collective
we spend our whole lives
seeking to be individual
define ourselves by
altering everything
we have
the same skin
grow hair the same way
lose nails
and teeth that don’t grow back enamel
our eyes know only their position below
our brows
our nose between
our ears on either side
next to
perhaps a few color changes
our genetic make-up
has only one brand
we were manufactured in the same factory
outside labels are all the same
so how could we expect that intrinsically
we could be any different
sure there is the effect of wear tear & age
nature versus nurture
the ends held prisoner by the means
but when you excavate the core
put under microscope the reason for doing
the instincts
the archetypes remain
unchanged
I wrote this poem a few months ago while thinking about Carl Jung and his idea of the collective unconscious. Simplified, his theory says that our unconscious minds are connected through ancestral memory and experience and that all humans have this in common. This part of our mind is, of course, different from our individual consciousness. What causes me to bring back this idea of the collective unconscious is what I have observed while watching and taking part in Paradise Now‘s games. There is no set rules to this game, yet after a while, patrons seem to know what they are doing and they exhibit this through their lack of knowledge. As the game progresses, patrons develop the same idea: that I must go along with everything in the game or, if I disagree, I change it. We all hold on to this same thought but in dealing with/ executing it, this is when our individual consciousnesses come into play: some people will follow along with where others lead them, others will create their own rules by changing the ones on the whiteboard still others will change their own rules silently. Through my own informal study of behavior, I have found that Paradise Now is not only a game of unequal circumstances and varying objectives, it is also a game of collectivity and observation.
Shay Tyndall
