Mindless
Originally uploaded by Constance Wiebrands
As a post that began as a very simple idea has become mired in associated discoveries of others' interesting perspectives, I went looking for a quicker topic.
How quick can I make this yet still be rational and constructive?
(and will this attempt to post from Flickr succeed considering my supposedly 80G (35G peak) has been throttled?)
Constance described graffiti on a tree in Hyde Park as "mindless, stupid behaviour". Those are strong words, so I'm guessing that she felt angry because the graffiti interfered with her enjoyment of the natural beauty of the tree/park/day.
Quite aside from the opportunity the post presented for me to practice empathy, the photo and the blogger's emotional reaction to the graffiti got me thinking about:
Literacy: The ability to read and write - a term which has been modified to encompass a broad range of communication and thinking skills in multiple media. I not only can't read that tag (and I'm diverted by the fact that it is a tag and a photo of that tag gets tagged at Flickr), I have no understanding of its subcultural context - but I'm sure that it is an expression with meaning amongst graffitists and possibly a wider subculture.
Illiteracy: How it feels. In this case I am the illiterate one and the fact that right there is an expression I do not understand frustrates me. Also, because of the circumstance in which I am illiterate in such forms of expression, I have limited knowledge of the people who do understand it - and when one has limited knowledge, self-protection endeavours to make do, at the risk of prejudice.
Mindlessness, Minding, Mind: There a number of things one might mean by "mindless":
# lacking conscious thought, intelligence or reason;
# requiring little mental effort;
# unattentive
# Heedless, imprudent, rash, showing no regard for meaning or consequence
In relation to the practice of tagging (from a mere distant awareness that there is a range of expression in the form of graffiti beyond the smallest (but even in itself not meaningless) "I was here") - the only way I could label it as mindless would be if it had become habitual for the tagger and I just cannot imagine that to be the case. Disregard for the preference of others for natural beauty is not necessarily mindless. Rebellion against social mores or law is not necessarily mindless.
And I'm going to stop myself before I contemplate "notart" or begin to research graffiti and its cultures.
You know, I have never looked at tagging in that sense, which is a bit odd, given that I am literate in more than one language/culture. I will concede that this is not necessarily mindless, but I still dislike tagging, especially on old trees in a park :)
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