Is it the times that dictate behaviors or the behaviors that dictate the times?
It doesn’t truly matter. What matters is understanding the times we live in and how the behaviors follow suit or lead the way.
We used to be driven by ‘Will’. We’d override the circumstances and forge a path regardless of how difficult.
That dominated for a good length of time, creating ‘Manly non emotional’ behaviors – A sign of strength was to deny any weaknesses.
The sixties with the advent of weed and psychedelics ushered in a more impulsive way of moving through the world – More dictated by our feelings.
The eighties and nineties were all about possibilities and creating possibilities – Overriding the circumstances became less important than controlling your circumstances.
Today, we no longer have ‘possibility’ as a cultural zeitgeist. We now have a good deal of anxiety, uncertainty and dread.
Understanding how to live in concert with what life throws at you, allowing something to happen, is becoming the new order of things. Control is mostly a myth.
So a more ‘soulful/spiritual’ approach to one’s self-expression is taking center stage.
Children and adolescents always drive the culture because they are inventing, innovating and using all current resources to generate a life-style, as opposed to those that long for a time that no longer exists. There is a healing, warm feeling to a nostalgic retrospective, but it has to live as an event, not a place where you reside.
The call to action is to create and participate in the times that you live in. Your past should live in your phone.