Can Emotions Become Static and Vise Versa

The dynamism of life becomes static when we start encapsulating it in a photograph, a film, a recording. Music, for instance, is a very dynamic thing. The music in itself, one and the same tune, can start to sound very different depending on the atmosphere that prevails. The atmosphere influences the song, the musician, the listener. It's all about feelings, emotions. Again, you will think! Of course, what else! What more do we have, feelings, emotions. Anyway, music can best frame the feelings of the moment, or even turn them into another emotion. From sad to happy, melancholy, the good old days, science fiction, progressive or even humour can be wrapped up in a tune. People recognise that. Why? That is irrelevant for a moment. What I do wonder is whether the dynamic of a song, a landscape, even a completely fictional film, a dream, is not lost because we start making it static, cataloguing it, documenting it. Sometimes I have the impression that we are only concerned with making a will of our planet, our humanity. Now look at You Tube. The most obtuse videos get millions of views there, and why? It must be very representative of what most people consider to be ‘human’. Recognisable to all, yet genially found, found, packaged, say, in an avi file and then thrown to the lions. If we are even to the point of packaging even those most obtuse features, then I wonder if we have crossed the boundary of cataloguing, bequeathing to our heirs. What in God's name should Martians do with a dumb blonde standing in front of a camera explaining the meaning of inane words?

Haven't we already packed, packed too much? Are we now in a kind of final stage where the last bits of junk have to be packed quickly, ready for the big move, from the real world to the virtual world? Soon we will be out of the door anyway if we keep going on like this! Still, sometimes I am glad there are some things that are surprising enough to give me some hope. Just because I sometimes have the feeling I've heard or seen it all before doesn't mean it's boring or worthless. Far from it! There will always be things that at some point, given the right environment and atmosphere, sound fresh and new. Sometimes in something old, something emerges that I had never heard or noticed before. That can even be very confronting. Because what I thought I knew or knew, suddenly comes into question after that one sentence, or that small detail, and then I suddenly have to rethink my whole vision. Then it sometimes even turns out that I have been fooling myself all these years. In that respect, something static can become something dynamic.

Although it is not dynamic, say live, dead matter can, precisely because it is static, reveal a whole host of details that you would normally never notice had it remained dynamic. Through those details, you can evoke something akin to real emotion. I guess this is the power of art, of course. But the absolute compulsive storage mentality of modern man is a bit sick also.

I've talked about it before, I think, to what extent this switch from the dynamic, say real life, and its associated emotions, to a static emotionless world could be good or bad. Could we really be happier in a virtual world? I don't think so! I fear that after a while, our brain, which naturally provides us with the necessary emotions, will just give up and just saddle us with pure recording, without any room for emotions. Our brain will get used to the sterile, atmosphere-less, numbness of that virtual world and not even pass on any stimuli to us after a while. We will become completely emotionless and even if we could break out of that static virtual world at all, we would never again be able to enjoy neither anything static, say art, nor anything dynamic, say real life! That's because we need the real world for emotion. However, when that falls away for a long time, and we only get into a static, virtual world, then emotion will also disappear.If generations were to pass, some emotions will be lost forever and others won't just come back either. Logical after all! A tell-tale sign is that everything today has to shock more and more to still reach the emotional upper limit.The virtual world cannot keep our emotions going.Where is the limit? Could a new big war save us, a bit of what the Americans are doing now? Perhaps their virtual reality was so advanced that they were obliged to get the necessary new emotions in Iraq? Hard to say!Sometimes I think it will be almost impossible to rule out as this trend continues, though I hope it never gets that far. Still, I fear that at some point the virtual emotions will have surpassed the real ones to such an extent that it will have to be rethought. It's a bit like with flavours today already. Children who are served real strawberries no longer recognise the taste because the fake aromas that are supposed to represent strawberry flavour have been so strongly adapted to an idealised taste that they have supplanted the real taste of strawberries. It's what we now call strawberry flavor is actually a virtual strawberry flavor. It works the same way with emotions.We have cultivated emotions now, which may no longer have anything to do with the original emotions.Let me just suddenly use the emotion sex. If the situation worsens, people will soon start confusing the emotion of sex with the emotion of drinking a soft drink. I don't know what a caveman must have felt when having sex. But that it was very rudimentary and much more pronounced, bordering on bestial, needs no explanation in my opinion. That the woman was not always pleased with this either! But how do you know that, and more importantly, how do you measure it? We believe that Muslim women should be miserable, according to our standards. But if we are to believe Jan Leyers, this turns out not to be the case. You could even ask yourself whether women here in the West are really that happy? How do you measure that? Through trendsetters such as quality time, part time job, bubble bath, the type of diapers the baby wears? It will probably help, but I have some questions about whether it is authentic. Just because it tastes good doesn't mean it's natural. So I ask myself to what extent all these ideal images are actually ideal. There is nothing wrong with it, but on the other hand…

One more small thought. Why are almost all the major comic book heroes in Flanders bachelors, or even loners? Lucky Luke, Lambiek, the Red Knight, Tintin, they are all loners and oddballs. Not really lonely, but definitely hardened bachelors. Abroad, most cartoon characters have at least one girlfriend. I've wondered how that would come about. Apparently the Belgian has a great affection for singles. I don't see anything wrong with that per se, of course. Although I wondered whether that doesn't indicate a social problem. Especially since children take this as an example and unconsciously start to see their single status as something valuable. It would be better if parents presented their children with their sex lives instead of comic books. Not for the sex itself, of course. Purely educational, to teach them how to deal with emotions. That is obvious.

Parents could provide some guidance such as:

'That's Jos and that's Maria. They are married, but Jos is now doing it with Veerle, Koot's wife who is currently in the shower with Effie, an illegitimate daughter of your father who in turn is giving the neighbor a blow job...'

It is the new reality and with gender switching it is even becoming worse, in my opinion!

Not really my thing, but a kid could learn something from this! it is imprinted in school on early ages so I bet the kids could capture the raw emotions of real life right away. But yes, that may be a bit far-fetched as therapy. The children will first have to go a little further into the virtual desert. There is also plenty to be gained in that area. But then I'm back to square one. Breaking through our increasingly static society and the associated pathological urge to absolutely capture everything that is dynamic in something static. Even I'm doing that now, by writing this down. But there is a very good reason for that! Who would want to listen to me if I wanted to explain this in a dynamic conversation? Nobody! I don't even know if I could do it! In any case, it proves that not everything that is static is necessarily bad.