United States of Mine

For every environment, in front of every person we adopt a unique posture, we adopt a suitable “me”, a language and a particular behavior.

It is interesting how a reality show like “Big Brother Brazil”, strongly criticized by its “bad examples” to our puritan and conservative society, can a be a source of relevant themes to be debated in what pertains to human and society behavior. Just to give an example, one of the main concerns of the housemates is being themselves. But what is it be yourself?

Perhaps one of the most plausible answers is “to behave as you usually do being coherent with what you think and feel”. This thought makes sense, however, it is important to keep in mind that is impossible to establish a kind of profile about who you are.

First of all, we all know that we change as the days, months and years goes by. We might have enjoyed very much something in the past and today we do not enjoy it anymore, or the opposite, we might have hated something in the past and now we love it. Second of all, what is the expire date of a relatively trustworthy profile about who we are?

Not only time can change our vision we and others have concerning our personality. The environment also “shapes” us, as well as people that share this environment with us. For example, the vocabulary we use and jokes we make not always are those we use with who works with us. A person may be glad, playful and funny with a certain group of people, at the same time this one may be more serious and tough with others. Have not this one being “himself” in some of these situations?

In a Big Brother, a housemate may feel intimidated by the cameras, to the exposition and constantly judgment from his house colleagues and the TV audience. He may end up out there being someone he have never imagined to be perhaps because he measured too much his words in order to not displease anyone, as well he may have walked over who dared to try to stop his plans. We can discover a new “me” in situations like these. And we are a bunch of “mes”, we have multiple profiles , almost all of them very similar in its essence, but never identical. For every environment, in front of every person we adopt a unique posture, we adopt a suitable “me”, a language and a particular behavior.

What is “being yourself”? Which are your different “mes” to different people and environments? And when are you being loyal to your essence and when are you fooling others and yourself?

Creativity, where are you?

What happened to creativity during the 20th century? Will we be always with an eye in the past looking for something pseudo-new?

In 1997, the British writer J. K. Rowling released the first Harry Potter series book, “Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone”, that became a worldwide best seller and then a movie by Warner Bros in 2001. Since then, Harry Potter became a global phenomenon, breaking selling books records when a new one was released and of viewers at the movies. Central theme: witches.

In 2008, another phenomenon among teenagers also went out from the books straight to the big screen: the Twilight saga. It was not as successful as Harry Potter, but it made lots fans around the world to fall in love with the story, as well it was strongly criticized. Central theme: vampires and werewolfs.

In 2010, the American TV network Fox releases “The Walking Dead” after the end of one of the most successful TV series, “Lost”. Central theme: zombies.

These are some examples of movies and TV series that made a worldwide success. Their central themes included witches, vampires, werewolves and zombies. What do they have in common?

Well, they are all fiction stories, fantasy. We can also notice that tales about these beings and creatures are not anything new. Even Disney's fairytales tells us stories with the same characters: the prince, the princess and the evil witch. What happened to creativity during the 20th century? What about the 21st?

We do not live in the Dark Age anymore and church no longer has the power to send supposed “demons” to the bonfire, we can not blame anyone due to sorcery for our “sin” to be understandable. We are so enlightened and skeptic that imagination is missing and even children are told since they are very young that the Easter rabbit and Santa Claus do not exist. Magic has gone. They become adult people with a little creativity, the grow up pale, skeptic, too much down to Earth.

Will we be always with an eye in the past looking for something pseudo-new? Will fashion always looking something retro or vintage to the model to show in the fashion show walkaway? Will the movie makes always be looking the best seller books list to know which of them could turn out to be a movie?

Inspiring in ancient tales helps to keep the folklore are mythology alive. Witches, zombies, werewolves, gladiators, god and demigods will not the forgotten soon. Will we be a generation of restores that will not contribute with anything new due to our lack of creativity?