a recurrent theme. As disconnected as this blog post seems, the experience as sifted through my cognitive apparatus, has been just as equally disconnected as it has been inextricably linked. _________________________________________________________________________________